Bloodline Rising

by Katy Moran

  I have never been so far from home. Oh, my city. I dream of her high walls and her roof-tops, my secret pathways; I long for the blue smoke of cook-fires rising in the air by the Forum of Theodosius, for the sight of white-winged gulls wheeling about the statue of the Emperor Justinian. Who holds court now in my underground palace? My heart burns to think of Thales down there with Niko. He will lead poor stupid Niko to his death – Niko has not the spine for ruling the Underworld. And what of Iskendar – what did he say when he heard Thales had bested me? Did he clap and cheer as the others surely must have done? Thieves are ever loyal to the winner in any battle, and Thales won out over me. I hope that Iskendar was sorry, and looked away while the rest raised the victory shout. I was the one who conquered that palace – it was nothing but a grand, ruined old storm drain before I made it mine. And now here I am, curling up in a foul swill of human waste on the deck of a slave ship. But at least I am free.

  I think I must have slept. For the first time in the Lord God knows how many days, I have not woken up in the dark. Greyish, pearly light slants in through the nearest oar-hole. Moving silently, I stretch out my arms and legs, biting my lip so hard I draw blood. I cannot let out even the faintest gasp of pain. The deck is empty. Crawling, I reach the oar-hole and peer out, and my eyes burn with the golden glory of it – the sun setting over the sea. Tears scald my face. I can see just a sliver of sky – a fire-tinged swirl of cloud and clear white light. The sea is like cloth-of-gold, and I remember waiting on the roof after I had stolen that pomegranate, and the sea looked so then, a spreading swathe of light.

  Move, you have no time.

  Tecca again. I must have lost my senses. I cannot bear hearing her voice, and I wonder if it is a punishment from God for the sinful path I followed this past year and more. But whatever she may be, Tecca is right. I must go. Once the slavers have done their trade in Ephesus we’ll be away again. I wonder, do the crew who take the slaves ashore to sell spend the night drinking in the taverna? Maybe we do not pull up our anchors again till tomorrow morning. I think of those still imprisoned down in the hold – the African man who laughed, all those hollow-faced folk I see at the oars day after day. Is it worse for the women, who must spend all their time below, for they never row? It surely is. I could not bear to stay down there in the dark all the time; I should lose my senses. I think I have already gone mad, hearing the voice of my dead sister. It is unholy of me.

  I know what I am going to do first, now I have the run of this hell-ship. I am going to do something good in thanks for my escape. This is a strange notion, doing something good, one I have not thought of for longer than I can recall. Being wicked is usually so much more fun – but there is not the scope for it as a prisoner at sea.

  I crouch by the oar-hole a moment, steadying my breathing, trying to clear my mind. It shall not be easy, remaining out of sight on a boat this size, and worse it shall be when they find out I was not taken ashore after all: it is hard to stay hidden when someone has sworn to find you.

  Two months later

  CHALCEDON, Nicomedia, Nicaea, Smyrna, Ephesus, Carthage, Athens, Syracuse – I have passed by them all. Always we drop anchor far enough from shore that no one might chance a swim, and all I see are the domed roofs of churches and the pale bulk of warehouses where silks and spices and slaves are held. I climb the masts and cling to the furled rigging; I hide below deck in the shadowy hold, among great bales of silk and barrels of wine all meant for kings of the frozen north. I sleep curled up in piles of looped-up hawsers or right in the bows on the upper deck, and no one has seen me.

  I am sitting on the bowsprit, right out over the rushing sea, when Tecca comes again and perches behind me, putting her cold little hands over my eyes.

  I never know when she is going to arrive. Sometimes I do not see her for days on end, and I wonder if I am bound up in a waking dream.

  “I know it’s you,” I say, laughing. I do not know if Tecca’s spirit is walking the earth or if my mind has rotted on this boat, but I am glad she is here. I am glad of the company.

  “Look,” she whispers into my ear. Her breath is icy cold. “Porpoises.” She takes her hands off my eyes and wraps her arms around my waist, the way she did when we rode one of the ponies in the countryside up by Hieron. We stare down at the porpoises, at their glistening backs and pointed fins. There are four, five of them and they swim alongside the ship as those still chained to the oar benches groan and heave. At least they do not starve now.

  “Tecca,” I say. “Are you a ghost?” I half-want to laugh because once I was the Ghost and now my sister is one. Tecca and I were always of a kind, more so than Elfla and me, even though we quickened together in our mother’s womb.

  “No.” Tecca’s voice has grown softer, and I can no longer feel her arms about my waist. “I am no ghost, but you are a traveller.”

  A traveller? Not by choice. I know not what she means, but I understand so little now – I am never even sure whether I am awake or asleep – and then she is gone, and I am alone again.

  I wonder what happened to Amin, and if the folk who bought him treat him kindly, as we did Asha, or if his life is worse now than it was when he was on this ship. That would not be easy, but folk treat slaves ill. The thought of Asha being taken on a boat like this when she was but a child makes me feel bad inside. I should have been kinder to her. I wish I was with her now, at home in the courtyard— But I cannot think of Asha, or any of them.

  I have work to do, and I must be gone from here. I crawl back along the bowsprit and drop silently on to the deck, slipping past the rows of heaving oarsmen. There are one or two who see more than the others. When I go by, they raise their eyes from the rowing, and they look afraid, as if they have just seen a spirit walking.

  I want to laugh, but I know I cannot.

  Am I dead? Maybe that’s what happened, and Tecca is trying to lead me to the next world – she coming back to take my hand for once, and not the other way around. But whether I am dead or no, I still have a duty, and I run towards the looming shadow of the tower. It squats just behind the mainmast, and back in the days when this dromon was a warship, they must have fired arrows from the top of it at the Arab fleet. Now there’s just an African woman up there who cooks. I think she must be a slave rather than part of the crew, for they’re leery of having women on board as it is, and would no more pay one than they would release all the cargo. I’ve heard more than one of them blame a squall on the women prisoners below deck.

  I squat in the shadow of the tower; it is early evening and the grey light is slanting. I have noticed these past few days that the sea looks more slate-coloured than deep blue, and there is a bite in the air. We are heading north, and winter is coming. There are not many slaves left, only a few who looked too sickly to sell at Syracuse. They are bound for the port of Londinium now, I know, where the slavers will buy many fair-haired brats like me to sell. An overseer ambles by, walking down the lines of oarsmen, idly flicking his whip, and stops to talk to his chief down by the stern. He is not looking at me.

  I fix my mind on reaching the top of the tower, and spring. My body is getting stronger again, my muscles warmer and looser, and I scramble to the top, hauling myself onto the roof where the cook-woman sits by her pot, chopping onions into it. Steam drifts. None of this food is meant to reach the mouths of those below, but I shall make sure it does. The cook-woman is scrawny like everyone else – she looks as though she can barely lift her arm – but she works fast and smooth, her heavy knife slamming down and down again. I wonder she has not got fatter and more hale in charge of the cook-pot. She pauses and scrapes white scraps of onion into her pot. I am so hungry I could eat it raw in handfuls. My mouth fills with spit at the thought. A shiny pile of fish lies next to her and, sighing, she reaches for one and cuts off its head and tail, slits it down the middle and pulls out its guts. All this goes into another pot behind her – the one destined for the cargo.

  I curse myself – I have come too soon
. What was I thinking? I ought to have waited till I smelled the food cooking before stealing what I could. I have to do this at each change of crew so that I can get it down to the hold, to the resting rowers and the women, without any of the slavers seeing. But the cook has barely begun her work, so I must either wait or come back when the sun’s even lower and she has finished. What is wrong with me these days? Every time I move about in daylight I risk being caught. There will be someone on this boat who is quicker than others, someone who will see me even though I do my best to remain hidden. The Ghost is losing his touch.

  I stifle a sigh.

  The cook-woman looks up. Right at me. Her eyes are locked on mine. She smiles, and laughs softly. “Careful, child,” she says in a low voice. “You grow reckless.”

  I feel cold to the bone. She can see me. And I did not know she could speak Greek.

  “It’s well enough,” she goes on, stirring the onions. “They can’t spy you from the deck, even if any of them were sharp enough to spot you, child, with your cunning – I’ve been watching you. Sit down.”

  I obey. There is something about her voice that commands submission. I glance around quickly. There’s a pile of rotten-looking blankets folded neatly in the corner and a row of sacks lined up next to a few barrels – they must shelter the woman and her fire from the wind. Oftentimes I have seen the crew sitting with the cook-woman, looking out to sea or up at the night sky as they warm their bones around her flames.

  “I know what you have been doing.” Her voice has a musical lift. She gazes down at the simmering onions as she speaks; if anyone on deck were to glance up, they would not guess she was talking to anyone.

  “I don’t steal it for myself,” I say, quickly. “Only a bit. I take all the food below and leave it in the hold. It’s – it’s for the prisoners.”

  She laughs softly, her thin shoulders rising and falling. “What a good little thief you are.” Then her face changes – she looks afraid. “And so the prisoners all think you died that day we anchored by Ephesus, and that your spirit haunts this ship, and brings them mortal food. I hear of everything, sooner or later, up here. But I am not talking about you stealing scraps from me, child. It’s your wandering I speak of.”

  I hear Tecca’s voice in my mind again: You are a traveller.

  “I have to move about the ship.” My voice sounds dry and cracked; it has been so long since I spoke to anyone. “If I stayed in one place I should get caught, and I would not be able to steal any food.”

  The cook-woman shakes her head. Her hair is woven into hundreds of thin plaits and they swing about her face. “Come, do you not see what you are doing? You walk too close to the other place.”

  A strange, fluttery feeling bursts in my chest. “What other place?” For all the talk to be having after such a long silence, this must be the strangest.

  I fear I already know what she means.

  The woman leans forward, and her skinny fingers grip my arm. “Hear this,” she says, and I feel her warm breath on my face. “You stray too close to the land of your ancestors. You are a powerful one indeed to do so, but you must take care, or you will not come back, and your body shall be as an empty shell.”

  I grow cold as I recall Thales the Knife calling Tasik my “witch-father”, and Achaicus Dassalena sowing his poisonous words in Constans’s ears. That ungodly craft, he said.

  What manner of man was he, my father?

  I will break open if I think of Tasik; I stare at the woman’s cook-pot instead – a blackened, iron thing it is, shaped like a bowl with a rough handle on either side.

  “There, now,” the cook-woman says, rubbing my arm. “The ancestors have such sweet voices when they call, and this life has no light for you at the moment. But you must resist, and live in the world of men.” She cuts open another fish and spears it with a wooden skewer, holding the flesh to the flames. The skin begins to spit and crackle.

  “I see my sister,” I whisper. Why am I telling this to a stranger, to the cook-woman on this damned boat? But the words come pouring out of my mouth like grains of wheat rushing out of an upturned sack. “I hear her voice, but she’s dead. She’s been dead a year and more.”

  The cook-woman nods slowly, turning the skewered fish so its other side begins to blacken in the flames. “She is trying to help you, child. The ancestors know they cannot linger here too long. But if you call her, she has no choice but to come.”

  I, call Tecca? She seems to come and go like a leaf floating on the wind. I cannot call her any more than I might whistle for a wind. The smell of the cooking fish is making my guts rumble. I am hollow and dry inside like an empty nut.

  The cook-woman smiles. “Are you a Christian?”

  I nod, though I know not what kind of Christian I have been. I have not prayed to God in as long as I can remember. It seems He doesn’t listen to me.

  “All you People of the Book forget,” says the woman. “You forget how close the ancestors are to us. You call your sister with your longing for her, but you cannot bring her back. She is gone from this world, boy. She has moved on.” She draws her skewer from the flames and holds it out to me. “There, my dear, eat that. Put some food in your body, and it will bring your spirit closer to your flesh and bones.”

  The fish-meat burns my fingers and then my mouth, but I do not care – I strip it from the soft translucent bones and tear lumps of it from the charred and blackened skin.

  The woman smiles. “Easy, or you’ll sicken.”

  She is right, it hurts my belly, but I don’t care. I swallow the last mouthful. “Thank you,” I whisper.

  “It’s no matter. I grow lonesome, with no one to talk with but my captors,” she says. “You rest now, boy. Get in behind those sacks, and sleep, and I shall let you know when it’s safe for you to steal from my cook-pot.”

  I am tired of taking orders, but of a sudden I want nothing more than to sleep, so I crawl across the floor – which is the roof of the tower: what lies below, within? – and I slide behind the barrel, covering myself with a half-empty sack. My fingers come away pale with the dust of crushed oats. I feel the waters of sleep rising up to claim me as I watch the woman get to her feet. She comes to kneel beside me, scooping oats from the sack in a cracked earthenware cup with whorls graven into the side.

  “Tell me your name, little barbarian, since you are hiding in my domain. I am Sia.” She smiles, showing crooked white teeth.

  “I am Cai.” It has been so long since I heard my own name spoken that I say it again. “Cai, son of Essa.”

  I dream less now. I do not know why: maybe it is because I eat more and I talk to Sia when I can. She tells me of the hot, yellow land of her childhood, of the white sand where the sea meets the sky. She tells me of the war between her village and the next one, and of being sold in a market-place to the wife of a spice trader. She tells me how she spent long days grinding cardamom seeds and weighing out turmeric on a pair of bronze scales till her hands were stained yellow. She shows me her fingertips, still tinged a faint goldy-green, as if each one has been bruised. That was more years ago than Sia cares to count.

  Most often I sit astride the bowsprit, watching the sea rush by beneath me. Sometimes I hear Tecca laughing, but when I turn, all I see is a flash of her red hair, a glimpse of her blue tunic.

  We are sailing fast now – what few slaves remain are chained in the hold. Till but a few days since, they were using some of the men as crew. I was clinging to the rigging, and I saw the African who used to be chained behind Amin hauling in the big sail they’ve rigged on the mainmast, and I’m sure he looked straight at me. He said nothing, though. He just finished hauling in the line – and then he jumped overboard. They cannot keep the slaves chained if they wish to use them as crew. I watched it happen, so full of horror I felt bile fill my mouth. I could not see him fall from where I sat, but I heard the cries from the crew and the slaves, and I wondered why more of them do not end it so.

  Folk will cling to their lives n
o matter what. Perhaps everyone has something to finish, just as I do. Maybe that drowned man had nothing left at all – no family to treasure hopes of finding, no enemy whose dying face he ached to see. Unlike me: I will watch Achaicus Dassalena’s eyes darken as he faces the next world, and I will send him there with my own hands.

  Off the Gaulish coast, mid-October

  AFTER NIGHT upon night of being lashed by a storm, our world has returned to a cold, quiet grey. We lost five men all told, each one washed overboard by waves that overtopped the mainmast. Now they use the slaves again as crew, they can only pray that more of them do not end it all by leaping for the cold embrace of the sea. The air gets ever colder, the water darker with each day that passes. Some days I catch glimpses of grey humps of land on the horizon: the coast of a land called Armorica, Sia tells me. At night she covers me with a ragged blanket I am sure she cannot spare.

  “You keep it,” I whisper as I curl up by the oat barrels. “I’m well enough.” I am not, of course: it is bone-chilling freezing up here in her tower fastness, but now I am set on being good instead of following my own merry path I ought to keep to it, come what may.

  “Take it: Sia’s bones are older and stronger than yours,” she says.

  I have not seen Tecca in such a long time I wonder if I was but dreaming: if I never really laid eyes on her, never heard her call to me, speaking those strange words, You are a child of the Serpent. I cannot tear my mind away from all that strange talk about Tasik and his unchristian powers. He was my father but what did I really know about him? I wish more than anything that he was here now; I feel sure he would understand about Tecca and this Serpent she speaks of.