by Rj Barker
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by RJ Barker
Excerpt from Legacy of Ash copyright © 2019 by Matthew Ward
Excerpt from The Unbroken copyright © 2021 by Cherae Clark
Cover design by LBBG
Cover illustration © Edward Bettison
Inside images copyright © 2019 by Tom Parker
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First Edition: September 2021
Simultaneously published in Great Britain by Orbit
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021935095
ISBNs: 9780316488051 (trade paperback), 9780316488037 (ebook)
E3-20210810-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Epigraph
Part I: The Black Pirate 1. The Terrible Here and the Terrible Now
2. The Terrible Now and the Terrible Here
3. The Black Pirate
4. Once More to Sea
5. And I Saw a Fair Ship
6. The Cause
7. Blood on the Water
8. A Well-Observed Plan
9. The Open Sea
10. The Wait
11. The Weight
12. The Sea Hates a Thief
13. A Slow and Stately Terror
14. Leviathans of the Deep
15. In the Deeps, the Most Blue Ice
16. The Ghosts in the Fog
17. The Fog and the Ghosts
18. A Mystery Resolved in Blood
19. The Leviathan Returns
Part II: The Shipwife 20. Those Who Are Cursed to Know the Future
21. No Safe Harbour for the Dead
22. The Solitude of Command
23. A Walk
24. Down Among the Desperate
25. The Woman and the Servant
26. The Passage
27. The Deckchilder
28. The Effect
29. A Homecoming
30. The Dying Town
31. The Acquaintance
32. And They Met One Late Night
33. The Woman in the Corner
34. The Choice
35. A Test
36. The Exchange
37. Toward the End
38. A Deal Struck
39. The Meeting
40. The Boarding of Wyrm Sither
41. The Escape
42. The Desperate
43. Only the Day Is Undecided
44. The Court of Birds
45. A Meeting of Lovers
46. The Last Escape
47. For Those Who Fly: Fly Fast, Fly Far
Part III: The Wake of Ships 48. Departures and Arrivals
49. Last Sight/First Sight
50. The Turn
51. The Tying of the Knot
52. The Tightening of the Noose
53. A Day of Dread
54. The Last Battle
55. The Bight
56. The Broken
57. Her Final Command
Epilogue
Discover More
Afterword
Extras Meet the Author
A Preview of Legacy of Ash
A Preview of The Unbroken
Also by RJ Barker
Praise for The Bone Ships
For my Dad, who introduced me to the romance and beauty of sailing ships
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The Song of Lucky Meas
The tide it ran for miles
Left ship and crew a-dry
Don’t sacrifice the babe
The sea put out the cry.
But the hagpriests didn’t listen
Said “The babe must surely die.”
Thirteenbern called out
“Give the child to the ships!”
And the sea came to her rescue
As word left the Bern’s lips.
PART I
THE BLACK PIRATE
1
The Terrible Here and the Terrible Now
Waves as monuments. Vast and cold, brutal, and ugly. Waves washing over all sound and sight and sense. Waves leaving you breathless. Waves leaving you gasping. Unstoppable, agonising waves.
“And how do you raise the sea dragons, Meas Gilbryn?”
As the waves withdraw, the tempest eases, the agony flows away and leaves behind a thousand other little pains. Her wrists and ankles, where the ropes hold her on the chair, the skin rubbed raw by straining against twisted cords. The gnaw of hunger in her belly, the rasp in her throat from screaming, the ache in her feet from toes broken and never reset correctly. The sharp catch of the clothes on her back against the scars left by the whipping cord.
The throb of a tooth in the back of her mouth going bad, one they are yet to notice. She takes a little comfort in that. That one little pain is hers, one little pain they could exploit but have not. Not yet. One day they will, no doubt about that. They are as fastidious in her pain as they are in their care of her. But today it is a small victory that she will claim over her tormentor.
“I do not know how to raise a sea dragon.”
A sigh. Meas opens her eyes to see the hagpriest sat before her on a stool. She is beautiful, this girl. Her brown eyes clear, dark skin unblemished and shining in the light coming through the barred window. Her white robe remains – miraculously, given her profession – free of blood or stain as she places the glowing iron back in the brazier. Meas smells her own flesh burning. It makes her mouth water with hunger, even as the pain from the burns sears across her nerves.
They burn her on the back of the calf. It is as if they do not want their cruel work to be immediately apparent.
“This could all stop, Meas, you only have to tell the truth.”
She has been telling them the truth for weeks, but they do not believe her. So she starts in the same place. The same place they always start.
“My title is shipwife. And if my mother wants my secrets, then tell her to come and ask for them.”
Laughter at that. Always laughter.
“You are not important enough to bring powerful people down here,” says her torturer. She stands, walks to the back of the small, clean white room and opens a cupboard. “You should know I am the very least of my order, the most inconsequential of novices. I am all you are deemed worth, I am afraid.” She takes a moment, staring at the shelves, choosing from the instruments stored there. Eventually settling on
a roll of variskcloth which shifts in her arms and clinks with the sound of tools hidden within. Meas’s heart starts to beat faster as the hagpriest returns to sit opposite her.
“I know I am important,” says Meas, sweat starts on her brow, “and I know my mother comes down, for I hear you talking outside the room to her. I hear you, no matter how low you keep your voices.” She was so sure.
The hagpriest smiles and places the roll of variskcloth on a small table by the brazier.
“I am sorry to disappoint you, Shipwife Meas, but that is simply another of my order. I am told your mother has never so much as mentioned coming down here.” She stares at Meas. “Or mentioned you.”
Something small but important breaks within her at that. She has been so sure. But in the hagpriest’s words is the ring of truth.
“Now, Shipwife Meas, let us look to your hands.” The hagpriest’s hands are gentle when they touch her, soft, so unlike Meas’s own, hardened by years at sea. But they are also strong as she forces Meas to uncurl her fingers from the fists she has balled them into. “The nails have grown back remarkably well,” says the hagpriest. “Sometimes, after they have been ripped from the nail bed, they grow back malformed, or not at all. But you are strong.” She lets go of Meas’s hand and turns to her table, unrolls the variskcloth to reveal the tools within. Sets of pliers of various sizes with strange jaws and beaks, although Meas is far more familiar with them than she had ever wished to be. The hagpriest picks over them, first taking one out and inspecting it, then another. “It is sad for you, that you hold such an important secret. And sad for me also, I suppose. I must be careful with you, oh so careful, and we must take our time. Were your secrets less important, our relationship would be far more agreeable.” She clacks a pair of pliers together in front of Meas’s face.
Open. Shut.
Open. Shut.
“By which I mean short, for you, Shipwife. Oh, agonising, indeed, far more agonising than anything I have yet put you through. But you would thank me when I brought out the knife that would send you to the Hag, if that is your fate.” She puts the pliers back. Takes out another, smaller pair.
Open. Shut.
Open. Shut.
She turns to Meas. “They often do thank me, you know. Women and men have so many secrets, and they become a burden. I allow them release from their burdens. And I allow the pain to end.” She forces Meas’s hand open again and places the pliers around the end of the nail on Meas’s longest finger. A gradually rising pressure in the nail bed. “They cry, Meas. They thank me and they cry with joy when I end them.” More pressure; not pain, not yet. Just the promise of it. “Now, tell me, how do you raise the arakeesians, Meas Gilbryn?”
Meas stares into the eyes of her torturer, finds no pity there. Worse, she is sure what the torturer believes she feels for Meas is compassion. That she thinks she is a woman doing an important job, no matter how unpleasant it may be. And she really, genuinely, pities Meas. That she thinks it a shame that Meas’s end could not be quick, if agonising. The pressure and the pain in her nail builds and builds. And she knows, as she has known so many times before, that she can bear it no longer.
“I cannot raise keyshans.” Words like shame, burning her throat as if poisonous. Bringing tears and choking sobs with them. “It is my deckkeeper, Joron Twiner. The gullaime name him Caller and he sings the keyshans up from their sleep.”
The hagpriest staring into her eyes.
“The same lies, Meas, they do not become more truthful just because you repeat them. But I admire your strength. We will find your deckkeeper, do not worry, and I will speak with him.” Meas steels herself, ready for the rip and the agony. Instead the pressure falls away. “I think, sweet Meas,” says the hagpriest, and she strokes her cheek, “that we are done for today. You are tired, and you need to rest. Think about today, and what may come in our future. Think about secrets and what you can share to end your pain.” She rolls up her tools, walks over to the cupboard and replaces the roll. “I will have the seaguard come, take you back to your rooms. I have had a bath drawn for you.” She turns, walks back to Meas and then she changes, from gentle to hard. Grabs Meas’s face, pushes her head back so she looks up at the hagpriest through tears of shame. “You are a handsome woman, you know? You are very fine looking.” She leans in close. “I am hoping,” she whispers, “that if I ask nicely enough, they will let me take one of your eyes.”
The hagpriest lets go, walks away, leaving Meas alone with two opposite thoughts warring in her mind:
Joron, where are you? You said you would come, and Joron, stay away. Whatever you do, you must not let them take you.
2
The Terrible Now and the Terrible Here
Skearith’s Blind Eye had closed and Deckkeeper Deere walked through night as thick and black as congealed blood. The gentle hiss of the sea on the shore like the drawing of breath, in and out and out and in. The crunch of shingle under her boots as she walked toward the lookout tower. Up the ladder on the stone pier, along the walkway of stout varisk, cured and black with age. The wind touched her face, cooling for now, not long until it became the biting cold of the sleeping season when ice would coat everything in Windhearth and the boneships would come in, heavy with ice as white as their hulls, seeking new supplies before they resumed their patrols of the northern waters. Not as numerous now those boneships, not calling as often. The sea was more dangerous than it ever had been; keyshans roamed, keyshans and much worse out there on the water.
Touching the hilt of the straightsword on her hip for reassurance.
“Bern keep me safe,” said under her breath before starting the climb up the ladder to the tower – the rungs cold enough to numb her hands.
“D’keeper.”
“Seen anything, Tafin?” The man shook his head, his body crouched, encased in thick robes against the night chill.
“S’quiet.”
Wind against her face.
“The breeze seems to be picking up,” she said. “I feel it when I turn to the sea.” Saw the screwing up of the deckchild’s face, knew it for disagreement. One of those many hundreds of little ways the old hands told you that you had said something wrong or foolish. “What is it, Tafin?” She waited for the man’s gentle instruction. She liked him, he never made her feel stupid.
“Winds is always off the land at this time, see. You…” His voice fell away.
A darkness against the darkness. A shape detaching from the night. A ship on the water, but no glowing corpselights dancing above it. No honesty in its approach. A black ship, coming in fast on the winds of a gullaime, and before she could open her mouth the call was going up from Tafin, and the deckchild on the tower opposite. Panic in their voices.
“Black ship rising!”
“… ship rising!”
And she was already halfway down the tower, sliding down the rungs. In the town and on the docks alarm bells were ringing and she knew every woman and man would be pulling on clothes, reaching for weapons.
Feeling fear.
Her feet hit the stone pier and she stumbled as she heard the warmoan, the sound of wind over the taut cords of the gallowbows, loud in her ear. The familiar sound of loosing, the high elastic twang of the cord, the thud of the bow arms coming forward, the hiss of the wingbolt. A moment later the sound of varisk and gion smashing and the screams of deckchilder, as the towers were hit by heavy stone. Too dark to see the far tower but she heard the groan and crack of the varisk structure as it toppled, the huge splash as it hit the water. Knew it lost. Then she was throwing herself to the floor as she heard the tower behind her coming down. Rolling over, as if the massive, crushing weight coming toward her should be met head-on. As if she needed to face her death bravely, but at the last moment she brought her hands up – a natural reaction, though what use she thought her slender arms would be to ward off the jointweight of that broken mass of gion and varisk spars, she did not know.
At the last she screamed.
Felt shame.
Felt shock.
Horror as Tafin landed by her, his head broken, body pierced by spars. Smelling like a butcher’s row.
But she lived.
Had the Hag smiled on her today? Not so much as a cut on her and the lookout tower had fallen neatly around her. She rolled over. Stared into the harbour as the black ship cruised past. The crew throwing lamps over the side. At first, she thought of it as light for the archers in the rigging but it was not. No arrow or crossbow bolt pierced her flesh, she was either not seen or not cared about. No, these lights were not to find her, they were so people like her could see this ship. Could see the cruel keyshan beak that crowned the front of him. Could see the spikes and burrs. See the skulls that topped the bonerails along the side, and under the brightest lamps could see the name. The most feared name in the Hundred Isles, and the most wanted.
Tide Child.
As the ship passed she saw its crew, saw the deckchilder arrayed for war, crying out for blood and plunder, saw Tide Child’s seaguard, stood like statues in clothes as black as the ship. Saw the gullaime, dressed brightly in thick robes and surrounded by six of its own in ghostly white. Saw the command crew on the rump. The burned woman, the massive forms of Hag-cursed Muffaz and Barlay Oarturner. Between them all, he stood. Stock-still and swathed in rags, even his face covered, all hidden apart from his eyes. Did he turn as the ship passed? Did he see her on the ground? Did he watch her as he glided into the harbour? A shiver of fear went through her, for no woman or man was more of a danger to the Hundred Isles fleet than that one.
The Black Pirate had come to Windhearth.
And where the Black Pirate went, death and fire followed.
She heard his voice, loud, but fragile, like the croaking of a skeer.
“Bring him to landward. All bows at the ready. Put fire to my bolts, my girls and boys, and fire ’em well.”
With that order she knew her one hope – that Maiden’s Loss, the two-ribber moored at the harbour might save them – was gone. Oh, Tide Child might be a pirate right enough, but they flew him well, manoeuvred him sharp and fleet as any ship. He came about, pulling side-on to Maiden’s Loss. Her ears hurt as the gullaime brought their power to bear to slow the ship.