by Rj Barker
Keyshan’s Eye was not a happy ship either, even if he had to grudgingly admit it was a well-run one. The crew seemed to exist in a state of near terror; even on the first day when they were fresh from port punishments were frequent, the deckmother carried a stick that she used often, rations were docked and the crew accepted this without a word, heads bowed as abuse was heaped upon them. His inability to keep up with them was met with resentment as the other deckchilder paid his price when he could not be punished. When they were fed lunch one of them spat in his food before handing it over, and Joron had worked so hard that day, been left so unbearably hungry by it, that he had simply spooned out the spit and thrown it to one side, gritting his teeth and eating the rest of the grain mulch that was served to them.
Some time in the third week it became clear that the Keyshan’s Eye was sinking. Worse, its pumps were jammed and Joron was given the miserable job that he was told he would retain for the rest of the passage: he became a bailer. His days were spent with a bucket, part of a chain of those judged not worthy to work the more responsible jobs on the ship. He trudged from the slate of the deck, down the steep steps into the underdeck, down into the hold and from there into the stinking bilges where filthy water swilled around his calves while he filled his bucket. Then he made his way back up to the maindeck – for the underdeck was so filled with cargo it made the bowpeeks inaccessible – to throw the water over the side. Then back down and up and down and up and down, day after day, week after week. Mevans spent his time in the tops and Cwell spent her time strolling the decks with Shipwife Ansiri and Deckkeeper Mrin, commenting on the weather and the course of the ship – both of which were judged good. Had Joron not been weary, and pained from his constant battle against the water in the bilges – a battle the ship was slowly losing, though none wanted to hear that – then he may have pointed out that nothing about this situation was good. Instead he only trudged back and forth with his fellow bailers, the lowest of the low, all raggedly dressed, half-starved and with no more time for him than the rest of the crew. When he tried to speak to them they looked blankly at him from haggard faces, skin worn by weather and poor nutrition. So he went on with his up and down and down and up and fill and pour, and it seemed the days passed in the slowest possible increments. All he had to look forward to was poor food and his hammock where he had the brief and black relief of sleep.
He passed Mevans one day, who pulled him aside.
“D’keeper,” he said quietly.
“Servant,” said Joron, “my name is Servant.”
“Ey,” said Mevans. “You look poor, D’keeper, I could ask Cwell to have you declared ill and—”
“This ship, Mevans, is sinking. Three weeks of bailing and the water is now up to my knees.”
“Oh, ey,” said Mevans, “most of these short haulers are barely worth the name ship, but we should be at Bernshulme in three more. It will stay afloat that long.” Joron nodded, so tired he could barely speak.
“Why do the crew put up with the way they are treated, Mevans? I know the ship is run well but the crew are near to breaking, full of fear and—”
“Slaves,” said Mevans quietly.
“But that is…”
“This is Cahanny’s ship, you think he cares about the laws of Bernshulme? Besides, they are technically indentured, working off a debt and that is legal under Bernshulme law.”
“They will never work it off though.” He turned to find Cwell by the rail, staring out over the sea as she spoke. “It is a trick, a lie,” she said. “They give themselves into these contracts in hope of escaping debt, then they are worked to their deaths.”
“All of them?” said Joron.
“Ey,” said Cwell, “apart from the officers and a few of the strongest deckchilder.”
“And yet they do not take over the ship?”
“No,” said Cwell, “for as you have noted, the ship is sinking. Where would they go?” Joron stared at the small woman, thought it odd how, since they had changed their positions, Cwell had spoken more than he ever usually heard her talk. “I will speak to Ansiri, have them reassign you as my steward. She does not like you and demanded you do this work out of spite, but she has made her point, and I think she worries I may say something unpleasant to Cahanny when we make Bernshulme so I am likely to get my own way.”
“Thank you, Cwell.”
“Do not thank me, you are tired. We will need you awake if we are to find the shipwife, ey?”
“Ey,” said Joron.
So Joron’s following weeks were easier, simply fetching and carrying for Cwell, in a way that was expected of a steward. When she saw his leg was paining him she commanded he take some time to clean the stump, which was much needed, as the constant walking up and down stairs had worn away skin and created sores which were now weeping. Joron had to ask Mevans to coax some bird fat out of the ship’s cook to coat his wounds and protect them. After that he spent a pleasant afternoon simply being out the way and resting his leg. So the journey continued until he heard the call go up: “Ship rising!” Then it was all he could do not to run up on deck, his heart beating hard in anticipation of action.
Though of course, this was neither a fighting ship nor his ship. Should they see action aboard the Keyshan’s Eye it would be short and pitiful and most aboard would end up as food for longthresh.
A knock on the door.
“Ey, enter,” he said, knowing it must be Mevans. Cwell would simply walk in, as would anyone on the crew of the ship.
“Hundred Isles two-ribber coming up on us,” said Mevans as he slipped in. “Shipwife says all is fine but the mood on deck is noticeably tense, it is.”
“They fear trouble with it?” Mevans shrugged
“I think not, ’tis simply the normal fear of criminals meeting with authority.” He got down onto his knees and pulled out their sea chest from under the thin bed. “But it does no harm to be prepared, ey?” he said, and took out a curnow, held the blade in his hand. They stood together in the small and cramped cabin. Feeling the ship slow, hearing the shouts of deckchilder as they brought their ship alongside the Hundred Isles boneship. The back and forth of words shouted from one deck to the other and the frustration within Joron that he could neither hear properly what was said nor see what was happening.
“Can you tell what they say?” he asked. Mevans shook his head.
“No, but it does not sound as though any are ill-disposed out there.”
“Well, that is good at least.”
“Should we try and open a bowpeek?” Joron shook his head.
“I wager this kind of encounter has been done many times before, let us not risk anything that may disrupt it.” They waited, Joron almost too worried to draw breath. For what if it all ended here? In the dark depths of a stinking, sinking brownbone? So easy for something to go wrong, so terrible to be at the mercy of others. The shipwife of the boneship could decide to impound the smuggler, a fair amount of coin to be made that way. Or the shipwife of Keyshan’s Eye could decide to give Cwell up. Though as Cwell stood on the deck with them it would be the last thing they ever did; she would repay treachery with her blade in an instant.
That would not help him, or Meas, wherever she was and whatever she was being put through. And all he could do was wait.
The air in the small cabin seemed to still, to close in on them. The familiar sounds of the ship receding, the running of water, the jangle of chain and song of rigging and wind drifting away as the ship came to a stop. Waiting. Worrying.
Then he felt Keyshan’s Eye shudder, heard a call and not long after a jolt as more wings were dropped and the wind gathered. The door opened and Cwell appeared.
“That shipwife did not like smugglers much,” she said. “For all that, they had no option but to let us through. Seems the people of Bernshulme are hungry, or those with enough money to buy black-market goods are, at any rate.” She spat on the floor. “Be pleased if we get to kill a few of them.”
“
Let us hope we do not have to,” said Joron. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to get in and out unseen.”
“We have not spoken yet,” said Cwell, “about how we get the shipwife away.” Joron nodded.
“It was not a thing I could plan for,” he said quietly, and what was not said, of course, was that they all knew there was little chance they would ever leave.
“My uncle may help,” she said.
“Ey, and if not him then I must search out Kept Indyl Karrad; he has a past with Meas, maybe he will feel he owes her enough to help us. He must, I believe.”
“The Kept care about nothing but themselves,” said Cwell.
“True, of most of them,” said Joron. “But Indyl helped our cause, he is part of it. We exist in a large part because of him.”
“He has no love for you though,” said Mevans. “He will never forgive you for killing his son in a duel.”
“Well, that is true, let us hope his respect for Meas overrides his hatred for me.” He stared at the filthy deck of the cabin, momentarily lost. “He may be the only friend we have in Bernshulme.”
“Well,” said Mevans with a grin, “I think this will be an interesting trip, if the only friend we have is the man who had you condemned to death.”
“War makes for strange bedfellows and stranger allies.”
“Is it not peace we fly for, D’keeper?”
“When we have her back it will be. Until then, it is war.” He gritted his teeth, feeling the pressure in his gums. “I do not know another way.”
“Well, we are fleet, Deckkeeper,” said Mevans with a smile, “war is what we are good at. So let us go to our war, and bring home the shipwife. That will be an adventure for me to tell my children, and them to tell theirs for all the generations of Mevanses yet to come, will it not?”
“It will,” said Joron, and he felt something rise within him, some bright hope. With deckchilder such as Mevans with him, how could he fail? Both he and Cwell were stout and strong and skilled. “It is not about numbers, you know, Mevans. A two-ribber can take a five-ribber, given the right conditions, the right wind, the right commander and enough luck.” His rousing speech was interrupted by a chuckling, and he turned to Cwell.
“Luck,” she said. “Strikes me we have had little of that since we lost the shipwife.”
“Ey,” said Joron, mood darkening again, “and that is why we must get her back.”
28
The Effect
They saw the smoke before they saw Shipshulme. Twisting spires of greasy black, lazily climbing towards the clouds, and Joron thought himself betrayed. Thought that Tenbern Aileen had sold him a lie and sent him away so she could raid Bernshulme without him. But later, as they came close enough that he could just make out some detail of the town, Shipwife Ansiri disabused him of that.
“Still burning the bodies,” she said to Cwell. “I had hoped the plague had run its course; we will have to go around the other side of Shipshulme to dock.”
“Why?” said Joron and the shipwife shot him a look of such filth he had to fight not to recoil from it.
“You tread my slate as your mistress asks, and she has coin and currency in Bernshulme, but I do not give you leave to speak.” Joron bowed his head, mumbled an apology. “Cross me again, servant, and I’ll have you thrown over the side.”
“No,” said Cwell.
“You think your uncle will avenge a lost servant?” said Ansiri.
“He will not,” Cwell laughed. “He casts life away like a fisher throws fish guts over the side.” Then she turned her head, ratty blonde hair blowing in the wind. “But I will, Ansiri.” And she stared right into the shipwife’s eyes. “Do you wish to test me?” She grinned. “For I confess, I am become bored this journey and would welcome some action.” Ansiri’s eye flicked away, toward where Mrin, her deckkeeper, stood. “Bring her to the party too,” said Cwell, “and your deckmother if you wish, for the three of you may even make it a challenge.” Her voice became colder than the Northstorm, as sharp and dangerous as ice islands. “I would not want it said the fight was unfair.” The two gazed at one another and all action on the ship paused, as if awaiting the outcome of the conversation. Then Ansiri smiled, and laughed.
“I would not be so rude as to fight my honoured guest,” she said.
“Good,” replied Cwell, but she did not cease in her gaze, did not let her eyes waver from Ansiri’s face. “Then you will answer my servant’s question. Why do we dock around the far side of Shipshulme Island rather than at Bernshulme? This was not the plan and I am suspicious when plans change suddenly.” Ansiri leaned in close to Cwell and Joron had to strain to listen over the sound of the wind.
“It is the plague,” she whispered. “Closed the harbour.”
“Why have I not heard of this?”
“To speak too much of such things is to draw the Hag’s eye, all know it.” Joron listened, and the Tenbern’s reticence in attacking Bernshulme became clearer. Why attack a place already crippled by plague when she could let it do her work for her? And why risk bringing disease back to her own people? Joron stared into the distance, wishing for his nearglass. He could make out the bright pink and purple hump of the island, and what looked like a few shipspines before it. And something else, something he could not quite understand. It was as if part of the island had collapsed and landed between the towers of the harbour on the ends of their long stone piers.
“Not many ships,” said Cwell.
“No,” said Ansiri, “most of the fleet are out in defence of the inner islands. The rest are round the rear of Shipshulme. Those few you see are there to defend the plaguebringer.”
“Plaguebringer?” said Joron. Ansiri shot him another foul look but Cwell had made her wishes about him plain and Ansiri continued, though she addressed her words to Cwell, not to him.
“That is what they call it, the keyshan.” A darkness descended on Joron then, he felt a sudden need to sit, his one good leg felt robbed of all strength. “So much rejoicing when it came, towed in by three boneships. Their crews were the first to die, then the plague spread across the docks, through Fishdock, the old town, the tenements. It is a cruel sickness, much like the rot your man has but faster. Nausea, vomiting, seizures, the skin falling away like it is burned but there is no fire. And it is made all the crueller that it came in with such hope.” Joron turned back toward the island, staring at Bernshulme. Now he knew what he looked at, the shape made more sense, and his brain could pick out the massive body of a keyshan, yet one greatly misshapen, not smooth and beautiful like the ones he had seen swimming through the waters. And he heard no song from it. Or did he? Was there something there? Something far away? Something cold and sad and lonely?
“We must turn now,” said Ansiri. “Stay and watch the island if you will, though with this wind we will not get much closer.” She walked away and started giving orders to her listless crew and Keyshan’s Eye began to turn away from Bernshulme to catch the wind which would bring it around the island. Mevans walked over to join them.
“We should get ready,” he said. “With this wind we will be in dock by the end of the day.”
“We do not go into Bernshulme,” said Joron, morose. “We fly around the island to the other side as there is…”
“Plague, ey,” he said, for nothing seemed to surprise Mevans. “I heard talk of it in the underdecks.”
“It is my doing,” said Joron.
“It is our doing,” said Mevans. Joron shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Mine. My orders, my idea. I knew I sent a poison to them.”
“You did not know it was a plague, mind,” said Mevans gently. “We fight a war as you said, women and men die.”
“True,” said Joron, “it is one thing to give an order and make a plan, another to have it blossom and see the rotten fruit ripen before you.”
“No point talking,” said Cwell, “it is done now. We should get our things.” So it was that they made their wa
y into the underdecks and gathered together all they had brought, packed it tight and well in the sea chest and Joron realised that, despite his life being one full of action and travel there was little he called important. Meas, she had many things, the trinkets, books and rocks that still sat in the great cabin aboard Tide Child. He had a bone spur and a straightsword, but these were workaday things, they said nothing of him, of who he was. Did he even exist beneath the persona of the Black Pirate? Was it even him who gave the orders that took so many lives, or just a shell of a man?
Did it even matter in the end?
He took a breath. Let it out. No time for melancholy, no time for indecision. Even if the Black Pirate was a fiction he must be that fiction from the moment he set foot on Shipshulme, he must command, decide, plan. For now he was as near to his goal as he had ever been. He felt sure Meas was on that island and alive, as sure of that as he was that a keyshan slept beneath Shipshulme. He felt the great presence, felt the slow beat of its heart and he was sure that it knew, in some way, of its dead sither on the island and that knowledge infused its slow dreams, and maybe it dreamed of wreaking vengeance, of waking to strike at those it might think had killed its sibling. Or could it understand they had not, that the corpse on the shore was product of its own kin fighting? Or maybe it did not notice it at all, and Joron simply assigned it human feelings in a bid to understand something so vast it was unknowable. He did not know and it did not matter. Without the Gullaime the keyshan was beyond his reach, he was sure of that.