Call of the Bone Ships

by Rj Barker

  “Why row?” said the gullaime, its sharp beak opening and the words tumbling out from within its throat, rather than being formed by lip and tongue as was proper and right. “I make air.” It pointed at the furled wing of the ship with the claw that tipped the elbow of its own wing, hidden within colourfully painted robes.

  “Save your strength, Gullaime,” said Joron. “The deckchilder row because speed is not important right now. Your magic may be important later and it would be foolish to use it up.”

  “Joron Twiner is foolish,” squawked the gullaime and it hopped down the centre of the craft, scrambling up so it stood before Joron on the pointed beak of the small boat. It orientated its whole body toward the merchanter rising from the sea before them. “Bad things,” it said. “Bad things start here.”

  “What bad things?” said Joron.

  “Raise your voice, Caller,” said Garriya from the bottom of the boat where she squatted with her bag of herbs. “What was long buried is being unearthed.”

  “What do you mean?” Her words were curious things and they swam around him. He felt that he existed separately in the boat to the deckchilder heaving on the oars. The sounds of the shifting sea receded, the brightly coloured clothing faded and there was only the voice of Garriya in his ears.

  “Keyshan rising, Joron Twiner, keyshan rising.”

  The rushing back in of sound and sense and the old woman was in the bottom of the boat, burrowing through her bag as if she had never spoken.

  Had she spoken?

  Once he would not have doubted it, but recently he had become unsure of his own senses. Whether it was the long hours and constant wakefulness or something else that had changed him, he did not like to think about it. He scratched at the top of his arms where the skin was sore. Keyshan’s rot, he was sure, but at the same time he hoped it was not and he dare not share his worries, for first it brought sores and in the end it brought madness. Increasingly he was given reason to doubt his world, doubt his eyes and ears and sense.

  Could it come upon a man so quick? The bonemaster Coxward had it, and he had for years. But was it different in each case?

  “’Ware below!” was shouted from before them and Joron shook himself as a rope came down from the merchanter. He tied on their flukeboat and climbed the side of the bigger ship. As he did the gullaime effortlessly scaled the side of Maiden’s Bounty without need for rope or ladder, its clawed feet and wings made for climbing. They were not creatures of the open sea, the gullaime, and Joron felt sure they never had been. If they had not possessed the power to control the winds no one would ever have brought them out here, where most gullaime suffered sickness, neglect and ill-use. And the work they did, controlling the winds, only brought them more pain, through draining whatever strange force was within that let them do their magic. This gullaime, the one they thought of as theirs, still needed to visit land and charge at a windspire, but it held more magic than any of its kind and, unlike any other gullaime, it still had its eyes under its painted mask. A secret shared only with Joron, for gullaime were blinded when they were young to stop them straying.

  Joron had always believed what he had been told, that this was done to keep them safe.

  But so much of what he had been told was lies. Was there any reason to believe this was different?

  On the deck of Maiden’s Bounty Meas had already started bringing women and men up from below. These people were broken, little more than skeletons, their bodies covered in sores that Joron recognised – the tops of his arms itched abominably – and they had wild, frightened eyes. He watched the huge deckmother, Solemn Muffaz, discretely sorting those brought up from below. Some went to landward but the vast majority went to the seaward side of the ship. They were people of every creed and colour the Hundred Isles possessed, and he could make no sense of it: this was not the fruit of some raid where all were of one type, more like a deliberate gathering of all the island’s peoples.

  Meas intercepted Joron on his way with Garriya to the sick and infirm, gently leading them both aside. “Garriya,” she said, “I trust Joron told you to bring what drugs you had that would let a poor wretch slip away?”

  “Aye, Shipwife. Though I will save those I can.”

  “Well, there may not be many. Solemn Muffaz has sent to landward those he thinks may survive, the rest, well” – she bit on her lip – “it is kinder to let them go than make them suffer.”

  “Why kill—” began the gullaime but Meas’s hand shot out, closing round its beak.

  “Squawk quiet, Gullaime,” she said. “I’ll not risk those that may live hearing what I say. They may not see it as the kindness it is if they have loved ones among those I send to die.” She let go of the gullaime’s beak and it twitched its head so it sat at an angle. Then, just above the rise and fall of the sea, Joron could hear what he thought were tiny squawks leaking from its beak.

  “I don’t mean you have to be silent, Gullaime,” said Meas and the creature let out a cry of frustration, drawing all eyes to them.

  “Strange creatures! Strange creatures. First be silent. Now be loud. Make no sense.”

  “She does not wish the ill people to hear you, Gullaime,” said Joron, and the predatory curved beak whipped round so the painted eyes on the creature’s mask were fixed on Joron.

  “Why bring Gullaime?”

  “Because I need your help,” said Meas. “Now come, we will talk more below.”

  As they entered the underdeck Joron and Meas once more tied cloths around their faces.

  “Why do that?” asked the gullaime.

  “The smell,” said Joron.

  “Humans smell bad,” it said. Then they were down the stairs in the darkness and the almost unbearable stink. Meas swore, left them and returned quickly with a torch, and Joron wondered what had happened that she should forget something she needed. It was not like Meas.

  “In here,” said Meas, pointing at the door before them, “are some of your people, Gullaime. They look as healthy as can be expected in this place, but I do not know why they are here.”

  “To fly ship,” it said without looking at her.

  “There’s a lot of them, for a ship like this,” said Meas. “And if that is the case, why were they not on deck when the ship was in trouble? No, there is a mystery here, Gullaime.” She held out the torch.

  “For me?” it said.

  “Yes. Judging by the way the humans have been treated on this ship I cannot imagine the gullaime have been treated any better, or will be too trusting of us. But seeing one of their own may help.” The windtalker curled its wingclaw and took the torch from her. Then it extended its neck so its head was directly in front of Meas’s face.

  “Kill gullaime too?”

  “They are your people; you will know when suffering is intolerable for them. So their fate is your decision.”

  The gullaime kept its head utterly still and the flames licked around its neck, the air tainted with the smell of singeing feathers. If anything, an improvement.

  “My people,” it said, and retracted its head to roost between its shoulders.

  “Joron and I will be in the ship’s cabin on the deck, come to us when you are ready.”

  The gullaime let out a squawk, almost deafening in the small room. “Go!” it said. “Not scare my people. Go!”

  They turned and climbed the steep ladder back up the deck, Joron following Meas towards the cabin. The sides of the ship were now filling with bodies, many simply lying inert, eyes closed. Those with their eyes open stared blankly, as if blinded. It was small solace to Joron that the wind stole the smell of them away, and he pulled off the mask from his face. He had seen the poor and sick on the streets of Bernshulme, but they were not like this. They fought for life, just like all had to in the Hundred Isles. But these? Their fight was gone. The underdeck of this ship would forever be his image of what awaited those denied the warmth of the Hag’s bonefire, and he knew he would do anything to avoid such a fate.

&
nbsp; Anything.

  “In here,” said Meas, pushing open the ill-kept door of the shipwife’s cabin. Within, a woman was tied to a single chair, the shipwife’s desk had been pushed to the side and the white painted floor was spotted with blood.

  “This is, or was, Caffis,” said Meas, “deckkeeper of the Maiden’s Bounty.” The woman was slumped forward, the front of her clothes black with blood.

  “She was wounded in the fight?”

  “Ey.” Meas did not look at him as he lifted Caffis’s head – a broken nose, smashed lips, bloodied and cut around the eyes. “But it was the beating that killed her.” She let time pass, its gentle waves lapping between them. “The beating I gave her, before you ask the obvious question.”

  “Why?”

  “Information,” Meas said. Left a gap in her speech for him to jump into, but he did not. “And anger,” she added, and he could hear it in the word. “Fury at what this ship had in its hold, at what she was part of.”

  “I understand that, but you always say all lives are precious, crew is necessary.”

  “I do.” She put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him backwards, gently. She let go of Caffis, her head falling forward, hiding her broken face.

  “I would have thought you had seen slavers before. I know it is not allowed but . . .”

  “This is not a slaver, Joron,” she said. “A slave, or a sacrifice, is valuable in the places that will buy them. Too valuable to transport like this.”

  “Then what is this ship transporting?”

  “I do not know. I had hoped she did,” Meas said, pointing at the corpse.

  “But she didn’t?”

  “No. She knew nothing. Her shipwife had all the details. They have made this journey twice before. They take these unfortunates from one ship, meet another at a different island each time. Any that still live are taken away onto that ship, the dead go overboard.”

  “It sounds like slavery is the intention.”

  “You have seen those on the deck. How much use would they be for work?” She did not wait for him to reply. “No, what they are being transported for, and why, remains a mystery.”

  “What do we do now then?”

  “We do one more sweep for this raider and then head back to Bernshulme. Answers will be there; the answers are always there. Indyl Karrad will know something; his spy network is far reaching.”

  “If we are not sent away again.”

  “I have let my mother push us around too many times. I will do it no longer. I will find some reason for us to stay in Bernshulme and we will search. I did not want it to be true, Joron, but the papers the shipwife showed me, it did indeed look like my mother’s hand.” Her voice drifted away then she shook her head. “And to have so many gullaime, there has always been illegal trade in them, but only in ones and twos, never so many at once. I do not understand. Something is off, Joron, something—”

  Her words were cut off by the gullaime storming in. “Windshorn!” it squawked,

  “What?” said Meas.

  “Windshorn!” it squawked again.

  “I do not know what that means, gullaime,” she said.

  The creature hopped from one foot to the other, slowly, and it almost seemed as if it hovered in the air for a moment between each step. Then its head orientated towards the corpse in the chair.

  “That one not smell sick,” it said.

  “What is windshorn, gullaime?” said Joron.

  The windtalker clacked its beak at the corpse in the chair before turning back to them. “Some gullaime windtalk. Some gullaime windshorn.”

  “Do you mean that they cannot control the weather?” said Meas.

  “Wind. Shorn,” it said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  “I did not know there was such a thing,” said Joron.

  “Humans do not know gullaime,” it said. “Windshorn no use.”

  “So,” said Meas, “we have a ship full of the sick and the useless, on their way to somewhere unknown.” If the woman in the chair had not already been dead Joron felt sure Meas would have hit her again – there was exasperation in her every movement. “It sounds like slavery, Joron, you are right. But if this ship really does come from my mother I cannot imagine it. She has many bad qualities but she abhors slavery. The idea someone else may profit from her people infuriates her.” She paced up and down the bloodied cabin floor. “We will return to Tide Child. Decide what to do there and sort out a crew for this ship.”

  “Gullaime,” said Joron, “what should we do with your windshorn?”

  Painted eyes stared at them.

  “Kill all,” it said.

  5

  In the Depths, Only Darkness

  Back on Tide Child they sat in the great cabin and Meas poured them both anhir, while Mevans bustled about bringing food they had no stomach for.

  “I said we were not hungry, Mevans,” said Meas.

  “Ey, but the body must be fuelled even if you do not like it,” he placed steaming bowls of fish stew before them both. Meas shook her head slightly and cast Mevans a dark glance before picking up her spoon and placing a measure of stew in her mouth. Mevans rewarded her with a smile and left the great cabin.

  “Acts like a Hag-forsaken mother bird.”

  “Talking of birds,” said Joron, “will you do as the gullaime asks and kill these ‘windshorn’?”

  Meas shook her head. “No. Not unless it chooses to share more of why it feels so strongly about them, and even then I may not.”

  “So what shall we do with them?”

  “Send them to Safeharbour with the Maiden’s Bounty.” She stared into the distance as she spoke.

  “You worry about something, Shipwife Meas?” She took another spoonful of stew and Joron, despite the horrors of earlier, realised he was also hungry.

  “Ey, many things,” she said quietly. “Mostly I worry about sending my crew away on the Maiden’s Bounty.”

  “That they will run?”

  She shook her head. Gave him a black look.

  “The ones I send will not run. I worry that the ship will not make it back. It is in poor repair and I cannot afford to lose loyal crew.” He knew what was unsaid there. More and more it had become clear there was a faction on Tide Child who believed things could be run better by them. Better, and not run as fleet, but as pirates. Those who were cruel or thought themselves wronged had found one another, bonded, come together. At their head stood Cwell, and though she was a fierce and violent woman she was also intelligent enough to know she did not have the skill to be shipwife. There were reasons the poor were not taught navigation or reading in the Hundred Isles. But now Cwell had a friend in Dinyl, and there was a man with reason to be resentful, and skill to pilot a ship, and with Sprackin they had a man who, though corrupt, understood the financial workings and how to properly stock a boneship.

  They ate in silence, mechanically fuelling their bodies while not looking at one another. Once done Meas went to one of the shelves in the cabin, boots knock-knocking on the bones of the deck, and took down her ledger. She opened it, Joron had time to see lists of names before she angled the book so he could not read what was there.

  “Bring me the gullaime, Joron,” she said.

  “I could have Solemn—”

  “Do it yourself please.”

  He nodded. Stood and gave her a small bow of respect before making his way through the ship. Along the black decks, down the black stair to the underdeck. Aware of each body around him, the ones who greeted him with a friendly nod and shout of “D’keeper,” and the ones who turned away, and those rarer few who stared at him without subservience. The few who he knew would push him on every order, react just too slowly, give not enough respect to their officer. It was never quite enough disobedience for Solemn Muffaz to bring out the cord and have them disciplined; these deckchilder were old hands like Sprackin and knew the exact width of the tightrope they walked, how much disrespect could be shown without it actually
becoming enough to warrant discipline in return. And though Joron hated himself for it, he knew he avoided giving them orders if he could. He passed the job to Dinyl, though he was sure it only strengthened the deckholder’s hand.

  He knocked on the gullaime’s cabin door. Once he had walked in and caught the creature without its robe, preening the long feathers of its body with its beak – feathers that had once been white but now other colours were growing through. The moment he walked in that day, he had known he intruded upon something intensely personal. It may have been the link between them that Joron felt growing day by day that let him know, or it may have been the fury the gullaime blew into when it noticed him – throwing rocks and rags and dust and all the strange bits and pieces it had gathered to itself. But he had been careful to knock ever since.

  “Come, Joron Twiner,” it said.

  The gullaime’s cabin was like no other on the ship. The bowpeek was always open, the cabin always cooler than anywhere else. The wind blowing through it set the trinkets strung across the ceiling on lengths of rope – feathers, glass, rocks with holes in that it had a particular fascination for – to jingling. In the centre of the room was its nest – a circular construction of cloth, feathers and varisk stalks stolen from the hold – the place where the gullaime slept. If slept was the word; it never seemed to truly be asleep, just squatted there in what approximated a meditative state. No matter what time he came for it, the gullaime always seemed to snap straight into full wakefulness. When Joron slept, sometimes he saw this room as if through the secret eyes of the windtalker.

  “Meas would speak with you, Gullaime.”

  It squawked, a loud “Awk!” that was almost deafening in the small room. “Shipwife, shipwife,” it sang, then stood. “I come.”

  They made their way back to Meas’s cabin, slower this time. The crew of Tide Child were checking over the gallowbows – the six great bows on the slate and the twenty lesser bows on the underdecks – and the gullaime, with its incessant curiosity, felt the need to stop and watch each crew. To inspect what they were doing, sharp curving beak darting in and out of the mechanisms as they were checked; and, when its curiosity was finally sated, it would say “good job” or “well done” in what, if not an exact copy of Joron’s voice, was at least close enough to make him uncomfortable. And in this stop-and-start fashion they moved through the ship, and if the deckchilder were at all bothered by the attention of the gullaime then none showed it. Indeed, it was met with a good humour and stifled laughter at its fleet and officer-like ways.