by Rj Barker
“Joron has a shadow and I have a shadow because we are important to the running of the ship. You are important to the running of Tide Child, so you too will have a shadow to protect you.”
“Not want!” it screeched again and this time a small metal mug was thrown, aimed well enough that Meas had to dodge it.
“Joron, see if you can talk some sense into it,” she pointed at the gullaime. “I will be in my cabin discussing our next move with Dinyl and the courser.” She turned and left. Did Joron feel an odd stab of jealousy that she still respected the deckholder, even though the man so obviously hated him? Possibly, but he put that aside for the good of the ship, as he had learned to put aside the constant damp and discomfort and the cold and the tiredness and a thousand other things.
“Not want, Joron Twiner,” said the gullaime, but its fury was gone now. Its voice gentle, sad even.
“Meas has said it will be.”
“Bad shipwife.”
“You know she is not.” The gullaime hissed. “I will tell the windshorn that it is only to be near you if you are in danger.”
“Not nest.” It stepped over to its nest and settled. “No thief in nest.”
“I will make sure it knows.”
“Not want.”
“We will make a show of you accepting it, and then maybe Meas will forget and we can quietly sideline it?” He knew she would not, and his thinking was that the gullaime would eventually forget its dislike of the windshorn.
“Bad shipwife,” it hissed. Joron ignored that and left.
Outside he found the windshorn, the same that had killed their old leader.
“Not wanted,” it said.
“Well no,” said Joron. “It would maybe be best if you kept your distance while the gullaime gets used to the idea of you.
“Distance,” it said.
“Yes.” The windshorn nodded, then huddled down outside the door.
“I’m not sure that is what distance means,” said Joron. But the windshorn did not reply or look at him, and if he knew one thing it was that the gullaime, as a species, had an uncanny ability to hear what they wished to hear and act upon that. In the end, it was often easier to let them work it out for themselves. So he left the windtalker and the windshorn separated by a screen of bone and a thin door and hoped he would not be called back later to break up a fight. Though if what he had seen in the hold of the Maiden’s Bounty was anything to go by then gullaime fights were short, brutal and deadly. He thought about the vicious claw on the windshorn, and hoped he was never pitted against one.
Joron passed up through the ship, noting that despite the new and strange crew that Meas had brought aboard, the life of the ship went on as it always did. Women and men of the day shifts moved about purposefully while those of later shifts slept. Some were in the hold restowing cargo to help the ship fly better, others up the spines to bring in the wings. Some checked the great gallowbows on the maindeck, some cleaned, some painted. As he passed, he tried to have a word on his lips for as many as he could, though some met him with little but polite surliness. He passed Sprackin, who was doing nothing in particular. Joron knew he should have picked the man up on it, but then he noticed Cwell, and Joron chose to pass by as if he had not noticed them. In the great cabin he found Meas and Dinyl bent over a chart – was that jealousy he felt? – and the courser, Aelerin, stood behind them, their features hidden beneath their robe.
“Joron,” said Meas. “Aelerin tells me they have dreamed good winds and calm seas for the next few weeks we will fly toward Safeharbour, so I have decided we will accompany the Maiden’s Bounty back there. Karrad is always telling me they need more ships. We may also leave the windshorn there.”
“That will please our gullaime.”
“Ey,” she said. And all the while they spoke Dinyl stared at him and Joron had to fight the urge to fidget under his judgement. In all things of the fleet he knew Dinyl was his better – the man had been favoured by Indyl Karrad and gone to the grand bothies of the fleet to study, while Joron was simply a fisher’s son. And yet Meas had, for her own reasons, chosen him over Dinyl and two years had passed since that day. One year since he had cut Dinyl’s hand from his body to save Meas, and destroyed the budding relationship he had with the man. And every day Joron had to work hard to ensure none saw that Dinyl was a better officer, one more suited to command than he was. Every day he had to work and live under the cold, judgemental gaze of a man who had once been his shipfriend, his comfort and his warmth.
“They will be glad to see us at Safeharbour,” said Joron, “and glad of more hands to put to building. How large is the colony now?”
“A thousand, last I heard,” said Meas. “And it grows. Those with a desire for peace hear of it, and they find us, or we find them.”
“Your mother will find us one day, Meas, you know that,” said Dinyl, his words blowing a cold wind into the cabin. Meas stared at the chart, nodded.
“I do not doubt she knows already.”
“And yet she has not moved against us?” said Joron.
“Karrad is her spymaster, he controls what information comes to her. She may know of our movement but not the size of it. She probably does not think us worth moving against.”
Dinyl nodded. “Let us hope so,” he said.
They flew across the sea for a week and a day, the wind kind and the services of the gullaime unneeded. Every time Joron passed the gullaime’s nest room the windshorn was still there. He never saw it eat, never saw it drink, never heard it talk nor saw it move, and though it was Joron’s nature to want to help all those he saw suffer, he dared not for fear of upsetting the friendship he had with the windtalker.
Still, it seemed that their passage would be an easy one, and no deckchilder ever complained when their way was eased, and the weather, if not becoming warm, at least lost some of its bite.
“Ship rising!”
The shout came on Joron’s watch, in that morran moment where Skearith’s Eye was not yet fully open and gilded the early clouds with silver and the lapping sea with gold. At the call he was up the mainspine. Not with the ease of Meas or the deckchilder, and Joron would never have that – he still had dark moments haunted by the frailty of his body and memories of his father’s death – but with more ease than he had once been capable of. The topboy pointed out the sighting, four points of the landward shadow, and Joron took Meas’s nearglass from within his stinker coat and found the ship. Two spines, black sails.
“A ship of the dead,” he said. “I think it is our allies in the Snarltooth, but being overly prepared never hurt a ship.” He leaned over the side of the topboy’s perch and shouted down. “Farys! Call the shipwife, clear the decks for action!” And then he heard Farys call out and a moment later the bell rang out and the drums beat and he knew the deck below would be like the ground around an insect nest disturbed by a foraging kivelly, the crew boiling out of the hatches to strip Tide Child down and prepare for combat.
By the time he was back on the slate Tide Child was arrayed for war: bowcrews stood by their bows, ropes were arrayed across the deck and he knew that below the smaller cabins of the D’older and the deckmother and hatkeep, walls would be down, hammocks stowed against the sides of the hull, bows ready to be untrussed. Meas stood on the rump of the ship.
“Ship rising, Shipwife.” He was always surprised by how calm he could make those words, as if they were not harbingers of death, pain and havoc. “Four points off the landward shadow.” He held out the nearglass and she took it from him, climbing a few steps up the rumpspine and hanging, one arm wrapped around a rope, her feet against the bottom of the bone as she stared out across the dancing, gilded water.
“It is the Snarltooth. He flies message flags and makes for us.” She put the nearglass away and turned to Barlay on the steering oar. “Three points to landward of the shadow,” she said. “Ready to meet with Snarltooth and receive Shipwife Brekir.” She turned, looking for her steward, Mevans, who was, as us
ual, already there before he was requested.
“I will arrange food and drink, Shipwife,” he said with a grin, bobbing his head. Then she turned to find the deckmother, Solemn Muffaz.
“Coughlin and his seaguard will be ready to receive Shipwife Brekir, Shipwife Meas,” said Solemn Muffaz. He received a nod of acceptance from Meas, not thanks, as this was what the shipwife expected. Tide Child ran as a fleet ship now, her ship. No slackers, no slatelayers, none who did not know their place; and if she could not trust them all? Well, that may be true, but she trusted enough to know the ship was hers. It ran her way, and her way was to run it well.
So, when Shipwife Brekir left her ship to climb Tide Child she was met with a ladder and was whistled aboard. The seaguard, in blue uniforms Meas had supplied herself, stood with curnows raised to greet her and she could have been any great shipwife from any great fleet boneship, not what she was: the disgraced shipwife of a supposed enemy vessel.
Brekir stood tall on the slate of Tide Child. She was from the south, like Joron’s family had been and her skin was even darker than his. Unlike Joron, she rarely smiled and carried the feel of a sea drizzle along with her, though Joron knew that beneath the dour exterior a wicked wit lurked. With her she brought two of her deckchilder and her deckkeeper, who was as big as almost any three others with a beard covering almost half his face, dangling down to his belly. He looked around suspiciously, for he, like Brekir, was a Gaunt Islander and the Tide Child was a Hundred Isles ship – nominally his enemy, if not for the dream of peace which united them.
“So it is true then,” the deckkeeper said quietly to Brekir, “we are traitors.”
“You have a problem with that, Vulse?”
“Oh no, Shipwife.” Something sparkled in his eye. “In fact it brings me great pleasure.”
Behind them stood a woman, small and bent and shivering, who glanced about herself as though frightened Skearith the Stormbird herself was about to descend and pluck her from the deck of the ship. Joron wished to reach out to her as he recognised the woman as a fisher from her clothes, a position in life fate had decreed for him. Though his body was sound and whole his mother had died in childbirth and he would never be chosen as Kept, his bloodline judged as weak in a land that only valued the strong. One of the fisher’s arms was bent out of true and she stared miserably at the deck, uncomfortable around the officers, but Joron knew he could offer her no comfort.
“How goes it, Shipwife Brekir?” said Meas. “Well, I hope?”
Brekir shook her head. “I see you have been busy,” she said, nodding toward the hulk they towed.
“Ey, I thought that Safeharbour could use another ship.”
“Well, I bring ill and iller news for you, Meas,” said Brekir.
“We shall go to my great cabin,” said Meas. “If I must sup bitter news let us at least do it over sweet drinks, ey?” Brekir nodded and Meas led them down through the ship to her great cabin where a table waited, laid with the best plates, and what food they had left that passed as half decent.
“Sit,” said Meas. They did, all but the bedraggled woman, who hovered at the back of the cabin. “You may sit too, fisher,” said Meas. Joron wondered if his father would have been cowed just like this woman. Thoughts of his fishers and the closeness of this woman, who had hands covered in cuts from gutting fish and fixing nets, and carried some indefinable scent that he associated with the boats of his childhood, caused memories to surface of the terrible day he had lost his father – his strong body crushed between the hulls of two ships. Joron blinked, Swallowed. Pushed the image out of his mind.
“Thank ’ee, Shipwife,” said the fisher and took a chair at the end of the table, perching uncomfortably. Mevans brought them drinks, thick anhir heated in a pan to chase away the cold touch of the sea winds. The fisher stared into the drink, looking utterly miserable, and Joron leaned forward.
“Good fisher,” he said, “Shipwife Meas has you here as she considers you as much a shipwife as herself, but if you would be more comfortable outside this cabin I am sure Mevans can find you a place to eat and drink elsewhere on the ship.”
“I would like that,” said the fisher quietly.
“Stay close enough that I may call upon you, Fasni,” said Brekir softly, and the fisher nodded as Mevans led her gently from the great cabin. Meas watched her go and gave Joron a nod as if to say “that was well done,” for if she had offered the fisher the chance to leave it would have been seen as an order and may have made the nervous woman worse.
“So, Brekir, how ill is your news?” Meas smiled, for Brekir’s news was always ill, even when some others may have thought it anything but, Brekir would find a dark edge to worry at.
“The illest, Shipwife Meas,” she said, staring into the steaming drink, “and from there it only gets iller.”
“Well, let us eat first then,” said Meas. “Bad news is better digested by a full belly. I will bring you food in the name of the Maiden, the Mother and the Sea Hag. Enjoy and be thankful.”
They ate, and while they ate Joron wondered if the news could possibly be as bad as the food, a roasted whole fish caught two days ago and with a gelatinous texture that gave way under his teeth only to reform on his tongue, as if the fish struggled still to live. After the seemingly unwilling main course was eaten, if not enjoyed, by all, silsh was served, the hot invigorating drink beloved of all who worked late watches on cold nights.
“So, Brekir,” said Meas, “tell me this this ill news of yours.”
Brekir sipped at her silsh, swilled the burning liquid around her mouth.
“All we did, Meas, in protecting the wakewyrm, it was for naught,” she said. Looked around the table, shook her head. “The death, the sacrifice. For naught. Keyshans have been seen again.”
Meas put down her cup, her pale face paler. “The wakewyrm has returned?”
“No,” said Brekir, “others have come. Three have been reported so far, and though none have managed to kill one I have no doubt towers are being built right now. The boneships will rise again, Meas, and our war will last forever.”
Meas turned her glass, her face unreadable, but when she spoke, her voice was as dead and black as her ship.
“You said you had iller news, Brekir. What could be iller than this?”
Brekir waited, as if the words she needed eluded her, her face contorted by misery.
“It seems your mother has finally tired of us, Meas. She sent her ships for Safeharbour and what your mother wants she gets.” She looked up, straightened as if to find some inner strength. “Safeharbour is gone, Meas. We have no place to run to. The dream is dead now.”
None spoke then. None had a word. Their hope, slowly growing over time, along with their hidden harbour, dashed on the rocks of Brekir’s words.
“Gone? How?” said Meas, the words barely a breeze in the still cabin.
“I was not there, that is why I brought the fisher. She saw it and it is her tale to tell.” She walked to the door, “Fasni,” she shouted, “it is time.”
7
The Fisher’s Tale
I sit before you, shipwife Meas, and I must tell my tale all at a rush and in one, for I do not lie to say you are a hero of mine from when I were young and running round the alleys of Bernshulme. To sit here, afront of you, well, to say it is hard to find words is the least of it so I shall speak and if you would be good enough to listen then I will think you kindly indeed.
This is my start. I found myself to Safeharbour after the sea took me and my flukeboat, Corpsebird. Some fell wind came up and pulled me far from home and would not let me go. Which is when I found myself falling under the hull of a black ship, and a shipwife name of Arrin.
Ey, you know him? He is a good man despite him missing a leg and so being, most would say, fit just for cobblering.
Anyways, I knew him for a Gaunt Islander as his ship flew the black circles and I were ready to be begging for me life, see. Told him I had no love for the Hundred Isles as
my boy was sacrificed as shipblood, even though he had two fingers missing from his right hand and were not proper; the hagpriests did not care. So Shipwife Arrin brought me to Safeharbour, said I could ply my trade there. Fishers were always welcome and the water round it were warm and easy to cast my nets in. I thought the Mother herself watched over me, shipwife, for it seemed she chased my nets full every time they were cast. I even met a fellow there and thought to have me another child for my time of grief was starting to pass. Life became good and though it were hard work to live it were still gentler than any other time in my life.
Then the boneships came. This was less than two months past, by my reckoning.
No Shipwife, I do not know the names of all those who commanded them. I heard talk on the docks of a Shipwife Barnt being him who led them on us, and he had a two-ribber named Keyshantooth, but those such as myself are not privy to the talk of shipwives. They were four that came upon us, a pair of two-ribbers such as good Shipwife Brekir has and a pair of four-ribbers which I swear were the biggest ships I ever did see, and me growing up in Bernshulme and all – but these ships seem so much the larger when arrayed for war and coming for you, maybe that is it. The ships stationed themselves in the outer bay of Safeharbour and none could get in or leave, and they did not come near enough for the tower gallowbows to act on them, but sent in an envoy to speak to our Bern Council. An offer was made, said all that came from the Hundred Isles could return home and those that came from the Gaunt Islands must be given up as shipblood or to mine slate for they were the enemy.
I do not think they expected us to say no but we was not Bernshulme where one decides, and the Bern Council put it to the town. You would have been most proud, Shipwife Meas, for not one woman or man there wavered in the least, all were resolute that we would fight. So the whole of Safeharbour were done out as for war, or as near as we could get to it for we were not warriors, just those people as what were tired with the way of things. Still, we had our own boneship in harbour and we had the spares and parts for it, and with Shipwife Arrin and the Sea Louse with us we felt good, for by then we all knew him for a fighter. We did the best we could to fortify the town and while we was doing that them outside the harbour brought up a big brownbone, like the one you is towing, Shipwife, and put catapults on it and started loosing fireballs into the town.