by Rj Barker
“Where will you be, Mevans?” he said.
“Watching, D’keeper. Just get out, we will find you.”
No shipfriends on the ship had she
“My Kept has all the love I need”
Dreamed every night of her return
Came home to find the island burned
She flew up high, she flew down low
Heave on, crew, heave on.
From north to south she flew the storms
Heave on, crew, heave on.
She flew to east, she flew to west.
Heave on, crew, heave on.
And always thought of home, hey!
She always thought of home.
“The Black Pirate” – traditional ballad
20
What Is Found Within
Joron took his night dose of the bower’s medicine, watched by the predatory eyes of the hagpriest, but this time the sopor did not come. Instead it was as if the drug from Garriya and the drug from the hagpriest mixed in his stomach to form a hard ball, a stone soaked in nausea and discomfort that squatted in his vitals, gnawing at him with the same fierceness as hunger.
But he did not sleep.
He sat in the darkness ignoring the churning in his guts and listening to the night sounds of the hagbower. When he looked out the small window Skearith’s Blind Eye was rising, almost at its highest point. He heard noise, footsteps, doors opening deep within the bower where there should be no doors opening. After that, silence. He waited, watched the subtle shadows of the Blind Eye’s light crawling across the tight sheets of the empty bed opposite him, and when he felt the silence was deep and long enough to signal that none walked the slate of the building he got up. Put on his clothes, grabbed his good boots and opened the door a crack.
Dark corridors: no one around.
He slid down the corridor, moving as silently as he could. Used to finding quiet paths through decks full of sleeping women and men, easily doing the same on the solid floors. He stopped at the edge of the communal area, peering into the gloom, letting his eyes adjust, not trying to see a person but looking for movement. That was easier in the dark, to find movement rather than decode unfamiliar patterns of light and shade into something that may or may not be a threat.
Nothing.
Joron moved forward, padding through the space and then – then – a movement caught his eye. He froze, turned. Found Gueste there, dozing on one of the couches. Her eyes opened and the other deckkeeper watched him for a moment, then smiled and reached for her pipe before waving Joron on. He let his heart slow a little, carried on through the hagbower, down the corridors to the doors at the front. Found them unlocked, because of course, who would want to come in here?
The streets of Bernshulme were not busy, not at this time and not around the bothies. He saw lights in the lower town, and heard singing and shouting, voices drifting across to him on the still, cool air. A few of the Bern and the Kept strolled and Joron stayed in the shadows; he did not want to stay near the hagbower in case he was missed and a search began, but at the same time he did not want to go too far away as he knew Mevans would be looking for him. So he loitered in a crevice between two buildings, lacing up his boots and waiting to see a familiar face.
A hiss. A sound out of place in the Bernshulme night among the echoing laughter, song and shouting from the town below. A whistle. He looked around, saw nothing. The whistle again and this time he saw a group of figures loitering in the shadow of a bothy; one gave him a nod and he made his way over. Found the comfortable faces of Mevans, Anzir and Farys.
“D’keeper,” said Mevans. “Glad you made it out.”
“Ey, Mevans, and I am glad you found me.”
“We have Hastir watching the back way, but all they bring in and out is carts.”
“Back way?”
“Ey, where they bring in supplies.”
“I forgot there was one, but then I have been asleep for most of my stay so it is little wonder. Come, we go to the Grand Bothy and to the chartmaster, Yirrid.”
“Why him, D’keeper?”
“Anyone who wants to go anywhere will need charts.”
“So he is the eyes and ears of the bothy,” said Mevans.
“Well, he is definitely the ears, Mevans. Now, let us proceed as if we are fully entitled to be there.”
“I am not sure anyone will believe that, D’keeper. Look at us.”
And he was right – Joron felt that no more raggedy bunch could be found on the streets of Bernshulme. As they moved through the shadows, he remained, deep in thought, desperate for some clever plan, the type Meas would come up with. But nothing came to him and he had little time. Outside the Grand Bothy he could see two seaguard standing beneath burning braziers, keeping watch of all those that came and went.
“What would Meas do, Mevans?” said Joron.
“Walk right in, D’keeper. Ain’t nowhere never kept her out.”
Joron politely thanked the hatkeep for information that, if not useful, he at least knew was probably true. “Not an option for us, I think.”
As he watched a drunk staggered past and shouted something at one of the guards. The seaguard immediately took a step forward but his friend restrained him. “He’s eager,” said Joron. Then he smiled to himself. “Farys, quickly – intercept that drunk, make it appear he has attacked you. With any luck it will draw that guard away, and maybe his friend.”
“If it doesn’t?” said Mevans.
“If it has no effect we think of something else. If it draws only the one man, then Anzir can make conversation with the other.”
“Me?” she said.
“Ey.”
“What shall I say?”
“Tell him how much you like his muscles, or something.”
She shrugged.
“They are good muscles, D’keeper.”
“Well, go then,” he said, and Farys walked across the road toward the drunk man. Joron had presumed she would have to start up some sort of commotion but the drunk man beat her to it, shouting at her and calling her filth. As soon as that started Joron and Mevans walked across the road further down, watching as the angry guard left his post to remonstrate with the drunk man again, his friend staying by the door. Anzir approached the second guard and engaged him in conversation. When his back was turned Joron and Mevans slipped past and into the building.
“That was easier than I thought,” said Joron. “Come, I know the way from here.” He led them quickly across the shiny floor of the bothy, eyes constantly scanning for any who may recognise them as intruders. There were people about, Bern and Kept and servants going about their duties, but they paid little attention to Joron and Mevans. He found the door Meas and he had used on their first visit, and from there led Mevans down into the tunnels which, as he remembered, all looked remarkably similar.
“I don’t suppose you have ever accompanied the shipwife down here for charts, have you, Mevans?”
“I have indeed, D’keeper,” he said.
“Then maybe you can lead us on from here?”
“Ey, rightly I can, if that’s your order.”
“It is,” he said, slightly self-consciously. They made their way further into the bowels of the Grand Bothy until Joron saw a door he recognised. “Do you think the chartkeeper will be awake, Mevans?”
“Two chances, D’keeper.”
“Ey, there is,” said Joron, and he pushed the door open into the musty, dimly lit room, and walked forward.
“Hello?”
Nothing, just the faint echo of his own voice. He stood, listening, waiting. Did he hear the sound of shuffling coming from the back? Did he hear a low moan?
“Someone is hurt,” said Mevans. Joron nodded and they headed into the back of the room, deeper into the gloom. As they passed they found the place a mess, charts on the floor, furniture thrown everywhere.
“Watch where you step, Mevans,” said Joron quietly, “these charts are precious.”
The sou
nd from the far end of the dark room stopped.
“Who is there?”
Joron recognised Yirrid’s voice, and yet also did not. The last time they had met, the chartmaster had been full of strength and humour, but now he sounded like an old man.
“Joron Twiner, Yirrid.”
“Meas’s boy?” he said.
“Ey, Yirrid,” said Joron.
“Is she here?”
“No, they will not let her leave the ship.”
The chartmaster came shuffling out of the darkness, a frail apparition. He walked slowly, scarred and burned face hidden by the curtains of his long hair. “What has happened?” asked Joron.
“A reminder, that is all.” In the dim light of the wanelights Joron could see the shadows of old bruises on Yirrid’s face, and the swellings of new ones around his ruined eyes. “I wondered why they came, but Meas being here – well, now it makes sense.”
“What makes sense?”
“This reminder.” He gestured around the room with a misshapen hand, then pointed at his face. “This gentle encouragement to forget.”
“Forget what?”
Yirrid tried to laugh, but it turned into a cough and he grasped his chest. “Terrible things,” he whispered. “I like to look through the old documents, boy, see what I can find. The Maiden always curses the curious, and she cursed me as I found a thing.” He turned away and Joron could just make out him muttering, “I should have destroyed it.”
“Destroyed what?” said Joron.
“No matter,” said Yirrid. “To mention it is to bring more misery, and Meas has enough.” Mevans leaned over and picked up a chart.
“I could help put these away,” said Mevans.
“No,” said Yirrid, some of his old life as a shipwife coming through in his voice. “They are all marked in ways I can read with what fingers I have left. I have systems. And I have a boy who . . .” His voice faded away. “Well, they will send me a new boy I am sure. Now, enough, I am tired and hurt. What do you want?”
“We came across a ship, a brownbone, taking sick women and men and gullaime somewhere. We do not know where and the shipwife burned her charts before we could get to them. The ship was called Maiden’s Bounty and the Shipwife named Golzin. Meas wants to know where it was going, and why. She thought you may know if charts had been requested by this shipwife, or charts for something you thought odd. She fears something terrible.”
Yirrid’s scarred face was fixed on him.
“So, it has started,” he whispered into the darkness. “Get me my seat,” he said. Mevans appeared behind him with a stool, and the old man sat. “Maybe the Mother sends you to help, maybe the Maiden sends you as a trick. Who knows, ey?”
“I feel it more likely the Hag follows our wake.”
“Ever thus for the crew of a black ship,” said Yirrid. “I cannot help you with where the brownbone was going. But with why it is going, though – well, sadly, that I know.”
“Is that why you have been beaten?”
Yirrid nodded. “Ey, it is. A warning not to talk of what I know.”
“Forgive me,” said Mevans, “but if you cannot see, how do you find secrets in old papers?”
Yirrid smiled. “My boy read for me, I was training him to take my place.” The old man sighed. “Now he never will.”
“They killed him?”
Yirrid nodded.
“I am worth keeping, my knowledge is needed. The boy was only a Berncast child who knew too much.”
“And what is it he knew?” asked Joron.
“Part of the secret to making hiyl, the poison for hunting keyshans.”
“It is made from the keyshans themselves, is it not?” said Joron.
Yirrid shook his head. “No it is not. That I know.” Then he repeated quietly, “It is what I wished I still believed.”
Joron stared at him, mouth dry, feeling that he stood on the edge of some precipice, some knowledge that once passed on would never leave him, and would never be wanted either.
Yirrid lifted his head. “We always say that life in the Hundred Isles is harsh, but it is nothing to the way the old ones lived, nothing. The poison – the cost of making it? It is lives. The ancients spent hundreds of lives making hiyl, thousands even. It is a dark and poisonous process, that uses up bodies. That much my boy read out before they took the scrolls from me.”
“That is why they want the sick,” said Joron, and he found himself wishing for his own seat. “If you must expend life in the making of a thing, then use those who are expendable. But surely we are not that—”
“You think it cannot be, Joron Twiner? That we would not murder hundreds for a chance to hunt the keyshans once more?” He let out a small laugh, a wizened, bitter sound. “We sacrifice our own children to our ships, you think those in power care about the lives of the sick and the useless?”
“But so many?” said Joron.
“Ey, from the numbers, the process must use them up in days.”
“And gullaime too?”
“Windtalkers? They are too valuable.”
“What if they are windshorn?”
“Well,” he shrugged again, “a worker is a worker, I suppose, and I have said too much. You must leave.”
“You have no clue where these brownbones are taking these people?”
“What would you do if I did?” he said softly. “Take your black ship to save those who are dying anyway? I would not throw away Meas’s life to save them even if I knew where they were taken.”
“Then,” said Joron, “are you any better than them?”
Yirrid chuckled, far from the reaction Joron expected to his insult.
“Of course I am no better, child.” He heard the officer in the voice once again, the core of keyshan bone that ran through the man. “I was a Hundred Isles shipwife, boy. How many innocents do you think fell to my blade? Too many. You think I would throw away the one person I genuinely care about for those who I know nothing of? Those I care nothing for?” He shook his head. “No, never.”
“She will hate you for it.”
“But she will be alive to do it,” said Yirrid.
Joron waited, trying to think of a way to convince the old man to help, but all he found was the churning in his gut of the twin poisons. The pain. He understood pain – his pain, and Meas’s pain. With that understanding came words.
“There was a place, Yirrid, that was not as fierce as the Hundred Isles, or the Gaunt Islands. A place Meas helped create. But it does not exist anymore, and the people who lived there, who were not sick, or useless, or unknown to us, were taken from it in these brownbones. So if you truly care for Meas, then know she loved these people, not for who they were, but for what they stood for. A living, breathing sign of her peace. I cannot make you help, but you can be sure she will not stop whether you tell me what you know or not.”
Yirrid tipped his blind face toward the chart-covered floor.
“Ah, Meas, you wish peace for all, but can you never be at peace yourself?” he said quietly, before raising his head. “Charts for the brownbones go out en masse. They are bundled up and handed out by the chart office in the harbour. No doubt those for the brownbones you seek are removed before the harbour office sees them. Would not do to have the common folk know they are to be harvested, ey?” He chuckled. “If anyone knows which charts are for those brownbones, it is Indyl Karrad. Nothing happens on this island without him knowing of it. You must speak to him.”
“I doubt he will want to speak to me,” said Joron.
“Well, that is a problem for you, not me.” He slid from the stool. “This place is a mess and I have work to do. I think you should go now.”
“Ey,” said Joron and he did, he and Mevans sneaking out of the Grand Bothy past the two men on the gate who, because they were leaving, did not even raise an eyebrow.
Outside they found Farys, Anzir and Hastir waiting in the shadows and the five of them made their way down the Serpent Road and into Fishdock, w
here Joron had visited Indyl Karrad before, though in the company of Meas. They wandered the streets, Joron conscious that time was running out and he must return to the hagbower before he was missed, until, eventually, they found a familiar building and Joron knocked on the door. A moment later the door was opened a crack.
“Too late for callers,” said a voice.
“My name is Joron Twiner,” he said. “I must speak to Indyl Karrad on behalf of Meas Gilbryn.”
The door shut. They waited. The streets were starting to fill, though it was still dark. Bakers had begun their work and the smell of smoke as ovens were lit was chasing away the usual smell of rotting fish. The drinking holes had finally shut and the sound of brushes could be heard as floors were swept free of filth.
The door opened.
“Kept Karrad will speak to you, Twiner, alone.” Joron nodded to Mevans.
“I do not like this,” said Mevans.
“It is as it must be, Hatkeep.”
He passed through the door. Behind it was a man, small and bent though there was something dangerous about him that set Joron on edge the same way he felt when around Narza.
“Follow me,” said the man. Joron did, up the sumptuously lined stairs, and into Indyl Karrad’s inner sanctum where the man sat at his desk. He still had the long, reed-woven plait growing from his chin, and he was still a finely sculpted and muscled man beneath the straps of material crossing his body that marked him as one of the Kept, but were there grey streaks in his hair that had not been there before? And was his musculature not quite as defined, and was the shimmering make-up around his eyes just a little thicker now, the better to hide the wrinkles there?
“Joron Twiner,” he said. “I am surprised you have the tits to come to my house.”
“I come on behalf of Meas. And I come with bad news.”
“Are you are always destined to bring me bad news, Twiner? It seems to be your lot in life.” Joron did not know how to answer. Here was the man whose son he had killed in a duel, and who in turn had made sure Joron was committed to a black ship. Though at the same time he was Meas’s partner in peace, someone she trusted and the man who kept them supplied with both stores for the ships and information. “Well?” said Karrad, “speak then. I would have you here for as short a time as possible.”