Call of the Bone Ships

by Rj Barker

  “No.”

  That word from Dinyl.

  “No, my deckkeeper?” said Cwell. “Do you gainsay your shipwife?”

  “You promised him to me.” An uncomfortable pause, “Shipwife. For what he did.” Dinyl held up his arm, shortened by lack of a hand. “For this.”

  “Do you want to throw him overboard?” said Cwell.

  “No,” said Dinyl quietly. Joron could almost feel the mutineers turning against Dinyl for spoiling their fun. “I want to do far worse,” he hissed. From the smile spreading across Cwell’s face Dinyl’s need for revenge was something she understood, would encourage even. “He took my hand, and that will be my starting point with him. But I want to do it on land. Where we have time, and space. Somewhere I can build a good fire to cauterise wounds. I do not want him to bleed out. I want to be somewhere I can make him suffer.”

  Cwell nodded. “Well, I would not be stood here without you, Deckkeeper,” she said. “So he is my gift to you. At the first land we see we will stop, and you and your shipfriend over there,” she pointed at Joron, “can put on a fine show for us.” Dinyl nodded, glanced at Joron, still holding the one-tail hat in his one good hand. “But I feel we must give our crew a show now. For they have worked hard this day.” A shout of appreciation went up from the mutineers as Cwell scanned the deckchilder knelt behind Joron. “Bring Hastir forward.”

  Two mutineers brought forward Hastir, who had once been a shipwife, once loyal to Cwell but no longer. A woman who was good at her job, a woman Joron had won over by giving her his trust. “You as good as spat in my face, Hastir, when you took up with that one.” Cwell pointed at Joron. “You and I were once friends.”

  “If your creatures would bring me a little closer,” said Hastir, “I will spit in your face for real.”

  Cwell let out a small laugh.

  “You are spirited, I like that.” She smiled, then shrugged. “But insubordination is punishable by death on my ship. Throw her overboard.”

  Hastir, kicking and struggling, was picked up by two of Cwell’s mutineers and thrown over the side of Tide Child. All heard the splash and knew her lost. Joron, no doubt along with many others, said a silent prayer to the Hag to receive Hastir by her bonefire.

  Cwell let a moment of silence pass. “The rest of you,” she said to the women and men kneeling on the slate, “have a simple choice. Swear your loyalty to me, or join Hastir among the longthresh. I do not ask you to decide now, I am not unreasonable. Talk amongst yourselves and I will take your reply tomorrow. For now, I will have my crew take you all below to the hold.” She paused. “Except Twiner. Lock him in the brig with the courser. I don’t want him interfering with the crew’s decisions.”

  It was a noisy and painful journey that Joron made from the deck of Tide Child to the brig, deep in the darkness of the ship’s hold. Those who took him by the arms were not well disposed towards him, and they made sure that any mutinous crewmember who remembered a slight, or felt that Joron had treated them unfairly, got to pay back what they thought was owed, either with fists and feet, or harsh words – and so it was a bruised and bloodied Joron that was thrown into the small dark room well below the underdeck. There he sat alone, and time passed and passed. Once Joron tried the door, and found it just as sturdy and strong and impassable as the brig had always been. The walls around him as tough as any bone on the ship, the only view out through a small barred square at head height on the door. He had little to do but think about the pain he was in and how this was merely a weak echo of whatever Dinyl would visit on him when they hit land.

  The brig consisted of three cells up in the beak end of the ship, reached by a ladder from the underdeck and locked away behind a thick door. Joron was surprised to find himself alone. He called out and there was no sound, despite Cwell having said he would share with the courser, Aelerin. The three cells were serviced by a small corridor that cut them off from the hold, and the armoury in the rump of the ship. As Joron nursed his bruises he listened. Tide Child sounded like a ship under way, but he also sounded different, subtly different. Was it Joron’s mind that filled in an unhappiness to every creak and crack of the bones? Under this mutinous crew the ship was definitely more rowdy: more shouting, more laughter, though it was tinged with cruelty – and Joron well knew the sound of a cruel laugh.

  Was it the Maiden he heard? Laughing cruelly at her trick, at Joron’s fate – that he had escaped one small box designed to ship him to a horrible death, only to walk straight into another?

  The Hundred Isles were ever cruel.

  He heard a noise and stood to look through the small barred opening. The weak glow of the wanelight in his cell was joined by the weak light from a shaft of illumination creeping along the corridor toward his cell as the solid main door opened.

  “Get in there. We’ll come back for you when the shipwife needs you, or when we does.” The last words a leer as the courser was roughly pushed forward. The door of the cell opened and they were thrown in with Joron – a flash of robes and they collapsed in a corner, clasping their stomach and curling up. Quiet sobs escaping their mouth.

  “Aelerin,” said Joron quietly. He had always wondered what they looked like under the cowl. The hood had fallen away, but the courser’s face was still hidden. All he could see was their scalp, covered in hundreds of tiny nicks where the courser had caught themselves with a blade as they shaved their hair to the skull. “Aelerin,” he said again, “did they hurt you?” He knelt by them, put a hand on their shoulder. The courser looked up, then twisted their body away from him, pushing themselves further into the corner of the cell. He could just see their face. He had always wondered if they were male or female, always been half tempted to peek under the cowl but now he could see he was no wiser – the shorn hair, the young, smooth skin: boy or girl, he could not tell. All he saw in them was terror.

  “I will not hurt you, Aelerin,” he said softly, unsure whether to touch. Unsure whether that would bring the courser comfort or not.

  “Why not? You do not like me,” they said. Their lip was split, bruises around the eyes. How could he answer that? It was true, the courser made him uncomfortable. They were a person he did not understand, had never understood, never tried to.

  “I do not know you,” he said.

  “And you do not want to,” they said. In those words was the same tone he had heard once when the courser had spoken of the gullaime and of loneliness. He wondered how he could have been so blind.

  “You are different,” he said. “And I was raised in a way that did not expose me to different.”

  “Yet you befriend our gullaime.” Was there betrayal in those big round eyes?

  “Maybe,” he said slowly, “there is only so much different I can take at a time.” The courser continued to stare and Joron thought himself a fool. So much obvious pain and loneliness and he had chosen to look away. “Sometimes, Aelerin, I am wrong, and know I am wrong, and still I do not act because it is easier not to act.” He moved a little closer. “But I am not the man who first came aboard Tide Child, and maybe I ignored you because it was easy for me to do so as deckkeeper. So many duties, ey? But here, in this place?” He shrugged, motioned to the small cell that contained them. “I am all you have, and you are all I have if we are to escape.”

  The courser stared at him.

  “Escape?”

  “Ey,” he said, calm as he could. “Meas will be expecting this ship to meet her.” He ripped a piece from the bottom of his shirt and moved to the back of the cell, finding a small pail of water and soaking the cloth in it. “Let me clean your wounds, Aelerin, and let us talk.”

  The courser continued to stare. Then they gave him a small nod and it was as if, for the first time, they realised they no longer had their hood over their face and they reached back. A sharp, panicked action.

  “Wait,” said Joron, “I will need to see your face to treat your bruises.”

  “It is not done,” they said, the edge of fear in their vo
ice. “It is an insult to the Mother.”

  “Well, Aelerin,” said Joron quietly, “I assure you if there is a list of things that are ‘not done’ then losing your ship to a mutinous crew is probably more offensive to the Mother than me seeing your face, ey?” The courser stared more intently, and he thought he had lost them. Was it a foolish thing to say? Blasphemous to their cult, maybe? He knew so little. The coursers were so secretive. Then they nodded, closed their eyes and he approached, kneeling before them, trying not to block the weak light as he very gently began to clean the courser’s face. Not only bruises there, but scuff marks. “They threw you about?” A nod. “What did they want from you?”

  “Courses. Navigation.”

  “Dinyl cannot do that?” The courser shook their head.

  “He can chart a course, but he cannot dream the winds, feel the storm’s moods, no, he cannot do those things. And I do not think he charts a course well—ow.”

  “Sorry,” he said, taking the cloth away, wringing it out before he set once more to cleaning wounds. “Why do you think Dinyl does not navigate well?”

  “I have set the ship against a strong current, it will slow us considerably, Deckkeeper. And he did not seem to notice.” Joron smiled.

  “Brave of you.”

  “I am not brave. I am weak and I am frightened.”

  “You were in a room full of murderers who were beating you, probably threatening worse. Yet you had the forethought to slow the ship to help the Shipwife find us, even though you must know what they would do to you if they found out.” He gently dabbed at a graze on their cheek. “You were chosen by Lucky Meas. She only chooses the brave.”

  “Meas will come for us,” said the courser.

  “She will,” he said, though he, in that moment, was not as sure. The ocean was vast and Tide Child was small. Even going slow against a current, the odds of Meas coming across them, even when she realised what had happened, were vanishingly tiny. Still, the courser’s faith in the shipwife was touching and he would not gainsay it. “But we must do all we can to help the shipwife when she comes.” He moved back, placing the cloth in the small bucket to rinse it out. Then wanted to curse himself for spoiling their only drinking water.

  “I do not mind drinking a bit of blood,” said the courser. “Blood is part of our lives.”

  “Ey.” Joron let out a quiet laugh. “You are right there.” He went and sat close, but not too close, to the courser. “Did you notice any loyal crew?”

  “They are all below, except Solemn Muffaz. They treat him most cruelly.”

  “He is strong, and he will weather it. He will consider it payment to the Hag for his crime, and he will be right.”

  The courser nodded. “He is always kind to me.”

  “What of the gullaime?”

  “They have barricaded it in its room with the other one.”

  “It will hate that.” Joron could not hide his amusement, and he was sure he heard similar in the courser’s voice.

  “It did not sound pleased.” The levity fled. “They tried to force it to come on deck and it killed one of them.”

  “No better than they deserve,” he said. The courser nodded.

  “The rest of the crew,” said Aelerin. “While I was there they brought their answer to Cwell.”

  “I have been in here all night?” he said, surprised that so much time had passed. The courser shook their head.

  “No, their answer was a swift one. They did not need more than a couple of hours.”

  “And it was?”

  “They serve the shipwife. Our shipwife.” Joron let out the breath he had not realised he was holding. Felt a sudden sense of relief.

  “I imagine Cwell did not like that?”

  “She had their messenger beaten, then they held her over the side, so she could see the longthresh, and sent her back. Told them to reconsider.”

  “If the shipwife is coming I hope she hurries,” said Joron. “Cwell strikes me as someone determined to get what she wants, and I do not think she will be patient.”

  24

  To Make Light in Darkness

  They came next for Aelerin mid conversation. It was in the – morran? In the afternoon? The next day? The next week? There was no way to tell. Usually he would listen for the sound of the bells and the calls in response; Solemn Muffaz’s sonorous voice tolling the hour of the watch: First watch, mid watch, middle watch, middle late watch, late watch, night watch, and on and on and round and round in the endless repetition of the sea. But under Cwell the bell no longer tolled, as if time had stopped when the shipwife’s authority was taken from the ship.

  His back hurt once more.

  “Where is Anzir, Deckkeeper?” they had said, and in their voice was a tiny spark of hope. To Aelerin he knew Anzir must have appeared like a rock, this great immovable warrior. But even a rock was eventually reduced to sand by the sea. Pain deep within him.

  “Dead, Aelerin. Sprackin killed her.”

  “But she was a warrior, and he is . . .”

  “Cowardly, Aelerin,” Joron had told them, and he realised that where there had been grief for the big, silent woman who had followed him around, now there was a deep anger at Sprackin. “He struck her a cowardly blow from behind as she tried to warn me of the mutiny.”

  “I . . .”

  “We will make him pay,” and before Aelerin had asked the difficult question of “how” there was a commotion and the courser was whisked away, leaving Joron alone in the gloom once more, with sadness and dreams of vengeance his only company.

  When Aelerin returned, they returned bloody and tear-stained. Once more Joron found himself playing hagshand, cleaning the courser’s face. At first, they would not speak at all, but after gentle care and coaxing eventually words came from Aelerin’s mouth, quiet as night waves on a long beach.

  “I do not know how much longer I can hold back.”

  “What do you mean, Aelerin?”

  “They do not know what I am doing, but I am sure they suspect me of something.” They sniffed, wiped at tears and Joron noticed one of their hands was bunched tightly in a fist, as if they held something. “They threaten . . . they threaten . . .”

  Joron put a hand on the courser’s shoulder.

  “You need not say. Women and men like that, they always threaten.”

  “Will the shipwife really come, Deckkeeper?”

  “Yes,” he said. To his own surprise he found that now he really did believe that. “She will. Somehow, she will.” Aelerin nodded to herself. “What is in your hand, Aelerin?”

  “I . . .” They looked down at their hand, almost guiltily. Then, slowly, the courser opened it. In their palm lay a small piece of parchment. “I . . . did not know whether to give it to you or not.”

  “Why?”

  “It is from Dinyl.” She held it out and Joron opened the note. Written in Dinyl’s hand for sure, the words poorly formed as Joron had taken his writing hand. Just five words there but they made Joron’s blood run cold: I am coming for you. He shuddered. Joron knew the sort of terrible pain one person could cause another, and knew how long such things could be made to last if a person had a mind to make them.

  “Hag curse him, I should have taken his head not his hand.”

  “What does it say?”

  “They threaten me too,” he said. His hand shook a little, so he folded the note and put it in his pocket to give it something to do.

  “It is strange, Deckkeeper. When they beat me it is not so bad as it is happening. It is the thinking of it I cannot stand. The thought of what might happen.”

  “Ey, so let us not think, Aelerin.”

  “How? How can I not think of their threats?”

  “We must go to other places, Aelerin,” said Joron.

  “How?”

  “Tell me your story. You know how I got here, I know nothing about you, or the coursers. I pride myself now on being able to spot a criminal, a violent person, and you strike me as none of th
ese. How does someone like you end up on Tide Child?”

  “It is not an exciting story, Deckkeeper.”

  “I will be the judge of that, Courser,” said Joron.

  How Aelerin came to the Tide Child

  I was born one of five, fourth of those five, and my father said that was the luckiest number, for each of my sisters and brothers had a leg missing or an arm missing or a finger missing but, apart from a slight twist to my own leg, I was as near a perfect child as he had ever seen. Every laying night, when he would send out an older brother or sither, my mother and father would tell me how excited they were for me, how good it felt to lay with another and that if any of their children were likely to make it to the bothies and become Bern then it was I. But when they spoke of what happened on laying night, of the wild abandon and sharing your body with any other you meet, when my brother and sither came back and told stories of their laying, when they spoke of their hope to bring healthy children into the Hundred Isles, I did not feel the same excitement as them. I had no wish to share myself with another. I tried to explain this to my family but they would only become angry. My father would beat me and my mother would stand and watch, as if I deserved every bruise. Deckkeeper, I felt like I was as strange and alien to my family as a gullaime, and like all I was ever to be to them was a disappointment.

  A year before I was of age for laying night I saw my first coursers, walking in a line through town. They were not all whole, not like you must be to be Bern or Kept. Some limped, some were missing fingers or arms, so being Berncast was surely no barrier to becoming one. As they passed it was as if silence followed them. All went quiet as they walked past in single file, heads bowed, hidden beneath robes so white I thought them sent by the godbird itself.

  See, I was raised in a busy house where voices were always loud and shouting. I had never heard such quiet, Deckkeeper, it seemed like they were magical. So I asked about them, and my father had nothing but bad things to say. Called them witches, called them evil, performers of dark arts, neither man nor woman, a creature apart from good people. I remember those words, those exact words. “Neither man nor woman,” and, “A creature apart from good people.” And I could not help thinking that he spoke of me. And in the year that followed I searched for all I could about the coursers and it felt like the Maiden’s hand guided me. They loved numbers, and charts, and pictures and quiet, and these were all things that I had taken to myself as comfort when my sithers and brothers had run to the arms of others.