Call of the Bone Ships

by Rj Barker

  Now, my father thought me some sort of hermit, cos I would take every moment I could to be alone and study what I could find on weather and currents and numbers. But that was not true. I did not for one moment long to be alone; in fact, my loneliness was as much a prison as this brig is. I simply longed for someone who would let me be as I wished to be. To this end, the coursers became my dream and I spoke of them so often that my father forbade talk of them. As my laying night drew closer, the more afeared I became, because it seemed my parents had begun to hate me for not being something they could understand. They had become cruel, as had my sithers and my brothers. All except the oldest, Fuller, who did not live at home any more and had taken up his job as a cobbler. Whenever he could he would bring me what he found about weather and the sea and navigation. Snippets taken from deckchilder who came into his shop. Sometimes he told me he would swap shoes for books to give to me, though my mother took the books away and sold them whenever she found them.

  My father told me one day that he had been looking into coursers, and my heart leaped. Then he told me, with such a smile as I will never forget, that the coursers would only take those who had proven their commitment by staying untouched. That no courser could touch another woman nor man in passion and still expect the Mother to sing in their dreams. I wondered why he had suddenly gifted me this information. Then he sat and took my hand. He was gentle, like he had not been for years.

  “After laying night, Aelerin, all this nonsense of yours will be forgot. You are the hope of us, most perfect of us. Likely to bear an unspoilt child, and your family will benefit from that, your sithers, your mother, your brothers, me.” I did not answer, for I had no answer. “Now I know that you may be odd looking,” he said, “but do not worry. I have spoken to the children of others, I have made sure you will not be lonely on laying night.”

  He had paid them, Deckkeeper. I choose to believe, still, that he was misguided, not malicious. I choose to believe he truly did not understand me, but nevertheless. He had offered a shiny coin to whoever lay with me, thinking that when the option of the coursers was removed from me, I would forget them. He could not understand that I saw the coursers as a place of refuge – they were not the cause of what he hated, they were simply a symptom of who I am.

  On laying night, I begged my mother and father not to send me out. But they would hear nothing of it and threw me out of the tenement. A whole gang awaited me outside, male and female, for when you are strange those who are not mark you out, and cannot wait to visit their malice upon you. But they were drunk and I was not. And they were out for some fun. I was fighting to live, as I knew without the coursers I would surely take my own life, for I had none left there. So when they tried to take me, my ferocity took them by surprise.

  I do not remember much of that night. I remember it mostly like a bad dream, the darkness full of fires, the air thick with the sweet scent of herbs thrown into those fires. The smoke which bent my thoughts in strange ways and filled the streets. Nightmare faces looming out of the dark, full of insane joy, laughing, shrieking, the sounds of passion. Coming across bodies twined together and moving rhythmically in alleys, doorways, by the docks. All the time I was running, running up the serpent road toward the courser’s bothy. I got lost, somehow found myself in the lamyard, saw the gullaime in their spiked pens, heard them screeching and calling. I nearly tripped over a couple about the laying in the long grass. They swore at me and I ran on. Always running, it seemed I ran all night, and when I thought I could run no further, then I found it, the white door of the courser’s bothy. I felt as if the Mother had guided me and I hammered on it, “Let me in! Let me in!” but the door did not open, and I believed that every moment I was about to grabbed from behind, dragged away by hands that wanted to earn my father’s filthy coin.

  But I was not. The door did open, and I thought my troubles over with. Here was the place I had dreamed of for so long. Here was a place that was quiet, and clean, so clean. White, everything whitewashed, and coursers walked everywhere, heads bowed. Undisturbed. Being who they were.

  It seemed like another world, a paradise, compared to the madness outside. Madness that I could still hear and I could not control myself. I spilled out my whole story to the courser who had met me at the gate. How thankful I was, how much I wished to be like them, how I had felt that, my whole life, this was where I should be. And the courser turned to me and said, “Become a courser? You? Some common Berncast? People like you do not become coursers.”

  My heart broke then. All this, for nothing. I must have been mistaken in what I saw, what I thought of them. But a single ray of light was provided. I thought then that maybe they remembered being like me, being an outsider, and that was why they did not turn me away, they took pity. Let me stay as a servant.

  I found out exactly how hard it was keeping that place clean, keeping all those robes white. I did all the work they asked and when I had a moment I studied the books. I found out the lie behind them; there were many who were misformed and would usually be called Berncast, but all were the children of Bern. Hidden away, given a job and forbidden to talk of their lives before. After a year, I was made personal servant to a courser in training. They were not like me at all, they snuck out and proved what my father had said about a courser remaining untouched did not really matter if you were from the right family. But still, I found some friendship behind the white doors, among the lessers like myself, and even among some of the coursers. Many are truly committed to the mother, and the songs of the storm.

  The courser I was servant to, Bralin, did not enjoy studying. When they realised I found pleasure in it they let me do their studying for them, and for the entire four years of their apprenticeship I had only joy. Bralin ignored me, went and enjoyed themselves while I did their work, learnt what they should.

  It was to be my undoing.

  Bralin passed for full courser, or rather I did, with flying colours. Among the best marks ever seen. He was sent to an important ship and I stayed in the courser’s bothy, once more cleaning robes and floors. A month later Bralin returned in disgrace – he had almost run his ship into the rocks before it was out of sight of Bernshulme. When he was brought back it all came out. You would think that they would have hidden him out of sight, then moved me to a ship, maybe just a small ship. But I had, however unknowingly, embarrassed important people. The common Berncast, Deckkeeper, as you well know, are not meant to be capable or intelligent. We are meant to know our place.

  And so that is why you find me here. On a ship of the dead. Telling you my story and wearing the robe of a true courser. This robe it is all I have wanted, it is my life’s dream. However short that life may be.

  When they finished their story, Joron stood. Unsure of what to say to the courser. He had wallowed in his own pity many times, but at least his youth had been one of joy.

  “I have been a fool around you, Aelerin.” He put out his hand to help the courser up. “You are as strong as any other on this ship. If you would have my friendship, I would give it.” The courser looked up at him from where they sat. Then nodded, and took his arm, letting Joron lift them up.

  “I am afraid, D’keeper,” they said, “that our friendship may be a short one.”

  Joron was about to reply when he was interrupted by the opening of the brig door.

  “Well, Deckkeeper,” came Dinyl’s voice from outside the cell, “I sent you warning, are you ready?”

  “It seems you are right, Aelerin,” said Joron, and the cell door opened.

  25

  The Grim Business

  “Are you ready?” whispered Dinyl. The weak glow of the wanelight gilded his face, turned his features into a monstrous landscape of gold and deep shadow.

  “How can one ever be ready?”

  “I did my best to prepare you.” Dinyl held up a curnow, though he also had one on his hip.

  “What?” Joron’s confusion was absolute. Was this some trap? But why trap him?

&n
bsp; “We do not have time for questions, Joron. Half of Cwell’s crew are drunk or asleep, we must act.” Joron stared at him, confusion making him mute. “Hag’s tit’s Joron,” said Dinyl. “You know how canny Meas is. She saw this coming,” he held up the stump of his wrist, “and saw this as the perfect way to put me amongst those she trusted least.”

  “You are on our side?”

  “Of course,” said Dinyl, “did you not read the note?”

  “How can I trust you?”

  “Mother’s love, Joron, we do not have time for discussion.” He glanced at the ceiling, and sighed. “I know that Aelerin has been slowing us and I have said nothing.” He held out the curnow. “Now, will you take this and come?”

  “You do not hate me then?”

  “Well,” said Dinyl, “I am not about to thank you for what you did, but I understand why you did it. Now come, before I am missed.”

  Joron took the curnow and it was as if a weight was lifted from his shoulders; the terror that had been in the back of his mind left, to be replaced by the familiar weight of a weapon in his hand. He would no longer die slowly, under a blade or heated rod. He may well die, but it would be with a curnow in his hand, fighting for his shipwife. All things considered, it was how he would choose to go.

  “Thank you,” he said. And it was as if the possibility of action chased away the pain that had been throbbing within the wound on his back.

  “It is my duty,” said Dinyl. Joron smiled wearily.

  “Aelerin, stay behind us,” he said. “If anything happens to us, claim we forced you to come and they will most likely keep you alive. You are useful to them.” The courser nodded.

  Dinyl led them forward and up the ladder to the underdeck. The deckholder could be seen by Cwell’s mutinous crew and they would think nothing of it. Joron and Aelerin followed him through the darkness of the ship. In the dim light the curnow at Dinyl’s hip glinted, and the white of his bone knife was the beacon that guided them.

  “We must go through the main underdeck now, most will be sleeping,” said Dinyl. “Then from there down into the hold to free our people.”

  “Ey,” said Joron. Then he stopped. “No. One of us most go to the armoury and bring weapons. When we free the crew we will be found out – they will not be quiet enough for secrecy and if they are not armed then they stand little chance.”

  Dinyl stared at him in the dim light. “I will go to the armoury,” he said. “If I go alone to free the crew from the hold they may tear me to ribbons before I get time to explain. You they will accept. So it must be this way.”

  “Ey,” said Joron. “I suppose it must.”

  “Do you still not trust me, Joron?” There was pain in Dinyl’s face.

  “Go and get us some weapons.” He put out a hand and Dinyl clasped it with his good hand. They shared a smile that Joron had thought was lost to him forever.

  “When we meet again I will have weapons for as many as I can carry,” said Dinyl. “There will be three or four deckchilder in the armoury but I am sure they will let me take what I wish. I have any number of good excuses prepared.” He reached behind him and produced a ring of keys, holding the ring in his mouth while using his good hand to remove one of the keys. “This is for the lock on the hold,” he said, then he reached behind himself and replaced the keys, hand coming back with his bone knife. “This is in case you need it, for quiet work.”

  “Thank you, Dinyl,” he said, and they made their way onwards through the underdeck. A few snoring bodies were in the hammocks and the smell of strong alcohol filled the air, as if it had seeped into the bones of the ship. Anger grew within Joron, a fury that he was in more danger of falling over some loose bit of rubbish and breaking his head on the floor than he was from running into a mutineer. Through the dark underdeck, to the hatch that led down to the hold and armoury. Rung by rung down the ladder into the pitch dark. There they split up – Dinyl heading one way, down toward the armoury; Joron and Aelerin toward the hold, where a wanelight glowed, showing him the way.

  “Who is there?”

  Joron froze. He recognised the voice – Coblin, one of Cwell’s mutineers, stood before the door to the hold. Joron put his sleeve across his mouth and walked forward, muffling his speech.

  “It is I, it is Gurant,” he said, using another mutineer’s name as he walked closer.

  “Gurant? You sound terrible. Have you been at—”

  But Joron would never find out what Coblin thought Gurant had been at. Now within reach of the woman, his knife flashed out, finding her throat and silencing her forever. Then he was at the door.

  “Hoy there,” he said, as loudly, as he dared. “Hoy there, who listens?”

  “Karring,” came the reply.

  “Well, Karring, wake those who sleep. This is your deckkeeper, and I have come to free you.”

  “Deckkeeper!” cried Karring, and Joron nearly jumped out of his skin.

  “Quiet yourself, deckchild,” he said, “we’ll not want Cwell warned we are coming. Now wake the crew, I am opening the door.”

  He found the crew within. The hold ran almost the entire length of the ship, the thin corridor Joron stood in running down the side of it. Above was the large, double doored trapdoors that could be opened, a similar pair on the maindeck, allowing the hoisting in and out of goods. Over a hundred and fifty women and men were in there, trying to find a place to sleep amid bales and barrels and spars, wingcloth and staves. The place stank of too many bodies confined without fresh air.

  “We did not give in, Deckkeeper,” said Barlay as Joron stepped into the hold, her face badly bruised. “And when we get up on deck I have a special fate in line for traitors, especially the d’older.”

  “The deckholder is why I am here, Barlay,” he said. “Dinyl is no traitor. He did Meas’s work, getting in among the mutineers for she saw this coming. It was him who freed me.” Behind her Berhof stood, his usually jovial face dark.

  “Then why did he not stop them? Or warn us?” he said.

  “I did not have time.” Dinyl squeezed in through the door behind Joron with his arms full of curnows. “By the time Cwell had told me what she was doing the mutiny was well under way. All I could do was wait for my moment. Now, the armoury door is open but a few of Cwell’s people are in there. We are bound to be heard, so must use these weapons to hold off any mutineers while the rest of you arm yourselves. Then we will take our ship back, ey?”

  “Ey,” said Barlay, and she took a curnow from him, passed it to Berhof before taking another and turning to Joron. “Where is Anzir? We could do with her arm.”

  “Dead stabbed in the back by Sprackin,” said Joron and from the look that crossed Barlay’s face he knew he should have been kinder, that the two women had been closer than he had thought.

  “That will be avenged then,” said Barlay, and she held up her curnow. “I will see to it.”

  “There are four in the armoury guard room, playing cards,” said Dinyl. “We must take them quickly and quietly.” Barlay touched the edge of her blade.

  “I can do that,” she said. “Berhof, Gulbry, Namd . . .”

  “I would come too,” said Fogle, the seakeep. Her face was covered in cuts and purplish bruises. “Cwell held me over the side and had me stare into the faces of the beakwyrms, would have fed me to them today. I would spill some blood for that.”

  “Ey,” said Barlay. “I can well understand a need for vengeance.”

  “The deckholder will lead you,” said Joron, but the noise in the hold was rising as the prospect of action grew. “Quiet!” he hissed, “or we will lose the ship again before we even have chance to take it. The mutineers will think nothing of Dinyl approaching, so be silent behind him. If you can kill them without the rest of Cwell’s crew becoming aware then our bloody job will be all the easier.”

  They moved through the dark lower decks of the ships. If Meas was still in charge he knew there would have been more crew down here, but Cwell did not run a tight sh
ip like Meas. Her authority came from giving the crew what they wanted, even when that was not what was best for the ship. Joron understood that now, in the same way every crew member that now moved silently with him through the belly of the ship understood. The ship was a machine, discipline the oil that allowed it to run. The anger within Joron burned hot. Anger that Cwell would try and take this ship from Meas, from him, from the women and men who had worked so hard to make Tide Child a ship as slick as any in the fleet. Anger that Cwell now put in danger something he had not understood at first, the idea of peace in the Scattered Archipelago – but it was something he now held dear to him. More dear to him, though, were these people; Farys, Barlay, Aelerin, Berhof of the seaguard who brought up their rear, even the gullaime. He was sure the anger that he felt radiating from the crew around him was that same anger.

  Ahead, Dinyl stopped at the door to the armoury. Held up his fist and all became silence.

  Life paused.

  Dinyl looked to him, for the order.

  Joron waited. Anger welling. Hatred.

  “Wait,” he whispered.

  “What?” said Dinyl.

  “I have been thinking like an angry man, not an officer.” He turned, found Berhof and motioned him down toward him. “Berhof, take three of our strongest and go up the hatch of the underdeck. Hold that hatch. We have greater numbers, but if we are trapped here in a corridor it becomes meaningless. Cwell could finish us with crossbows. You must hold the way out.”