Call of the Bone Ships

by Rj Barker

  A brownbone, though?

  Well, that was another thing entirely.

  “Now you,” she said, “you crews of our brave merchants, those brought here who escaped Safeharbour, those who have come to us through many and varied other means, those of you dragged here by fate . . . Well, I have need of you. Oh, you need not know a warship to help me, need not understand the complex ways of my boneship. For I have many good people on board Tide Child and they will teach you, and Joron will teach you, and if you have the strength to pull on a rope or raise a curnow then you will be welcomed and put to good use on Tide Child. And you . . .” She let her voice fade away, let the silence of the room grow around her before speaking again. “You! Can avenge what was done to Safeharbour! You!” – she pointed at a woman missing a hand and dressed like a tailor – “Can help me stop what I believe is a great darkness! And you!” – she picked out another of those sat around, rapt and hypnotised by her – “Can help bring about a peace like our people have never known.” Again, she let silence fall before talking again. Quietly, softly. “So what say you, ey? What say you all?”

  A roar. An affirmative roar, and those on the landward of Meas were almost climbing over themselves to get to her. Now Meas had to shout to be heard.

  “Wait! Wait, and quiet yourselves! Do not make your decision yet, for it is not a small one. Think on it. And if you still wish to fly with me then be on the beach as Skearith’s Eye dips and report to my hatkeep, Mevans. He will speak to you and rate you and tell you your place aboard.”

  There was much chatter at this. A woman stepped forward.

  “Shipwife Meas,” she said. She was tall, thin and with long red hair that she brushed out of her face with a hand that had three fingers fused together.

  “Ey?” said Meas

  “I would ask a question.”

  “And what is your name?”

  “Jennil, Shipwife Meas.”

  “Ask your question, Jennil.” The room went silent, all the better to hear what was asked of the most famous shipwife on the Scattered Archipelago.

  “I lost my child and man at Safeharbour, Shipwife, so if I join your crew, do you promise us action? For I thirst for vengeance.”

  Joron saw the smile creep across Meas’s face.

  “Oh Jennil,” she said, “if you thirst then follow me, and your cup will overflow.”

  The room erupted into noise, and Joron knew that, by the time Skearith’s Blind Eye rose above the bay, Tide Child would once more have a full complement on deck.

  31

  What Sleeps Within

  Brekir was her usual dour self at the meal held by Meas the next day. A new scar marked the right side of her face.

  “So, we know no more than we did before but we have lost much-needed women and men, and Joron has a shadow likely to stab him in the back.” She chewed solemnly on a tough bit of fish before reaching into her mouth, pulling out a bone and placing it onto her plate. “I almost choked. The beasts of the sea try and strike at us even from death.”

  “Admittedly,” said Meas, “the loss of so many of my trained deckchilder is difficult, but I prefer to think of it as Joron solving a problem. Cwell is family to the crime lord Mulvan Cahanny. If I had executed her, and marooning was as good as, he would feel bound to avenge her. This way she lives but is removed from the rest of the crew. They see a shadow as apart from them, as you well know.”

  “Ey,” said Brekir and she lifted her cup. Mevans stepped up behind her and filled it with shipwine then he offered the jug to her deckkeeper, Vulse, who followed Joron’s lead by not drinking and covered his mug. Mevans offered drink to Aelerin. The courser gave a gentle shake of their robed head.

  “Not drinking, Vulse?” said Brekir.

  “Someone must make sure the shipwife gets back to Snarltooth,” he said with a smile.

  “Ten cordings for you when we return,” she said.

  “If you remember, Shipwife.”

  “Twenty,” said Brekir, but beneath her miserable demeanour there was humour, though it had taken a long time for Joron to be able to read her.

  “How do we stand, Brekir?” said Meas.

  “Better than I thought if I am honest, and now I am let out of the dark and things are shared with me I can see how it truly stands.” Meas was about to speak, apologise for keeping Leasthaven from Brekir but the dour shipwife waved a hand at her. “I understand the need for secrecy, fret you not. We have twelve black ships, five of the Hundred Isles and seven of the Gaunts – well, ten black ships and two pretenders.”

  “Pretenders?” said Joron.

  Brekir smiled, a rare thing indeed. “It is what they have taken to calling the two ‘white’ boneships that came over. Their shipwives intend to paint them black, like criminals, because they think we do it from solidarity, not as we are all condemned, I gather. If more come across I reckon it may well become what we do.”

  “Don’t let’s do it yet though,” said Meas. “A couple of white ships would be useful for slipping in and out of harbours if all black ships become thought of as traitors.”

  “Ey,” said Brekir, “there is that. As well as the fleet ships we have nine brownbones and enough flukeboats to service the bigger ships and provide a steady stream of fish.”

  “So,” said Meas, “it seems we have a fleet.”

  “Ey, we do, Shipmother,” said Brekir.

  “Don’t call me that,” said Meas. She snapped the words out, cold as the Northstorm.

  “It is what is being said, Meas,” said Brekir, “you may as well get used to it. We need a leader and you are seen as it.”

  “I’m no stonebound shipwife, Brekir, to command a desk and push supplies around a map.”

  “No one would ever suggest that you are,” she said. “But after the destruction of Safeharbour our people need someone to look up to. None of the Bern Council escaped.” Silence fell in the small room and it felt to Joron like a heaviness in the air, that a point had been reached where something had changed.

  Eventually, Meas spoke: “I would not leave the deck of Tide Child.”

  “We would not ask it,” said Brekir softly. Meas sighed.

  “Very well.” She did not sound in the least pleased at this promise of promotion. “But this cannot happen while so many of our people are missing. Once that is sorted I will take the name Shipmother and lead, though I will not do it alone. Maybe having our own Bern, even a council of them, was simply to recreate what we said must change. Maybe a council of shipwives should run us.”

  Brekir nodded. “I see no reason why that cannot be the case.”

  “Well, good,” said Meas. She took a sip from her drink. “You know, Brekir, in this wish to name me Shipmother, I get the distinct feeling I have been outmanoeuvred and outmatched as surely as if my ship were sinking into the sea below me.”

  “I would never presume such a thing, Shipwife,” said Brekir, but she hid her smiling mouth with her cup. “Now,” she continued, once her usual seriousness was restored. “tell me of McLean’s Rock.”

  “I know little about it. Aelerin has been studying it.”

  The courser nodded. “It is a crescent isle,” they said, “like many of them are, but my charts tell me little of it. It is in temperate water where the dying season will either be under way or starting as we get there, and it is steeply sided, like a mound, with the sides falling away to beaches on all sides but to the north, where there are high cliffs. It has a windspire as well but that is all I can tell you. Information in our charts is scant.”

  “Thank you, Aelerin. How sings the weather?”

  “A storm is coming, Shipwife.”

  “Well, we all know that,” said Brekir.

  “One other thing,” said Aelerin, “and it may be nothing. The oldest of my charts had been scraped and written over. I did my best to recreate what had been there before – I think McLean’s Rock was once called Sponge Island.”

  “A good place for fishing sponges once, do you thin
k?” said Meas.

  Aelerin shrugged. “I do not know, Shipwife.”

  “Is it just you and I to go, Meas?” said Brekir. Meas nodded.

  “Ey,” she said, “I will take Tide Child into the bay, drop the staystone and land everyone I can. I will need your flukeboats. We overwhelm those on the island then ransack the place looking for clues to where our people have gone.”

  “And if we find nothing, Meas?” said Brekir.

  Meas looked at her, and there was something in her eyes that Joron had never seen before – a bleakness, a loss. He knew then that this was the last throw of the dice, that if they found nothing which led them to the people taken from Safeharbour then those people were lost and he shuddered, remembering his short time in the box. Joron bunched his fists, nails digging into his palms, as Meas spoke again, ignoring Brekir’s words.

  “I want you to bring some of the gullaime we saved from Safeharbour. They have made nests further up the hill from Leasthaven town. Bring plenty so you do not exhaust them if you need the wind. When we get to McLean’s Rock, I want you to coast around the island and warn us in good time of any approaching ships. If something big comes, though I think it unlikely, stay out of range of it until we are back aboard Tide Child and we shall tackle it together.”

  “It sounds like a good plan.”

  “For however long it lasts, ey?” grinned Meas.

  “Indeed,” said Brekir, then the two shipwives stood and grasped arms while Joron put his hand to his breast to salute Brekir and Vulse did the same for Meas.

  Above, Tide Child’s deck was as full as Joron had ever seen it, old hands showing the newer ones how to pull on ropes without burning their hands, cranes rigged on the landward side of the ship to bring aboard water and stores for their journey. All was action – Solemn Muffaz walked among the deckchilder, face dark as a storm, while Coughlin, with a full regiment of his own seaguard, watched as the supplies were brought on, ready to lend an arm when needed. Joron wondered how Coughlin had replenished his numbers, then shrugged, presumed some connivance with Mevans and moved on. He passed Berhof, stood by a crane and looking distinctly sickly even though the ship only bobbed at his staystone. The man gave him a weak smile. Joron added his voice to the busy throng – a “Mind that barrel, Alvit,” here and a “Tie off that rope, Mebble, or someone will lose a finger,” there. Even if Joron had not known Tide Child’s crew by name and sight he would have been able to pick out those who were new. Not because they worked less hard – Joron had never seen a crew go about their tasks with such single-minded purpose – but because the gullaime walked among them with its miserable follower. And where the regular crew of Tide Child took the windtalker’s well-meaning curiosity in their stride, the newer members shied away from it, something met with laughter and derision by the more seasoned deckchilder.

  “Ho mates, it’s only our gullaime,” said one.

  “Well lucky our windtalker is, pay it no mind. And neither pay mind to Shorn, for it is the windtalker’s shadow,” said another.

  “Ey, unless the windtalker gives you an order, for it is indeed an officer,” said a third.

  This last brought the most laughter and Joron smiled to himself, until the crew started to sing as they pulled on the ropes. The words were familiar, the chant familiar.

  Bring the babe a-world.

  Push, hey a push hey!

  Bring it out in blood.

  Push, hey a push hey!

  Bring the babe a-world.

  Push, hey a-push hey!

  Be Bern girl and be good.

  Push, hey a-push hey!

  And Joron found his throat catching and his eyes damp, for he could not join in. He knew, from a few sad experiments in his quarters, that what he had once had, what had once been celebrated by his beloved father, had been stolen from him by a cord and an order from Gueste, and he would sing no longer.

  “Jo-ron Twi-ner?” He turned, expecting to find the gullaime but it was not – it was the windshorn who acted as the gullaime’s shadow.

  “Yes, Windshorn.”

  “Smell sad, Jo-ron Twi-ner.”

  “I am . . .” But before he could explain what he was the windshorn was chased away from him in a flurry of sharp claws and snapping beak and shouts of “Away go! Away go!” And the windshorn cowered on the deck while the gullaime stood over it, the wings beneath its robe outstretched.

  “Gullaime, please stop. Let the windshorn – let Shorn up,” he said, as if giving it the name the crew had bestowed upon it gave him some power. The gullaime hissed and backed away.

  “Made Joron sad,” it said, swaying from side to side. “Bad windshorn. Bad.”

  “It was not the windshorn, Gullaime.”

  “Why Joron sad? Can smell!”

  “Not in front of the crew, Gullaime.”

  “Ship woman? Ship woman made Joron sad?”

  “No, Gullaime, anything but.” He leaned in close. “It is simply that I can no longer sing. When I was strangled with a cord, it broke something in my throat, and my voice is gone.” But it was more than the loss of his singing voice, for Joron knew now that his voice had been more than just for song. He had hidden the events on Safeharbour in the back of his mind – none had asked about it and he had been nothing but glad of that. But where he had told himself the keyshan that had saved them from Meas’s sither and her ship was simply coincidence, he could not pretend that the tunir rising from the ground to his and the gullaime’s song were anything such. Together, they had brought them up, and that thought terrified him, but it also filled him with wonder, and sadness, that whatever had allowed him to bring that terrible creature out of the ground to his aid was lost to him now.

  The gullaime took a step back, cooing and altering the inclination of its head as if it needed to refocus on him. Then it took a step nearer and reached up with its wingclaw.

  “Come,” it said, “come with Gullaime.” And it walked away a few steps through the throng and the noise and it seemed to Joron as if all of the shouting and hammering and brushing and the creak of the rigging faded away. He followed the gullaime, down through the ship, through a haze as thick as the heaviest sea fret until they approached the gullaime’s nest, and it was as if they walked in a trance together, unaware of anything else. Once in the nest-cabin the gullaime turned to him and it spoke, but not out loud – these words came directly into his mind and at the same time the creature reached out with a wingclaw.

  “Song here,” it said, and touched the temple of his head. “Song here,” it said, and touched his chest above his heart. “Not here,” it said, and touched his throat. “You sing inside, gullaime sing outside.” He was about to say he did not know what it meant when it ripped the mask from its face, the eyes beneath blazing, shining white, the spiral pupils within slowly spinning. Joron felt himself pulled into those eyes, and forced into a communion with the windtalker. He felt the song rising within him, and realised how foolish he was to think that such a thing came only from his throat. This song was so much more than sound – he felt the archipelago stretching out around them, the metronomic beat of waves on rock, the melodies of the currents of air and sea, the way they twisted and shimmered around the islands, concentrating and chorusing around the windspires. And he felt the song within, the beat of his heart, the high-pitched passage of blood through veins, the cymbal-spatter of thoughts, the crack of muscles and the groan of tendons and it was beautiful. Behind it all was some meaning, and although he could not quite fathom it he felt sure of it, felt certain that this meaning was only a moment away from him.

  Then the cabin door was thrown open and the windshorn entered.

  It stopped.

  Unmoving.

  The melody of the world vanished as the door swung shut behind the windshorn. It stared at the gullaime, at its shining eyes.

  “Windseer,” it said. It sounded amazed, reverent. Fell to the floor, prostrate, gabbling and clicking in the gullaime’s own language and Joron, knowing how pr
ecious the gullaime was about being seen without its mask, expected it to fly into a fury and attack the windshorn. But it did no such thing. The spirals in its eyes vanished, the heat within them also. Then it put the mask back, covering its eyes and the magnificent, beautiful and bright plumage around them. Then it hopped over to the prostrate windshorn.

  “No windseer,” it said. “Just gullaime. Stand. Stand.”

  “Windseer,” said the windshorn, “have come to us. Windseer has come.”

  Once more the gullaime bowed its head.

  “No. Not windseer. Only gullaime,” it said. And Joron did not think he had ever seen a creature look so completely miserable.

  32

  The Gathering Storm

  Tide Child flew the sea and his crew pulled together quickly. Most of those who had come aboard had served before, and the ways of the sea were simply memories that needed dredging back up to the surface of their minds, rather than new skills which must be learned. And it was fortunate that it was so, as only days after they left Cassin’s Isle the storm Aelerin had promised hit Tide Child and Snarltooth.

  It was rare for the anger of the Northstorm to reach so far up into the Hundred Isles, and Joron had thought they would have had longer to prepare, but as the two ships passed through a densely packed area of small islands he had recognised the signs of its coming: a sharpness to the air and a thick band of darkening cloud that stretched from horizon to horizon.

  “That does not look good,” said Dinyl.

  “No,” said Joron. “My instinct is to head for open water where we cannot be smashed against these islands.”

  “I will call the shipwife.”

  “Thank you, Deckholder.” And the call went out from Dinyl to Solemn Muffaz to those in the underdecks, and a moment later Meas wandered up the deck, like she had not a care in the world, to take her place between her officers.