by Rj Barker
“Strikes me,” said Meas, “you have the sort of mouth gets you into trouble, Anopp.”
“Has been said before.” He let out a long slow breath between his teeth. “Still, I am here now, so if you need me, I am yours.”
“Well, I am not foolish enough to ignore good advice, or cord the skin off a useful man. We do things differently on my ships, Anopp, but call me traitor again and I’ll put you off on the loneliest island I can find.”
Anopp let out a small laugh. “You’ll do for me, Shipwife Meas,” he said. “You’ll do.”
Now, deckchilder are nothing if not inventive. Meas’s crew built a small tent to catch dew and funnel it into a large barrel, though there was never enough water and some of the crew took to swilling out their mouths with seawater, which made them thirstier, but gave them a little moisture in return. Others swore this was a way to madness and stayed thirsty, but Meas said, quietly to Joron, that both methods worked and both were their own particular torture. He noticed, however, she took no seawater.
Useless ropes were unpicked and cord twisted into fishing lines. Needles, a thing no deckchilder was ever found without, were bent to make fishhooks. A small spine was rigged and on it was rigged a small and almost useless wing whose sole purpose, Joron thought, was to make the crew feel a little better as the wind remained shy of them, and all the gullaime were spent from their battle with the massive waves.
They drifted for a day. They drifted for two days. They drifted for a week. They drifted forever.
Lips became chapped. Skin flaked and wrinkled for lack of moisture. Wounds went bad, had to be constantly cleaned with seawater. Joron worried about the wound in his leg as it started to smell strange. Energy drained away and he shivered for lack of food when he did not burn with fever due to his wound. He was shocked at how quickly the human frame withered.
But all was not lost. The remaining gullaime demonstrated a previously unknown and unguessed-at ability to swim and to catch fish. In the water it was as if they became different creatures, gliding through it like they should have been able to fly through the air. White torpedoes flitting beneath the ship, quickly changing direction in pursuit of prey or to avoid the beakwyrms that prowled around the hull. Each time they returned to the deck they deposited beakfuls of fish onto the deck which the crew fell upon, eating raw.
As they squatted and ate another meal of raw fish, Meas stood.
“It is hard, my girls and my boys, I know that. To be adrift like this. To have no way of controlling our fate. But mark my words, mark what I say, for I am Lucky Meas, and you know I speak true and seawater runs in my veins. We have fought hard and it is not our destiny to die up in the waves like this. Under shot and blade? Ey, many will die that way, and I may be among them. But we will not die here, not like this.”
There was a rumble of agreement, and then, as a line of women and men formed at the dew barrel to receive a meagre dribble of water, Meas took him to one side.
“This cannot last, Joron,” she said. “We need more water, so if you find a moment to beg the Hag, Mother or Maiden for rain then take it, but do not let the deckchilder hear you.”
“Ey, Shipwife,” he said. Then the question that had been on his lips from the moment Keyshantooth had come to rest in this unnatural calm sprang to his lips. “What of Tide Child?”
“Dinyl is a good commander, and he knows the sea. With any luck they were further away than us when the waves hit. Tide Child is a strong ship, he will have ridden them easily. Though they may have pushed him far out, of course.”
“We must hope he finds us soon. I feel myself weakening by the day.”
She nodded. “Ey, me too.” Then sniffed, making a face as much of distaste as worry. “How is your wound?”
“Clean.”
She stared at him then nodded again.
“Good, keep it so. I fear the deckchild’s disease will start soon. Old wounds will open, teeth will fall out, and without some vegetation there is little to be done.”
“Ah, what I would do for a little good news,” said Joron, and he did not say the wound on his back was already weeping a clear liquid that made his clothing stick to his flesh. “I am trying to find work to take my mind off our situation, but I find myself so listless.”
“Well,” said Meas, “think on this. If we are left in such a state by those waves then it is likely the flukeboats of those on the island were entirely destroyed.”
“I know they are the enemy, Shipwife,” he said. “But I can take no joy in the death of deckchilder on the sea when they are already beaten.”
“Oh, I take no joy in feeding the Hag, Joron, do not read me wrong. But I have no wish for what you did on that island to be reported back to my mother.”
“What I did?” Already, that strange haze had fallen over him, making the moments when he had sung the keyshan up dreamlike and unreal.
She stared at him, then peeled flesh from the fishskin she held in her hands and chewed on it.
“You raised a keyshan, Joron. You sang it into wakefulness.”
“I did not.”
But he knew it for a lie. He had forced the thought of it to the back of his mind. He had filled his thinking with their current predicament. Not with what had happened on the island. Not the swirling, spinning songs, the feelings of imprisonment that had haunted him for months, the feeling of waking. Of freedom. Of power. But they were not his, they were felt at second-hand and had the same nebulous strangeness as a dream. “I did not,” he said, knowing it again for a lie.
“Well,” said Meas, “that does not really matter. It happened and it is best my mother never knows that anyone may have such power.”
“Surely it would make her leave us alone?”
Meas smiled, but to herself, not to him. The sort of smile a mother gives a child when it presents foolishness as wisdom.
“The power to destroy islands with a song, Joron? You think that would scare my mother? No, she will see it as the weapon it is.” Meas threw her fishskin over the side and stared out across the empty sea. “And she will never rest until it is hers.”
The next day they had their first death. She was called Mekrin, and had come on board Tide Child in the last influx from the prison ships at Bernshulme. She was neither the strongest nor the bravest nor the worst-behaved on the ship. Joron knew little about her, but he knew her name and knew she was quick to smile when given a good word, slow to anger and vicious in a fight. Given a little better luck, if they had been pushed toward Tide Child and found old Garriya in the underdecks, Mekrin may well have survived. Even if she had been a little louder, a little quicker to complain, then maybe something could have been done. Unlikely, but maybe. She had taken a wound on her arm in the fight on the island and kept quiet about it. The wound had soured and by the time she had shared her pain with a deckmate it was too late. They had washed the wound, done their best with all the same tools they had used on Anopp and his back, but bad food, little water and two weeks or more of drifting had weakened Mekrin. The flesh around the wound had become black and the poison reached past the shoulder joint, so they could not even remove the arm. That night, while she ranted and raved and sweated, Meas sat with her, a knife in her hand. And at the last, when Meas put the blade to the woman’s neck Mekrin had a moment of lucidity, the pain vanished from her eyes and she met Meas’s gaze.
“Do it, Shipwife,” she said, “and I’ll thank you at the Hag’s fire.” The blade bit, and Mekrin was released from her pain, later they wrapped her body and sent her to the Hag with all the honours the hungry, thirsty and tired crew could put together.
Two days later Jennil came to Joron, not yet comfortable enough to go straight to the shipwife, and she showed him her leg where many years ago a sword had caught her. The scar had reopened. Joron showed Meas but the shipwife could do nothing but nod.
“Hold on, Jennil,” she said. “Help will come.” But all knew the deckchild’s disease was the beginning of the end. First wounds
would open, then teeth would become loose and soon after would come the weakness of mind and body that led to listlessness and death.
Joron dared not ask anyone to look at his back, or at the sores on his arms, and he knew the wound on his leg was getting worse.
Soon after Jennil’s wound opened, the days became strange, long and idly coloured. He remembered voices, and sweating and strange talk of legs and blackness. Somewhere inside he knew he was in dire trouble – a little voice, locked within him, called out for help. But the voice was swallowed up by an agony that quickly overwhelmed him.
So, when during the night Joron heard the sinister beating of wings, he was sure the skeers had come for him. That razored bills would eat him alive; eyes and tongue first, then ripping at his innards. And did he even have the strength to fight them off? He could feel a wind on his face as the bird beat its wings above him. He did not even steel himself for more pain. Could not bring himself to care.
“Arse.”
He forced his eyes open. Saw the feathered face and the beady eyes of Black Orris inspecting him from the open bowpeek. “Hag’s tits,” croaked the bird and took off. He rolled his head to the side and there, coming through the water, lit by wanelights along his side and bright lanterns at front at rear, was the black-hulled form of Tide Child.
“Ship rising,” he whispered into the night. “Ship rising.”
43
Aftermath/What Dinyl Did
The smell of the bilges – rotting food, sewage, brackish water – was like perfume to Joron. This was Tide Child, this was home. Deckchilder had carried the sick and failing from the deck of Keyshantooth and those hands, rough from years at sea, treated them as gently as any father takes a child to lay it down in bed. And that is what was done with every woman and man that survived. They were taken from Keyshantooth to their cabins and hammocks, there to be fed thin soup from the hand of Garriya. A soup she said would banish the deckchild’s disease and bring them back to health.
And though it tasted foul, it did just that.
The gullaime had suffered far less than the humans, though Joron did not know why. He had a memory of the ship’s gullaime’s masked face above his own, singing to him in its own strange language as he had drifted in and out of consciousness. He was not quite sure whether that had happened on Keyshantooth or here on Tide Child.
But time had passed, and though he had been banished to his cabin by Garriya he felt his strength was returning and he would soon return to Tide Child’s deck. He had complained of being isolated and the hagshand had, only today, relented on his need for nothing but rest. Now he lay in his hammock and Dinyl and Aelerin sat with him in his small cabin.
“This is the second time I have been forced to my bed to recuperate, Dinyl,” said Joron to the man sat beside him, “and I do not like it.”
“Well, maybe you should avoid danger from now on, ey, Deckkeeper?” Dinyl glanced across at Aelerin and smiled at the courser. Joron felt a laugh bubble within as they all knew the chances of danger being avoided while on the slate of Lucky Meas’s ship was almost none. But the laugh died in his throat because there was some seriousness there in Dinyl. Something unsaid between him and Aelerin. Or was there? His tiredness was such that it would be easy to ascribe feelings to others that were not there. “Now, Joron, do you wish to sit and moan about your lot or would you rather hear of our adventures?”
Joron nodded, which made pain radiate through his body from the re-opened sword wound on his back, and the gash on his leg. He hissed, but Dinyl ignored it and continued.
“Well, we dropped you off on the beach and I took Tide Child in a wide circle around the island. That was when we saw the boneship on the horizon. I was in two minds as to whether to stay or to follow it, but Meas had left orders that we were to keep others away.” He shrugged. “Of course, Joron, we could not know it was too late for that.”
“Of course,” said Joron, and smiled for he knew that Dinyl told him this story in part to make sure he had not erred and was not likely to incur the shipwife’s wrath, in part to distract Joron as he was confined to his bed by Garriya while she treated his wounds. How long had he had been in bed? Well, for a time. Did not want to think about why, or Garriya’s worried face when she looked at his leg. Could not. Not yet. “You went after the ship. It is what I would have done.”
“Ey, and the deckmother and Aelerin both agreed, as did Mevans. So we set the wings to make after it. My plan was to catch its shipwife’s eye and then run with the wind and hope they chased us. When we were far enough away I could bring Tide Child to and let them board, feigning ignorance. Say I was chasing something over the horizon. As I am not important enough to be known to any roving shipwife – as far as I know, of course – we had planned for repainting the name, a fine ruse so they did not think us Meas’s ship. I hoped to be back at the island in good time to pick up Meas and your good self. The only oddness was that Aelerin . . . well . . .” He shrugged. “I will let the courser tell you that.”
“I knew another storm was coming,” said Aelerin quietly, “but I also felt the winds were calm. This was not something I have ever heard sung by the storms before.” Joron nodded, as he understood how one could feel two things at once. He was presently both hot and cold.
“And Aelerin was quite upfront with me about it,” said Dinyl. “Yet still, I made the decision to approach the ship. The winds were brisk, I felt it a worthwhile risk to take if it would give Meas the time on the island she needed.”
“As I said, Dinyl, you were right in your actions.” The words seemed to fight being formed on Joron’s lips.
Dinyl smiled once more. “Well, as soon as the ship saw us, it turned tail and ran, and it was only a two-ribber. Oh, thinks I, this is a mite suspicious, why would they run? And remembering how the shipwife had said she saw no one on the island, I thought, could they be bringing people for it, or orders? And I thought how much I would like for the shipwife to come back aboard Tide Child, having found nothing, and for me to present her a whole stack of orders telling her exactly where our people had been taken.”
“I would not tell her you wished her to fail,” said Joron. “Maybe just say you thought the ship curious.”
“Well,” said Dinyl, “ey. Maybe I should put it that way right enough.” He made a note on the papers he held in his hand and Joron saw the shadow of a smile beneath Aelerin’s hood. “But that is not the story – the story is we flew for the ship and it ran. And I spoke with Aelerin and Solemn Muffaz and Mevans and it was decided we would follow, for a while, and if we judged we were more than half a day from McLean’s Rock we would turn back.” He let out a long breath. “Had I only known, Joron, I would never have . . .”
“How could you, or anyone, have known,” he said, his voice a whisper, like an old man’s, “that they would hide a ship within an island. Not even Meas suspected it.”
“I should have suspected a trap, Joron.” Dinyl looked at the floor, and even though Joron did not think Meas would punish him, he felt Dinyl likely to punish himself far more than she ever could. “But I did not.”
“Nor I,” said the courser quietly. “Nor Solemn Muffaz or Mevans. None did.”
“Thank you, Aelerin, but you were not in command.” Quiet reigned then, and though Joron felt Dinyl punished himself for nothing he knew exactly how he felt. For Joron had been the deckkeeper among those who had gone ashore, forty in all. Of whom only a handful returned and those, like himself, badly wounded or in poor health. He felt keenly that he had somehow failed Meas and those who now sat with the Hag at the bonefire. He also knew that his guilt would be felt by Meas, but magnified a hundred times. Unlike Joron, who sat here, sharing failure with his friends, she had no such option. If she was well enough to stand – and he did not know how she fared as this was the first time he had been allowed visitors, and even this on Garriya’s sufferance – he knew she would be standing at the great windows of Tide Child, staring out at the frothing wake left as the ship f
lew through the night. She would share her troubles with her only true compatriot, the dark and endless sea.
“So you turned back?” said Joron.
“Ey, we followed as we had said, and turned back. The ship tried to pull us further on, bringing in its wings, slowing. I cannot tell you how my heart fell at that, for it was then that I knew I had failed my shipwife, and fallen for exactly the same trick I had planned to play myself.”
“We all fell for it,” said Aelerin.
“And again, I say I was in charge,” said Dinyl. He sighed. “We turned the ship, and started back, but it was hard work, tacking constantly and with half the crew we really needed. Worse, that Hag-cursed ship followed us, though it lost us during the night so there was at least that small sign the Mother smiled on us. As we were tacking back our topboy saw you leave the island. I almost had them corded, I thought they had lost their mind. A ghost ship exploding from within the island? What madness, I thought. But, of course, more madness was to come. We tacked away once more, thinking it for the final time and desperate to get back, unsure just what the topboy had seen and what this may mean for Meas and your good self.”
“The d’older was fare beside himself,” said Aelerin. “And still I felt the storm was coming, though there was not a cloud in the sky and the wind was poor. I doubted my sanity.”
“And then it came,” said Dinyl. “The islewyrm.”
“That is what you have called it?”
“It is what the deckchilder have called it. And we were fortunate with the waves it brought. Our tack had taken us far enough out that we could turn Tide Child on to them, and there was space between them enough that we were not swamped. Still, we lost most of our tops as the waves passed.”