by As The Shore To The Tides, So Blood Calls To Blood (html)
Bloodport.
A barnacle clinging to the underside of Mirdhras.
Jostled through the twisted, mud-spattered streets of home, I took in its heat, its noise, its stink. The narrow buildings leaned into each other like conspirators, while street vendors harangued passersby to come sample what they had to offer—from skewers of dubious meats, served piping hot, to prayer rockets guaranteed to reach Jamie’s stone ears.
Jemmite faith militant stood guard against blasphemy on every corner. A young man, old enough to shave but still too young for wisdom, cried out “So the Fallen may rise” in defiance. The Jemmites clustered round him, swinging their cudgels to silence him before taking him away. I clenched my fists at the injustice. Bloodport had been founded by worshippers of the Wounded God, but now its people were forced to outwardly pray to their god’s rival. This was why Mama and Papa had taken to the waves, to create their own town out of decommissioned fishing boats and half-sunken wrecks and be free to pray to their god.
At least until a routine Jemmite patrol ship had found them.
Out over the sea, the sky rumbled its faint threats and flashed lightning, but the air over Bloodport was hot and still as a held breath. My hands shook with the effort of willing my steps to turn away from the shoreline; I had to find Ostred.
The best places for that type of gossip would be the rough-and-tumble places along the waterfront, where sailors from all up and down the shore gathered. By the time I turned onto Murkwater Alley and my eyes fell upon the first place, by the god’s curdled blood if my heart didn’t beat faster. I nodded at the woman keeping bar and asked for whatever passed for rotgut as I let copper fall on the splintered wood.
Just one drink.
Buy me enough time to ask about my brother.
Whatever was in the cup smelled like fermented chum, but I choked it down and asked for another. My eyes danced over the heads of all the drunkards to find the hired muscle, a bald, barrel-chested man who scowled back at me. When the woman returned, I caught her eye and traced a spiral on the bar. Her gaze flicked to it and back to mine with no change in expression. She moved onto the next cup without a word.
Later, she bent her head to share some words with the bald man. He looked my way and crossed his arms, which were scarred in a way that made them look scaled. Both kept glancing at me, and I felt a prickle run over my skin. My nerve broke, and as soon as their customers distracted them, I slipped out—and almost walked into a Jemmite guard. I mumbled my apology to my feet and kept walking, hoping he wouldn’t follow.
At the next place, I told the barkeep I was looking for someone.
“Oh?” He glanced at me as he poured. “What do they look like?”
I frowned at my drink as I realized I didn’t have an answer, and he left to fill other cups. It dawned on me that the last time I’d seen him, Ostred was still a boy. Not anywhere as big as I’d thought him when he abandoned me at the orphanage. Almost two decades had passed since then, and nearly five years since he last tried to find me. By the time the barkeep came back round, I’d already left.
Prayer rockets set aloft whistled in the distance as I walked under the moonslight. Unbidden, laughter bubbled up from my gut. What a fool I’d been, thinking I’d be able to find Ostred. If a smuggler didn’t want to be found, then what? I belched, thankful for the drink warming my belly. This close to the Wound was like fighting an undertow, its pull now faint, then sharp and strong as being snatched by a shark.
One more and the night could take the rest. I shouldn’t have another, keep my wits about me, but there was a reason I was drinking—to find Ostred. I gritted my teeth in concentration as I fought the urge find the shore and wade out into the dark water, instead heading towards the next place. It reminded me of Old Rodrigo’s, small enough to be confused with a vendor’s stall, with a high bar to stand at and one barrel full of spirits.
“Easy on, traveler,” the barkeep said when I dug for my coin. He slid a cup towards me, a lopsided smile splitting his red beard. “I know what you’re here to find.”
When I gave him a sharp look, he twirled a spiral in the air with one finger. It was the slightest movement, meant for my eyes only, but I held my drink in both hands until they stopped shaking. My reflection stared back at me from the bottom of my cup with such a haunted look that I gulped down half my drink rather than keep looking at it.
“I don’t know what you’re saying.” I gave the slightest shake of my head, afraid to even look at him. In my pocket, Ostred’s letter flared with heat. I glanced at the barkeep out of the corner of my eye and remembered something Mama and Papa used to say: red hair, favored by red waters.
“It wasn’t easy,” he said, making a show of tidying up everything around me. “Keeping an eye peeled and an ear pricked up for anyone asking around, but he’s never led us wrong.”
My breath fled as I felt invisible jaws closing all around me. I was already turning to go before the thought to leave crossed my mind, but the Jemmite guard stood at the entrance to the place.
He slapped the business end of his cudgel in his other palm, the meaty sound echoing. He stepped forward, forcing me back inside.
“Anyone see you?” The barkeep held a lamp, adjusting its light.
“No one important,” he said.
“And our orders?” The barkeep’s voice had an edge.
“You know what I’m not hearing? ‘Thanks for getting the lads ready to turn the world upside-down,'” the guard said.
“That’s why we sweetened the pot for you. The orders?”
“God’s stone balls, what do you think? Dissolved the ink in blessed water.”
I tried to dash outside. As I pushed past him, he managed to hook a foot between mine, sending me sprawling face-first. He drove the air out of me, twisted my arms behind me and bound them. I squirmed, trying to get out from under him, but lights danced in front of my eyes and I gasped like a landed fish.
“Can’t deliver you if you up and run off.” The guard grunted as he pulled me onto my feet. “Very different reward for us if we came back empty-handed, eh?”
“Definitely,” the barkeep said over his shoulder, pulling at a hidden catch in the back wall to reveal a narrow passage. We squeezed through, the smell of the tide thick in the narrow space, and moved through a forest of wooden piles. Occasional thumping overhead reminded me we were under the floorboards of Murkwater Alley. Ahead, the Wound heaved itself onto the stony shore, its waters seeming to hiss my name.
“Do you know where we’re meeting him?” The guard shoved me ahead.
“You’ll see,” the barkeep murmured.
The passage led to a rickety pier on the far end of the docks, hugging the breakwater wall. The fishing boats looked decrepit and half-sunken, piled high with crab cages and stinking nets. Gaunt men and women huddled together on their decks, eyes dull and hollow.
“Huy-huy,” they muttered as we passed them.
“Bloodhounds,” the guard said, shuddering.
“Word is, they swallowed godsblood as a way of defying hard questions from Jemmites like our friend, here.”
First thing the Jemmites had done after taking me from Mama and Papa was to sever the cord holding my pendant of godsblood from my neck. The brother who took it laughed at my cries after he tossed it overboard. I never thought to eat the symbol of my faith in defiance, even if it would drown my mind to this world. I thought of the desperation that must lead to such an action and felt a guilty relief as I listened to their dreary voices call to each other.
When we reached the end of the pier, the moons had moved behind Mount Ajh. By now, whatever plan the guard had conspired to happen up in the Temple Wards of Mirdhras was visible from Bloodport. The peals of bells, faint with distance, sounded an alarm as flames leapt across the vaulted roofs. Closer, scores of prayer rockets shrieked aloft. I was sure more than a few of those were launched in celebration.
“Your idea?” The barkeep glanced my way. Behind me, the guard sl
id his cudgel out before answering.
“We never agreed to torch everything,” he said. “What good is a share of the riches now?”
I shifted my weight as he moved, but he was too quick. I glanced off his shoulder and fell, knocking my head against the boards. the barkeep heard nothing, his eyes dancing as the flames grew to engulf the roof of one of the temples.
“I love a good plan,” he murmured.
“A shame you’re no longer part of mine,” the guard muttered before bringing his cudgel down on the barkeep’s head with a crack. He crumpled, his head a bloody mass.
After searching through his pockets, the guard rolled the barkeep into the open waters. As he came towards me, something slithered loose inside me. My brother’s letter answered me from inside my pocket. It kindled with a hot, slow pulse. The guard loomed over me, his cudgel covered with gore and part of the barkeep’s scalp.
His hands tugged open my pockets. He palmed whatever scant copper was still on me before his fingertips brushed the letter. He tugged it out, smiling. “Oho. What’s this, then?”
“No,” I said, gritting my teeth as I pulled the same way the Wound did to me. One bloodhound staggered out of the shadows towards me, towards the guard.
“Huy.” It sniffed the air and came closer.
Unaware of the bloodhound, the guard peered at it before turning to me. “I’ve got to go, so do let him know he sweetened the pot plenty, but I’ll be damned if I jump in.”
“Y-you just can’t,” I sputtered, unable to say much else.
“If the Wound wants you, it can have you.” He shrugged and kicked me towards the water. I struggled against him to stop myself from rolling all the way into the water, the Wound lapping at my waist.
“Huy-huy.” The bloodhound lurched ahead, the glint of a knife in her hand. Several more followed her to swarm over the guard, hands rising and falling as I slipped further into the water. One of the bloodhounds gave a cry as it held my brother’s letter.
The last thing I saw before I sank into the red waters was the bloodhound lick at the ink-covered surface of the letter and shudder, as if in ecstasy.
Once upon a time, an old man and his wife lived on the shores of the Wound. Much to their regret, they had never borne children. Now in their sunset years they feared the time had passed.
Even then, they held out hope.
One day, the old man, whose name was Manni, signed aboard a vessel bound for the wine-dark deeps. There, he hoped they could find one of the great tar-like masses of half-living godsblood. Such a find could ensure that his share of the riches was enough to pay the offering required to adopt a child from one of the Jemmite orphanages on Mount Ajh.
While away, his wife Estelle kept casting her nets along the shore. She collected the pieces of hardened godsblood the waves left on the beach like a spray of uncut, unpolished jacinth. Between one cast and another, she would scan the horizon for the sails of Manni’s ship returning to port.
Now, everyone down those shores had some story of small miracles visited upon them because of godsblood: from fish jumping into starving fishwives’ nets to old salts claiming they fell overboard only to have the red waters spit them back up undrowned. Because of this, Estelle the Bloodmonger was a welcome sight among the nearby communities, and she got by selling what she drew out of the Wound.
So, when her nets came up empty no matter how often she cast them, she grew worried. After more time passed with her nets remaining empty and her larder growing bare, she became desperate. She was too weak with hunger to climb the slopes of Mount Ajh to beg for salvation from Jaime’s stone ears.
Instead, she knelt before her household shrine and called upon Jaime to save her, hoping he could still hear her pleas. Every morning, she prayed, and every night she prayed, for seven nights and seven days. When her reward was nothing but silence, she knew what she must do.
Come dawn, she waded into the surf, drew her knife, and set its edge against her forearm. She took a deep breath before calling out to the god of the bitter waters.
“Before, I only took, but now I see my error and beg forgiveness,” she called out into the heart of the sea. Then, she drew the blade across her skin and fed her blood to the waves. “Just as blood calls to blood, please take of my body so that you can grant me life.”
For seven days, she waded out into the waters, and for seven days she drew another line across her skin, feeding her blood to the sea. For seven days, she said the same words, made the same plea.
On the seventh day, the sea answered.
Red waters surged forth in a flood, rising past Estelle’s waist and spreading past the stones lining the shore. For as far as she could see, dusky gems of godsblood bobbed in the water, so much that she didn’t need her nets. She scooped up her prizes with her bare hands and gathered them in her skirts to carry them home. She hurried back with her nets and cast them wide. Every time she dragged them back, they held so much godsblood to make her fortune for years upon years.
For three days, the waters of the Wound flooded the land.
For three days, Estelle cast her nets.
And on the third day, the waters retreated, the Wound settling back into its bed. Estelle struggled to store her bounty and packed barrel after barrel until she could sell or trade it.
In the following days, every time she daydreamed of all the meat pies or sweetcakes her new fortune could buy her, she became ill. At first, she thought the thin gruel she ate for breakfast had turned, but as she spied sails on the horizon by the dying light, she was certain another of her prayers had also been answered.
The sea had gotten her with child.
She was as certain of this as she was sure the ship she saw was Manni’s, returning from the untamed deeps. So, when her husband crossed the threshold, Estelle stayed in her seat next to the hearth-fire. She did not stand with joyous cry at his return, and she did not rush to embrace him. Instead, she clasped her hands in her lap to hide their shaking, afraid of how Manni might react to the news of her miracle.
“Dearest,” he called. He carried a bundle in the crook of one arm. “Come see what I’ve brought!”
The snap of the banked fire filled the silence.
“My love, why are you sitting in the dark?”
“Forgive me,” Estelle murmured from her chair. She rose, lighting a candle from the hearth flame. “I was having a most curious dream where we had a child together.”
“Then your dream was god-sent. Come,” Manni said, smiling and beckoning with his free arm. And Estelle, hearing the warmth in his voice, reminded of their long life together; of her husband’s gentle soul, let her fears subside.
She allowed Manni to draw her into his embrace.
“Look,” he whispered in her ear and lifted the rags to reveal a fat-cheeked baby boy, dozing.
“Another miracle,” Estelle blurted.
“Another—?” Manni started to ask before he saw his answer written on Estelle’s face. For a moment, his face was as still as the surface of deep dark waters, and Estelle’s heart fluttered. Then, the moment passed, and her husband’s smile emerged like sun from behind clouds.
“Then we have been twice-blessed!” Laughing with joy, Manni kissed his wife. Squeezed between them, the baby awoke and began to fuss. Manni stepped away from Estelle’s embrace to rock the baby asleep again.
“He might be getting hungry,” Manni said and smiled, but did a shadow of pain cross his face? Questions warred with each other in Estelle’s mind until—instead of asking any of them—she stammered out something else altogether.
“How was the voyage, love?”
Manni made a sour face. “We came back empty-handed. Well—” He glanced at the baby. “Maybe not all of us.”
“How—?” Estelle bit back the rest of her question, but Manni saw her eyes on the child and knew what she meant to say.
“Third night out, beyond the sight of shore, a dream woke me. So I did what many of the other sailors did to clear t
heir minds and cast a line off the stern by moonslight.” Manni moved to his chair near the hearth-fire and sat with a groan. There! Estelle saw him wince in pain, but he continued to speak before she thought to say anything about it. “Instead of fading, though, the dream became clearer to me: I was trapped in the cold dark, and far away a voice wailed my name.” Manni trailed off into silence.
“And then?” Estelle poked at the fire.
“Then I woke.” Manni shook his head as if even now he couldn’t believe what he’d done. “For the second time. I could have fallen overboard, especially with what was tugging at the line.” Manni nodded at the child. “In the moonslight, he was black as pitch, like he was covered in godsblood, or made of it. Whatever it was washed off easy enough.”
At that moment, the baby began to fuss again, but nothing Manni did could dissuade the child from crying. And for the third time, Estelle noticed her husband grimace as he lifted his shirt to reveal a deep, puckered wound under his ribs.
“No help for it, now. He’s been hungry,” Manni said.
Then, he lifted the child to suckle at his wound.
Estelle could have shrieked but instead strangled the cry coiling itself at the root of her throat as she fathomed at last what the sea asked of them in return. Her hands moved to her belly, to where another sea-born child quickened.
And she set aside her fears; did they not live amidst miracles?
Even so, some small noise must have escaped her lips, for the child opened eyes bright as two polished coins to stare at her while he fed. Estelle waited until Manni pulled the boy off with a gasp before beckoning him to follow. She led him to the storeroom, past the nets hung to dry, where she had rolled the barrels full of godsblood.
The child, perhaps still hungry, whimpered as Manni rocked him, crooned a lullaby, and did what he could to quiet him.
“The sea already sent us gifts for his children.” Estelle uncovered one of the barrels. The musk of godsblood mingled with the salt tang, and the child fell silent. His nostrils widened as he scented the air, eyes gleaming, and followed her hand as she plucked a piece out of the barrel.