Ruin's Wake

by Patrick Edwards

  Her heart leapt into her throat and relief washed over her, but she found herself speaking through clenched teeth. ‘No, it’s not! It’s a disaster!’ Her eyes began to water and she cuffed at them, annoyed. Nebn held her again, then guided her over to a chair. He sat facing her on the mattress, looking up, elbows resting on his knees.

  Kelbee took a deep breath to gather herself. She noticed how warm the room was, though the small, stubborn heater in the corner was switched off. He’d brought it here for her, to banish any chills – he loved to look at her, her body, loved tracing her lines with his fingers and knowing that the bumps that rose on her skin were nothing to do with the temperature. He’d banished the bare concrete floor with a mad assortment of rugs, the overlaps creating a thick-piled geography of their own. Every time there was something new: a wall-hanging, a lamp, a shelf with more books. He’d been sneaking things into this abandoned place for two years. He’d told her it was where he came to think, to be at peace, though when she’d come into his life it had made a different kind of sense.

  Nebn was looking at her, waiting for her to speak.

  ‘Have you got anything to drink?’ she asked.

  ‘I can make you tea.’

  She nodded. ‘That’d be nice.’

  Nebn went over to the kettle. Like the small hotplate and most of the lighting, it was wired into a small junction box that led to a generator concealed inside an old cupboard. That had been the hardest to get hold of, he’d said. He poured the boiling water into a chipped cup and dropped in a little muslin bag, stirring once before handing it to her. The steam was spicy and pungent and reminded her of the countryside. At first she simply breathed in the aroma, feeling the warmth of the mug against her palms. When it became unbearable she pulled her thick woollen sleeve down over her hand and cupped the mug in her palm. She blew on to the surface of the tea, then took a sip. Nebn was watching her closely from the mattress.

  ‘It’s yours,’ she said in a rush.

  Is it? she thought. It had to be; she wanted it with every fibre, and in six years there had been nothing, until him.

  He smiled. ‘I hope so.’

  ‘What makes you so calm?’ The irritation in her voice came as a surprise.

  ‘I’m absolutely terrified,’ he said. ‘But I also think it’s wonderful news. We’ll manage.’

  ‘I wish I was so confident.’ She took another sip of her tea, then put the mug down. His face was a conflict, eyes narrowed with concern but cheeks flushed with excitement. Seeing the sweep of his grey hair made her chest clench tight, like someone had reached in and grabbed her lungs. ‘He’ll know,’ she said. ‘It’ll be obvious.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘What if it looks like…’ She indicated his hair, so different from the usual blacks and dark browns of most men. So different to him.

  His mouth turned up at the corners. He ran his fingers through his steel mop. ‘Would you believe it isn’t really this colour?’

  She’d never heard of a man dyeing his hair. She wondered once more how little she really knew him.

  He leaned back on his elbows, eyes intent on her. His shirt gaped, showing the pale skin of his chest, the darker hair disappearing down into shadow. ‘You mustn’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of you.’

  She boiled over. ‘How? How will you? Don’t just say that!’ It was as if the words had been torn from her without her choosing. She’d never raised her voice to him before, not in anger. She saw the surprise on his face and instantly hated that she’d made him look like that, but the words continued to pour out.

  ‘How will you look after me?’ she shouted. ‘He’s an officer! He’ll know, he’ll know it’s not his and then he’ll kill it, and he’ll kill me and afterwards he’ll kill you for fuck’s sake!’ She clapped her hand to her mouth, shocked – she’d never spoken like that, not to anyone. Her whole body was shaking.

  She held her head in her hands. ‘I’m done. He can do anything he wants and there’s nothing I can do about it. How can you keep me safe from that? How can you keep us from that?’ Her mouth was salty from tears and she cradled her stomach as if it might escape. ‘It’s just… too much, Nebn. I don’t know what… what to—’

  He wrapped her in his arms and she leaned in, breathing him. It was like the earth just before a heavy rain.

  ‘I should get rid of it,’ she said.

  That made him tense. ‘Don’t talk about that,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you to even think it.’ He pulled back and held her by the shoulders. ‘I promise you now, Kelbee, I promise I will do everything in my power to keep you safe.’

  What power? she thought. What power do you have?

  ‘We have some time,’ he continued. ‘Until it’s born there’s no reason for him to suspect anything. Maybe even for a while after. I know some people who can get you out when the time comes.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Just people. Good people, with resources.’

  ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’

  ‘Just trust me.’ He used his thumbs to wipe the wetness from her cheeks, then leaned and kissed them. ‘Do you trust me, Kel?’

  She nodded, sniffing. When she looked up, his eyes were more serious than she’d ever seen them. His jaw was set in a hard line. He looked so earnest, so desperate for her to believe him that a soft laugh escaped her lips.

  He drew back, unsure if she was mocking him, so she took his head and kissed him to show she meant no harm. He kissed the side of her neck, her throat, her chin, then her lips again. With a gentle press of her palm on his chest she pushed him back onto the thick pile of blankets that served as a bed.

  At first, it was like he was afraid she’d turned to glass, a perfect, fragile copy of herself. He undressed her with such slow care that it almost broke her heart. She used her hands to reassure him, to coax him; she straddled him and guided him into her, taking his hand and holding it to the soft skin between her breasts so he could feel her heartbeat. His thumb gently followed the outline of the nipple, which hardened under his touch. His fingertips traced a line under the curve of her breast, then down over the fine hair of her belly. As his hand moved between her thighs, to the place where they were joined together, she let out a gasp.

  Afterwards, they slept, the sheets tangled with their limbs.

  Wreckers

  Dripping, somewhere nearby. Salt in his mouth. And something else; coppery, flat.

  Blood. His blood.

  With the taste came the memory of the cool ship’s deck against his cheek, the shuffling of angry boots. Pain in his head, pain in his ribs. Then the cacophony of shrieking iron, the agony of steel rent from steel. The pitch and sway of terminal violence, leaving his ears ringing and sharp pain behind his eyes. Water, salty and as cold as death.

  Then, here.

  Only one eye would open, though he found nothing but darkness anyway. It felt gritty, like he’d not slept for days. He was propped up with his back to something solid and the back of his head and face felt bruised. His ribs throbbed with a dull ache, but there was no stab of pain when he stretched. None broken, there was that at least.

  His hands were bound behind him with something solid that rubbed into the skin of his wrists. When he moved his feet, he heard the soft scrape of grit on a hard, damp surface. He breathed in the air, trying to gauge the room’s dimensions. It felt close and there was a rankness – the stench of shit and old mud, moss and seaweed. There was moisture, but it was stale. He knew then for sure that he wasn’t on board the Alec IV. The floor under him was as steady as rock.

  After a while, his eyes began to adjust. The only source of light was barely noticeable, a sliver of brightness. He gradually made out the shape of a door, the light coming under the jamb and around the edges of what might have been a small, shuttered viewing hatch. The room, as it came into view, was a bare box only a few paces from end to end. Something bulky hung in the far corner over a bucket. Cale guessed that was the source of
the worst stink.

  He stretched his fingers, brushing the tips against the wall behind him, and felt rough, brittle ridges. Concrete, most likely. The floor under his bare feet was gritty with sand. Maybe he was still near the coast. He shivered; a draft was coming from somewhere and his shirt had been ripped open at some point.

  He remembered lying there on the deck plates, waiting for the killing blow. The angry voice of the bosun, grating. There had been another voice, younger. It had been shouting at them to stop.

  Derrin, the shy one, the one he’d told to stay away. He’d been there, but not with the others. He’d come to warn him.

  Something had happened then, a lurch. Freezing water had swamped his face, flooding his mouth and nose. Saltwater. He remembered dragging himself up. The deck had been all wrong, pitched at an angle. He’d lurched through corridors, searching for a way out, all the while that awful grinding and the shouts of panicked sailors all around. The night air had smacked him in the face; he recalled the whiteness of the cliff as it loomed above him in the darkness. More rending of metal, crashes, screams. After that, everything was blackness.

  He tried to sit up, propping himself on his bound hands. The raw skin stung as he did so, and he sucked in a hissing breath through clenched teeth. Everything hurt.

  ‘Awake, then?’ came a voice from the gloom.

  Cale tensed.

  ‘Good-o. I was getting bored here, talking to myself.’

  Cale scanned what little he could make out. The voice had come from the far corner, where the shape that he’d assumed was a sack hung above the latrine bucket. It was suspended from the ceiling by two large chains and rested flat against the wall. As he stared, the shape moved. ‘Who’s there?’ he called out, louder than he meant to.

  ‘Your new roommate, pal. Though I suppose you’re mine, come to think of it. Rights of precedence and all that.’

  Cale squinted at the shape, which moved again. On closer inspection, it was not shaped like a sack: there was a protrusion on the top that almost looked like a head and neck. Cale shook his head, dismissing the thought as soon as it came to him.

  ‘Nope, you’ve got it. That’s me.’ The shape moved again, the head-like protrusion dipped as if nodding. ‘And you thought you had it bad.’

  ‘Who are you? What is this place?’ Cale asked.

  ‘Who am I? Easy. Where we are, however, I can only hazard a guess. I’d expect we got here much the same way though. Boat?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You were on a boat.’

  ‘I… yes. A ship.’

  ‘There we have it then. There we bloody have it. Sorry to lay this on you, friend, but you’ve been wrecked.’

  He was right, the ship had run aground. That was why it had been so sudden, so fast. It explained why it had sounded like the vessel was being ripped apart.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said the voice. ‘You’re not, you know. Dead.’

  ‘I’m a prisoner.’

  ‘Got it in one, buck. Banged up. Tossed in the oubliette, with only old Ardal Syn to keep you company.’

  ‘Ardal Syn.’ Cale mouthed the name slowly. It sounded odd, foreign.

  ‘At your service, old chum. Pleased to make yours. May I say, it’s nice to hear another voice. Been getting samey of late.’

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘Took my eye off the ball, that’s how.’ There was a hawking sound and a plop as the speaker spat on the floor. ‘Put my little tub on autopilot, let the box do its thing. Counted the bars of the Lattice, cracked a beer. Had a snooze. Next thing I know, I’m here. Though – has to be said – with more to me than there is currently.’

  Cale pulled his feet in and used the wall to push himself to a standing position. He peered into the murk, trying to match the voice with the shapeless lump. Perhaps the man was bound behind his back too? But why suspend him in that way? Was he resting in a sack? In the poor light, he couldn’t tell. It appeared, however unlikely, that his cellmate was little more than a limbless trunk.

  ‘Cheeky sods have been messing with the beacons,’ continued the voice from the shadows. ‘Playing tricks with the shipping lanes.’ A pause. ‘What about you, then? What do I call you?’

  ‘Cale.’

  ‘Just Cale?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hello, Cale.’

  Cale shook his head, trying to shake off the dull fug. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘You must mean the management. Lovely folk. Salt of the earth, brine of the sea, murderous fuckers to a man. They wreck ships for a living.’

  ‘Pirates?’

  ‘Mmm, not exactly pirates from what I can tell. And I would know, having drunk with some of the best, and they wouldn’t have anything to do with this lot. More like professional scavengers.’

  It had been years, but Cale remembered hearing of gangs who’d found a way to tamper with the shipping beacons and made a living from the spoils. It was hit and miss: vigilant pilots would simply assume a malfunction and correct their course, but there were always the unwary and inattentive – or drunk, like the most-likely-late captain of the Alec IV. Those would find themselves sailing onto jagged rocks, and by the time anyone came looking the scavengers would have picked the carcass clean. Sometimes the Fleet caught a few but most of the wreckers just melted away into the uncounted coves that pockmarked this part of the coast.

  Cale heard footsteps approaching.

  ‘Oh, goody,’ said Syn. ‘Sounds like you’re about to be introduced.’

  There was a squeal of metal, then the door swung wide. Piercing light flooded in and stung his eyes. Through the shadows of his lashes he saw two men enter. They left the door open.

  ‘Awake then, cunny?’ said one. ‘Keeping the animal company, are we?’

  The speaker walked up to Cale, bringing a faint odour of mould. The other stayed by the door. The rifle in his hands was stubby, the stock sawn off, little more than a pipe protruding from a rough wood block. The man holding it shifted from foot to foot. Cale didn’t doubt the weapon worked.

  The man in front of Cale came up to his shoulder. He was skinny, with hollow cheeks laced with old scars. A dirty shirt draped his bony shoulders, gathered by a wide leather belt. Small eyes darted about as if afraid to settle on anything for too long.

  He frowned up at Cale and clicked his tongue in disapproval. From his belt he pulled a thin cylinder which he flicked outwards. The baton extended with a snick. ‘Down where you belong, filth.’

  The blow took Cale behind the knee; he grunted in pain and sank to the floor.

  ‘Much better,’ said the skinny wrecker, a grin in his voice. ‘Now, let’s take a look at you.’ He grabbed Cale by the hair and pulled his head back. He examined the swollen eye, fingers jabbing at the bruised tissue; when Cale tried to pull away the bony hands held him fast. The man was stronger than he looked. ‘Lean forwards,’ he rasped, letting go.

  Next, he crouched down and checked the binding on Cale’s wrists. He made a sucking noise, then stood up, pushing Cale back against the wall with the toe of his boot.

  Cale felt the tip of the baton under his chin. The cold metal tingled.

  ‘I’m going to cut your hands free,’ said the scarred man. He indicated a nub on the baton’s handle. ‘Try anything and I hit this. It’ll put enough juice through you to floor a mastodon. Understood?’

  Cale nodded slowly.

  A thin blade appeared from the wide belt and Cale felt it slip between his wrists. Warm breath was in his ear.

  ‘Remember,’ said the wrecker, ‘Jerbo over there is the nervous type. He’s just waiting for an excuse to put a slug in you.’

  After a moment’s sawing the rope gave way with a crack. Cale gasped as his hands came free and cradled them to his chest. The skin felt like it was on fire. The baton withdrew.

  ‘That’ll hurt like a bitch when the blood comes back. You’ll likely wish I cut the buggers off.’

  Cale looked up and saw the sallow face t
wisted in a smirk.

  ‘Get the food,’ said the scarred wrecker. The younger one lowered his rifle and returned with a tray which he set down on the floor. Cale made no move to pick it up.

  The scarred man put away his weapons. ‘Eat up now, boys. Got to keep your strength up for when we ransom you.’

  ‘And how am I meant to do that, you dumb fuck?’ came Ardal Syn’s voice from the corner. ‘Does it look like I can reach?’

  The two wreckers swapped an amused look.

  ‘I guess you go hungry, punchbag,’ said the gunman. The scarred one guffawed.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Syn. ‘Clever. And what do you expect to ransom if I starve? Thought of that, pricks?’

  The younger one with the rifle spat on the floor. ‘We took your limbs already. Keep up that lip and maybe I’ll take your balls, eh?’

  Scar-face cut him off with a snarl. ‘Shut your mouth. You’re not cutting anything unless I say.’ He kicked the tray towards Cale, spilling the contents onto the floor. ‘You feed the horrible fucker. I won’t have any more lads walk out of here with bite marks, so you can take your chances.’ He slapped the door with a loud clang, barked a laugh and left the cell.

  The other one followed him out, keeping his weapon levelled.

  The door slammed shut, bringing back the darkness. The viewing hatch slid open, and from the tiny square of light came the sneering voice. ‘Watch your fingers, you hear? The teeth!’ Another laugh and the hatch clanged shut.

  Two sets of footsteps receded.

  In the black, Cale felt his way to the tray and lifted it with hands that felt like they belonged to someone else. Some of the contents had clung to the surface and he poked at them: a kind of thick, cold gruel. He made out a shape on the floor; picking it up he found it was a chunk of stale bread so hard it could have been a stone. A jug of water had fallen over, spilling most of its contents, though some liquid still sloshed in its belly.

  ‘I won’t,’ he heard Syn say.

  ‘Won’t what?’