The Wrack

by John Bierce

  His guards followed behind him, returning the operation of the semaphore crank to the seers. Normally, the seers would have assistants to work the cranks, but in these times…

  Yusef’s brain took to uselessly revolving the thousand complaints and pleas he’d gotten from his healers. Most notable, of course, was their continual resistance to recording the names and death details of the Vowless. It was a small chore, even in the worst of times, and already something most healers did for their records, but many of the Moonsworn hated having to participate in pagan Vowless nonsense.

  For years, Yusef had refused all protests, and commanded Lothain’s Moonsworn to continue. Not just because it was a smart move politically— one that kept the Vowless from distrusting the Moonsworn entirely.

  No, simply because it was a kindness that cost them nothing but a little ink and a few words, and the world could always use a little more kindness.

  Now, though, that dull, aching hole inside of him was whispering that even that little bit of ink and those few words were too much for those hateful Vowless.

  His anger grew and grew as he descended the stairs, and he finally found himself listening to what he’d been trying to avoid inside himself, dwelling on what he had no time to dwell on.

  When he exited the tower, he didn’t even look at the city guards at the door, he just marched straight on.

  Yusef didn’t know what he was thinking when he saw the child again. If you asked him, he might say he hadn’t been thinking at all.

  That would have been a lie. He was thinking of Emala, and the mob, and letting those thoughts feed the angry hole in his heart as he clenched his fists and stalked straight towards the idiot Vowless child drinking from the river.

  He was thinking about kicking the child into the river, and the thought made him happy.

  When he reached the child, he stood over it for long seconds, shaking with rage, and grief, and every pent up resentment he’d ever formed against the heathen Vowless, who treated them as objects of constant suspicion, who kept watch on them as though they were spies, just for not praying as they did. He thought of a daughter who might be weeks dead without him knowing, because of a stupid, cowardly king’s order to keep his people from using the semaphores. He thought of a son-in-law who he’d always dismissed as useless who’d died a hero driving off the mob, trying to protect Emala, and he had deserved better from Yusef. He thought of a thousand tiny slights from Vowless, and even his damn headache, and it all fed into the hole inside him, which just kept growing and growing and never getting filled.

  And he found himself starting, in his head, a warrior’s prayer, a prayer to the Sun Goddess, a prayer for strength and a prayer for will and a prayer he’d never expected to say even in the privacy of his own head.

  Then he caught sight of the child’s blackened, clumsy fingers, and the way the filthy river water just ran right out from between the cupped fingers that didn’t work right anymore, and the way the child was reduced to lapping up a few droplets from its palms. He saw how skinny the child was, and how its muscles kept twitching the way all survivors of the Wrack did.

  Then the child looked up at him, and he was looking at a little girl who looked even emptier than the hole inside him, and his anger just…

  Flowed out of him like the water between the little girl’s fingers.

  And shame filled the hole and washed away the half-finished prayer, and it felt a hundred times heavier than anger, and he almost broke under its weight.

  But he didn’t.

  He leaned down and gently picked up the girl, who hardly seemed to weigh anything at all, and he carried her all the way home through the bitter autumn wind without saying a word, and though his head and his stomach and his back and his knees hurt as badly as ever, they didn’t seem to matter so much anymore.

  And he let his tears fall freely, not caring who would see them.

  And he started another prayer, but it wasn’t to the Sun.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Adrift on Land, Home at Sea

  Captain Mathias of the Unfortunately Inquisitive Wren was, despite everything, having a good day.

  His ship had a damaged keel and rudder, a temporarily patched hull, was badly overcrowded, running low on food, and had been anchored off a barren rock at the edge of the Citrine Isles for weeks. They hadn’t seen another Radhan vessel for even longer. The miners, fishermen, and shepherds of the windblown, rainy isles had closed off their borders entirely in an effort to keep the Wrack out. His crew was going stir crazy, and the one rocky beach they had access to on the island was covered in seabird shit and was filled with their relentless squawking from their cliff nests, so it hardly made a good place to escape seeing the same faces day in and day out. And there had been quite a few sprained ankles from trips to fetch water from the freshwater spring emptying onto the beach.

  Mathias, however, could quite easily and happily overlook all that.

  There hadn’t been a single case of the Wrack onboard. Not one.

  So despite the cold and the spray Mathias was resting, quite comfortably, in a hammock in the ship’s rigging, with one of the ship’s cats purring on his chest.

  It was, to be sure, not the wisest decision, and he’d have spent quite a lot of time yelling at any of his crewmembers who did the same outside a breakwater, but they were in the lee of the rock they were anchored next to.

  “Captain,” someone said from just a few feet away.

  Mathias kept his eyes closed.

  “Captain,” the voice said, “if you don’t stop pretending to be asleep, I will flip your hammock with the next wave and send you straight into the water.”

  Mathias groaned. “Rank insubordination. Besides, you’d drown the cat.”

  “Insubordination? Really? I hadn’t realized,” his first mate said.

  Mathias opened his eyes and glared at his cousin, Ann. Most of the crew was related to him one way or another— Radhan vessels were family affairs, and most Radhan spent more time at sea than on land. They had enclaves in quite a few larger port cities across the continents of Teringia and Oyansur.

  Which was, of course, part of their problem. They’d been part of the Radhan fleet evacuating their enclaves from the west coast of Teringia. The Unfortunately Inquisitive Wren was carrying a third of the population of the Swalben enclave, while the other two thirds had boarded the much larger Dawn Eagle. The Dawn Eagle had made it out of the Swalben Harbor just fine, but the Wren had left almost two hours later at low tide, and in their haste to escape before the Wrack arrived, they had steered too close to the Swalben breakwater, and a freak gust of wind had slammed them into it.

  Mathias was quite happy to go before any board of inquiry once they rejoined the fleet, for they’d made it out of Swalben in time, and escaped the Wrack.

  “We’re running out of food,” Ann said.

  “Interestingly, I’m aware of that,” Mathias said, shifting in his hammock. “Anyhow, haven’t we started fishing already?”

  “They’re hardly biting,” Ann said. “It’s not even enough to make for a mouthful apiece divided between everyone.”

  Unlike the Dawn Eagle, they hadn’t had time to load supplies before leaving. They’d simply packed people in with anything they’d carried, then when they’d filled up, they tossed any of their cargo that couldn’t be eaten onto the docks and packed more people in. They’d barely gotten everyone on board in time even then.

  “How many more days’ worth of food do we have?” Mathias asked, already knowing the answer to that question.

  “Five days, maybe? We can stretch it out a little further if we reduce rations again, but…” Ann said.

  Mathias grimaced. They’d already done that twice.

  “Still no sign of the fleet?” Mathias asked.

  Ann shook her head. “With our luck, they’ve probably already sailed to Rendezvous.”

  The greater Radhan fleet was based out of Rendezvous— a massive archipelago a third of the
way around the world from southern Oyansur. It had massive forests of good shipbuilding timber, rare trade goods that couldn’t be found anywhere else, and, most importantly, it was completely uninhabited by any people other than the Radhan. The Radhan had discovered it nearly two hundred years ago, and they had managed to keep it a complete secret from the rest of the world. Some nations surely suspected its existence, but suspicion wasn’t proof.

  Not that it was difficult to keep the secret— most ships and sailors on Iopis were miserable in comparison to the Radhan, and offered no true competition. Iopan sailing had improved in recent decades as the numbers of nephrite-bearing seers increased, but still, most Iopan ships wouldn’t even leave sight of the shore. The fishermen and merchants of the Citrine Isles were a little more courageous than that, but it was scant praise— it was less than two day’s sailing from Western Teringia to the Citrine Isles.

  Rendezvous also had one of the great Mist Mazes in the sheltered sea between its islands, far larger than the little one in the Krannenbergs the Lothaini feared so much. The Radhan, at least, understood the value of the mazes, and some of their best ships could safely sail it and return. Safely being a relative term, of course— more Radhan ships were lost in that maze, and the lesser one to the southeast of Oyansur, than to all the storms on Iopis.

  “Has Nesem had any luck with the semaphore?” Mathias asked.

  Ann shook her head.

  Ships were too unstable for the clockwork semaphores, and holding still enough for a semaphore stay put and work in the aetheric currents— what the Eidola foolishly referred to as the spirit realm and the Sworn referred to as the Goddess Sea— was nearly impossible. It could sometimes be done in still enough waters, and they’d anchored right below a major aetheric current, but Nesem, their ship’s chief seer, had been trying with no luck to get it to work since they’d anchored here.

  Mathias glanced down from his hammock and spotted Nesem in the prow, where he was staring upwards— presumably at the aetheric currents. The currents made for a navigation tool almost as reliable as the stars, though none of the landbound peoples had yet figured out all their tricks as of yet. The Singers were close, but not enough to worry over just yet.

  “We’re going to have to try and climb the cliffs, Captain,” Ann said.

  Mathias shook his head. “Absolutely not. Those cliffs are a crumbly mess of shale most of the way up, and there’s that huge overhang at the top where it transitions to sandstone.”

  “It would solve all of our problems, Captain. Seabirds and eggs for food, and Nesem is convinced that there are stable aetheric currents up there that could be used to reach out to the Seawatch,” Ann said.

  Mathias didn’t doubt Nesem on that— he’d transferred to the Wren two years ago from another Radhan ship that largely traded in the southern shores of Oyansur. He’d proven to be quite nearly the most skilled seer Mathias had ever worked with, in forty-some years of sailing.

  “It would solve all our problems, yes, save for the fact that the cliffs are too dangerous to climb.”

  “We’d only have to climb it once,” Ann said, “and carry some rope up.”

  Mathias groaned. “We’ve surveyed every inch of the cliffs over the beach, and there’s no viable route to the top.”

  If they’d managed to stay with the Dawn Eagle, they wouldn’t have had this problem. The larger ship’s crew had rather more… versatility in how they addressed their problems. Of course, that versatility came at the cost of quite a lot of wildly expensive Quae jewel-silk, but…

  Mathias cleared his thoughts of what-ifs and if-onlys and focused back on the problem at hand.

  “If there was a route I was convinced was even possible— forget even being safe— I’d allow it,” he said.

  Ann gave him an uncomfortable look.

  “What?” he asked, suspicious.

  “You’re not going to like this,” Ann said.

  “There’s a lot I don’t like,” he said.

  “I mean, you’re going to like this even less than most things,” Ann said, flicking the rigging lines in the way she did when she was nervous.

  “Just spit it out already,” Mathis said.

  “One of our crewmembers believes they’ve found a way up,” she said.

  Mathias just stared at his first mate for a long moment.

  “By the fact you haven’t said their name, I suspect I know precisely which crewmember you mean,” he said.

  Ann just shrugged.

  “Of course I’m not going to like her idea, I don’t like any of her ideas,” Mathias said. “All of her ideas are terrible, and they always seem to end in someone getting hurt. Usually her, but it somehow ends up being me nearly as often.”

  Ann just nodded.

  “Do you remember her “improved” block and tackle?” Mathias demanded. “How expensive it was to fix the dock?”

  Ann nodded again.

  “Or her new space-saving cargo storing scheme? The ship nearly toppled over!” Mathias said, starting to work up into a well-worn litany of complaints.

  Ann looked like she wanted to argue that one, but didn’t.

  “Or her shortcut through the Moon’s Horns? We had gouges in the hull to port and starboard,” Mathias said.

  Ann gave him a sheepish look as she nodded.

  “Or when she decided to become a seer without telling anyone, and comes back to the ship short an eye?” Mathias demanded.

  “I remember all of those things— and a hell of a lot more,” Ann said. “But… I also remember that the dock was already rotten, that we still use her new cargo storing method and just take more care redistributing the weight, that the shortcut worked, and we got the cargo into port at Ladreis just in time, and, well… she might be an even better seer than Nesem now.”

  “She’s reckless, impulsive, and can’t stay focused on any task once she’s mastered it,” Mathias snapped. “She’s got a lad or lass in literally every port, has almost missed departure half a dozen times, and has broken up at least three marriages that I know of. If it weren’t for a very small number of extremely lucky successes, she would have long since been thrown off the ship.”

  “It’s not that small of a number of successes,” Ann said, “and it’s definitely not just luck. She fixes more problems than she causes, and there’s no braver soul on deck.”

  Mathias sighed. “I’m going to hate this idea, I just know it. I don’t know where she gets it from.”

  Ann chuckled. “She is your daughter.”

  Mathias snorted and closed his hammock over the cat and himself. His voice came out muffled from inside his canvas cocoon. “I blame my husband. Tell Eissa yes, but I don’t want to hear a word of what her plan is, and I’m not leaving my hammock until it’s done.”

  “This plan is so, so much worse than you described it,” Ann said.

  “Are you implying that I misled you?” Eissa said, a wide grin on her face as she finished stripping off her clothes, save for her leather pouch full of eyes strapped to her left bicep.

  “I don’t think I’m implying it,” Ann said. “I am, in fact, directly saying you misled me.”

  Eissa winked at the older woman with her nephrite eye. Eissa had never much seen the point of wearing an eyepatch— they were just there to make others more comfortable, and that was no fun at all.

  Ann opened her mouth to object, but Eissa just smiled and hopped out of the dinghy.

  The water this far north was what most people would describe as bitterly cold, but as far as Eissa was concerned, it was merely bracing.

  She swam around to the back of the boat, where her invention floated. Unlike many sailors, all the Radhan could swim, but hardly any could come close to Eissa. She’d come in third overall among all the Radhan fleets in the great games at Rendezvous three years ago. She had actually won the two day race, where competitors had to make an uninterrupted swim between islands. The winner of that one was always a woman, but she’d also placed highly in the sho
rt distance swimming sprints, where the men tended to dominate.

  Eissa excelled at anything she put her mind to, and she saw absolutely no reason to be humble about it. She certainly wasn’t humble about her newest invention.

  Well, it wasn’t precisely her invention, if she was to be honest. She’d gotten the idea from the Nemennemak islanders, who had been using them for generations to navigate the sea caves beneath their islands. They used the devices to help harvest the luminescent silk from their cave worms, which was traded to the Quae Empire, who in turn wove it into jewel-silk. Since the Quae blockaded the Nemen islands to maintain their monopoly on jewel-silk— and executed anyone who tried to sneak into the islands— well…

  Eissa felt entirely justified in not telling anyone she’d swum out to the islands by the cover of night and spent a few days with the Nemennemak, who really couldn’t give a damn about the Quae Empire’s laws one way or another. They’d been happy to show her around the islands. She didn’t share a single word with them, but she’d been working on replicating their curious mode of transit they used to maneuver through the tight tunnels that lead to the silkworm caves ever since.

  “So… your brilliant invention is just a plank,” Ann said.

  “This is hardly a plank,” Eissa said, indignant. “I spent weeks carving this out of a single chunk of wood, then carefully waxing the wood until it wouldn’t absorb water.”

  Ann gave her a flat look. “Alright, it’s a weirdly-shaped waxed plank.”

  Eissa just sighed and climbed atop the board. She had no idea what the Nemennemak called them, but Eissa had been calling it her wave rider.

  The wave rider was about eight feet long and roughly oval shaped, coming to a point at either end. It had a small keel on the bottom near the back. She didn’t know what wood the islanders carved theirs out of, but she’d chosen teak, on the general principle that if it was good enough for ship building, it was good enough for her wave rider. Their wave riders were only about five feet long, so they could maneuver in the narrow caves at high tide, which was the only time the silk was accessible. The cave ceilings were too low for actual canoes, but the islanders could fit through floating on their wave riders. Eissa’s was designed for use out in the open, hence its greater size.