The compound was large enough to be called a fisherman’s town in its own right. Fifty people lived within its sprawling perimeter, and perhaps another ten further along the rutted, single-track path that led to the mainland. In the factory-sheds they would strip down their monstrous catches to oil, bone and leather. From there the sea-harvest was sold onwards for the trade disciplines of medicine, food and clothing. Eight families, all descended from those first deepwater fisher clans the Baron of Vigil had, a hundred years ago, brought from the Sainted Isles. They had not needed much incentive to leave their island home, for the waters around Equus had become sterile and barren from rockblood poisoning. If they hadn’t left for the mainland, they’d have all died.
But they were shorefolk now, mainlanders, hunting close to the Vigil coast and never venturing more than a few days eastwards and never close to the deepwater abysses of their forefathers. Out beyond the Sainted Isles the land slipped away into the true abysses, but there were no souls left alive who dared chance running a fishing line into those depths.
Jorgen took Stefan’s elbow before they came too close.
‘We come out of respect tonight, son. But remember, it’s not our place to participate in their funeral.’
‘But you’re their friend.’
‘It’s their ceremony. Their lost fellow must return to his god.’
Near the beached pontoon a mourner went into the water, chasing eddies of cold blue bioluminescence. A woman, perhaps the missing man’s widow. To Stefan’s shock and surprise she began to slice ribbons from her shoulders with a knife until her pale arms and chest appeared black in the dying light.
Others joined her, and these folk more vocal, wailing a cacophony of curses and song. The wind kicked up harsh and cold.
With all that blood they might attract something hungry into the shallows, Stefan thought with a horrified thrill. Even though he was baptized into the Redeemer’s church, Stefan knew a little about their beliefs just from living close by. They were mostly converted to the Clay Church now, but the shorefolk kept provisions in their religion for the Deepwater King’s offence. If the dead man was not accepted into the court of the King, he would become a lost spirit of a sort, a bitter source of bad luck and spoiled hunts. If he had been especially wicked, the King might also see fit to finish off the mourners at the benighted fellow’s own funeral.
Much to Stefan’s relief, no monster came to the small beach that evening, not even a jenny-ray, and by full nightfall the deepwater folk-rite was complete. The mourners moved out of the water to the safety of land, bound up their wounds, embraced each other and shared bottles of liquor between them.
A large man in a coat of tooled ichthyosaur leather came out of the shadows and enveloped Jorgen with his embrace so fully it was as if he had eight arms instead of two.
‘Beacon,’ he mumbled through his embrace.
Stefan’s father leaned back slightly to look his friend in the eye. ‘Ah, Zach, my condolences. Who was he?’
‘Ishmael,’ hissed the brute through his teeth. ‘Ishmael Cleave.’ The shark-tooth tattoos on Zachariah Riven’s pale cheeks twitched. By daylight he would not be permitted the speaking of the dead man’s name, so he would say it through the long Deepwater Night. ‘Barb to the chest, dead before his head went under.’
‘Ishmael Cleave? Oh no, was he not married to your sister?’
‘For a year. My sister has no luck with the men of her affections. The King also loves them too much.’
Zachariah Riven held Jorgen by his shoulders, looked him up and down. Took note of the uniform, the respect of it.
‘It honours him, you coming.’
‘How’s Thalie holding up, really? I saw her give the old rites for him down by the water. Her love must have been great, to take such a risk.’
Zachariah nodded, clearly agreeing. ‘She is not at her best. I think she hoped that …’ He trailed off. ‘Well. Who knows what my sister hoped. Now my nephew will have no father to teach him a man’s ways.’
‘He’ll have you, Zachariah Riven. You’re his uncle, his blood.’
‘I have my own son to worry about.’
Stefan saw Jonah Riven, Zachariah’s nephew and the one the men spoke of, standing awkwardly nearby. He was a slight, raw-boned boy who Stefan had known most of his life, but in that distant way when separated by a three-year age difference. Stefan raised his hand hesitantly, unfamiliar with funeral etiquette.
Jonah shook his head at Stefan’s greeting and faded into the darkness.
Stefan shivered as the closing songs were sung on the beach. He had heard whispers about what the Deepwater rites were supposed to do. Something sinful. Something unholy.
Jorgen Beacon took Stefan’s shoulder and directed him back towards the ridge. ‘Let’s leave our friends to their grieving, my son,’ he said. ‘We have been granted a rare sight, but the rest of the night is not for us.’
Stefan glanced back at the water line, wondering if he had missed a slumping shadow past the breakers. Maybe there was something out there, something called by the mourners. But the sea was dark, and offered up no secrets.
‘I heard someone was invited to a ritual last night,’ Bellis Harrow said archly from her high position on the tide-wall. She slid a brassy lock of yellow hair behind one small ear. ‘A funeral for Ishmael Cleave.’
Stefan hid his surprise with a shrug. ‘Don’t believe all the gossip, Bellis. The townsfolk talk too much.’
‘Was not the normal gossips.’
The Postmaster’s daughter tilted her blonde head towards Vigil’s crooked little boat-harbour and its jumble of marina berths. ‘Mx Modhi – the Harbourmistress – she grouched at me all morning about Jorgen Beacon’s shirking. He got completely drunk at Mr Cleave’s wake. Missed the morning helioscope signal, and now she has unexpected visitors.’ Bellis pointed to a boat at the far end of the marina, a big ghostwood hunting ship with a high bow and side wheels for churning through weed-fouled waters. ‘Harbourmistress Modhi takes a dim view of your father’s friendship with the Islanders.’
A defensive loyalty towards his father made him respond in a temper. ‘Would she rather the Vigil lighthouse keeper be fighting with them? Because he’d miss a few more if he got beaten up by even one of those fellows. They’re huge.’
She smirked, and nodded, for shorefolk tended to grow as tall and broad as the cryptid creatures they hunted. Bellis Harrow herself was tiny, an elfin little thing. Her Lyonnian ancestors might have done duty as chimney sweeps and mine-workers due to their small size. It was generally agreed that she was beautiful, except for an uneven cast in her face. It was as if the vital clay in the hands of her Creator had been dropped, then patched together again in a hurry, leaving her unsymmetrical.
‘She also suspects your da doesn’t fight with the Riven leader as much as he does the other thing,’ Bellis said with a wicked smirk, and gave Stefan a playful shove with her toe when he pretended to be aggrieved. Of course Stefan knew about the relationship between the two men. There was not much else to do on long nights on the promontory, and the Beacon family history was full of hot-blooded and ill-advised love affairs.
‘You are an awful tease, Bellis.’
‘I could be more than a tease, handsome Stefan,’ she wheedled, winking. ‘You have yet to take your priestly vows.’
It was Stefan’s turn to shove her, but under his playfulness was an air of caution. An uncanny kind of feeling always accompanied Bellis’ presence. She was by turns completely magnetic and utterly awful – becoming more mercurial as they had grown up together in their little fishing village. The boys in town had lately begun to fight over who would squire her to the monthly dances. Let them fight. Stefan hated such confrontations. How awful, if he were to be dragged into the same madness that enchanted them.
‘I suspect Mx Modhi loves hearing about promontory drama,’ Bellis went on. ‘It gives her more entertainment than watching boats come in and out all day.’ She leaned in conspirato
rially. ‘So is it true? What happened out there during the Deepwater Rite? Did someone lose a hand or a foot?’
‘I cannot say. It was private.’
‘Then I must bribe you. Is bribery a sin for a priest? Tell me it is not so!’
‘I’m not a priest yet, so show me your bribe, Bel.’
Bellis winked, then took out a small packet of tobacco from her coat pocket. Some strands of brown leaf had already been rolled into cigarettes with scraps of cotton paper. She offered Stefan the least bent of her treasure trove.
‘Where did you get this?’
‘My secret!’
He looked about uneasily before accepting a lit strike-match and coughing through tobacco smoke. Bellis had a way of wheedling contraband from the sailors that was not exactly innocent. She used a certain charisma upon the men. They gave her everything she asked, even objects that were not theirs to give.
‘These better not be stolen cigarettes,’ he grumped. ‘Last time we got chased into the Black Rosette because of that whiskey incident.’
‘Ha, I remember it well! If the night-ladies hadn’t hidden us in their pleasure-huts, we’d have been flogged by the watchman.’ Bellis then gestured otherwise. ‘No, these were a gift to my father, from the new Mrs Sage.’
Even speaking of her powerful father caused Bellis to pull a disagreeable face. The Postmaster was overprotective and authoritarian. There was no love between father and daughter.
Bellis re-lit the strike-match to ignite her own twist of tobacco paper. She blew smoke rings, pulled a knee to her chest, inspected a hole in her stocking. ‘So, did the funeral call the dead man out of the water, huh? Would have been a sight to see.’
‘Don’t make fun, Bel! It was a very solemn rite.’
‘Of course it was.’
‘Could have been a tragedy if there was any leviathan close enough to shore to pick up the blood-scent.’
She shook her head. ‘I would not make light of it if it were that dangerous. Maybe if there really were monster-callers of the old blood among them, they might have called something up. But they’re just simple shorefolk now. Everyone knows the deepwater folk went extinct when the Baron Justinian brought them here.’
Bellis looked wistfully towards a scrap of shoreline revealed by the low tide. Jonah Riven stood in the rock pools, picking idly through the stones. He was as small as Bellis was, though at fourteen years old it was hard to tell if he would take on the towering shorefolk height or more likely resemble whatever townsman his mother Thalie had tumbled with instead. His features were more delicate than those of the rest of his shorefolk family, and there was an air of feyness about him, as if he were not completely hewn from this brutal coast.
They suited each other, Stefan thought. Two people not quite tied to this harsh world. Had Jonah not been younger than Bellis, he might have joined the town boys in squabbling over her strange affections. As it was, he was more interested in the goings on at the tideline, like a child. His stained shirt rode up his thin back each time he bent over. Black gouges inflamed his pale skin, fresh deepwater tattoos. By his twentieth summer he would wear the squid-ink tattoos all over, even in the unmentionable places of a man’s body.
Bellis sighed and tucked her chin into her palm. ‘His people once believed they could bring the dead back, if they asked the Deepwater King in a way that pleased him.’
Stefan felt the same shiver that had afflicted him on the funeral beach. The sun had gone behind a cloud, or at least it felt like it had. A looming chill.
‘Some kind of aequor profundum, they used to call it,’ Bellis continued. ‘Profound water, a resurrection rite. Isn’t it a strange pagan idea? So barbaric.’
‘If they could do that,’ Stefan said, ‘they’d not have had to evacuate their island, would they? Wouldn’t have had to come here and be baptized in our ways.’
‘I guess not.’ She turned her head. ‘Jonah,’ she called in a chiming voice. ‘Come and sit with us.’
The boy did so, and gave Stefan a shy, brief smile before perching next to Bellis on the tide-wall.
Wherever Bellis went, Jonah was not far behind. Last winter, when Thalie Riven had been courted by Ishmael Cleave, that was when Bellis had unofficially taken the lonely and ignored Riven boy under her wing. Their odd relationship might have been fine back then, but with the mounting attention from the town boys, it seemed altogether risky. Stefan could see in his mind’s eye an aggrieved suitor suffering an attack of the jealousies before the summer was out.
Jonah accepted the last lit cigarette like a wild thing snatching a treat. The sweet tobacco smoke surrounded him like a wreath. Then a brief joyous moment occurred, as a belly of sun showed out from behind a cloud, and the small quartz chips in the grey granite stones sparkled as if they were diamonds. But enchantments can sometimes obscure dangers.
Stefan no longer wanted to taste the bitter smoke, and discarded the tobacco butt inside the mortar of the tide-wall.
‘I’d best get back home,’ he started to say.
He stepped back, and to his surprise collided with two huge figures in bronze krakenskin coats and grey knitted sweaters.
Stefan startled at the sudden, silent appearance of these men. He may as well have run into a wall of solid meat for all the movement the massive figures made.
Both men had black chevrons carved into their hands and trinkets piercing their cheeks. A brace of scabbarded flensing blades swayed at their leather-clad thighs.
One of them, elder and taller, was Zachariah Riven, unmistakable in both height and the tattoos below his grey eyes.
Zachariah grunted, ‘Watch it, lad, my knives are sharp.’
‘Sorry,’ Stefan mumbled. But Zachariah’s attention was elsewhere. ‘Jonah,’ said Zachariah brusquely, his words like mill-rocks grinding. ‘Tide’s up soon. Come away.’
The boy clung mutinously to the wall. ‘But there’s another hour to go.’
‘Come.’
Jonah’s uncle did not wait to see if the boy followed. He only swayed, knife-clinking, back to the harbour, where his massive ghostwood paddleboat Sehnsucht knocked against the pontoons. A wet drizzle drifted sideways out of the fog bank. The sun had stolen away and taken the sparkling moment with it.
The other Riven man, Jonah’s cousin, looked exactly as Stefan imagined Zachariah would have done if he were younger, minus the broken nose and the deep furrows on his salt-corroded brow. Zachariah’s son spoke harsh words in the old Fictish language to Jonah. Red-faced, Jonah discarded the cigarette and climbed off the wall.
Bellis jumped in between them, like a bird might jump before a bull.
‘You leave him be, Jeremiah Riven!’
Iron in her voice again. Stronger than the tone she used to wheedle tobacco and cigarettes from besotted sailors. Stefan stood up, sensing something in the air. A weight in the atmosphere, like a coming storm.
Jeremiah Riven scrutinized Bellis, his eyes squinting. ‘Say what, Harrow?’
‘You. Leave. Jonah. Be,’ she said again, fierce with command. ‘He’ll stay with us this afternoon. There’s an hour before the tide turns.’
Jeremiah’s terrifying face became blank for a second, before he winked and snatched the pouch of tobacco out of Bellis’ bosom. ‘Looks like this’ll have to come with me as well.’
‘Hey, give that back!’
Jeremiah shoved the pouch in his pocket and loomed over Bellis. Wetted his lips with his tongue and let his gaze fall on her in a way that made even Bellis Harrow shudder. ‘Why not come to the sheds and we can work something out.’
She hissed at him. ‘Brute. My father would have you put in the stocks.’
Jeremiah snorted, already bored. The exchange had been mocking anyway. He had never shown any interest in Bellis, not even when she had developed a woman’s body and drew attention from everyone from the night-soil collectors to the Baron’s son. ‘Your father knows where I live. Tell him to swing by.’
Bellis glared at him, but to no
avail. Jeremiah shouldered Bellis aside and pushed his young cousin along ahead of him. ‘Move it, Jo.’
‘Bye, Bellis,’ Jonah said belatedly, earning himself a clip over the ear.
‘Don’t talk to her,’ Jeremiah grunted.
The two Rivens followed their patriarch down to the harbour where their white boat Sehnsucht was moored and waiting for the rising tide to take her out of the harbour mud.
Bellis, frowning, went back to her perch on the sea wall. ‘He is a fiend! If I ever told Father half the things that beggar says to me, he’d be over to the promontory with ten men and a dozen firearms!’
‘Ah, come on, Bel, don’t sulk. You can’t expect to charm everyone,’ Stefan said at last. ‘Especially not a Riven.’
‘I was not attempting to charm him! He treats Jonah abominably, is all. Jonah’s so alone.’ Then she gave a great sigh.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I keep being reminded what day it is. Four more days until Saturn’s Day, you will be leaving me and I will be alone as well!’
‘Alone with all your admirers.’ He gestured towards the fog-shrouded Manse Justinian, set high on an uplift of land watching over Vigil town. ‘And perhaps your eventual husband. They will keep you busy until I come back.’
Bellis shook her head and smiled unconvincingly. ‘You won’t come back. Once the church has trained up their handsome young priest, they’ll send him across the Summerland Sea to some gaudy Vinland cathedral. We may never see each other again from this day. Oh, you tell me of my admirers, but they love a shell and not what lies beneath.’
‘They’ll come to know you.’
‘Will they? Have you ever cracked open an oyster, and seen the little monster inside? They will not love that.’
Deepwater King Page 2