Deepwater King

by Claire McKenna

  ‘According to this other official letter from Postmaster Harrow, what happened on the promontory was a random …’ she waved her hands in the air, trying to grasp the full meaning of the tragedy, ‘… devilfish attack. It makes no sense. Why would the Magistrate sentence a boy to the worst prison in Lyonne for a bloodworker accident?’

  ‘Because accident or not, he still called to monsters and killed his family,’ David replied.

  ‘But that’s just not how a bloodwork accident would normally be dealt with. Life imprisonment in another country? It all sounds far too convenient for the Lyonne Order’s business, having Jonah be removed from Bellis so utterly.’

  David Modhi nervously rubbed his hands, seemingly uncomfortable at Arden’s observations. Though he was sanguis ignis, and bloodworked fire, David Modhi would never be a servant of Lyonne. Because of their flight into the free waters of the Darkling Sea, he would never be bound up in oaths to the Lyonne Order and the Eugenics Society. Arden Beacon, an invested Lyonnian bloodworker, had once dreamt of that kind of freedom with a man she had begun to love. For a little while, Jonah Riven had made her believe it possible, and then it was taken away.

  But if Jonah had never managed to be truly free of the Lions, how could Arden have done the same? She had foolishly chased freedom, and now she was a fugitive and he was dead.

  ‘I think,’ David said carefully, ‘they sent him away because Jonah was Bellis’ friend.’

  Arden nodded. ‘Yes. I think so too. The Order wanted her isolated. So they could watch her grow without interference. To have as much influence over her as possible.’

  They fell quiet and the boat creaked around them.

  ‘Do you think he survived Bellis?’ David asked. ‘I mean, after you escaped from Sehnsucht?’

  She shook her head wearily. In her mind’s eye she relived the last time she saw Jonah’s face, receding from view while aboard the petroleum Queen’s ghost-white ship.

  A Lion spy had been on board Bellis’ ship, and he had helped them escape. The spy, Mr Absalom, had given Arden’s companion Chalice Quarry a secret locket full of gathered information. Commanded her to bring those items back to Clay City, and the Order.

  But the spy’s help had not extended to Jonah Riven. While the women fled, he had remained on board. Chalice might have survived the water with Arden, but she had been under Lion instruction and had been ordered home not long after their eventual rescue.

  Arden sighed, still missing Chalice utterly, another layer of regret added to Jonah’s loss. Chalice could never have stayed. She was completely beholden to her Order masters.

  ‘No, he would not have survived Bellis. I have thought many days and nights about what Bellis Harrow would do to Mr Riven in punishment for disobeying her prohibitions, but at the end, letting him live long was not one of them.’

  With more force than she intended Arden dropped the copied letter file and its contents into the map drawer, closed it with her knee and winced as her hand hurt while turning the lock. The bloodletting grommet snagged and pulled under her fingerless gloves. Bellis Harrow – the Queen of the Sainted Islands – had been the trauma of Arden’s summer. It was nearly midwinter now, and though they’d been sailing for almost a week, she was still hurting.

  Three seasons ago Arden had come to a springtime Vigil to run her uncle’s old lighthouse. She had thought she was primarily sanguis ignis back then, and had been able to trammel a little portion of fire to provide light and do her duty.

  What she hadn’t known, and it galled her like a wasp’s nest in wood, was that the Seamaster’s Guild had not employed Arden due to her meagre talent with flame. She was a Lion’s tool. They had used her as bait to goad her neighbour Jonah Riven into remembering the hungers of man.

  Not a proper seduction though. He was too remote and wary for that. Arden’s presence, they expected, would jog his memory. Even though she and Bellis looked nothing alike, Arden would remind him of his powerful wife in hiding somewhere in the Sainted Isles. They suspected Arden’s vulnerability would arouse in Jonah an equally protective need to find Bellis again.

  Arden had been disposable to the Lyonne Order in light of the greater prize: it was the matter of Bellis’ restraint that the Order sweated over. It was Bellis they devoted their energy towards. Bellis had the old orientis ability to influence people, but fearsome Jonah Riven, new-returned to Vigil after serving his sentence for a massacre, Jonah been the only person who could influence Bellis in return. Two monsters, two of a kind.

  The Lyonne Order required him to tighten Queen Bellis’ leash.

  But the Lions had not expected Arden and Jonah to fall in love. Hadn’t expected that Arden would be with Jonah on Saudade when he was reunited with his long-lost love. Instead of a marital reunion between man and wife, the meeting had turned into a three-way, jealousy-fuelled disaster.

  Arden’s last image of Jonah remained a scar on her mind. Him shackled and bleeding off the bone-white bow of Sehnsucht. The last second’s rebellion before he was beaten to death on Bellis’ command.

  At least it would have been quick. Arden could not have borne the thought of him suffering.

  Before she could speak to David further, a strange shiver trembled through the hull of their becalmed boat.

  Arden sat up straighter. ‘What was that?’

  An unearthly voice echoed in the waters beyond the sanctuary of Saudade’s hull. Not whales or plesiosaur. It sounded too human.

  ‘It’s fin-folk,’ David answered breathlessly, his eyes wide with excitement and fear. He tilted his head and frowned. ‘A pod of them. Close perhaps. Those are hunting songs!’

  ‘Fin-folk?’

  ‘They call them merrows, sometimes?’

  ‘I know what merrows are. Oh, that’s not good news at all.’

  ‘They’ll not harm us. They don’t dare go near black mangrove wood.’ He rapped on the desk, the same dark wood as Saudade’s hull. ‘It reminds them of kraken haunts.’

  Arden nodded. ‘My father kept a book describing the southern species of merrows,’ she said. ‘And I know that mangrove wood or not, they’ve been known for boarding ships at anchor.’

  David snatched up his boots and began to pull them on.

  ‘I need tell Sean to keep watch. Hillsiders don’t have much of a sea-sense.’ Then the boy yawned, and stumbled over his feet as he stood up.

  ‘Hold on,’ Arden scolded, leaving the map desk. ‘I’ll go tell Sean. You get some rest.’

  ‘I don’t feel that tired—’

  ‘Tired enough to tip over the edge of the boat in a rogue wave, David Modhi. Look at you, weary-drunk as a dock-bound sailor.’

  ‘I’m not weary either!’

  ‘If I count the days we took from Vigil to Garfish Point, this is your third night awake. Now sit. I’ll go warn him. Get some sleep.’

  Despite her uniform dress being warm enough for the strongest gale, Arden slid into her dark bronze krakenskin coat before slipping outside. The coat lay heavy on her shoulders. It was true deepwater clothing, a hunter’s garment, but cut for a woman. Arden had once thought the coat belonged to Bellis, but it had really been the garment of Thalie Riven, a cunning-woman among the shorefolk of Vigil’s promontory.

  Thalie Cleave-Riven, Jonah’s mother. Dead in the same massacre that had taken his family.

  Arden climbed out onto the deck, where the empty sky – all but the brightest stars washed out by the waxing moon – might have well been cut from funereal black glass. Once there she gulped down the breaths she had not permitted herself in Saudade’s below decks. Jonah’s face there every time she closed her eyes, blood-drenched and defiant to his dying. Each time she thought her grief had dulled, an image of him would catch like a burr, taking her breath away.

  Despite the kraken-boat’s supposedly unsinkable design, it was not safe to run the engines on a night like this, not while there were monstrum mare about. They were powered down for the dark-time hours. Ballast anchors kept Saudade from
drifting too far off course. The fin-folk singing receded faintly into the distance. The waves sloshed gently against the black mangrove hull. Saudade’s bow dipped and rose. She had much of a tugboat informing her design, as her forecastle was long and wide, the abaft even longer, and the wheelhouse the only high point. Most of the vessel’s mass was below the water, making her harder to capsize when a creature as large as herself was trying to drag her down to the deeps.

  The waters below Saudade flashed electric pink as a fever of giant rays schooled beneath them, disturbed by the presence of the merrows.

  Jonah’s mother had been briefly married, Mx Modhi reported in her letters, to a man who’d died at the barb of a giant ray. Ishmael Cleave had been his name. His people had given him the Deepwater funeral on the night before they died.

  Deepwater rites, Arden repeated to herself. A prayer on Deepwater Night. Jonah had implored it of her the last time she had seen him alive.

  Arden bent over and pressed her cheek to the dark wood of the gunwale, imagined by its natural warmth she could still sense Mr Riven’s palms having rested there. It would be hard to let Saudade go when the vessel reminded Arden of Jonah, every beam and plank. As she rubbed the wood she felt the coins catch inside the leather, and grimaced.

  ‘Do they hurt?’

  The darkness had not been entirely unpopulated. Sean Ironcup stood further down the deck in a woollen jacket, indigo-cotton leggings and rubber fishing boots.

  Arden startled. ‘Sean! I hadn’t realized I wasn’t alone.’

  His slender body leaned heavy on his staff. The palsy dwelt in the left side of his body more than the right. One arm was perpetually folded like a bird’s wing, so that Arden could not help but be reminded of those myths of men turned by witches’ spells into swans by morning.

  ‘I’m sorry if I interrupted. I thought you knew I was here.’

  ‘Don’t be. I was inattentive when we cannot afford to be, out here.’ She remembered his question, then, and held out her palms with their fingerless gloves and a small stitch work of flames in the centre. ‘My hands don’t really hurt. It’s my coins that are a little tender though. It has been a year, and I’m due replacements.’

  A sudden wave of inhibition came over her and Arden tucked her hands into her dress pockets. Even though they were both Lyonnians, Sean’s family had been Hillsiders, people from the high, cold tablelands that bordered the sprawling capital of Clay. They were perennially suspicious of the sanguis-endowed, forever sensing an interference with the ways of nature.

  ‘What happens if they aren’t replaced?’

  She gestured indifferently with her chin, pretending the issue was of so little concern she had not thought of it. ‘Then I would get very sick.’

  Sean had no more questions about her condition. They stood slightly apart on deck and viewed each other with the chary caution of fighters sizing one another up. A smudge of blue kraken-grease still dappled Sean’s blond-stubbled cheek. Seeing that it was David who worked the engines, it could only have come from an impromptu encounter between them.

  Theirs was a forbidden relationship too. David Modhi, a runaway sanguis whose genetics were too precious for him to make his own decisions, and Sean Ironcup, a man involved in Arden’s attempted murder and therefore a felon. Arden could see in Sean’s eyes an equal suspicion of her. She was far too highborn and deep in her privileges to be making decisions that would affect all of them, in his opinion. Even after two nights and a day in flight she knew she still looked like genteel old money, a sanguis with a complexion like a bright copper burner, dark eyes better to be reading in a library than looking out to sea, and her mahogany hair still coiled elegantly upon her head.

  Although he was not long past his twentieth year, Sean Ironcup had already developed the rough, uncultured face of the poor farmers from the Clay highlands. He had thinning yellow hair the texture of corn leavings, a hairline still somewhat too close to his brow. David had given up a lot for this raw young man. Too much, maybe.

  He leaned casually upon the gunwale, but his expression was still suspicious. ‘David said you were taking us to Libro Island.’

  ‘Yes. I hope if the weather stays fair we will arrive by tomorrow. The map shows a sheltered port on the south side, and a town with welcome-marks.’

  He gave a sceptical grimace. ‘The map on this very boat said Maris Island was uninhabited, and then we found out that Bellis Harrow had put an army there.’

  ‘In all fairness, it is a very old map.’

  ‘So nobody knows the islands very well, right? I mean, not even Leyland knew, and he considered himself an expert.’

  The mention of Sean’s wicked relative made Arden bristle, and her reply a touch too forced. ‘Mr Ironcup, I am more than certain Libro Island is our destination. Bellis took a Libran girl as a prisoner, and we have suffered equally under her tyranny.’ She tried to give a comforting smile. ‘They are farmers like yourself. You’ll find a home among them, I’ll make sure of it.’

  Even in her impatience, Arden still tempered her feelings, tried to be kind. Sean Ironcup knew she disapproved of him, of what he’d done to her when under the wing of his family – and of his relationship with David Modhi. He had taken a great many choices away from David’s future. As a sanguis ignis David would have been welcomed in Clay City. He did not have to throw in his lot with a Hillsider criminal.

  Sean’s hand trembled, a tell for his anxiety. ‘I wonder … Would there be a chance while we are there …’

  ‘A chance of what, Mr Ironcup?’

  ‘Of finding my sister Helena. If we made a small detour to Equus, we might be able to track her down.’

  Arden sucked her teeth and gave Sean a pained smile. ‘Like I explained before, Equus Island is far too much a dangerous place for any of us. Even if we don’t have someone from Bellis’ crew recognize us, we cannot put this boat or any of us at risk among such desperate people as Equus prospectors and pirates. I am also still quite vexed about the whole attempted murder thing.’

  Undeterred, Sean pressed on. ‘I only want to confirm Helena’s safety, Mx Beacon. Maybe send a message? I know she would never leave Gregor, but her children need to know their mother is all right. I could not care less about the other two. They can become kraken-food for all I care.’

  A sea-spray kicked up as the boat dipped into a wave-crest. Arden brushed aside a damp lock of hair from where it tickled her eye. ‘All right. When we get to Libris, I’ll see if we can arrange someone to make inquiries.’

  Sean opened his mouth to speak more and then uttered no sound. His head tilted.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Is there something out on the water?’

  She frowned, and suddenly remembered her reason for coming out. ‘Merrows?’

  ‘No, a ship is out there. A big one!’

  Arden listened, to little effect. Sight was her talent – she had ears no better than anyone else. Strangely, her navigationer’s sight seemed reduced in this darkness, as if a black veil had been draped about them.

  Sean didn’t bother to explain, instead thump-limped on his staff towards the lantern house. ‘Our engines are stilled. We need to get a musket-flare up,’ he said urgently. ‘We need to hail them, so they can avoid us.’

  Gradually the sound came across the dark water. No splash and whip of a craft at sail. Not the shallow beat of a wheelboat either. This one had a deep rhythm of long pistons through a big engine block. The stars winked out just above the horizon.

  Over by the rope-chests, a small musket-flare clicked in Sean’s best hand. He clumsily loaded a phosphor cartridge into the breach while using his armpit for leverage. His tongue poked out in concentration.

  ‘Can you see it?’ he grunted mid-load. ‘Are they close?’

  ‘I can’t see anything. I should be able to, but I can’t …’

  The air stilled. A feeling of something coming close, yes, but nothing in the silvery night apart from the disappearing stars as if—

  Ard
en gasped, lunged at Sean and snatched the musket out of his hands.

  ‘What in God’s …?’ Sean protested.

  ‘Shush! Quiet!’

  ‘We need to warn them that we are here …!’

  ‘Quiet!’

  With a cry of alarm Arden threw her arms about both Sean and a nearby post, else they would have been toppled by the great grey bow wave. There was no time to fire up the boilers again and away. The death-grey ship passed right by them with barely inches to spare. Saudade rocked wildly.

  A lungful of the ship’s paying load hit her and Arden reeled. That volatile stink of petralactose and rusting iron. Rockblood filled the ship like a wound might fill with infection. In the darkness the hull had no colour, only a flat moon-shadow grey.

  Through the mist and the lantern glow Arden stared wordlessly up at the rusting flanks of the old iron craft as it slipped by. Sean dropped the flare-rifle and hugged the post until the rocking faded.

  ‘Is it gone?’

  ‘It’s gone now.’

  ‘What was it?’

  A door clanged open as David fell out. By the way he held his head the near-collision had thrown him off the couch. ‘Did something hit us?’

  ‘We were nearly capsized!’ Sean shook his fist at the dark water in protest. ‘The boat pilot tried to run us down!’

  Arden ran to Saudade’s stern and squinted into the night. The lightless boat had disappeared into the gloom, the engine a distant receding thrum. No craft followed behind them. She turned back to where David comforted the Hillsider lad as best he could, but Sean was having none of it.

  ‘Was that ship trying to run us down on purpose? Are we being hunted?’

  ‘No pilot crewed that ship, Mr Ironcup,’ she said tartly, and shook the water off her coat.

  ‘It makes no sense!’ Sean still trembled from the near miss. ‘How can it not have a sea-pilot?’ He turned to David Modhi for confirmation.

  ‘She’s right, Sean. If that was a ghost ship out of Equus, there would have been nobody on board. Not a living soul. They are like clockwork, wound up once and then keep going until the metal turns to dust and sinks into the waters.’