Arden nodded in agreement. There had been days in old history, where a thousand captainless ships out of Equus had operated in a chain, one behind the other. Automated iron tombs filled with rockblood. The undead instructions might last forever, but metal was certain to fail eventually. Ships would sink, or get carried north by storms. There were perhaps less than a hundred rockblood ships out there now.
‘But how is that possible?’ Sean asked.
Arden picked up the rifle from where Sean had dropped it, took the flare cartridge from the breech and checked the paper was still intact. Then she looked at Sean.
‘It’s an obscure bit of Clay City folklore, but have you heard the story of the Saint of the Islands?’
Sean shook his head. ‘I thought when they said the Sainted Isles they meant the Redeemer …’ he said, referring to the messianic figure who’d drowned and resurrected from a lonely pirate rock.
‘According to my father, the Lyonne Order centuries ago exiled a very powerful bloodworker onto Equus,’ she explained. ‘Someone who made all the rockblood pumps and refineries, the clockwork ships. Set them going forever. Many sanguinem can have more than one endowment, a greater talent and a shadow talent.’ She tapped her chest, then shrugged at the thought. ‘Every once in a while some individuals can have two very powerful ones.’
‘Sanguis orientis and sanguis mandatum,’ David interjected, wanting to prove himself knowledgeable, for he’d have no doubt heard the tale from the Black Rosette traders back in Vigil. ‘Direction and Instruction, but combining to form something new, something that can keep machines going forever and men compelled to work them!’
Arden nodded. ‘That’s the talk around dinner tables, when the sherry makes an appearance and the adults think the children are in bed.’
Sean frowned. ‘I’ve never heard of mandatum … or orientis for that matter.’
‘Nobody has, not really,’ Arden said. ‘They are drunkard’s myths more than anything. Had I not learned about archival sanguinities in my academy history classes, or seen Bellis-damn-Harrow work orientis on twenty men—’ She snapped the flare-rifle shut. ‘I’d not have bothered to remember them.’
Arden locked the rifle away, and put the paper cylinder back with its two other remaining cartridges in a box that had once held closer to thirty.
‘Because of this saint’s talents, an automatic ship can still work after all this time?’
‘Yes, if the metal still holds. Because of the two instructions. We are on a path far from Equus, thank goodness, but we may still cross more than just a lone corpse-boat and must keep watch.’
A new terror dawned upon Sean. ‘It is a sin.’ He grabbed David’s elbow, to impress upon him the gravity of his words. ‘It’s a sin, David, to give life to something inanimate, to play God!’
‘It is the economy of rockblood and the petroleum islands,’ Arden corrected him, as she locked the gun box tight. ‘These are sightless lands, Sean. Especially for me. Something is getting in the way of my vision. Let me decide who we signal or not from this point, all right?’
Sean pouted, but succumbed to David’s hugs and pleas for understanding.
‘I am right. Now be gone, little devils. I’ll take this shift. We may have a long night ahead of us, if we are on an orientine sea-road.’
After the two young men begrudgingly took their leave, Arden climbed into the wheelhouse. The moon showed as a hard little dot high above the horizon. A collection of spindly shapes moved through the water beside the boat in silver reflections that could only be a plesiosaur pod, coming to the surface to feed upon the shoals of fish that followed behind the lich-ship’s wash. The kraken would soon follow as the great apex predator of the Sainted Seas. She knew she should by rights have let one of the pair take the morning shift as she too had hardly slept. However, the sudden appearance of the ghost ship had filled her with an undertow of concern. Something worrisome in the way they’d crossed the perimeter between mapped land and the unknown so quietly in the night.
Arden reached into the pockets of her skirt and took out one of the few possessions she had taken with her on her flight from the mainland. The iron ring from the promontory beach, the one cast in the shape of a giant sea-serpent, ridden by the small figure David had identified as the Deepwater King. An almost unbearable weight was on her. Grief and duty. She pressed the iron to her lips.
‘I’m on my way, Jonah,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll give you the prayer soon.’
David’s footfall caused the ladder’s creaks as he made an unannounced entrance into the wheelhouse. Arden, still holding on to the old relic, slipped it back into her pocket.
‘Two brandies and an opium tincture in quick succession,’ David said. ‘Sean’ll be right come morning.’
‘I rather thought I ordered everyone go to sleep,’ Arden said, rearranging the olive fabric of her oiled skirt as she sat up. The cold weather tended to make the fabric stiff, and the kraken-oil heater at her feet was set to Riven levels of warmth – which was to say, barely above freezing. Even if she’d managed to get one of the ignis lights going, ignis flame burned cold. With a pang of regret, Arden wished Chalice were here. Even as a spy pretending to be a keeper’s assistant, Chalice Quarry would never have let a heater burn down. Arden imagined Chalice in her stormbride dress, spluttering with indignation, red hair awry, hauling a stove into the wheelhouse.
‘Can’t sleep any more, Mx Beacon. Too many things going around in my head.’
‘Likewise, Mr Modhi. At least our sufferings won’t be for much longer. Once we start up the engines at first light, we could be in Libro by suppertime tomorrow.’
He shot her a tight expression before kneeling to warm his hands on the heater. ‘If you say so.’
‘They will give us shelter, David. When I was a brief guest of Bellis Harrow on Sehnsucht, I saw a servant girl who called herself Persephone Libro. She will have a family, and a real name. A family who will want to know she is still alive. We will bring them glad news of their daughter.’
‘Mx Beacon, if Bellis has already taken Libran prisoners, they may no longer have safe harbour to provide us.’
‘Still a safer harbour for us than a desperate place like Equus, with ten thousand men all scrapping over the same patch of dirt. Taking one prisoner does not mean she’s taken them all.’
‘I’m just trying to keep an open mind.’
‘David, if a man must stay up and whisper doubts in my ear, he can also fetch me some tea in the meantime.’
The young man smiled tentatively and stood at the doorway but lingered, not quite finished.
Arden exhaled impatiently. ‘Speak, Mr Modhi.’
‘Mx Beacon,’ David started with hesitation in his words. ‘You told me Mr Riven asked for a prayer in his memory?’
‘Yes, for the Deepwater Rite, or as close as I can come to it. At the time I didn’t understand what he meant by a prayer. So specific. But I had a lot of hours to study the old Island mysteries while I was recovering at Mrs Sage’s apartments. Her husband was translating medicinal journals from Fictish to Lyonnian. He had several old books. I suspect Mr Riven didn’t mean just a prayer, but a ritual.’
‘I have heard of it.’
‘Yes. Your mother more than once spoke of the shorefolk rituals in her intelligence-gathering letters. Ishmael Cleave had the Rite performed in his memory, the night before the massacre.’
‘I just don’t think it’s safe,’ David said, shaking his head. ‘It’s a hard service. Back home we’d get fisherfolk coming into the harbour with hands and limbs missing because they’d called up something huge during their funerals.’
‘Monsters?’
David nodded.
Arden rolled her eyes. ‘With due respect, I’m not going to secure the help of a rum-addled sailor who can’t keep his hands inside a boat while performing the rite, David. We are going to islands where the old religion still holds. Equus might have been poisoned against the deepwater ways by the rockbloo
d industry, but even I’ve heard Libro never suffered like they did. It’s a peaceful and spiritual island. I can find a priest on Libro who remembers the old ways. I’ll exchange the last of my Lyonne gold for them to complete the ritual on Mr Riven’s behalf. Will that be a problem? If it is, tell me.’
Taken aback, David swallowed. His apple jumped in his throat.
‘I would do anything for Mr Riven. But I can’t understand. Why even come all the way out here for a prayer? Why not go home to Lyonne, and pay a priest there? Sean tells me that the God of Clay and the Deepwater King aren’t that different.’
‘Maybe the gods are not different in a Hillsider’s opinion. But I’d know the difference.’
He pointed at her hands. ‘Those coins are hurting more every day. I saw what happened to your uncle, Lightkeeper Jorgen, when he decided he wasn’t going to do what the Lions told him any more. He lost feeling in his hands, they turned black with sepsis and he died. You don’t have much time left either.’
Not wishing to meet his eyes, Arden plucked a pilled thread from where the fabric wore down at the knee-line of her skirt. She noticed at once how her fine finger skills took much more effort. No, she did not have time. Eventually she would lose the use of her hands and become a liability to her own survival, but she had yet to think much beyond that.
Refused, even. Not until she’d given Jonah his due.
Morning had yet to find the boat. A greenish light on the southern horizon spread higher than the permanent storm. An aurora’s mantle, she thought. Of all the bad-luck omens.
She lifted her head. ‘It is true, I can’t live out here. But when I pay Jonah his last respects here it will be me doing it. Of my own volition. Once I go back to Lyonne I am a sanguis, a cog in the Lyonne Order’s great machine. I will be no different than that pilotless ship, carrying out instructions laid down a century ago.’
She pressed her hands together. They hurt, but it was a more welcome pain than the fog of grieving, and the regret that would follow her always, were she not to do this.
‘Why is fitting in so bad, Mx Beacon? It would be nice, to belong somewhere, be part of something.’
‘If I were you, it would be wonderful. And it would be, if ever you were to change your mind and go. But I fear when I go back to Lyonne, I’ll forget what it’s like to be me. I’ll forget him. Then Jonah will truly be lost, and he will never find his way back to the cathedral of the King. I’m already responsible for the death of his body. I’ll not allow the loss of his immortal soul.’
David looked at his feet, then nodded. ‘Doing it for him, then.’
‘Yes. So go on, Mr Modhi. Fetch me some tea and join me for the sunrise, for Libro is waiting for us.’
2
The sea gods were malicious
The sea gods were malicious, for on sunrise when Saudade came to pull anchor and fire up the kraken-oil engine, the boilers refused to catch alight. Arden pumped the priming handle for all it was worth, and received not more than a spark for her efforts. The four great pinions that steered both side wheels and screw groaned piteously in their valve seats.
‘What’s the matter?’ David asked when he pushed his dark tousled head into the wheelhouse. ‘Daylight’s here. Shouldn’t we be on the move?’
Arden made an impatient gesture at the priming handle. ‘We have been stymied by physics, Mr Modhi. I cannot get the engine started.’
David pondered the handle. ‘It may be the oil seats down in the engine block. It shouldn’t take long. I’ll go and tighten them, and we’ll be on our way before breakfast.’
David’s confident appraisal of their problem didn’t shake her doubts. For all that Saudade had been repaired by Mr Fulsome in the Vigil docks several weeks before, there were a myriad little things that could go wrong with a boat left abandoned on a storm-tossed sea for over a month. Saudade had spent a long time alone, knocking about with the whales and sea-rays before a fishing boat had towed her in.
The devils of misfortune and the salt water had, in that time, found their way in through the vessel’s nooks and crannies. It was not an ailment particular to these waters. The same happened to the Clay Portside wharves that were rarely used and fell into ruin. Desertion made them haunted.
David’s best experience in engine repair had been with the small single-stroke generators at Mr Riven’s promontory lodge, not with twelve massive valve chambers as mysterious as a thief’s maze in a Pharaoh’s tomb. At full sun-up they had yet to find a solution for their stilled engine, and Arden admitted that Saudade was now adrift.
The boys didn’t give up trying to fix her, so, jangled with anxiousness, Arden had nothing else to do except pace the deck, and shuffle through all the scenarios of rescue she could think of. Though they were in neutral waters, she still half-expected to see the big Lyonnian clipper from two days before. It had pursued them a short time after they’d left the mainland, only turning away upon the sunset when Saudade had crossed into the Darkling Sea.
‘Devilment,’ she said to the empty air. ‘Don’t let me get to a point where I start wishing for Lions.’
No other craft disturbed the flat expanse of the north-passage sea-road. The wind remained a fair easterly one and the weather stayed kind. The fauna of the ocean did not bother with this black mangrove wreck upon their watery kingdom. In the afternoon sun Arden saw a large shadow pass under the ship – she feared a great shark or sea-dragon until recognizing it as a giant armoured isopod, tumbling lazily below Saudade before moving on upon a cold, hidden current.
David and Sean took the kraken-oil engine completely apart, fashioning a block and tackle upon the forecastle deck, disinterring brass levers and glass oil-cups the size of a man’s ribcage, ceramic rings wrapped in copper wire, valve seats of a tough black rubber, worked around pistons as large as rum barrels at the end of tree trunks.
By the late afternoon, the combined wisdom of the ambassadors of Clay Hillside and Vigil were stumped by the engine’s complexity. David threw Arden an apologetic glance and shook his head.
‘We might wait for someone to come along,’ he said at last.
‘That could very likely be the Lions,’ she said. ‘Or pirates. If you can’t fix the engine, at least get the parts back together again in the engine bay. We can’t afford to lose a piece over the side.’
The drowsy day with its hint of chill at last got the better of her, and she left the wreckage of the decks for the relative quiet of Saudade’s dark below. She did not mean to nap, but the sound of the waves heaving against the hull, the faint camphor of the rare wood and the low lights behind the yellow sconce-glass made her drowsy as if she’d taken opium. She lay upon the ray-leather chaise longue without removing her boots, and the ship rocked her to sleep …
… until a whooping cry from David snapped her awake.
Disoriented, Arden sat up. Boats, he was yelling. There’s boats!
Boats? Her competing desires jostled for attention. Had the Order found them?
Upon making her way outside, she found Saudade was no longer alone on an empty sea. During Arden’s unplanned afternoon nap a small flotilla of sloops and yachts had come upon them. One sizable paddleboat bore a yellow flag. Clay City, but it was not an Order flag, or a nautical flag. These were civilians, which meant they could be anyone.
‘Hoy,’ David shouted. ‘Hoy!’ He lit a saltpetre cartridge, sending lurid red smoke careening over the decks and off with the wind. ‘Over here!’ The cold pink eye of a phosphor flare hung in the mist above.
Devilment! He was not a Beacon ignis with her family’s brilliant eyesight, so David couldn’t have even seen who he’d signalled. He’d lain out the best tableware! In a hurry Arden righted her waxen skirts and fastened her boots before leaving the wheelhouse, preparing to scold him.
David’s expression was luminous as he turned towards her. ‘I think they saw us,’ he said joyfully. ‘We’re saved!’
Almost speechless with disagreement, Arden pointed at the signal smo
ke as it drifted over the water in a red tail.
‘Saved by who? Now they know we’re vulnerable, and look at them – they are all from Lyonne! Have you boys no sense, David Modhi, Sean Ironcup? You tell me to be careful!’
David pouted. ‘We are vulnerable. We need their help.’
‘We don’t even know these people.’
Arden looked down at her hands, and all the cautions of a lifetime came over her. She yanked off her flame-embroidered fingerless gloves, and dived into her dress pockets for a roll of crêpe bandage.
‘Quick, help me tie the bandage on. Over my coins. We need to hide them, fool!’
David, having expected gratitude, gave her a baffled frown, did what she asked. Once bound she grabbed his hand and turned his arm over. Most of the small cuts could be passed off as common engineering injuries, but in one instance she could see he’d deliberately inserted a phlebotomist’s needle into a vein, bruising his skin in such a shockingly obvious blood draw even a commoner could see it.
‘Roll those sleeves down,’ she said urgently. ‘I’ll do the same. My hand wounds are rope burns from hauling up the engine. You cut yourself on glass, by accident. Other than that, let me do the talking. Understand? Not a word to them. Tell Sean.’
‘Won’t we get preferential treatment if we say we’re sanguinem?’
‘We won’t get anything. Have you been listening to what Sean has said of what Hillsiders think of rich bloodworkers? David, in my home city, sometimes people can’t find work because one of us has replaced a hundred of them! We may be the entire reason the people over there have been forced to make this fool journey out to this excremental place!’
By David’s face she could tell they’d not had such a discussion. Arden shook her head. ‘Just go get Sean and tell him to keep his mouth shut. Disguise those cuts and let me handle this.’
Chastened, he ran for the cabins, to prepare Sean for their visitors, and inform him of his required silence.
She slid her gloves into one of the roomy pockets of her dress, before checking the honey-wax seals on her hands. If she didn’t do anything strenuous, she would not bleed through the coins and give away her disguise.
Deepwater King Page 5