Deepwater King

by Claire McKenna

  In her mind Jonah dragged her onto the stony beach when she had been half-dead from blood loss, irretrievably gone, or so she had thought before he called something to shore. The intimacy and violation tasted like salt in her mouth, the memory so raw she wanted to gasp at it. They had done something there, baser than lovemaking, an act so desperate and violent for a moment she’d thought him transformed into one of the very monsters he had called up.

  ‘But there’s so much more to the deepwater ways than a few muttered words. The King exacts terrible payments. To do the ritual properly would take days. You would need to give yourself over utterly, surrender yourself, know despair and sacrifice and sorrow and …’

  ‘I’ll do anything,’ she said, and in her mind she thought of the Harbourmistress’ letter to the Lions, a detail of the funeral of Ishmael Cleave, Thalie Riven cutting herself open to summon the King.

  He trailed off, his cadaverous face absent with memory. When he spoke his breath whistled through a crooked tooth. ‘Love makes you speak rashly.’

  She jerked her hand away.

  ‘I never told you that I loved him.’

  ‘It is written all over your face. To guide your lover to the halls of the King would require a sacrifice.’

  He observed Arden with the coolness of one of his icons, and mysteriously a flicker of light appeared in the cavern of his eye pits.

  ‘What sacrifice? Blood? I can give blood.’

  ‘Not blood. It’s meaningless to Him, He gets enough. Love. Yes. He will take that from you, if He has not already done so.’

  He reached out again and caressed Arden’s hand, and what had before been damp and dry was now cold, and wet. The voice that issued from the priest seemed changed. Husky, deeper and low with seduction. ‘Would you lie with an intermediary of the King, surrender your body to Him to pay the sacrifice? Would you part your legs and soul and take the King into your body? Will you forget your lover and let Him take you?’

  Taken aback by the sly rasp in his voice, Arden snatched back her hand and stood up. ‘I think not!’

  The smell rose up again, kraken-musk and the cadaverine stink of dying, as if a third body had squeezed into the darkness and watched their proceedings.

  ‘Too late … it is already done. You lost your love for the man the moment you set foot upon Equus. The King has already seen your face. He will have you in the darkest ways, Arden Beacon, whether you want Him or not.’

  Gulping air which had become as thick as seawater, Arden slammed her way out of the confessional. Had the priest reached over and touched her in her most intimate place, she would not have felt so molested as she did right then.

  Chalice stood up as Arden approached.

  ‘What happened?’ Chalice asked, her fists clenched as if ready to fight. ‘Did he hurt you?’

  ‘This was idiotic,’ Arden snapped at her, struggling to hold back angry tears. ‘I was thoughtless in believing you actually knew a proper deepwater priest here and not a common Clay ghoul making a clumsy sexual pass! There’s nothing here, Chalice! I’ve wasted time, and put everyone in danger, for nothing, nothing at all!’

  Chalice kissed her teeth as she followed Arden into the breezeway and onto the stinking streets.

  ‘Darling, we were always chasing believers in a god whose people either died out or scattered to the four winds. At the back of your mind, you must have known this.’ She ran to catch up.

  Arden stopped and whirled on Chalice, a fight upon her tongue. The religion was alive, it was alive and terrible beneath the cassock of an excommunicated Clay City priest and drawn on the skin of Malachi Abaddon.

  But if it existed, its entry was an emotional labyrinth Arden could not enter. All it took was a priest speaking of profane intimacies, and she was lost, stymied and afraid to go further, to enmesh herself into a world that might not exist.

  The priest’s words had not been lecherous. They had been exactly what was required by a religion washed in oceanic violence, and she had fled at the speaking of them.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Arden said, defeated. ‘I’m being overemotional and irrational. I know you tried your best, Chalice. It’s not your fault I couldn’t do what was required.’

  ‘I understand,’ Chalice replied, rubbing Arden’s arms. ‘It’s been a dreadful few days and you’re completely worn out by all this.’ Chalice waved her hands about.

  ‘He knew too much. About me and Jonah. That’s all. Asked too much of a price. I panicked. Jonah’s memory is the only thing keeping me together at the moment. I fear if I lose it, then I’ll lose myself.’

  Chalice hugged her, forgiveness on her face. Arden returned the hug, but could not get the priest’s words out of her head. Love. He will take that from you.

  ‘Come back to Lord Abaddon’s and get a night’s rest,’ Chalice murmured. ‘Sean should have hired men to repair the boat. By tomorrow we will be on our way to Lyonne, and the sweet air of home will take the sorrow away.’

  Arden stepped back and shook her head.

  ‘I can’t go back home without having done something for Jonah. You know that. That was our deal, remember. If I go now, he’ll haunt me forever.’

  She’d never seen such a look on Chalice’s face as she did then, wrenched with hesitation and resolve. Chalice took Arden aside from the curious onlookers smoking cigarettes from high balconies, into an alley.

  Overhead, hot incandescent wires buzzed inside a glass globe the shape of a persimmon.

  ‘What is it?’ Arden asked, concerned by the way Chalice had slipped into such a severe mood and what it meant for what came next.

  ‘Before I worked in Vigil with you, I was a stormbride in Harbinger Bay, with Lightkeeper Pharos. We would often watch the shorefolk of South Lyonne enact their own ceremonies to the deepwater gods, along the beaches south of the estuary.’

  ‘Your stories are of no help to me right now,’ Arden wearily complained.

  Chalice’s fingers dug into Arden’s forearm. ‘They would burn the boat of a dead man. Something he owned, often with him on it. Put it on the water and set it alight. We saw the shorefolk funerals from the lighthouse. A gift to their own Deepwater King. They worshipped Him differently, but they still gave Him devotion as best they could.’

  Arden stilled. Chalice’s hands slipped down into hers.

  ‘No,’ Arden said. ‘His boat comes back with me.’

  ‘And what does a dock girl do with a boat too heavy to get past the canals of Clay Portside? Let Saudade flounder on a wharf until the borers eat her into paper? Would she sell Saudade like chattel so other hands might turn her into a messenger boat?’ Chalice gave a sad smile. ‘They’d strip that old girl to pieces for the black mangrove wood, sell her treasures bit by bit. If Jonah’s soul is in that boat, think of him torn apart, disrespected, hmm? Think how he would prefer to dispose of his earthly remains if he had the choice.’

  Arden leaned back against the brickwork. She had thought about it, every moment Mrs Cordwain’s pilgrims were walking all over the deck, every time she had touched the wood, or smelled the oud of the black mangrove when in the cabins.

  Above her, rust-scented rain threatened to break through the constantly shifting canopy of clouds. A few coppery drops fell on her cheek. The boat was the only thing Jonah loved before Arden—

  Her thoughts stopped. They’d never known each other long enough to speak truly of such things as love. Jonah had feared Arden would abandon him once she’d worn out her curiosity. Maybe he even died doubting her commitment to him.

  What kind of thief would she be, discarding Saudade, or selling Saudade, or leaving Jonah’s boat to rot in some inland harbour?

  Chalice let Arden’s hands go.

  ‘Perhaps it’s too much, darling,’ Chalice murmured apologetically. ‘Forget I spoke.’

  ‘Wait,’ Arden said quietly. ‘Perhaps, it’s not too much. Everything that is left of Jonah is in the wood and beams of that boat, and everything you’ve said is true. I need to think a
bout what to do with her, in a way that honours him.’

  ‘It was only a suggestion.’

  ‘It’s a good one, Chalice. I think … I think it might be how I deliver him back to his King.’

  ‘Then let us get to the safety of Lyonne, all of us. Make your decision once we are on familiar shores.’ Chalice nodded in determination. ‘In the morning we will leave this place.’

  7

  Arden woke later in the true

  Arden woke later in the true night – she supposed it was that, for the light through the lower windows had changed from the dull yellow to a dark, chemical scarlet.

  She sat up from the too-soft mound of cushions, disoriented momentarily. The night was animated with scents and sounds, the murk and shudder of the river below them, the distant roaring of the pumps and derricks piercing the brittle limestone earth, the pestilent hum of Burden Town. A hot breath of air puffed in through a slightly open window, not quite so tear-jerkingly rancid with fumes. The wind had turned about, bringing in a sea breeze heated by warm currents.

  Was it time to go?

  Deeper in the house a clock chimed twelve times, followed by its stolen brothers. Arden sighed from disappointment. Too many hours. It was midnight still, and dawn was at least six hours away. The old talents of the nameless saint pressed all around her, making every muscle tense with anxiety. Arden could sleep no more. She had dreamt of Saudade burning, and she was certain it was no trick of her mind, it was her future, clear as day.

  Chalice snored with an epiglottal burr beside Arden, a book tumbled off her lap. Arden slipped a thumb under her fingerless glove and absently rubbed her aching hand, considered waking Chalice up. Her own thoughts seemed too much to bear right now, that place where Jonah’s image faded as if through darkened glass. Could she really destroy Saudade on behalf of a dead man?

  As she lingered over Chalice, Arden heard someone moving about one of the adjoining rooms of ill-gotten gains. Mr Le Shen, still awake.

  She recalled how he had studied the religions of the coast dwellers. He would have more to say about her intentions, even advice. How to approach them. What to ask.

  Arden pulled her boots on and quietly stepped out into the corridor. In the dim light she collided with a side table and sent a mismatched pile of Lyonnian lead crystal vases clinking. Stolen treasures that Lord Abaddon had collected from his desperate arrivals. Their facets flashed silver, as from a high clerestory window the full moon was shining through the parted clouds.

  Once the table had stopped trembling Arden let it go. She stepped through louvre doors and into the high room that served as the library. The space was taller than it was long, with a small mezzanine level made accessible by a corkscrew staircase. Like the front foyer it contained yet another thieved trove of payments and taxes. Fur coats and embroidered dresses hung on an ornate clothes dresser, polished shoes, jewellery, clocks and pocket-watches, precious mechanical devices. Most of all, books.

  Mr Le Shen slumped, snoring, at a desk at the back of the room. He had fallen asleep upon his forearms, one water-damaged tome still open from a pile. She turned down the lamp at his face and let him be.

  Before she turned away, a thunk from above caught her attention. A huge moth was up there, caught in the clerestory, and it batted its furry, mouse-sized body against the high glass windows with a constant, aggrieved stutter. She stepped quietly up a curled staircase of iron to a low mezzanine, reached up on tip-toes and pushed the window-lever open so it might escape.

  After securing the window closed, Arden found more books stacked haphazardly alongside things more suited to children. Delicate porcelain dolls still bearing the marks of having been dumped in greasy water and recovered, string-toys, cutlery to feed babies. She swallowed an ache of concern, for there was no place on Equus for children yet desperate, rockblood-enchanted parents had still brought them here.

  She had seen no children on the streets of Burden Town.

  He will take the love from you.

  She covered her face and crouched in the moonlight, waiting for the wave of loss to wash over her and pass. Jonah, she thought. I shouldn’t have come here.

  When she raised her head to wipe her eyes Malachi Abaddon sat in a corner of the mezzanine that had been empty before.

  ‘Hello,’ he said in an oddly clipped accent. ‘Don’t mind me.’

  Arden forcefully heeled the last of the dampness from her cheeks. ‘A gentleman would have made his presence known!’

  ‘Your business did not look like something I could readily interrupt.’

  ‘Well, we all appreciate good manners.’ She stood up. Since the deepwater priest had rattled her so much, Arden did not want to speak to a boy wearing chevron tattoos.

  But Malachi swung into her path, his blue eyes going silver in the window-gleam.

  ‘As for manners, Lord Abaddon was aggrieved that the expensive meat Harmal served at your greeting meal stayed on the plate.’

  ‘I recall someone signalling me not to eat it.’

  ‘The person the meal once was thanks you, for all that he was a criminal and not worth the sauce he was cooked in.’

  He grinned at Arden’s expression as it dawned on her what he’d meant. ‘Is it really that bad? This town has fallen to cannibalism?’

  ‘Used to get all our food from Libro Island,’ Malachi said. ‘Not now.’

  Of course not. Because if what Chalice had said was correct, Bellis had come across the island of farmers and decimated them. Equus might have survived for a time buying their supplies from Lyonne or Fiction, but the threat of piracy would have made merchants think twice about risking their crews.

  Malachi flicked his eyes towards the high windows. ‘What business did two Lyonnians have in town?’

  ‘Business that was private, and it is done. We are leaving in the morning.’ She stepped onto the iron stair, only to have Malachi slip in front of her again.

  ‘Oh, my lord will be upset at such a quick departure. He has developed a fascination for the Lion who came on …’ He paused, and grinned. ‘Zachariah Riven’s boat.’

  The name took Arden aback. ‘Excuse me, it’s not his boat. Anyway, how would you know of Zachariah Riven? He was a Fiction man, and eighteen years dead.’ She peered at him anew. ‘Which almost certainly pre-dates you.’

  ‘Don’t think me so young. I could count nine winters when he died.’

  Arden examined the catamite’s face. She had thought Malachi young, but that was the emasculation softening his features. Perhaps he really could be a man in his late twenties.

  ‘I knew Zachariah Riven,’ Malachi continued. ‘A shorefolk patriarch from Vigil. His ancestors were brought to the mainland from Equus a hundred years ago. We are somewhat related.’

  Arden peered at him, and knew he was telling the truth. Malachi’s hair was the same shade as Jonah’s beard after a few days without shaving.

  ‘Zachariah divided his time between here and Vigil,’ Malachi continued. ‘He was not afraid of hunting in deep water. Owned three boats, a gold waxwood named Sonder for plesiosaur-running and one white pirate ghostwood called Sehnsucht. Then lastly a boat made when he had secured his fortune. This one hewn in black mangrove, and magnificent.’

  Malachi counted them off on his fingers and he threw Arden a challenging look when he finished.

  ‘That last boat was Saudade. The boat that came this morning into the harbour and from which you disembarked.’

  Arden stepped back from the stair, startled by his words. She noticed how Malachi was dressed in waxed cloth and leather, for a journey. So it was he Arden had heard moving about the library earlier. The satchel slung over his shoulder bulged, and a silver soup ladle stuck out from under one unbuckled flap.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  Malachi brushed back his snarls of copper hair. ‘I am not just a whore to Lord Abaddon. He knows I have fed myself in pieces to the ocean and that sometimes I must return to give fealty.’ He gave a short, sardonic bow
. ‘Otherwise the sea might again rise from the insult and take all of us.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘It’s full moon. Spring tide. We need to summon the Deepwater King to feed His people.’

  Her heart thudded against her chest and her breath came loud. Now it was she who manoeuvred in front of him, to stop Malachi leaving with questions unanswered. ‘Deepwater King? You’re doing a deepwater ceremony? A real one?’

  ‘Is there any other?’ Malachi went to sidle past. ‘I will tell Miah Anguis your greetings, and that Zachariah Riven’s boat has been kept in reasonable condition.’

  ‘Miah Anguis?’ Arden repeated, suddenly aware that she was being lured, and unable to refuse the bait. Below the floor, the chatter of a rockblood engine sounded as a small boat moved through the filthy river beneath them.

  Miah Anguis.

  The man Bellis fears, who drove her from this island so utterly and trounced her so completely she could never return, not even with an army.

  ‘Didn’t your companion ask about Mr Anguis at the table?’ Malachi asked with a sly wheedle. ‘Miah Anguis has been an object of discussion, has he not?’

  ‘I never thought he was a deepwater man,’ Arden said with a shake of her head. ‘He came across as being someone like … like Lord Abaddon. Someone legitimately with power, and in Equus that only belongs to a certain kind of person.’

  She shook her head at her misunderstanding. She had imagined a warlord with an army equal to Bellis Harrow’s, a Lyonnian criminal with weaponry and even a fleet of ships, yet all that Burden Town could produce had been this tatty smuggler and his hired help.

  ‘You believe a deepwater man could not be powerful, Mx Beacon?’

  ‘To be honest, I was told all the true deepwater people had been taken from Equus a century ago. When the rockblood poisoned most of the waters.’

  ‘Some of us get by. We live on the northern shore, keep the old ways. Or find work in Burden Town.’ He gestured about himself.