Deepwater King

by Claire McKenna

  The small platform where Mr Cleave had given instruction creaked and hummed.

  This is the place where it ends. You can go no further.

  She climbed onto the watch-platform and lay with her cheek upon the driftwood planks until the night came, and in the dark the petralactose smell began to give way to stale freshness. The moon in the sky, waning.

  Let the Deepwater King take me into His cathedral, let Him take me down to the bottom of His cold, dark kingdom … and let Him return what He has taken.

  She could not even sleep, only lie as if she had been discarded upon the platform the way one would discard bait for a monster.

  Bait, she thought dully. Rolled the word about in her head, fed it to the emptiness in her heart. The sanguis evalescendi in her blood gnawed at her bones. Under the cacophony of mandatum and orientis lurked a deeper, older sensation, a shadow of the deepwater people’s bloodwork when they would pull beasts from the water and the leviathan from his lair.

  She’d felt it the same way she’d felt Mr Stone’s brief potentials with the rockblood in the barrels.

  Her mind threw a memory at her, enclosed in the confessional of the Burden Town priest. I have a talent that can increase that shadow of yours.

  With slow, careful movements worsened by her injuries, she descended down the rusted pipe-ladder. Her necessity only increased as she approached the shore. How exactly had Jonah died? Could she call him back, in flesh or in spirit, the way he’d once called for his stepfather to return?

  She waded into the sloshing, foaming water, found it colder than the air itself.

  Once it reached her waist she grabbed a hank of her hair, cut it off at the root, threw it into the ocean, then with her bodice knife stabbed and stabbed her hands, opening her coins.

  Find him, maris anguis, monstrum mare, Deepwater King. Bring him back …

  Let him come back to life. If he’d been put into the sea, then let the sea return him. If he’d been shackled, then let him slide out of the metal.

  Return him.

  It was not Arden calling the storm, for the oceans required no blood from her, and she hauled off her sodden krakenskin coat and would have walked into the wave if someone had not come behind her and swept her out of the water, half-dragging her back across the wet sand towards the watch-platform.

  She did not want to be carried so, and kicked free. Her intruder dropped her beyond the reach of the water, long enough for her to feel something hump and roil in the sand beneath her palms. The person pulled her up again, and she cried out for Jonah, for his name was the only word that came to her lips.

  A phosphor flare ignited, crimson-bright. Pipework had erupted from the sand, alive, alive.

  ‘Climb!’ the rough voice barked in her ear. ‘Climb!’

  Arden was thrown against the ladder the way someone might haul up a bag of rocks.

  ‘Get up there—’

  Her hands gripped the bars and fell. ‘I can’t, it’s too much …’

  ‘Climb damn you, woman, else we will both end up dead!’

  The platform might have been an unconquerable mountain. She’d climbed it earlier, but she could not climb it again. The days and nights crossing the pipelands of Equus had broken her body. A Fictish curse exploded from behind her, and Arden watched in exhausted remove as the person turned to pull up his sleeves.

  Arden recognized the Riven eyes there, achingly familiar. ‘Jonah.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  Miah Anguis cut himself and sucked the blood from his arm, before spitting it into the darkness. The sand writhed up in broken metal, the arbours and gears of a devil machine. He yelled Fictish words, then once more threw Arden onto the ladder.

  Mandatum, she thought dully. Only a sanguis mandatum could instruct soulless metal like this.

  Weeping with pain and terror, half-supported by the hard thighs and back below her, she climbed. He paused to shower another mouthful of blood at the pipes once more, then came up after.

  Her voice, when it returned, came at a tremble. Her lungs felt as if they were burning each time she sucked in a breath. ‘I did not need saving, sir.’

  Miah seized her shoulders and pushed her against one of the poles, his face in hers, trying to scry the madness in her, his own bloodied mouth a twist of horror. ‘Monster-calling will kill you, Beacon! How can you even try to use the blasted poison when you have not the skill for it?’

  ‘Jonah is still alive,’ she screamed back at him. ‘Days ago he was still alive! There’s still time to bring him back!’

  ‘A blessing that he is gone, woman! There is no funeral promise to keep! If he did not die under your watch, he’s not your business, you’re free of him.’

  ‘Don’t woman me,’ Arden yelled, and dived for the ladder, only to have him grab her about her waist and hold tight. Wrapped her up in the prison of his arms until her struggles turned to puppet-jerks against his thick immovable torso, then to nothing. His blood-scented breath hissed hot on her neck, his heavy pelvis pressed tight against her own. The evalescendi hammered through her body the same way it had done when Jonah had brought her back from near-death. The blood from his cut forearm coursed down her belly and one leg of her kidskin stockings.

  Slowly, the flares faded against the sand. The dark returned and the awful feeling drained away. She no longer yearned for the ocean, and the absence exhausted her. She slumped in Miah’s arms. He did not let go, and somehow she was glad that he did not, otherwise she would have been lost.

  ‘I don’t like restraining a fellow human,’ Miah Anguis hissed in her ear. ‘But I’ll not have a sacrifice to the devil-cogs just to send a love message to my family’s murderer.’

  ‘Then why not use mandatum to ward them off?’ Arden croaked in between her torn breaths. Talking hurt, but she wanted him to know what she had seen.

  He dropped her then, suddenly. Offended terror in that shadowed face. ‘I wasn’t using mandatum,’ he said, the denial too abrupt for Arden not to have been correct.

  ‘I’m sanguis, and I know a bloodworking command when I see one.’

  ‘Sit down. You are having fever-visions.’

  ‘I am …’ she started, then stopped, for there was nothing else she would rather do than collapse and sleep forever. She crumbled like a marionette with its strings cut into a cross-legged heap.

  Miah gave an annoyed curse under his breath that was so much like Jonah she had to squeeze her eyes tight lest she cry into the bargain. He slipped off his dry coat and laid it across her back. She pressed her hands into her eyes until the afterimage of the flare turned green, then looked at her unwanted rescuer. ‘I thought everyone had gone.’

  Miah made a dismissive gesture towards the sand. ‘Someone always stays behind when the encampment moves. Two hundred people are not easily hidden, and someone might follow.’

  ‘What would follow so many out here?’

  ‘Whatever lives in the pipelands. The old copper devil.’

  She pulled the coat around her. It smelled of the deepwater man, both animal and hot and metallic, like iron in a smelter. ‘I thought the big machines couldn’t get past the mangroves,’ she said with a sulky curiosity.

  ‘It doesn’t stop them trying. At least nothing’s out there tonight. That’s a complication we don’t need.’

  The flare burned down to char and cinder, leaving the sands black once more. A gear meshed out of time with a cog, and sparks flew beneath them. The automata screeched like little animals. Miah tested the fuel contents of the rusted red-glass lantern. Managed to get it alight so they were not lost to the immense night.

  The platform turned a deep, louring scarlet.

  Cast as red as a devil in the light, Miah took a leather bladder from a satchel about his torso and unstopped the seal, held it out to her.

  ‘It’s just sweet water,’ he said at Arden’s hesitation. ‘I won’t give you liquor yet.’

  The water was slightly warm and brackish with an undertow of rockblood sulph
ur, but she accepted it without complaint. When she had choked down as much as she could bear, he stuffed the bladder back into the travelling satchel.

  ‘Who brought you here?’ he asked – casually and yet with such urgency she knew this was no small question.

  ‘I walked. When I found out about Jonah, I walked.’

  Her reply was met by a scowl and squint of disbelief.

  ‘From Burden Town? Impossible. The trail goes go through the pipelands. The lich-metal there will turn a body to mincemeat before they go three hundred paces.’

  ‘Well, I saw them.’

  ‘But you were not attacked.’

  ‘No.’

  He hovered on the edge of speaking, thought to say something, then changed his mind. ‘Hmm. Maybe you have a slight sympathy towards, some kind of … hmm.’

  Now Miah didn’t look at her as if she were an annoyance. Something mercenary had appeared in his expression now; perhaps a recognition that she could be useful. He rummaged around in the satchel. Gave her an unleavened bread, a hard cheese, a saltwater melon pickled in vinegar. Took a knife and cut small slices, not enough for her to become ill from eating after so many days without.

  Arden was grateful enough at this unexpected bounty to weep messily as she ate the bread in small bites.

  ‘Who told you my cousin was alive?’

  ‘Lions.’

  ‘Then you should be with them, and not here.’

  She shot him an aggrieved look, full of anger and despair.

  He merely shrugged and passed over a small bladder of liquid again. This time it was kelp spirit, and even though she had not called anything with her bloodwork, the liquor helped quell the pains sparking through her body.

  ‘Eat more, if you can keep it down.’

  Even as she ate, even though her raw, bloodied appearance would have made her quite the horror to look at, she felt his eyes upon her. Those quick, critical glances. ‘This was an unusual path for a woman to take.’

  ‘I just had to get away from them.’ She shook her head. The food had revived her a little, made her thoughts clearer, made her understand how truly lost she had been when she had begun her walk.

  ‘Them?’

  ‘Lions. The Lyonne Order. They wanted me to return to Lyonne.’

  ‘Ah. I suppose they had transport available as well,’ he said roguishly.

  ‘I was not ready to go.’ Her next words came out in a whimper. ‘I can’t go home without him.’

  ‘Like I said, if my cousin survived Bellis, he needs no funeral.’ He cut a melon slice off the fruit and wedged it into his mouth. Spoke with a cheek full. ‘Which made your excursion into the water beyond foolhardy, not to mention your trip out here.’

  She glared daggers at Miah Anguis. Her increasing clarity brought back her sense of self-respect. If she had ever recognized Jonah Riven in his cousin, the quiet strength of him, that feeling had fallen away. Miah was coarse and self-assured in a way Jonah never was.

  Then he stood up with a grunt and squinted out into the black ocean. ‘We might not find out for a while yet if the calling has drawn monsters to shore. If luck holds, they’ll not come at all.’ He nodded inland then. ‘Fortunately the pipelands are quieter tonight. When the light comes we can move,’ he said. ‘It will be a day’s journey to catch up with the village. I can find someone to sail you back to Burden Town by the sea-road. Maybe the Lions have waited for your return.’

  ‘And what about my boat?’

  ‘My boat. We’ve had this conversation.’

  Yes. The conversation, and the wretched agreement he’d proposed. A feeling was growing in her, a decision igniting in her belly that Miah Anguis’ presence had only accelerated like fuel on a fire. An understanding of one of the last things Mr Absalom had said to her.

  Where would we find men immune to Bellis’ powers here, he’d said, or boats fast enough to outrun her Sehnsucht?

  Yes, where? In all her walking, Arden realized she had not been directionless. She had orientation, a goal. She had unconsciously sought out the one person who could help rescue her lover. The certainty grew in her, a single, incendiary purpose.

  ‘Keep Saudade. Help me get to Maris Island. Just put me in front of Bellis Harrow.’

  ‘Huh. Would have been easier to suicide in a Burden Town canal than come all the way out here and ask me to facilitate your undoubtedly quick death at her hand.’

  ‘I wouldn’t die. Not if you came with me. Not if I face her, and you’re around, with whatever talent you have of keeping her at bay.’

  Miah dumped his satchel in front of her crossed legs.

  ‘All right, so you have gone mad. Rest now. I’m not going to carry you back to Burden Town come morning.’

  ‘You are a coward, Miah Anguis!’

  He wagged his finger at her. ‘Now, now, insults only get a person tipped off this platform. It’s not about my cowardice, it’s about me not giving a shit about my family’s fucking murderer.’

  ‘Then if Bellis is so intimidating to you, at least let me know for certain what she did to Jonah. Discard me on Maris and scuttle off back here to hide with your tail between your legs. I don’t give a shit about that either.’

  Miah’s face twisted. ‘Forget going to that godforsaken place! If my cousin is alive, he will not have survived her intact.’

  ‘I don’t ever want to return to Burden Town. You have to help me.’

  ‘Have to help?’ He laughed. ‘You demand so many things. Look at you. Ordering. This island has chewed you up and spat you out, and here you are presuming to give me orders.’

  ‘Bargain, not orders!’

  ‘Bargain? With what?’

  More sparks from below, illuminating the shoreline, and the opaline remains of the serpent. It was true. She had nothing, not even the scant remains of attractiveness, for everything about her was damp and wind-scored and abraded.

  Miah reached for his satchel, prepared to rise, already tired of her. ‘If all I’m going to get is arguing all night, you stay here. I’ll come back at daybreak. It will be safe to move then.’

  Arden watched him going, saw the chance close. She stood up, his coat falling from her, stood in his way as if there was ever a chance she could stop him leaving.

  ‘Take me to Maris, Jeremiah Riven.’

  ‘Don’t call me that name.’

  She took his rough hands in her own. He was immobile as if she were touching a statue, yet inside trembled from an indignant tension. This was the price she always knew she must pay. Her skin turned to stone. Her body had petrified into a lump of granite. Give the Deepwater King what he wants.

  The priest had told her, in the Burden Town alley. Had spoken with the voice of the deepwater god.

  She pressed herself against Miah, ragged and pitiful.

  ‘You offered me Saudade if I gave three nights to you in return. I will give you her and three nights. Tonight, two more. Just take me to Maris when it is done, do what you do to keep Bellis Harrow toothless and help me rescue a man.’

  She fumbled open the sodden ribbons at her salt-stained chemise and bared herself to him.

  Only then did he understand what she meant, and scowled at the clumsy offering.

  ‘You said no to me, before.’

  Spoke those words, but his breath came loud and his voice grinding, his eyes falling to the welts and weals across her neck and torso, the marks of her desperate journey, and how many more irredeemable things she might do before this was over.

  ‘I did not know what I wanted. There is a difference between a ghost and a man.’

  ‘The deal was made once only, and was refused. I won’t make it again.’

  She’d never been much good at seduction. Either too chilly with men or ploughing forward like a demolition ship that was only going to make a mess of things. Still, Arden reached up and around the broad resisting neck. Her muscles cramped and aching, her remaining clothes still stinking of raw petralactose and sweat, and yet determined to win thi
s brute’s will.

  He avoided her mouth as if she were repellent to him, tore her hands from around his neck and held her away, his eyes wide with resentment, at the favour she asked, at all the things she represented, at the tremble that went through his body at her touch. ‘It is too dangerous.’

  ‘For me, or you?’

  A second passed where she feared she had tried for too much with too little, before he released her wrist.

  She met his eyes as she pulled open the leather belt buckle at his waist. This was the moment she would strip herself raw of all the civilized flesh and wear the skin of a wild thing … but something she needed to keep to herself. I will not ever love this man.

  She stroked between his legs as she spoke, as if she were invoking her own gods. ‘Three nights, Miah Anguis. Three times where you take from Jonah what he loved and then you take me safe to Maris so I can get Jonah back.’

  He swelled in her hand. Let him retract his promise and she would take away hers and she would walk into the pipelands, the ocean, shed her blood into the sand, come back as a ghost the way the deepwater people feared. She didn’t care, she was beyond dying. In the glow of sand-sparks Miah’s eyes glittered with a long-buried reckoning.

  ‘Three nights,’ he repeated, hoarse. Desire or surrender, hard to tell. ‘And he will know of it, when we meet again.’

  Even in the dark she closed her eyes and slid down her kidskins. Turned about, upon her knees as a penitent might before a cold image of his god. The iron snagged rough both on her palms. The wind hissed through the metal bars, cold upon her walk-chafed thighs. The waves sloshed. Thankfully, Miah was measured in his act.

  In a distant landscape his hips jolted against her as he searched clumsily for her opening within the dry folds of her quim. Only for the quick, urgent memory of another man did this one’s entry not hurt so, yet still Arden gritted her teeth and exhaled the way she’d needed to do the first time she purposefully used a bloodletting knife to pierce her skin.

  Then the sting of his entry, he was inside her, a hot violation of her body, and the promise was sealed.