‘So my dressmakers are guards too. Am I expected to make an escape if I’m left unattended?’ Arden asked flatly.
‘Where would you go if you did?’
Arden didn’t reply, and Mrs Seaworthy stood up, walked to the other side of the longhouse and opened a door.
‘Henrietta,’ Mrs Seaworthy called softly. ‘We’re ready.’
A tall woman entered the lodge, bearing a flax woven satchel. A woman in an embroidered dress of grey wool, with chevrons on her cheeks. It was the same woman who had helped her bathe on the first morning, Mrs Cleave. She projected such an authority Arden halfway wondered if she should stand up at the woman’s arrival.
‘Should have thought it too easy,’ Henrietta Cleave scolded. ‘I actually believed Miah would keep the agreement and let you leave us before he spun ideas about getting married. How on earth did you fumble such a simple restitutio deal, and with him?’
‘I didn’t fumble the deal, Mrs Cleave. The agreement was broken from the beginning. He’s the one who should be driven into the pipelands.’
‘Yes he is. But I come to bring a repair of sorts.’
Mrs Henrietta Cleave sat down before Arden, placed the satchel by her side, and nodded at her. ‘You are Arden Beacon. Your uncle was Jorgen Beacon, of Vigil, and formerly Clay.’
‘Yes.’
‘I knew him,’ she said. ‘He was a good man. Respected among the deepwater folk, and a good friend of Zachariah Riven, who was a distant cousin of mine.’
Of course, Arden thought. It was where Henrietta’s sharp, sea-bitten features came from.
‘So I will talk to you with respect,’ Henrietta Cleave continued. She placed her hand on the satchel meaningfully. ‘Has it occurred to you, Clay woman, to wonder why Miah is unmarried at his age? Why the women have steered clear of his name for twenty years even though they are not averse to brief trysts in the mangrove forest?’
Arden shook her head and rubbed the coins in her hands. They did not pain her. The heel of her hands remained numb, as if the fire had not warmed them up at all. Her anxieties crowded about her, a suffocating weight.
‘He said because you have never properly accepted him.’
‘It’s not acceptance,’ Mrs Cleave went on. ‘We don’t want him married to anyone. Nobody wants him as Deepwater King, or have him replacing my husband, Amos. The monster in him cannot rule this town. Yes, the title was held by Jonah Riven for a night and a day to save his demon Queen, but at least he left when all was done.’
Next to Mrs Cleave, Mrs Seaworthy nodded and made the circle of the serpent upon her chest. ‘Thalie’s son left, and took that devil Queen away from us. She could terrorize the rest of the islands, but she had no place here.’
‘Because of Miah.’
‘Unfortunately, yes. They are a pair, repelling each other. Thank the deep sea gods they shared a hatred from when they were children in Vigil.’
‘Thank those gods,’ Mrs Seaworthy repeated and made the serpent sign again.
‘But that still leaves you,’ Henrietta Cleave said. ‘I have been Deepwater Bride for thirty-five years. Amos is my second husband. I have kept this community alive through all the encroachments of mechanica and sanguis devil queens, I am not about to make way for a helpless Lyonnian interloper who has no control over that man’s worst obsessions.’
‘I don’t intend to stay, Mrs Cleave, married or not.’
‘You won’t. Miah Anguis will not keep you around much longer afterwards.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Mrs Cleave stared at Arden intently, willing her to take with the utmost gravity what she had to say. ‘Only the Bride can challenge the King’s leadership. There’s little you can offer him once the marriage rite is completed except the risk of losing his position.’
‘What – are you saying he’ll kill me?’
Henrietta did not blink. ‘As a man given the abyssal crown he will have utter say over your life and death.’
‘He will not kill me.’
‘Really? He will suffer being second in command?’
‘He still needs my blood to use his power.’
‘The blood. Not the woman.’
Arden must have appeared resentful enough that Mrs Cleave did not linger on the awful outcomes.
‘But there is still a way to survive the ceremony and secure – if not escape, then at least time.’
‘How?’
‘You must run,’ Mrs Cleave said.
‘That’s what I want to do,’ Arden started, then stopped, for Mrs Cleave had opened the satchel and in it were her forbidden sturdy signaller’s boots, cleaned and rescued from the long walk.
‘You’re giving me my boots back?’
‘And your coat. Enough for you to survive that first night unconsummated. He may claim you as wife, but without the first night’s ceremony he cannot claim the position of leader. We are too thorough for that.’
Just as Henrietta said, a krakenskin coat lay folded neatly below the boots. Hers, not Jonah’s, which Arden quite accepted she would never see again.
‘As soon as you are on the bridal beach, get dressed. You have a head start, and you must run far. Grab a stick and beat him if you must, throw your blood-fire at him! Do not let your husband catch you. If he does not catch you on the wedding night, the leadership challenge will be forfeit. He cannot marry you, he cannot be King.’
Someone outside was talking, and Mrs Cleave stiffened and dared not speak further. In the silence Arden’s mind was a whirlwind. Boots, that meant she could run. A beach, far from here, meant an escape.
Mrs Cleave was cunning enough to see the gears turning behind Arden’s eyes. ‘It’s not a complete escape, dear. The wedding will take place here, first. Then the second act, on a small island north of here. One night out of his reach … that is all. Afterwards with the ritual incomplete, another agreement can be made. But my husband will remain administrator of these people, and you may yet have your freedom.’
Arden exhaled. ‘If you think it will work.’
Mrs Cleave nodded at the boots again. ‘They’ll be hidden on the longboat that is meant to take you out. Don’t let Miah see. He will take grave offence that we intend to trick him out of his ambitions.’
She stopped talking as the big otter slid back into the room and let out a bark.
The door opened a few seconds later. Miah stood bulky and tall in the shadows, watching them in judgemental silence.
‘Were you not supposed to prepare a dress, Mrs Seaworthy, and not indulge in idle gossip?’ His eyes went to Mrs Cleave, and anger darkened them. ‘Or you, Mrs Cleave?’
‘Mr Anguis,’ Mrs Seaworthy said hurriedly, leaping to her feet so quickly she knocked over the bench. ‘Your bride is in seclusion. She must not be spoken to.’
Mrs Cleave rose only slowly. ‘I am giving the next Bride advice on her duties to come, Jeremiah. It is no simple task, leading these people.’
‘Leave us for a moment.’
‘Mr …’
‘Get out of here, Henrietta.’
Mrs Cleave give Arden a pointed glance. Mrs Seaworthy had already fled.
Miah came up to the table, took up the hem of the discarded dress. Rubbed it between his fingers before glaring at Arden sulkily.
‘Will you stay here without trouble, or will the cage be better?’
Were it not so ghastly cold she would have rather had the cage. There was no ambiguity there. This warm lodge meant to seduce her with homeliness. She was trapped between Miah Anguis and Mrs Cleave’s warnings.
Too late, she realized the forbidden boots were on the same table as the dress. Mrs Seaworthy had hurried so much that she’d forgotten to hide them.
Arden lunged to him so he might turn about and not investigate the package upon her table, or the knife, or the instruments of her escape. ‘I’m supposed to be in seclusion here,’ she said, snatching the dress up and folding it upon one of the other tables, drawing him away. ‘You impress up
on me all the rituals of your people and then cast them aside to suit your whims!’
Miah snatched her arm and pulled her close to him. The change was in his face, a caul of strange obsession covered his eyes.
‘I called the serpent to the shore,’ he hissed. ‘Me, not Mr Cleave, or any of the men. The Deepwater King moves in me and in my blood. I make the rules, and when you are Deepwater Bride the damn rest of them will follow me.’
‘It must not be much of a following if they can’t elect you naturally.’
‘What were you all conspiring about?’
Arden’s heart raced so hard it would have been impossible for Miah not to have heard.
‘How to be the Deepwater Bride,’ she said sullenly, even though underneath she was jumpy with excitement. ‘Since I have been roped into that position without my consent.’
‘Well, you certainly know the mechanics of that position.’
Her mind boiled over with quick thoughts. Though they were her chosen avenue of escape, she would not rest her entire chance on Mrs Cleave and the women. They all thought her merely a tool, and perhaps that was mostly true.
Miah Anguis will not keep you around much longer afterwards.
But Miah couldn’t be completely mercenary. Even a shark in bloodied waters might have some recognition of its own kind. She took the dive, same as she had on the platform.
‘I know the mechanics of your heart, Miah. When first you spoke of this to me, it was not through sheer ambition, out of wanting to be King. It was a man who wanted not to feel so lonely. You didn’t need to have treated me so abrupt and cruel.’
He scowled. ‘You will never feel towards me the same as you feel towards Jonah. Not while he is alive. Only a fool would continue to hold hope.’
I will run from you. I will run and you will not see me again.
‘These last few days have made me a realist. We can still work something out, you and I.’
She moved close to him. A dark, unbidden passion leapt into his eyes, a confusion of thoughts he’d not allowed himself before. He snatched her up and pressed his mouth to hers, great gasping, hungry kisses she was powerless to fight, so did not.
Then he discarded her, his breath wheezing like a steam train. His hands worked at his belt buckle, and she laid her own numb palms upon his raw knuckles.
‘You must leave,’ she said. ‘We cannot make love. It is forbidden until after the wedding.’
A moment when she thought he’d laugh at her, and mock her small protest. Then he nodded.
‘Until after the wedding,’ he gruffed, and left her standing alone in the longhouse, shivering as if she’d run from one side of Equus to the other.
22
Thunderclouds massed upon the horizon
Thunderclouds massed upon the horizon, great mountains illuminated internally by violet lightning. The sunlight faded long before the day’s end, casting a monochromatic gloom over the rusting hulks of the ghost ships and the thin, hungry coast.
In the fading light the women came for Arden and sat her upon a stool. Mrs Cleave thumbed the skin behind each ear taut, murmured Fictish prayers. The application of the wedding tattoo took a long hour. As a thin line of kraken ink fell down into the bodice of her dress she tumbled over the instructions Mrs Cleave had impressed upon her.
Delay the moment Miah consummated the wedding. Hide for the night. He would be fighting mad, but Mrs Cleave would, with her grateful husband, supply a boat for her when she returned from the ceremony. Because he was not King and leader, Miah could not stop Arden from leaving.
She would go to Maris after this, Arden decided. Even if it was abandoned it would be a start. Someone must have remained to tell her where Jonah had gone.
Mrs Cleave took Arden’s chin in her hands and raised Arden’s face so it might meet her own. ‘Remember,’ she said firmly in Lyonnian, ‘what you have to do tonight. The boots are in the front of the bridal boat, along with the krakenskin.’
The day was late by the time the boats were ready to sail, the sulky sun behind clouds and a song on the wind, the callers of the King. Upon the dock, the young folk gathered to see Arden off in her decorated longboat. David and Sean were among them. Their gloomy expressions didn’t stand out so much among the others. Today was an anxious, waiting day, not a celebratory one.
David took a step towards Arden’s bridal party, only to have Sean catch his arm, hold him back.
Arden took her seat in the bow of a decorated longboat. Miah paced the dock with predatory restlessness, uttered sharp words to anyone that displeased him. She was just as restless, but for other reasons entirely. Her feet could not keep still, as if an invisible music were playing the cacophony of freedom.
Arden’s boat left the harbour first. At an appropriate distance, the captain, a small, sea-bitten woman, switched over to the petralactose motor. A kick of power made the bow rise, and Arden hung on grimly as the boat hauled through the water.
Past Equus, the shallow seas turned grey, and the waters became oddly flat and clear, as if a wave-break had caused it to stagnate into a still, lapping pond. The bride-boat passed over mineralized forms resting just below the water. Arden guessed she might be looking at floating pumice stones or Sargasso shoals, only for Mrs Cleave to lean forward and say, ‘Skeletons. Because of the rockblood and the mechanica, these waters are toxic, and barren of life. It’s why they are so clear.’
She turned to Mrs Cleave, feeling hopeful. ‘Which means it will be hard to call monsters?’
The woman nodded. ‘Exactly. He cannot summon reinforcements where we are going.’ She gave a sigh and then asked over the clatter of the engine, ‘Is it true? Miah says you have a sanguinity that can increase his mandatum talent, that with your help he could clear the mechanica from the island.’
Arden shook her head. ‘All the mandatum in the world won’t make Equus like it once was,’ she said. ‘They were lain in with orientis, too, and that’s hard blood.’
Mrs Cleave closed her eyes and nodded. She seemed a woman well used to casting aside impossible dreams. ‘Then make your flight swift and we will meet again in the morning.’
By eventide a small, mountainous island rose up from the dead waters like the tip of a great sunken castle. Arden’s confidence faltered as she marked its dimensions. It was a small, solitary outcrop close to five miles wide, craggy and desolate. If she didn’t find somewhere to hide within its intimidating vertical aspect, she would have to quickly learn the feminine wiles of manipulating a king.
Devilment, she thought to herself miserably, if I knew how to make a man do my bidding, I’d be Mrs Richard Castile.
‘Mx Beacon,’ said a voice in her ear.
She startled. Mrs Cleave had not spoken this time, only one of the bridesmaids. The former Deepwater Queen had retired to the back of the longboat to unspool the anchor.
The bridesmaid nodded at a package at Arden’s feet. ‘Put on the boots. We’re going to beach this boat. Get ready to run.’
The singers sang the song of the Deepwater Bride, daughter of a wealthy King, who had chanced a shoreline where she was forbidden to go. Arden fumbled with her laces, feeling the boots at once too loose and too tight.
Not so far behind them, the bridegroom’s boat cut its motors and unfurled the black sail.
She had halfway imagined a long, unbroken shore, like the beach at the Clay mouth. Instead, they’d arrived at a dirty, wave-broken scramble like a twin to the ruined coast they’d left, a dump littered with boat parts and broken machinery. Gnarled skeletal remains of tree roots tangled in grey spools at the tideline.
In the setting sun the shadows cast out long and black against the flame-tinged sand. The engine clattered louder, the bow raised, skipped and jumped.
‘Hold on!’ shouted the woman at the tiller. ‘Duck down!’
A dreadful jolt and scrape. Arden’s shoulder rammed into the bow. The bridesmaids let out a collective yelp of protest at the rough landing. The woman at Arden’s back
gave her a push.
Arden snatched up the krakenskin coat and stumbled out of the boat, before splashing through the skim of water. Half-buried debris caught and snagged her feet.
Almost to the second of the groomsboat reaching the shoreline, the sun set behind the island’s great rock. Arden heard the bullroarers behind her, the calling of maris anguis.
Run.
23
In the pelting gloom
In the pelting gloom, her feet fell over a length of iron, and she quickly traced out a ragged edge with her foot. Only a bruise, no skin broken. Her dress caught and frayed.
She pulled off a glove, slipped the wax from a coin, bit into her new healing skin. Foxfire jumped in her palm, a tiny orb of ignis spiritus that glowed no brighter than a gleam of moonlight on still water. Not enough of a light for anyone to see but her own Beacon-sharp eyes.
She stood up and looked around wildly. ‘Gods and devils damn it,’ she said under her breath. The beach had ended as suddenly as if a mountain had fallen there. A sheer slab of extruded granite, stretching into the sky.
In the distance some male voices sounded in song, echoing off the rockwall.
She had to get off this beach. As for shelter, only a narrow copse of black mangroves against the battlement wall of the island mountain provided the slightest cover. She might as well have been put in a box.
I’ll double back, she thought. It’s nearly dark. If I can make my way past the landing …
She came across a small trench in the sand that might have been a creek mouth once, and Arden turned inland to where the dead mangrove trees twisted in their eternal dying. Some animal had left behind a narrow path through the trees. She moved through, willing her breath not so rasp so loudly past her lips.
Through the gaps in the foliage came snatches of lantern-light. The wedding party had set up their tents at their landing spot in preparation for a vigil.
By the morning they would have a King.
Or not.
Make it not, Arden thought fiercely. Make it not.
Deepwater King Page 26