I put my mirror in my pocket and dropped through the opening at the prow onto the deck. My feet went clean out from under me, sending me on a skid across the slanting deck until I struck a barricade. It gave in a way that made me scramble back from it. In the dim light that came through the holes around the edges and masts, where the canvas met wood, I squinted at what lay before me. I’d hit the bodies of two rowers bowed over their oar. Shaking, I made the Sign against evil on my chest. Only when I’d caught my breath did I inch closer for a better look. There was sommat strange about the way they sat, bent over, arms stretched out, thrusting on their oars, as if they’d been frozen in the middle of their work.
I moved closer still. Mithros witness it, the oar had grown up and over their hands, holding them there.
For a moment I waited, trembling, trying to work up my courage for what must be done. I scolded myself for a coward, and numbered all the corpses I’d handled. Wasn’t it me that washed Holborn and laid him out for his burial, without a tear? I’d dug bodies out of scummer and sewer water with little more than a kerchief over my mouth for the smell, so there was no good reason for me to falter.
I slid over until my legs dangled in the gap in the wood where the oarsmen sat. Then, carefully, begging the dead mumper’s pardon like he had the ears or the soul to hear me, I reached down to take anything that might be in his pockets.
Sparks leaped up to shock me. I yelped and flinched, brushing the dead oarsman’s arm. Bigger sparks jumped to me, stinging harder.
“Pox and murrain, protection spells!” I snapped. I tried to wriggle away on the ship’s deck. I touched the cove accidentally with my foot and got spark-bit one more time. “Ow! Plague take all mages who won’t lay a protection spell that doesn’t hurt!” At last I thought to use my head. I took my mirror out again and looked about me for magic. Spells of a deep purple color, almost black, coated the ship’s wood and the captive dead. More spells, dull bronze in color, were fixed to the canvas overhead.
“Spells to keep any from picking the pockets of the dead, and spells to keep the ship and the dead from rotting, I’ll wager,” I said to myself. “And never a thought taken for a poor Dog who needs to collect evidence.”
Vexed, I sat back and thought. I needed to explore the rest of the ship. I hadn’t brought a lamp, not knowing the sails covered the deck. I chose to deal with that first, returning to the prow, where I had boarded. There I drew my long knife. Someone had started a cut in the canvas already—last night, mayhap, when folk were looking to see how the ships went down. It even could have been Master Ironwood or Mistress Orielle who had sealed them this way.
Starting at the cut, I dragged my razor-sharp knife through the canvas, down the spine of the ship, admitting what light there was along with the rain. I had to step around a cove who was collapsed facedown on the walkway that ran between the rowers’ benches. From the whip that still lay in his fist, I could tell he was the overseer. It was the deck that held him. It had grown around his feet, and then his hands. I shuddered when I saw it had also grown up around his face. I wasn’t about to try to examine the contents of his pockets. Some other poor mumper could have that chore.
At last I reached the ship’s stern. The wheel gripped the pilot’s wrists in its wood. The rail had wrapped a cove and a mot in its wooden embrace. They leaned forward, pressed down by the sail. When I cut the heavy cloth entirely in half and flung it off of them, they remained bent over, their bodies stuck in that position. From long nights with the healers who worked with the dead to tell Tunstall and me what they’d died of, I knew all of these corpses would remain in their final positions for at least one more day, mayhap two. The priests called it Death’s rigor. I thought it was a curst sad way to be stuck after dying, and prayed that when my end came, I would get caught flat, in my bed.
I poked them, and the pilot, with my baton, with no results. Feeling bolder, I reached out to search the woman’s pockets, if she had them. The moment I touched her skirts, the protection spells sparked out at me, leaving a blister on one of my fingers. I cursed myself blue, for all the good that it did.
Back down the walkway I went, throwing the leaves of sail to either side to lay the deck partially bare. I knew rain would not wash the powerful spells away and I wanted to see the deck more clearly.
At the stern rail I leaned over to see if Achoo had come to sit at the foot of the ladder and stare woefully at me. Instead I looked straight down into Tunstall’s face as he climbed the ladder, his glowing rock shining through his tunic.
“Cooper, you hurt my feelings, running off,” Tunstall called as he swung onto the deck. “Just for that, no chickpeas with eggs and cheese for your breakfast.” He slipped to fall on his back.
“It’s slippery,” I told him, trying not to smile. I have been in some bad places where I have thought that Mattes Tunstall looked like the handsome young god in the stories. This was not quite that bad. Still, I could have kissed him. The place had me well spooked.
Tunstall grunted and sat up. “Now that you warn me, it is slippery.” He set about pulling off his boots and stockings. He tucked his stockings inside his boots and threaded the boot tops through his belt. “What have you found so far?” Tunstall asked, rubbing his knees. Of course they pained him on a day like this.
“Protection spells. Nasty ones that bite.” I showed him the red spots on my hand. “As for the crew, the ship grew up around them on deck, and the sails came down, sealing them underneath,” I said, helping him to his feet. “They were trapped.”
He took his glowing rock from his tunic. I went around to the rail and found a point where the sail had been threaded through an oar hole. Tunstall helped me to pull the cut canvas back so we could see how it was fastened. The cloth came out in a neat strip from the mainsail, went through the oar hole, and wove itself back into the sail, without a seam showing. It made me think of how the wood of the oar, the wheel, and the rail had all come out and around their victims, then returned to the main piece, as if it was their nature to grow around human flesh.
“Beghan,” Tunstall whispered. It was a word in his native Hurdik that meant something like “so bad I want nothing to do with it.”
“We don’t get a choice, remember?” I asked. “We have to follow this trail to its end.”
“I’m hoping the prince’s trail doesn’t stink so bad,” Tunstall muttered as he looked at the oarsmen closest to us. With the sail pulled back he could see the neat bands of wood that locked their hands to the oar. “My skin is creeping. Let’s see what’s below, Cooper. They’re not paying us by the hour.” He walked carefully toward the big hatch at the stern of the ship.
“So far we’ve not been paid at all,” I reminded him, following. “And I can’t say much for the food, either.”
“You could have had my chickpea dish.” Tunstall knelt by the hatch cover and lifted it away to reveal the hold. By the light of his stone lamp we could see what lay below. There were stairs, or a sloping ladder with wide steps, all stained with old blood. Water gleamed at the bottom.
Tunstall turned and began to descend, the lamp lighting his way. Once he was down, I sucked up my courage and followed him.
Tunstall made room for me at the foot of the ladder and held the glowing rock up to reveal the contents of the ship’s hold. A large gap in the keel lay half in, half out of the sea-water that rocked the ship gently. This vessel was not fitted for long travel, but I already knew that, because it was a small galley. There were a few crates, barrels, and sacks placed in the stern and in the shadows of the bow, just touched by the light. Six people lay in bunks fixed to the hull, three on each side. All of them were chained to their bunks. I could see those in the middle and bottom bunks. A hand dangled from one top bunk. The occupant of the opposite one had half crawled out of hers before she had drowned. Seawater had soaked everything down there, clean up to the underside of the top deck.
There was no telling how many others had been aboard. They could have been sw
ept out to sea through the gap in the center of the keel. The hole itself was near twenty feet long and twelve feet wide. I wondered how long the ship had stayed afloat with so much of its keel missing.
I took out my spelled mirror and used it to look around the hull. There was magic laid over everything. “I’ll try to check for anything they might carry, or what’s in the bags, if you insist,” I said to Tunstall. “But it’s spelled. You’ll have to put up with me yelping and whimpering if you do.”
“Hmpf.” Like most of the senior Dogs, Tunstall had learned a lot about magic over the years. “Let me try.” He left the ladder and waded around me, bending down to peer at the body in the middle bunk on my left. He held the stone lamp up so we could both see everything clear.
“A lass, perhaps twelve or thirteen, blond, just blooming,” he said, and reached into the boxlike bed, for her arm, I suspected. “Ach!” he cried as sparks bounced off his arm and chest.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” I asked him. I aimed the mirror at the broken wood in the keel, but it showed me only the thin purple sheet of the protection spell.
“Both ships are alike, Master Farmer told me this morning, except for this one being set up to carry slaves,” said Tunstall. “They had a big enough mage, or mages, to do that thing with the sails and the wood, to trap the crew on deck, then sink the ships, all at once. But we knew that.”
I sighed. “It’s more complicated work than slavers usually pay for.” I shifted Tunstall’s arm so the flameless lamp lit the chain that secured the lass to her bunk. Then I moved his arm up and down so we could see the chains that ran into the top and bottom bunks as well.
“I’ll take that back now, if it’s all the same to you,” my partner told me as he tugged out of my grip. “Where’s your stone lamp?”
“Back in my room. I hadn’t planned to go exploring today,” I replied. “This is a slave ship, Tunstall.”
“Seriously?” he asked me, his eyes wandering over the hold. “I thought it was one of the Carthaki emperor’s pleasure boats.”
I elbowed him. “Did Master Farmer know if the other one is a slave ship?”
He shook his head. “Looked like a plain raiding vessel, he told me. He just knows what he learned from Mistress Orielle.” He looked at my face and sighed, tucking the stone in his tunic. “Let’s go have a look, then, or you’ll pester me to death.”
“I didn’t say a word!” I cried as I followed him up the ladder.
“You don’t have to, Cooper. I know that look on your face. I ought to, by now.”
We stepped onto the deck. Of course, since I’d cut the canvas all the way down, the rain fell onto us without hindrance. Tunstall held his hand over his eyes. “It’s raining harder, isn’t it?”
From his mouth to the gods’ ears, the rainfall poured, sounding like drumrolls where it hit the canvas. We scrambled for the rope ladder, slipping and sliding all the way. Tunstall didn’t even bother to put his boots back on. Through it all the stone lamp kept glowing. Curious, I looked north along the beach as we descended the ladder. It was hard to tell, the rain streaming down as it was, but I will swear on my mother’s grave I could see the great boulder shining even through that.
Achoo leaped at me as soon as I touched my feet to the sand, yipping with glee. Eagerly she washed my face, even though the rain was doing that for her. At least in this downpour the fresh mud had been washed from her fur.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I told her, rubbing her ears. “You wouldn’t have liked it up there, I swear it.” She was shivering dreadfully as I hugged her. Gently I moved her away so she would stand on her own four feet. “We need shelter,” I said to Tunstall. “She’s freezing.”
“Poor girl,” Tunstall said. He bent and lifted my poor Achoo into his arms. “What wicked thing did your ancestors do, that you should get a sarden detail like this, eh?” He looked at me. “Why in the storm gods’ names didn’t you leave her in your room?”
I glared at him. “She slid down the cliff first. Had I known, I would have stopped her. Speaking of which, how did you get here?”
He raised his eyebrows. “I climbed down the rocks. I wasn’t going to risk breaking my neck. There’s a bit of a cave next to the path. Let’s put her there before she drowns.”
He was right. I cursed myself for not thinking of it before, but then, I hadn’t turned that way once the stream, now a waterfall, had dumped me on the beach. We took Achoo to Tunstall’s cave, so she at least would be out of that poxy wet. Before we stepped inside, I used my mirror to look at the sky. The heavy gray clouds were woven through with threads of magic that were the same color as those in the storm last night. I promised myself that if I ever encountered the mage who sent this downpour on us all, I’d go sea fishing with him, or her, as shark bait.
I retrieved my shoes and stockings from their rock and placed them on a ledge in the cave. Tunstall left his boots there as well, while I gave Achoo very strict orders to remain. She was so cold that I believed she would stay put this time.
Back into the mess we went, almost running into the Lash before we realized we’d reached the water’s edge. We made our way south, squinting, until we found the second ship, the Rover. Up the ladder we went. When we stepped into the small open area in the prow, clear of the interlocked sails that covered the deck, I drew my knife to cut a path for us.
Tunstall stopped me. “I’d rather crawl under there than be drenched anymore.”
I sheathed my blade, thinking it would take a while to oil it and dry out the sheath when we were done. “You first,” I invited him.
He pulled his stone lamp from his pocket. “Follow me, then.”
“Tunstall? How long do you think those things will shine?” I asked as we ducked under the canvas. “Kora’s lights don’t last more than an hour—two, if she remembers to refresh the spell.”
“I don’t know,” Tunstall said, kneeling beside the first pair of rowers. “Ask Master Farmer. They’re his stones.”
I grimaced at the bad joke. “Why can’t you? I’ve talked with enough people of late.”
Tunstall shook his head. “One day you won’t have me to take up any extra chatter for you. Then what? You’ll have to do it all yourself.” He raised the lamp so I could see that these rowers, too, were gripped to the oar by the wood. “Master Farmer doesn’t seem that bad.”
“He was decent about the cooking,” I agreed. “And he didn’t whine in all the rain last night. I do wish I knew more about him—my lord never said anything of him to me.”
“Folk usually only talk about great mages,” Tunstall replied. “And how often do you get to sit down and talk the work with my lord these days?”
“True enough,” I said. My life was far busier since Achoo had come to me, and it wasn’t fit for me to be seen often with Lord Gershom. Folk might think I was his Birdie, reporting to him on our kennel’s goings-on. When I did visit, he and I usually talked about crime in Corus.
Tunstall turned and went on to the stern of the ship, down the middle. I followed him close enough to hear him say, over the pounding of rain on canvas, “If we stay on this Hunt together, let’s pray he knows enough to keep us alive!”
When he reached the hatch to the hold, he pulled it off and descended the ladder one-handed, the lamp held out so it would light the area below him. I waited for him to halt before I went down, listening as I strained my eyes to see what lay there.
The Rover was no slave ship. There was no setup for narrow bunks with chains attached to the foot. Like the Lash, the Rover sported a great hole punched through the center of the keel. My mirror revealed the magic that had made that hole, the same mix of colors that painted the upper deck to trap the crew. There were protective spells of a deep crimson shade different from that destructive power. Amulets, spells cut into the wood around us, and charms twinkled white in the mirror. I wondered how long they would last now, with no one to renew them.
From the ladder we could see a crate or two remaining
in the prow and the stern, and a wine jar afloat in the water that had come in through the hole. Some cutlasses, daggers, and small shields still hung from nails on the keel. Blankets floated on the water. The rest of the hold was empty as near as we could tell.
We had to search what was there, or we had to try. Tunstall stung his hands on the magic on the cargo. I picked up another blister trying to see what was in the pockets of those who stood on deck around the wheel. That was enough. We were happy to get off that ship.
We found the foot of the cliffs, where I retrieved my footgear, and used them to guide us to the cave where we had left Achoo. We had to dodge a hundred tiny waterfalls that poured off the heights, all produced by the steady, hammering rain. I threw another curse toward the unseen mage, or mages. I wanted to hang them upside down on these same cliffs in their own storm, a kind of natural version of the torture called the Drink. See how they liked it.
Mastiff: The Legend of Beka Cooper #3 Page 11