The Rot's War

by Michael John Grist

  Sudden tears trailed down the Shrew's face.

  "Blast it Van Sant, who? Mollie and Bomsy? The Gods?"

  But the Shrew didn't seem to hear him. He opened his arms wide and a strange laughing sob, like water leaking through a dam, escaped his lips. "Oh," he said, softly. Then he was gone. He didn't fade, or pop out of existence. He was just gone, leaving Lonnigan alone.

  He gazed up into the white. There was nobody here. Was this the extent of his revenge?

  "What now?" he called, but the white gave him no answer. "What happens now?"

  Then an answer came.

  "Now your life's work begins."

  Lonnigan spun, and saw a young man standing behind him. He had dark hair tied neatly back, sharp gray eyes, and twin misericorde blades set in long sheaths at his thighs. He couldn't have been more than eighteen years old, but something about him radiated power.

  "Who are you?" Lonnigan demanded.

  "My name is Sen. I've come to ask for your help."

  * * *

  When Sen had first lurched through the veil onto the dark under decks of the Shall-I-Row, the Darkness had been everywhere. In the Great Library it had poured into him like seawater gasped in an undertow, and now he was drowning in it; inside and outside at once, digging into his mind like the Rot's tongues furrowing the city.

  All he could do was fight, raking at his own body and trying to spit out the Dark. He rolled on the splintery boards of the shadowy Orlop deck while navvies slept in hammocks around him, fighting his invisible battle until one of the navvies rolled out of her hammock and punched him in the head.

  That stopped the battle with pain and splintery stars.

  "And stay shut up," she grunted, climbing back into her net.

  After that he lay silently for a long time, terrified not of the woman but of what was happening to him. He could still taste the Darkness in his mouth, could feel its touch running up and down his calves like invisible hands, looking for a way to dig in.

  Withering him away.

  He saw flashes of poor Craley left behind, swallowed by the Dark. Was she really gone? He wanted to open the veil and go find out, but knew that wouldn't be possible now. Even if she was alive, the veil would be torn so thin that he'd never find purchase in that time again. Perhaps he could return in five years, or ten, but what good would that possibly do? Another memory wasted just to know something that he couldn't change.

  He shuddered despite the humid fug of the enclosed deck.

  He was on a ship, and it had to be Lonnigan Clay's vessel, out hunting the white Eye of Heaven. That had been the last desperate vision in his head as he'd yanked at the veil and tumbled through.

  It was a ship at sea, plain from the creaking timbers all around him, responding to the roll of the ocean with their own a Hax of haphazard groans. Water dripped nearby and the foul breath of sleeping navvies salted the air. He smelled stale scarab smoke and rum, old sweat and brewer's yeast. Through the boards beneath him came the steady, dull thump of waves breaking under the ship's hull, lulling him steadily away from the feverish memory of old Aradabar.

  He focused on regulating his breathing; a trick Sharachus had taught him for when stalking prey above the city's rooftops. It helped calm him, and gradually the sensation of the Darkness receded. Perhaps part of it had come with him, but the Corpse here was thick enough to absorb it.

  He looked around; at the dark deck loaded with its swaying cargo of bodies, hanging in blankets from their roof hooks like a ripe load of strange fruit. There were all manner of castes here; the one who'd struck him was a hulking Euphlact, sagging in a doubled-over stretch of old sail, while nearby lolled the bald pate of a Pinhead, the small feet of a Dogsbody, the long fingers of a Gawk hanging down to touch the floor. The bass snores from an Appomatox's chest mouth droned over them like an outsized Gomorrah fly.

  He thought again of Craley, then pushed the image away. He couldn't afford to dwell on that. He had to just hope she was still alive, and focus on the task at hand.

  Lonnigan Clay.

  He rose stealthily and padded along the dark deck, weaving a shifting path between the mumbling, swaying forms. At the galley's end he found a ladder and climbed, emerging above deck to see a sky more massive than any he'd seen before. His breath stopped up. It seemed like an ocean in itself; deep purple sprayed with stars like revelatory lights in an immense, hanging city. The moon cast heavenly glows around floating drifts of cloud, each a continent to itself.

  He stood awestruck for long moments, all thoughts of the Darkness forgotten. This was beautiful. He'd never been to sea before. Not even the horizons on the Gutrock wastes were as broad and epic as this.

  At his side the trebuchet mast groaned and clicked under a shifting wind. He'd learned about that from Craley; Lonnigan Clay's means of assaulting his Eye of Heaven. The massive triple bole of the trebuchet stretched upward, culminating in a crow's nest as large as a Levi barge. Its sails bulged out in a steady wind, spilling a breeze that buffeted him gently. Around it the fishing-net mesh of rigging produced a constant low sigh of ropes sawing against each other.

  Sen remained still for a time longer, absorbing this incredible scene and the rhythms of the ship. Lilting calls came from above, sharing star orientations with the navigator at the forecastle. A sleepy body nudged past him like a ghost, trudging an habitual path. From all sides came the ceaseless lap of the ocean. Sen didn't know where they were in the world, but that didn't matter, because Lonnigan Clay was here.

  Standing beside the navigator at the ship's wheel stood the silhouette of a massive-shelled Cray, which could only be the man he sought. Sen felt strange murmurs run through his chest, to come so close to touching history. Clay had his own constellation, after all. Sen had dreamed of his many exploits as a child.

  In life he was immense; probably twice as tall as Sen, with his shell hanging like a boulder atop his broad back. His claws lay on the deck railing, each as big as a Moleman cannon.

  Sen moved closer, rolling between shadows with a slow, languorous ease, as he always had in the city. For now, remaining unseen was important; he'd learned enough of buccaneer lore to know they would try him as a stowaway if caught; perhaps sentenced with a keelhauling, or abandonment on a deserted island. He was not a chartered navvy aboard this boat, and had no share in the take.

  He was here only to observe, and learn what kind of man this Lonnigan Clay was.

  Hunkered behind a net-strapped block of rain barrels, Sen spied as a woman approached Lonnigan's side; she had a moon-pale face and a cloud of insect-like creatures buzzing at her back, forever twisting her hair. Every now and then one of them would light up like a shellaby bug, with a transient blue light.

  They spoke, and Sen padded to the deck wall and climbed halfway to the forecastle railing to hear.

  It was the first of his observations.

  * * *

  Lonnigan studied the young man. He was fey but confident, and perhaps there was something familiar about him. Perhaps he'd seen this youth before, hovering like a shadow around his life, but had never really noticed him until now.

  "What help?" he asked, his low voice rumbling through the white mists.

  Sen smiled, though there was no pleasure in the motion. It seemed more like a calculation, the kind of gesture Lonnigan himself would make in dinning bars when trawling for new recruits.

  "Let's walk," said Sen, and started away.

  Lonnigan followed, and so they walked through the white for a time. The giant orange Cray towered over the gray-eyed youth, but the boy showed no signs of fear. They conversed, and for the most part the words washed over Lonnigan as if heard in a dream. Sen told him of times to come, of the Rot and the Darkness and the end of the world, and he listened and wondered when he might wake.

  "Ignifer," Lonnigan grunted at one point, as Sen described the place he'd written his newspaper. "Proximal to old Aradabar. The territory of the Demon King?"

  Sen nodded. "Of King Seem, ye
s."

  Lonnigan shuddered then, his claws clacking absent-mindedly. "Bad trawling, there. There's little to be had."

  "There'll be less soon. There'll be nothing at all."

  They walked for a time longer in silence, as Lonnigan absorbed this information. The white around them passed and didn't pass. It made no difference, it looked the same and felt the same wherever they went.

  At last Lonnigan spoke up, sharing the question he'd been thinking ever since he'd come to this strange place. "Is this the Eye?"

  Sen gave him that smile again. "No, Lonnigan. This is the veil. Your bombe blast rebounded, hurling your ship to the bottom of the ocean. There it lies still, with all your dead crew."

  Lonnigan shook his large head. It was probably true about his ship, but not the Shrew. "Van Sant isn't dead. He was here with me a moment ago. Then he disappeared."

  Sen frowned. "He was here? That's curious. I don't know why. The veil moves in mysterious ways."

  Lonnigan heaved a heavy sigh. Sen had told him many things already, and he'd heard enough. If his crew were dead, he should be with them. If Mollie was gone…

  He stopped abruptly. "You want me for your war, Sen. Walker of the veil. But I don't want to fight. Return me to my ship."

  Sen halted in front of him, his gray eyes twinkling. "I like the sound of that. Walker of the veil."

  "Your war is not my war," Lonnigan said. "Return me."

  "I know very well your war, Lonnigan, mad Cray of the water." Sen took a step closer, so his nose almost touched Lonnigan's hard-shelled chest. "You seek to rescue your wife and son from the Eye of Heaven, and slaughter those who caused their suffering."

  Lonnigan's eyes narrowed dangerously. That was a story he'd told to no one but Mollie and the Shrew. It was not possible that this child could know it. "Do not mock me, boy," he warned.

  Sen ignored the warning. He stepped back, drew his misericordes, and dropped into a fighting stance. "Will this be necessary?"

  Lonnigan stared at Sen in disbelief. He was a diminutive figure barely larger than Bomsy, barely larger than just one of his mumpen claws alone. He had no wish to kill him, though he would. "You must be mad. I'll extomate you in a single blow."

  "Perhaps back on the Corpse World you might," Sen answered calmly. "Though even there you might be surprised. I'm a skilled misericordeist. Here in the veil you don't stand a chance."

  Lonnigan regarded him calmly. He'd fought against many warriors before, some of the greatest of his age, and never once been defeated. "Put your toy blades away before you hurt yourself."

  Sen's face was equally impassive, and he did not sheathe his blades. "Your wife left you, Lonnigan," he said flatly. "She took your son Damaris with her. She was not stolen by the Eye of Heaven, as you have willed yourself for so long to believe. She is not dead. She lives yet, on an Islet off the Coast of Hegralta, where she winnows aulks and trades with the Runt people of Meran. She left you."

  Lonnigan's shell began to vibrate with a sudden, surging rage, though he did not let the expression on his face change. "You lie." His voice became deeper, the bass thrumming out in a weird harmony to the musical pitch of his ringing shell.

  "She lied," Sen insisted. "She spun the tale of the Eye of Heaven and the sinking of her coracle to an old seadog, who she paid to come to you as witness. She despised you, and she feared you, so she lied and she left everything she'd ever known behind to escape."

  Lonnigan felt his orange face bruising to red. These were his deepest secrets, flayed open by a child. His claws at his sides twitched. "One more word," he warned, his voice as gravelly as a Balast's, each word spat with restraint.

  "When she arrived on the Islet she carved a figure of you out of sopwood," said Sen, "which she then burned, and buried in her aulk garden. She has taken a new man, one of the Runts, and your son Damaris now calls him father."

  "You lie!"

  Sen lifted his right misericorde and pointed it directly at Lonnigan's burning face. "He urinates on the burial place of the carving of you every night."

  Lonnigan roared, lofted his bright mumpen claws, and swung.

  The blue blast rang off his shell an almighty musical clang; multiple notes at once that seemed in his ears to form a chord similar to the ones his mother sang him as a babe in arms.

  His great shelled body arced through the white with echoes of the blow knelling in his ears. He braced to land hard, but no sudden impact came; rather the white gathered about him, its cool touch gripping and tipping him until he felt firm ground beneath his feet. For a moment vertigo swirled through him, as the white released him and he staggered for balance, though he was already upright.

  The dark figure of Sen approached through the white mist. His misericordes were sheathed again and he walked calmly, with no sign upon him of the blast.

  "What happened?" Lonnigan asked, all thought of their dispute driven from his mind by the blue flash of light.

  "I said you were no match for me here," Sen answered. "You stand no chance."

  Lonnigan clacked his mumpen claws and surveyed the white, seeking the foe that had hurled him so. "That was not you. It is not possible."

  "It was."

  Lonnigan stared. "Then what is it, some enchantment? Are you Craven? Unforgiven?"

  The boy shrugged. "Perhaps. What does it matter? I'm here."

  "Then I will not be. Return me to my ship now!"

  "Your ship has sunk, along with every soul on board. They are all dead, Lonnigan. Your folly led to this."

  "Return me!"

  Sen gave another calculating smile. "No. You've tried so hard to find the truth. Why would you want to run from it so soon?"

  "I've no desire to hear your lies spewed like wortweed over the Haresdown. Return me!"

  "Very well," said Sen, and the white was suddenly gone.

  They stood on a long sandy beach. The ocean was a thick green before them, the sky azure blue and dusted with thin clouds. In the distance large nodular crags thrust up in strange patterns from a low cliffside, seeming almost organic in their bulbous proportions. Within many of the pods were round holes that could only be windows.

  "The Runt-towers," Sen said, pointing. "They build them out of paste they generate from their own bodies by eating the paplas grass, found only in these scant fathoms of sand dune. Like Appomatoxes, I suppose."

  To Lonnigan, none of this had any meaning. "This is not my ship."

  Sen turned to him, a look of tired patience evident on his face. "I told you, your ship has sunk."

  "Then where are we?"

  "Didn't I just say? We are on the Islet of Meran, near to where the Runts build their spittle towers, only a few fathoms from where your once-wife has built her shack and farms her aulks."

  Lonnigan's eyes widened. "Laverne's here?"

  Sen nodded. "She is. She must be tithing and shelling about now, I'd assume. Her husband is likely to be at the Runt Spumeworks, firing paste for more constructions."

  "That's impossible."

  "It's true," said Sen, and set out over the sand. For a time Lonnigan only watched him go, then lifted his heavy claws from the sand, hoisted his giant shell, and followed.

  AULKS

  The shack sat atop a knoll of reed grass, surrounded by a loll of low black and scrubby plants, all of which seemed be in blossom, sprouting black buds and stalky ragged tubers. Their smell was powerful and musky, but not altogether unpleasant.

  Sen and Lonnigan stood on the brow of a sandy rise looking down at the shack. It seemed to be strung together out of flotsam and debris, stood upon a foundation of splintered masts and roofed with coranut husk. Its walls were of a rubbery hosing daubed with tar, with stretches of what looked like long-oars for support braces. At the side there lay an upturned barque keel serving as a back porch. The shack had no single design; rather it seemed to be a work in progress, similar to the nodular crags of the Runts.

  Sen pointed at the spidery black plants in the garden.

  "T
he aulks live beneath that. They're a kind of shellfish, filter feeders that strain the deep sands. The plant roots simply provide a pre-filter lattice that catches and sieves oceanic plankton down to the aulks." He paused. "I forget where I learned that, now."

  Lonnigan was ignoring him, staring at the higgledy shack.

  "I always thought we'd live by the sea," he murmured.

  "Your once-wife shells the aulks and sells them to the Runts," Sen went on. "She also weaves the black plants; they're called Oriole Grubs, named after Auroch the World Spider."

  Lonnigan turned to face him, his expression inscrutable.

  "They're supposed to be her eggs," Sen added helpfully.

  "How do you know so much about her?"

  "I've been spying on you for years now. Also I had my daughter learn everything about you. To learn what drives a man like you."

  Lonnigan frowned. "You can't have a daughter. You're a boy yourself."

  Sen shrugged. It wasn't much of an insult, really. "If it was my son in that shack, and my wife, I'd want to set things right. If I'd abandoned them, I'd want to apologize. Then I'd want to rethink my life, and set my unique gifts for leadership in another direction."

  Lonnigan scowled. "You're not me."

  "Then be a better Lonnigan Clay," Sen said, "not some mad Cray unable to see the mistakes he's made. You've been a bad husband and father. Accept it. And know this," he palmed one of his misericordes smoothly, holding it as a blatant threat, "if you harm your wife now, or your son, or even her husband in any way, I will kill you myself. Misericordes are designed for penetrating the chinks in armor, did you know that? I'll shuck you out of that shell with ease."

  Lonnigan stared at him. Sen stared right back, unconcerned.

  "You don't know me," Lonnigan said.

  Sen felt tired. He'd watched this Cray for so long, watched his lies upon lies bleeding into a kind of self-imposed madness. He'd thought finally cracking through the shell might provide some relief, but it didn't feel good. It just felt sad.

  "Don't I? I've followed your trail through the years, Lonnigan, learning what drives a man like you. How best to steer you."