by Martha Wells
Then a crewman ran up the deck, yelling. He struck at the creature but it let go of Miss Marlende long enough to backhand him. The blow was hard enough to send him flying back across the deck and slam him into the wall. Miss Marlende fell away from the rail, and Emilie sat down hard. The creature reached down and slapped at Emilie, sending her rolling away.
Emilie landed hard on the deck, reeling from the blow, and looked up in time to see the creature drag a fighting Miss Marlende to her feet. Emilie looked desperately around, saw something lying near the fallen crewman - it was a fire ax. She shoved to her feet, snatched it up, and darted forward.
She swung it at the creature and the blade bounced off its head, painfully jolting Emilie's arm. Apparently unhurt, it dropped Miss Marlende and turned to Emilie. She lifted the ax again, for all the good it had done her, but she wasn't going to let it hit her again without a fight.
Then she saw Kenar behind it, climbing up over the railing from the deck blow. Emilie waved her ax, yelling, “Yah! Yah! Yah!” trying to keep the creature's attention on her. It jerked back uncertainly. Then Kenar swung over the railing, grabbed the creature by the throat, and tossed it off the deck.
Emilie lunged to the rail, looking down in time to see creature bounce off the lower deck and fall back into the weed-choked water. But more slim green forms climbed the hull to the lower deck, tendrils of vine waving angrily in the mass of weed. Gunshots rang out as crewmen along the middle deck fired at the creatures. The ship's stack belched as the boilers built up steam for an escape.
Miss Marlende stumbled to her feet, saying hoarsely, “What was that thing? A plant?”
“Yes, it looked like part of the weeds.” Kenar turned, reaching out to steady her.
Emilie couldn't tell if the gunfire was driving the creatures off or just startling them. “If they're plants, it can't do much good to shoot them,” she said. It might be just as useless as shooting a tree. “Oh, there's Dr. Barshion!”
Dr. Barshion had stepped out onto the deck just below. He was coatless, his normally sleek hair mussed. He held a small book in one hand, his other hand clenched in a fist. Emilie thought he was reading aloud, but she couldn't catch the words. On the lower deck, a plant-creature swung over the rail, grabbed a crewman, and tried to drag him over the side. But two other men drove it off with blows from their rifle butts. Emilie heard Lord Engal shouting orders. Kenar stepped up onto the rail, meaning to leap back down into the fray, but Miss Marlende caught his arm. “Wait!”
Below them, Dr. Barshion raised his voice, crying out something Emilie couldn't understand; then he made a throwing gesture with his free hand. Sparks of red light glittered along the hull; the plant-creatures climbing the rails keened in alarm and fell back away from the ship. A moment later the stacks belched again and the ship angled away from the weeds, and a gap of dark water opened between it and the dark mass.
“He manipulated the remnants of the aether bubble to repel physical objects,” Miss Marlende murmured. “Finally. I was beginning to wonder how much good he was as a sorcerer.” She swayed a little and Kenar asked, “Are you all right?”
She waved him away, turning back to the deck. “I'm fine. But this man was injured...”
The crewman who had tried to help them was stirring and trying to stand. Kenar went to haul the man to his feet, and in the lamplight Emilie saw it was Ricard, the young assistant engineer.
The young man gasped, “That was… What was…?”
“No one knows,” Kenar told him. “But some of that weed was caught on the hull; we can have a closer look at it.”
Miss Marlende told him, “Yes, but let's get Ricard inside first so I can check his head.” Tugging her jacket back into place and pushing her disordered hair out of her eyes, she turned to Emilie and said formally, “Thank you, Emilie, your assistance was effective and timely.”
“You're welcome,” Emilie said automatically. She realized she had clasped the ax to her chest. She decided to keep holding it for a while; it was reassuring.
Her heart was still thumping. This had been very different from hitting the robber with the fire bucket. The worst she had thought would happen then was that the man would hit her back, knock her down. She had realized later that that might have been naive; those men were deadly serious and he might have shot her. But even that wasn't as bad as that creature, dragging her and Miss Marlende off the ship to be... Drowned? Eaten? It was possibly better not to know for certain, but her imagination was doing a good job of filling in the details.
They went back inside, and once Ricard stepped into the brighter light of the corridor, they saw he had a bloody gash on his temple. “I thought you were helping Abendle and Dr. Barshion with the aetheric engine?” Miss Marlende said, helping Kenar guide Ricard down the first set of stairs.
“It was my turn to take a break, Miss,” he explained, wincing. “I was walking around the ship for a bit before I turned in.”
“Lucky for us,” Emilie put in, following behind them. “You distracted it.” And brought me the ax, she thought.
He glanced back, giving her a wan smile. “I think you did a better job of distracting it than me.”
Emilie didn't know what to say. She wasn't used to compliments about actual accomplishments, just stupid things, like needlework and decorating hats.
They reached the main lounge, and Miss Marlende caught a steward's assistant and sent him running off to get the ship's medical kit. Kenar left them then to head back out to the main deck, and after a moment of hesitation, Emilie followed him. She had decided that knowing what was out there was better than just imagining terrible things.
Out on the deck, Emilie was glad to see the men with rifles were still keeping watch. The searchlight, sweeping back and forth across the water, showed they were some distance from the vine mat already and moving steadily away. But a small section of it had caught on the ship's hull, and the crew had dropped the launch's platform to get a closer look at it. Lord Engal was down there with a few crewmen carrying lights. Kenar started to climb down, and Emilie realized she would have to relinquish her ax to follow him. Curiosity won out, and Emilie set the ax down on a handy fire equipment box and followed Kenar down the ladder to the launch platform.
The first thing that struck her was the smell; it was more like rotting meat than any kind of plant. The men were poking cautiously at the mass of weeds with boathooks. One of them drew a lump in close to the platform, and another hacked it free of the weeds. “It's a broken cask,” he reported. Looking up at Lord Engal, he added, “Could even be from the Scarlet Star, My Lord.”
“They seemed to try to take anything they could grab,” someone said, and Emilie recognized Oswin's voice. “They got two of our life preservers and a coil of rope.”
“It explains why the wreck was stripped of everything movable,” Kenar added, stepping around Oswin for a closer look.
“At least they didn't get any of us,” Lord Engal said. He glanced at Kenar. “Is Miss Marlende all right?”
“Yes. She's tending to the man who tried to help her.” Kenar crouched down to get a better view of the weeds. Emilie felt she could see well enough where she was, and stayed near the ladder.
“Perhaps she'll be more cautious next time,” Lord Engal said.
Emilie snorted quietly to herself. Typical and unfair, she thought. With some asperity, Kenar said, “She was cautious. She was two decks above the water. Sometimes caution doesn't help.”
Lord Engal didn't reply to that.
“Look at this,” another crewman said, holding up a clay sculpture in the shape of bird.
Kenar stood up to examine it. “That's a net weight,” he said. “The Lothlin hang them off the rails of their boats.”
Lord Engal turned to him. “These plant-creatures are called Lothlin?”
“No, no. The Lothlin are fisherfolk, peaceful. Nothing like those things.” Kenar sounded disturbed. “If one of their boats was driven this far from their home territory,
trapped in the mat-”
The first crewman said, grimly, “It looks like they didn't make it out.”
Emilie stepped forward to look. Prodding at the mass of vines had released dozens of small objects that had been wound up in it. They bobbed free in the water: sticks, odd-shaped knobs, round things like smooth rocks. She tried to see them as wood, the debris of a wrecked ship, but the colors were bleached white, dull yellow, rotted brown... Then a round object floated closer, turned as the crewman poked it with the pole. It had a face, or what was left of one, with empty eye sockets, a hole for the nose, teeth, and the lower jaw broken away.
Emilie pressed back against the ladder, cold shock washing over her. They were bones, all bones, wound up in the vines. Long bones, knobs of bone, fragments, skulls. She swallowed hard as a whole ribcage bobbed up out of the weeds. The sausage from this morning tried to exit her stomach and she took a deep breath, willing it back into place. That's a lot of dead people, she thought. Pieces of dead people. Emilie had seen the dead laid out decorously in coffins, but never anything like this.
Lord Engal stepped back, his grimace of distaste visible in the lamplight. “I think we've seen everything we need to see. Cut this mess free of the ship and draw up the platform.”
Emilie realized she was in the way and turned to climb the ladder back up to the deck. She had to grip the ladder extra hard because her hands suddenly felt numb and chilled, as though it was freezing out here rather than only pleasantly cool. Eaten, we definitely would have been eaten, she thought. On reflection, it seemed obvious. Plant-creatures with sharp teeth didn't try to pull people off ships in the middle of the night for a good reason.
She stood near the rail to watch the lights bob as the men hacked and prodded away at the mass. Bits of it broke off and swirled away, caught in the ship's bow wave, then the whole thing finally gave way. Kenar came to stand beside her as the launch platform was hauled up and Lord Engal gave muttered orders to Oswin and the other crewmen.
Dr. Barshion came out on the deck a little distance from them, and she heard Lord Engal congratulate him on driving off the creatures. But Barshion said, “Unfortunately, it's not something I can repeat. The aether in the remnants of the protective bubble is completely depleted now. I can't use it to drive off an attack unless I recreate the spell, and I won't be able to do that until we get the motile working again. The two are meant to work together.”
That's not good, Emilie thought, hugging herself. It seemed a long time until the night-eclipse would be over; the ship was like a bubble of light traveling through impenetrable darkness. Emilie said, “Do you think we'll run into anything else tonight?” She realized it was a stupid question as soon as the words were out. Kenar had told them over and over again, he had no more idea of what was in these waters than they did.
But he just put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a one-armed hug, saying absently, “I hope not.”
Emilie would have thought there was no way she would be able to go back to sleep after everything that had happened. But the shock of seeing the bones had rather crushed the excitement right out of her, and she found herself so heavy with exhaustion that she could barely drag herself back to Miss Marlende's cabin. Without bothering to undress, she lay down on the bed. Her restive stomach found this position much more amenable, and she quickly slid into sleep.
She woke briefly when Miss Marlende came in, drifted off again, then roused herself to see what the clicking noise was. It was Miss Marlende, sitting on her bed, loading a revolver. Miss Marlende saw her watching, and said, “Obviously I should have taken this precaution earlier.”
It was a little odd to see a woman with a gun, especially a pistol. But after what had happened, it seemed an excellent idea. Emilie asked, “May I have a pistol too?”
Miss Marlende frowned. “Have you ever used a pistol before?”
“No.”
“Then you may not have one.”
“Hmm.” Emilie subsided, sinking back down onto the pillow to go back to sleep. She recalled accidentally stabbing herself with a penknife while trying to cut reeds for a fishing rod one summer, and decided Miss Marlende was probably right.
Emilie slept through the end of the night eclipse and three hours into daylight. She woke, blearily stared at the clock, and struggled out of bed. After a quick wash, she tied her hair back, laced her boots, and hurried out to see what was happening.
She stepped onto the deck into dim sunlight and a humid breeze. Dark gray clouds filled the sky, heavily bunched in the direction the ship was heading. It completely obscured the cloudy column of the Aerinterre aether current. They had left the remnants of the flooded city entirely behind, but the sea wasn't empty. The ship was steaming toward a series of small islands. Odd islands, Emilie thought, shading her eyes to see. They all stood high above the water, at least twenty or thirty feet, with trees and clumps of vegetation on top and sharp cliffs dropping down to the waves.
By going to the bow and looking over the rail, she found Miss Marlende and Kenar on the main deck. Miss Marlende was using a spyglass to study the islands. Emilie hurried down the nearest set of stairs to join them. “What's that?” she asked. “Are we nearly there?”
“Possibly,” Kenar admitted. “These islands are similar to the ones near where the airship went down. I just hope we can navigate through them.”
Miss Marlende lowered the spyglass. “The channels between them seem quite narrow in spots. We're going to have to go very slowly.” She tapped her fingers on the rail in frustration.
“And hope nothing tries to grab us,” Emilie added, thinking of the Sargasso creatures last night.
“There's that,” Miss Marlende added wryly.
There seemed to be nothing more to do at the moment than watch the islands draw closer, and Emilie's stomach was growling. She went back inside, and found her way back down to the crew's galley. Mrs. Verian wasn't there, but her young assistant was scrubbing the tables, and Emilie managed to get him to stop long enough to find her a sausage sandwich, an apple, and a mug of very sweet tea. She was so hungry she ate the sandwich standing up at the serving counter, then put the apple in her pocket and carried the mug of tea out, meaning to head back up to the main deck.
But just down the corridor, at the base of the stairwell, she heard Dr. Barshion's voice and stopped to listen. “…I'm sorry, Abendle, I just don't believe that's the right method. We should be adjusting the axis slowly, not trying to reorient it completely.”
Abendle. That was the older engineer who was working on the aetheric engine with Dr. Barshion and Ricard. Dr. Barshion sounds exhausted, Emilie thought. Sounding even worse, Abendle replied, “Yes, Doctor, you know more about it than I do, but I still think these figures don't show what they're supposed to. Maybe if Miss Marlende looked at them-”
“No, Abendle, she's not familiar with her father's work in that detail. I wish she was.” Dr. Barshion laughed a little wryly. “No, you and I will have to try to puzzle it out.”
Steps sounded on the metal stairs above and Emilie hurried away down the corridor, looking for the next stairwell. She made it before the two men reached the corridor, and escaped unseen up to the next deck. She wasn't sure why she had fled, except that Dr. Barshion already thought she was an eavesdropper and she didn't want to confirm that reputation by being caught at it again.
Emilie spent the morning out on the promenade deck, with Kenar and Miss Marlende. But Miss Marlende was too impatient to stay in one spot for long, and kept getting up to walk around the ship.
The scenery they were passing was endlessly fascinating. The islands were growing larger and closer together, so sometimes it was difficult to find a course through them. The ship kept having to stop and send out the launch to take soundings, which made Miss Marlende even more frustrated.
The trees were like the palm trees Emilie had seen drawings of, the ones that grew on the coast far to the south. But the fronds were much bigger, stretching out for ten or fifteen feet
and then drooping at the ends. There were other trees like none she had ever seen before, squat with thick conical trunks, topped by sprays of feathery fern-like leaves. Beautifully colored birds - blue, yellow, green - flew away from the ship's passage, too quickly for Emilie to get a good look at them.
After the third time Miss Marlende excused herself to go up to the wheelhouse, Emilie said to Kenar, “You're not nervous.”
“I'm less nervous.” He smiled at her, a quick flash of pointed teeth. “My people are in an area that's foreign to them, but the ship was in good repair when I left, and they had plenty of supplies. And I know they can take care of themselves, and that they will watch over Dr. Marlende and his crew. Vale knows that too, but she's waited and worried a long time.”
Emilie noted that he had used Miss Marlende's first name, then realized it probably didn't mean the same thing to him. Kenar seemed to have only one name, himself. Though after their shared trouble, he and Miss Marlende did seem to be good friends. And she thought he had been through a lot too, what with the dangerous trip to a strange world, and Lord Engal's suspicion and distrust. “Why did you go with Jerom to get help?” she asked. She had asked him that before, but he hadn't given her a very good answer. “I mean, it was very difficult.”
He looked out at the channel again. “Dr. Marlende brought his ship and his people into danger to help us. We had anchored near a series of small islands and sandbars, and sent a small boat ashore to replenish our water supply. Rani, my partner, was aboard it.”
Just the way he said the name “Rani” caught Emilie's attention. She wondered if “partner” was the correct word or if Kenar was perhaps translating it wrong.