The Rising Scythe

by S G Dunster

  “They won’t try,” Holystoan reassured Antonio. “You are a great deal more of a meal than they’re used to taking.”

  “Dirks are sharp,” Antonio returned, eyes flicking over the coastline.

  “Aye, but small. And you’re anything but. A Portuguese carrack, with four cannons and two score crossbowmen?” Holystoan made a tsking noise. “They’d flee into their houses and caves at the first volley.”

  “Which is why I keep them at the ready,” Antonio replied tersely.

  But it wasn’t ships, in the end, that proved a problem. It was the sea itself—breath and blood that rose up to clip the wings of the Espada, Virtude, and Barbosa. A spring storm was always fierce, with the change of hot and cold air stirring up winds that blew waters into mountains. Thessaly felt it coming a long way off, and so did the crew of the Espada. Though for Thessaly, it was the way it sang through the silver core of her loose magicks, and for the men it was the learned instincts of a crew whose livelihood was weathering storms.

  The squall hit just as they were coming around the tip of Land’s End. The sky turned grey and purple, the water evil green. The wind flicked up spray, drenching all on deck.

  “Sails down!” Antonio shouted as the first swell rose up west—a menace shot through with queer jade light. “Sails down, boys!”

  Bellccior was all over the place grunting and winching, unknotting, barking orders at the scurry of men. The other ships crawled with men, looking to Thessaly like red ants busy about their nest. The Barbos got its sails down first, then the Espada. A wind tipped Frogo nearly parallel before the sail was whisked down.

  Dim shouts sounded from the other ships, which were further out to sea than the Espada, as the swell in the west came under them, lifting the Barbos up high in the sky, then spilling it over the other side.

  Thessaly clutched the rail with both hands as the wave divided them from the other ships like a choppy green mountain range and rolled toward the Espada, gathering height as it approached the shores.

  “Away, away!” Her father roared down at the men straining in the galley. “Row! It’ll take us into the rocks!”

  He was right. The black, jagged outcrop trailing off the western end of the land loomed closer. The huge bulk of the Espada lurched toward the clusters of rocks, foaming, then rearing up out of the sea like broken teeth with the swell and troughs of the wild waves.

  “Turn! Turn!” roared Antonio. He stood at the top of the forecastle, braced against the thick mast pole. “Rapido! We shall break in two!”

  Fire seared through Thessaly, followed by a wave of cold. Her bindings had come undone.

  She had only a moment to realize it and then the boat rose up, up, up—a mountain of water indeed, and growing taller, taller, with the waves pushing the Espada into the sky.

  Thessaly’s innards thrilled and knotted as they rose higher, higher. The wind battered at the masts, tilting them so the rail Thessaly clung to dipped low, even with the churning foam of water.

  They were going to tip. They were going to be swept into the rocks and broken to pieces for the pale gaping crowds along the shores here to pick through.

  She gripped the deck, closed her eyes, and was suddenly in a world of floes. Breath, huge and angry. Blood, massed and swelling in a giant of energy and power. Green, blue, grey. Pale invisible gold, standing out in coils and flows and forces boiling under them, flowing over them.

  Thessaly blew out her own air as if it might make a difference, as if the ship were a leaf or a bit of seed-fluff she could right just by breathing. The wave stilled and rippled. A surge of icy something flooded Thessaly’s body and mind. She was in it, suddenly.

  Her floes. Gold and gleaming, silver and shining, ran into the water underneath the boat, and it ran into her, tapping at the cold floes in her center. She could see it all, the current that forced them up, the shirring wind that passed over them, ripping away the canvas of the huge sails, bending the mast close to breaking.

  “Vinculum!” she screamed, so loud her throat felt on fire. A cascade of bursts passed through her—at her crown, at her throat, at her chest, groin, knees, feet, and then shot through the sopping decks’ wood, spilling into the water. It was a flash like lightning, both gold and silver, bursting up, out, away, snapping under, through, beneath—a great halo of crackling power, like the explosion of a thousand cannons.

  Everything stilled for a moment.

  Thessaly was trembling. There was an immense weight. It pressed all around her and she felt as if she were holding it, the wave, on and against her body. How could she?

  She couldn’t hold that much. There was no possibility of that.

  Was there?

  That thought brought it all crashing down and the wave rolled the Espada wildly toward shore, roaring to the rocks in a hundred-foot eruption of foam. The boat shot down into the wave’s trough, moving at a terrifying pace, tilting crazily. Then it shuddered, gusting to the bottom, just past the rocks around the point, missing the sharp edges, dipping and roiling in water only deep enough for the rudder to clear.

  Thessaly opened her eyes. The men who stood near her, hands on ropes, on masts, on baling buckets, were frozen, gaping at her.

  They were past the point.

  Somehow. Somehow, as she’d held the wave, she’d shifted them just enough.

  Just. Enough.

  She sat down on the deck, trembling all over.

  Chapter 10

  “B

  ruxa,” one of the men whispered. He shuddered, his eyes wide, showing white all around like a frightened horse’s.

  Thessaly’s own eyes turned upward, to the forecastle where her father stood.

  He was there, watching.

  And Holystoan, too, the weird light gleaming off the silver threads in his vest. They were too far away for Thessaly to see their faces, but the sear of their gaze was a firebrand in her center.

  Fire and flesh. With her floes snaking awry still, a mess that still trailed in the water and coiled up into the sky, she felt her father’s awe and fear. And in Holystoan, she felt something too—a warmer feeling. Satisfaction? Joy? A sharp hint of pride.

  He was proud of her, at least. He was grateful she’d saved their hides.

  Slowly, everyone turned back to their tasks. It was a fierce storm and even now that the danger of wrecking was past, they would need to work through the night. They would need some luck to weather it without a great deal of damage.

  The wind blew at the waves, taking the ship west now, further and further west, no matter how the men strained to row. They were being blown and carried out to sea.

  Thessaly knew that this was where they wanted to be in a storm, away from dashing rocks and hard land. But it was frightening to be tossed by waves, to be taken up into the great grey-green mountains. She stood there, feeling it, trembling. If she needed to, she could save them again.

  If she needed to, she could manage to get them into the safe places. She could shift masses of water. She could drive forces that no man or woman should be strong enough to drive.

  Thessaly could tame the ocean. The thought was dizzying. Cowing. It was like being taken, herself, by a giant wave—intimidating, overpowering. Overwhelming.

  The clouds began to scatter, the wind to die down. The moon peeked through, shining on the fleet as the ships bobbed on the rough waters.

  The danger was past.

  Thessaly went to her room. On her way, she whispered it again because these waves of power were still painful, though not so disabling anymore. Still, she would not be able to sleep with them roaring through her one after the other.

  Vinculum.

  She fettered up breath and blood, drawing the cold floes back inside, making them a mass contained.

  Vinculum.

  She drew back flesh and fire, pulling away from the spots of human warmth and passion they sought and probed.

  She stripped off everything, even her chemise and shivered, water dripping from the tips of
her hair, flowing down her back like a small waterfall. She wrang it out, and the water puddled around her feet.

  She took the sodden mass of clothing and put it in the corner by the door, and quickly pulled a dry cotton shift and nightdress from her trunk. They were particularly fine, embroidered with patterns of lilies. She didn’t care. She just needed dry cloth next to her skin.

  She wound her wet hair in a length of linen, binding her wet scalp, so she wouldn’t make her bedding wet, and threw herself on the bed next to Rosalie, who was curled tight with the covers pulled over her head.

  They made land hours later, when the dawn hit the water.

  At the call, Thessaly came up on deck and saw that they were anchored off the shores of a small island crowned by a blocky structure studded with stone cottages. Rosalie followed her, bleary-eyed and shaking, wrapped in one of the blankets from Thessaly’s bed. Loredan slipped between them and put an arm around both.

  “I’m glad to know women strong enough to brave squalls like we had last night,” He said. He gave Thessaly a particularly significant look, and she knew what else he was saying.

  He was proud of her.

  Proud of her powers, not afraid. The thought filled her with a fierce joy, and she put her head on his shoulder for a moment.

  They docked for repairs. Masts had been bent and cracked and the sails of the Espada, which had never quite made it all the way down, needed mending. The men sought timbers, which were scarce. A cluster of ship’s boys set to sewing up the sails. The repairs were put under Antonio’s supervision while Holystoan and Antonio took Thessaly, Guzal, and the Waintrees ashore for some solid ground.

  The island was a large, sloped hill, covered with a great many old buildings and walls. At the top was a narrow stone building, square towers, peaked windows, and a cross winking at the top.

  “The Abbey of St. Michael’s,” Henri said, pointing. “Old. And not without some Holystoan influence.”

  “Ah?” Rosalie asked pleasantly, her father helping her along the rough stone path. She’d been badly shaken by the storm, and wasn’t entirely steady even this morning, in spite of Loredan’s praise. But she was taking it in stride, not complaining at all.

  Rosalie is a sport, Thessaly thought admiringly, watching the small, pink-clad girl step in front of them along the winding dirt path that led up the hill.

  “Aye. A great laird or something several generations back, laid the cornerstone,” Holystoan answered, taking Thessaly’s arm while Antonio stayed behind, throwing glances at the fleet, keeled over and moored in the small bay. The men had struggled the huge boats into the shallower, gentle waters, and tilted them on their sides so they leaned, masts slanted into the sky, and an army of bodies was busy scraping and pitching the vast stretches of hull, and repairing where boards had come loose or broken.

  It would take a while, Thessaly thought. And where were they? What was this tiny island?

  “We shall have to take a tour of it, then,” Waintree said jovially, patting his daughter’s hand. “Let us continue all the way up and see what there is to see.

  Holystoan gave a little bow, walked quickly with Thessaly at his arm to the front of the procession, and led them up.

  They soon encountered clusters of dwellings and a small open field with a cross marking a town commons. Men and women and children came out to stare. Some waved, but none approached them. Just watched them pass. They all of them seemed to share a sort of face, Thessaly thought: sharp cheeks, jutting chin, heavy brow. Their complexions were enviably clear and pale, and light-colored eyes stared out of every face, contrasting sharply with unruly manes of coal-black curls, men and women alike.

  “True Bretons,” Holystoan commented idly as, a mile or so farther uphill they passed another collection of cottages where more than a dozen people came out to watch them pass. “To our luck, they are a mild people, very much to themselves these days. They did not used to be.”

  They made their way up to the abbey’s foot and were met by a pale, ice-eyed priest with a fringe of wicked dark curls surrounding his clerical tonsure, which was burned pink with the sun. “Diad’uit,” he said, his voice sweeping like notes from a viol. “What bringeth ye here?”

  Holystoan bowed low and touched his cap. “We have wrecked, Holy Father,” he answered, “and wish to take in some sights while the ships are repaired.”

  The priest bowed in return and gestured for them to enter the tall arched abbey doors. The stones were grown over with moss and ivy, and Thessaly couldn’t help but notice that some were in bad repair.

  There was a basin of holy water just inside the doorway. Rosalie and her father dipped their fingers in and crossed themselves.

  Thessaly glanced at Holystoan.

  She did not want him to know about it—how holy water burned her when she used her aunt’s spell.

  She dipped her fingers in, too, containing her hiss at the boil of fire they brought to her skin, and crossed herself as well. The cross burned and throbbed there at her chest as they strode through the open chapel with its rough domed ceilings, touching here and there a carving or a painted figure. Thessaly bit her tongue and kept silent, though the pain was rather terrible.

  There was not much to examine. The abbey was small and unadorned. They walked the walls, looking at a few crude frescoes of dark-haired men holding up instructive fingers, and a stone mosaic of a dove holding an olive branch. Finally, they came around behind the altar to the only thing of real note—an ornate cabinet carved out of the stone of the wall itself. On it rested a few objects: a dusty bit of cloth, a splinter of wood, and a clay pot.

  “Relics,” the priest said, hurrying toward them. He rolled the R in a way Thessaly found soothing. “If it please ye, dinnae touch.”

  “We won’t,” Holystoan reassured him, but his eyes lingered on the clay pot. Thessaly stepped up beside him and looked, too. It was an odd shape, not rounded, but faceted, with flat planes coming together in a narrow lip on top, leaving a small hole there. In each of the planes was another hole—small, perfectly round and exactly the same, each one. The thing was, Thessaly realized, studying it more closely, marveling at its symmetry, each facet was exact, and smooth. Each pierced hole was likewise exact in size, smooth.

  “What is it?” Thessaly asked Holystoan.

  He shook his head. “Who can know? Doubtless it’s said to be some lamp of Saint John, or perhaps the nightsoil pot of Stephen the apostle.” He kept his teasing tone low because the priest still anxiously hovered. Thessaly smothered her smile with her hand.

  They came back to the shore just as the men, grunting, massed in hundreds along the thick ropes tethered to the Barbos, raised the cargo ship aright in slow steady movements.

  Antonio had run down ahead of them and was now gesturing and shouting at the men, giving quick and fierce instructions until the ship had been moved properly into deeper waters.

  “We can set sail again,” Antonio said as Thessaly, Waintree, Rosalie, and Henri approached the beach. “Loredan’s done well. Those were quick repairs. If we make haste, we will outrun the next storm.” He pointed to the horizon, which was dark with clouds. “Bristol will shelter us. We don’t need to go too many leagues in to escape the worst of it.”

  They scurried aboard. Thessaly and Guzal and Rosalie, Cerdic and Loredan and Henri chose to congregate in Henri’s room to wait out the blasts and cold this time.

  “I don’t envy a captain his life,” Henri said, using his silver knife to clean his fingernails of dirt. “I prefer a warm room to a wind-tossed deck, particularly when there is a great deal of water in the wind.”

  “It’s a life of glory and discovery,” Loredan put in. “Well worth being tossed.”

  “Well, that is why you have chosen it,” Henri said, giving him a quirk of the lips. “Or is it?”

  The question tingled, hung heavy, made Thessaly a little embarrassed.

  “Not the only reason,” Loredan answered finally. “And all fine enterprises
require a bit of tossing and wind.”

  Thessaly gave him a grateful glance, then went back to stacking her cards. She tingled when she touched them. The fire wanted them, the earth wanted them. It was like they were bodies, flesh and passion, attracting those floes inside her. Thessaly found the sensation fascinating, even pleasurable, with the bulk of the force tied up inside her fetters. She allowed the trailing ends of her floes to move toward the cards, however, and she ran a finger along the edge of one, relishing the snap of energy there.

  “You’re glowing like an ember,” Holystoan commented. His tone was casual, but she heard the edge of warning in it.

  “Am I?” Thessaly asked. She touched her face. Her skin was hot.

  “You’re very pink,” Rosalie agreed. She laid a hand on Thessaly’s forehead, then drew it back with a yelp. “You are hot. Guzal, she needs a tea, or—“

  “No,” Thessaly interrupted, giving Henri a rueful look. “No, I’m well. Only a little warm, shut in this small room with so many others.”

  Loredan and Antonio only looked on, silently, as Thessaly closed her eyes and tucked up all the stray floe-ends she’d let come loose.

  A day later they came into the channel of Bristol on a gust of wind, skittering across the steely waters, tilting and righting in a breathless race against the storm. The clouds boiled and cracked overhead, releasing a flood of rain. The decks gleamed under the lamps lit and hanging from the rails, their warm light refracted along the wet boards and down into the water. Thessaly watched out the window, marking the land they came around. It was a dark shadow in the downpour, a flat shoreline bordered by great dark rocks and an occasional beach of bleached grey stone that looked startlingly white in contrast.

  “Can’t see much,” Rosalie complained when they stood at the end of the narrow ship’s corridor, looking out over the forecastle deck.