He nodded, and as he was halfway into his breeches he dived forward and kissed her. Kissed her twice and had he done so a third time she would have damned the boat and the inrushing sea to tangle once more with Mr Riven on the carpet, would have committed desperate adultery with him as they sank into the deepest oceans.
‘Later,’ he said, and ran barefoot out into the corridor, heaved open the trapdoor, and descended below.
Arden took longer getting into her own dress. How complicated could it be, wearing women’s clothes? But within a matter of seconds she was outside, in the wind, and seeing exactly what they had collided with.
27
A hull, upside down
A hull, upside down, floating in the water. A hull, with a bulbous, broken keel painted as red as lacquer. Chalice Quarry looked down at the wreck as if flummoxed by its sudden appearance.
‘Fine Breeze.’ Chalice Quarry nodded at Arden guardedly as she approached. ‘Was already like that when David steered into it.’
Her poor capsized vessel yawed and bobbed in her death-throes. Arden panged with gladness. A terrible accident had occurred, and lives might very well have been lost, but it meant that their troubles were at an end.
Still, it presented a mystery.
‘What could tip over a perfectly good boat in flat sea?’ Chalice asked. ‘We haven’t reached Tempestas or Sainted waters.’
The large cloud wall of the Tempest boundary was a good ten miles away. Even hopeless Lyonne Hillsiders would have known better than to chance a little vessel like Fine Breeze against the storm.
‘I’m willing to leave the secret to the Old Guy and never find out,’ Arden said, happy enough that she did not want to curse too harshly the sea-devils who’d given her such a gift. ‘She was built to come out of a capsize. This was fated.’
David stuck his head out of the wheelhouse window. ‘I’m sorry, Lightmistress! I tried to avoid the boat, but she was so low down I didn’t catch her until the last minute.’
Arden waved back. ‘Nobody could have seen her and there’s no damage, David. Don’t fret.’
Mr Riven exited the forecastle trapdoor, slimed with kraken oil and pitch. He went to the balustrade to survey the water, and the capsized Fine Breeze. Without a word, he cleared the edge of the deck and dived into the water, disappearing beneath the opaque surface.
‘What was that in aid of?’ Chalice asked. She tilted out over the deck rail, but nothing remained other than whitecaps and Fine Breeze’s water-faded hull. ‘They’d be dead for hours,’ she shouted into the water.
Whatever their fate, Mr Riven had to make sure. The moralities of life upon the sea required such efforts.
Arden called for David to throw down the boarding gear, and David reappeared with a yellow canvas bag. It made a solid thump as it landed on the deck. The crossbars and knots of a rope ladder spilled out of the waxed mouth. Arden tugged on the leading end and motioned Chalice over. ‘Help me get it secured to the rail.’
‘I doubt there’s an air pocket,’ Chalice said between puffing, for the wood slats and lengths of sisal made it heavy indeed. Arden ran to help, and they jostled the boarding bag to the edge of the deck. ‘We had quite a solid collision.’
They made fast the rope ladder and waited. The ship knocked up against Fine Breeze’s wreck.
‘Surely Mr Riven should have found what he wanted by now,’ Chalice said after several minutes of their watching the impenetrable water.
Chalice was right. He should have. Jorgen’s boat contained only one cabin, no Saudade rabbit warren. The reconnaissance should have taken seconds. Not this long.
‘You go in,’ Arden said to David urgently. ‘Something’s not right.’
The young man nodded and pulled off his boots.
Just as he had set one bare foot on the ladder, Mr Riven cleared the surface with a gasp.
He had not risen empty-handed. He hauled up a body into his arms, a man limp and pale.
‘Grab him,’ Mr Riven shouted. ‘I’m going back in.’
‘Jonah—’ Arden started, but he was once more gone under the water, and David was struggling with a corpse.
The woven straps that Mr Riven used to pull kraken hens onto his boat still coiled neatly upon the forecastle deck. The thick webbing barely fitted under the corpse’s arms, and Arden half-expected the shoulders to detach completely with the slightest force. Dead men rarely lasted in the ocean. The hungry things consumed the flesh of the dying even before they drew their last breath.
To Arden’s relieved surprise, the body held together, and with Chalice’s assistance, they managed by sheer effort to haul it up onto the black wood. Arms and wrists bounced limply upon the deck. Strands of violet kelp fronded the face and shoulder in a manner more befitting a pagan burial.
She saw at once who Mr Riven had rescued.
‘Sean Ironcup,’ she said. ‘Helena’s brother.’ A stabbing whirl of disgust and enmity directed towards the dead man. If she didn’t have witnesses she might even have kicked him.
Chalice took Arden’s arm and pulled her back. ‘Easy, sister. He’s more than paid for his trespasses towards yourself and God now.’
David loitered about in concern. ‘Can we not resuscitate him? I’ve seen my mother bring back a few.’ He mimed pressing down on bellows.
‘Be my guest.’
With a dulled impassion she watched David kneel and put several enthusiastic puffs of air into the corpse’s lungs. After a minute of compressions upon the blue sternum, the hopelessness became obvious. David sat back, panting from his exertions.
‘You’ve done your moral duty, Mr Modhi. Go help Mr Riven,’ Arden said brusquely, as David attempted a second round of resuscitation.
‘I’ve heard of it taking an hour.’
‘He doesn’t deserve a minute. Go.’
When David retreated, she knelt to formally acknowledge the thing they had plucked out of the sea. How small he seemed, now that the kick of life had gone from him, how wasted his frame, how young his face. She could almost pity him. ‘I suppose we will be charged to give you a sea burial, Sean Ironcup.’
The sound of Mr Riven’s voice commanding something of David brought her back to the present. If there was anything more found in her boat, she did not particularly want to discuss it with Chalice around.
‘Get some cloth to wrap him,’ Arden said to Chalice. ‘Like you say, we have to respect the dead, especially if they don’t deserve it.’
Chalice, unimpressed about being sent off the deck, returned into the dim interior of Saudade. Once the Madame Lion was safely ensconced and out of hearing, Arden ran to the edge of the deck, only to have David throw a glass jar at her.
Arden nearly dropped the slippery object, before clutching the blood-filled mason jar to her chest.
‘Devils, David, I’d rather not be sweeping this muck off the deck.’
‘Can’t climb with one hand, Lightmistress.’
He pulled himself off the ladder, and Mr Riven came after. He’d turned nearly as blue with chill as the dead man. Arden snatched up one of the rough blankets used to protect the wood from rope wear and threw it over Mr Riven’s shoulders. He wiped the seawater from his face and head, nodded at the mason jar.
‘The Ironcup boy was trying to hide it. Fell out of his grip when I moved his body.’
‘Only one jar?’
‘Last one. Five broken jars in the crate, blood in the water.’
‘I take it the other Tallwaters aren’t down there.’
Mr Riven made a sign to the negative, ran the canvas over his torso to dry off. ‘Like I said, a lot of blood. These are plesiosaur waters. A pod could easily finish off three adults in a matter of minutes.’
Arden held the jar close to her chest. The blood had jellied since last it flowed through her veins. Soon she would let it fall into the ocean. She knew that she should say a quick prayer for the dead Tallwaters now, but ended up saying one of quiet blessing to herself. It was over. It was over.
On the deck, David still fussed over the dead man. A little sense of guilt wormed into her heart. Had it been Sean Ironcup who had broken the jars? Or had he only condemned his family’s share to give himself better options of survival?
They would never know, she thought. They would cast him overboard and go back to Vigil, and she would map out a new life that included Jonah Riven …
Mr Riven had not moved from the deck.
‘Jonah,’ Arden asked gently. ‘Aren’t you cold?’
‘We have a problem.’ Mr Riven tilted his chin towards the Tempest boundary. ‘There’s a ship in there, just beyond the Wall.’
‘A boat? Prospectors gone off course maybe? We’re too far south for Equus, and Maris is uninhabitable.’
‘I don’t know. I’ve not seen a Lyonne-built ship to withstand such weather. Your blood might not have been going north to Bellis, but it was definitely going to someone. Someone still waiting to collect.’
Arden nodded. She did not doubt his hunter’s instincts. ‘All right. We’ll leave Fine Breeze for salvage and go. I’ll tell Chalice.’
‘Tell me what?’ Chalice exited the door, closing it solemnly, laid some linens next to Sean Ironcup’s body. She sagged with knock-kneed relief when she saw what Arden carried. ‘You got the blood! Oh! You got the blood back! Excellent!’
Chalice stopped speaking. Her joy was not shared.
‘What?’
Arden grabbed Chalice’s arm, offered her excuses to Mr Riven and dragged her away.
‘Madame Lion,’ Arden hissed once they reached the opposite deck. ‘Who else knows … about my shadow endowment, about Bellis? Do any of the Islanders know? Would they manipulate Mr Harrow, make him think he was helping his damn golden daughter?’
Chalice’s lips pressed together. A wave passed over the boat, drenching them in a spray.
‘Not more than ten officials within the Order were allowed that information. It … was too sensitive a matter to speak of.’
Arden pointed at Fine Breeze’s hull. ‘Then pray to the gods and devils this was an accident. Jonah says there is a boat beyond the storm wall and it has not moved. He thinks it might be the ones who intended to rendezvous for my blood.’
A thin blush of pink spread under Chalice’s freckles. ‘If it was, why would they stay?’
‘Let’s hope they’re just waiting for us to leave.’
‘Yes. We’ve got your blood back now. The last of it. We can toss it over the side and go home.’
‘This won’t end by throwing away this jar! If someone got Mr Harrow to send the Tallwaters out here, someone, somewhere knew there was something more than just ignis about me. And if he knew, then others would know.’ She pointed accusingly at the storm wall. ‘Even them. What chance of others knowing our secrets, Chalice? Can you even trust your own people?’
‘The Order would never …’
Their conversation was punctuated by Mr Riven clearing his throat. ‘Ladies,’ he said. ‘Whatever business demands this privacy needs to wrap up damned quickly. Our guests are coming.’
The sea-fog had slunk upon the ocean. A thin, distant sound headed up the darkening of the sun. Carried through the moist air and still ocean, a threshing of bows against waves.
Arden did not need the spyglass Mr Riven offered her. It would have made no difference. The fog was too think, and even she could not see anything beyond the Wall, but she had her own signal keeper’s instincts too. A boat was out there. Not by chance, not here where the volcanic island of Maris poisoned the water. The boat lingered there on purpose.
She hefted the jar in her hand. A solid, jellied weight. A sudden panic for what it represented. The shadow that had complicated her life. She needed to be rid of it, and she readied her arm to throw …
Only to have Mr Riven’s hand firmly placed on top of her own. He nodded at the corpse bound in sheet. ‘If worst comes to worst, we will need something to bargain with.’
‘You can’t possibly consider such a thing, Mr Riven,’ Chalice scolded. ‘That blood isn’t worth anything to anyone except your wife.’
‘I can consider bargaining for our lives,’ Mr Riven continued. ‘The current’s pulling us into the Tempest. We might hide there until that ship passes, but if she’s any bigger than a fishing boat, we’re in no condition to get boarded by pirates.’
‘Pirates?’ Chalice asked. ‘Here?’
‘We’re in a desert, Madam Lion. There’s no living to be had but theft.’ He took the jar from Arden, and nestled it inside the lifejacket box, before closing the lid. ‘Rather it, than you.’
Arden nodded, and would have kissed him had the situation not been so charged.
David had by then reluctantly abandoned Sean’s body, and was halfway through the retrieval of the rope ladder when he paused, head cocked like a sparrow that hears the worm. ‘What is that sound?’
He shoved the heel of his hands into his ears as the whistle picked up. A constant harmonic of agony, the cry of atmospheres caught in a perpetual collision.
‘Storm wall,’ Mr Riven barked. ‘It’s closing in faster than I thought. Get inside, all of you.’
Mr Riven ran for the wheelhouse ladder and seized the riser. A simple action, enraging the gods, and no sooner had he boosted himself to the first rung than a wave with all the power of a massive fist backhanded Saudade, six ways to Sunday.
With a whirl of vertigo Arden was boosted up by the rising deck and tossed into the side of the cabin with such an impact, every tooth in her skull rattled.
Chalice and David went sliding past her in a startled jumble of soaking limbs and open mouths, and if they had been screaming, the roar of the Wall took the sound away.
Another wave, Saudade lurched to starboard. This time Arden took off down the end of the deck with the speed of a bottle rocket. In a single, time-frozen moment, the wreckage of Fine Breeze tossed up into the air, suspended in spume and wave-wash, before descending towards Saudade. The little yacht dropped upon the forecastle deck with an unholy chorus of splintering wood before smashing into the railing, opening a gap on one side like broken teeth in a jaw.
Arden slid towards the edge, and slipped. Unable to arrest her long fall, she saw herself as though from above, as if through the longest of spyglass lenses, a small figure in waxen broadcloth sliding across the oil-slicked wood to where the balustrade was broken, to plunge over the side …
28
… and stopped.
Her skirt caught on a hook that jerked her from neck to knee, and Arden spun on an axis of wet broadcloth to discover the corpse, blue with cyanosis, now holding the hem of her dress in the grip of death.
His staring eyes had the shade of granite set in pearl.
The fist tightened harder on her skirt. The stitches crackled. Sean Ironcup, yanking her away from the seething wreckage of Fine Breeze as the wood battered and chewed upon the side of Saudade.
‘Sean,’ she shouted. ‘Hold on!’
Then just as suddenly Chalice joined him in trying to haul Arden up from the brink, three souls locked against the storm of the Tempest Wall. All the while behind them a man shouted in strangulated harmonics, shouted Arden’s name.
The boat pitched forward again and now the three were all in the sea, no air, no breath, no purchase in the roil and thunder. Arden could only dream of fire as she clung to the submerged edge of the boat, her head under the waves and her ears filled with seafoam and water.
Just as suddenly the boat bow flipped upwards once more, propelling them all high into the air with a seabird’s vertigo. Arden snatched at a railing, only to have it tear out of her hands from the inertia of the boat’s fall …
And then they plunged again.
The storm no longer roiled or roared. Only silence here, and her battering heart in the cavern of her chest, and her dragged down to lightless depths. Fingers clasped and scrabbled. Was that a foot upon her shoulder? A wisp of hair at her hand? All three of them, caught in the wreckage of a flou
ndering ship?
Arms as cold as death reaching about her.
Arms muscular and alien all at once.
Long arms, and bright cobalt rings.
29
Was the dumping that woke her
Was the dumping that woke her, flat on her back on the hard wood of the deck, her head shooting stars. A boneless hand flopped in her face, and she could not be certain if her own or somebody else’s. Whatever had happened, wherever afterlife she had ended up in, it was an infinitely less soggy, choppy and very much calmer one than her life of two minutes previously. The Tempest still roared, but at a remove, a distance long passed.
Arden coughed seawater from her lungs and sat up.
‘I’m never getting used to—’ she started to say, then stopped.
Through the haze of rain, a single golden eye beheld her.
One giant golden eye, staring from over Saudade’s transom, wider than the full stretch of her arms. Up and up, it loomed overhead, so round it filled the world in concentric circles huge enough to fall into. The double pupil, blacker than the oldest and deepest wisdom, stared down at her with the detachment of kings.
‘… devils,’ she finished.
With equal languid nonchalance, the long arm that had seized them from the water moved about the deck in the manner of a drunken person searching for a door key in the dark. The kraken’s limb spanned wider than Arden’s own torso and shone with a bright metal iridescence, even in the dwindling storm.
Arden could only bear mute witness as the entire scolex of the monster rose in majesty above the deckline, same as every woodcut and eyewitness account of kraken attack she had ever seen or heard. The blue phosphorescence of a living kraken crucifix left afterimages in her vision, so bright was it, putting the colours in her coat to shame.
Oh, she thought. Oh, he was the devil and God as one.
Seven more arms rose up to join the lone limb, lashed at the storm and writhed luminous against a lightless sky, before slipping away into the fog and plume.
Monstrous Heart Page 29