Black & Mist

by Thomas J. Radford

  The tail is the key, Violet pulled her distracted mind back on track as she tightened the knotted scarf she’d tied over her hair. Quill’s was going to give him away. He had some plan for her, some nefarious plan she wasn’t going to like. There was no other reason he would have had her assigned to his watch.

  Possibly he might have done it just to spite the skipper, Violet thought. But Quill and the skipper had always maintained a surly respect, content to let it go at barbed comments. And if there was one person Quill wouldn’t goad it was the skipper.

  Not that he wouldn’t, just never has.

  “Stop doing that,” Quill said, not even bothering to look up.

  “I’m not doing nothing,” Violet told him.

  “Then do something.”

  “I am. I’m watching.”

  “It is irritating.”

  “We’re on watch.”

  Quill straightened up with a sigh, finally deigning to look at her. “You have lessons when you share a watch with the skipper, yes?”

  “Yeah,” Violet said, not hiding her suspicion.

  “And before then you had them from . . .” Quill actually hesitated, “from Piper.”

  Violet nodded stiffly.

  “One assumes they covered the basics of navigation with you. One would hope you were paying attention.”

  “Won’t have you badmouthing Piper or the skipper!” Violet jumped to her feet. “You don’t get to talk like that. Not ever!”

  To her surprise, Quill laughed. “Good. If nothing else, the two of them managed to instil some semblance of respect for one’s tutor into you.”

  He took a step toward her, looking down at her. Violet stared back defiantly.

  “But my criticism was not directed at your tutors. Merely their student.”

  “You mean me.”

  “Yes.”

  Violet glared.

  “Tell me, girl,” Quill turned away, “what are the principle challenges we face when navigating through the black?”

  “Kelpie navigators?”

  “Do not test me.”

  Violet bit off her next comment. “Everything is always moving.”

  “Is it?”

  “Well, yeah, where we’re going isn’t going to be where it was when we get there.”

  “So we need to account for where an object’s transit would carry it before we set our course. And suppose we do not know the route our own destination travels, how then might we compensate?”

  Violet stared. She had no idea. At length Quill seemed to realise this.

  “Perhaps another question,” he allowed. “Given that we are still within the grasp of this planet’s winds, how often must I refill our sails?”

  “Thought you didn’t have to,” Violet said. “Why would you when we’ve got crew and canvas out there catching real breezes?”

  “Good,” said Quill, with something that might almost have been approval. “But this planet is still trying to pull us down.”

  Violet glanced over the side. She could see the world below them, a world whose name escaped her for the moment. The sea coast of Port Border had given way to a rockier, more mountainous region. There were touches of snow now, which was a good sign given their intended cargo.

  “We are, in fact, falling.”

  Falling . . .

  “Don’t feel like we’re falling,” Violet said, even though she knew it was true.

  “Perhaps because our new . . . friend . . . and I spent the better part of the morning carrying the Tantamount against this planet’s gravity. Sailing, flying rather, through the air is a much more challenging endeavour than through the black.”

  “Could have just sailed upriver,” Violet said.

  “The river would have frozen before we reached our destination. And launching the ship from the bed of a frozen river is much more challenging still.”

  Violet nodded.

  Sneaky Kelpie, trying to lull me.

  Her eyes caught the snap of a billowing foresail. A sailor called out, a line was tweaked, and the canvas settled.

  “How does it work, Quill?”

  “How does what work? What is it?”

  “How do you use magic to make a ship sail the black?”

  Quill’s eyes narrowed to mere slits.

  Violet beamed at him. Two can play at this game. “How do you use thaumatics to fill a ship’s sails, I mean?”

  “I push them.”

  “Doesn’t seem like it would work.”

  “No?”

  “No, cause you can’t be around to push them the whole time, so how do they stay filled like there’s actual wind when you’re napping? Why don’t they go still?”

  Quill snorted. “An actual nuanced question. I am almost impressed.”

  “So? How does it work then?”

  Quill looked down the length of the ship. Everything was tied down, a good thing on account of the wind and the rain lashing them.

  Violet instinctively ducked when one of the coarsely woven sacks of salt they’d taken on came flying towards her. It came to a sliding halt at Quill’s feet.

  “Watch,” he said.

  The sack of salt rose between them, drifting lazily around the deck, tumbling end over end.

  “Not everything in the black is in motion,” Quill said, gesturing idly with his hand. “Most, but not all. Objects that possess an envelope . . .”

  “Like us.”

  Quill stopped. “Do not interrupt.”

  “Sorry.” Violet bit down on her lower lip.

  “Like the Tantamount will . . . slow down. The miasma we sail on and through will drag the ship to a halt, clap us in irons and hold fast,” Quill’s voice became more distant as he mused, perhaps concentrating on his prop. “A natural current or wind is rare in the black, thus we rely on ether and thaumatics. Ether to keep the black at bay, to forge our way through the mist. Do you know what happens to a ship when it ventures too far into the black, to a place where the miasma is thin?”

  “No,” Violet blinked. She’d started to get caught up in the telling, surprising herself.

  “It falls,” Quill said, dropping his own hand. The salt fell too, hitting the wood hard, a handful of coarse white grains spilling out onto the deck. “It falls, as if one had sailed a ship off the edge of the world. Sometimes,” he looked at her, “it falls forever. Others will fall until it finds the miasma again. Only perhaps the mist is not thin but thick, places like the Morgana. The effect is no different than if one sailed into a cliff, the outcome the same. This is why we keep to the Lanes, the ways of the black.”

  Quill raised his hand, causing the salt to rise, still leaking small white rock crystals over the woodwork. “A navigator’s thaumatics obey the same rules. Left alone, a vessel set in motion, under sail, will wither and stop, as it would were a sea breeze to die. Unless it were to be . . . structured in such a way as to sustain itself.”

  Violet watched as Quill tossed the sack in one direction then another, weaving a convoluted design in front of her. She narrowed her eyes as she watched the container being buffeted in mid-air. “I don’t understand.”

  “You, like our gluttonous cook, prefer to goad and prod,” Quill said, “to provoke until you elicit a reaction you can see and gloat over. Some of us . . . are more subtle.”

  The sack was starting to fray under the abuse Quill was dealing to it. Violet took a step back, expecting it to rupture and for salt to fly everywhere at any moment.

  “Some of us are more subtle. Some work with currents and forces you are blind to, that you cannot see because you do not look. But the results . . .”

  Quill stopped talking, now drawn to the display between them as Violet was. He smiled, visibly, teeth and all. The sack burst apart, spilling its contents. Violet flinched, raising her hands reflexively to cover her face.

  Only she wasn’t covered in the gritty substance as she expected. Peering cautiously through her fingers, she saw that Quill’s display was not yet done. The complex
pattern he’d traced with the unwieldy sack was now fully realised, a twisting design drawn in salt that flowed continuously. Violet could no longer see where it began or ended, like a mythical snake chasing its tail.

  “What is that?” she stared. It was strangely beautiful, Quill’s self-sustaining pattern. For he wasn’t feeding it anymore, if that was the right term. To look at him she couldn’t see the tell-tale glimmers of thaumatics, the tension in his limbs, or the visible flicker of his own energies.

  “That,” Quill said, reaching out to pluck away the still entrapped and now useless sackcloth, “is what you do not see when the sails fill.”

  “How long will it stay like that?” Violet walked around the pattern. It was changing as she watched, taking on a more spiral shape, ever twisting.

  “Until it exhausts itself.” Quill shrugged. “This is a mere cantrip, a simple training exercise. I perhaps misspoke before. What it takes to fill the sails of a ship this size would be more complex. It would require anchoring, or one might experience . . . unpleasantness.”

  Or you just don’t want to admit your job might not be as easy as you make out, Violet smirked.

  “Can I touch it? What happens if I touch it?”

  “Nothing,” Quill snorted. “What has ever happened when you try and touch a breeze?”

  Slowly, carefully, Violet extended one hand towards Quill’s model. There was a prickling, the hairs on the back of her hand standing up as she edged closer, tracing one of the outer tributaries of the pattern. She could feel her eyes widen as the pattern started to change, that one flow stretching out as if reaching for her touch.

  And then it bit her. Violet snatched her hand back, crying out and cradling it to her chest. The pattern shuddered and collapsed in on itself, the whole pile of salt falling to the deck, any trace of elegance or design gone.

  “Damnit, Quill!” Violet yelled. “You meant for that to happen!”

  “I meant no such thing.” Quill blinked at her. “I touched it before and this did not happen. The fault clearly lies with you, girl.”

  “You said it was safe.”

  “I did not. I said nothing would happen. In any case, you are not injured so it was safe.”

  “Yeah?” Violet held up her hand. The tips of her fingers were red and blistered. Burned.

  “Curious.” Quill grabbed her wrist, turning it so he could see.

  “You’re hurting me.” Violet yanked her hand away angrily.

  “You will live,” Quill was dismissive. “Tell me, are thaumatics common amongst your kind? I admit to little familiarity with the adults of your kind. You are an uncommon race.”

  “I don’t know. What does that got to do with anything?”

  “Nothing,” Quill said. “Be sure you clean up that mess.”

  Violet glared at the kelpie’s back as he turned back to his charts. She shouldn’t have been surprised.

  “EASY THERE, LASS, you look fit to murder.”

  Violet stopped up short at the sound of Hounds’ voice. It carried over the carousing of her watch on the gun deck. As the Tantamount only had a handful of guns, none of which resided here, it was more of a secondary cargo deck. It was also where the crew hung their hammocks; the swinging canvas reminded Violet that she still had to attend to Mantid’s special circumstances.

  Why can’t he fix his own hammock though? Where’s he sleeping now?

  Violet heaved the sack of salt off her shoulder. There was a gritty white residue on her shoulder where it had sat. She’d fixed the bag up as best she could, knotting the end, but it was a patch job and she knew it. She needed to find somewhere to stow, or another container to store it in. Problem was, having just left port, most nooks and crannies were well stuffed and every spare box had been pressed into service. Gabbi had gone on a shopping spree with the advance, and sundries had done for the rest.

  “This one burst,” she said to Hounds, who was surrounded by a half circle of card players. “Need to sort it somehow.”

  “You break it?” Denzel asked, then immediately held up his hands defensively. “Didn’t mean nothing by that, Miss Violet. Here take this, weren’t using it anyhow.”

  “Thanks.” Violet took the offered apple crate the sailor had been using as a stool. She wedged the ruptured sack as best she could into it, looking around for where she could leave it. She settled on weighting the crate between a trunk and somebody’s seabag.

  There. Not my problem no more.

  “Play a hand with us, Violet,” Hounds said, dealing cards as she spoke. The woman flicked cards to all the players in the circle, making it look deft and easy.

  “Not much of a player,” Violet said.

  “Tell that to Denzel,” Hounds smirked. “Not even a round and you’ve hustled him out of the best seat in the house.”

  Denzel rolled his eyes; his crewmates laughed and pushed him. With Denzel’s apple crate gone, only two of the circle, one of them being Hounds, had seats. The other was Haze. The old sailor had a folding stool of some sort. The others crouched or knelt on the floor.

  “All right,” Violet said. “What’s the game?”

  “Tricks and trumps, lass,” Hounds said. “Bid with your partner and no skipping rounds.”

  “Who’s my partner?”

  “Volunteers?” Hounds peered over her cards, pushing Violet’s five towards her.

  There was a round of coughing from the players and eyes were averted.

  “How about you, Shellfish?” Hounds said to Haze. The old sailor looked at her ugly.

  “Shellfish?” Violet repeated, causing the look to be turned upon her. Didn’t care much, she was well used to it.

  “Aye, Shellfish,” Hounds grinned. “Man here’s a certified shellfish, been to the Edge and everything.”

  “Ain’t a shellfish, woman,” Haze complained. “It’s a damned turtle.”

  “Aye, which is a fish in a shell, ain’t it, Shellfish. So you partnering up with little Miss Murdersome here or not?”

  “Not.”

  “It’s like that, is it? Shameful. Bringing bad luck on yourself. Who will it be then?”

  Mantid tapped the deck impatiently.

  “Thank you kindly, Mantid,” Hounds grinned, tilting her head towards the secondary navigator. “The Kitsune and the Mantid, fearsome as they come, lads. Least we know there’ll be no table talking.”

  No table talking, Violet thought, looking at the new navigator, no bloody talking at all.

  “You know all the lads, Violet?” Hounds asked. “You’ve met Denzel, surely, and Mantid. Evil card player that one. Darkest bluffer I ever set eyes upon. The ugly one calls himself Haze and the one with the face is Mugs. The two of them against me and Denzel and you and our peerless navigator as the wild cards. First call for trumps is spades. How do you all plead?”

  Mantid had his cards splayed out before him, facedown. His head swivelled to face Hounds and he tapped his cards.

  “Mantid passes,” Hounds said. “Just to be different. Haze?”

  The man shook his head. He also cleared his throat with a hacking cough that made the two either side of him lean away.

  “Pass,” Denzel said in disgust. “How about you, Miss Violet?”

  Violet looked at the cards she held. Scarcely a spade to be seen. Nor an off suit bower. She followed those who came before her and passed.

  “Same here,” Mugs grunted.

  “Useless layabouts,” Hounds muttered, picking up the kitty and tossing away a few of her own cards. “Not a shred of courage amongst the lot of you.”

  “Rules are if no one calls trumps we stick with the dealer,” Denzel winked. “Faster game that way.”

  “Stick it to the dealer would be more apt,” Hounds scowled. “Who dealt these miserable hands?”

  “A miserable dealer.”

  “The boss lady would have shot you out of the black if she heard talk like that,” Hounds said. “Right, ante up.”

  All the players pushed in a coin.

>   “I don’t have any money,” Violet said, alarmed.

  “Want to stake your partner?” Hounds elbowed Mantid, to no response. “Fine, cheap sod. Here, lass.” She grabbed a handful of coins from her own pile and trickled them in front of Violet. “You do well, those come back out of your winnings; you lose and we’ve got a problem. So don’t lose.”

  Violet swallowed, not sure if the woman was joking. She took another look at her cards. Not good. Only a single trump and a few face cards. Not good at all.

  “What was that about the boss lady?” she asked as betting continued. She wanted to fold but didn’t have the nerve to in front of them all, not after Hounds had sponsored her in. “Did you mean the skipper?”

  “The skipper, a skipper, not your skipper,” Denzel said.

  “Our old skipper,” Hounds said. “Back in the days when we sailed proper colours, Denzel and I. Crow too, come to think, except he wanted to stay back in Border. Good eyes that man, shame about the nose.”

  “The good old days,” Mugs grunted. “I fold.”

  His partner Haze made a sound of disgust.

  Damnit, should have folded too. Hells.

  “Alliance?” she guessed. “You sailed the High Lanes?”

  “Sailed everywhere, in the good old days,” Hounds said, opening the round with an off suit. “The High and the Free, the Dark and the Far. Didn’t stay long enough to make citizen before we had to get out.”

  “If you call being sent out in a bubble to be used as target practice for the gunners the good old days, sure,” Denzel shrugged, throwing a discard.

  “Hence why we got out,” Hounds said.

  “One of the reasons we got out,” Denzel muttered. “Oh, let me count the reasons.”

  “I don’t understand,” Violet said. She looked down at her cards again. No way to win this hand, best just to discard something.

  “Folk called her the Gunner’s Daughter. Went through crews like weevils through biscuits. Got things done though. Braids loved her, the way everyone loves a villain, us . . . not so much,” Hounds said grimly.