Black & Mist

by Thomas J. Radford

  “Meanest skipper in the High and the Free,” Denzel said. “Crews changed. She never did.”

  Hounds nodded. “Crew got out of line, she’d send her least favourite person out in a bubble.”

  “And shoot it out of the black,” Denzel continued.

  “And how’s that for sticking it to the dealer!” Hounds grinned, taking the round. She played a high trump the next round but her face dropped when Mantid awkwardly pushed a card forward facedown.

  “Is that what I think it is?” She glared at him before Denzel turned it over, revealing the left bower.

  “Sneaky shark always plays high.” Denzel shook his head, playing his ace trump. Probably all he had. Haze off-suited and Violet had to throw in her solitary trump. So much for being a good partner.

  “Don’t get angry, sailor,” Hounds told hers. “You’re a lousy player to start and when you’re mad you play stupid.”

  “Not angry, just tired,” Denzel said. “Woke up last night to find someone watching me sleep. All big and shadowy. Had glowing eyes too. Thought it was the old man’s pet Luscan. Damned horrible, it was.”

  “You sure you woke up?” Violet asked him. To her it sounded like Bandit. The loompa’s eyes would glow like that if there was a light to reflect. It was the only way to find him sometimes.

  “Damned sure,” Denzel shuddered. “For a moment I thought I was back on the—”

  “Play your damned card,” Haze interrupted. “We’re all waiting.”

  “Where in the Far Lanes did you learn to play, you damned cockroach?” Denzel stared at the card Mantid had played. He’d gone off suit again but played low, a poor choice on the face of it. Denzel played a high suit, but it was one of the only suits Violet had a face card for. She threw it down with a grin.

  “I swear he cheats.” Denzel leaned over the cards. “Not even using a third of the deck and somehow he’s counting.”

  “He ain’t counting,” Hounds told him. “Not proper anyway. Sorry, Violet.” She played another trump to win the round, scooping the cards up.

  “But that was my move,” Violet protested as Hounds dealt her next card.

  “And it was a good move,” Hounds said. “Mine was just better. One card at a time, navigator.”

  Mantid waved a forearm over the cards. He’d pushed his last two cards out, facedown again. Denzel threw his own cards down in dismay.

  “Gods damnit,” he muttered. “Are those going to be trumps, Mantid?”

  Hounds leaned over her navigator. “When I turn those cards over am I gonna be seeing spades staring back at me?”

  “He counts,” Mugs nodded his head. “Every time.”

  “Least the shark plays,” Haze grumbled. “Not folding like some pissant fish dribbling coin.”

  “That folding chair you’re so fond of, old man? Got a new place for you to stow it,” Mugs warned him.

  Mantid tapped the deck insistently.

  “The black take you, crawler.” Hounds flipped the cards. There were two spades, both lower than what Hounds had won the last round with. Violet put her cards down as well, though facedown. With no trumps between her and Denzel it didn’t matter what she played. It was all down to what Hounds still had left.

  The woman stared at Mantid so long her frown lines started to etch. Then dropped two off-suit aces on the table.

  “Thought we had him that time,” Denzel sighed.

  Haze snorted. “Not likely. Your table talk is awful. Even the girl could tell you were holding.”

  “She could?” All eyes turned towards Violet.

  “Whose turn is it to deal?” Violet pushed her facedown cards across the table. All the eyes followed them. Except Mantid’s.

  Does he blink? Can he even?

  “The cockroach.” Denzel pushed the pile of loose cards across the floor. “And ain’t that a sight to see.”

  “Good, give you time to grow a pair,” Haze said to Mugs.

  “Almost long enough for you to shuffle off this mortal plane,” Mugs shot back.

  “Neither of us are that lucky,” Haze said.

  Hounds and Denzel waded into the conversation while Mantid shuffled, moving the cards awkwardly around on the floor before trying to gather them up into a deck. He looked up at Violet and flicked his chest twice with one forelimb.

  Wait . . . hearts?

  Chapter 8

  “YOU SHOULDN’T BE down here.”

  Gravel didn’t turn around; he wouldn’t be able to see anything in the dark. He could just barely make out the silhouette in front of him. Squat, bulky. Massive. And pure black.

  “Apologies, Ensign, won’t be happening again.”

  “You said that the last time.”

  Didn’t have to see Kaspar to hear the annoyance.

  “Don’t trust this thing, Niko. You saw the way it came at us.”

  “It’s not moving now.”

  “Aye, and that don’t bother you? Like it’s just sleeping. Or waiting, maybe. Waiting for what though?”

  “Need you at your post, landsman, before someone marks you as absent.”

  Gravel climbed to his feet, still warily watching the thing hidden in the darkness. It hadn’t moved. Didn’t mean it wouldn’t. “That’s your officer voice, Niko,” he said. “Something the matter?”

  “Got another signal from the . . . from that ship.”

  “That ship bothers you, don’t it? Feel like telling me why?”

  “No. It’s nothing.”

  “Bad liar, Niko.”

  “It’s . . . not something you need to know, Brandon.”

  Gravel nodded, wondering if Kaspar could even see that much. “Aye, sir. Leave the worrying to you. It’s what you’re best at. Be at my post when you need me, then, sir.”

  Gravel stopped, his back to the Ensign. “Be best if you didn’t break the ship afore asking for help though. This time.”

  He actually got a weak laugh in response.

  Damn, things must be worse than I thought . . .

  BARELY A DAY since the lower decks had been packed with salt and sawdust and the crew were hauling it back onto the docks. They weren’t complaining though—a short run and a double one at that which was going to take them all the way to Vice. Better than Nel had hoped for. Might be she even owed Violet an apology.

  All right, more than might. That can wait though.

  Quill paced the length of the ship beside her, all bundled up in a blanket. The Tantamount might run cold but it had been a long time since they’d made an ice run, and few of them had the clothes for it. Ice could form at the lowest point of the ship during long runs, but with the entire hold packed, the whole ship was going to chill. And Quill was already wrapped up in the warmest blanket he could find.

  “Too cold for you, Kelpie?” Gabbi prodded mercilessly. She was watching his discomfort with undisguised glee.

  “I envy you your many layers of blubber, cook,” Quill admitted. To Nel he sounded almost sincere.

  “Yes, Quill,” Gabbi narrowed her eyes at him. “Must be hard for you, all snake skin and bile for blood. You going to be all right with weeks, maybe months of this until we get to Vice?”

  Quill stopped long enough to glare at her. Just looking at him made Nel pull her own coat tighter around her shoulders. When had it gotten so threadbare?

  “Where’s Mantid?” Violet asked. Of all of them, she was the only one who didn’t seem to feel the effect of the cold.

  Hells, girl has ice forming in her hair!

  Nel had to resist the urge to reach out and brush it off Violet’s head.

  “He and the captain are huddling in the galley,” Gabbi said. “Last I looked, they were fighting over who gets to hug the stove.”

  “Pathetic,” Quill shivered, stamping his feet.

  “You want to go wait in the galley too, Loveland?” Gabbi asked him sweetly. “Maybe thaw the frost off? Take the chill out of your bones?”

  Quill looked at her suspiciously, before shaking his head and clut
ching his blanket. “No, I do not.”

  Nel sidled up to Gabbi. “That was cruel,” she said.

  “So?”

  “Just an observation.”

  “Might want to check the lockers, Skipper. Just an observation.”

  “What for?”

  Gabbi held out a crystal, round and covered in grit. “Found a couple of bed warmers in my sandpit. Someone’s been borrowing from the ammo locker. Could do without my kitchen being set alight. Got Jack for that.”

  Clever sods. Wish I’d thought of it—except for the part where they overcook the crystals and set their hammock on fire. Have to remember to check the cage. And the guns, come to think of it . . .

  “Cargo’s coming, Skipper,” Violet pointed.

  Young eyes, Nel thought, following Violet’s direction. I miss being young. That part anyway.

  She could make out the incoming train, little more than a grey smudge coming down the hills now, but she trusted what Violet said.

  “Quick delivery,” Gabbi commented.

  “Always is with ice runs,” Nel said. “Less time spent sitting around and shifting ballast is more coin at the end.”

  “How we getting paid for this, Skipper?” Violet asked, her head twisting back and forth between Nel and the docks.

  “You didn’t figure to ask that when you were setting all this up?”

  “Skipper,” Violet sounded reproachful.

  This time Nel did ruffle her hair. Violet ducked her head, looking annoyed.

  “Leave off, Nel,” Gabbi told her. “It’s a fair question.”

  “Get paid by the pound, lass,” Nel said. “They’ll weigh the run at beginning and end, and we get paid for what we deliver. Minus the advance.”

  “Why would it change?” Violet asked.

  “Because it’s ice.”

  “So?”

  “Ice melts, Vi.”

  “But we run cold,” Violet objected. “That was the whole reason we got the job.”

  “Still gonna be some loss of product. Normal run could lose maybe half the cargo by the end.”

  “Half?!”

  Nel nodded. “We should be able to do better than that.”

  Quill leaned out over the ship’s railing, lizard eyes peering through the sleet-misted distance. His profile was remarkably akin to that of an old woman, stooped and bundled.

  “What?” Nel asked him, suddenly suspicious.

  “Draugr,” he pronounced. The blanket started to slip unnoticed down his shoulders as he straightened up.

  Hells.

  “Violet, stop, come back . . .”

  Too late though. The girl either couldn’t or wouldn’t hear her, already belting down the gangway and weaving through the slow-moving crew on the dock. Some reacted in annoyance at her passage but most were too slow to react much at all, numbed by the cold as they were.

  “Gabbi, go find the captain,” Nel said grimly. “Quill . . .”

  “I know.” The Kelpie made for the gangway, blanket now hitched up.

  Draugr at both pickups, Nel thought as she followed him down. So much for a labour shortage then. No wonder they caused a riot. And just what does Vi find so damnably fascinating about them?

  There were a dozen sleds, each with half that number of Draugr harnessed up the way one might harness dogs or horses. The sleds all carried a payload of ice, cut into blocks of roughly the same size and lashed down with rope and hides. As Nel got closer, she could see how much of a toll the frozen environment took on the Draugr. Their skin was frostbitten and haggard, like tanned hide or—a more stomach churning thought—cured jerky. In places, the skin was worn through, exposing muscles and tendons as they moved with an unnatural stiffness.

  That ain’t right. Not by a long shot.

  Violet was amongst the Draugr now, poking and prodding them, far too curious for Nel’s liking. The girl tugged on hands and what tattered remains of clothing there was, speaking animatedly at the Draugr and peering up into their eyes. Eyes that were glassy and framed by frosted lashes. Almost the only hair visible on any of the Draugr present, Nel observed. They’d been shorn at the head. It had the effect of making them less distinct, almost faceless. Violet was studying them, she realised, looking for telltale clues as to any past or identity. Tattoos like Stoker and his crew had. Something that would tell her these Draugr used to be real people.

  Maybe.

  Where do all the damned Draugr come from them? Too many of them for someone not to notice if it were all like Grange and such. People would notice.

  Wouldn’t they?

  “You are the captain, I presume?”

  “First officer,” Nel said to the man in charge. He had to be the man in charge because he was the only one who didn’t look dead. A Korrigan, bundled up in furs. Fair taller than usual, he almost came up to Nel’s shoulder. Or maybe it was she. Nel wasn’t about to ask. She already liked them more than Jack though, as this one had the good sense not to extend a hand, meaning Nel could keep hers tucked away where they were less cold. “Captain pulled rank on account of it being colder than a miser’s heart here.”

  “So long as you’re here for the pickup, it don’t matter to me. If you got the papers, we can do our business and be done with it. Weather can turn foul here so best we move things along.”

  “This is not foul?” Quill asked, teeth chattering beside her.

  “This is spring,” the foreman said gruffly. His breath gushed out in great steaming plumes.

  “Papers are aboard,” Nel said. “So is the ink and so is the brandy. We can talk aboard if you’ve a mind.”

  That at least cracked a smile, out of the foreman if not Quill. The Kelpie scowled, looking on disapprovingly. Nel didn’t care. Let the Kelpie judge her.

  The foreman glanced back over his shoulder. “That girl never seen Draugr before?”

  “Used to have one as a pet,” Quill muttered. “It died. An unfortunate fascination ever since.”

  Clever, Quill.

  The foreman grunted. “Folk are strange. Draugr as pets. Strange.”

  Quill shrugged in agreement.

  “Your workers look battered,” Nel said.

  “Yeah,” the foreman nodded. “They do. Harsh living up here. Safer with them kind. Cheaper in the long too.”

  “What do you do with them during the summer?”

  “Sell ‘em on. Those that make it through the season anyway.”

  “You lose workers?” Nel asked, frowning. She was watching Violet involved in a silent staring contest with one.

  “Plenty. Some fall through the ice when we cut, avalanches take some. Lost a whole hut once to a moving drift one year. And every season some of them just stop.”

  “They stop?”

  “Dead, frozen maybe, or run out of whatever makes ‘em go. Everything breaks eventually. Better than things used to be though.”

  “How so?”

  “Used to be real folk. Good folk, mostly. Those that ain’t afraid of a hard job. Didn’t like to see them when they came back with frostbitten bits. Better like this.”

  “I guess so,” Nel nodded. She didn’t know how that should make her feel. A few months ago she wouldn’t have given the Draugr much thought. Because there hadn’t been anything to think about. Even Stoker had said he didn’t believe there were others out there like him.

  Still . . .

  “Your girl’s about to get a fright,” the foreman said while he fished a bone-carved whistle out from under his furs. He blew a series of short notes on it. To Nel it sounded like louder and not-so-loud noise but there was a substantive reaction from the Draugr. All the teams stepped forward together, hauling their cargo to the makeshift docks Quill had brought the Tantamount into. The sleds came to a stop by the ramps, essentially slides that would assist in loading the cargo hold. Their initial pickup had included a number of tools; grapples and tongs, for shifting the ice itself. Even so, it was going to be fiddly work.

  It occurred to Nel she hadn’t seen
Draugr work that much. There’d been few, if any, under colours when she served. More in the Central Band but she hadn’t been stationed there. There were more to be found on ships now but she’d never had a chance to really watch the creatures at work before.

  In rough unison, each of the Draugr reached up and unbuckled their harnesses. They must have been snap releases as Nel couldn’t imagine those frozen limbs had the dexterity to manage complicated knots or latches. What was more impressive was seeing the Draugr fall into work crews. The ice was untethered and the sleds tilted, dumping the blocks by the ramps. Half of the Draugr workers stepped back into their harnesses and began towing the sleds back the way they had come. They passed Violet on the way. The girl hadn’t taken fright at all, and she just stood there, turning to watch them go.

  “Gonna be a couple of days to load your ship at least,” the foreman explained. “Lot of hauling trips to make. Lads by the ramps will shift what comes in. Your crew need to handle the loading itself. No problems, right?”

  “No,” Nel said. “No problems at all. Follow me and we’ll see to those papers.”

  She leaned in to Quill as she passed him. “Get Violet back here and set the rest to work. The sooner we quit this frozen wasteland the better.”

  Quill nodded, still muffled shamelessly in the folds of his blanket. “I agree, Skipper.”

  Well, that was something.

  IT WAS THE second day of receiving deliveries of frozen water when things went spectacularly wrong. Quill and Mantid had been cajoled into assisting with the unloading. Mantid had acquiesced willingly enough and even Quill had gone along with the idea. Violet thought both were united for the first time in wanting to be quit of the frozen wasteland, as Quill described it.

  She had thought Quill looked odd shivering in a blanket but Mantid looked outright bizarre draped in an ill-fitting rug. His kind did not have the frame suited to any kind of wrap and the new navigator was already moving stiffly, seemingly in danger of freezing solid along with their cargo.

  Violet was watching along with the rest of the crew. There was little else to do as the ice Draugr were handling most of the operation with an eerie efficiency. Efficient if you didn’t count the time one group had run over another with their sled because the first hadn’t moved out of the line fast enough. It was the way the rundown ones picked themselves up and went back to work that made it eerie—completely silent.