The Iron Ship

by K. M. McKinley

  Guis sobbed, part in self-pity, part in fear. Something was stirring in the thick air of the room.

  “Everyone hates me.” He tripped on a stack of books, sending them skidding across the polished floor. He flopped face down. “I hate me,” he said.

  “You are not to think so! You are not to be so, you must find balance. Find your peace within, my master. They love you, they love you, do not think they do not.”

  “They do not!” said Guis. A lie, his intellect said. The terrible truth, his heart rejoined.

  “Be calm. Light your candles. You must do so, or I will struggle to help you.”

  “I am! I am trying.”

  He would have torn the little being from his shoulder there and then, if his instincts warned him against it. Without Tyn, he was defenceless against his own thoughts. He dragged himself up and went stumbling about the place, knocking his possessions into disarray. He lit big-headed matches that exploded with sulphurous ferocity, and touched them to the wicks of his candles. No tallow for Guis. He remained a goodfellow, at least for now.

  One, two, four, six candles. The moonlight was replaced by naked flame’s soothing flicker.

  “There!” hissed Tyn. In the corner, a patch of shadow that would not depart before the candle glow, a physical darkness.

  “To the bed! To the bed! Get inside the circle!”

  Around Guis’s bed was a circle of silver filings mixed with salt. Unlike the rest of the room, this part of the floor was clear of detritus. He stepped over it and sat on his bed.

  The shadow drew itself up, taking on the rough shape of a man. The candlelight dimmed, its colour drained away. Sounds from outside became brittle.

  Guis screwed his eyes shut.

  “Do not concentrate! Do not think on it!”

  “How can I not?” said Guis. His terror dissolved into bitter, drunken laughter. “Too late.”

  The shadow thickened, its outline became more certain. A pair of glints in the shadowy round of its head suggested eyes.

  “Think of something else, my master!”

  “I cannot, I cannot!” He slammed the heels of his hands into his forehead. “I can’t stop thinking about it!”

  “Stop this, my master! You must stop it.”

  “I can’t, Tyn. I’m tired. Tired of this. Tired of it all. Let it come. I deserve my fate, the loveless son.”

  “Then sleep, sleep.” Tyn made a pass with his hands, as if drawing down Guis’s eyelids with its finger tips.

  Guis’s eyes, already heavy with wine, slid shut and he fell sideways on the bed. Tyn leaned with his collapse, expertly riding the playwright as he fell. He scampered up over Guis’s collarbone to stand upon his upper arm, not taking his eyes from the shadow.

  The skin of reality rippled. Light returned, intruding now into the shadowed corner, separating the night-black skin of the thing from its refuge.

  “Go Darkling, go, nothing for you here!” said Tyn softly. “Back to the shadow with you, get away from the light. Back to the cold, back to the night.”

  The Darkling remained manifest, its half-formed shape indistinct but too invested in the weft of the world to be dissipated easily.

  Tyn growled at it. “Begone!”

  The shadow creature’s form thickened.

  “Begone!” Tyn said. He held his hands wide. His eyes blazed. Smoke rose from his flesh beneath his iron collar. The scent of rich leaf mould filled the room. Tyn’s eyes flashed green.

  The Darkling melted back, becoming shadow once again.

  Tyn shut his eyes. When he opened them, they were bereft of power, and he stood smaller. He rubbed at his burnt neck and grimaced. “Poor Tyn,” it muttered. “Poor Tyn is trapped. Poor Tyn will never be free.” He stared at his sleeping master. Hatred etched itself into his face.

  The moment passed. Tyn’s anger burned out. His expression changed to one of affection. He padded along Guis’s arm, climbed down and stood on the bed. He reached a hand out to Guis’s cheek and stroked it tenderly.

  “Sleep, good master. Sleep.”

  Guis rolled onto his back and let out a somnolent, wine-stinking sigh. Tyn climbed onto him again and stalked up and down until satisfied the magic was done. The rain started again, as it fussed and primped at Guis’s shoulder, tying new warding knots into his hair, crooning a song which brought to mind wild places. Raindrops tapped at the windows, driven by gusting wind, run-off spattered noisily into the street mud from a broken gutter. But the night was quiet. When its duties were done, Tyn took another look around the room, sniffing at the dark places suspiciously. It was a long time until he was satisfied. Warily, he coiled the braids into a nest in the hollow of Guis’s neck. There it slept the remainder of the night through, face twitching as it dreamt of dark forests.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Silver Ship

  A WET NIGHT gave way to a fine morning that found Garten and Trassan on a bench on the south cliffs. From the safety of Malladua, they looked down upon the Totterdown, a cleft in the cliffs full of prettily painted buildings that wobbled higgledy-piggledy to the high water mark. Insular and sometimes dangerous, its inhabitants had been there for generations. They carried on regardless of the city that had swallowed them, eyes forever on the sea. All of them were fishers, anguilloniers, potmen or gleaners.

  Malladua could not be more different. So new the stone gleamed, ordered, planned, named in Maceriyan, and fronted by the great walls of the cliffs. High above the water, it offered the cleaner air of the sea with none of the peril. A meticulously-tended green twenty yards wide ran all along the cliff walk in front of fine terraced townhouses, lawns studded with flowerbeds and ornate lamps. A round plaza paved with slabs of granite was central to this linear park. From its seaward edge, a statue of Demes, the father of Alfra, looked out over the marshes with blind bronze eyes.

  The brothers had not slept. The hour was early, that time when the world is luminous with the coming sun. It was too late for ne’er-do-wells, too early for most good folk. In the predawn stillness sounds carried far, shouts from the waking markets, a bell tolling out thanks to departed gods, and the ceaseless cries of Karsa’s gulls. Smoke wound up from the city in uncountable blue threads.

  “What are we doing here?” Garten shivered. He had lost his hat, and it was cold. He keenly felt every last drink of the night before. Daylight reveals drunkenness’s shabby nature all too readily. “It is going to start raining again soon. Look at those clouds.”

  Trassan had a spyglass. Garten vaguely remembered stopping by his house to fetch it. “Just wait, will you? The sun will be up in a moment, that weather is miles out to sea. Trust me, this is worth it. You can only see this after a Great Tide, blasts all the muck out to sea. It’ll be swallowed up by the silt in a few days.”

  “What will?”

  Trassan laughed. “Just wait! This is a surprise.”

  Acid burned Garten’s gullet. He swallowed it back. There was a leaden pressure growing at the back of his skull that pulsed as if alive. Each beat squeezed bitter spit into his mouth. “I don’t feel all that well. I need bacon. Very salty bacon. I’ll be fine if I can have some bacon. Please. Bacon.”

  “We’ll get you bacon after we’ve seen this and after we’ve seen Rel.”

  “I don’t think Charramay is going to be very pleased with me.”

  “She’ll not know! You can come and sleep it off at my house.”

  The sun crested the horizon, a sliver of brilliant light peeking between cloud and earth that joined the distant sea and mud of the marsh into a single sheet of molten metal.

  “Ow,” said Garten, shading his eyes.

  Trassan stood and scanned the mud.

  “There!” he shouted.

  “Ow,” said Garten again. He rubbed his head. “Why do I always listen when you say ‘one more drink’?”

  “Look! Look!” Trassan hauled his brother to his feet. “There it is! Can you see it, right there, a flash of silver brighter than the rest?”
<
br />   “Yes. So what? If I look interested can I have some bacon?”

  Trassan tugged him over to the rail around the viewing platform until they were right on the edge of the cliff, by the brazen feet of Alfra’s father. Trassan pointed. Garten looked hard. Trassan handed the spyglass to Garten.

  “See there? Can you see it?”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “An object of sculpted metal, unharmed by the sea.”

  “Is that it? A spine of metal emerging from the mud.”

  “That’s it.”

  Garten saw something tall, seven yards or so, sharp as a shark’s fin. A pool excavated by the rush of the tide glinted around it. As his brother said, the metal was free of corrosion or fouling and shone with reflected sunlight.

  “That, brother, is a Morfaan ship.”

  “And? People have known about that for years, it’s in plain view,” said Garten. “It’s on all our charts. You dragged me out here to see that?”

  “Then did you know an engineer by the name of Gann tried to retrieve it? He failed. Whatever that piece of metal is, it’s attached to something very large.”

  “That I did not know.”

  “He attempted it ten years back, before you joined the Admiralty,” said Trassan.

  “Right. Well, it’s very nice, but why are you showing me?”

  “Because, brother, you’re looking at the past there, but also the future.”

  “Every magister with big ideas says the same thing. The wisdom of the ancients! A new world! Bollocks. I don’t see what the fuss is about. The Morfaan were decadent, and they fell. Ours is the superior civilisation.”

  “That’s father talking. You don’t really believe that.”

  Garten shrugged. The motion forced out a sickly burp. “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t.”

  “Imagine if we could make a ship like that.”

  “Come on Trass, no one knows how to replicate their metallurgy. Father told us that often enough. What has all this to do with me? I feel lousy and its freezing. Do we really have to be out here? What is it you need from the Admiralty? If it’s permission to dig that out you’ll need to speak to the Shoreman’s Guild and the customs people. The foreshore’s not our purview. Sorry.”

  Trassan smiled, not taking his eyes off the ancient vessel buried in the mud of the bay. “I’m not interested in salvaging the wreck. Well, I am. But I don’t think I could. However, there is something better. I’m going to tell you something that no one else knows. I trust you can keep it a secret.”

  “I’m your brother, Trassan.”

  Trassan put his hand on Garten’s shoulder. His eyes were alive with excitement. “Vand has discovered the location of an intact Morfaan city.”

  Garten raised his eyebrows. “What? How long have you known this?”

  “Not long, I swear, or I wouldn’t be here with you right now. He’ll announce it soon. His excavations in Ostria have been most illuminating. He found a map. It dates from some time before the Maceriyan period, when the Morfaan were in decline. Most of the places marked there are familiar—the ruins at Ostria, naturally, Under-Perus, Mohacs, the Glass Fort, the rest. But there is one site, so remote, that he took a gamble that it might still be whole.” Trassan gripped his brother. “He had a seeing performed, it’s there alright. Still there, whole, untouched. Deep in the south, surrounded by ice, but it’s there, in the Sotherwinter. It’s fortunate that the Prince Alfra was under construction,” said Trassan.

  “Right,” said Garten, who did not believe it was a coincidence for a second. “You’re planning to go there.”

  “Yes, yes!” said Trassan. “In the iron ship! The greatest adventure of this modern age!”

  “And to get there you’ll have to pass beyond the Final Isle.”

  “I will,” said Trassan encouragingly. “What I need from you, brother, is a free charter of trade for my ship, a Licence Undefined.”

  Garten lowered his spyglass. “Piss off. Nobody gets a Licence Undefined but the Ishmalani. We can’t have captains going where they will. Crossing the Southern Ocean is out of the question without proper consideration. The treaty with the Drowned King forbids it.”

  “I’m serious. This ship will be able to do things no other vessel built by men has ever done. Not even the king will be able to stop it.”

  “I’d take that back if I were you. We’re dangerously close to the water.”

  “A boast. I have no intention of crossing the dead. That’s why I want the official documentation.”

  “Then it doesn’t matter what this ship of yours can and can’t do, brother. Be more careful of your bragging. The ocean is his domain.” He frowned. “No. I can’t do it for you. You’ll have to go through official channels.”

  “No! You can do it for me, without all the delay.” Trassan paused. “What if I were to tell you that I have a Ishmalan captain? Would that make it easier for you?”

  “How much did he cost you?”

  “Everything is in place,” said Trassan soothingly. “It will all be perfectly legal. If I’m going to do this, I have to go next spring. I need your help.”

  “Apply openly,” said Garten. “Don’t drag me into it.”

  “Come on, anything with Vand’s hand in it will be debated endlessly. He’s as many enemies as friends. It’ll be kicked up from the Admiralty and end up in the Three Houses. The last thing we want is the politicians to get involved. Get me my charter, let them argue over it afterwards.”

  “Yes. Right. I see.” Garten looked at his brother seriously. “And you’re not planning to go anywhere unusual. No. Just a simple request, that’s all. Utter rot. No one will believe you. You’ll have to go through the official channels, public inquiry. It’ll be judged in the national interest, you’ll get it, although I don’t see the king allowing you an easy passage. You’ll just have to wait.”

  “We don’t have time. There are other parties interested. Rumour has it Vardeuche Persin already knows what Vand has uncovered and is preparing an expedition of his own. I’ll be kicking my heels here for another year while he’s looting the city. We don’t want the Maceriyans to get there first, do we?”

  Garten huffed. “Trass...”

  Scenting triumph, Trassan pressed on. “There’s a city, Garten. An entire Morfaan city! Can’t you see what this means? Do you really want all that to end up in the hands of the Maceriyans? Look, you can trust me, we’re family. I’ll cut you in. There’s a lot of money to made out of this. But it all has to be done discretely. If I go through the proper channels, then the Houses are sure to block us at every turn. Half of them are in the pockets of Judan, Horozik and the rest.”

  “And they’re in the pockets of Persin.” Garten weighed the spyglass in his hand as he mulled over Trassan’s words, his growing hangover forgotten for a minute. “All right,” he said cautiously. “I’ll see what I can do. No promises!” he said in response to Trassan’s grin. “Understand this, I’m doing it because you’re my brother, not for the money.”

  He raised the telescope to his eye again and looked out to where floatstone ships laboured up and down the horizon.

  “But I do still want the money,” he said. “In case you think I’m going to do it for free.”

  Trassan chuckled. “Spoken like a true Kressind.” He smacked his brother’s arm. “Come on, if we’re quick, we’ll be able to catch Rel before they kick him out of the country. Then we’ll get you that bacon.”

  Garten sucked air through his teeth. “It’s not like that. He’s not getting kicked out.”

  Trassan leaned forward onto the rail, and looked down directly to the marsh a thousand feet beneath him. “It is exactly like that,” he said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A Night in the Drum

  THE WATCHMEN JOKED about a woman they had both had dalliances with as they dragged the hooded and handcuffed Tuvacs from the street. He was limping from his beating, but they pulled mercilessly, their fingers digging into the soft flesh ben
eath his biceps. A door opened, and he was shoved up into a watch wagon.

  He saw little through the sack on his head; little glimpses of a world crosshatched with rough fibre, a windowless box with benches down each side. Three other men staring bleakly ahead while his handcuffs were fastened to a bar running under the bench. The door closed, leaving them in near total blackness. An uncomfortable ride, two more men thrown in. Another dash over rough streets brought him to the Drum, the old castle of Karsa City, and its most infamous prison. There he was chained to the others and jogged through a nail-studded door he had heard so many black stories about, down slippery stairs into the cacophonous gaol. Cries wailed from grilles in doors. Pleas for release, for water. Curses. The watchmen slammed their truncheons into the wood and shouted for quiet. The stench was revolting.

  They stopped. Tuvacs snatched his breath as the watchman unlocked a door. His arm was grabbed roughly again. Hands tugged carelessly at his wrists. The handcuffs came off, followed by the hood. He was still blinking at the smoke and stink when he was tossed onto a filthy stone floor.

  “You’ll see the magistrate tomorrow, thief,” the watchman said. “Keep yourself quiet until then.”

  The watch sauntered off, bashing bars and doors with their sticks and taunting the prisoners.

  The bang of the door at the end of the corridor cut their talk abruptly off. The shouts from the other cells subsided. Somewhere, a man was weeping.

  Tuvacs lifted up his head. Damp straw stuck to his face. His cell was small, but there were half a dozen men crammed in there. One of them stared at him with unfriendly eyes. Tuvacs got to his feet and backed up, finding a seat. The man next to him bared his teeth. Tuvacs was careful not to shift his gaze too quickly, nor to leave it on the man’s eyes for too long.