Samos sucked in deep lungfuls of cool air. If he stayed on this ship he could not resist whatever it was that lured him to Tatiana. He put his hands up and rubbed them roughly across his face. Think! Think! With no sign of any momentous thought he turned and made his way toward the bow but even there at the very bowsprit the fog of her influence touched him. He continued to follow the railing, pacing the very edge of the ship, but soon he found himself back at the stern. Despairing he turned and spied the main mast rising into the dark, star-laden sky, heard the creak of the ropes to the sails as they pulled taut and strained against the force of the wind. He followed the line of the mast to the top where the black silhouette of the crow’s-nest perched.
Samos muttered to himself. For an Immolator it was possible. No more difficult than climbing the Monument to the Higher Gods, though his stomach churned at the way the crow’s-nest exaggerated the roll of the ship. He needed distance and that was as far away as he could get on this ship. Just a few moments to think. Perhaps it would do. He set out.
The bat trinketton made a good first foothold. Without stopping to let himself contemplate what he was doing, he raised his leg, planted his foot and swiftly launched himself upward. From rope to rope and ratline to ratline on the small rope ladder. Ignore the lurch of his innards, the acid taste in his mouth from rising stomach juices, onward, upward. Step, step, step. He reached the crows-nest, hauled himself in and collapsed onto the small circular floor. Then he clung there, waiting for the world to stop swaying and his head from spinning. Seasick in the crows-nest. He had a hunch the crew on the deck wouldn’t appreciate him spewing down on them.
If ever someone asked him what improvements they could add to the needle make-up of Immolators, he would urge them to add a seasickness needle. He swallowed and slowly pulled himself upright.
It was working.
For the first time in many hours his thoughts were untainted. Down below was a storm of lust where his mind and body were barely his own to command. Up here he seemed to have passed some invisible layer in the air where that compulsion dissipated.
To his surprise he heard the creak of the ropes and hard breaths of someone climbing. A man was scrambling up as fast as an ape. He stepped away to let the man swing his leg over and enter the crows-nest. Samos grinned ruefully, remembering how he’d thought the ascent difficult.
“Right, what are you doing in my spot?” the man croaked.
One moon, peeking like a monstrous white balloon above the sea’s horizon, cast silver light on the man’s face and gleamed off the hairless dome of his head. Wrinkled by age, with a nose the size of a squashed plum, the man was pure ugly.
“Cork’s the name.” He stuck out a hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
In the middle of the sea, halfway to the heavens, it was absurd. Samos shook the man’s hand. “Pleased to meet you too.”
Cork sat, leaning against the timber slats and shifting his backside around until he was satisfied. “Lovely night.” He searched in his pockets and retrieved a pipe and some tobacco then began to stuff the weed into the pipe’s bowl.
Samos grunted in reply. The company didn’t alter his task. He couldn’t stay up here forever. He made himself survey the deck of the ship. On the foredeck, two rowboats were tied down. Perhaps he could row away but then he’d be lost in an infinity of ocean. He was no seafaring man and though he might reach land by swimming or rowing, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t be throwing his life away. The fastest way to finding the Sungese then, hopefully, deneedling, was this ship. He’d promised Pela.
Pela. It was like a plunging into icy water. He remembered. No, more than that – he felt again what she meant to him. He’d promised to love her forever. To never forsake her. And yet...and yet. What he’d done.
The last time he’d cried had been when he was fourteen. Soldiers didn’t cry. If his eyes watered it was the wind.
He wiped his nose on his arm. “Scum!” he muttered. “The Tormented One has my balls in his talons!”
“Mate,” said Cork in a deadpan voice while still industriously stuffing his pipe bowl. “You look like you’ve got worries. Hells, I know you’ve got worries. She’s after you and I’ve never seen her not get her way. Enjoy it while you can. That’s my advice.”
“You give me advice? Then tell me this. What is it she does? And why? I could swear she’s afraid of something.”
Cork clamped the pipe in his mouth and sucked it a time, his face writhing as if he chewed on a distasteful idea. “Hmph!”
“Help me. I have to stop this.”
“Ha! You’re the Immolator.” He poked at Samos’ rock-hard calf muscle. “Don’t you hurt her. We’re all dead loyal, her sworn men. It’s your fate. Accept it. Have your fun and in a day or two it’ll be over. Now, get out of my crows-nest. I need to smoke my pipe in peace.”
His face glowed with zeal. The change from jovial welcome to angry dismissal had been abrupt. If this man was the same as the rest of the crew, they weren’t just dedicated to her, they were in love with her. He wasn’t the only one affected.
Samos studied Cork then decided to ignore him. The man wasn’t about to evict him. If this strange compulsive attraction was a recurring thing...she must know what was happening. The crew was immune. Why him? Slowly a notion emerged. Was it something to do with her heart? Strange though the idea was, what else could it be? The only one who might be able to tell him the truth in that was Tatiana. Yet, if he came close enough to talk to her, he would be defeated before he uttered a single word.
He raised his gaze to the stars. Cold, distant, the home of the gods. He bowed his head. Perhaps, if he pleaded enough, Amora would make good her promise.
The words of his prayer ran skittering through his mind. Over and over, he said them and his fingers grew cold where they wrapped about the timber edge of the crows-nest. The sky lightened as the second moon rose, the wind moaned and howled, salt settled on his skin, the ship rocked like a gigantic pendulum counting the minutes. The rigging chinked and creaked in counterpoint.
And the goddesses and gods stayed remarkably absent.
He needed... He needed some way to distract himself from her influence. Something strong. Something that might block her out. He groped at his neck. Heaved a sigh of relief when he felt the thong still there, and suspended at the bottom was the jade heart pendant. This would do. If anything, it must be this. It must be. He held the heart tight in his fist and the stone crushed deep into his skin. Blood seeped from between his fingers.
C H A P T E R F O U R T E E N
Samos climbed down from the crows-nest as dawn broke, landing cat-like on the deck. A desultory wave from Cork had been his only farewell. The man had spoken no more words after the first few, as if Samos were barely worthy of being someone to converse with and his presence as appealing as that of an already buried corpse.
The rest of the crew went about their business without making eye contact with him. I’m a ghost. Thankfully, Tatiana didn’t appear. He held up his hand to inspect it. The jade heart sat in the middle of his blood-smeared palm. He’d used the thong to fasten it, wrapping it round and round his left hand until it was secure. God-sent revelation or crazy-but-maybe-workable idea? He didn’t know. Didn’t care, if it actually worked. So far...he closed his eyes and concentrated...so far it seemed to be working. The predatory lust was present but more as a background noise and he could ignore it easily.
“Mr. Samos!”
Turning, he found Joss behind him. The boy jiggled excitedly from foot to foot.
“Hi, Joss.”
“You’re back! Would you like some breakfast? Come down to the mess. That’s what they call it here. A mess, not a dining room.”
The boy gabbled on with more facts he’d garnered. Most likely by chewing the ears of the crew. At least one of us isn’t invisible.
Joss confidently led the way to a hatch and down a timber ladder. As they squeezed past a sailor, Joss was greeted with a nod and a clap on th
e back while the man barely glanced at Samos.
At the third door along, they turned in. The mess was a long room lit by a single trink light hanging from the ceiling. Half a dozen men hunched over platefuls of bacon and eggs and sundry fried foods, or bowls of steaming porridge. Food and fart and smoke smells clogged the air. Samos’ stomach cramped and grumbled with hunger.
“Come on!” Targeting two unoccupied chairs, Joss sidled along between table, chairs and wall, pulled out both chairs and sat. He beckoned eagerly to Samos.
There was an awkward silence, as if moments before there’d been a hearty conversation going on. Though the legs of Samos’s chair screeched evilly on the polished floor and the chair itself creaked in protest at his formidable weight, nobody raised their heads. The man to his right was wide of shoulder, with his brown hair cut and stiffened into a central brush. He grunted and shifted his tattooed arm the smallest possible distance to make room.
“Now we wait.” Joss grinned.
“Right. I can see you know your way about already.”
A minute later, a brawny cook, face shining with sweat and skin grease, elbowed open a door at the far, narrow end of the mess. In each hand he balanced a plate piled high with food. “Pass them down,” he declared, dumping them on the table. The plates were slid from man to man, spilling a little onion as they went.
Two plates arrived in front of Joss.
“The bigger one’s for your mate.” The cook’s nostrils flared and he waited, as if concerned the plates might be mixed up.
Samos stared at the plate. Everything was there. Bacon, fried eggs, sausages, a potato fritter, tomato, scrambled egg. Saliva filled his mouth. To his left, Joss grabbed knife and fork then speared a sausage. The cook still waited, a lowering monolith surrounded by a symphony of chewing, swallowing, and burping, along with the sounds of cutlery clashing on plates.
Why did the cook wait? Was there a difference between the plates apart from the amount of food? Samos raised his head to stare back at the cook; as if he’d suddenly recalled some other chore, the cook, eyes dead cold, turned away.
Facts slotted into place. She wanted to control him again, sure of the effect from the last time, she’d had something, a soporific maybe, put in his meal. It could be in anything. Fork in hand, he toyed with the food, shifting it about. No unusual smell or color. Samos buried the fork in a hill of scrambled egg and left it there.
From the corner of his eye, he checked out the man to the right. A mermaid and sword tattoo glistened on his mighty bicep. Ah, well, if it started a fight, so be it.
“Pardon.” He reached across, snagged the man’s plate and swiftly switched the plates. The man froze, fork poised in mid-air. “That one was too hot for me.” Like a ripple spreading outward, the room fell silent again. Samos braced for a blow. The man swallowed. Then slowly he moved the fork-laden hand down in an arc, skewered a slice of bacon and brought it up to eye level, where he turned it round and round.
“That ain’t no tree decoration,” Samos said. “Why don’t you eat it? Or maybe you know something I don’t?”
The bacon twirling stopped. The hairs on Samos’s neck rose. He tensed.
Joss sat up and looked about. “Why aren’t you all eating?”
As if it was a signal, everyone began to eat, except for the tattooed man who shoved back his chair, glowering at Samos through deep-set piggy eyes before he stood and stalked away.
“I’m eating now, Joss.” Samos gulped down most of his food then wiped his mouth and slouched to lean against his chair back. The boy shoveled in a several large mouthfuls. Thoughtfully, he studied his old plate. “Say, have you ever caught rats? No? Maybe I’ll show you how after we’re done here.”
He prayed the ship had rats. He didn’t want to do this at every meal, and he had a feeling Tatiana wasn’t going to give up anytime soon. Why was this so important to her? Not pure sexual desire – it was more than that. He’d find out, if it killed him, because he had a feeling not finding out would also prove fatal.
****
Joss had already found the route down to the nethermost cavern of the ship – the cargo hold. They wormed through corridors, past doors, through a hatch and down a ladder into the gloom.
“Right.” Samos looked around, careful not to spill the plate he held. Down here the only lighting came from the lanterns they’d brought with them and he hooked his onto the low ceiling. “Stick yours there,” he told Joss, indicating another ceiling hook.
Shadows rolled up the walls and down again as the lanterns swung with the movement of the ship. Just a few inches on the other side was the sea. He blinked. Concentrate man, he told himself.
Crates and boxes were stacked and tied down neatly in aisles and rows. In them – food, weapons, an awful lot of them, and sundry things like ropes and paint and spare sailcloth.
“How do you know this? What’s where? The whole ship layout?” Samos scratched his head. “We’ve been here only a day.”
“I like to find out things. And it’s not that big. Besides, I’ve been in half the ships that dock at Carstelan.” Joss grabbed a lock of his mud-brown hair and started to chew on it. “Um. There’s another hold at the stern.”
“Uh-huh. And the crew don’t mind you wandering?” Samos asked, stalking slowly along the aisle and looking back at Joss.
Puzzled, Joss shook his head.
“Ah.” He squatted. “Rat dung. Great. Here’s what we’re doing. I’ll leave this plate here. And we’re going to retire outside the door for a while.”
“Sure. Sure. Are you...are you going to eat them, because...the cook’s food’s not bad.”
Samos chuckled and straightened. He nudged the plate against the wall. A pile of clothes spilling from a hessian sack caught his eye. Not because they looked unusual or blood-stained or anything, but because among the clothes were other things. A slave collar, a letter wallet, three pairs of boots; in fact when he hauled it all out there were at least four sets of clothes. All men’s, all different sizes. The letters and a locket with a lithograph of a sweetheart inside it, seemed to belong to different men.
A yellow cotton shirt with a hole torn through the middle of it bore the only dark stains. Blood? Some of the trousers had a different stain. Cautiously he brought one pair up to his nose and inhaled. He grimaced. Semen. Old, but the odor was distinctive.
Were these the clothes of Tatiana’s victims? But she was an Imperial Investigator, respectable. Hauling strangers into her bed was one thing, murdering them afterward was far worse. They might be here for another reason. Besides, he was an Immolator. The chance of her managing to murder him by herself was next to zero. He could swat her like a bug.
But would I? He stood and walked back to Joss, thoughts still swirling in his head. Could he do anything if she held him in her thrall like she had? The answer to that eluded him. He didn’t know. Wouldn’t know unless he tested it. He meant not to let that happen.
“Come on, Joss.”
Outside the hold he sank down to the floor beside Joss, listening for scurrying noises, waiting to see if any rats would take the bait.
“How long are we staying on this ship, Samos?”
He sighed. “Too long. Now be quiet or you’ll frighten the rats.”
C H A P T E R F I F T E E N
Amora – the goddess of hate and love.
The sighting of gods and goddesses by humans is rare but not inconceivable.
*****
The child, Mara, became Thom’s carer as much as he became hers. Simple things like gathering firewood or packing clothes at the start of a day would often puzzle him or send him into a mind fugue of near-total blankness. Neither body nor thoughts would move until Mara took his hand and whispered to him. After the near-drowning, a deep rattling cough bothered her for a few days. By the time they reached the orphanage it had completely gone but the idea of using a needle to help her lungs to heal had already occurred to Thom. He’d recoiled from that thought as if it were poison.
To touch a needle again...no.
“You like it?” Omi pointed up the slope their path followed.
Thom let the pack he carried sag to the ground with a thump. Nestled on the crest of the hill before them sat the orphanage. Two higher buildings and several smaller ones surrounded by a white wall. The buildings themselves were blue-gray stone, and the stone locally quarried from the looks of the boulders baring themselves here and there on either side of the road.
In the town they’d passed through, there’d been many Bloodmen and Thom guessed they were close to the Forests of the Clandom. Even this close to autumn, the air was thick with moisture, the sky clogged with heavy storm clouds, and if you stepped out into the surrounding scrub for a toilet break and chose the wrong spot, hundreds of mosquitoes would rise as one whining mass and engulf you.
He smacked one such attacker that had settled on his arm.
“You’re tasty, Mr. Noname,” said Omi. “Don’t worry, the sea winds keep them away. Come! We’ll be in time for dinner.”
Mara ran ahead, the small pack on her back bouncing against her with each step.
Grunting with effort, Thom shouldered his own pack that Omi had loaded with just about everything that weighed more than a thimble. After the river incident, he’d spoken with Mara but not Omi. The little man had tried many times to draw Thom into a conversation about what had happened in Carstelan.
Omi had no right to know what went on in his thoughts. Damned if he was going to tell Omi a single thing. It was his own burden, and he would bear it or sink under it by himself. Maybe, out here, he could somehow find a sort of peace. Yes, he owed the priest, and he’d pay him in full, with labor, but not with his thoughts.
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