And yet there the similarities ended. Dow’s countrymen, however much they may have resented the Ship Kings’ rule in their hearts, seemingly accepted it in time as an unavoidable fact, and as far as Dow knew made little attempt at rebellion in the years after the Great War. The Twin Islanders, however, were never so resigned; their councils continued to meet defiantly in secret, plotting and preparing for the day when they might overthrow their oppressors.
Why the Twin Islanders chose defiance when the New Islanders settled for acceptance – that Dow couldn’t answer. Was it simply that the Twin Isles were harsher lands, breeding tougher folk? Perhaps. In any case, the Ship Kings’ response was ruthless. The punishment for partaking in the forbidden councils was death. And thus, fatefully, did Damien Tender enter history’s stage. His father was one such secret councillor, until he was exposed by Ship Kings spies and swiftly executed. Damien’s mother then boldly took his father’s place on the same council, and was likewise unmasked and murdered.
The future War Master, a mere youth at the time, found himself orphaned, his heart – so the legend went – filled with hatred for his overlords. To soothe his trouble spirits he took to sailing in small boats, roaming for love of the sea and in willing disobedience of the Ship Kings. Eventually he became the leader of a band of young mariners, all as daring and restless as he, and together they began to explore the nearby Labyrinth Corridors. And so, whether in truth they were led by whale, or by chance, or by some other agency – for the legend did not specify – the great discovery was made.
Young though he was, Damien Tender was quick to see the hope the Atoll offered. But he also knew – better than anyone – the dangers of betrayal by Ship Kings spies. It was he who founded the Order of Pilots, and swore his companions to the uttermost secrecy. But further, he realised that if the Atoll was ever to be populated and exploited, then a clandestine network must be established throughout the Twin Isles, a web of covert operatives to help him organise resistance, and to deliver his commands without detection. But who could such operatives be, for the Ship Kings watched everyone?
It was the final proof of Damien Tender’s genius – according to the tale – that he decided to enlist the aid of the lowly washerwomen. Who better, after all? The humble laundry maidens, in plying their trade, roamed all about the Twin Isles at will, and yet never aroused suspicion, for they were so poor and ragged as to be invisible to the proud Ship Kings.
Hence was born the Order of Laundresses – though they would not remain mere washerwomen, or mere messengers, for long.
Meanwhile, Damien Tender was one of the first to disappear himself from the Twin Isles (the common ruse was to pretend that such men had been lost at sea, chasing whales) and to settle permanently at Black Sands. In the hellish early years of the town he became known as the toughest and most unwavering of the rebel leaders, and at length he insisted that the secret councils back on the Twin Isles cede him absolute authority in all military matters. The Laundresses echoed his demand. And so at last he took for himself the title of War Master – and over the decades that followed he forged his forces patiently until they were ready to make war with the Ship Kings.
He was undoubtedly the greatest figure of the age. And that was the nub of the matter, Dow had to admit to himself; the source of his unease as he contemplated his appointment with the man.
In comparison to such feats – the founding of a city, the building of a fleet, the freeing of a people and the deadly assault upon a mighty empire – Dow’s own achievements, as renowned as they might be, felt almost vanishingly small.
*
It might have helped if he could have talked with Cassandra, but she had gone away early in the evening to meet with her mistresses, and though Dow waited up late for her, to hear if she had any further news, she did not return.
Nor did she appear the next morning. The only arrival, a half hour before midday, was a troop of soldiers, come to escort Dow to the House of the Lagoon and to the War Room. Except, arrangements had changed. According to the troop commander, it was not only Dow who was now summoned to the War Master, but also Captain Fletcher and the rest of the Snout’s senior staff: Agatha Harp, Jake Tooth and Johannes.
‘What’s this all about?’ the captain demanded of Dow as they gathered at the gangway – in dress uniform all, for so Fletcher had ordered, not wanting his ship to be disgraced before the high command. ‘What does Damien Tender want with you, let alone the rest of us?’
Dow had revealed nothing of his plans to anyone save Cassandra as yet, and it seemed too late to do so now. ‘I couldn’t say,’ was his only answer. And it was the truth anyway. What the War Master wanted with the captain and the others, he had no idea – as much as he might like to speculate.
‘Perhaps,’ said Johannes, ‘he merely wants to honour us for bringing him the prisoner.’
The captain chewed a bearded lip. ‘I doubt it. Damien Tender is hardly one for empty honours – and I was not invited to see him yesterday. No, this is for something else, and I don’t like the feel of it at all.’ He was studying Dow still, suspiciously. Then he sighed. ‘But if we are commanded, then let us go.’
And so they set off into the town, their escort arrayed before and behind them. To Dow, sweating in his uniform coat, it seemed a longer walk than the day before. The sky was baked to whiteness, and the crowded streets – devoid of any shade – were furnace-hot, as if Black Sands was one great anvil upon which the sun beat eternally. They came at last to the inner beach of the Atoll, and began the half-mile trek out across the great pier to the House, a mass of gabled roofs shimmering in the heat haze.
‘It’s actually not one house,’ remarked Johannes, walking at Dow’s side, ‘but three separate wings. See? One to the south, one to the north and one to the west. The left wing is home to the Mistress Superior and her sisterhood of Laundresses. Few outsiders enter there. The right wing contains the private apartments of the War Master, and fewer still gain admittance to his innermost halls. As for us, it is to the central wing that we are bound, for there is housed Fleet Headquarters, and also the War Room, wherein Damien Tender and his admirals plot our victories over the enemy.’
‘Aye,’ noted Jake Tooth, from behind the blacksmith, ‘and all our defeats too. Though not intentionally, it’s to be hoped. But whatever losses the fleet may suffer, at least our commanders are safe here, so very far from the war.’
Captain Fletcher gave the harpooner a dark glance, with a nod to their escort. ‘Watch that sort of talk. This is no place for disloyal words, in jest or not.’
Jake only grinned coldly. Even in full dress uniform he managed to look artfully dishevelled, as if disdaining the whole enterprise.
‘In fairness to the War Master,’ Johannes observed, ‘he has once left Black Sands. At the start of the war he led the fleet out of the maze to win the liberation of the Twin Isles, and he was also in command at the great battle for the Twelfth Kingdom. If he has not left the Atoll since then, it’s only because his admirals and other advisors beg him not to; his loss would be too devastating for our cause. Only here is he secure from all Ship Kings raids, as he could never be anywhere else in the world.’
Agatha Harp nodded. ‘But do not think, Mr Amber, that he allows distance from the fighting to hinder or diminish his authority. No effort is spared to keep him in communication with his far-flung captains. Ships come to this port every day bringing reports from the fleets, and leave again bearing commands. And of course the Laundresses see and hear all.’
The party came at last to the end of the pier, and to a formal courtyard that lay between the outflung arms of the House. An ornamental garden was raised there, watered by a bubbling fountain – reminding Dow sharply of the lawn upon the Twelfth Kingdom – and beyond, three pathways diverged to the three wings.
Their escort led them down the middle path, and so to the entrance of Fleet Headquarters. They passed through a great square doorway into a foyer, dim and shadowy after the brigh
t outdoors. At a long counter against the rear wall, clerks were attending to lines of waiting visitors – naval officers and shipyard functionaries, by the look – but Dow and the others were led by without pause.
A wide gallery drew them deeper within the House. The light grew dimmer beyond the foyer, until the only illumination came from lamps burning on the walls, and the heat grew oppressive. Officers strode back and forth importantly, and through the many doorways could be glimpsed narrow chambers extending away into gloom. Earnest-looking clerks – most of them women, and laundresses, to judge by their patchwork garb – laboured over desks covered in scrolls and ledgers, pausing only to look up with pale faces as the visitors moved by.
At length, beyond several security grilles that had to be unlocked by key, they passed through a suite of grander offices, and so came to a final anteroom. Its walls were lined with chairs for those who might be kept waiting, but in the event there was no time for anyone to sit before chimes sounded distantly from elsewhere in the House, signalling noon. The troop commander opened a great set of doors with a push, then bowed to usher the party through. ‘The War Room,’ he said.
Captain Fletcher led the way, Dow trailing towards the rear. To his surprise – after the rabbit-warren dimness they had just passed through – the room they now entered was spacious and full of light, for it was open all along one side to a terrace that faced west, overlooking the lagoon. They had passed indeed right through the central wing of the House to its further end, with nothing but water beyond. Ripples gleamed and cast reflections across the ceiling – and from that ceiling hung strange devices, like wheels fashioned of flat blades, whirling by some power and thrumming softly at the air, creating breezes that instantly cooled the sweat on Dow’s skin.
For furniture the room bore a single table, wide and low and bare of any papers, around which was arranged a collection of low armchairs. The only other decoration was a giant map that hung upon the wall, a framed panel fully fifteen feet from edge to edge, displaying all the known world in a vivid sweep of blue and red and green.
Such was Damien Tender’s famous War Room. But the War Master himself was nowhere to be seen. Seated at the table were only two women and one young man. The latter rose politely as the newcomers filed in.
‘Captain Fletcher, welcome,’ he declared, with a bow. ‘I’m Lieutenant Brand, adjutant to the War Master. He has been detained, but will be with us shortly.’ His hand swept to indicate the two women. ‘May I introduce meanwhile the Lady Constance Reed, Mistress Superior of the Order of Laundresses, and of course you already know her attendant . . .’
It was Cassandra. She gave her shipmates a brief, ironic smile, but to Dow she seemed rather wan and tired, as if she had been kept awake all night – and, oddly, she would not meet his eyes.
As for Constance Reed, Dow had heard many hushed stories among the Twin Islanders of the Mistress Superior of the Laundresses, and always they spoke darkly – fearfully even – of the powers she wielded, of her mastery of secrecy and of subterfuge. And so Dow had come to imagine her as an almost witch-like figure, of great age and menace. Not dissimilar, indeed, to old Mother Gale, of faraway Stromner; only more powerful . . .
But Constance Reed was in fact a hale-looking woman of no more than fifty, with nothing of the witch about her. Even her laundress attire was the simplest Dow had yet seen, a grey dress quite free of rags, with only the dark bird’s nest of her hair directly indicating her profession. That and her eyes, maybe. They were not bewitching, but they were sharp and observant, and sombrely evaluating; as if weighing all she saw against the secrets she kept hidden.
Those eyes were assessing Dow even now, but when she spoke it was to Captain Fletcher. ‘Welcome, Captain, to you and your officers. Sit, please.’ Her voice was deep and practised in command, but gracious. ‘Our thanks are owed to you for the delivery of the prisoner. The developments upon which he reports are fascinating. We’ve received similar news from other quarters of late, but his is a most detailed account.’
Captain Fletcher nodded cautiously as he and the others took seats. ‘Glad to be of help.’
‘And quite an adventure to secure him,’ added the War Master’s young adjutant. ‘Not only an encounter with these new Ship Kings weapons – but then to have a Rope Fish intervene! Extraordinary!’
A discussion ensued regarding the dreadful fate of the Revenge – the lieutenant wanted to know all the particulars – but it was only polite talk, passing time until the War Master arrived. No one spoke to Dow, although now and then he was aware that the Mistress Superior was glancing at him. He shifted restlessly in his chair. Overhead the whirling blades whispered perpetually, beating warm winds about the room. Dow studied the devices a while, but could detect no sign of what propelled them.
His gaze drifted finally to the great map on the wall. He’d thought its purpose might be to show the dispositions of the Twin Islands fleets, but that wasn’t so: the map seemed to be ornamental rather than functional, the oceans painted an achingly deep blue, and the landmasses formed from inlaid pearl or shell, coloured to match each island.
Three years ago Dow would have found it all indecipherable, but he was familiar with maps now. There in the centre of the chart, in the heart of the Middle Sea, sat his own homeland of New Island, readily identifiable by the great arms of the Claw. To the right, across seven weeks’ sail of blue paint, and twice the size of New Island, was Great Island, home to the Ship Kings; while to the north stretched the Latitude of Storms, and above that the berg-littered sea of the Unquiet Ice, and finally the jagged line of the Ice Wall.
There Dow’s gaze rested a moment in bitter memory, before drifting south again, all the way down to the map’s lower left. Here two smaller curls of land waited; the Twin Isles, Whale and Red, a bare thirty miles apart in all the wilderness of the sea. And spreading southwards from these lonely twins lay the confused pattern of reefs that formed the Labyrinth Corridors, although notably it was not an accurate depiction, for there was no sign of the Great Atoll hidden at the Labyrinth’s heart.
South further still – in a strip that ran along the bottom of the map – the deep blue of the sea faded into a pale band of nothingness: the Barrier Doldrums, girdling the world, and beyond which all was unknown. There was a southern half to the globe, assuredly, but the map – like all Four Isles maps that Dow had ever seen – made no attempt to guess or to display what might lie there.
He heaved an inward sigh. What a waste of ships it was, to have to fight a war, when so much of the sea still beckoned, empty and unexplored . . .
He was aware suddenly that the room had fallen silent and that the Mistress Superior was watching him closely, as if gauging his thoughts.
‘Welcome to you in particular, Dow Amber,’ she said, then glanced at the map. ‘A pretty thing, is it not? Though, as you might have noticed, some important details are missing. Still, that’s no surprise, for this map was made not by us, but by the Ship Kings – it hung once in the office of the governor, in Port Best. It was brought here after the liberation, as a reminder to us against repeating their mistakes, for it shows the Ship Kings’ ignorance of the world, as much as their knowledge of it.’
‘So I see,’ said Dow warily.
Constance Reed’s gaze lingered on the image of New Island. ‘At least your homeland is accurately drawn.’ She turned to Dow. ‘I have received many reports, from Cassandra here, of your eagerness to return there, to lead your own people in their struggle. A desire that does you credit, as does your patience, under our guidance, in not rushing in too soon.’
Dow suppressed a frown.
But the Mistress Superior missed little. ‘You are displeased with such guidance? Is it that you tire of being at the beck and call of we Twin Islanders? A fair point. We share a common enemy, but we are not the same. Perhaps you have not even forgiven us – after three years – for our attack upon your countrymen at the war’s outbreak?’
Ah. She meant the burning of
Stone Port and Lonsmouth: it had been the Twin Islanders’ first test of their strength. Dow felt an even greater caution come over him. This was delicate territory. He said, ‘Your reasons have been explained to me.’
As indeed they had, by Cassandra and Johannes among others, seeking to reassure Dow that the attack had not indicated hostility towards his own folk. The intent had been only to cripple the two ports, thereby strangling the flow of New Island produce to the Ship Kings. Dow could accept the logic of this with his mind, but his heart, which remembered the inferno of Stone Port and the thousands of refugees flooding into Stromner to starve, had not found it so easy.
Constance Reed smiled as if she could guess all of this from his tone. ‘And here you sit, with one of those who ordered the very infamy! Well, I beg no forgiveness. Freedom is hard won.’
‘That much I know,’ said Dow, meeting her gaze fully for the first time, and holding it.
She nodded minimally in acknowledgement. ‘What you may not know, however, is that in these last few months the situation on New Island has improved mightily. With the exception of Broken Harbour, the Ship Kings have been driven once more from all the major ports and towns – and that’s in no small part thanks to your countrymen themselves, who are working willingly in coordination with our own forces.’
Broken Harbour? Dow had never been there, but knew it was a port on New Island’s east coast. But how disturbing it was to hear of his home, and of his own people fighting there without him. And what of his family, up in the highlands? The old impatience flared in Dow painfully. He should be there!
But then what of Nell?
‘Indeed,’ said the Mistress Superior expansively, ‘I had considered of late that it is almost time at last to send you home. And yet how strange – I hear now from Cassandra that you wish otherwise. I must say, I don’t think—’ But here her gaze slid to a point somewhere over Dow’s shoulder. ‘Ah. War Master.’
The War of the Four Isles Page 8