A rasping caused him to peer over the edge and see the mushroom-headed poles pushing out towards the quay. One after the other they clunked against its stone. The ship’s rocking lessened as she was pushed away. Sailors on the quay untied the hawsers and, in twos and threes, they strained against them. The poles continued to push, the ship moved further from the quay and dragged the hawsers and their sailors closer to its edge. Carnelian watched with disbelief as they plunged into the sea like stones. On board more of their fellows drew the hawsers in. The heads of the sailors bobbed up and soon they were being dragged out of the water. Their feet had barely touched the deck when there was a sudden rattling on either side, rude cries, a scraping. The ship sprouted wings of wood as oars were pushed out from the hull into the water. Under his feet a heart began beating. Driven by its rhythm the oars ploughed the sea. The banks rose and fell churning the slate sea white. The ship began edging backwards into the bay.
The quay was receding. His people stood in uneven ranks. They neither waved nor cried out. Their swarthy faces grew more indistinct with each thump of the drum. When they had become a single grey mass he turned away. His face was stiff with pain under his mask.
The shuddering of the deck changed its rhythm. The sea was threshed to spume as the ship’s prow was brought about. He watched the cliff and the Hold slip off slowly to the left, until, past the prow stem, he saw the hills of the sea sliding towards them. The drumming changed again, quickening with his heart. They moved forward. He looked with horror as a smooth glassy slope came rushing on. The world lifted until it seemed the ship was going to fall back upon herself. Then the deck lunged forward and down taking his stomach with it. Up, up, up, then rushing down so that the next wave rose high enough to wash away the sky.
There was a snapping and a rustling above his head like giant birds taking to the air. He looked up to see the fan-sails stretching open like hands. He watched them punch forward as they caught the wind. They seemed as fragile as autumn leaves but they held. He looked up the deck again as his grip tightened on the rail. The prow was knifing into another wall of water. It cut a widening white gash that sent a wind of foam hissing back. He felt the cold splatter on his robe and smelt the salty terror of the open sea.
Alternately he was climbing and then descending the deck. He bent his knees to keep his balance. Every so often spume would lash his back. There was a constant roaring; everything clattered and shook around him.
He saw Keal ahead hanging on to some rigging. He looked as if he were coming to help him. Carnelian put up his hand and commanded him to stay where he was.
‘Down there, Master,’ Keal cried above the wind. He was pointing into the mouth of a large funnel that opened behind the mast. Carnelian thanked him but his words were lost in the roar. He staggered up to Keal, nodding his thanks, and then past him. Behind the mast there was some respite from the wind. He lunged towards the funnel, swayed at its lip and peered in. A narrow stairway led down into blackness. He had to duck his head to enter. He fumbled for the balustrade and went down.
With each step the sea noise lessened and the creaking of the ship’s timbers grew. He reached a dim corridor that had small doors all the way down on both sides. As his eyes adjusted he saw that the bulkhead on the left had been daubed with crude representations of House Aurum’s horned-ring staff. The right bulkhead bore Carnelian’s own chameleons. He almost felt like kissing them. He walked down the corridor and had to bend his head down because the ceiling was so low. He knocked on one of the doors. It opened. A familiar face. ‘Naith,’ he cried in delight.
The man knelt. Over his head Carnelian could see the cabin with its inset bunks. It had a faint smell of home. His pain was almost released in tears. ‘Get up, man,’ he said, remembering Naith. ‘Just get up.’
The guardsman looked at him.
‘Where’s my cabin?’ asked Carnelian.
The man leant out, grasping the threshold lip, and pointed down the corridor.
‘The door beside the stairway?’
He nodded.
Carnelian stepped back and let Naith shut the door. The corridor angled up then down. He edged along it to the door that had been pointed out. He tried to listen at it, opened it, lifted his foot over the threshold and then stepped into the tiny cabin beyond. Tain was there. ‘Thank the Gods, Carnie. I thought you washed into the sea.’
‘Apparently I’m made of finer clay.’
Tain looked puzzled.
Carnelian looked around the cabin. The floor curved up to form the bulkheads and then further round to form the ceiling. A single bunk was set into the bulkhead opposite the door. A tiny lantern swinging from a hook in the ceiling easily lit the place.
‘There’s not much of it, I’m afraid,’ said Tain.
‘I’ve worn bigger robes,’ said Carnelian.
‘Can I stay here with you, Carnie?’
‘Where are you going to sleep?’
The corners of Tain’s mouth turned down.
‘Of course you can, but you’re having the floor.’
Tain managed a grin. He moved aside to reveal a bed already made on the floor. Carnelian saw that some of their clothes had been unpacked. He took two steps across the cabin, turned and wedged himself back into the bunk.
‘I’d like to see one of the other Masters getting into one of these.’
Tain was staring into space. In his eyes, Carnelian could almost see a reflection of his people on the quay. He busied himself tracing the graffiti carved into the bulkhead. Obscene pictures. Strokes in rows as if someone had been counting days. All the way up his back, he could feel the sway and shudder of the ship.
Carnelian was curled up in the dark, rocking as his stomach turned inside him. He was exhausted. The ship was pressing in. She was whispering. He forced himself fully awake to listen. It was just her body creaking all around him. The bunk was too short for him to straighten his legs. He swung them out and hunched on the edge. He imagined her decks above his head, her tree masts, her bronze machines. Up there against the leaden sky her sails like fans. He made their shape with his hands, stretching his fingers till the skin between them hurt. He slid his feet out until they found the warmth of Tain’s body. Below them her belly swelled into limitless sea. Carnelian recalled what Keal had told him about the sartlar oarsmen. A vision of them writhing in her bowels like worms made him snatch his feet up from the floor.
DREAMING
Sweet lady let me taste
Your bitter kiss,
Mother my forgetting,
Bind me with dreams.
(extract from ‘Slave Dreaming’)
IT WAS TOO MUCH BOTHER TO HAVE HIMSELF CLEANED. BESIDES, TAIN was all clammy misery and found it hard to stand up. Carnelian asked only that his brother touch up his body paint where it had rubbed off in the night. When Tain was done he sank back to the floor. Carnelian wriggled into his robes, put on his mask and, shrouded in his travelling cloak, opened the cabin door.
The corridor smelled of men, urine and brine. The swilling sounds of the sea coming down the stairway almost made him retch into his mask. He stepped out of the cabin, closed the door so that Tain would not be disturbed, then padded along the corridor. The faint scent of lilies suggested that one of the Masters had walked there not so long ago. He knocked on Naith’s door, and when the man showed himself Carnelian asked if he could take him to Keal. Naith said that he had been forbidden to leave the cabin but that Keal was quartered further down the passage, beside the Master’s cabin.
Carnelian followed the directions. The corridor grew gloomier with each step, but his eyes adjusted well enough. He reached a round space with a central column. A yoke of bronze as thick as a man’s waist gripped its base. It could only be the shaft of the central mast. Peering round it he saw that the corridor continued on to another stairway down which daylight was filtering. Four doors led off the mast-columned hall. Each had been painted with the warding eye and one of the cyphers of the Masters’ Houses.
>
Carnelian retraced his steps, found the door he thought Naith must have meant and knocked on it. It was opened by a guardsman he knew. The man began to kneel but Carnelian stopped him with a command sign. ‘Rale, is Keal here?’
‘Yes, Carnie,’ the man said and stepped aside to let him in.
Carnelian squeezed into the cabin. It was perhaps twice the size of his own. Men were sitting on the floor playing dice. The six bunks hedged them in. One man lying on his bunk looked green. The others looked sickly, uncomfortable. They smiled, avoiding looking at his mask.
‘Get on with your game,’ he said more gruffly than he intended. ‘I’d speak with you, Keal.’
Keal stood up from among them. ‘I’m sorry, Carnie, but I’m not allowed to leave this room unless the Master sends for me.’
‘You can leave with me and tell him if he asks that it was I who commanded you.’
Carnelian squeezed back out into the corridor. He still had to stoop but it was less constricting than the cabin. His head scraped against the ceiling as he turned to look at Keal. He wondered that his brother could stand unbent. ‘Let’s go up there,’ he said, pointing.
He walked up the steps and coming out of the funnel straightened up to his full height and stretched. He groaned. ‘The luxury of a straight back,’ he said into the freezing wind. His cloak lifted around him. The deck grating gleamed with water up to the rails. The foremast blocked his view of the prow. Beyond the narrow solid limits of the ship was the vast blinding sky, mottled and melded into a foamy silver sea.
He turned to his brother. ‘How’re things?’
Keal was gazing blank-faced at the world. He focused on Carnelian and gave a nod towards the stairway. ‘The lads are well enough down there, but those that are here under our feet. . .’ He tapped the deck grating with his foot, then pursed his lips and shook his head.
Carnelian peered into the space beneath the grating and thought he could make out murky movement. ‘What protection do they have down there?’
Keal looked grim. ‘Some blankets and tarred tapestries to keep out the spray.’
‘The other Masters’ people?’
‘They’re just as badly off, worse even. One of them was so ill that his Master sent word and he was chucked into the sea.’
‘Into the sea?’ said Carnelian with horror.
They both looked over the rail at the swirling water.
‘Apparently, this was to stop what he had spreading to the others. If you ask me he was just underfed.’
Carnelian peered down through the grating again. ‘I should go down there, talk to them.’
‘Don’t even think about it, Carnie,’ Keal said. His voice was tinged with anger. ‘It would be unseemly. Down there, even I’m forced to stoop.’
‘My Lord!’ A cry in Quya.
They both turned to see a huge shrouded apparition bearing down on them. Carnelian cursed under his breath. Keal collapsed onto the deck as the Master swept up.
‘Lord Carnelian, have you no fear of coming up here on deck?’ It was Jaspar.
‘Fear, my Lord?’
‘Sea air burns the skin. Your hands, my Lord, your poor hands.’
Carnelian looked at them. They looked fine.
‘You should wear gloves,’ said Jaspar and lifted up his hands. Each was sheathed in silvery leather streaked like serpentine, so thin his hands seemed merely painted.
‘Is that your only protection, my Lord?’
‘Not so, my Lord, not so. But to reveal the other we must needs first clear the deck.’
It was only then that Carnelian remembered Keal. His brother’s hands were numbing yellow on the grating. Carnelian almost spluttered out an apology but remembered who else was there. ‘Return to your cabin, Keal,’ he commanded, biting his lip once the words were said.
‘Yes, Master,’ muttered Keal. He stood up, head bowed, and moved off.
Jaspar’s mask was scanning the rigging. He looked off across the deck, spotted the captain and raised his hand to summon him. The man came jogging and flung himself at their feet.
‘Clear the decks,’ said Jaspar.
Carnelian wanted to escape. ‘That is not really necessary. We—’
‘Nonsense, my Lord. I for one would breath the air unmasked.’
The captain crept away and began shouting commands. Sailors were scrabbling down the rigging, tying up ropes. Their branded bony bodies jerked across the deck and fell out of sight through a large horn-rimmed hole.
Jaspar dropped his mask into his hand. ‘It will be more pleasant to converse without these.’
Carnelian took a step back, staring at Jaspar’s face. It was blue. His entire skin was lapis-blue. Jaspar pulled off one of his gloves. His hand was the same vibrant colour. He regarded it as he turned it this way and that. His blue lips gave a little horizontal smile. ‘It is an interesting cosmetic, neh? Of course, it is exceedingly outlandish. One would not dare use it in Osrakum. But out here . . . so far from civilization, well . . . Besides, cousin, I intend to show it to none but you.’ He leant towards Carnelian. ‘It can remain our little secret, neh?’
Carnelian stared at the gleaming idol’s face. ‘W-where did you find it?’
‘One of my slaves brought it to me in Thuyakalrul. Apparently it is rather in vogue among the marumaga there. My Lord might not know that the more neutral pigments have been forbidden them by a recent statute of the Wise.’
‘They copy us?’
Jaspar flourished his hand in the air. ‘Does not all the world? The pretensions of the marumaga are legion. They are like children aping the ways of their elders. But we were talking of the pigment. The creature . . . my body-slave, has sworn upon his skin that the paint is proof against the sea-air burn.’
‘His skin?’
‘His skin against mine. It is an unequal wager, but he has nothing else to hazard.’
‘Is it necessary to resort to such terror?’
‘Say whim rather than necessity. But after all, is terror not the birthright of the inferior?’
Carnelian turned away to hide his frown. He pretended to survey the rolling surface of the sea. Spray flickered chill across his face. He wondered if it was burning through his paint.
‘Would my Lord be amused to try the pigment for himself? I have a jar spare.’
‘I thank you, no. It would be wasted. I do not intend to venture much abroad.’
‘Indeed, I too do not intend that the day should often look upon my face.’
‘The other Lords?’
‘The Ruling Lord your father I cannot speak for, cousin, but as for the others, if the voyage out was any indication, we will see nothing of our dear Vennel.’
‘Perhaps he does not mind stale air.’
‘Rather he does not thrive in the company of his . . . peers. Even when we were blown off to the east and daily threatened with foundering, he affected a disdain to meet us. He sent up word that he should not be disturbed. At the time, I ventured to suggest to Aurum that our Lord might well find shipwreck most disturbing.’
‘He is brave, then?’
‘On the contrary, he is craven. His blood lacks the true passion of the Great. His thinking bears comparison with the cold calculating of the Wise. The most I would say of him would be that he is, shall we say, capable of serving.’
‘And Aurum?’
Jaspar regarded him with a blue smile. ‘Whenever I came up he was always here surveying the sky as if he were marshalling the winds.’
‘He is powerful?’
Jaspar chuckled. ‘Not that powerful.’
Carnelian put on a smile.
‘Once he was mighty. Intimacy with Nuhuron, the last God Emperor, gave him much influence. Naturally, this ceased with the accession of the present God. In spite of this, Aurum is still one of those who channel the currents of power in the Clave. Recently, many of us had hoped that his channelling days were finally coming to an end.’
‘He supports one of the candidates and you s
upport the other?’
‘Not so, cousin, not so. My father’s faction supports neither of the Jade Lords, as yet.’
‘Then it is Lord Vennel’s faction that supports the other candidate.’
‘No, no, no. It is Ykoriana, sister and wife of the God Emperor and mother of the contending twins who supports one of them, Molochite. Vennel is merely a puppet. It is her hands that move him.’
‘I am confused, my Lord,’ said Carnelian.
Jaspar examined his hands as if looking for some chink in their blueness. ‘It seems that my Lord requires clarification,’ he said at last. ‘When we left Osrakum, Aurum could command the support of three-quarters of the Great of blood-rank two. With Nephron’s ring, that of the God Emperor’s mother, and the Pomegranate Ring, Aurum could count on about twenty thousand votes. The Empress Ykoriana could rely on only a quarter of the Great of blood-rank two, but almost all the blood-rank one Houses whose cause she espouses. Additionally, she also had in her hand the rings of your maternal grandmother, the Lady Tiye, and of her own mother, the Lady Nayakarade, both of blood-rank three. Throwing in their rings, that of her son Molochite and her own she had something over twenty-one thousand votes. My father’s party had the support of those of the Great whose blood pride keeps them from siding with the lesser Houses. With a few others this gave us nearly thirteen hundred votes.’
‘Your faction then controls the balance of power?’
‘It did, but as each day passed the Emperor grew weaker and the aura of his endorsement dimmed about Aurum’s faction. When we left, Osrakum was murmuring with rumour of the desertions he might expect to Ykoriana’s party. After all, as the Gods’ power wanes hers is in the ascendant.’
‘So you all came to our island?’
‘Aurum used his power in the Clave to elect your father, He-who-goes-before.’
‘How could he carry the vote there when he could not win the sacred election?’
The Chosen (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon) Page 9