by James Maxey
“Can you not return to the Sea of Wine? I was under the impression this was one of your magical talents.”
Gale shook her head. “I could trigger the transition, but mother was the true cause. When she bargained with Avaris to bind her soul to the ship, she didn’t know that her state, bridging the gap between life and death, would weaken the fabric of reality, to the point that the Freewind could tear through.”
“Wait. Avaris? Your mother knew her?”
“So I’ve been told,” said Gale. “Truthfully, my mother’s biography is a complicated matter. She really did live a life of grand adventure. Alas, she was also prone to, shall we say, fabricating certain elements of her history.”
“If we found Avaris, she could explain the spell she used to bind your mother to the ship.”
“We know a good deal about the process,” said Sage. “Grandmother was quite ill when she made her bargain with Avaris. She knew she had very little time left. So she allowed Avaris to kill her. All the blood was drained from her body. The blood was diluted in wine, then soaked into to the Freewind board by board.”
“This is why our former ship had such a distinctive hue,” said Gale.
“Right,” said Sorrow. “But problematic. Since your mother doesn’t have any blood now, we couldn’t duplicate the original binding.”
“If we can’t place her spirit into a ship once more, can we release her? Better to swim on alone into the Sea of Wine than to live in a prison of wood.”
Sorrow nodded. “I agree. But we shouldn’t give up hope. As it happens, I’m on a quest to find Avaris. I think she can help me with my, um, skin condition. If your mother’s soul can last until then, Avaris may know some new trick to save her. Right now, my best hope of finding her lies in the Silver City, so it’s fortunate you were heading there, yes?”
“Good fortune indeed,” said Gale. “We’re departing later in the day. We can—”
Gale was interrupted by a knock on the door.
Sage whipped out her spyglass. “No one’s there,” she whispered, confused.
There was a second knock.
“Who is it?” Sorrow asked.
“Slate,” a deep voice answered.
Sage lowered her spyglass as her mouth went slack.
“I’m getting dressed,” Sorrow said. “Go find the galley and get some breakfast. I’ll join you later.”
“May I prepare something for you?” he asked.
“I’m not even a little bit hungry,” Sorrow said, doing her best to ignore the feeling of fullness in her abdomen.
She heard Slate’s heavy feet as he climbed the stairs up to the deck.
“You look spooked,” Gale said to Sage.
“I didn’t see him!” Sage said. “I mean, once he started talking I realized I could see him, but I hadn’t seen him the way I normally see people. He’s like a big, walking sack of meat. He has no aura at all!”
“Is he undead?” asked Gale.
“He breathes, he sweats, he bleeds,” said Sorrow. “He’s alive in every way I’ve thought of testing.”
“Sounds like you were pretty thorough in your testing,” Gale said with a sly grin. “I don’t blame you. Jetsam makes him sound like quite a feast for the eyes. Is there any sort of agreement between the two of you? A partnership that it would be impolite to intrude upon?”
“What? Are you... are you asking if we’re lovers?”
“You said you’d tested him in every way you could think of. I know the first thing I’d test.”
“By the pure metals, no! It’s nothing like that.”
“Good. I’d thought that, since you slept alone, you might not be possessive of him.”
“I’m not, but, really, I don’t think you should, um, test him yourself.”
“I agree!” said Sage. “I’m not even certain he’s human!”
“Also, you would drive Brand absolutely insane,” said Sorrow.
“Brand employs me,” said Gale. “He’s not my husband. He has no say as to whom I share my bed with.”
“You know he’s in love with you.”
“I know he thinks he’s in love with me.”
“You’re not worried he’s trying to manipulate you by providing you with a new ship?”
“I’m certain he is. But no matter. Brand may make any attempt he wishes to seduce me. I can see through his every action. When we share each other’s bed again, it will be due to my actions, not his.”
“When?” Sorrow asked. “Why would you...”
Gale shrugged. “Since we can no longer shorten our journeys via the Sea of Wine, we’ll be between ports for weeks at a time. In times of boredom, a woman can be forgiven for seeking... amusement.”
“When I tried to find amusement with Will Fortune aboard the Monsoon, you practically broke my arm,” grumbled Sage.
“You’ll thank me later. He wasn’t the right man for your first time.”
“It wasn’t going to be my first time. We were going to just fool around a little.”
“Fooling around a little is how I wound up pregnant with Levi when I was sixteen,” said Gale.
Sorrow folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not really comfortable with this discussion.”
Gale nodded. “My apology. I forgot that you were raised to follow the tenets of the Church of the Book. It’s no wonder they’ve become the most populous faith in the world, considering how they discourage the discussion of sex.”
“Wouldn’t refraining from discussing sex have the effect of reducing the population?” asked Sorrow. “The less the mind is focused on the topic, the less feverish it becomes.”
“So the church teaches. But all their efforts lead only to ignorance. Men and women among the faithful are left to rut like animals on pure instinct. The men know nothing of seduction, and the women know very little about how to entertain themselves without spilling out babies.”
Sorrow thought this was an odd attitude for a woman who had seven children, but let the matter pass.
Gale wasn’t through, however. “In most other cultures, sex is an act of the body. Wanderers, by being free to discuss the act, have turned it into an act of the mind. Until you’ve experienced the difference between the approaches, you can never understand how one is superior to the other. Perhaps you can speak to Brand about it. He was an enthusiastic student.”
“It’s not a topic that’s ever interested me,” said Sorrow. She looked down at her tail. “For obvious reasons, it interests me even less now.”
She led them toward the door. “If you’ll give me a moment, I’d like to get dressed. I’m sure you both must have a million things to do before this ship can leave port.”
“True,” said Gale. Sage lifted the figurehead.
“You know that Mako sneaks out to see Sandy, and you never say a word,” Sage muttered as she passed her mother.
“Mako doesn’t stand a chance with Sandy,” said Gale. “She doesn’t like his teeth.”
“How can you know that?” asked Sage.
“A mother knows,” said Gale, as Sorrow closed the door behind them.
Sorrow dressed, finding her armor no tighter than it had been before. The bloated sensation in her belly was all in her mind. She ran her hands along the remnants of her pelvic bone, letting her fingers pause where her crotch had once been.
She sighed. “I wasn’t using it anyway.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHILD’S PLAY
SORROW SPENT THE following day in the hold. The ship had departed at dawn, and when Sage had come below to bring breakfast, Sorrow claimed to be suffering from sea-sickness. In truth, she wasn’t, but she suspected it wouldn’t take much to nauseate her considering her most recent meal. As horrible as the rat had been going down, she couldn’t bear the thought of having it come back up. She felt her best course to avoid the experience was just to remain in the dimly lit hold and try to sleep until she was certain her unanticipated late night snack was completely digested.
She attempted to distract herself by updating her journal. Writing always took her from the realm of emotion into the realm of objective analysis:
It was only meat. For most living creatures, my meal was a completely natural event, barely worth note. Lions and wolves and housecats survive on raw meat; certainly humans can tolerate the diet. In some respects, the convention of gutting and skinning a beast, draining it of blood, cutting out the bones, then cooking only the muscles seems wasteful.
I should feel proud to have moved beyond such unnatural prissiness. Civilization has done all it can to suppress the hunting instinct that lies within us all. To have this instinct reawakened is an improvement, not a curse.
She closed her journal with a sigh, not convinced of a word she’d written. She began to think that her self-confinement was keeping her from moving past the incident. If she would only go up on deck, she could be distracted by the activities of the Romers.
If all the Romers had been adults, her decision would have been simple. She could hear Poppy and Cinnamon on deck, and they were ten and twelve, respectively. It had been one thing to slither into Commonground and face the stares of scoundrels and ruffians. If they were given nightmares by her appearance, she felt no pity for them. But Sorrow had seen things no child should see at Poppy’s age, and didn’t want to give the girls nightmares. Still, she couldn’t hide below deck for the entire voyage, could she?
Her self-imposed exile in the hold came to an end with a knock on the door. The hold was dark save for the lantern. She threw her blanket around her shoulders to conceal herself before opening the door.
It was Brand, looking concerned as he slipped into the hold.
“Can I help you?” Sorrow asked.
“You’ve been hiding out since we left port. I was wondering if you needed help.”
“I’m just feeling... queasy. I’ve more stomach to upset than I used to.”
Brand held up a gnarled, tan root. “Ginger. Chew on this and you can handle rough seas. Gale’s powers do push a ship across the waves faster than most people are used to.”
Sorrow took the root. It looked tough and fibrous. She had doubts about putting it into her mouth.
“So what’s the real reason you’re hiding?” Brand asked.
“Why do you doubt that I’m sea-sick? On my previous travels aboard the Freewind I spent most of my time in my cabin.”
“Some company would be good for you.”
“I’ve been too busy for company,” said Sorrow. “I’ve been updating my journal.”
“Is there a section about how I killed the dragon?” Brand asked with a grin.
“You’ve been mentioned, yes. As an aide in my successful gambit to stop the beast.”
“Do you also talk about me being a good listener with interesting insights into your true feelings and motives?”
“No.” She rolled her eyes.
“I think you’re hiding down here because you’re ashamed of your appearance.”
She crossed her arms. “I’ve been seen by half the Romers already. What do I have to hide?”
“It’s the only explanation I can think of for why you’re letting Slate run around the ship without you watching his every move. Considering you went to that graveyard digging for answers, I can’t believe you don’t have the biggest question you found under constant surveillance.”
“Slate’s... running around the ship?”
“He’s playing with Poppy and Cinnamon on deck right now.”
Sorrow frowned. What had she expected? That he would spend his journey lying in his bunk immobile as a corpse? She shouldn’t have been surprised to discover that Slate was interacting with the crew. He’d been quick enough to make friends with Battle Ox. After she’d eaten the rat, all thoughts of trying to figure out who and what Slate might be had faded in importance.
Sorrow sighed. “Let me get dressed and I’ll come up top. In truth, I’m feeling better adapted to the waves now that we’ve been under way for so many hours. I’d reached the decision to go to the deck on my own just before you knocked.”
“Right,” said Brand.
She dressed in her full armor. She knew that this was pointless attire aboard the ship, but she felt stronger when she wore it. She did modify the helmet, opening the faceplate to reveal her features from eyebrow to chin. When she was done, she slithered from the hold up the stairs to the deck.
When her torso rose above the edge of the hold she ducked, as she found herself in the midst of battle. Poppy was wearing a bucket on her head and lunging at Slate with a mop handle. Slate parried her blow with a mop handle of his own. Slate had shed his armor, and was dressed in the same white cotton uniforms sported by the Romers.
The mock sword battle between Poppy and Slate was being watched from the aftcastle by Cinnamon and a short woman that Sorrow didn’t recognize. She did a double take and realized that the woman was Bigsby. The dwarf had his platinum blonde wig piled on his head, where it was held in place by a dazzling silver crown studded with emeralds. He was wearing a cream-colored silk dress adorned with abundant frills. His face was powdered to the point that it almost resembled a white mask, with bright red lips, pink cheeks, and thin arched eyebrows penciled on.
“Glad to see you’ve joined us,” Brand said from behind her.
She turned around and asked, “Where does he keep getting these outfits?”
Brand shrugged. “He knows a seamstress in Commonground named Rose Thirteen. She apparently has a whole wardrobe full of outfits his size.”
Sorrow was confused.
Brand shrugged and said, “I didn’t ask questions. I had a million things to do to get the Circus ready. And Rose was a little too friendly for my taste.”
“You found a woman to be too friendly?”
“I didn’t think it was possible either, but she asked if I wanted to marry her about five minutes after we met.”
“That’s too friendly.”
Brand nodded.
Sorrow turned back to the sword fight between Poppy and Slate. Slate obviously had the upper hand, but Poppy was making up for her lack of experience with speed and agility. Slate parried every blow, but she easily tumbled and rolled away from any attack he launched. She ducked beneath his latest swing, jumping forward, rolling into a ball, then springing back to her feet only inches in front of Sorrow.
“Sorrow!” Poppy said. “Slate’s teaching me to be a knight!”
“Girls can’t be knights!” Cinnamon shouted from her seat on the aftcastle.
“Not true,” Bigsby answered. “Like my ancestor Queen Alabaster Brightmoon, I’m also a famous knight of the church.”
“Then why aren’t you down here training?” Poppy asked, placing her hands on her hips.
“My abilities are innate in my royal blood. Before I could even walk, my father placed me in the saddle atop his finest steed and I bested twenty men at jousting. I need no training.”
Poppy fixed her eyes on Sorrow. The girl circled her finger next to her skull as she silently mouthed, “He’s crazy.”
“Be that as it may,” Sorrow said, “your sister is correct that you can’t be a knight.”
“Ma says that a Wanderer can be anything she wants to be.”
“But being a knight isn’t merely a profession,” said Sorrow. “It comes with a lot of religious baggage. Wanderers can’t be knights because they don’t believe in the Divine Author.”
“I’ll convert,” said Poppy.
“Please don’t let your mother hear you say that,” said Brand. “She’ll skin me alive for giving you that book.”
“What book?” Sorrow asked.
“When I took possession of the ship, I found a dog-eared copy of Champions of the Book tucked in behind the mattress in the captain’s cabin. It’s a history, sort of. Mostly its blood-drenched legends of knights battling monsters, witches, and dragons. I immediately thought of Poppy.”
“Why?”
“Did you ever see the books
she read on the Freewind?”
“No.”
Poppy said, “I like reading about battles. The bloodier, the better.”
“Is that appropriate reading material for a child?” Sorrow asked.
“No!” said Cinnamon. “It makes her mean. She’s always hitting people!”
“I’m not mean,” Poppy grumbled. “You’re just a—”
“Poppy is rambunctious,” said Slate. “Full of energy and daring, but lacking formal training. She would make a fine warrior.”
Sorrow raised an eyebrow. “So... you believe it’s okay for women to fight? That’s not exactly a tenet of chivalry.”
Slate shrugged. “I suppose it’s not. But, somehow, it feels right to me that women should engage in combat. You certainly held your own in battle.”
“By the seven stars!” Poppy exclaimed as she bent over to look down into the hold at Sorrow’s serpent form. “It’s true!”
“Don’t be alarmed by my appearance,” Sorrow said. “I’m still the same woman you knew.”
“Alarmed?” Poppy said, dropping to her chest and stretching her arm down. “This is amazing!” She ran her fingers along Sorrow’s scales. “You’re like a dragon!”
Cinnamon was suddenly at the hold as well, bending over to stare at Sorrow’s tail.
“Come out into the light!” she said.
Sorrow was surprised by the reaction, but complied by slithering up the steps until she was completely on deck.
“I thought Jetsam was lying,” said Cinnamon.
“You look just like Avaris!” said Poppy.
“What?” Sorrow was bewildered. What could this girl know about Avaris?
Poppy ran across the deck and grabbed a bag lying next to the mast. She pulled out a book and ran back. The tome was leather bound and thick, with dog-eared pages and a spine that had seen better days. She flipped through the yellowed paper until she found the page she was seeking. “This is Avaris!”
An old woodcut portrayed Avaris as a demon with a serpent’s body from the waist down. Avaris also had fangs, and fins for ears, not to mention menacing talons in place of hands.