Lotus Blue

by Sparks,Cat

  “Girl’s a member of my crew,” said Quarrel.

  “Girl ain’t nothing to do with you,” said the man who’d lost his lance. “What you done to her?”

  “Nothing. She’ll be fine so long as she does what I say, as will the rest of them. As will you. Now get off my ship while you still can.”

  But the ship was moving. If anyone was going to leave, they’d have to jump and chance a broken limb. The wind blew blasts of sand against their skin as they passed the masts and sails of smaller vessels.

  “You her father?”

  “Her friend, and if you so much as—”

  “Take care of your friend then,” said Quarrel. “She’s no use to me damaged. Pull your weight and you’ll receive an equal share. Cross me even once and I’ll kill you both.” Quarrel slapped the lance back into its owner’s hands.

  The man looked as if he might lash out, but stayed his hand, one eye on the girl. “Who or what the hell are you?”

  “I’m your captain,” answered Quarrel firmly. “Let me down and the girl will pay the price.”

  = Twenty-six =

  The shelves of the Razael’s galley larder were packed solid with provisions, much more so than usual, but it was fare of a less luxurious nature than Grieve had become used to during his frequent below deck sojourns. Potatoes, rye, and salted roo. Sugar, vinegar, and coffee.

  He turned up his nose at that lot and went in search of cheeses. Cheese and olives were what he craved during his shipboard days. He had water and he had wine and now he had a clear, uninterrupted view of the most beautiful girl who’d ever graced the Earth. Or he would have, as soon as she came back onboard, which by his calculations would be any day now.

  The fat man with the triple pointed beard entertained his guests in that one particular stateroom, which meant Grieve had an excellent view of anyone who came and went.

  Shouldn’t get involved, he told himself, over and over and over, only Grieve wasn’t listening to his pesky inner voice, his voice of reason, the one element that kept him a step ahead of trouble and strife.

  He had to duck and keep very still as a line of dockhands hauled heavy sacks down too-thin passageways, bashing clumsily against the wooden bulkheads. Grieve winced. They were not the Razael’s regular caretaker crew. These brutes didn’t care what they scratched or bashed or scraped.

  He waited until the coast was clear, then reached up high for a jar that looked like it might contain quince paste. Choice! He stuffed it into his carryall, then waited again until he could hear nothing but the far off cries of dockside vendors and the beating of his own heart.

  The belowdecks passageways had never been so busy. Something suspicious was going on, but it wasn’t his problem. His problem consisted solely of sneaking back into his hidey-hole, securing his pilfered provisions, and dreaming of the girl in the brightly coloured saris. Every time she visited the ship she was wearing a different one. Wealthy and smart, no doubt she hailed from one of Heel’s most illustrious merchant families. Two or three such families controlled most of the overland trade—and probably half the black market deals as well. A far cry from his own pathetic desert heritage.

  Thumping and shouting echoed down the companionway, mixed in with the clang of dockside bells and a thousand other sounds besides. Angelfall had stirred the whole town up till they were mad dog crazy, partying like it was the end of the world, the whole darn lot of them. Drinking and carousing and dancing in the streets. Fighting too, over nothing more than promises.

  Too much food and drink below, too much shouting up on deck. Whatever. Smuggled grain, stolen goods, the hurly burly of the business world could pass him by for a week or so. Grieve was planning to take a holiday. To rest up, kick back, lay low, and indulge himself with dreams.

  He wondered about the strangers he so often glimpsed in the stateroom through the crack. Men with jewelled rings on their fingers. If Grieve owned jewels he’d never be so stupid as to put them on display, where every gutter thief like him could see. Rich people were idiots, be they deep desert dwellers, land, or sea.

  He tiptoed down the passageway, alert to every sound, making no more noise than a dockyard rat. Perhaps the girl would return by nightfall? Perhaps this time he would learn her name, and a little more besides. Girls like her came and went as they pleased. Their fathers did not control them. Grieve’s own father had never managed to control his sisters—or him, his brothers, their cousins. Too much empathy had been his father’s problem. Empathy was for the weak. It had served him poorly in the past. These days he had no stomach for it. He saved his stomach for pilfered cheese and other morsels stolen from the tables of the rich and bloated.

  Those bells again, much louder than before. Messing up the quiet—and the quiet was what he loved most about the ancient, stately ship. The fact that nobody could mess with his peace and . . .

  The floor lurched and the bulkheads heaved. Grieve dropped his carryall and steadied himself. Cheeses spilled across the polished boards. He knelt down and quickly scooped them up, and was getting to his feet once more when the passageway shifted and tilted and a rumbling caused the exquisite parquetry to shudder.

  He steadied himself against a bulkhead with one hand, pausing to listen until the whole place lurched one final time. Then he was certain.

  The Razael was moving, only it couldn’t be. He dropped his stolen bounty and ran for the companionway, flying around corners, no time to hide or stash his stuff, no time for anything because the rumbling below his boots was getting stronger and more insistent. Great reliquary engines were choking into life. He didn’t even know the ship had engines.

  He wasn’t the only one heading for the companionway. Bigger, meaner men than him were pushing each other out of the way, shouting about earthquakes, swearing and calling on their gods for help, cursing whoever had tricked them to this fate.

  Topside, the air stank of bitter, greasy smoke. Fights were breaking out on deck, and ending swiftly by men in fancy garb, the likes of which Grieve had never seen before, their faces obscured beneath helmets that seemed to suck light from the sky. Sky that was moving, sails unfurling as the ship made for the Open Black, leaving the docks of Fallow Heel behind.

  He ran for the side, his one and only chance, but all was lost: too fast, too furious, too late to jump or even think about it. His carefully-constructed cover was now blown, had anyone been paying close attention. But nobody had eyes for anything but the landscape blurring past, sails billowing with mighty breaths of wind. The Black Sea beckoned like the old crone death herself.

  The Razael was heading out across the Obsidian Sea with him trapped on board, and there was not a damn thing Grieve could do about it.

  = Twenty-seven =

  The Black Sea stretched on forever. There seemed no end to it. At its edges lay the Dead Red Sands, but Star could see no sand from where she stood, clinging to the railing, trying to keep as small as possible and out of everybody else’s way.

  She’d awoken propped up against a pile of sacks, with pain screaming through her left arm and no memory of how she’d come to be onboard. Nene’s field kit was still slung across her torso—something to be grateful for, at least. All around her, a frenzied crew of sand sailors were preoccupied with keeping the wretched vessel moving, with preventing it from ramming into competing vessels and other obstructions littered across the Black.

  From shore, the Black had appeared so calm and still, but there was nothing still about the place up close. Its impenetrable surface was alive with darting forms, vessels both large and small scooting across it, dodging out of each other’s trajectory like insect larva clumped on stagnant water, wriggling and jittering. Constantly on the move.

  She had never set foot upon a ship before this day, either sand- or the ocean-going type, although she had once stood upon the cliffs of Usha and watch
ed three ocean vessels bound for foreign lands. Glorious and mighty, their sails had puffed out like chests, moving headstrong into the breeze, as if with a will and purpose of their own.

  There was nothing glorious about this ship. The deck was made of ancient timbers meshed and mashed with other salvage. Old world metals, wire, and plastics. Broken doorways, window frames, and doors. Unsettlingly uneven. Construction that creaked and squealed with every slamming gust of wind. The railing rattled wildly beneath her grip, threatening to snap and send her hurtling over the side at any moment.

  No part of the ship matched any other. The same could be said for the crew. The sailors were not uniformly large, nor uniformly male, as she had initially supposed. At first they had seemed alike as brothers, exposed flesh patterned with inkings that told her these men and women had crewed a lot of ships. They had hunted tankers and survived the experience.

  Lucius. The last thing she remembered was his face, staring at her through the bustling, pressing crowd.

  She avoided eye contact, tried not to get caught staring at crew members’s scars and tattoos, and especially not at individual faces, lest she draw attention or end up in a fight.

  She feared being singled out for amusement’s sake. Out on the Black, she was on her own. Back on the Van, Benhadeer had kept an eye on things. He’d had a soft spot for Nene and her sister.

  Nene. She didn’t want to think about Nene. Not sisters—Nene’s words chased around and around in her head. Words that couldn’t possibly be true.

  But as worried as she was about drawing attention to herself, the business of sailing took up everyone’s attention and time. The crew ignored her as though she were a barrel or a sack of grain. Which suited her fine—so far, so good. She clung tight to the wildly wobbling rail, staring over the side at the smaller craft veering close to the vessel’s massive wheels. Blokarts mostly, assembled from assorted pre-Ruin scrap and irritating as sand skinks. They darted close, then skittered out of the way before she could get a good look at the pilots. All were swathed in heavy protective wrappings. There was something hungry looking about them, even with their faces covered and nothing showing but a dark slit across their eyes. Something about them seemed other than human.

  The ship’s wheels thundered, crushing over detritus with thick, ridged tread, swerving to avoid larger obstacles. A lookout was perched high above in a rickety crow’s nest, his face obscured by goggles of tarnished brass. There were four other spotters as well, two fore and two aft, all shouting in booming voices.

  The Black itself was not truly black, but a greeny-gray that seemed to suck up light, flecked with patches of a paler hue. Embedded with chunks and shafts and indistinct shapes. Things that had melted and fused long, long ago.

  Fires burned on the surface. Many of them, scattered. Broken wrecks of ships much like their own, flames fiercely consuming all combustible parts. Blokarts circled close to the wrecks like cockroaches or carrion birds. No evidence of the crews they had once carried.

  A ’kart suddenly broke off from the cluster, its driver wrapped from head to foot in rags. A passenger stood and aimed a crossbow directly at Star’s chest. She froze, then clutched her ears as shots went whizzing past her head. A tankerjack leaned over the rickety rail, firing back. The crossbow lowered and the ’kart scurried off like a startled rat.

  Star was left standing there, stunned, ears ringing, unable to believe any vessel so small and flimsy would dare attack anything so much bigger.

  She wanted to thank her saviour, but the crew member—a tall, dark-skinned woman—had already dashed over to the starboard side where another larger vessel about the same size as their own was veering too close for comfort.

  Shouting followed. More shots were fired and the vessel jerked away. Something else caught Star’s attention. An indistinct shape darting through a ragged gash in a wrecked hull they were passing. Big and quick—too quick and too dark for her to see clearly. Craning her neck, that was when she saw the bodies: dozens of them, lying in the open. Too late. The ship rolled out of reach just as a pack of dogs came bounding out from behind a frozen mound of melted slag. Half starved, slavering things, all teeth and bone.

  Star was frozen too, both in horror and fascination. Allegra’s spyglass! She fumbled it from her trouser pocket, and aimed it in the direction of the flaming wreck, just in time to see what she had missed before: bands of people gripping staves and lances, running across the Black from refuge to refuge, silhouetted against the flame, limping, lame and injured. Trying desperately to find a way back home.

  The ship rolled on. She did not get to see what happened next.

  A large man stood upon the main deck bellowing orders. She stared at him as the rest of the crew obeyed his every command. The ache in her arm had not gone away and though she couldn’t remember exactly why, she knew this was the man who had caused it. He’d not touched her, yet somehow . . .

  By listening to the others’s banter, she learned the big man’s name was Quarrel. He cut an impressive figure, even larger and more frightening than when she’d first seen him standing on the deck. He seemed to emit a magnetic presence. She could not take her eyes off him.

  She was still staring at him when he turned around. She flinched, expecting some kind of recognition when he saw her, but Quarrel looked right past and over the side of the ship, more interested in the turbulent passage of nearby vessels. It made Star wonder if her memory was playing tricks. It would not be the first time her own memory could not be trusted.

  She listened to the back and forth of the active crew. Two watches were decided upon: one to sleep or rest up any way they could, the other to keep the ship moving forward at all cost, sails trimmed tight to follow the true direction of the wind. There were not enough crew for all the tasks at hand, or so it seemed, yet the battered old vessel could not have carried more. Every spare inch of the cramped belowdeck space was crammed with reliquary. Belching, acrid smoke seeped from its innards.

  Star squatted, wedging herself into a corner made from lumpy burlap sacks and the ship’s splintered side, keeping out of everybody’s way, the items from Nene’s field kit digging into her ribs and thigh. There was nowhere safe to stow her belongings so she kept them slung across her body. Medical supplies and knowledge would give her value on this voyage—and whatever lay beyond it. Without them, she was nothing but a useless hand, a useless mouth to feed.

  The tall, dark-skinned woman who had fired upon the blokart stood on the foredeck, ignoring the bustle and activity around her, the swing of the boom and the whomp of the sails.

  Star stared at her hard, hoping the woman would glance her way, either out of curiosity or friendliness. The tall woman did neither. Her entire attention was focused on the sky.

  Star had never seen a sky like it; the colour of an infected wound, blistered and puckered. Even the air smelled foul—and not just from the smoky reliquary below.

  They were just a few miles out from Fallow Heel, yet nothing was familiar, not the elements of nature, and certainly not the moving deck beneath her feet.

  The boom swung, two sailors sensing its motion and ducking almost before the lookout called a warning. Star kept herself well clear of it and leaned against the rickety rail to stare back out over the side. Everything had changed and was changing still—not just the sky. The Black seemed blacker than before. Wrecks were becoming fewer, with wider stretches in between sightings. No small craft buzzed around the bow or stern. The ship had apparently outrun them.

  Little by little, the crew began to relax. The reliquary engine cut out altogether, and the sails carried the load. The pungent smell of seaweed baccy wafted. The crew began to banter with one another, rather than merely bellowing instructions. The ship had passed through the worst of it. Next stop would be the tanker hunting grounds—or perhaps a fallen Angel. After what happened to Remy, Star
never wanted to see a tanker again—not face-to-face, at least—but she relished the chance to get close to an Angel.

  Quarrel strode across the deck. He did not move like an ordinary man, nor even stand like one. Star couldn’t help thinking of that broken and battered Templar the Van had passed, lashed up high in Broken Arch where everyone could see it. Left to rot under a cruel and blazing sun. She recalled how Nene had insisted on checking to see if the thing was alive or dead.

  Nene who cared for monsters more than her own sister.

  Nene who turned out not to be her sister at all.

  Nene standing in the splintered ruins of their Van.

  She couldn’t bear to think about any of it.

  Star knew she had to find herself a friend. Maybe the tall, dark woman who’d been studying the sky.

  When she next caught sight of her, Star decided to take a chance. The woman’s name was Bimini, she’d overheard. Star bit her lip. It was now or never. Something Nene used to say.

  She let go of the rickety rail, and picked her way across the deck, a plan clear in her mind. She would offer her own name, ask Bimini where she had come from and what she was doing in such a terrible place.

  But she didn’t get the chance. She was knocked off her feet and dashed to the deck as something large slammed into the ship’s starboard side.

  = Twenty-eight =

  Star lay on the deck where she had fallen, sprawled and dazed as a volley of sharp, stinging missiles whizzed above her head. Not bullets. Peppershot. The weapon of choice for homestead raiders, good for leaving bloody surface wounds on exposed skin. Not deep, but just enough to distract, irritate, and undermine, to weaken resolve and hamper attempts at resistance.

  Star clambered up on unsteady feet as raiders began boarding from a ship pulled up alongside. It looked like the same craft that had veered too close before. Some of its crew were wielding guns, but not all—and the guns were old. They seemed more for show, like those worn by half the Van folks she’d ever travelled with. Status symbols that could mean different things to different tribes.