Blood and Tempest

by Jon Skovron

  It felt strange to sit back and let Alash do all the work. And yet, she was tired from her brief but intense fight with the mole rats, and there wasn’t much she could do anyway with only one working hand and no special shoes. So she leaned back and tried to make herself comfortable. It was funny, really. Her intention had been to save Alash from the mole rats, not the other way around. Funny, and oddly thrilling, to see evidence that he—that any person, really—could change and grow so much in such a relatively short amount of time.

  The way Alash pulled them almost felt like sailing across the fractured earth. That feeling grew even more pronounced when they reached the observation tower and he tied the platform up to one of the tower struts, held out his hand, and said, “Welcome aboard, Captain.”

  They ascended a ladder fixed to the side of the tower. When they reached the top, Hope was surprised to find how homey it was. There was a sleeping mat off in the corner like the kind the Vinchen used. There was a small writing desk piled with notebooks, parchment, and odd little tools and devices that reminded her of his workshop back at Pastinas Manor. There was also an intricate series of funnels that ran along the canvas roof and converged over a large barrel filled with what was most likely rainwater. The fourth corner was a metal pot suspended over a small pile of black rocks.

  “Is that coal?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “There’s not much wood on the island, obviously. All the lumber you see here I had to bring up from Vance Post. At first, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to cook anything, and had more or less resigned myself to a life of cold rations. But it turns out there’s a large coal deposit somewhere in the colony, and the mole rats are constantly pushing bits of it to the surface to make room for themselves.”

  Hope knelt down and looked at it more carefully. “I’ve never seen it before. I’ve only read about it.”

  “Likewise,” said Alash. “It took me a little while to figure out how best to use it as a fuel source. Frankly, even now I feel like I’m only just beginning to grasp its full potential. The energy output is significantly higher than that of wood. It’s quite astonishing, really.”

  Uter was still being cautious, but his curiosity got the better of him, and he gradually drifted away from Hope’s side to the desk with its many strange little tools.

  “Care for a drink?” asked Alash. He held up a small earthen jug. “It’s a fermented drink I’ve been developing from the tubers that the mole rats eat.”

  “Thanks.” Hope accepted the jug and took a sip. It was surprisingly sweet. “Not bad.”

  “It’s an acquired taste, but I’ve grown to like it.” He poured himself a cup and took a slow swallow.

  “Why did you come here, Alash?” she asked.

  He gave her a wry smile. “I could tell you about my rekindled interest in the natural sciences. Or perhaps you’d like to hear about my theory that the biomancers have been cultivating giant mole rats because their physiology is potentially the key to granting humans a longer life span.”

  “Those both sound … plausible,” said Hope.

  “It’s true those are the reasons I chose specifically to come to Walta. But the reason I left Vance Post … well, it was mostly because I couldn’t bear to see her with that pirate.”

  “Ah,” said Hope.

  The “her” was obviously Brigga Lin, whom Alash had been in love with for about as long as he’d known her. She suspected “that pirate” was probably Gavish Gray, captain of the Rolling Lightning. Hope remembered seeing him supporting Brigga Lin during the attack on Dawn’s Light. The smuggler did have a certain smarmy, arrogant charm about him. And as Nettles might have said, wasn’t bad on the gander. He also seemed to lack Alash’s sensitive nature, which was a quality that Brigga Lin had always seemed to find irksome.

  “So why did you come here?” he asked.

  She laughed. “Honestly, I thought I’d be rescuing you from the dread mole rats.”

  “You know, all those terrible rumors are wrong,” he said defensively. “They’re not at all bloodthirsty or aggressive. They aren’t even carnivores. The only time they attack is when someone threatens their colony.”

  “Which I did spectacularly today.” She held up her mangled prosthesis. “I also wanted your help reworking this.”

  “I can see why.” He lifted it up and gave it a more careful look.

  “Even before it was damaged, actually,” said Hope.

  “Oh? I thought you were happy with it.”

  “I was. But my … priorities have changed. I want something more suitable to general everyday use.”

  “I’m sure we can come up with something,” said Alash as he scrutinized the mechanics more closely. “Although taking the design in that direction will most likely impact sword handling.”

  “That’s fine,” she said. “Because I don’t intend to ever pick up a sword again.”

  He tore his eyes away from the prosthesis to stare at her. “Not … ever?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Okay. I …” He scratched his scruffy cheek, looking mystified. “I just think of the Song of Sorrows almost as a part of your body, so it’s difficult for me to grasp this …”

  She waited for the inevitable protestation that renouncing swordsmanship was not only impractical, but dangerous. In a world where some of the most powerful people alive wanted her dead, how could she discard the one sure way to defend herself? She’d asked herself that question many times. She always came back to the idea that if she was going to fulfill her teacher’s last wish and find a better path for the Vinchen, she must accept that most wild dreams were built upon dangerous, impractical choices. No, not accept it. Embrace it. Even if no one else did. Still, this was the moment she dreaded the most. Her absurd ideals running headlong into the cold logic that Wentu and Yammy had been kind enough to keep to themselves.

  “How do I put this …” Alash struggled for a moment, then he suddenly smiled. “I think it’s marvelous.”

  “You … do?”

  “Of course. I’ve told you many times that I abhor violence.”

  “That’s true.” She’d always shrugged off his declarations as naive. But now here she was, bent on proving it was possible.

  “Not such a crazy idea after all, is it?” he asked, as if he knew what she’d always been thinking. Then he went back to studying her prosthesis. “Obviously, we’ll need to discuss the design in detail, but regardless of how we decide to go, I’m quite sure we won’t be able to do anything with it here on Walta. Fortunately, there’s a blacksmith on Vance Post that owes me a favor.”

  “And you don’t mind going back there?” asked Hope.

  “More than likely she won’t even be there.” Tension crept into Alash’s face. “They spend a lot of time at sea, doing God knows what. But even if they are on Vance Post, they keep to the Shade District. My blacksmith is in the Commercial District, an area far too industrious and respectable for the likes of that pirate.”

  “If you’re certain,” said Hope. “We could try somewhere else if you prefer.”

  He shook his head. “Think nothing of it, Miss Hope.” Then he turned to Uter, who was now fiddling with some sort of sliding ruler. “And you, Mr. Uter.”

  Uter hastily put the ruler back on the table.

  “Have you decided if we are to be friends?” asked Alash.

  Uter considered him a moment. “You’re awfully nice to Hope,” he said. “And you’re going to fix her metal hand. So I guess we can be friends.”

  Alash filed away all the jagged bits of metal that made Hope a danger to herself and others. It was near sunset, so they decided not to head for Vance Post until the next morning. There wasn’t a lot of room up on the tower for the three of them, but Alash insisted that Hope use the bed.

  “It would pain me to think of you sleeping on the bare floor so much that I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway,” he declared.

  When Hope lay down on the bedroll, Uter snuggled in close. He was
still uncharacteristically timid and pensive. Clingy, even. As they lay there staring up through holes in the canvas at the starry sky, she decided to ask him about it.

  “Uter, you’ve been acting strangely today.”

  “Strangely?”

  “Not like how you usually act. Normally you’re so cheerful and energetic.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you not like Alash? Does he frighten you for some reason?”

  “No, he seems okay.”

  “Was it the tunnel?”

  There was a long silence. Then, in a quivering voice, Uter said, “I don’t like being buried. I don’t like it.”

  “Have you been buried before?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who buried you?”

  “My lord.”

  “Why did Vikma Bruea bury you?”

  “That’s what they do when you get wighted. They make you drink these awful-tasting things. Then they put these smelly oils on your skin. Then they … Then they …”

  Hope could feel him shaking next to her. She wanted to ask him how long he had been buried. But she suspected the boy probably didn’t know and would find it painful to think about it. Hours? Perhaps even days? All the while struggling with whatever potions the necromancer had given him that kept him teetering on the edge of death. They suffer for days in more pain and torment than you or I could imagine. Most of them eventually die. Their bodies just can’t take the suffering, and give out. That’s what Maltch, the elder on Gull’s Cry, had said. How could a young mind process such torment? Perhaps it couldn’t.

  Hope put her arm around the boy and pulled him close to her so that he shivered against her. She held up her broken prosthesis and stared at it in the faint moonlight.

  “Some things that are broken can never be returned to the way they were,” she said. “But perhaps they can be made whole, in a new way.”

  She said it to comfort him, but she knew she was expressing a hope for both of them.

  Gradually, Uter stopped shaking and drifted off to sleep, and sometime later, so did she.

  13

  Brigga Lin used to find sailing so thrilling. The sight of the open sea used to make her chest surge with an exuberance she could barely articulate. Release? Freedom? Possibility? One of those. Or perhaps all of them. She used to stand silently for hours on the forecastle of the Kraken Hunter with Hope. Words had been unnecessary because they’d both known what they were looking at as they gazed out at the ocean: a better tomorrow.

  But now she was alone, and she no longer knew what she was looking at, other than a lot of salty water. It stirred nothing within her.

  As she stared at the lead-colored sea beneath slate-gray skies, she was distantly aware that some kind of argument was taking place back on the quarterdeck. The Rolling Lightning was a fairly small ship, but even so, they must be raising their voices pretty loudly for the sound to reach her at the bow over the crash of the waves. Not loud enough for her to hear what they were saying. But then, she wasn’t trying to hear anyway.

  A few minutes later, Gavish Gray appeared next to her, looking quietly furious in that way he had. His eyes would get a hard set, his cheeks would flush, and his nostrils would flare. As often as Brigga Lin saw that look, he rarely communicated to her what caused it. She rarely asked.

  After he’d had a few minutes to calm down, he spoke in a light, conversational tone that sounded slightly forced. “I fear you’ve upset Jilly.”

  “Oh?”

  “Aye. She was hoping for some biomancer training. Just the two of you on a small island.”

  “She still has plenty of reading to do before we need to start any practical application,” said Brigga Lin.

  “So you said.” Gray was quiet for a moment. “Still, it’s been a hard couple of months. Wouldn’t hurt to give her a bit of special attention, would it? I think it’s that, more than the learning, she craves.”

  “If you’re seeking to appeal to my maternal instincts, you’d have better luck with some of your crew. They’re far more attentive to Jilly than I am.”

  “That’s what troubles me,” Gray said.

  “Attempting to make me feel guilty for my inattentiveness is equally futile,” said Brigga Lin.

  “No, it’s not that.” Gray’s nostrils and cheeks flared up again. “I just …” He pressed his lips together for a moment. “Never mind. You’re right. I’ve no business telling you how to school your own pupil. I won’t trouble you about it again.”

  Then he turned and walked across the deck back to his cabin, closing the door behind him.

  As Brigga Lin continued to stare dully out at the water, a thought slowly rose up in her mind like an air bubble in a pool of oil. Perhaps something else was troubling Gray. Something he couldn’t articulate. And he’d been awkwardly trying to find a way to talk it out with her. She supposed that, as his lover, she was expected to attempt to coax it out of him.

  She sighed and headed across the deck toward his cabin. It was beginning to rain anyway.

  As she passed the hatchway down to the galley, she heard something that made her pause. She stopped and stood for a moment, trying to think what it had been. Words. A phrase. A few of the crew speaking. What did they say? She wasn’t sure. It was odd that she’d heard it and yet not heard it, all at once. But there had been a coarse laugh and the name Jilly.

  She looked up into the sails. As usual, Jilly lounged in the rigging, one bare foot idly dangling. How did that girl lose shoes so quickly?

  But if Jilly was up among the sails, that meant the men below weren’t talking to her. They were talking about her.

  Brigga Lin remained standing next to the hatchway. She became aware of an unpleasant tightness in her chest as she strained to hear what the men below deck were saying.

  “Well, I can certainly understand the temptation,” came Fisty’s voice, his tone agreeable. “But you know it would anger the Lady, and that would anger the captain, and we don’t want that.”

  “I don’t give a piss about what upsets the Lady,” said Slake, a sour contempt in his tone. “The captain should never have let her on board. He can claim all he likes that she’s not a biomancer. She’s got that attitude all them biomancers got. Like none of us are worth a cup of piss.”

  “You know I’m with you on this,” said Marble Eyes. “The Lady has too much sway over the captain. She has to go.”

  “So you want the captain should get rid of the Lady but keep Jilly?” asked Fisty. “How you going to convince him of that one?”

  “We’ll just tell him how useful she is,” said Marble Eyes.

  Slake laughed. Brigga Lin had never heard him laugh before. It was an ugly, convulsive sound. “And with the Lady out of the way, she’ll be twice as useful.”

  “That baby slice is so fresh, I can almost smell it,” said Marble Eyes, his voice dreamy. Then more firmly, “But don’t forget she’s got knives. My leg still ain’t healed from when I made a grab before.”

  “The knives just make it more fun,” said Slake. “Between the two of us, I’m sure we could handle her. I go first, though. I’ve been wanting to toss that little slice ever since I laid eyes on her.”

  Brigga Lin stood above the hatch, motionless. Thunder rumbled in the distance as the rain began to fall harder.

  Drowning was usually something that happened fast. A person fell in the water and, within a few minutes, they ran out of air, their lungs filled with water, and they died. But there was a disease called Swimmer’s Lung. No one knew exactly how a person got it, but once they had it, their lungs gradually filled up with fluid over the course of many weeks. It was a slow drowning.

  The curious thing was that most people who had Swimmer’s Lung didn’t realize something was wrong until their lungs were mostly full. It was such a drawn-out process that they grew accustomed to the progressive shortening of their breath without even noticing it. At such a late stage, drastic measures were needed to save the victim, such as piercing the chest with a
hollow needle to drain it.

  Brigga Lin had been slowly drowning for months. Except instead of fluid, she was drowning in time. Old Yammy had warned her this might happen. In her arrogance, Brigga Lin thought she could handle it. After all, she’d spent years growing accustomed to the sense of all the living things around her. But she had not truly appreciated how intense it would be to feel not just what was, but also what had been, and what might be. She’d fought to stay afloat for a while, then somewhere along the line, after Hope had left and most of the crew went their separate ways, she’d slowly dropped beneath the waves of time without even noticing.

  Now something had yanked her back to the surface. Something hard, and sharp, and clear. Something that brought the painful focus she needed to clear her head, as a victim of Swimmer’s Lung cleared their lungs. Something that forced her to finally wake up. It was the pure, hot rush of wrath.

  She pulled her hood up and walked slowly down the narrow steps to the galley. Fisty, Marble Eyes, and Slake lounged around a small table, each with a cup of grog. When they saw Brigga Lin, their expressions grew uneasy and they stood up, as if attempting some sort of awkward gentlemanly behavior.

  “My lady …,” said Fisty uneasily. “Is there something we can help you with?”

  Brigga Lin smiled as she walked toward them. She lifted her arms so that her sleeves fell back to reveal her elegant, long-fingered hands. Most of the time she cast from afar. But every so often, it was good to get her hands dirty.

  “M-my lady?” asked Fisty as he sidled away. The other two were trapped in the corner, their eyes both belligerent and a little frightened.

  Not nearly frightened enough.

  Brigga Lin decided it was convenient that most pirates went shirtless. Her hands shot out, her left hand against Marble Eyes’s bare chest, and her right hand against Slake’s. As she touched them, their skin, muscle, and bone in that area softened to the consistency of thick custard. They flailed and struggled to free themselves as she pressed her hands into their chest cavities. Slake even managed to yank out a bit of her hair, which was impressive given the amount of mind-numbing agony they were both experiencing.