The women roared with laughter.
"You won’t stop us," Mal said. "Why defend that heretic?"
"She is my mother," Doom said. "The House of the Pale Daughters has set me in her service."
"The way I see it," Bon slurred, "yer gotta kill her. Now, seven years, death is death."
"No," Doom said, and the pair laughed.
"Maybe we should kill you, little girl," Mal said.
Just outside the flimsy door, Reft steeled herself. The women were as hard as petrified wood, covered in knife scars. Reft was a trader running to fat, and she held no illusions about what the pair could do to her.
They're going to hurt Doom, she thought, and went to make her move.
There was the sudden shuffle of feet on the deck, the roars of the women as they jumped to their feet. In one heart-beat, Reft heard the crash of a dish breaking, a scream, the thump of a body falling. Finally she kicked the door open, arms shaking as she lifted the mace.
"Leave her be!" she cried, only to see Doom standing over the pair. She held their coral knives in her hands, each of them bloody up to the hilt.
Bon stared at the ceiling, blood gushing from a hole above her heart. Mal flicked about like an eel, gasping for air through the severed ruin of her throat.
Reft dragged the bodies over to the front of Old Char, Mal still twitching as the life leaked out of her. Reft gently rubbed the crab's swaying eyestalk, and then the old girl stirred from her slumber.
"This is the food line," Reft said, lashing a rope around Bon's ankles. Doom watched the complicated hitch knot, and helped Reft to shove the dead body out and over the edge of the shell.
The body dangled in front of Old Char's mouth for a heartbeat, and then the crab lurched forward, snatching it up with her claws, stuffing it into her mouth. Her mandibles smashed together, crushing the corpse into paste.
Reft drew up the mouth-line, the end now frayed and bloody. She looked at the other woman. Mal gurgled weakly, blood bubbling out of her mouth. She raised a hand, fear writ large in her dying eyes.
"Do you deserve mercy?" Reft said. Mal nodded.
"I shall leave it up to my Pale Daughter. Doom, does this woman deserve to live?"
She said nothing, merely kneeling down by Mal’s feet. As Doom began to tie the knot around her ankles, the dying woman wept, mouth moving in a plea she no longer had the air to voice.
"You tried to murder this little girl," Reft said. "Here is your mercy."
Together, Reft and Doom pushed Mal over the edge. The rope pulled taut, and Old Char snapped her up, chirping joyfully as she ate her alive.
The next day, Reft gave Doom the smokehouse for her own use, and built her a bed out of scrap wood and leather straps. From that day on she visited the great hall only to fetch her meals, and to tend to the larvae.
"I am pleased that I do not have to share a roof with my wife's killer," Eakr said. The great hall became a more peaceful place, but Reft still felt the presence of her Pale Daughter, saw her Doom wandering the deck. She remembered all too well her inhuman speed, the way she'd butchered two grown women in the blink of an eye.
Each day slipped through her fingers, and eight years seemed like nothing at all.
#
It took Reft more than a year to get her books back into the black. These days there were more crabbers plying the Archipelago, and she'd had to keep her profits razor thin.
She put on another crew, honest deck-hands with references. Under Doom's care, the latest batch of crab larvae had grown their first shells, and Reft sold the juveniles for a tidy sum.
"We should be bringing trade for the priests on High Claw," Eakr complained, unhappy with this modest accumulation of wealth. "Yet here we are, scrapping over postal tenders. Fetching salt for the outer islands."
"It's good work," Reft said. "Steady income."
"Steady income," Eakr scoffed. "You have seven years left, Reft. Seven years to make this right."
The holding sheds still stinking of pigeon meat and smoked eel, Reft steered Old Char towards Bridge. Their oldest son Pol was desperate to join the other debutants, and find himself a wife. Reft and Eakr had thunderous arguments over the amount of dowry he should take.
"I need money for trade goods," she warned Eakr. "We cannot go into debt again."
"Who will Pol get with this?" Eakr said, tossing the small purse of coins back onto the table. "He'll get a shepherd, or a farmhand. Worse luck, he'll have to marry a crabber."
"I paid for my mistake," Reft shouted. "This is the best I can do."
Eakr ran to his sons, sobbing and railing against the injustice of it all. Reft left the great hall, storming about on the deck.
I should run to the Murk, she thought. Leave that shrieking dick to fend for himself.
Doom was at the front of the deck, standing in between Old Char's eyestalks. She swayed in time with each lumbering step, but hers wasn't the balance that any crabber developed over time. She seemed rooted to the shell; not one of the parasites that crawled on Old Char's back, but a new appendage, a third eyestalk scanning the Murk for food, for enemies.
"There is a new island," Doom told Reft, voice absent and low, not taking her eyes from the Murk the crab was lumbering through. "Even now it is rising."
Reft grew excited. They could claim land if they got there early enough. Trading rights if they beat the other crabbers to the site.
"Take us there," Reft urged her. "We must get there fast."
Doom stroked the fine hairs on Old Char's eyestalks, whispered to the crab. The behemoth turned from her path, ignoring the bulk of Bridge on the horizon.
When Eakr discovered the change in direction, he flew into a fury. Pol joined forces with his father, and they screamed at Reft to turn the crab around, to deliver the oldest son to his season in the sunlit courts.
"You turn away on the say-so of that thing?" Pol said, pointing at Doom. "She is going to kill you! Don't listen to her."
"Be silent!" Reft yelled, unbuckling her eel-skin belt, wrestling it out and into her hand. She was furious, trembling all over. By the laws of crab and woman, she had the right to beat any man for any reason. Weak little things, good for nothing but their seed, for the little jobs that no woman would do. Eakr and Pol looked at her dubiously; she'd never raised a hand to them in anger.
"You're too weak to whip your own," Eakr scoffed. "Mark my son, and I swear we will smother you in your sleep."
Doom moved fast, her tiny hands darting like the claws of a crab. Father and son retreated, crying out as the Pale Daughter slapped and pinched at their faces, leaving red welts wherever she struck.
"Do not threaten my mother," Doom said. "By the laws of crab and woman, her life is mine alone to take."
Eakr and Pol fled, all tears and bruises. That night they barred the great hall, keeping Reft and the deckhands away from a cooked meal. Reft ordered the crew to break the door in, and by the time they got through, hungry and furious, the doors were a flapping ruin.
"Out," she told her husband. "You sleep on the deck tonight, and every night until I can bear to look at you."
Old Char lumbered on, oblivious to the drama on her back. The Murk was pale yellow here, drifts of fog and muck that swept across the swamp in a striated pattern. Most of the time Reft could see down to the bottom, where trees struggled for light.
"It is thin here," Doom said. "Tonight, this is where it will come."
Under the moon, the trees shook, and the Murk bubbled. The dactyls from Low Claw came to circle above the spot, and Doom cried up to the winged reptiles, a wordless shriek that made Reft's skin crawl. When it finally rose from the Murk, the island was a stunted thing, hardly worth giving a name to. Reft tried to claim it anyway, only for the factors to arrive and declare her claim on the island as worthless.
The moment she left the House of the Pale Daughters, Reft the heretic became legally dead. Under the tongue-lashings of her husband, she turned the crab around, as penniless as she'd e
ver been.
#
Reft had two years left to her purchased life when she married off Pol to a factor on High Claw. The dowry was Old Char herself, the big crab to be given to her daughter-in-law after her own demise.
Eakr was ecstatic with the match, but badgered Reft at every opportunity. Once Doom executed Reft, Eakr could not rely on Pol's wife to care for the extended family. There were two more dowries to make, and the fine house on High Claw that he felt Reft owed to him.
This far into her sentence, Reft began to feel the pressure of every day, a race against death itself. Always, always her Doom followed her on board, lurking at her elbow, helping with this or that task. She served Reft with a smile, but the rest of the family barely existed for her.
One day Old Char began to brood, shuffling slowly between Bridge and Tower. Her eyestalks drooped, and she chattered irritably when Reft tried to talk her into continuing.
"Now the crab falls ill," Eakr said. "And so it goes for Pol's dowry. We'll be treading the Murk next week!"
"Be silent," Reft snapped. "She wants for a mate is all."
Old Char would not move any further. They set the fires at the top of the great hall, and by midnight another crabber came by. Reft recognised Tater the Eld, an old rival. Tater drove Fabr, a bull crab in his prime. Fabr was pale with streaks of orange, and he danced around, excited at the smell of Old Char.
She responded to the bull crab with a great clash of claws, the promise of violence if he dared to get close to her. They circled each other, chirping and clicking their mandibles. Matings were not unknown to end in killings.
"So you want your bitch serviced," Tater called out across the gap, leaning on her own railing. "What will you give me for risking my crab?"
"Half of the larvae," Reft offered.
"From this old boiler? You'll have to do better than that."
"I've three years left before my execution. You can have the pick of my sons."
"What of my dowry?"
"Damn you. Three-fourths of the larvae. We shall train and fit them all for you."
"All of the larvae," Tater said. "I'll also take your husband."
Reft smiled. "Done."
"What?" Eakr screamed. He rained blows on her, his fury beyond words. Doom interceded, seizing the man by the wrists, twisting them behind his back until he howled for mercy.
"Tater the Eld has a house on High Claw," Reft said, trying not to flinch at the pure anger pouring out of her husband's face. "You are now provided for."
"Tater is an eel of a woman, you - you cannot sell me to her! I am no sack of trade salt, I am your husband."
"Till death, as I swore to you at the altar. Then, you will be her husband. This is my wish."
When Tater the Eld invited her over to her deck for a drink, Reft cast over a rope and swung across. Even on the back of Fabr, she could still hear Eakr's cries, the curses he hurled at her.
"You are braver than I," Reft said, accepting Tater's flask of mash liquor.
"I like my men to have a little fire, Reft the heretic," Tater said. The crabs continued their mating dance, claws crashing together, a frenzied chitter coming from both of them now.
Fabr danced around to the rear of Old Char, who presented to the bull. The two crabs ground together, screeching, throwing their humans about as they consummated their dance. Reft later found that Fabr got too enthusiastic and crushed Doom's little smoke-house into splinters.
"What was your heresy, Reft?" Tater said. She was flush with a good deal, and a victory over an old rival. She had a twinkle in her eye, and Reft knew that the tale of her own ruin would make this the best day of Tater's life.
"I was fitting together an expedition," she said with a sigh.
"So?"
"I meant to take my crab to the edge of the Circus," and here Reft meant the distance from High Claw where the crabs would journey no further, in any direction. "My expedition was going to take to the Murk itself, brave the rivers and swamp mud and all of the vile things down there."
Reft took a deep belt of the liquor, gathering her words. Tater listened intently, a bag full of mirth just waiting to burst.
"I believe there is an end to the world," she said. "The very edge of things, a place where the Murk stops."
"End of the world!" Tater wheezed with laughter. "Oh, do go on. Killed for a myth."
"I'm not dead yet," Reft said.
#
Old Char chirped cheerfully, sweeping through the Murk with an extra spring in her step. Clutching copper nails in her teeth, Reft wobbled around on the roof of the great hall, fixing the shingles Fabr had broken during the mating.
She looked down to see Doom picking through her ruined hut. The tiny girl shifted the beams single-handed, setting the wreckage into a neat pile.
Reft frowned when she saw Aeri and Luin come to watch Doom working. As Doom set aside a beam a grown woman would barely be able to lift, her sons spoke to her Pale Daughter for many minutes. When the conversation ended, the boys all but ran back to the great hall, not looking back.
"What did they want?" she asked Doom. The girl had raised an even simpler shelter, a roof with no sides. The rest she was remodelling into a larvae pen, with a space for a mud sty and a fire-pit for warmth.
"Tater the Eld thinks you are going to force Old Char to go beyond the Circus," Doom said, hammering in nails with single, precise blows. "She fears for her larvae investment. Eakr fears for Pol's dowry, should the crab die."
"Seems they fear me more than you now."
"Aeri and Luin brought me a message. Your husband and his future wife want me to execute you now."
Reft licked her lips.
"I still have two years."
"Yes."
"Did they offer you money?"
Doom nodded.
"I'll match it. I'll pay more."
"You've already bought your death, mother," Doom said. "By the laws of crab and woman, that is when you die. No earlier."
Reft quietly thanked her. The whole way back to the great hall, she trembled with relief, and then with anger, at the knowledge that her family plotted against her, even as she worked her final moments away to provide for them.
She went through the motions, sharing food at the table, planning their route and future trades. As she slid into bed with a smiling Eakr, Reft the heretic knew one thing.
She was going to run, the laws of crab and woman be damned.
#
There were places in the Murk where the water ran fresh and sweet, and where the miasma and rot were almost forgotten. Colonies sprouted along these water-ways and lagoons, little villages on stilts. There lived the destitute, those who rebelled against islander law, criminals who'd been sent down into the Murk to die.
The laws of crab and woman were not observed there. Men behaved as they wished, and the woman who raised the belt was as likely to die with a knife in her ribs as to enforce her own dominance.
The dactyls who roosted in Low Claw raided the outlaw settlements with impunity, the winged reptiles breaking into the huts and eating their fill of human flesh. Other times the cacodrills would snatch people from the doorways, or chew the posts until the houses fell down.
"I've heard a rumour about iron ore," Reft explained to Eakr. "Enough to buy Aeri and Luin into high society. Enough to free our family from the crabber's life."
"You mad fool. We should not go near the stilters," Eakr said, but the gleam in his eyes spoke otherwise.
Reft spent more time up on the roof of the great hall, tapping away at shingles that she'd already set. She'd left one of them loose, and for the past few months had been hiding coins underneath it.
Doom lay in her larvae pen, covered in the infant crabs. She stared at Reft from the mud, tracking her as she hefted the shingles that she didn't need. Reft wondered if she knew the truth, had guessed that her mother was eyeing off the Murk.
Dawn brought Old Char to the sweet-waters, and the crab fed on silver eels, gorgi
ng on swarms that were hundreds strong. Reft urged the crab downstream, and she crossed many deep lagoons, swimming when her legs could not reach the bottom.
A narrow delta of life, fecundity surrounded by decay. Fish for the eels, the eels for the cacodrills, and the people who preyed upon all of this and were preyed upon in turn.
"It is beautiful," Doom said when she brought Reft some lunch. "A shame no island will sing here."
Reft took Old Char in to the first of the stilter villages. People stood on their roofs, calling out, singing them in with joy. Traders seldom came, and crabbers never. Her crew were busy trading for staples such as flour and salt, taking on wood and the handful of tin ores the stilters had found here.
It was not the wealth she'd promised Eakr, but the tiny trickle of coin was enough to keep her husband busy. By the time the crew halted trade for their noon meal, the cry went up on the deck of Old Char.
Reft the heretic had gone missing.
By the end of that first hour, Doom broke the neck of Eakr, and slit the throats of Aeri and Luin when they tried to run for safety. She butchered Reft's crew, and then turned on Old Char herself, severed her eye-stalks, dodging the blind fumbles of her claws as she dealt the crab one thousand precise wounds. When the big crab fell, the cacodrills fell upon the enormous corpse in a feeding frenzy.
Doom stepped lightly across their scaly backs, as she chased Reft the heretic into the Murk.
#
The stilters spoke softly, their patois full of clipped, low sounds. Reft stared flatly, almost numb to the terrors of the swamp. She watched with detachment as her guides poled their flat barge past packed banks of cacodrills, sunning themselves and watching their passage with half-lidded eyes.
"They sleep," the guide said. "You only see them after they’ve eaten."
Reft wanted to wade over and place herself in their jaws. From her hiding place she'd seen the Pale Daughter slaughter her family and crew, saw the ease with which she'd gutted Old Char.
There were no true rivers in the Murk, and more than once they had to haul the barge up and onto the bank, carrying it on to the next body of water.
When the last fingers of sunlight made it through the tree canopy, a serpent took the first guide, the bulk of the snake falling onto their boat into a graceful loop. Within a heartbeat it snatched the man up in its jaws, and then slipped into the water, the last scaly coil gone by the time the guides could seize up their hatchets and spears.
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