by Iain Lindsay
The seventh Breaker joined his raised hands to its fellows, and then something happened.
Tal had never been able to describe this act. It was magic, of course, but magic by its definition defied the mind and confused the eye. Tal thought he saw a shimmer of a heat wave pass through the air between the Breakers and the hulk, a sudden fractal of images and light as if lots of panes of invisible magnifying glass had been pulled through the air.
Feeling the thrum of power, the hair stood up on Tal’s skin as he watched the Breakers start to move their hands, guiding the hulk away from the docks to where it’s final destruction would not endanger them.
Here it comes…Tal watched as the hulk that he had been wormed inside wobbled and floated ten feet out, twenty, fifty, a hundred feet and…
There was a sudden movement from the hands of the Breakers, a twisting sensation like rolling dough, and the ship before then responded. It rolled onto its side violently, and parts of it started to spin and break in the air – but not fall.
Tal jumped his eyes between the Breakers and the ship, seeing how the nearest one pulled with fleshy splayed fingers, and the rear of the vessel splintered and came apart. At the fore, the prow section was similarly broken and held, spinning in the air by the seventh Breaker as between them, the other five tugged and pushed at the vessel. Tal saw incomplete sections of decks give up under the arcane forces, cracking and pulling apart, the few masts tearing before each piece was set to swim in the air in delicate, perfect balance. The boat segments did not plummet out of the sky, but instead revolved sedately around each other. Tal thought it was like watching feathers on the breeze, never touching each other, but slowly spinning around and around.
The metal? The eye? Tal searched the distant revolving pieces, but he could see no sign of the strange metal device. Was it still in there? Inside one of those sections? Had someone removed it already? But who – he and the Overseer had been the last workers to leave, hadn’t they?
Suddenly, the Breakers brought their soft, swimming hands together in a clap, and the boat responded in kind, smashing itself together in a thunderous roar. There was a flash of light, like the startle of a near lightning strike and the hulk was falling from the sky, gravity resumed.
Far below, Tal could see that there were already people on horses and carts moving out across the near Susha to the heaps, racing to be the first to get to the hulk as it hit the earth. Wood tore and shattered, great gouts of earth were thrown up in the rubbish pile that was the bottom of the Breaker’s cliffs.
Another work day was done, and their chance at salvage gone. Noise returned to the hushed crowd in the form of claps and cheers as the seven Lords of the Reach glided their austere paths back down the jetty to the ornately carved, winched lift that would carry them to their domain in the heart of the Reach. Tal had heard it said that lift went straight down into the cliffs themselves, and the Breakers lived in an underground palace like kings. The crowd pulled back to let them past, bowing their heads respectfully – not that the Breakers themselves offered a moment’s recognition to anyone.
When they were gone, a sense of relief settled on the rest of the crowd at the Eastern Docks. Sorcery made everyone wary, even when it was done for profit.
Jotni yawned and stretched, cracking large shoulder muscles as Tal likewise stood up to go. “Here, Tal,” the heimr fished out a few coppers from his takings that day, and pushed them into the Nhkari’s confused hands. “I saw Kenrath steal your salvage. You might be a fool, Tal, but you say you need the ticket money.” He shrugged like it was no bother to him, even though Tal knew that the heimr’s own purse couldn’t be full.
“Jotni, no… I’ll pay you back…” He tried to say.
“Don’t turn down an act of kindness, Nhka,” Jotni called over his shoulder as he lumbered back through the crowds. “And don’t put a price on friendship.”
Jotni was gone, leaving Tal with the gifted coins in his hand, feeling grateful and ashamed in equal measures.
4. Serin, Hunting-Wolf
Down ladders worn from use, along narrow corridors of wood that opened out into workshops and Counter’s halls. Past shouting people and praying people, the smell of fresh-sawn wood and ship’s tar a constant, before hitching a ride on one of the wicker baskets big enough to carry sacks of nails, flour, or workers. Tal limped through the many platforms and walkways of the Reach on his way home, past the sudden vertiginous openings as large as city plazas, which only contained the constantly-moving chains attached to lifts.
Tal’s home was in the lowest-of-the-low hovels. eight floors down, and next to the edge of the cliff where the light was dim and the air thick with tallow and smoke. The boy’s steps turned onto the last wooden balcony stapled to the cream stone, across creaking boards that should have been replaced a long time ago.
Someone was emerging from the cave built into the cliff he called a home, and Tal recognized Meda, the short, stocky Nhkari woman with mountains of black hair wrapped into thick braids down her back. She was one of the Nhkari who had accompanied his mother on her march, and, although they weren’t related, Tal thought of her as an aunt.
“Meda?” Tal almost smiled in confusion. It was strange to see her here when he knew that both she and his mother should still be stripping canvas somewhere down below in the workhouses.
“Talin.” She looked harassed, but grateful he was here. “I can’t stay, our Overseer only let me bring Serin home. Your mother had an attack again at work.”
“Is she alright?” Tal rushed forward.
“She needs rest. Rest and food.” Meda put a restraining hand on the youth. “I’ve done what I can, I’m sorry, but I have to go…”
“Thank you, Meda,” he felt sick as he watched the woman hurry down the balcony towards the nearest ladder, to disappear back to her shift.
“Mother?” Tal ducked his head under the tent awning that separated their cave from the balcony, to hear the familiar sound of coughing.
Despite her ill-health, the proud Nhkari woman had tried her best to make their cave livable. Scraps of canvas and hemp bags had been stitched into a thick carpet on the lower floor, where a simple table held a tallow lamp, some needlework and a stack of ceramic plates. A chair and a brick fire led to thick clay pipe disappearing into the roof, where eventually, the boy knew, it would filter through the many air-holes drilled into the cliff itself by previous workers just like him.
“Mother?” He called again, to where the back of the hovel was fitted with two sleeping platforms, one under the other, with colorful cloths affording at least a little privacy.
“Tal?” a creak as his mother moved, the curtains pushed aside and first her brown legs appeared, (covered in the dints and white scars of a life on the Reach, Tal grimaced) and then the rest of the woman who had walked for four moons to bring him to safety.
Serin of the Nhkari had been tall, before; tall and fierce, with black tribal diamonds inked down her neck and across her shoulders. Her ruddy-black hair was still wrapped and piled behind her head, and her almond eyes looked tired.
“Tal. There’s some stew by the fire. Meda, bless her, left us some lamb. Enough to last us for a couple days at least…” she coughed weakly, before thumping her chest over her stitched and re-stitched canvas clothes.
“Mother, lie down, get some rest!” Talin’s voice spiked with worry as he moved to her side, fetching the pitcher of water, still smelling a little from the last of the herbs that he had bartered for her. I’ve run out of the Pains-ease a trader sold me a moon ago, Tal grimaced as his mother drank. “I’ll heat up the food, you need it more than me,” he said, already feeling guilty for not bringing Jotni’s spiced bread home to give her.
“Save enough for yourself, Tal,” she scolded in with apparent discomfort, paused when she thought she would cough once more, waiting for the spasm to pass before letting out a slow hissing breath. “How was your shift?”
Tal threw some more kindling on the fire and stok
ed it up, before moved the large metal pot with Meda’s offering inside. A wave of aromatic spices filled the room, Rosemary, Garlic, a bit of Thyme, Fenugreek. He was always amazed at how his mother was able to take such poor ingredients and turn them into feasts. She must have spent her wages on those spices, Tal felt ashamed. He had come home with nothing but the few charity coppers of a friend.
“I, uh…” his voice wavered. Could he tell her about the machine? Should he tell her? Wouldn’t the news that he had been disciplined and beaten be just another disappointment to the once-proud woman?
“Cumu,” she breathed, whisper-quiet. It was her pet-name for him, her baby name that she had sung to him through long fear-edged nights and days. It meant ‘little thunder’ in the Nhkari tongue, and she used to laugh it was because of the serious look that Tal always wore, even as a baby. “You have never been good at hiding when something was troubling you. What is it – the Overseer? Did he hit you again?” Her voice gained its tone briefly, as anger flashed through her. “If I had my kubaya still…”
Tal shook his head. The short Nhkari hunting spear with its leaf-shaped metal head and strips of sinew and hide down its length was long gone, sold years ago for when the coppers had been sparse. Just like now. “It was my fault.” He said impulsively. His mother was right, he could never hide anything from her. “I was stupid, and that made him kick me…”
“Wolf-Mother!” Serin cursed again, before erupting into a hacking cough. “Never,” she wheezed difficultly, every word a struggle. “Never say you deserved a beating from that” (gasp, wheeze) “little man. You don’t kick a dog into obedience,” (cough, shake) “you don’t beat a man. That is the Nhkari way.”
For a moment in the tallow light, Tal thought he could see the strong woman who had marched across the deserts to the plains and beyond with a toddler strapped to her back. Fending off hyenas and lions, vultures and slavers.
Only to fall under a different type of slavery, but slavery all the same, he bit his tongue as he served up a steaming bowl. His mother appeared small beside him, Talin was surprised to notice. The years of climbing was broadening out his shoulders, giving rangy muscles to his long arms – but the hard work seemed to be having the opposite effect on her.
“Talin, where’s yours?” she frowned.
“I’ll eat after, when you’re done,” he pushed the bowl into her hands. “Please.”
Serin of the Nhkari regarded her son for a moment, “When did you grow up, Talin? You look like your father did at your age.”
Father. Talin had never met him of course, he had died when the Protectorate’s armies had fallen on the Nhkari people. But he had died bravely, or so his mother told him.
“Dega, everyone called him. It means hunting-wolf, because he was the best hunter in our village.” A ghost of a smile on her face. “You should have seen him, Cumu, he would watch and wait as still as a stone, before striking like lightning.” Serin said proudly, before turning her gaze back to their cramped home, and her son. “You should be out there,” she whispered, stroking his cheek with her calloused hand. “You’re fourteen. A man by our standards. I wish I could train you in all the things you need to know…”
“You teach me well,” Tal insisted. She had him rehearse the ways of hunting and tracking, drawing the tracks and signs of animals in the dust of the fire. By flickering stove-light she had him practice the hunting strikes with an imaginary spear, and the overhand throws. Not that I have ever held a weapon, Tal thought regretfully. She had even spent a moon’s pay on a rare parchment book of dull northerner stories; the Hero Gudder and his Hundred Talents; working through the awkward Common Tongue with him until he could read just a little.
“But it’s not enough” the woman wheezed. “You should go. Run away. Be out under the free skies, not stuck in here with me,” she said fiercely.
“I would never leave you,” the young man insisted.
“You must, if you want to live.” She croaked, before suddenly holding her chest and doubling over into a hacking, sharp-sounding cough. Tal rubbed her back and prayed for it to pass, and when she finally regained her breath he saw that there were tiny flecks of blood on her hand that she wiped away hurriedly.
This place will kill us both. Tal came to a decision.
“Eat. Rest.” Tal said again, folding his mother’s hands around the bowl. He would find a way to get that gold from Jekkers, and he would get his mother out of the Reach.
5. Lost Sailors and Storms
The Captain Jos Tremaine swore mightily, and he swore well. The grasping winds tore at his long brown hair as he struggled with the ship’s wheel, and his long, angular features were twisted with exhaustion as he tried to pull his airship back from the dive it was plunging into. His buckled leather jerkin was sleeveless and salt-stained, and his white linen shirt underneath was torn.
“Get that main sail reefed!” He bellowed. “Angle the air fans!” The Storm canted to one side as the winds buffeted, throwing it downwards towards the frothing waters of the Inner Ocean. Out over the schooner’s deck came the clang and grate of his precious cargo shifting from the nets that held them, and the sudden scream of one of his crewmen.
“Reece!?” He shouted in alarm. He knew every shout, curse, and scream aboard his airship. He should do, he’d been travelling with this crew for the best part of ten years.
“I’m on it!” growled Gulbrand, his heimr Quartermaster with skin like blue-scaled bark and pronounced horns that swept back from his skull. The troll had been working to fix down the sacks and barrels tight to the deck, but now he was flinging himself over it, tree-trunk arms catching the rope netting to skid and slide to the edge of the hull, and there to catch onto the grab-nets and lean out over the air-fans.
“Reece!” Gulbrand shouted down. Jos couldn’t see the First Mate who shouldn’t have been exposed out there in this storm. What was he thinking? Unless the winches inside were stuck again, and Reece had to climb out to kick ten hells out of the turning-wheel…
“He’s gone” the heimr shouted perfunctorily, no time for despair as Captain Tremaine watched his Quartermaster jump down from the edge of the grab nets and disappear overboard. Great. One crewmen lost, and my Quartermaster is insane. Tremaine pulled hard on the wheel.
They had been looking for a faster way out of the Izant islands, hoping to avoid the Protectorate’s patrol ships when the storm had hit them. A real nasty-looking one too, black thunderheads that flashed and grumbled, pregnant with lightning.
The crew had told me not to go through it. They had told me to go north or south, but…
“Dammit!” Tremaine shouted, at the storm, at himself, at the entire world. Reece. The cargo. If he had gone north they would have faced the Protectorate’s navies. They would have taxed his cargo if he was lucky, and probably even their dreary-witted officers would have put two and two together and come up with an answer why the Izant shipping lanes were losing cargo hand over fist.
Because Captain Jos Tremaine, and all the good crew aboard The Storm were only part-time traders. The rest of the time, they were pirates.
A sudden grinding thunk and the sleek, golden-mahogany Storm was suddenly slicing through the air, no longer threatening a dive, but swooping. “He’s done it! He’s bleeding well gone and done it!” Jos cried as the large, blue-scaled fists of the heimr appeared on the railings, and then hauled on the grab nets to roll himself expertly back onto the now-flat deck. The starboard air-fan was now as flat as a bird’s wing, and wasn’t catching the devilish winds that had been hurling them all straight into the drink.
“Ugh” Gulbrand held up one boulder-like fist, thumb raised. Jos could never tell what expression was on his Quartermaster’s heavy-browed, tusked face, but he hoped that was a weary grimace of success, not of exhaustion.
“Reece?” Tremaine’s strained voice under the tempest.
Gulbrand shook his head.
Jos grimaced, then shouted “We’re not out of it yet, lads!” this
time finding the wheel easier to control as he shifted her under the gale, using the winds to speed along the tops of the chopping seas as fast as a cormorant.
“Hey!” Shouted Lura, his only female crewmember and official Master Rigger, still somehow miraculously clinging onto the mast where she had successfully reefed the mainsail. Well, if anyone could stay aloft up there then it would be Lura, Jos thought. She was one of the tylaethi; the white-skinned, white haired people of the deep Tyl forests, renowned for their acrobatics, their gleaming eyes, and the fact that they had a tail. “Where’s Reece?” She shouted on alarm as she started to descend the rope.
“Lads and lassies” Jos growled. Don’t give the crew time to grieve. Not yet. “I want that main sail at half! Ride this current out of here!”
The wind hid Lura’s muttered insults as she re-climbed the ropes, and pulled on the hitch knots that she had just been securing. With a ripping sound, the triangular main sail opened out, before jumping to a halt halfway down the mainmast where Lura had already tied it off.
The Storm jumped forward now, cutting through the tops of water sprays under thick black skies, towards a band of lighter grey, and then blue.
“We’ll come out from under her yet,” Jos felt that dangerous excitement that he always got when the ship was working as it should. When he was riding a wind at full speed, and every hammered nail and shaped plank was working in unison with the captain’s will. There was no other feeling like it under the skies, as if he were a god.
They were at the front of the storm, balanced at her boiling edge like a thrown star as they raced towards the distant line of umber hills over dark waters.
“Which coast is she, boys and girls?” Jos shouted.
It was Odestin, the rangy human Mate with his pale skin and thick black beard but shaved head who answered. He was currently clutching onto the foredeck, peering down the bowsprit. “That’s the Aratine Hills, Cap’. We’ve cleared the shipping lanes and heading straight for southern Ara.”