by Iain Lindsay
“What… What has been done to me?” Jekkers hissed in a voice that was not entirely his. He felt a sensation of air at his neck which he didn’t expect, and, putting his hands there he found flaps of skin on either side, flaring and breathing softly, like the gills of a fish.
“You have been remade, Overseer. You will be given the means to return the medallion.” The Breaker said, before turning, and walking out of the cavern.
11. Inspection
Days aboard the Storm passed quickly, with Talin being woken in the pre-dawn by the Quartermaster’s shout, to a breakfast of bread and left-overs before being sent up the rigging as hand to Lura. It was strange working with the tylaethi, Talin thought. She moved with an ease that defied vision, leaping easily from one crossbeam to a rope and back again. She had him climb up the three masts of the Storm, up past the crossbeams and to her crow’s nest den atop the tallest mainmast and back down again. They moved out to the edges of the ropes and back, checking knots and adjusting cloth. While Talin was always the slower, he found that his Reacher’s habits served him well for he could always follow her, no matter how high she went.
“This?” She would point to the ropes and ties around them as they worked.
“Square Knot.” He learnt the words for the knots that he already knew by hand, but had never heard the name of; the hitch, the double-hitch, the sailing-bob, the noose.
“This?”
“Overhand…no,”
“Sheet Bend” she corrected him, showing how it could be tightened and tied off.
At night, Tal collapsed with aching muscles in the powder locker (tiptoeing warily around the crates stacked in the corner), he would dream of swimming – or was it flying, in endless seas of blue, constantly searching for Home. At meal times he would be called to the Forecastle, there to eat with the rest of the crew while one or another of them captained the wheel. Chef Sevesti was indeed a miracle worker – turning ordinary fare into dishes spiced for royalty, and black-bearded Odestin with his shaved head and dark eyes was full of ribald jokes about far-off ports and the inns that he had frequented there. On the second night, Gulbrand brought into the Forecastle a small bone whistle ‘carved from a sliver of Mamut tusk’ he muttered, before proceeding to play a long and slow ballad made haunting by the accompanying sigh of the winds.
The airship was travelling in ‘a good current’ as the Captain said, travelling south and east over the golden greens of the Susha, following a wide and sluggish river that divided the Plains from the hotter, orange sands that stretched to the southern horizon.
From his position up on the toplines on the third day, Tal thought he could see the whole world. He thought he might even be able to see yesterday and tomorrow, if he squinted hard enough.
“You can climb, for a human.” The Master Rigger surprised him by landing with light feet, hunching over her knees like a cat as she balanced on the crossbeams. Her tail flitted behind her to catch the wind.
Tal shrugged. It was only partly his skill, the rest belonging to the harness that he wore – the only piece of that accursed Reach that come with him aside from the hidden medallion. The wide multi-strip of stiffened leather acted as a belt across his middle, and attached to loops over his thighs. Metal rings and clips allowed him to thread the ropes which would hold him to whatever he was climbing. The crew of the Storm did not use harnesses, but worked just by the strength of their arms and the balance in their legs.
“That is your homeland?” The tyl woman cocked her head to the plains below. Tal saw herds of the gigantic dapple-furred Hagga, like tusked antelopes roaming sedately. Something that big, you have to trip it up. No use throwing spears, he remembered his mother’s stove-lessons. Everything can be hunted, if you know the tricks. But how do you hunt a future, he questioned.
The Hagga were picking around a large area of blackened ground with half-built stone walls. Huts that had been burst apart and now overgrown with the creeping thorn kudzu vine like a green blanket. They had passed over many such ruins on the plains.
“I wouldn’t know.” Tal replied truthfully. The only home he remembered was the Reach.
“Too dry for my liking.” Lura shook out her hair and turned easily on the balls of her feet, “My people come from way out there,” looking out into the far North East where, just, Tal thought he could see the suggestion of cloud on the horizon. “Those are the Ladder Mountains at the center of Ara, and many days past them are what you humans call the Witch Mountains, and the Tylaethi forests are on the far side of that.” She said lightly.
“You are a long way from home,” Tal felt awkward. He was unused to speaking to people with tails, or anyone who didn’t share the scars he’d earned under the Overseer.
The Rigger shrugged like it was a long time ago, although she didn’t look old enough to have such a journey behind her. “I was like you, a slave; to a cruel man with a circus,” she said, before bending forward, catching the cross-beam with her hands and performing a perfect cartwheel across it. “All of the crew of the Storm were slaves in one form or another before the Captain found us. Gulbrand was a thrall, Odestin a criminal, Sevesti was wanted by the Izantine royal family. As for Tremaine himself…” the cat-like Tyl was about to say something, before she fell silent. “It would be better for the Captain himself to tell you his story, if you stay with us.”
“If your Captain lets me stay, you mean.” Tal tried not to sound bitter. He failed.
Lura just raised her eyebrows noncommittally.
Always the same, he thought, forcing himself to speak the words he had been dreading. “Is it because of my skin? Because I’m Nhkari?”
To his surprise, the tyl coughed back a laugh, revealing small, white teeth. “Look at me, human. Look at the Quartermaster. Do you think anyone here cares what color your skin is?”
Talin felt stupid, but still stubborn as he opened his mouth to argue that it was different for the Nhkari. It had to be. They didn’t have a homeland, a nation, soldiers or a king (or whatever these tree-cats have). It had to be different for them, otherwise – why did it happen? Why did the Captain not want him on the Storm past Marduk?
Tal was about to say all of this, but was cut off by the sudden bark from the Quartermaster at the wheel.
“Lura! What’s that coming up on the southern horizon?” Even all the way up here – high enough for the wheel to appear a child’s toy, the heimr’s booming voice was loud enough to be plainly heard.
Tal looked, but saw nothing but the golden glow of the distant deserts. “I don’t see anything.”
“That’s because you humans don’t have eyes. I don’t know what you call those things on either side of your nose, but they’re not eyes!” Lura perched and leaned out from the crossbeam, one hand on the mizzenmast as she peered into the haze with her wide and bright oval-shaped eyes.
“One ship. Large but fast-moving. Brigantine, Quartermaster.” She shouted.
“What flags are they flying?” Gulbrand shouted tersely.
Lura shaded her eyes, looking at what to Tal was now little more than a smudge of dust and dirt. “Red circle and star!” she called in alarm.
“Just great. CAPTAIN!” Gulbrand roared.
“Who is it? What does it mean?” Tal’s heart started to beat.
“The Protectorate.” Lura rolled her shoulders. “Tariff Inspectors or a patrol-boat, I reckon.”
“The Protectorate?” Tal said with wide-eyes. Had they come all this way for him? Had they heard of the riot at Reach?
“Just get below decks and stay quiet, and prepare to move when the Captain jumps-to.” What Lura did next shocked him, she pushed out with her toes, neatly somersaulting onto the mainsail, to slide down it’s billowing body to the deck.
“Master Rigger!” The Captain’s angry voice rose up as Tal made his fast, but still considerably slower descent down the mizzenmast to land on the sterncastle behind the ship’s wheel. Tremaine was emerging bleary eyed from his cabin below them. “How many
times have I told Lura not to do that! What’s this racket up here? Who’s come to screw up my day now!?”
The vessel bore down on them quickly despite her size. Under her bow, the fury of her passing kicked up a wake of sand and dust from the scrubland below, and sent the Hagga running in alarm. She was a brigantine, bigger than the Storm, and whose square sails bore the red circle holding the three-lined asterisk of the Protectorate.
“Can we outrun her?” Tal heard Tremaine ask worriedly.
“Not with the starboard air fan in the shape it’s in,” Gulbrand grunted to the folded-back collection of struts and sailcloth that still needed fixing.
“Sky’s dammit!” Tremaine cursed as the brig drew closer. Talin could see that her gunwales were built high around her sides and paneled with metal plates, forming a protective wall from which sat the snub noses of many small cannon. She was more like a flying fort than a flying boat.
“Merchant flag!” Tremaine moved about the deck with all the haste of a man possessed. Lura was already at the bowsprit, pulling the cord to release a scrap of sail cloth with the three coins of a merchant vessel.
“Home flag?” Lura called out.
Tal saw the Captain pause, smack a gloved hand to his forehead. “Izant.” He shouted, and then “better get Sevesti up on deck, as well.”
Tal watched, mystified, as Lura pulled another cord, and the orange and yellow silks of the Izantine flag fluttered next to her fellow, and, a moment later the chef of the Storm emerged, not wearing his apron anymore but clad in a yellow-silk shirt under a fur-lined purple jacket. There was a muttered conversation between the Chef and the Captain, who replaced Gulbrand at the wheel, “Get yourself below, Tal,” Tremaine nodded. “Quickly now, move-to!”
Talin just managed to bang the trapdoor closed above him as the brigantine caught up with them.
The constant sound of the wind changed, becoming a sharp whine as the large Protectorate brig drew closer. Talin breathed lightly in the dark of the lower deck, as he pressed his ears to the walls of the inner hull.
Muffled shouts. The angry clop of boots.
Would the Lords of the Reach come for him? Did they care so much about one slave? Talin thought it unlikely, but he didn’t put any cruelty past those strange beings. Following the muffled sounds from above, he moved to the nearest gun-port, to find that the sound was much louder if he opened the shutter just a little.
To see the dark of deep-tanned wood, and the large muzzle of a cannon slide past him.
Sweet Wolf-Mother. Talin pressed himself against the walls of his cubbyhole, but the Protectorate’s gun kept on moving, to be followed by another, and then another…
“Merchant vessel! You are being stopped by the Protectorate vessel Her Grace, under the powers of the Empress-Protector, and are commanded to stand down all duties!” He heard a voice ring out from above him.
Fear spiked though the youth. They can’t let the soldiers take me back to the Reach. I won’t go!
“Captain…?” A deeper questioning growl, which could only be Gulbrand.
“What is the meaning of this? We are the Sweet Breeze, under Captain Trecastle and the Merchant Severn! What right have you to stop us?” Tremaine’s voice shouted in outrage.
The Captain lied. Tal narrowed his eyes. The ship was called the Storm, not the ‘Spring Breeze’.
“I repeat – stand down all duties and prepare to be boarded!” Tal heard the other man shout back.
There was the sound of sudden thuds and scrapes above him as things were dragged across the Storm’s deck before thudding against her railings. There was a lurch, and the hull of the opposing ship drew closer.
“I don’t like this, Captain,” another unmistakable grumble from the Quartermaster.
With a loud thump, the two vessels banged together and locked. There was the sound of scraping wood and the thuds of feet right above Tal’s head.
“I demand an explanation, officer!” Tremaine sounded incensed.
“And you are the Captain, are you? And this man…?” The Protectorate officer snapped. More thumps of boots on deck.
A new voice filtered down from the top deck, the thick accent of Sevesti. “My pleasure, gentlemen. Such a comfort; to see the Protectorate’s navies this far south.” Sevesti purred. “I am the Merchant Severn, and this is my cargo here. Would you like to see the ship’s manifest?”
Severn? Sevesti? Tal wondered. If he was such a rich merchant, why did he cook for a living and take orders? It was all a lie.
“Yes-yes, give them here.” An annoyed snort, and a ruffle of paper. “Yes… You don’t have a lot on board at all, do you merchant?”
“Pirates off the Izant coast, would you believe!” The Chef was indignant. “Attacked us straight out of the storm. We had to take shelter inland,” a sorrowful tone of voice, more scraping feet.
“And I suppose it was in this attack that you damaged your starboard air fan?” The officer sighed.
“It all happened so fast, my dear officer! Thank god for the Captain Trecastle here I tell you – he tells me that we can get the fan fixed at a little place called Marduk, which is why we are deviating from our itinerary, you see.” The chef’s voice sounded innocently confused.
“Hm.” Another perfunctory snort.
“Why… Is there a problem, officer?” The Chef sounded aggrieved.
“The outpost of Marduk is not, uh, the most civilized of climes, merchant.” The Officer said. “Perhaps you would do well to find another, more reputable Captain when you get there…”
“I, uh, beg your pardon?”
A sudden clap of hands made Talin flinch. “Enough. I will be searching this vessel.”
“What?” Both the Merchant and Captain burst out.
“Is there something wrong with our manifest, Officer?”
“Don’t you think for a moment I’m going to let your soldiers…” Tremaine was hissing.
“Our orders come from the highest channels: search all south-bound boats for someone who shouldn’t be here. While I am sure that’s not you,” The officer’s voice was cold. “But we had best check, to be sure…”
Someone who shouldn’t be here. Talin’s heart turned to ice. That had to be him, didn’t it? The Breakers had really sent a Protectorate brigantine after him? He bared his teeth in a silent howl of frustration. Was there nowhere he could go? No sacrifice that others would make for him that would be enough?
“This is preposterous! Get off my boat!” Tremaine was demanding above, and Talin could track the heavy, footfalls of the heimr Quartermaster who must have moved beside him.
“Don’t be ridiculous now, Captain Trecastle. These are crossbows. We’ll have you stuck like pigs before you can pull that blade. Put it back now, and call that…troll off too…” The officer was snarling.
More thumps and scrapes of feet.
I have to move. Talin thought. Any moment the Protectorate were going to come down here and see him, wedged into the gun port. You have to move, Tal, he ordered himself, but still his legs were frozen.
“Men?” The officer was saying. “Half of you watch the crew, and half come with me. We’ll be searching every room. Every hiding place, understand?”
“Aye-aye, sir!”
You must move! Talin’s legs unfroze as he heard booted feet running across the vessel, followed by the grunts and shouts of the Storm – or Sweet Breeze’s – outraged crew.
His feet took him to the only place he knew. The powder locker.
12. The Boreal Centrifuge
They’re going to find me. I’ll be sent back to the Reach, and there they’ll kill me just like they always wanted to. Talin’s thoughts were panicked as he stepped back from the door. He had no way of locking it, and barricading it would only delay the inevitable.
A hunter looks for signs. He scanned around the room for anything that might help. The bed. Hide under it? Useless. The powder crates.
While the notion of threatening to blow them all up was
appealing, Talin had no way of lighting them. His threat would be ridiculous.
That only left the stack of old sail. Feeling desperate, he started peeling it aside, hoping to squirm underneath it. Maybe they won’t bother to lift the heavy material… A useless dream, but it was the only option left. The cloth was old, and black mold and dust had started to creep its way through the rotting fibers. Talin fought the urge to cough as he heard boots hit the lower deck.
“Fore and aft! First room!” The officer’s words were strict and harsh.
Dust was getting into his nose as he scrambled to the back of the cloth, wedging himself against the plank wall.
Which wobbled. What?
“Just trash sir, a good-looking flintlock pistol…” one soldier was muttering.
“Leave it. Second room!”
The inner walls of boats shouldn’t wobble. That would be a weakness that would let in air or water, if the outer hull became compromised in any way. Talin turned over in the dark, started feeling for the edge of the fragile plank, to find that it wasn’t just one though, it was a whole section. The wood felt thinner than the stout, immobile planks around it.
“Officer, I really must protest…” came Tremaine’s worried shout.
“I thought I told you to secure the crew?” The Protectorate man was annoyed. “Captain, wait there, or I’ll be forced to shackle you!”
The youth pushed on the panels. If it was weak board – a botched repair job maybe, then he might be able to crawl out into the space between the inner and outer hulls. He was very surprised with a section a little bigger than him scraped, and slid back, revealing darkness behind.
Talin escaped into the darkness.