by Iain Lindsay
The thin man raised it to his eye line as he had been directed, and proceeded to shuffle around in a slow circle. The triangular bit of chitin bobbed and moved, until he felt it. A coldness in one particular direction that the bone wanted to go in. He stopped and went back the other way, and found it again. Yes. It was there. East by North-east, a little higher than the route they were taking, but close enough.
The Breakers had told him that they had tuned the Oculant to its prey. It would seek out the Storm, and the precious cargo it held above all things.
“They are flying away from the Reach, across the Susha,” Jekkers prided himself. There were really only two directions to go. To veer northward, up towards the Aratine – but an airship with a broken fan as the Storm had would have to be insane to attempt that with the sandstorms and unpredictable monsoons that buffeted the Plains. “No, Tremaine will take her to Marduk. The only home for pirates like him.” The Overseer crowed.
Thunk-thud. The sudden noise made him jump, and drop the Oculant with a heavy bang on the floor. It wasn’t coming from the wall, but his narrow door.
“Hey! You in there! What under the stars did you dare call me!?” it was the woman from next door. She had dared to approach him in his own room. To disturb him even further!
Jekkers could have gagged with rage as he crammed the device away, staggered to his feet and threw open the door to confront a smaller, angry-looking woman with red wavy hair, dirt smears on her face, waving a wooden hand at his chest.
“I’ve a good mind to give you a hiding, you old bugger!” The salvage merchant snapped.
“Have you now?” Something strange happened to the Overseer’s eyes. Instead of their usual washed-out pale color, they had flushed a total black, like a shark’s dead gaze.
“What the…” the woman tried to stumble back as a fine tracery of black lines crept under the skin of the Overseers’ face. She was too slow, as the thing that the Breakers had made snapped a hand forward to seize her, and drag her into his lair.
14. The Ceremony
“You’re pirates.” Tal repeated. It was obvious, really. The fake names given to the Protectorate guards, the hidden spring-doors throughout the Storm, the hidden bags of Izantine silk wedged against the outer hull.
He was standing on the deck as the sun started to burn the western horizon, their pursuers lost far behind them. Up above, Lura was still working hard on the ropes to get the most sail responsive to every gust of wind, and Gulbrand was once again manning the wheel, his heavy brow ridges unreadable.
“Yep,” grinned Odestin, his shirt open as he leaned, panting against the rails of the boat where he had spent their afternoon’s escape kicking the starboard fan into shape.
“Is that going to be a problem, Tal?” The Captain was leaning against the bow arm of Bertha, apparently nonchalantly sharpening the blade of a thin stiletto knife.
Talin swallowed nervously.
“We steal where we can, and we do it because it’s better than working for some lord, king, empress or master.” The Captain said in the gathering dark, with the tone of an oft-repeated phrase.
“We do it because we have to.” Odestin said, folding strong arms thick with black hair over his chest.
“We do it because we’re damn good at it,” there was a thump, and Lura the Rigger landed with a crouch at the base of the mainmast.
“Now, young Talin…” Tremaine stood up languorously, and threw the knife into the air like a juggler. Tal watched it spin and flash in the air, it’s blade rapier-sharp, before the Captain caught it expertly by the handle. “You can understand why we didn’t want to share our occupation with you at first, but it seems that we have no choice now…”
Did I escape the Reach, and the Protectorate, just to fall prey to pirates and thieves? Talin felt his back and his legs tense. Did they know about the gold medallion? But where could he run to? There was nowhere to go on a boat.
“What do you think we should do, boys and girls?” The Captain lifted his chin, smiling. “Do we trust him? A boy from the Reach? A slave?”
Talin found his fists balling at his side. They could try to do away with him, but it wouldn’t be without a fight…
“He can’t fight, yet.” Gulbrand said from the wheel. “He’ll need training.”
“He did do a pretty number on that Protectorate boat,” Odestin scratched his beard, considering.
“Are you saying you want to be his sponsor?” The Captain pointed the knife at his First Mate. Odestin scowled, and rubbed his arms uncomfortably.
“He knows his ropes,” Lura said with a shrug.
“How about you?” The knife swung in the Master Rigger’s direction. “Will you sponsor him? You know what it entails, don’t you?”
The Rigger stood up slowly, it was like watching a cat unfold itself as she glared at the Nhkari. “I know.” She nodded. “If he wants this life, then I’ll act as his sponsor.”
“His mistakes are yours?” The Captain pressed. “His life is yours? If he deserts or dares mutiny…?”
“I wouldn’t do that.” Talin said quickly. “You saved my life.”
“Honor amongst thieves, eh?” Gulbrand smirked.
The Captain tutted. “I know what you think of these customs, heimr, but it’s how we’ve been doing it for years.” Tremaine looked again to Lura, and then to Tal. “What say you, Tal? You want to be a pirate? To be one of the most hated people in the World Islands?”
“I thought I already was,” Tal shrugged, gesturing to his honey-brown skin, before straightening up and nodding. “Yes.”
“Ha!” Odestin barked. “He’s got some spirit, I’ll tell ya that much.”
“I’ll take him on.” Lura said quietly, extending a forearm to Talin to grasp in the traditional warrior’s grip. Her other forearm she extended to the Captain. “His mistakes are mine. His life on deck is in my hands.”
“As you all are in mine.” Tremaine said, rolling back the cream linen of his shirt to reveal his own forearm, the meat thick with five silver scars. “Just as I act as sponsor to the lot of you,” Tremaine’s voice rose. “So Lura acts to Talin.” With agonizing deliberation, Tremaine seized Lura’s offered arm with his own scarred one, turned it palm up, and drew the knife in a pencil-thin line across the tyl’s own white skin, where a bloom of blood droplets appeared like flowers behind. Tal felt her grip his own forearm in pain, but she did not cry out. He gripped back, amazed that she would take on any injury for him.
When it was done, Tremaine nodded, stepping back to clean his blade off on a white handkerchief, before it disappeared back into a sheath on his calf. “Get yourself below and see Sevesti to wrap it now, Lura,” he said in a gentler voice.
“Aye, Captain,” before she let go of the Nhkari’s arm, the Rigger turned to look at him with her large, oval eyes, her expression fierce. “You asked me if we cared what skin you had, human. This is to show that we all bleed red underneath.”
Tal had no words for her act of apparent sacrifice, but it seemed that he didn’t need any, as the Rigger had released him, and was moving across the deck to the Forecastle, where already Chef Sevesti’s voice could be heard rising in one of his Izant operettas, accompanied by the clash and clang of pots.
“You may do the same for someone one day, Talin,” the Captain was tugging his sleeve over the mess of white scars on his arm. “It’s how we all stay alive up here. We all owe each other our blood. And all of my crew owe me.” The Captain’s face was dark for a moment, before Odestin clapped the lad on the shoulders.
“Woohoo! C’mon then Tal-lad, let’s see if you can do what pirates do best other than making merchant’s pockets lighter: drinking!” The blackbeard pushed the stunned youth towards the Forecastle, laughing as he went.
After they had left, leaving the deck to descend into darkness behind them, the Captain and the Quartermaster stood alone in the evening. “Do you think that was wise, Quartermaster?” Tremaine’s voice was softer, wary, losing its pr
evious authority.
“Probably not.” Gulbrand said in the gathering gloom. “But when have we ever considered ourselves wise?”
Captain Jos Tremaine did not have an answer for his Quartermaster, as he turned and stalked back to his state room.
The recognition of a new crew member aboard a pirate crew is an excuse for a party, Talin discovered. As was escaping Protectorate captivity, and generally being alive for one more day a good thousand feet above the ground. Pirates, Talin saw, did not need much excuse for a party.
The ringleader for the night’s singing, dancing, and story-telling was of course Odestin, who tried to show the youth a very rum-sozzled version of the hornpipe, although Sevesti also performed a full-throated libretto, and Gulbrand once more brought out his bone pipes, to play an insistent, repetitive heimarian marching song. “I cannot sing, but the words are very beautiful,” the troll assured them all. “At least three verses on how to correctly display an enemies head, and one on what to do with their home-village!”
Despite the bloodthirsty heimarian war-songs, Talin found, under the onslaught of Iron Rum that was produced by Odestin (“from one of my secret stashes, lad, shhhh!”) the youth found that he was enjoying himself. At some point in the evening, even Lura, his sponsor (who only sipped at the rum, claiming that it tasted off, and was nothing like Tylaethian wine) was cajoled to join in and perform a few tumbler’s tricks; walking on her hands to jump from table to the next, before somersaulting in the air to land with perfect poise on one of the empty chairs.
The Captain however, did not join them at their revels, instead manning the wheel as their raucous sounds lifted through the gloom. At some point, Tal’s inebriation exceeded his ability to stand up, and he was taken to be violently sick over the side of the Storm – much to Odestin’s cackling laughter.
“Now you’re a real pirate, son!” He declared to the sails, howling like a mad dog.
Talin felt like a real fool however, as he stumbled toward the stairs that led back to the powder locker, and bumping into Lura.
“Tal,” the tyl said, her eyes glittering with the stars above.
“Th-thank you, Mashter Rigger…” the young man managed to mumble, before belching.
“You’ve already told me that seven times tonight, Tal,” the tyl said, gripping his forearm, hard. “I did it because I was once lost and alone just like you, when a good man vouched for me. Just don’t make me regret it.” She said with a swish of her tail, guiding his hand to the stair rail and leaping up expertly to the wheel deck to take over from the Captain.
Tal wobbled down the stairs as the boat swayed its gentle rhythms underneath him, and somehow he even managed to find his way to his bed.
15. The Waystation
Despite the sudden disappearance of the salvage-merchant, no one on the Junker Caravan seemed to care. The only problem would be the smell, the Overseer thought as he looked at the bundle of blankets poking from under his bed, stained dark red and black.
But what did a man like he care for such things? He was the Overseer. No, he was more than that now, wasn’t he? His skin had taken on the waxy, greyish appearance of the Breakers, underlaid with the creeping nest of black veins. When he prodded at his skin, it felt hard and firm to the touch, and occasionally itchy. Looking in his small commonplace mirror returned a vision of his face that was alien to him; but one that he found that he preferred now. Stronger muscle tone, a flush of health; and eyes that were black, lifeless orbs.
“Mister!” Someone shouted outside of his door. It was morning, and that meant that he was irritable, but he knew that this was necessary. “We’re here!” said the younger caravan steward in a worried voice, before his steps raced off. Even in his hermitage, Jekkers had managed to spread fear.
Taking up his things, his knapsack containing the precious Oculant, and fitting the large and ragged sail-cloth coat about him, now with a hood that almost covered his strange face, the Overseer stepped out of the cabin. A pause as he looked back at the bundle of flesh under the bed. No matter. He left the door open as he walked the narrow, swaying wooden corridor, with windows on one side bright with accursed Plains light.
The caravan was pulling in to a waystation, a small huddle of stone buildings and a wide space of cleared, baked ground. It looked like desperation, if the emotion could put up buildings and settle somewhere. A twisted bit of metal acted as a weathervane, and a few others in leathers or hides lazed or lounged outside.
And there is my ride… Jekkers managed a smile at the balloon that was tethered to a tall wooden pole. Its basket was almost the size of one of the segmented caravan platforms, and its balloon was vast stretched canvas in white and orange, contained in nets. The Overseer scowled at the colors that would attract attention, but all it had to do was to go east. That was all he had to do.
Coming to a stop, the doors were opened and the ramps thumped to the baked ground as the disheveled few outsiders gathered around the ramp, looking for employment or victims or both.
“And thank you for your passage,” the Caravan’s Chief was saying to the passengers who elected to get off: a large northerner mercenary with head shaved into two tufts of fair hair, looking blotchy and sunburnt and out of luck as his coin only went this far.
“What in the mud am I going to do now?” The man growled in a northern-Ara accent.
“Thank you for your passage,” the chief repeated, as behind him surly caravan crew with hooks and cudgels menaced. Jekkers raised an eyebrow in interest – the mercenary wore the crossed-over leather harness of a thrall, and the axe on his back had many notches from battles fought and won. He rather thought that if it came to a fight that the mercenary would win, but he wouldn’t know how to drive a caravan, and, as the inevitability of his poverty hit home, the mercenary snarled and stamped off down the ramp.
“Thank you for your passage,” the chief said to Jekkers next, looking up for his smile to suddenly fade as their eyes met. He quickly made the two-fingered sign to avert evil, but the Overseer just laughed and walked out into the bright dust.
Jekkers hissed, feeling the glare of light painful in his eyes as he batted away the offers of help or service from the hopeless assembled outside. Instead, he made his way straight to the balloon.
It was wrong to call it a basket really, the Overseer saw, as it was more like a wooden carriage the size of a small house, with a platform on top, shuttered around the sides, and reinforced slabs of wood on the bottom. Bulging sacks of ballast were strung along the outside like mushroom growths. Outside of the ramp stood an Izant woman with black hair and terracotta skin, swathed in a black cloak against the slight breeze.
“Captain?” The Overseer found his voice and used it. It sounded guttural and taut.
The balloonist looked at him up and down, eyes widening a little as her gaze found his eyes, and she shook her head. “You must be the Breaker client,” she nodded to the balloon ramp. “You’re all paid. We leave on the morning breeze.”
“How long to Marduk?” Jekkers snapped, causing the Captain to scowl at the prospect of having to talk to him. “That depends on the wind. If the current we’re expecting arrives, then we could be there in two days, but we have the Southern Viper to contend with. She might blow up and try to push us off course, or she might speed our journey.”
“Hss!” Jekkers spat in annoyance. The Southern Viper was a current of wind that rang along the edge of southern Ara, often feeding the tropical storms and hurricanes of the further Izant islands. She was unpredictable and could change her flow leagues inland or retreat out to sea in a matter of hours.
“He looks as impatient as me!” boomed a voice as the mercenary with the twin tufts of hair and the axe stepped up behind him.
“Two ducats passage to Marduk,” the Captain said, leaning against her staff as she eyed the clearly annoyed mercenary. The man growled, opening large, scarred hands to show that he had nothing.
“I can work though. Can lift any cargo, can s
top – or start – any fight you need.” The mercenary said.
“We got a full crew already friend, I don’t need another,” the woman shrugged, turning to go.
The man grunted in anger, kicking the dust after her. “The Lords will pay his passage.” Jekkers said suddenly.
“What?” the mercenary furrowed his sun-blistered brows.
“You want a job?” The Overseer turned to say to him, allowing the mercenary to stare at his black-veined skin, his black orb eyes.
“Hell’spit – you’re an ugly one, aren’t you?” The mercenary pulled a face, before cracking into a gap-toothed grin. “Sure. But I’m not cheap – I’m the best fighter this side of Heimjall.” The man proudly scratched at his thrall harness – the leather that crossed at his shoulders and snug around his hips that was given to the most notorious slave-soldiers of the Protectorate.
“You won your freedom then?” Jekkers asked.
“Served ten years as a thrall, and split enough heads for the Protectorate they decided to let me go. Either that of make me a Champion!” the man barked a laugh, once again revealing his surprising lack of teeth.
“The Lords of the Reach will see that you get paid.” Jekkers said. The ex-thrall frowned. The Breaker’s name went a long way in the south, but would it be enough? The Overseer sighed, his gloved hands scrabbling at the collar of his shirt to pull aside the stiff material. There, over his grey skin under his right shoulder was a large healed burn. The red and black blobby scar tissue showed on image of a rounded head, with the fingers of tentacles extending from its lower half. “All I have to do is to show this mark, and goods, services, and coin will be extended to me. As my servant, you will have the same luxury,” he croaked, wishing that this transaction was done already. But he could use a big man like that, someone to do his bidding during the daylight hours.
“Agreed.” The man nodded as the Overseer covered up the Breaker’s mark. “My name is Garn.”