by J. S. Morin
“Just how cracked is he? Do you think he’d kill me over pushing him overboard? I didn’t think. I just sort of did it; it was an accident.”
“Want my advice?” Tanner asked. Madlin nodded vigorously. “Tell the little prick he deserved it. If that doesn’t work and it looks like he’s gonna do you cold, tell him his uncle would never kill a defenseless lady.”
“I’m not defenseless!” Madlin protested. She drew her revolver and held it up, careful not to point the barrel in Tanner’s direction.
Tanner laid a hand atop the barrel and pushed it back down in the direction of the holster. “You just keep talking like that, and he might kill you anyway. He’s thirteen and got all the rot that goes along with it. Tell him he can’t hurt you and sure as hangin’ he’ll try. Make him feel like a big man, he won’t lower himself to hurt a girl.”
Tanner stood once more and squinted at the horizon, shielding his eyes with a hand. “Maybe best if we do find him washed up in pieces though. Kid might’ve started a war in Veydrus with that stunt of his.”
“He better not be dead. I still plan to get him to show me proper magic.”
Tanner leaned over the rail and twisted around so his face was just a handsbreadth from Madlin’s. “Depending what we find on that little island, I might have an alternate plan.”
“What makes you so sure it’s a little island?” Madlin asked. “Could be the southern peninsula of Takalia, for all we know.”
“We ain’t drifted that far in a day,” Tanner replied. “And tiny, piss pot little islands are all this stretch of Katamic’s got.”
By noontime, it took no special lens or vantage to spot the grey stretch of rock that jutted from the Katamic in their path. It was the largest of several now visible from the Darksmith’s deck. For all appearances some ancient god had waded north from Khesh to build Takalia, and his bag of rocky shorelines had torn and spilled in the middle of the sea. The way was dotted with flotsam from the Fair Trader like trail signs. Whatever current was dragging them along had made better time with lighter debris than the hulking steel hull of the steamship.
Captain Toller made a few attempts to alter their course, in an effort to put some word in as to where they ran aground. The bait sail was in tatters, but by makeshift rigging the crew had managed to raise it and catch a wind; the Katamic deigned not to notice the effort, and pulled them along in spite of the tiny, ragged bit of cloth that tugged at the ship like a puppy biting at a trouser hem. An attempt at rowing lasted all of perhaps five minutes. A wooden ship the size of the Darksmith would take a hundred men or more at the oars. The steamship was far heavier than a wooden ship its size, giving it both more mass to push and a deeper draw to force aside in their path, plus they had no proper oars. Even a crew of landfolk would have soon realized that rifle butts and steel-sheet wreckage from the lower decks were no way to move a vessel.
Thus they waited for the Katamic to be done with them, and see where they ended up.
Madlin kept her vigil at the aft castle, starboard side. “I’ve been watching the path of the debris field in front of us,” Madlin said to Captain Toller when he happened to pass nearby. “We’ve got a good chance to miss that large island. Only the leftmost part of the swath of wreckage seems to be washing up.”
“I’ve already done all I can think of to move the ship under power—wind, steam, muscle—we’ve got nothing to do but wait,” said Toller. “And pray, I suppose.”
“You’re missing the obvious one, I think,” Madlin said.
“How’s that, now?”
“Swim.”
Toller’s face went slack and his eyes darted off in the direction of the island. “No, we can’t just leave the ship adrift. What if someone salvaged it?”
“That one should be even more obvious,” Madlin replied.
Toller shook his head. “No. We’re better off seeing where the currents take us. We should reach Takalia within a week.”
“And we’ve got two days of food. Four if we ration like misers,” said Madlin. “My father had the world-ripper running last night, nearly got it to open a hole. If his flywheel trick works out, we’ll tell him where we are and get picked up.”
“If we stay on the ship, we get those same four days, except we won’t be surrounded by whatever crew of the Fair Trader survived. And Cadmus had a dozen dullards with guns blast holes in his machine.”
“Just the wire webbing. That’s quick to fix.”
“Doesn’t fill me with confidence that he’s about to whisk us off to safety,” Toller said. He pointed to the island. “We maroon ourselves there, you’re betting our lives on your father’s tinkering. I’d rather take my chances at sea, and either land starving in Takalia or force Cadmus to pluck us from a moving target.”
“Yeah, and what about Dan?” Madlin asked.
Toller bowed his head, revealing the bit of a spreading bald spot Madlin didn’t normally have a vantage to view. “Regrettable. He gave his life to save us from those misbegotten rat-kissers.”
“And if he didn’t, he’s probably stranded there, waiting for us.”
Toller put a hand over his mouth and rubbed at his stubble. “There’s no smoke coming from the island. He seems the type to have laid into them, burning things.”
“We owe it to him to look.”
“At the cost of a ship?”
“Yes.”
“At the cost of my ship?” Toller’s voice rose.
“My father’s ship, and we can start making you airships if we can get Dan to show me better magic.” Madlin left out that she was pretty sure she knew enough already, but she wanted more.
Toller’s eyes walked a circuit around the derelict Darksmith. Madlin gave him a moment free of her badgering to contemplate his decision. She could always start in again if he still disagreed.
When Toller’s eyes returned to Madlin, they were somber things, weary after a long farewell. “I have your word? An airship of my own?”
Madlin gave a nod. “My word.” She offered Toller her hand and they shook on it. “Besides, how many twinborn can I trust to captain a ship?”
The island had grown huge as they approached. By landmass standards it was still a paltry thing, but it had looked so small on the horizon compared to the wide outcropping of rock that loomed over the Darksmith and her crew. There was nothing resembling a beach, just grey granite jutting from the water’s depths and continuing on down below them.
“I don’t like this,” said Jamile, her gaze turned toward the water more than the island.
“You said you knew how to swim,” said Madlin. “Seawater even makes you more buoyant. This shouldn’t be too hard.” She told herself that, at least. She had grown up in an underground labyrinth of tunnels in one world and an icy wasteland in this one. She had gone swimming perhaps five times in her life, on the rare days on Tinker’s Island that would be called summer by anyone not born there.
“The pond by the sanctuary had little fish in it, half the length of your hand. Leeches were the worst thing in it. The Katamic has ... well, it has everything in it. There’s a hundred miles of water beneath us. If you swam straight down, you’d come out the other side of the world.”
Madlin scoffed. “Nonsense. The sea doesn’t go all the way through Tellurak. And even if it did, the pressure would crush you flatter than a sheet of paper before you ever got there. The Katamic’s probably only a few miles deep.”
Jamile stared at her, aghast.
“What?” Madlin asked.
“Below us, there’s miles and miles of nothing but water, filled with sharks and jellyfish and eels and turtles and spiny little fish that will stop every muscle in your body if you so much as brush up against them.”
“Turtles are harmless,” Madlin said.
Jamile backed her way up the tilted deck. “Give me a rifle. I’ll stay here and guard the Darksmith until your father can get the machine working.”
“Trouble, ladies?” Tanner asked, sauntering over. Madl
in was impressed despite her general annoyance with Tanner that he was still able to act nonchalant walking on the inclined deck.
“Yes, Madlin’s mad as her father, wanting us to swim to that island,” said Jamile.
“Naw, not from what I’ve heard,” Tanner said with a smirk. “Her dad’s a real nutter. Course, most of that stuff they say about him’s still brown from the arse it came from. This one though, she took a warlock’s tongue to the wrong side of her feelings and heaved him overboard. She’s got her old man beat ‘til I meet him and see otherwise.”
Madlin frowned and made sure Tanner noticed. “Thanks.”
“As for me, piss on this swimming business. It’s for the fish; you know what I mean? Don’t get me wrong, I’m coming, but gut me if I said I was looking forward to the trip.”
“Think we’ll find Dan there?” Madlin asked.
Tanner sighed and nodded. “Probably made himself a nice little tent out of pirate skins.”
“Ew,” Jamile and Madlin said in unison. They turned to each other with puzzled looks.
“Yuck,” said Madlin.
“Vile,” said Jamile. They shared a nod, satisfied that they’d parted ways verbally.
A signal whistle blew, its clear, clean note cutting the air like an arrow piercing everyone’s eardrums. After a second it rose, then fell again. Captain Toller lowered the whistle and bellowed. “All hands, abandon ship.”
The grim crew stepped over the railing one by one and filed into the water. Some muttered prayers or well-wishes to the doomed vessel. Others just took the meager supplies they were willing to bear as they swam ashore.
Madlin hung toward the back of the group, in no hurry to be in the water. Toller ducked below decks. The plan had been for him to be last off the ship, and for him to personally be the one to open the watertight doors that were keeping several compartments of the ship from flooding. With those open, it would only be a matter of time before the Darksmith was claimed by the Katamic Sea.
Minutes passed, and the gentle swells of the Katamic lapped over the deck, soaking Madlin’s shoes. The crew was nearly all in the water now, and the remaining handful prepared to plunge in. Tanner was already gone, somewhere near the head of the pack; he was no strong swimmer, but was eager to be done with the ordeal. Jamile hung back with Madlin until they were the last two on deck.
“Go on, get in there,” Madlin said, offering a gentle shove with her forearm.
“You first,” Jamile replied.
Madlin stared off at the door to the lower decks. “No, I’m waiting for Toller. Captains get some soft-witted ideas in their heads about honor and ships. I’m not going to let him ride this hull down to the bottom.”
“I’ll wait with you,” said Jamile. “You might need help getting him—”
“Just go.”
Jamile edged over the Darksmith’s railing, sitting a moment with her chest heaving and a duffel with the few belongings she could save clutched in one hand. The other hand gripped the railing with white knuckles. Madlin moved behind her and put her hands on Jamile’s shoulders, kneading muscles tight as a drive belt. She leaned close and spoke softly in Jamile’s ear. “Just relax. Take a few deep breaths. Everything’s going to be fine.”
Jamile took a long, shuddering breath, then another. Madlin waited for her grip to loosen on the railing. She set a foot firmly behind her, availing herself of the leverage from the deck’s tilt, and shoved Jamile off the railing. Jamile hit the water with a splash and came up spluttering.
“Madlin! What were you trying to do, drown me?”
“You can swim. Swim. I’ll be along in a minute.”
Madlin left Jamile to follow in the wake of the human flotilla stretching out toward the barren chunk of rock that passed for an island. She climbed the ever increasingly angled deck until she reached the door to the hold, which conveniently flopped open downward.
“Toller,” she shouted down the flooding stairwell. There was a chorus of waterfalls playing within the ship. “Get your arse up here before you get sucked under with the ship. If you do anything so mush-brained as—”
“Pull the brakes there, General,” Toller’s voice echoed up from below. Sloshing footsteps were barely audible over the inrush of seawater. “Just making sure this lady makes it all the way to her final resting place. Boil my liver in a pot of rum if I’m taking any chance some pirate gets aboard and floats her.”
Madlin let out a relieved sigh. “Darksmith’s a one-captain girl, Toller. She wouldn’t go behind your back like that. Now get up here and get swimming.”
Madlin was the last ashore. She emerged from the surf on her hands and knees, dripping saltwater like a soaked washcloth. The small canvas bag she’d left with was somewhere in the vicinity of the sunken Darksmith after slipping from her grasp midway to the island. Her spectacles had spotted over with brine that couldn’t be cleaned away until her clothes dried enough to wipe them on. One shoe had fallen away as she kicked to propel herself through the water; there was something about left feet that were just ill luck for her. The one true fortune she’d had was that the buckles of her holster and the safety strap that kept her revolver secured within had both held up to the trials of her swim.
When she was past the line where the waves no longer reached, she collapsed and rolled onto her back. The rock was an uncomfortable pillow, but surprisingly smooth against her back. To her hands and her bare foot, it had the texture of a polished tunnel floor like the ones in the nicer parts of Eversall Deep. Madlin closed her eyes against the dizziness of looking up into an infinite sky above, and listened to the sound of her own breathing.
There were other sounds on the island around her. The Darksmith’s crew milled about, some exploring the terrain, others just basking in the sun to dry, carrying on quiet conversations. The Katamic never quit its assault on her ears. She was growing heartily sick of the sea, and being reminded of it every few seconds by the break of a wave was starting to grate on her nerves. Madlin reached a hand up to her neck to let a trickle of aether into her collar’s runes, then remembered that she didn’t have one around her neck.
“You all right?” Jamile asked. Though her eyes were closed, the sunlight trying to shine through Madlin’s eyelids was blocked by the other woman’s presence. “Neck bothering you?” Cool fingers probed the sinews of Madlin’s neck where she had reached for it.
It was easier to play along than admit her momentary confusion of worlds. “It’s nothing. Everyone accounted for?”
“All the ones who made it to the water with us, at least,” Jamile replied. She reached a hand beneath Madlin’s head and took her by the arm, helping her to a seated position. “I’ll tell you what I told the rest. It’s bad for the body to work that hard then stop all at once. Stand up, stretch, walk around a bit. Sit and rest when your heart stops pounding.”
Madlin climbed reluctantly to her feet with help from Jamile, wishing she had a pair of crutches to lean on lest her wobbly legs buckle beneath her. She put her hands to her hips and bent forward, wondering if she would vomit up the stray gulps of seawater she’d swallowed as she gasped like a bellows during her swim. She still had the briny taste in her mouth.
“Anyone find Dan?” she asked between breaths, as much to keep her mind from her sour stomach and burning muscles as for any interest in the answer.
Jamile pointed off vaguely over the rise of rock that obscured the inland portion of the island. “Tanner went off looking. Haven’t heard anything.”
With a long, shaky breath, Madlin straightened and tried to resume breathing normally. “Fine. I’m going to look for both of them.” She sat and pulled off her other shoe, lobbing it well clear of the water’s edge. When she stood again, she felt the damp, sun-warmed rock beneath her bare feet. It reminded her of playing at the water’s edge in Tinker’s Island in those fleeting summer days of her childhood.
“I’ll stay here, I think,” Jamile replied. “Not sure I can be spared here, just yet.”
/> You’re not sure you want to see Dan, Madlin corrected in her head.
“It’s not a big island, just yell if you need me.”
Madlin set off, exchanging a few greetings and inquiries with the crew as she wove her way around the shore to find a way up to the island’s interior. It was a climb and a scramble, but there were rocky paths leading up, unintended by nature, but passable by humans nonetheless, strewn with tidal pools filled with mosses and little creatures. The island had appeared utterly barren in a spyglass, but it seemed that anywhere one looked, scraps of life could be found digging in, holding onto whatever they could to survive. If urchins and snails could survive on the island, so could a band of humans for a few days—even if it meant eating urchins and snails.
When Madlin was on higher ground and out of sight of the crew, she drew her revolver. With practiced movements so ingrained as to defy conscious thought, she slid the cylinder release, snapped the cylinder out on its hinge, and pulled the ejector pin. Eight bullets tumbled into her hand, still wet from her extended bath in the Katamic Sea. She didn’t stop walking, keeping an eye to the uneven rock as she felt her way along with her feet. She shook the water from the bullets, then blew on them until they were mostly dry. She blew into each chamber of the cylinder and down the barrel as well, for all the good it really did. The gun needed a proper cleaning. It would be crusted with salt and whatever other filth the seawater carried until she got it home to Tinker’s Island where she had all the tools she’d need.
She wandered the island, gun in hand. If there were survivors of the Fair Trader lurking, she wanted to be ready for them. If she found Dan first ... well, maybe the gun would matter, maybe it wouldn’t, but she preferred the feel of it in her hand to traipsing about unarmed. She kept it aimed at the sky as she leaned on her forearm to brace herself against an outcropping as she stepped across a small chasm. The sight lines were poor, with a general upward trend to the mountainous terrain the farther inland she ventured. In her mind she tried to put some familiar shape to the landscape. It was neither a peak breaking through the waterline nor an elongated crashball of land. When Madlin reached one of the higher points, she looked around in all directions. It resembled nothing so much as a ragged cut on the face of the Katamic, puckered and scabbed over with rock, made by a knife—or best yet, a hook—that had caught and dragged along the sea, skipping as it tore, leaving the smaller islands in its wake.