by Jay Lake
The raging water caught at my calves, my thighs, my waist. I kept climbing, praying to stay ahead of it. I felt as if I would be sucked down at any moment. Lost over the side without a trace. It boiled around me, stinging cold and angry as any jilted lover.
A jilted lover whose fists weighed as much as cities.
The water reluctantly pulled away without claiming me in its grip. Gasping, I climbed more, realizing from the agony in my left arm that I’d been clinging with both hands.
Oh, in that moment I would have given much to kill Councilor Lampet all over again.
I gained the landing at the top and pounded on the bridge hatch. A face loomed in the little glass port on the hatch—my friend the mate. He looked amazed.
A moment later it opened, and I was yanked within.
The bridge was warm, of a miracle. A little heater with white stones glowing red behind a grid kept them all from expiring of the damp. The air steamed. Three men stared at me in frank astonishment, the fourth gripping the wheel and studying the water ahead as if his life depended on it.
As if all our lives depended on it.
The mate exploded first, shouting in a language I did not understand until he registered my lack of comprehension. He switched to his accented Petraean. “What are you doing? They told me you were a madwoman, but I thought it was jealousy!”
That statement I marked down to explore later, because I very much wanted to know which they had told him that. “The storm! I have come about the storm.” I was forced to shout back simply to be heard above the din of rain and wind and wave.
The man at the wheel glanced at me once, then turned his attention forward again, barking questions in that same language I did not understand. He and the mate argued briefly, before the mate turned to me once more. “I have explained to the captain that you are a madwoman let loose by your people as a sacrifice to calm the storm.”
“Not that, you idiot. This is no natural weather, is it?”
By way of an answer, lightning danced across the bow of the ship, visible from the bridge’s windows. Balls of it stayed there to spin and shoot sparks in half a dozen colors.
The mate looked forward, then back at me. His face was mottled by the swirling colors. “No,” he finally said. “It would seem not.” With that, he spat a curse in this crew’s language that I did not speak. Some Sunward tongue that it might profit me to learn if we survived this, I thought.
“I am a kind of priestess.” There was no way for me to speak at less than a shout and hope to be heard. “With the ear of several among the divine. Tell me what you can of this.”
He shook his head. “We do not know. The weather should not be out of the south so much right now, and these seas seemed to be aimed at our ship. As if the ocean were fighting with purpose.”
The captain barked another question without taking his eyes off the water.
I looked at them all. “Is there a walkway in front of the bridge?”
The mate nodded, his face uneasy.
“The seas are not breaking this high,” I pointed out as reasonably as I could with such loudness. “I will manage myself out there.”
He pointed to another hatch to the captain’s right. I crabbed across the deck, sidling past the captain and the other two officers. There was small point in smiling at them. I’d be a hero or I’d be dead very soon. In either case, what happened in here would not matter so much.
Nodding at the outside hatch, I got the mate to take hold of it. We waited for the ship to roll such that it was uphill from me, so I wouldn’t just pitch over the rail on exiting; then he threw it open.
I scrambled up and out into what felt like a solid wall of water. I knew this was only wind and rain, and not the wet fist of the sea rising up to claim me. Snatching hold of the rail, I clung through the top of the ship’s roll with both hands though my left arm felt likely to tear loose from my shoulder.
When the starboard side of the ship dropped, I worked my way around the front of the bridge. Or wheelhouse. Whatever they called it, here was where the ship’s fate was decided. Bracing my shoulders against the glass directly before the captain and my feet against the coaming that ran along the walkway, I once more grasped my short knife and pointed it at the lightning dancing below. I cut the wind that came toward me.
This I did not want to do. But even less did I want to die. Not here, not now, for so senseless a purpose as to satisfy the ocean’s hunger.
“Desire!” I shouted. She was the greatest of the gods I knew, a titanic, which is to the gods as the gods are to men. And I had sworn never to call upon Her again. “Desire!” I shouted again. “I beseech You in the name of women everywhere. And most especially my daughter, Marya!”
Another wave broke across the port rail, drowning even the colored lights below. Though its body did not reach me, its fingers lifted and snatched at me with the strength of a dozen men. I turned my god-touched knife toward the water and imagined myself cutting through it like the keel of some racing yacht.
“Hear me!” I shouted again once the water had receded enough for the world to be anything other than pressure and wet. “I have so much to do yet, in your name and for the women of Copper Downs and Kalimpura. As I gave you a daughter in Copper Downs, save my daughter now, and me to care for her.”
The wind whipped around my knife as if it were the prow of some granite eminence. The waves lifted again, then just … stopped.
The storm was not so much abated as halted. Prince Enero moved forward, laboring up a rising slope of water that roiled in place. The air was still, the rain hanging where it was like mist caught for a peaceful moment. Horizontal, daggered mist that cut my cheeks and pinged against the iron walls of Prince Enero’s superstructure like a fall of gravel, but still, not what it had been.
Something broke to the surface in the water ahead of the bow and slightly to the port. A great kalamar-fish, one of those fabled tentacled giants of the benthic depths. I could not see how long it was, for its very shape twisted and boiled with the water, but it seemed like I couldn’t have paced it from tip to tentacle in less than forty steps.
We moved forward through an eerie, silent sea where the waves remained frozen in their cresting and the very rain in the air continued stilled.
A hatch clanged and the mate came to stand with me. “Vargas is throwing up with fear,” he said quietly. Blood began to speck his face from the interrupted drops piercing him much as they already were piercing me, though he did not seem to notice.
I couldn’t tell if he was amused or horrified.
“When this is over, I will do the same.” I kept my knife pointing bow-ward, as if the shivering tip coated in god’s blood were all that could pull us forward through this strangely quiet storm. My bones were cold, joints aching, and I could feel the chill settling into my lungs and heart.
It was not Desire who had answered my prayer, I realized, but Her brother Time. Time, fighting with or cooperating with Oceanus, I could not tell which. So much was frozen, and what moved—us—would be in peril of leaching away if we did not find the honest world again soon.
“The crew will all fear you after this,” the mate observed a minute or two later.
I continued to tremble. There was nothing to do but point forward and pray. Hope. Trust. Something from that very short, desperate list of options. I would likely fear myself, but I no longer could spare the words. Each puff of warmth escaping my lips would be another wound.
He had the sense not to touch me, but he stood so close, I could feel the warmth of his body through the air. “I will not, though.”
Who’s mad now? I thought, and stifled a laugh that would surely slip out of control. What would I owe for this? I had raised Desire’s debt to me, but a lifetime of my energies and attentions could not possibly offset the cost of an effort so massive as stilling this storm.
Prince Enero plunged over trough after trough. Frost formed on my blade, then on my leathers, then on the exposed skin of
my hands and face. I held my place, a statue dedicated to fortunate travel, while everything leached away.
The still, tall waves grew shorter and smoother. The sky lightened from corpse dark to bruise green to something gray and faintly lemon yellow that recalled the memory of the sun. My face was no longer scored by daggers of rain.
Finally the mate very carefully touched my shoulder. “I believe you can let loose of this,” he said softly.
I sagged and lowered the short knife. With a rush of air and noise like being inside a thunderclap, the storm resumed. This was just rain and the casual violence of open water, though not so far to the aft we could hear the wind shrieking and lightning crackling like fire in a granary.
Grasping the rail with my bad hand, knife still in my good hand, I forced out another prayer. “I do not know what sacrifices are now your due,” I said quietly, certain that both Time and Oceanus had their hands on my fate just then. “My debt is as deep as your sister Desire will allow.” Unsure what to do next—I could hardly light them candles here, and that seemed unfit for the titanic whose demesne was the very seas themselves—I ended as simply as I’d begun, my voice quiet on the wind. “My thanks to you, now and ever.”
Without making any comment, the mate walked me back through the bridge, strong hands around my shoulder and gripping my good arm. The captain gave me another long glance, then shook his head silently. Vargas—I assume it was he—mopped a mess around a toppled bucket. The third man spoke urgently into a brass nozzle, giving orders to someone belowdecks.
I was escorted down the ladderway, through the passengers’ mess, into the passageway beyond, and finally to my cabin. When that hatch was opened for me, I stumbled through and collapsed on my bunk twitching, weeping. The short knife I kept clasped between my breasts.
The officer shut the hatch and walked away with no word, only a sad smile. I lay there both steaming and freezing as Ilona and the twins slept.
Mother Vajpai and Mother Argai slipped in a few minutes later. After taking a close look at me, Mother Argai began wrapping me in blankets, while Mother Vajpai slipped out again. Shortly thereafter she reappeared with Ponce and some hot water. They poured it into me straight at first, until tea had brewed, then filled me with that as well. In time, Ilona spooned hot soup into my mouth. The galley must have uncovered their fires, though I did not recall seeing her wake up. It felt good to have her attention, simple and uncomplicated by loss.
In time I told them all what had happened, as best I understood it. They just stared, my friends, comprehending my words without understanding their import. Mother Vajpai looked sad more than anything.
“You will forget some of this,” she said. “And that will be among your greatest blessings.”
She was wrong, of course. I have never forgotten that day. And never again in my life was I to be such a mighty conduit for the divine. If I’d thought the uses the gods had put me to before then were cruel and debasing, well, I’d had only the blessings of ignorance.
Prayer is a dangerous business.
What will you do if one is answered?
I have saved the ship. No one is grateful.
That is not quite correct. I am not surrounded by fools. None of us were ready to surrender our lives and breathe out our last upon the ocean floor.
But what I did … Chowdry, my friend, I called upon the power of a titanic. And worse, my call was answered.
Even now, days later, my bones feel hollow as if they had been blown out. My joints are loose, though they tighten more every day. My body was borrowed like a suit, or a mummer’s costume. When it was returned to me, the seams had been stretched.
So has my soul.
Sometimes, I think death might have been preferable. I know that sensation will fade with time, or at least I hope so. The crew is frightened of me. The other passengers avoid me completely. Even my own friends are cautious. They hide behind strained courtesy and counting their words like misers with copper half taels.
Do not teach your congregation to pray.
Someday they might succeed.
My sense of desperation receded with everyone else’s caution. A week of smoother sailing, interrupted by several ordinary squalls, set everyone aboard Prince Enero to rest, or at least less on edge. Besides, what I had done was only rumor or secondhand testimony to all aboard except the captain and the three officers who had been on the bridge with him.
The mate, whose name had proven to be Lalo, messed with us almost every night of that week after the storm. Even when the captain kept his table, our party was not invited. Everyone understood. Lalo was both apology and ambassador, as well as a shield for the rest of the crew and passengers.
I noted that Ponce seemed jealous of his attentions to me, but Ilona managed to keep the boy sufficiently distracted to avoid trouble. That in turn made me feel a bit ill, for Ilona’s interest in me had flagged so much. Not that I could blame her. She was ever half-sick over Corinthia Anastasia, and my children were a distraction to us all.
Only the babies remained unchanged by the events of the voyage. They suckled when hungry, squalled when they messed their rags, and generally slept, ate, and shat much as I had been told all babies everywhere did at this early an age. I divided my time between attending them and working out with Mother Argai on the poop deck aft. She was still slow from her poisoning, and I was recovering from both childbirth and my injuries since, so we were matched in our needs for careful sparring.
Our exercises together were slow and painful.
“I miss divine healing,” I gasped after Mother Argai had delivered an openhanded roundhouse strike to my temple that I’d been a heartbeat too slow to duck away from.
“I have never experienced divine healing,” she replied, her breath every bit as rough as mine.
We faced each other, my hands braced on my hips, Mother Argai’s on her knees, both of us rolling with the motion of the ship.
“Always it comes to me slow and painful,” she added with another whooping breath.
“Much like life itself.” I dropped to a ready crouch. We worked without weapons yet—both of us felt too unsteady to safely spar without fear of unintentionally wounding the other.
It was an odd sort of sharing. Mother Argai had always been tougher than most women, myself included. I could be hardheaded beyond reason, even I saw that about myself, but she had a physical endurance that I could not match at my most driven.
This I admired.
We shuffled through another limited version of a Blade unarmed sparring match. Open palms, no handstrikes, no closed fists, and no leg drops or low kicks. It was as if we were both fourth- or fifth-petal Aspirants once more.
I staggered from a fierce smack to my shoulder. “We should train all the girls for a season aboard ship.”
Mother Argai laughed, her voice rough with exertion. “You would have our temple with a navy now?”
Managing to land a flat touch to her chest, I danced back, or tried to. If she’d been willing to follow up, she could have knocked me down hard. “Why not? We could make runs among the fishes.”
That brought another laugh, and with her laughter, I saw once more a light that had been absent in her eyes since the Quiet Man’s attack. Not just a bit of joy for herself, but maybe a bit of restored regard for me.
This is what trust feels like, I thought, and renewed my attacks upon her.
It was the most loving thing I knew to do.
* * *
By the time we spied Cape Purna, the northeasternmost extent of Selistan, our councils had resumed, rising up out of the harried, fractured conversations between me and Mother Argai. So much had happened when I was still carrying the twins, and the ramifications of those events carried forward into question after question after question.
What to do when we reached the Temple of the Silver Lily? What if the Goddess Herself were in danger? Could we locate the rumored Red Man and his fey little assistant—Firesetter and Fantail, Laris had calle
d the two of them—who were said to be god-killers from the Saffron Tower gone renegade? Would they aid us with their knowledge if not the strength of their arms and spells? What if Surali had seated herself as Primate of the Bittern Court? What of her Quiet Men, and who were they truly? What if the Prince of the City had fallen? What if we could not determine the fate of Corinthia Anastasia and Samma? What if we could, and they had met their end?
Those last sent Ilona sobbing, as it must wound any mother’s heart, but still we worked through the possibilities. None of us knew enough to plan sensibly, so we did what we could, ate well, and accepted the prison of silence that had grown up around us amid the distrust of the others aboard ship. They feared me and avoided all of my party.
Still, I came to be quite fond of Lalo, and in other circumstances, might have sought to act on that. Later, even with all the pain of what happened during the storm and afterwards, that I did not try was my only true regret concerning that voyage.
Kalimpura: The Exile Is Returned
THE FAMILIAR JUNGLED coast eventually gave way to an equally familiar line of buildings and docks that even in those days I knew better than I knew the waterfront of Copper Downs. Kalimpura’s broad, shallow harbor was crowded with the ships of a dozen nations and more. The place seemed so much like home to me that I might have stepped over the rail and walked across the choppy water.
Prince Enero loomed here over the low-sided traders accustomed to the calmer seas of the Selistani coast and the waters southward. She entered the harbor like one of those floating islands of ice said to be found where the oceans of the world approach the frigid walls that define the northern and southern extents of the plate of the earth. I watched from a place near the bow, wondering if my sentence of death or banishment still applied.
Not from what Samma had told me, but that was before Surali had suborned the new Temple Mother and turned the Lily Goddess’ followers against Her interests.