The Bone Ships

by R J Barker

  He wondered if any one of them gave a thought to him. If they wondered where he was or even if he lived.

  He thought it unlikely, and as he watched, standing by the rail between two great gallowbows, a little blood from a stinging cut on his foot stained the water at his feet. A slowly branching pattern of dark red against the grey slate of the deck.

  They had no interest in him, the crew. They had sometimes regarded him with interest when he’d returned to have the purseholder dole out the meagre amount of coin due to him as shipwife. Heads had sometimes turned, cold eyes had sometimes followed him as he went below to the shipwife’s great cabin.

  In the great cabin was his chest, holding what meagre possessions he had – even more meagre than when he had come aboard as what money he got was never enough to buy what he needed from the fisher village. Each time he left Tide Child he had been worried about that chest, though he could not take it with him as that would be to finally abdicate all authority, to say he had run from the black ship. But when he returned he was almost frightened to approach it, in case he saw the hasp broken, as that would mean that his authority was gone -- what authority? In the claustrophobic heat of long nights in his decrepit bothy he had dreamed of that moment: the shattered lock, the quick knife to the kidneys and the blood upon the white boneboard in the great cabin. The light finally fading as Tide Child claimed its due, passing his weary soul into the hands of the Sea Hag, who waited for all.

  But the moment had never come, and each time he had seen that lock still in one piece he had felt sure, somehow, deep inside, that his small authority was intact. Only now, watching the reddened backs of what had been his crew, did he realise how wrong and foolish he had been. Sea chests were sacred to the deckchilder, and to meddle with one was one of many small superstitions, like throwing paint in a dock or on the spinebase, that was never to be broken.

  They paid him no mind as he stood and gently bled, but they could not take their eyes from her as she paced back and forth like a caged firash. There was that unmistakable fury to her, something internal, a roaring fire that was not seen, only sensed – sensed through the strict movements of her legs, of her arms, the glare of her eye as she surveyed the state of the deck, kicking at loose bottles and old rope. Her mouth moving as she paced. Rehearsing the words she would cast at the crew? The feathers in her grey and blue and red hair glinting like lightning in a far-off storm.

  As she paced he realised that, apart from the few he considered an obvious threat, he had lied to himself about this crew. He did not know them. He did not recognise them from their eyeburned backs. They were not his and never had been. When he looked at them, at the myriad different-coloured skins and shapes of the Hundred Isles, he had no clue what names those skins clothed. Even those whose faces he saw as they emerged, blinking and confused from belowdeck, he could not name as they squinted and wondered about the sudden and tempestuous change in the winds that had blown into their lives. He did not know them at all. Where she invited their gaze upon the stage of the rump, he had avoided it. Where he had quailed and hunched and scurried past disinterested eyes, she demanded they look upon her – and they did. They could do nothing else.

  He could do nothing else.

  Joron started to count them, gave up and guessed the entire crew must be present. He saw the courser slinking around at the edge of the group in their grubby, patched and holed robe – damn him he should at least know their name. He had known it, what was it? Alerry, Alerrit? Aelerin. That was it, Aelerin. But the courser was one of the othered, and made him uncomfortable; they were neither woman nor man and he regarded them with the same sort of superstitious dread that came upon him when he thought about the gullaime, the windtalker, stranded far out on the bell buoy.

  “You stink,” said Meas quietly. “You hear that? You stink and it shames you. From the lowest fisher in a flukeboat to the crew of the mighty Arakeesian Dread, the sailors of the Hundred Isles are clean. We’re no raiders. No Gaunt Islanders to wallow in our own filth and fly ships that can be smelled before they breach the horizon. We have pride.” Her eyes pricked at the crowd, making feet shuffle, heads bow. “And yet, you stink.”

  “Who are you to tell us this?” The speaker was hidden in the crowd, but at least that was a voice he knew. Old Briaret. The woman was as taut as rope and had been condemned in youth. Hardly knowing any other life than Tide Child, so she knew little of the world outside it. Only to her could the identity of the woman on the rump be a mystery.

  “They call me Lucky Meas.”

  “Not that lucky then,” said Briaret, “if you’re sent here to join the dead.”

  Meas seemed to grow, to straighten, as if what should be shame was a mark of pride.

  “I am Meas Gilbryn. I broke the Gaunt Islands fleet at Keelhulme Sounding. I took the four-ribber Bern’s Woe with only a handful of flukeboats. I am firstborn of Thirteenbern Gilbryn, who leads us all.”

  He heard the whisper at that, like the hiss of wave on shingle – “Firstborn cursed born, firstborn cursed born . . .” – and so did she.

  “I hold no curse for I am chosen of the sea and it washed me ashore as a babe when raiders wrecked around me. I hear the whispers of all storms, North, South, East and West, and I am favoured by the goddess of the young, the goddess of the people and the dark goddess of the depths. Maiden, Mother and Hag listen when I talk.” She stopped then, royal, regal, ruler of the ship, and she dared any to say otherwise. When she spoke next she sent her words into a stillness as profound and full as any becalming. “You will find, and I believe, that the Hag sends me where I am needed.” She looked around the ship – at the filth, at the resentful faces and lastly at him, at Joron Twiner. “And Hag knows I am needed here. Sorely needed.”

  There was a moment then when Joron waited for the challenge. He felt like someone should turn the glass at the rump so the sand could pour and time could be seen to pass, but none did and no challenge came. He picked out the ones most likely: Barlay, a woman as huge as any and flanked by two of her cronies; Cwell leaning on a rail, looking alone as always, and as thin, lithe and dangerous as any longthresh, but she had her followers too; then there was Kanvey, surrounded by his boys, standing on the other side, and it was him that Joron feared most, for he was a predatory man and more than once he had found Kanvey’s eye travelling up the curve of his calf, and the man’s open lust scared him. But for now they were stilled, shocked by the onslaught of Lucky Meas’s contempt.

  “Clean this deck,” she said, “coil the ropes, stack the shot and tie down the gallowbows. Get Tide Child ready to fly and fight, for that is what we will be doing, make no mistake about it. And I know you are a rough lot, so when the time comes” – her eyes roved around, settled on Kanvey, settled on Cwel, settled on Barlay – “that you feel the need to test me. Then do it like deckchilder, do it to my face.” She rested her hand on the hilt of her sword. “Because the Bern sought to give me to the ships as a light when I was a babe, even after the sea returned me. And in the ceremony the Mother came upon them, and she said I would not die then as sacrifice and I would not die in treachery, you hear? She said I’d die fighting. So unless you question the will of the Maiden or the Mother or the Hag, you’ll pull your blade to my face, ey?” Again her roving eye, her fierce, bird-of-prey features waiting for a reply that never came. Only silence faced her. “Well, to it then! Move!” And they did, and inside Joron something twisted, and he learned – in a moment of shock and revelation – how much he desired what she had, that easy command, the way she barely seemed to feel the weight of the two-tailed hat on her head. “Twiner” – she spat on the deck – “come with me to the great cabin.”

  “No.” This from Barlay. The woman stepped forward, flakes of skin had caught in the blue dye of her short hair. Her cheeks pale as ice and her eyes almost hidden within the round of her face. From a pocket in her deck trews she took out a crumpled black object and held it up. “Order us to clean the ship . . . well, you wear th
e two tails and few are more worthy, so it is your right. But you’ll not take that” – she pointed at Joron – “to the great cabin like he is your second.” She unfolded a black rag, the onetail, the hat of the deckkeeper, second in command on the deck of a boneship, and she placed it on her head. It barely fitted, just perched on the crown looking ridiculous, and only waiting for a stiff wind to snatch it away. “He wants my place, he must take it.”

  A shiver of fear down him, like cold sea making its way inside a heavy stinker coat, freezing him all the way to his bones.

  “I want your place,” said Meas, stepping down from the rump, “and I want it for him for my own reasons and I do not need to share them.” A circle began to grow about the two women. “So I will take the hat from you, for my own reasons and I do not need to share them either.” Barlay’s hand went to the curnow at her side and Meas shook her head. “No no, my lass. A strong girl like yourself has no need of a sword. I am a slip of a thing and sure you could squeeze the life from me without too much trouble, ey?”

  Barlay eyed her, suspicious but unable to disagree, and she nodded.

  “But think this, lass. You won that hat through strength, ey? But your accent says you are from Glenhulme, where they breed for strength and naught else. So, lass, how are your numbers, ey?” Meas crouched by the rumpspine, dipped her hand for luck into the pot of red paint at the bottom, finding it almost dry. Then she spattered what paint she found on the deck to join the lines and dots already there and stood, touching her fingers to her face, leaving red dots on her cheeks and stepping forward. “How is your hand for holding a quill and taking my notes, ey?” Meas stepped forward again and what Joron saw seemed impossible: Barlay – huge, frightening Barlay – took a step back. It was as if each of Meas’s words was a lash of the whip.

  “Strength is what is needed for a ship, naught else,” said Barlay. Now she stepped forward, pulled herself up so she towered over Meas.

  The shipwife did not waver.

  “How do you calculate the quickest course between islands, ey lass? How do you understand the courser’s notes? How do you steer when you cannot see Skearith’s Eye? How do you read the map and know the reefs? How close can you travel to Skearith’s Spine without losing the wind?” Each word a fist that battered Barlay back once more, but Joron could feel the woman’s building anger the same way he felt a storm on his skin, could see it in the red of her face, usually as pale as his was dark. “How do you—”

  Barlay moved, running forward with a scream of rage, great meaty fists swinging. Meas ducked, sidestepped and kicked out, sending the bigger woman sprawling on the deck. From there she was on her, straddling her back, using her slight weight to twist a massive arm back and push it against the joint until Barlay was silenced, her anger reduced to grunts of agony. Meas leaned over, her hiss loud enough for all to hear. “I see in you, Barlay, a strength I will sore need at the steering oar, you hear? I see a place by me on the rump, you hear? But I do not see you wearing that hat, ey?”

  “Hag take you!” screeched Barlay. “Hag take you, Meas Gilbryn! You take the storm-cursed hat then.”

  And Meas did. Picking it from where it had fallen on the deck and standing, walking away without looking back as if she were not worried that the bigger woman might attack again.

  As she passed him she threw him the hat.

  “The great cabin, Joron, and be quick, or” – Meas pointed at the hat, limp in his hand – “she may want that back.”

  He followed Lucky Meas down the steep stairs, through the hatch and steadying himself on the rail – one hand for the ship one hand for himself. As the deck blocked the sun he descended to darkness. The bowpeeks on the side of Tide Child were tied open, but they let in little light and did little to cool the ship. The heat down here was of a different set: more oppressive, more solid. It had substance. Where the heat above was dry and stark, this was moist and enveloping; it sucked you in, stole your breath.

  The smell of confined humans was almost unbearable.

  They were forced to walk bent over, heads bowed to avoid the overbones, staring at the deck below, stripes of light from the bowpeeks showing the scuffed and variegated floor – black to grey to white to grey to black – where the crew had run and scratched and pulled objects over it. These were the stripes of his shame as much as any scars left on a deckchilder’s back by the cord, showing how he had neglected Tide Child, and every step he took, past poorly stowed hammocks and through the stink of rubbish, made him feel smaller. Somewhere, water had got in and been left to pool – when had he last worked the pumps? – and started the arakeesian bones of the ship rotting. That smell was always there, always somewhere on a ship, but now, too late, he realised it was too strong; the not-quite-unbearable stink of rotting bone filled the underdeck, a greasy grey stink to rotting flesh’s purple stench.

  In the great cabin sat his chest.

  He wondered, once again, if the lock would still be in place.

  Meas opened the door. It creaked. One of the panes of glass in the door was broken, a serrated crack running across it, prints from greasy hands around it. Meas paused for a moment, running a long slender finger along the crack. When she took her hand away there was a smear of blood left on the glass, like a promise of violence.

  The great cabin was Tide Child in negative, the only place on the ship that had been left bone-white. The boneboards of the floor, cut from the wide bones of what must have been an enormous arakeesian, were scuffed and smudged with dirt. Still, the whiteness of the place was shocking – the intent of course, meant to dazzle any crew entering the domain of the shipwife. Meas strode across it, manifestly undazzled. The desk of cured varisk and gion and the chair that married it had been pushed to the side, away from the windows at the rear which let light stream in. She grabbed the desk, pulled it so it sat in front of the windows, gave it small shoves and pushes until it found its place – a rut that it had worn into the bone over the many years of its existence until it had become comfortable there. An imperceptible place on the deck where it had always sat and a place she knew would be there, had not even had to think about being there. This was her world, it was what she knew, what she was.

  When she sat behind the desk she took a moment, looked around. Stopped. Became still. A breeze from somewhere pushed a strand of coloured hair across her face, set a feather a-twisting and charms a-tinkling on her tight deep-blue uniform jacket.

  The silence oppressed him, forced him to speak because she clearly had no need to, not yet. As he opened his mouth he realised he stood at attention, not at ease, not slouching. The tautening of his muscles had crept upon him as quietly as a sea fret creeps up on the land.

  “Why?” he said.

  “Why?” She let it hang. It was not a question she asked of him, maybe it was a question she asked of herself because she did not yet fully understand her reasons. “Why?” she said again. Above, the stamp of feet, the growl and hiss of brushes pushing water across the deck, the thump of objects being stowed and the shouts of women and men up and down the rigging of Tide Child’s spines and wings.

  “Why give me this?” He held out the crumpled one-tailed hat. “Why fight to give it to me?”

  “A shipwife needs to show a crew she is strong, and it gave me the opportunity to do that. It will cow them, for a while, ey?” She nodded to herself, ran her hands across the desk, stretching her arms out to either side. “And I did not lie, either. I need my second to understand numbers, so tell me I have not chosen badly, Joron Twiner. You know numbers, right? And you read?”

  He nodded.

  “How did you know?”

  “Joron Twiner is a fisher’s name, so I presume you are a fisher’s son?”

  He nodded.

  “I have never met a fisher who did not plan for their child to be more, though the Sea Hag knows our world may be a better one with more fishers and less fighters.” She mumbled that last, running her hands over the desk, along the cured leaves which had be
en bound to it to create a flat writing surface, and back in front of her. She looked up. “Where are your charts?”

  A shock upon him, a paralysis that made him long to take a pull at the flask on his hip, for the charts lay in the hands of the pilot who had guided his ship here, into Keyshanblood Bay. He had traded them for knowledge and coin, spending the money on drink and food to take to the tumbledown bothy that had let him hide from his fate.

  Hide. A joke of course. The Hag sees all and never forgets.

  “Charts? I . . .” He had no answer, no honourable way to finish the sentence.

  “Sold ’em for drink, ey?” He started to make an excuse, expecting condemnation as she stood. “Listen to me, Joron Twiner.” She stepped around the desk and towards him, keeping her voice low. “A ship is a world, you understand? And this ship is mine now, my world, my rules. My word here is law to all who fly with us. What happened before Tide Child felt the weight of my heels on the deck? Well, that is between you and the Hag and I care nothing for it. We will deal with it as we have to.” She stared up at the overbones, listening to the rasp of brushes on the slate deck. “Hear that? We make the decks clean so we may begin our work, and I have much work for us to do. So truth is what I need at this moment, for I have a purpose and little time to get about it.” He waited a moment, expecting some trick from this sudden gentleness, but she said nothing, leaving only space in the air for his words.

  “There are no charts.”

  “Very well. We will pick some up when we return to Bernshulme, together with supplies and wages for the crew to send to their families, if they have them. For now, go to the hold, make sure we have at least four days’ food and water in, and send me the courser and tell them to bring charcoal. We shall write our charts upon the deck in here, and you shall check the numbers for me.”

  “But the courser is—”

  “Very likely better at that than both of us, ey, but I do not know that, not yet. Until I do you and I shall also check what they say. You understand?” He nodded. “Be gone now, Joron Twiner.” He turned but as he reached the door she spoke again. “I forget, one other thing.” His fingers twitched for want of the door handle in them, to be out of this place, to be out of her presence.