The Bone Ships

by R J Barker

  Or was it simply that he watched the crew this day without alcohol between him and them, neither the stumbling fuzz of drinking nor the retching misery of its after-effects. At the thought of it, of the thick drink slithering down his throat, his mouth dried and his stomach became wet and noisome, like the sea after the killing of a skyfish, when it seemed the water wished to create a barrier between itself and the creatures who had taken one of its most beautiful lives.

  Hag’s breath, he wanted to drink.

  Maiden’s blessing, he wanted not to.

  He felt a need to pace the deck but was afraid of the way the crew would look at him as he moved among them. Afraid that what he would see in their eyes was not what he was starting to see in their eyes when they looked at her. Not respect, not yet, and it was not fear, not that yet either. But there was some worth they found in her that they knew was lacking in him.

  So he stayed where he was, by the for’ard gallowbow, and made a show of examining the weapon.

  Tide Child carried four great gallowbows to seaward and four to landward on the maindeck as well as ten smaller bows a side on the underdeck. There were four in a gallowbow crew if you included the bowsell, who was there to aim and give orders, but in reality it only took three to loose the great bows or the lesser ones below. One to loose and two to spin the winch that pulled back the launching cord between the outspread bone arms and to load the bow with the huge bolts that could smash through the sides of a ship as easily as they smashed through a body, or the stone bolas designed to cut rigging – or the most feared of the gallowbows weapons, wingbolts: giant carved stones, thick in the middle and tapering out into wings. He had heard stories that a skilled shipwife and windtalker could keep one aloft over a distance further than a person could run in a day, though Joron did not believe it. But he knew the wreckage a well-aimed wingbolt could cause, especially when the centre was filled with hagspit oil. As a child he had suffered nightmares of burning to death, locked in the hold of a ship as it melted in the fierce heat of bonefire, and only his father’s strong arms had ever been able to banish that fear. An arm reaching from the bloodied sea.

  A good crew could loose two shots from a gallowbow in under a minute – spinning, loading, aiming, firing – but Joron had no idea how quickly his crew could loose. A shipwife was meant to exercise the bows once a week at least, but Joron had never dared to ask his crew to untruss them. Never dared to begin the rituals of practice in case no one followed his lead. So whether this crew were as adept with the bows as they were at getting the ship under way he had no idea. He suspected that they had no great skill. He did not know what Meas expected of them, but even if she expected very little, he felt she was sure to be disappointed.

  He should tell her. He did not know where they headed, but from her urgency it must be to action. She stood at the rump of the ship, staring forward past the spines, past the huge billowing wings of the ship that scooped up the air and dragged Tide Child through the water, past the sharp beak of the ship and into the distance, beyond the islands that dotted the sea around them.

  But what end did she see that he did not?

  She spoke, said something he could not hear as it was torn away by the breeze, and behind her Barlay leaned into the steering oar. Above Joron the weave of the wings creaked and cracked as more of the Eaststorm’s whisper was gathered into them. He felt a pang. Jealousy?

  No.

  Annoyance that Barlay was where he should be, on the rump, and that she still had the blues of command painted on her scalp, although he wore the one-tailed hat. Had Meas told her to keep them, just to make sure he was aware of how precarious his position was? Or had the colours simply not run from her skin and hair yet?

  “Beakwyrms, Shipwife!” The call came from the front – male – but he did not see who called. Five or six crew were leaning over the for’ard rail.

  He did not know their names.

  “Good,” shouted Meas from the rump. There was a merry breeze now, trying to catch her voice and tumble it away, but it fought a losing battle. That hoarse cry had fought against the worst the Northstorm had to give. “We have some speed then. If I thought Deckkeeper Twiner could find it, I would ask him to throw the rock and see how fast we move.” Laughter around the ship, and he felt himself colour like it was his first laying night. “Twiner, count the beakwyrms for me. Let me know how dangerous they think my ship is.” He could feel the approval of the crew at this nod to the Sea Hag’s ways as he made his way to the beak. Those on the rail did not move for him, and knowing Meas watched he grabbed the smallest body and hauled them away so he could lean over.

  Vertigo.

  The sudden reeling feeling that the ship and the sea stayed still while he rushed forward. Panic clawed at him, for forward was into the sea and, if lucky, to be crushed by the beak of the ship. If unlucky, to be food for the wyrms below.

  “Numbers, Deckkeeper Twiner!”

  Was it a trick, to be sent forward? He expected to feel sudden hard hands, gnarled and rutted with years of hauling on ropes, grab his feet and push him up and over. It did not happen, and the rail was sturdy in his too-tight grip, his knuckles bone-white against dark skin.

  “We count five, D’keeper.” This from a girl, young but terribly scarred, half her face smashed by something or someone, skin tight with old burns, the flesh around one eye drooping as she tried to smile at him.

  “Only cos you can’t count no higher, Farys,” said another deckchild. Laughter, but he clung to that unexpected bit of friendliness as tightly as he clung to the rail.

  “You shut your trap, Hilan,” she said.

  “Five is it?” said Joron. “Then let us count twice for it pays well to double-check all a ship’s numbers.” He’d heard his father say that, and from the way Farys and the old man behind her nodded it was clearly something they approved of.

  “Ey,” said the old man, Hilan, as weathered and scarred as Farys but by time not violence. One ear was missing, a deformity that marked him as Berncast, his bloodline weak and he as a man who could never rise in the Hundred Isles. “Sea Hag’s arms open for them as don’t double-check every knot and number, and all know that to be true.” Again that little murmur of agreement, but behind them one of Cwell’s clique caught Joron’s eye and spat over the side of the ship. Joron turned away from her.

  The sea was full of ugly creatures but beakwyrms were famously among the worst. They looked like the intestine of a kivelly when it was cut from the bird to make sausage: pink, glistening and shot through with blood. The creatures surfed the waves of foam that the boneships kicked up. Each was as thick as a big woman or man and about ten or fifteen paces long, not as big as he had seen but big enough. The wyrms ended bluntly, like fingers, and they had no eyes or nose or any way Joron could see for them to sense the world around them, but Hag knew they had teeth. When attacking, the whole end of a beakwyrm would draw back and reveal it was little more than mouth, row upon row of serrated teeth right back into the darkness of its throat, teeth that could chew through flesh and bone and so noisy to work few. Iridescent frills spiralled around the wyrms’ sickly pallid-pink flesh, propelling them forward in a twisting, shimmering dance through water and wave before the ship. They spun around one another as if they were lovers dancing.

  “Five wyrms, Shipwife,” he shouted. “We trail five wyrms at the beak.”

  “Five,” she said, and she made no attempt to hide her disappointment, though it was five more than had ridden with them when Joron brought Tide Child up to Keyshanblood Bay. “Five only, ey? Well, the wyrms are drawn to blood, so you can be sure we’ll ride many more when we make our way back to Bernshulme.” She nodded, but to herself, and though she spoke out loud he did not get the feeling she addressed the crew.

  He had heard of deckchilder cheering the thought of action loudly and long as if they wished for nothing more than to put their bodies in harm’s way in the name of the Hundred Isles, but on Tide Child her words were met with sullen si
lence. Meas turned away from them, leaving Joron feeling as if he had disappointed her somehow, and angry with himself that somewhere, deep within, it bothered him.

  Later, as Skearith’s Eye started to dip beneath the far islands and Tide Child made his way through the greying sea, Joron went to the deckkeeper’s – his – cabin. It had a bed, thin, barely wide enough for him to fit his body on, and he was by no means a well-built man, but Joron had grown up on a fisher boat sleeping in a hammock. He was accustomed to the way the hammock moved with the ship and communicated the sea to him. In a bed he was haunted by nightmares of stone, of land that shook beneath him and cracked and broke, swallowing him up, dragging him down to be entombed in the dark earth, whereas in the hammock he dreamed of soaring above the sea like a bird. So, in a cabin still full of Barlay’s possessions, he slung his hammock and tried to sleep.

  He woke at the night bell to take his turn at the watch. Out the squeaking door of his cabin, head slightly bowed to avoid the overbones. Wanelights glowed, skyfish oil burning slowly and meekly within kivelly skulls. Most of the crew slept, and the air was thick with the bitter scent of sweat and bodies. Hammocks rocked and Joron moved between them, careful not to knock into any sleeper and wake their wrath.

  No sign of Meas on deck; barely anyone there at all. A figure at the steering oar that he did not recognise and a few others cast about the deck like stones for fortune telling. He said nothing to them, only took his place on the rump of the ship, his bare feet cold against the slate. The breeze ruffled his hair, bringing a curse to his lips. He had left his hat in the cabin. What was worse, to stay where he was or to go back to his cabin through the dark ship? He did not know, remained there unmoving and undecided, appearing steady when he was anything but. The thick tangles of his tightly curled hair caught the wind, the sweat on his scalp gifting him some relief from the night’s heat.

  Against the black of night Skearith’s Bones shone above, the final blessing of the vast bird that had created the land for them to live on when she needed a place to lay her eggs. Though Hassith the spear thrower had killed her with Myulverd, the spear made by his sither, she had given them her bones as a final gift, to light the night. Even when her Blind Eye closed and vanished from the night sky, her bones remained, tiny dots of bright white, smudges of colour smeared across the black like giftpaint on a doorway. Skearith’s Bones changed with the season, revolving through their thirteen forms, but Skearith’s Gift, the three brightest stars that made up the point of her beak, always pointed directly at the Northstorm. Though the rest of her bones moved with the coming of the cold days, the gift always pointed the way for a deckchild, and Joron found himself talking to Skearith. As a people they rarely prayed to the storm bird – through guilt for Hassith’s wrong? Possibly. They gave their prayers to the more apparent goddesses, the ones that felt more real and present, the ones that inhabited the world around them: the Sea Hag, cold and cruel; the Maiden, capricious and full of curiosity; and the Mother, who welcomed all in need of succour but was strict and unforgiving to those who disobeyed her. But this night, as they quietly cut through a calm ocean on the whisper of the Eaststorm, he found himself silently asking Skearith, “Show me the way, Stormbird, show me the way.”

  But, of course, Skearith was long dead and no answer was forthcoming.

  “Where is your hat?” Meas, out of nowhere, like the Sea Hag come to claim her due.

  “In my cabin, it is a fine night, and I—”

  “I care not for what the night it is; you wear the hat rain or shine, heat or cold. It is who you are. I will fix you up boots too, from Hoppity Lane when we return to Bernshulme. A barefoot deckkeeper, whoever heard of such a thing?” He did not answer, and did not think she wanted an answer. “Haime,” she said, and he felt the man at the oar stiffen at his name, “steer us a mite more seaward. We approach Frana’s Isle and though no one lives on it there are a fair few hidden reefs around it.”

  “Where are we going, Shipwife?” said Joron.

  She glanced at him, her face all angles and points, grey and unhealthy-looking in the pale light of Skearith’s Blind Eye, a creature of shadows. Only the gleam of her eyes gave a clue to how fierce and alive she was.

  “North,” she said. “We go north, ever north, and as for what we do there, well, I will tell you with the rest on the morran. For now, Joron Twiner, go get your hat.”

  Skearith’s Eye was barely above the horizon, a bloodshot smear seeping into the morning’s clouds, when Meas gathered her crew before the rump of Tide Child. It was Menday, when traditionally the people of the Archipelago rested from work, although that rest generally took the form of fixing ropes, darning clothes, checking hulls and spines for damage.

  Joron was faintly surprised to find that it was Menday – he had lost track of the days and never regained it – and that familiar cycle: Madenday, Toilday, Mareday, Clensday, Hagsday, Menday, had been denied him ever since. He had felt that to ask such a simple question as “What day is it?” would have been to admit just how lost he had become since his condemnation. It had not occurred to him, until this moment, how that lack of order had subtly affected him in other ways. Knowing what day it was again felt like being bound to the sea a little more, as if the deck beneath his feet took on a little more solidity, as if the bones of Tide Child somehow pulled themselves a little more watertight, and his position on the chart of his life became a little clearer. He knew what would come next today, knew it from every fleet story he had heard on his father’s knee – Meas would read the Bernlaw.

  And every Menday, boy, the shipwife reads the Bernlaw so the crew will know their duty. And you will listen and you will obey and one day you may be oarturner or purseholder. Imagine that! The boy I raised on the rump of a fleet ship, ey? Corpselights dancing for joy above your head as you sing and work.

  The feel of his father’s hand on his head, ruffling his hair.

  Strong fingers, Warm hands.

  There were seventy-two crew assembled. None slept when the Bernlaw was read and even the ship’s pumps were left unattended. There were three missing, two lying in the hagbower below the underdeck where wounds taken in fights on board slowly festered and they could die out of sight, and the gullaime, which still refused to leave its cabin. Them aside, all stood before Meas. Not enough, not really, not a big enough crew for a ship this size; a hundred and fifty was the minimum complement, one hundred and thirty sailors and twenty soldiers. Two hundred to really run the ship. Joron had never thought about it before, how woeful his ship was, how little he had in common with the actual fleet of the Hundred Isles. Maybe he had been the shipwife the ship deserved, but now Tide Child had Meas Gilbryn, Lucky Meas, the witch of Keelhulme Sounding. Fierce, gifted, storied Lucky Meas.

  What had she done to deserve this?

  What had any of them done? Himself apart, he did not know.

  He should have known.

  “Stand upon the slate, my children.” All here but him were of the fleet, and it was as if the ritual of the words was burned into them. Their reaction, the turning to the rump and the woman stood upon it, was involuntary and inescapable. Not one could resist the draw of it, even those who had their own power. Barlay, Cwell and Kanvey were drawn to her. Oh, with distrustful, calculating eyes, and maybe she saw the same calculating gleam in him when she talked, but still they listened, as if they could do nothing else.

  She read the Bernlaw in a harsh staccato voice, the list of rules that must be obeyed, and at the end of every line she paused and barked out, “To go against this is punishable by death.” And this was met with a solemn nod of the head by every woman and man among them. Even though those deaths were already certain.

  “Shall keep themselves in good health. To go against this is punishable by death.”

  And it did not matter.

  “Shall obey those the Bern put above them. To go against this is punishable by death.”

  And none found humour.

  “Shall pay true ho
nour to the Maiden, Mother and Hag. To go against this is punishable by death.”

  And none made light.

  “And woman may lay with woman and man may lay with man, but woman may not lay with man and risk a child aboard ship. To go against this is punishable by death.”

  In that death was always the intended destination for this crew and this ship.

  Only at the very end did Meas’s voice waver. At the end of the Bernlaw the last words were always the same: “May the Maiden play no tricks, may the Mother hold us close and may the Hag look away. So says the Bernlaw. So say us all.” And the crew repeated the words back.

  But aboard Tide Child the words were changed to reflect their condemnation, and though Meas read loudly, “May the Maiden play no tricks,” her voice quietened at, “may the Mother hold us close,” and did she almost falter at the last? Did something almost crack in her voice as she read the words unique to those condemned to a black ship? “And may the Hag welcome and forgive us.”

  Did it?

  He was sure it did, just a little. And if he noticed he knew every other aboard the ship would have too. But the crack was papered over quickly; the weakness did not last, and when she read the final words, “So says the Bernlaw. So say us all!” she was as strong and fierce as ever, glaring at them as they returned the words to her. Then she walked from the rump commanding the first watch to break their fast below and the second to take their places on the ropes and the spines and the deck.

  “Clean my slate! For I’ll not have it run with filth!” she shouted. “Barlay, what stand you there for?” she bellowed at the huge woman. “Can you not see the oarturner is practically asleep on his feet? Take your place and steer us straight.” Barlay nodded and made for the rump. Meas turned as she passed Joron. “Deckkeeper, to my cabin, and I will speak with you of where we go and what is expected. Bring me the masters of your bowteams – I’ll know the bowsells afore we fight.” She stopped, feeling his hesitation. “You do have bowsells assigned?” He did not, had never given such a thing as much as a thought, but already he felt Meas’s wrath and knew her well enough to not chance an answer she did not want to hear. At the same time he did not wish to tell a lie she would easily see through.