The Bone Ships

by R J Barker

  “But if you sink in the harbour—”

  “That would be expensive for you also.” The keeper looked alarmed, but also lost in the face of Meas’s self-assurance. “What I suggest is that you have a land cradle made ready for us.” She pointed past his boat at the distant shore, past the ships at their staystones to where the huge ship cranes could just be made out through the mist. “I see an empty cradle. I think we can make it if I keep the pumps running.” The harbour keeper turned from her and had a swift whispered conversation with two ostentatious dandily and scantily dressed Kept who accompanied him. Then he turned back.

  “Very well. We will send out pilot boats to bring you in. Your crew will not leave the ship. We will have soldiers meet you and, when we are ready, will have your crew moved to a hulk outside the harbour until you leave. If you try to deviate from the path the pilot boats take you on then the gallowbows will sink you no matter the loss. Do you understand?”

  “Perfectly,” she said. “And I would expect nothing less.” She turned away from the man as if he had never been, and as she walked past Joron he heard her whisper to herself. “Jumped-up purseholder – never even seen the storms.”

  Tide Child’s crew were standing around like lost children. Meas snapped, “Get ropes, ready the ship for towing and double the speed on those pumps. I’ve been embarrassed enough; I won’t have this ship sink in the harbour under me.” Then there was at least a pretence of order aboard the ship. Women and men ran around, stowing spars and shot, getting ropes tied on to the ship’s beak ready for the pilot boats. When the boats arrived there was no communication with Tide Child; the ropes from the black ship were attached in silence. Meas had already changed the teams on the pumps and told those going off duty to get some rest. Then she called for Joron to join her on the rump of the ship.

  “Twiner, we pass through the harbour now, you and I. We will stand here, and we will say nothing. We will look at no one and we will feel no shame at the colour and state of our ship. Do you understand?”

  “I—”

  “You need only say, ‘Yes, Shipwife.’”

  He swallowed, nodded.

  “Yes, Shipwife.”

  “Good.”

  And they stood, feeling the strange motion of the ship moving, seemingly of his own volition as the pilot boats towed him through the harbour. All about them rose the boneships of the Hundred Isles fleet, white and whole and shining. Each one named and loved by his crew, polished until he shone in the dipping light of Skearith’s Eye, corpselights dancing merrily above them to show that, unlike Tide Child, these ships lived. As a young man Joron had enjoyed sitting with his father, watching the ships come in – enjoyed the drama of it and the joy. The way a ship would come back, flying flags of victory or, even better, towing a prize and with his crew looking forward to the coin they knew it would bring. And his favourite moment had been when the crews of the ships in the harbour would line the rails and spars of their own ships and cheer the new arrival into the harbour.

  But there was to be no cheering in for Tide Child.

  The women and men of the Hundred Isles lined the rails and spars of their ships, right enough, and above them glowing corpselights gently spun around the spars, but as Tide Child drew near they turned away. Turned their back on the black ship. Joron knew it was no honour to be on the crew of a ship of the dead, but he had never seen this before, never even heard of such a mass rejection of a fleet ship. But gradually, as each crew turned away from them, he realised it was not his shame they refused to look upon, nor the sorry state of the ship – it was Meas they repudiated.

  She showed no emotion, not even when they passed the ship that had been hers, the five-ribber Arakeesian Dread, and the crew that had once served her turned away. Still she stared forward, as if Tide Child was the only ship in the harbour and the only thing that interested her. But as they rounded Arakeesian Dread he saw the first crack in her armour.

  Another five-ribber, newer, much smaller, had been hidden behind the Dread. Joron did not know this ship, had not heard of him before. Across his beak was the name Hag’s Hunter, and above him floated seven corpselights, one shy of a ship’s full complement and all the blue of firstlight – to show the ship undamaged. Blood still stained the ship from sacrifices, lines of bright red down pristine white sides. He was not a truly new ship – could not be, must have been taken from the Gaunt Islanders. But it was not the ship that made Meas clench her hands, fight back a look of such sudden and complete fury that Joron took a step away from her. It was the woman on the rail, the shipwife of Hag’s Hunter. Only she, among the thousands of women and men on the many ships in the harbour, did not turn away. Instead she watched Tide Child as he was gently towed past. Like Meas she wore the two-tailed hat, but where Meas looked fit to kill, she watched with something akin to amusement and never took her eyes from Tide Child’s shipwife.

  So, thought Joron, who are you, ey? And what do you hold over Lucky Meas? But there was no clue from Meas. She did not look again at the shipwife of Hag’s Hunter and she did not look at Joron, only stared ahead at the town of Bernshulme as it began to appear from the mist.

  To take his mind from the rows of backs on each ship Joron concentrated on Bernshulme too. It was a town of curves. A single curving path wound up the steep side of the mountain and along the path were the spiral bothies, the houses of the Bern and the buildings of Bernshulme’s government and fleet. Small ones at the bottom and around the old harbour, little more than the height of a tall woman standing on another’s shoulders, each the shape of half an eggshell, and growing larger and larger as they climbed the hill until it reached the Spiral Bothies. These were enormous beehives of flat stones placed carefully and artfully so that each stone locked together and held up the building no matter what the storms might throw at them.

  As the ship approached the cranes, Joron began to pick out colours around the bases of the bothies, where women and men had thrown bright paint for luck or blessings. At the very top of Bernshulme, about a third of the way up the hill, was the greatest bothy of them all, the Grand Bothy, the palace of Thirteenbern Gilbryn, its stone alternating between dark and light so twin spirals ran right the way up it, ten, eleven, maybe twelve times the height of a tall man. And this was not a simple beehive shape; it was more like the upturned hull of a ship, the top floors a latticework of stone and plates of cured and bleached clear gion. Joron had heard it also went back into the mountain, hiding multiple floors and rooms within the rock, though a fisher boy would never gain entry to such a place.

  On the lower floors judgements were handed out and ceremonies took place; higher were the small rooms where the women of the isles went to bear their children. Any woman strong enough to live through childbirth and who had children unmarred by the Hag’s curse lost their first child to the ships, though they would join the Bern and rise in power for it.

  Joron’s mother had died birthing him in those rooms, and his father had taken his tiny bloodied body from the bothy. Miserable at the loss of his wife, but glad his son would live. Weak stock for weak stock, the hagpriests would say of those found wanting, and they would not take him for the boneships, his soul to inhabit the living structure and glow above it as a corpselight.

  It was not lost on Joron that the Thirteenbern’s firstborn, a child who should have gone to the ships, had somehow survived to attend the spiral bothies and be trained as fleet. He did not believe all the talk of miracles around Lucky Meas Gilbryn’s survival. The Gilbryns were an old Bern family and those raised among the Berncast in the wharves and sea caves knew the truth. Nothing was fair in the Hundred Isles. Only strength was respected, and few were stronger than the old Bern families.

  Tide Child slowed and Joron glanced at Meas. He followed her gaze until he found himself looking at the ochre block on the harbour side that commanded her attention. Three steps that went nowhere, built from the white limestone only found in the sea stacks along Skearith’s Spine that were as likely
to wreck the ships of those coming to quarry them as give up stone. But the stone was white no longer; it had been stained ochre by the blood of the firstborn, sacrificed to float as light above the boneships.

  “Get Tide Child ready for the cradle,” said Meas quietly. “I want everything that can come loose tied down and then tell the crew to put on their shackles. I’ll give no seaguard an excuse to wet their spear on my crew.” Joron nodded and set to work, though there was little to do. Everything not essential had been thrown overboard on the journey to lighten the ship and keep him afloat. And the women and men of the crew were so tired they had no energy to argue with Joron when he ordered they be shackled like gullaime leaving the lamyards; they simply put out their hands to be cuffed by their fellows, Barlay and Cwell. Then the two women came to Joron, who secured them in turn, Barlay resigned to the fact of her bondage and Cwell staring at him as he tightened the hasps around her wrists, mocking him without ever speaking. By the time Tide Child came to rest in the cradle, the shore workers sweating and grunting as they took up the slack in the ropes and lifted Tide Child just out of the water, the entire crew was shackled.

  Seaguard surrounded the ship, stone-tipped spears held aloft and armour of silver-painted leather shining. Behind them the women of the lamyards waited to take the gullaime. Meas climbed down the side of the ship and went to the seaguard commander and nodded at something he said. The crew were formally given into the care of the seaguard, gangplanks were then placed against the side of Tide Child, and the commander led his troops on to the ship. The crew, meek as children, marched off the ship and along the harbour front watched by townspeople who jeered and spat at the condemned.

  “Come,” said Meas. “Even dead officers get their own quarters in Bernshulme, though given where the seaguard commander told me they’re located, I dread to think what state they’re in.”

  They were billeted in Fishmarket. No place in Bernshulme stank like Fishmarket. The beehive-shaped bothies that surrounded market square had been tunnelled through to allow access in and out of the market squares. Bit by bit a mixture of neglect and utility had turned these tunnels into passages, so each bothy was cut in half. The work had been done poorly. The roofs regularly collapsed, and the stone – always valuable – rather than being used to rebuild the bothies was simply spirited away and the roofs patched with varisk and gion leaves, badly cured ones, as was proved by the leak above Joron’s bed. It was not a large leak, but large enough to leave the bed he slept on – dreaming of high seas and engulfing waves – as damp as any bed aboard ship.

  But he was tired, and neither the wind creeping in through the holes, nor the overpowering stink of rotting fish from the market, nor Meas’s obvious contempt was enough to stop him sinking straight into sleep in the dark room atop the half-bothy in Fishmarket.

  But he did not sleep for long.

  “Twiner.” A whispered word, heard from a long way off in the pitch darkness of the room. “Joron Twiner.” Harsher words. Was he drunk again? Was that why he felt so cold, so shivery? “Wake, Deckkeeper.” Then he was awake. Eyes wide though there was no light to fill them. He felt her near him, the movement of air as she moved.

  “Meas?”

  “Ey, and it is ‘Shipwife’ to you, on land or sea. Cover your eyes.” He did, heard the spark of flint on metal and and then gradually uncovered his eyes to the warm glow of the wanelight she held in her hands.

  “What is—”

  She covered his mouth with her free hand.

  “Shh.” She glanced at the flimsy door. “Someone comes – more than one – and from the sound they are armed.” It felt as if icy seawater ran down his back. “Pick up your curnow.” She took her hand from his mouth and pulled one of the small crossbows from its cord on her coat. “Take this. Do not loose unless I do.”

  “Have they come for me?” he said.

  She smiled, a slit in her face.

  “Possibly, Twiner, but I have many enemies too.” The smile widened. “More than you, I imagine.” And he felt foolish. “Now listen, Twiner. Stand ready by me, hold your sword like you know what it is for, right?” He nodded, listening to the faint sound of feet making their way up the steps of the bothy from below. “I reckon you have time to put on some trousers too, if you hurry.” He nodded, struggling into damp clothes, the comfortable feel of old fishskin around his legs, the illusion the cured material would give some protection.

  By the time he was dressed and standing ready behind Meas, the sounds moving up the bothy’s tight staircase were louder. “You out there,” shouted Meas, “if you come to rob us then know we are awake and we are armed before you come through that door.”

  There was only silence.

  Then.

  “We do not come to rob you,” came a woman’s voice, “and for the Hag’s sake, Shipwife Meas, keep your voice down.” Meas lowered her sword, its tip coming to rest pointing at the floor as if disappointed to be denied action.

  “So, she cannot leave me alone, even here.” He heard her say those words and was sure he was not meant to; they were little more than a sadness breathed out. “Put up your weapons, Joron Twiner, and accompany me. If I am to die tonight then you are the nearest I have to a friend just now.”

  “So you will take me to die with you?” he said. He had seen little that made him believe they had any sort of friendship, but this seemed little thanks for it.

  “They would only kill you here otherwise.” She sheathed her sword, raised her voice. “Enter then, and take me where you will.” The door opened to reveal two of the Grand Bothy’s guard, a man and a woman, decked out in their finery: glittering fishskin and feathers, chestplates of shining metal – a fortune’s worth just there – and helmets of hard birdleather sculpted to look like vicious sea creatures.

  “You are to come with us, Meas Gilbryn,” said the man. They were armed only with the daggers at their sides.

  “Very well,” she said, straightening up. “Come, Twiner. We will let these fellows escort us and keep us safe from bandits.”

  “Nothing was said about bringing him.” The man pointed at Joron.

  “Were you told not to bring him?” said Meas.

  “No, but—”

  “He is my deckkeeper, and a shipwife goes nowhere without a deckkeeper.” She took a step towards the guards. “Of course, you are not fleet, so you may well not know such things.” If the man recognised this as the insult it was he did not show it. “But no doubt the person who sent you did and would have said were I not to bring my deckkeeper.” The man looked over his shoulder at the woman behind him, who shrugged.

  “Very well,” he said. “Bring him if you must.”

  They followed the two soldiers down the tightly winding stone stairs. The walls touched his shoulders and, to Joron, used to wide seas and the wind in his hair, there was something of the coffin about these houses of the stonebound. A ship, even his father’s small fishing boat, was always moving, creaking, speaking, breathing. Not these houses, and he was glad to get out on to the narrow, too hot, streets. At first they had swayed and moved beneath him as his legs became used to land once more, but now the ground felt too solid and still. Strange, unnatural.

  The guards picked up the spears they had left with two more of their number at the door and then the four marched Meas and Joron through the streets. The few Berncast, scurrying and suspicious, out in Fishmarket this late vanished before the soldiers. Meas did not seem worried by what was happening, at least not yet. Even though she had said they might be going to their deaths, she did not act like it. So Joron, in the way learned from his father, borrowed no trouble from a good wind.

  Strange though, that Meas acted almost like she had expected this to happen, as if it were normal.

  They threaded their way out of Fishmarket and through Narrowtown along Hoppity Lane, where the one-legged made shoes and boots, then joined the Serpent Road, which led up through Bernshulme, eventually, to the spiral bothies. It was only when they turned
off the Serpent Road and down towards Fishdock that Meas changed. Her easy, predatory lope tightened a little, became more of a bird-like strut. Her head turned like a kivelly looking for a predator, and she moved a little nearer to him. Then in that almost-but-not-quite-speaking voice:

  “Keep your hand near your curnow.”

  “What?”

  She shot him a look of irritation as he made no attempt to keep his own voice down, but the guards paid no attention to him and she whispered back:

  “I thought they came from my mother. It is not unusual for her to demand my presence, though I thought it finished once she condemned me.”

  “But?” This time he whispered.

  “We do not head towards the spiral bothies, so I do not know where we go.”

  “I wish you had not told me.”

  “If wishes were fish then the starving would bloat,” said Meas.

  They walked further into Fishdock. Newer than the rest of Bernshulme, in Fishdock the buildings were tall and square, stone for two levels and then cured gion and varisk above. Many of them rose five or six storeys and they teemed with people: single men with weakblood children, the deformed, the imperfect, those too debilitated by keyshan’s rot to continue working the shipyards and the docks. Here also was the engine that powered the Hundred Isles, providing them with those strong enough to be sailors and soldiers, servants and workers, all eager for a way out of the poverty and misery of the tenements. Always more women than men here too, as male children were often given up to the sea. The only hope most had was for a fertile girlchild. If she was strong enough to make it through childbirth and lucky enough to have perfect children she may even become one of the Bern. Some said Meas Gilbryn had been raised in these houses. Joron doubted it. These were the places of the Berncast, where Joron had grown up, and few ever rose from here.