The Bone Ships

by R J Barker

  The guards stopped under a flaming torch outside one of the many tenements.

  “Go up,” said the guard. Joron looked at the man, looking for some hint that he would walk out of the door again, but the guard remained stone-faced. Meas ignored him and led Joron through the door, straight up a tight staircase. Again that feeling of claustrophobia. It took him a moment to realise the tenement was not like the one he had known. There was no smell of damp, and the constant noise of the people who lived in such buildings, sometimes as many as six or seven people to a room, was absent. And when they climbed from the stone storeys to the varisk and gion levels he noticed a quality to the construction work generally lacking in Fishdock. The variskwork shone as if polished; gion stalks had been intricately scrimshawed with scenes of the sea.

  “This is not a tenement,” said Joron.

  “No,” said Meas, “it is not.” She sounded tired. At the top of the stairs there was an intricately carved door showing Skearith the Stormbird being killed by Hassith the spear thrower, the man who had brought misery to the world. Joron expected Meas to knock but she did no such thing, instead giving the handle of the door a vicious twist and walking straight in. The room that met them was panelled with starched gion leaves that had been left to mature to a very dark brown, mottled with streaks of deep red. They were also carved with scenes of the founding of the Archipelago. Here Cyulverd and Myulverd lay down to sleep until the sea smashed them and they became the islands. There Skearith sang the storms into being to protect her eggs. On another wall her spirit gave the gift of the gullaime to the Mother after banishing the Hag and the Maiden to the sea and the air. Usually, Joron would have been fascinated by such beauty, but instead he was frozen in place. Held still by the scene before him.

  A desk and four chairs. A man.

  There is a feeling to being tricked, and it is like no other. Especially when that trick is an unpleasant trick and it is played on you by one you trust. Joron realised, when that feeling overcame him – a heaviness in his stomach, a catch in his throat and an anger he had to bite back that showed only in the tightening of his hands into fists – that somewhere, deep within, he had, at some point, decided to trust Meas. Though not to like her, never that. But at some point he must have started to think that her stern demeanour counted for something. That she would be hard but fair.

  No longer.

  Oh no, no longer.

  Behind the desk sat Kept Indyl Karrad, one of the most powerful men in the Hundred Isles. Beautiful, as was the way of the Kept, his face painted and burnished in silvers and bronzes along the line of his cheek. His skin clean shaven but for the hair that grew under his chin, which had been twisted into a long plait woven with colourful reeds. He wore little more than straps over his torso, the better to show off the oiled and finely sculpted muscles of his chest and arms. Under the desk Joron knew he wore tight trousers which showed off the muscles of his legs and were covered in embroidery to exaggerate the groin and advertise his fertility. Below that, long boots. Joron remembered those boots. Remembered being led out of the Berncourt, condemned, head bowed in shame he should not have felt, and noting that Indyl Karrad did not wear his clothes merely to advertise his station but also out of vanity as the boots were subtly heeled to give him a little extra height.

  Power and vanity are a bad combination, lad – the voice of his father. He could not bear to hear it, not here, not in front of this man, though there was possibly no place he was more likely to hear it than in the presence of Kept Indyl Karrad.

  Once there had been a young man called Rion, shipwife on a boneship, who had offered Joron five iron pieces in compensation for grinding Joron’s father into mush against the hull of his warship. It is a good price, fisher boy – more than any fisher is worth.

  Joron had stood speechless, furious that this man – barely older than he was himself – could take all his father was and meant, could break him simply because he was too drunk and proud to give way and follow harbour rules. Then, with his blood still darkening the water, to value his father’s life as worth no more than a few bits of coin. It was more than Joron could stand, and he had challenged Rion to a duel. He fully expected to die, but at that moment he had not wanted to live either, and what better way to join his father at the Hag’s fire than to die trying to avenge him? But Rion, in either overconfidence or stupidity, had robbed him of his chance to be reunited. He had spent the day of the duel drinking with his friends and when it came to the moment, Joron, with what even he knew was a lucky blow, had killed the man with a single thrust.

  And that should have been it. Justice is swift and harsh in the Hundred Isles – “A life for a life is a fair price.” But Rion’s father, the man he stood before now, was powerful. So Joron found himself called a murderer, accused of drugging the boy and called before the court of the Bern. Not that he had cared – he was ready to be sentenced, to go into the sea with his veins open and wait for the Hag to claim him – but Indyl Karrad must have seen that Joron wished for death. Joron could still see the moment the man had understood that the man who had killed his son did not fear for death – the cruel smile that crossed his face as he requested the Bern send Joron to the black ship, to a place where he was neither dead nor alive. Caught in limbo, snared by grief.

  “Karrad,” said Meas. She almost spat the name.

  “Meas.” He was little more welcoming. “You bring the murderer of my son to me?” He had a nightroom voice, warm and soothing despite the venom in it. Joron remembered that voice – sweet and thick as gion syrup – from the court of the Bern as it argued for him to be cast to away to a ship of the dead. “Send the flotsam away, Meas” – Karrad nodded at Joron – “and then I must speak with you.”

  “He is my deckkeeper, Karrad, and I bring him so what is said by you is witnessed by another officer of the fleet.”

  “Deckkeeper,” said Karrad quietly to himself, tapping a quill on the desk in front of him. “Well, how you have risen, eh, Joron Twiner.” His eyes flicked up to Joron’s and then back to his desk. “You are a joke which seems to have backfired on me somewhat?” He shook his head and laughed quietly to himself. “Still, I imagine a few days under Meas’s command will see you so far out of your depth you drown and the Hag will take you. I shall look forward to hearing of this flotsam becoming jetsam.”

  Joron was about to speak but Meas stepped forward, physically cutting him off from Karrad.

  “I thought I was rid of you when they sent me to the black ships,” she said. “I thought we were done. What use am I to you now?”

  “What you did was stupid,” said Karrad. Joron almost held his breath. What was it she had done? He waited for Karrad to say, but he was to be disappointed. “You make a mistake though, if you think foolishness frees you from your obligations, Meas. If anything, a black ship gives you free rein in a way a fleet ship never could.”

  “In what way?”

  “You are outside the order of command, expected to cruise, looking for trouble. You are able, nay, required, to take orders that may not come through the usual channels, and though I am fleetwife, my lack of service on a ship gives me less access than I would like to our ships. But a black ship? You I can have.” Did he leer? “And you can go to places I could never send a fleet ship.”

  “So, you intend to use me as a glorified messenger, is that it?” Meas shook her head. “I think we have spoken enough, Karrad. I think will take my chances with fleet orders.”

  “Well,” said Karrad, “that is up to you, but how well has that gone, eh, Meas?” Before she could reply he stood. “And how will you get that old ship fixed, eh? Fleet orders for you will be to rot in Bernshulme while they break up your ship. Maybe a two-ribber will no longer hold the corpselights in its bones and take the black, if you are lucky.” He left a silence, interrupted only by the chirping of the night insects. “Besides,” he said more quietly, “that is not what I want you for. To have you delivering letters to spies is beneath you, and I know
it.” Was there a warmth there? Something beneath the timbre of his voice? “And a black ship is hardly unlikely to draw no attention, is it? No. I have something much more in keeping with your talents in mind. I know you, Meas.” He came around the desk to stand nearer to her and Joron felt like an interloper, a voyeur watching an intensely private moment. “I know what you want,” he whispered. “I know what you will enjoy.”

  Meas seemed to collapse in on herself. It was not overt, only a collection of minute changes in posture, as if all the cockiness and surety fled from her and left her stranded, out of her element.

  “I am sick of this, Indyl.”

  “Have you forgotten the dream, Meas?”

  “That is all it is to you.”

  “It can be so much more.”

  “I am not sure I believe anything you say.”

  “You believed in the dream at Harrit Bay, Meas.”

  “And look what it has got me.” She held out her hands. Inside, Joron was jumping from foot to foot. What was all this about? “Where were you, Indyl? Where were you when they shamed me and stripped me? You did not come. Your word would have saved me.”

  “I could not have saved you. Everything I . . .” Karrad took a deep breath. Picked up a small ornament from the edge of his desk and then put it down again. “Everything we have worked for would have been lost. They would have condemned us both.”

  Meas raised a hand, almost touched his cheek, and it felt to Joron as if the air were harder to breathe, or maybe it was that he became a ghost to these two people. That to them he no longer existed.

  “Indyl,” she said, “when I hear you speak” – that voice so soft – “I understand your actions.” Karrad smiled. Then something changed in his eyes – a warmth entered them. Then Meas’s hand came away from his cheek. “I think you even believe what you say when you say it.” She shook her head; the gentle sound of hair moving over leather. “But words mean nothing without action.”

  “You were too overt, Meas.” He tried to grab her wrist, but she was too quick for him. He took a step back, putting space between them. “The rule of the Bern cannot be fought head on, Meas. It is not the way.”

  And Joron did not want to know what they spoke of. He wished he was not here, that she had not brought him. He went cold from foot to fingertip.

  Treason.

  They talked of treason. Meas Gilbryn, the greatest shipwife of them all, was a traitor. He was about to say something, to ask to leave, when she turned to him.

  “This is not what you think, Twiner,” she said. “This is Hundred Isles politics, so don’t get ideas about running to the Grand Bothy with tall tales and expecting to win your life back. You will not know who to speak to, and you are as likely to get a knife in the gut as you are to be rewarded. And remember who owns you – remember that – and if you think you have any honour, look to that before you act.”

  “Honour.” Karrad laughed. “Sooner expect a kivelly to fight a sankrey than to find honour in one such as him.”

  Again the silence, hot and suffocating, filled with the trilling of insects.

  “He does for me, Indyl,” she said. “For now.”

  “I heard he ran your ship into a reef.”

  “I did that,” she said, and it shocked Joron that she did not hesitate, did not dissemble or blame him as she had done on Tide Child. “I was shipwife. I was responsible.”

  “Not the way I heard it.”

  “It is the way it happened.” She shrugged. “I suppose I should not be surprised to know you have spies on my ship.”

  “I have spies everywhere. He’ll be the death of you, Meas,” said Karrad with a nod towards Joron. Then he returned to his place behind his desk. “But your command is your choice. Now, do you wish to hear what I have to say or not?”

  “Speak,” she said. “I will listen, as will Twiner. And we will sit, not stand like we owe you some allegiance or meet you in honour.”

  Karrad shrugged. “By all means take the weight from your feet. Twiner’s feet are particularly filthy and you do me a favour to remove them from my floor.”

  Everything that was Joron tensed, but he showed none of it. For in that moment of Meas taking the blame for Tide Child’s grounding the ebbing tide of loyalty he had been feeling towards her rose once more. He did not know why, or understand it; maybe it was that she was the nearest he had to a safe port in this room and that was all. But it did not make it any less true or real in the moment.

  Joron sat opposite the man who had made sure he was condemned to a ship of the dead, and, in so doing, he heard of the miracle that would make him part of a legend.

  Thirteenbern called out,

  Give the child to the ships!

  And the sea came to her rescue

  As word left the Bern’s cruel lips.

  Anon., “The Song of Lucky Meas”

  “There is an arakeesian coming,” said Karrad.

  It was as if all the air was stolen from the stuffy little room. Oh, the wanelights still burned and they could still breathe, but for a moment Joron was light-headed. An arakeesian? A sea dragon? Their bones were the building blocks of fleets, but no keyshans had been seen for over three generations.

  “Is this a joke?” said Meas. Though Joron could tell she felt it too, the excitement, the wonder, the awe at even the possibility of it.

  “No,” said Karrad. “I wish it was.”

  “Why have I heard nothing?” she said.

  “A number of reasons, Meas,” he began. “Chiefly because you are now shipwife of a black ship and no one wants to speak to you.” They locked eyes and Karrad was first to look away. “But there are other reasons. My spy network is still the best – I get the news first. At the moment all the people who know of this beast are in this room.”

  “How sure of this are you?”

  “As sure as I can be.”

  “What of your spy?

  “She had an accident.”

  “A poor reward.”

  “Some secrets are too precious to risk on one life, Meas. My spy rests comfortably by the Hag’s fire and her children are not too Berncast – no missing limbs or such, only a few marks on their skin. They will find themselves invited to attend the schools of the spiral bothies. She would think it a good trade.”

  “Did you ask her?” said Meas. “A military school makes a poor mother, as I well know.”

  “You always have had a mouth on you, Meas.” He saw the true Karrad then – vicious, unpleasant, cruel – but it was gone as quickly as smoke in a storm. “Because we know of the arakeesian first, we can get to it first. Before the Gaunt Islanders or the Hundred Islanders.”

  “What?” The word escaped Joron’s lips involuntarily.

  “Quiet, Joron,” said Meas, but he could not have said any more if had he wanted to. He was out of his depth and drowning here. Who were these people? What he thought Meas was changed and twisted in front of him. First he had met the loyal and respected shipwife, then had come the political plotter, and now, despite what they had said to him, it seemed she really was an outright traitor. But if she was not loyal to the Hundred Isles, who did she fight for?

  Why did she fight?

  What else was there?

  “How sure are you of this keyshan, Indyl? You know how deckchilder talk.”

  “Absolutely sure.” He opened a drawer in his chest and took out a rolled chart, spreading it across the desk. “In the old days they called the first arakeesian of the season the wakewyrm, so I have named it that.”

  “You think there will be more?” said Joron. Karrad looked up at him, becoming utterly still for a moment before answering.

  “I hope not.”

  This made no sense. More arakeesians meant more ships, and the fleet sore needed them.

  “It has been spotted here” – Karrad pointed at the map – “coming in near Soris Isle in the far south where it is too cold for anyone to live.”

  “This is how no one knows?”

 
“Aye,” he said. “And it is small, for an arakeesian, I am told, but it is still many magnitudes bigger than anything else in the sea.”

  “And you need us for this why?” said Meas.

  “There are old charts in the Grand Bothy, long forgotten. I have dug many out and hidden them, but I cannot be sure I got them all.” Karrad looked worried. “The arakeesians always followed the same routes, which is what made them easy to hunt, though they were hard to kill, of course.”

  “Yes, yes, that is why the black ships were instituted,” said Meas. “This is not news.”

  “Well, exactly,” said Karrad. “Though when you read the old accounts, most of the killing was done from towers overlooking narrow straits. The black ships were mainly a punishment.” He gave her a small, unpleasant smile. “Now, follow the red line on the map. That is the course the keyshan should take, mostly past deserted isles – there are few places it will be seen. They always keep to the deep channels.”

  “So,” said Joron, “you want us to go back to what the black ships were intended for and hunt you an arakeesian?”

  Karrad stared at him as if he were a fool.

  “Of course not,” he said. “I want you to keep it alive.”

  “Alive? But we need its bones.” He stared at Karrad then added, “For our ships,” because the man did not seem to understand this most basic need of the Hundred Isles. “And we need ships to fight the Gaunt Islanders. They are massing in the south – everyone knows this. They will attack soon.”