Shadowless: Book 1 of the Ilmaen Quartet

by Helen Bell

  After an urgent conversation with the captain, the boatswain worked his way back and they all four put their heads together. Vel, Kerin noticed, looked as exhausted as he felt.

  ‘Captain reckons it’s the strengthening ring,’ yelled the boatswain, gesturing with his hands to demonstrate what he meant. ‘A band of metal, eyes where each end of the band overlaps, and a rivet through the eyes. Rivet’s worked loose, that’s what’s catching. We need someone up there to free the sail, but also to see if they can sort the rivet out to stop it catching again, at least till the storm’s over.’ He turned and selected a marlinspike from its fixing nearby and handed it to Vel. ‘You’re mast monkey, boy. And I want a man either side to hold that yard and canvas steady as they can, or the wind’s liable to flip the yard and knock the mast monkey off. Get to it… and be careful.’

  The slippery wetness of the rigging made it a slow climb, and the yard creaked and swung threateningly. Kerin took the same starboard rigging Vel was climbing, until he could grasp the yard itself and haul it aside, out of Vel’s way. On the port rigging, the other crewman climbed level and braced the far end of the yard. Thankfully it had jammed close enough to where the rigging joined the mast that Vel didn’t actually need to be on the mast or the yard to reach it. Eventually he made it to the nearest point, leant out from the rigging and yanked at the canvas; folds came free, and more crew below hauled in that section. Kerin could just see the rivet that had been snagging the sail; it looked to have almost worked its way out. Unless it was removed or knocked in, it would only catch again.

  Vel used the pointed end of the marlinspike to try and tease the rivet free, but it was not going to come. Careful not to drop it, he reversed the spike and used the wider end as a hammer. When he was satisfied, he raised his arm; Kerin and the other crewman carefully released the yard and two men below them hauled it in again. To Kerin’s relief the yard began to move, away from where he and the others clung to the rigging. None too soon: up here above the towering waves he could see the coastline by the lightning flashes. They had been driven within half a mile of it. He moved to the outside of the rigging to give Vel room to come down, and started his own slippery descent.

  The ship suddenly started to turn sideways on to the waves and wind. The loose sail billowed and suddenly tightened as it filled and the ship heeled crazily, dropping the starboard side perilously close to the waves. In the rigging they were suddenly flung at an angle of forty-five degrees. Kerin hung on and tried to wind his feet further into the mesh of the rigging, but Vel was thrown just where Kerin’s feet were scrabbling for a hold, and knocked them away. There was an audible crack, the yard hitting something, and Kerin winced despite his own struggle for safety; Vel had been within reach of the yard. Something fell silently past him then; the other crewman, he realized. Vel was still on the rigging, clinging to what for him was now a mesh floor, looking down at the fermenting sea only fifteen feet away.

  Kerin’s hands had binding on them still, or he would have gone overboard as fast as the other man. Even so, as he struggled to swing his feet back up into the rigging, he could feel the wet rope working its way inexorably out of his grip.

  Vel was on the right side of the rigging for his own safety, but slightly below Kerin now, trying to see where the crewman had fallen. There was not four feet between them.

  ‘Vel!’ Kerin almost screamed in panic. ‘I can't hold on!’

  Still aghast at the other crewman's fate, Vel registered the grimace on Kerin's face and started working his way across, but Kerin could not measure his progress; he had to strain to keep his grip. His entire soaking weight had slid down past his knuckles, past the binding, and on to his fingertips. His arms, exhausted from hours of work, had barely been able to take him up the rigging just now; on the inside of his wrists, where tendons met flexor muscles, it felt as though someone was trying to rip everything out with red-hot pincers.

  Kerin felt Vel’s hand closing over his but it was too late; he slipped from Vel’s grasp. He fell backwards into the boiling sea, incredibly slowly it seemed; he had time enough to see lightning illuminate a huge wave that struck the traitor sail, splintering the yardarm and the mast and dragging the canvas, rigging and Vel with it.

  oOo

  The sudden yaw of the ship tossed Jesral out of the bunk with a scream of terror. Renia, on the inside and half awake, just managed to hold herself in by jamming an arm and leg against the framework. It was her bad leg; she gave a scream to match Jesral's.

  The ship heeled even further, with a great shudder and a noise that sounded like it was tearing in two. ‘We're sinking!’ Jesral screamed again, clutching the side of the bunk in near hysteria.

  ‘No!’ Renia yelled back, her mind made clear by the pain. She could hear shouting under the noise of the storm and the agonized groaning of timbers. ‘Someone's trying to control her. You feel it?’

  She clambered out of bed and nearly fell on top of Jesral, such was the tilt of the cabin floor. She found the blanket from last night, and wrapped it round both of them as they huddled together. But the floor was wet; in the wild twirling of the shadows thrown by the swinging lamp she could see the hatch was leaking. That scared her. She knew it had originally sealed well, so the stresses on the ship must be enormous. She swallowed her fright.

  ‘I'm going to fix the hatch. Might have known it'd leak. There, the ship's straightening up again. We just hit a wave wrong, that's all.’ She worked her way over to and up the steps, ankle still screaming at her; for lack of anything else, she used a piece of their discarded clothing to bung the leak. Voices shouting out on the helm deck carried through as she forced the hatch open then shut again on the bung. They carried as far as Jesral, still clutching the side of the bunk.

  ‘Man overboard? That's what they said, didn't they? There's a man overboard, Renia!’

  That was indeed what they had been shouting. Just yesterday afternoon, in warm bright sunlight, she had laughed as Captain Harrat and one of the off-watch crew had gone through a pantomime to illustrate this and other nautical Ilmaenese phrases. No sense in denying it, thought Renia, struggling with the hatch that continued to leak and her own feeling of rising panic.

  ‘There's thirty crew on this boat, including our two. There's not much chance it’s one of them.’ That sounded harsh, as if the rest of the crew did not matter. More shouting from above, as she wrestled the hatch open and shut again, informed the captain that three were overboard now. That paid her back for her unfeeling comment. It shortened the odds frighteningly, if their men’s shift was on.

  Renia had a strange feeling as if she were being strangled. She caught at her neck and found the pouch the Eagle hung in had worked its way round to the back and the cord had twisted tight. She remembered what she had said about the Eagle to Kerin, about its power to protect him if he wore it, and began to feel real foreboding.

  Chapter 13 – Taking It In Stages

  When morning came and the storm had abated, charts could be properly checked. The bad weather had driven them farther west and closer to the coast of Ilmaen than they had realized. With their position re-established, Captain Harrat set a heading to the nearest deep-draft port, Wistram. The Dawn Wind limped towards it under the ragged remains of the storm clouds.

  Jesral and Renia called the captain into the cabin as soon as he knocked. They were up and dressed, sitting on their bunk. He looked briefly round at the storm damage and their efforts to repair it. The floor was still wet and the clothes wedged in the hatch dripped slowly. Jesral looked drawn and sallow – ill as well as upset – and Renia knew her own face must show the apprehension she felt.

  He came and stood before them, an expression of misery on his face. The stare Renia gave him was piercing before she shut her eyes and turned her head away.

  ‘Which one?’ she asked. He did not answer, and after a moment she looked back at him in bleak comprehension.

  ‘Not both of them?’ Harrat looked down in assent. At the edge o
f her vision she saw Jesral's face folding in distress. Strangely, Renia found she didn’t even have the urge to cry. ‘They can't both be gone. I'd know,’ she said to herself, once out loud but repeatedly in her head.

  Harrat sat beside them and quietly described what had happened. Renia found she wasn’t listening, her mind filled with that single repetitive thought she couldn’t shake. With an effort she granted the thought permission to exist, if it would only sit quietly in the back of her mind and let her focus on what he was saying. She heard what he said now, she understood it all, but it was just words to her, not real, not fact. Not until he described the smashing of the yard and mast, and how the rigging and sail must surely have trapped and drowned the two men. It still wasn’t belief, but the words reached out and touched something; a thought older and more compelling still.

  ‘What did you say?’ Harrat’s voice broke in, startling her. ‘You said something, but I’m afraid I didn’t hear,’ he added kindly. ‘It sounded like “ropes” to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry. My thoughts were wandering. Please go on.’

  He explained where they were in Ilmaen compared to where they had intended to be, and offered to find some lodgings in port for them, at his expense, for a few days while they got over the shock and decided what to do next. Renia heard herself accept the offer in a dull voice. Her concentration was elsewhere, her ‘thank you’ as much a signal for him to go away as any expression of gratitude.

  She knew she was being rude. She heard Jesral thanking him volubly as he left. And when she cried afterwards Renia hugged her, understanding her grief but feeling none of it.

  They couldn’t be gone. The thought just wouldn’t be dismissed.

  oOo

  The lodgings Harrat found them had thirty-five stairs. Jesral knew, because she had counted them as she laboured up with two of the packs, following the captain who carried the other two, and a crewman who helped Renia. She had counted them again when, on their own at last, she set out to get some food and other basic necessities for them both. She was in no doubt as to their number when she had carried it all back up them again.

  Renia was no help. In shock, Jesral surmised. She just gazed out of the window all the while Jesral unpacked and put things away. It was a pretty view to be sure, over slate roofs and back towards the harbour – but it led the eye to the Dawn Wind’s shattered mast, just showing beyond the rooftops, and that she could do without. Renia was so knocked sideways by the loss that she couldn’t take it in properly, that was it. Not a tear, not a word of anger or grief. It couldn’t be good for her, and it was stopping Jesral from grieving properly herself. God knows what would happen when Renia finally came out of shock.

  Jesral remembered her dad’s death when she was twelve, after some stupid drunken brawl about nothing at all, from a head wound that had seemed superficial but had caused him to die in his sleep. She must have been like this then, she supposed; she only really remembered from the point where they buried him in a shallow grave in a mean little wooden box, and the villagers carrying it had stumbled and dropped it, and she had shouted and screamed at them and at the unfairness of it all because, drinker though he might have been, she’d loved her dad so much. She doubted that she would witness such a performance from Renia, but it did not mean the girl would not feel the same way inside. Jesral wished she knew what to do to help her. It all added to the physical and emotional draining that left Jesral, like Renia, unable to do anything more than pick at a cold supper and fall into bed to a sleep of exhaustion.

  Jesral awoke late next morning feeling no better. Indeed it was beginning to sink in that they were in a far more difficult situation than if they had truly been at the mercy of Harrat's hospitality. Neither of them had really given much thought to what would happen when they got to Ilmaen; Renia had expected to follow Kerin's lead and Jesral had not dared to do anything else, given her precarious position among them. If they just sat here now, however, they might sit until doomsday. They could afford it for a while, thanks to the not inconsiderable amount of money they had hidden away in their packs; but Jesral for one had never been a sitter.

  They might try to find Renia’s relatives, but they had little enough to go on there. Another alternative was to go back – which was not actually an option at all, Jesral decided, shuddering at the thought of ever setting foot on a ship again. Or there was the crazy notion Renia came out with as they broke their fast on what was left of their supper. Came out with it so calmly, too, sitting there on her bed with her good leg folded under her, as though the idea of the two of them trying to get Jastur out of a fortress on their own was obvious. It clearly surprised her that any other option had occurred to Jesral. Dear Lord, she was so calm it was not normal. Still no tears at all, after losing a brother and being stranded in a strange country to compound the misery. Either she was bottling up her grief masterfully, or she was still refusing to recognize her loss. Or Renia was possessed of some evil spirit, and Jesral had followed the wrong instinct in not running all the way back to the Three Villages while she had the opportunity.

  No, she thought, dismissing the last idea. It was not that kind of unhinged calmness. It was more as though Renia was waiting for something to happen, patiently adamant that they must help Jastur – not that she had a single practical suggestion as to how to do it.

  It’s suicide to try it on our own, Jesral had argued.

  Maybe, but we must do it, came the reply.

  Someone else must be trying to help him, Jesral’s next tack.

  We can’t know that – but if there are others then we can help them and increase the chances, was Renia’s retort.

  It’s too far away, you can’t walk or ride hard enough.

  We’ll find a way.

  We’ll draw too much attention, two women travelling alone.

  A shrug only to this last objection.

  It was Jesral who saw an improbable solution slowly take shape in her mind as Renia sat, patient and stoic. Nothing will happen unless I make it happen, she concluded, and jumped up to rummage through her pack. The money they had got for the horses was in Internationals, deliberately so: being notes they weighed less, for a start, and though they might be difficult to use in the smaller towns and villages they would travel through, they moved so fast in a port like Greatharbour that in any transaction you could expect to get Internationals from a dozen different countries of origin. There was no way to trace them back. More of Kerin's forward planning. Shame the fool had not thought to survive himself. No one was going to suspect anyone like herself and Renia of planning a counter-coup, so whatever they did next, local currency would be a lot more useful to them now than some complicated plan to cover their tracks. She ferreted out the few Ilmaenese coins Harrat had exchanged for the last of their Mhrydaineg coinage. She took those and an International, in case she found somewhere that would be prepared to take the note and give her back local currency in change.

  ‘Well, this is getting us nowhere fast, and this garret is making me claustrophobic. I’m going out. Lunch needs buying anyway.’ Renia did not appear to be listening. Jesral sighed and pressed hard on her browbone; she could feel a headache coming on.

  ‘While I'm at it, I'll ask about to see what rumours are flying. Jastur can't have just vanished off the face of the earth, if he's still alive.’

  ‘He's alive.’

  ‘Fine, fine.’ At least that had got a reaction. Jesral increased the pressure on her browbone, gave it up as a bad job and snatched up a drawstring bag. ‘Could you at least sort out the packs while I’m gone?’ She faltered a little, softened her tone and chose her words carefully; doing so as much from her own grief as from sympathy for Renia. ‘There’s no way we can carry all their stuff too. We’ll just have to take as many useful things as we can manage.’

  oOo

  Renia continued to sit on her bed for quite some time after Jesral had gone. The other girl’s judgement was accurate; Renia was in shock, but trying hard to fight it.
The absent calmness on the outside might look like complete denial, but it disguised her turmoil. She had stopped telling Jesral it could not be true about Vel and Kerin. It did not stop her feeling so, though she knew that was against all reason. She stared over the rooftops towards the harbour and the broken mast of the Dawn Wind, running a scene through her mind again and again; Vel turning Kerin over that day on the beach, and the blueness of his face. Somewhere during the last day someone else had done that to Kerin, and to Vel as well, only this time there would be no faint flush of pink to the cheeks, no spark of life to rekindle. They were gone. They must be.

  But they could not be: not Vel, at least. Surely she should feel it inside, somehow? But there was nothing, nothing at all.

  No. They were gone. Jesral was right to tell her to face facts. If they were going to follow the original plan, if things were still going to happen, then she and Jesral had to make the decisions. There was no one else to make them now. And she could not let Jesral do everything, not when this was more Renia’s fight than Jesral's.

  Her fight. She fingered the pouch around her neck, feeling the Eagle’s shape within like an oath between herself and Kerin. It was clear now what she had promised him by accepting it. She had thought only of it saving him; he had seen its power to save Jastur also, and so Ilmaen, by corroborating his claim. Was that why she had felt the compulsion to come? Had she known at the back of her mind of the fate the others had faced, known all along that they were going to die? But if that was so, if it was her destiny to rescue Jastur, then why had she seen a noose for him as well? What was driving her on, if it was all for nothing?

  Such thoughts were unbearable. She pushed them aside. She should take a positive step. Sort out the men’s packs for a start.

  These were both upended in an unceremonious hurry on to the middle of Jesral's bed, and sorted to either end, stuff to be kept or disposed of. They had no need of two more sets of cutlery and dishes, so those went. But the small cooking pan from Kerin's pack could be used, and Vel's little knife with all the extra tools, and some rope. Their water bottles were discarded too. Then she remembered Jastur. If he had to travel with them for any length of time, he would have need of such things. So she took one of the water bottles back, and one set of dishes and cutlery.