Shorefall

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “Sh-Should they be on?” stammered Sancia.

  “All interior lights should be on at night except for those in the quarters. Otherwise it’s a dangerous tripping hazard—among many other things.”

  Sancia had to pause at the idea of Gregor worrying about tripping hazards at a time like this. Then she flexed her scrived sight, and recoiled at the amount of information pouring in through her eyes: being inside the galleon was like being inside a giant sea beast, only she could see all its bones and veins and muscles around her, all at once.

  She’d initially worried this would be like the Mountain of the Candianos—the giant dome in the center of their campo in Tevanne, which had been scrived to act as a single massive intelligence. But the galleon was instead thousands and thousands of components that all had to work together just right for the ship to function: the hull believed it was preternaturally strong but light and could repel waters, the locking mechanisms on all the hatches believed they were just awaiting their specific keys, the lamps and lanterns all awaited signals to alight…

  But something was missing.

  “What do you see?” whispered Gregor.

  “Lots of things,” she said back. “But…no people.”

  “What?” he said, surprised. “Wait. Can you see people?”

  “No,” she said. “But I’d be able to see any scrived rigs on their person bobbing along as they walk or move. And it’s hard to see among all the components…but I don’t see that anywhere close to us. Maybe the crew’s all up on the main deck, or…hell, I don’t know my ships, somewhere goddamn else. But it…it looks like we’re very alone here.”

  She could barely make out his face, staring at her incredulously in the dark. “Is this a trap?” he asked.

  “How could it be? Why would they assume Valeria would know, or tell us?” She looked around. “And I don’t see any logic or sigil strings suggesting it is…”

  “And you don’t see…well…him? Crasedes? Or the artifact?”

  She shook her head. “I see shit-all.”

  For a moment they just sat there in the dark, unsure what to say or do.

  “Step one is weaponizing the ship against itself,” said Gregor. “Is that still possible?”

  Then she looked up into the ceiling. “I see shrieker catapults. And no one’s watching them. So—yes. Definitely.”

  Together she and Gregor wound their way up through the decks of the galleon. Though the ship was gigantic, it was clear the Dandolos had maximized the use of space: every hallway was tiny, cramped, and suffocating—especially in near-darkness. She and Gregor crept on and on, the lights of their scrived lanterns dancing over the wooden walls as they listened for any sound. They encountered no one, nor any obstacle, really. The whole ship seemed queerly abandoned.

  “There should be someone here, right?” she whispered.

  “Galleons typically have over three hundred crew members,” he said softly. “This deck should be full of people.”

  She felt her skin crawl. Something’s wrong. None of this is as it should be.

  “We should be approaching the upper catapult decks now,” whispered Gregor.

  “Good.”

  “There should be thirty-five shrieker catapults apiece. What are you planning to do?”

  “I don’t know what the hell is going on,” said Sancia, “but if something goes wrong, I want as many weapons on my side as possible.”

  Finally they came to the catapult bays. The long, thin contraptions of wood and iron were empty of ammunition, but sat pointing out at the closed artillery ports.

  “Can shriekers penetrate a galleon’s hull?” asked Sancia.

  Gregor shook his head. “Not a chance.”

  “Okay. Then…let’s turn them all around,” said Sancia, “so they point in, not out. You do that while I work on the catapults.”

  None of the catapults were loaded with shriekers, which meant she had the unenviable task of taking the long spears of scrived metal and placing them in the catapult pockets. Doing so activated the shriekers’ acceleration strings: the instant she’d slotted them into the pockets, they began vibrating and pulsing with a dreadful energy.

  She placed her hand on one catapult and listened to its arguments.

  <…await the breaking of the bond, the severing of metals, and then you shall be high, high up, high in the sky, high in space, and you shall have fallen, fallen, fallen, you shall have fallen for two hundred miles, falling through the air…>

  She listened carefully to its acceleration commands. It worked like many scrived projectiles: they would be convinced that they had not been fired forward but were instead falling down, plummeting down a straight line for miles and miles, attaining impossible speeds.

  She released it. That’s easy enough to work with, she thought. Now for the dangerous bit…

  She took out her imprinter espringal, pointed it at one metal spear, and fired. The slug hit the tip of the shrieker and stuck—but otherwise, nothing happened.

  She let out a breath, relieved. Shriekers were one of the deadliest and least predictable scrived weapons Tevanne had ever invented. She’d never imagined she’d ever want to tinker with one—let alone thirty-five of them.

  She stuck slugs of metal to about half the shriekers. Then she said, “Gregor—give me your imprinter.”

  “Why? What are you doing?”

  “Giving us an advantage. Trust me.”

  He did so. She took his imprinter and walked along the rest of the catapults, applying his slugs to them as well. When she was finished she stood back, surveying her work. “It’s done.”

  “And…what have you done?”

  “The shriekers activate their velocity strings when the spears are broken from this metal release here,” she said, pointing into the workings of the catapult.

  Gregor flinched. “Please do not touch it, then…”

  “But we’ve applied one half of an anchoring string to all the spears,” she said. “Like we stuck our boat to the galleon—you do one half, then the other, and the two bits get pulled together.”

  “So?”

  “So…” She showed him the setting on his espringal. “You point your espringal at something, and fire the second half of the anchoring string at it—and it will pull five shriekers from their catapults. Since the catapults are pointed inwards, not outwards, the shriekers should go right through the walls of this ship, and our anchoring slugs will redirect the projectiles toward whatever it is that you shot at.”

  Gregor stared, amazed. “So…when I fire my imprinter at something, I will essentially be firing five shriekers at it?”

  “Yeah. Fire again, get the next five. And again, the next five. You get three volleys, I get four. Seems handy if we want to sink the ship or…if we encounter anything else in here. Just…be aware that it’s going to rip through a lot of shit to get to your targe—”

  She heard something echoing below them, faint but high-pitched. She stopped and peered backward into the darkness.

  “Did you…” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Gregor, troubled. “I did.”

  They listened hard, and then they heard it again—the sound of a man screaming.

  The sound tapered off. Sancia and Gregor stood without speaking, listening to the creaking, groaning, shuddering ship move around them. There was no other sound.

  “So—that’s not normal, right?” she asked.

  “It is not,” said Gregor.

  There was a long silence.

  “I…suppose we had better go investigate,” said Gregor quietly.

  “What time is it?” said Sancia.

  Gregor pulled out a scrived timepiece and huddled by his scrived lantern to see. “It’s not even ten o’clock yet.”

  “So…they can’t have done it yet, right? They hav
e to wait for the lost minute, for midnight.”

  “I am afraid I am not the expert on this material.”

  “Shitting hell,” said Sancia. She wiped sweat from her brow and lifted her espringal. Together they continued into the depths of the galleon.

  * * *

  —

  They wound on and on through the decks of the ship, through quarters and chambers and stairwells. The air was hot and moist and dreadfully still, and the lights from their lanterns seemed painfully small, tiny bubbles of luminescence attempting to beat back the dark.

  Then they heard a scream again, echoing from the innards of the giant vessel. They exchanged a look and continued on, deeper and deeper in, espringals ready.

  “We’re approaching the cargo holds,” whispered Gregor.

  “Which means what?”

  “I’m not sure. But there should be large chambers up ahead. Perhaps where they keep the slaves.”

  They came to one corridor that seemed unusually long and straight, perhaps running from bow to stern. They stopped and shone their lights down its length, but could see no end to it.

  I hope no one is at the other side, thought Sancia, looking back at us.

  They started down the corridor, moving as quietly as they could. Sancia flexed her scrived sight as they walked. For a long while she saw nothing at all—and then she raised a hand.

  They halted as she examined what lay ahead. She thought she could see a handful of unusual scrivings on the floor a few dozen feet away—a scrived timepiece, a sachet, a fire starter for lighting a pipe, an augmented knife…

  It’s a person, she thought. I’m seeing what’s in his pocket or on his belt…

  They weren’t moving. And they were just beyond the light cast by their lanterns.

  Someone is lying down over there, she mouthed to Gregor, pointing ahead.

  Gregor nodded and crept forward, espringal raised. Sancia watched, trying not to breathe too loudly as his light stretched forward along the wooden floors of the corridor…until it fell upon a spreading pool of blood.

  Gregor paused ever so briefly at the sight of it. Then he walked forward until the light illuminated the body of a man lying facedown on the side of the corridor.

  He did not rush to the body. Instead, Gregor looked into the darkness, head cocked, no doubt listening for the killer. Then he stepped forward through the blood, knelt beside the body, and rolled it over.

  Gregor quickly withdrew his hand. Sancia couldn’t see what he was reacting to, but it was no comfort to her that a veteran of so many wars could have such a reaction.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “This man…This man’s eyes have been removed,” said Gregor.

  “What?” she said, horrified.

  “His eyes are gouged out.” He leaned closer and held his little lantern up to the body’s face. “No. Cut out.” He examined the rest of the man. “And…Sancia…I think he did this to himself. Look.”

  Grimacing, Sancia approached and saw the augmented knife clutched in the man’s fingers. His wrists had been slashed open, and his front was covered in blood.

  “Wait,” she said. “He killed himself?”

  “Yes. Though I suspect he cut his eyes out first.”

  She swallowed her horror and studied the body. He looked quite affluent, wearing an elaborate doublet and hose, with lace collars and cuffs. She examined him with her scrived sight, and peered closer at his scrived sachet and the many permissions it bestowed on him.

  “Definitely Dandolo,” she said. “And I think a scriver. I haven’t studied their sachets in a while, but…this looks very inner-enclave to me. Why did he do this?”

  “I do not know.” Gregor looked down the corridor and held his lantern high. “But that’s where he came from.”

  She looked and saw droplets of blood on the corridor’s darkened floor, marking the man’s path. He must have come from the other end of the corridor.

  There was a noise—a strangled sob from the far end of the corridor, lost in the dark.

  Sancia did her utmost not to jump or scream. Gregor’s face remained totally impassive. He stood, raised his espringal, and began stalking down the corridor toward the sound.

  “Please come with me,” he said quietly. “And let me know what lies ahead.”

  She followed him down the corridor, stepping around the blood on the floor.

  It’s still not midnight yet. What happened here? What in hell is going on?

  Finally their light fell upon the end of the corridor: a small, blank wall, with a single plain door, hanging open. She could see nothing but darkness on the other side. There was blood on the handle of the door and around the frame—remnants of bloody handprints as someone fumbled with it, she guessed.

  “Sancia,” whispered Gregor. “What is in that room?”

  She walked forward. Little tangles of logic and arguments sprang to life—all of them small, trivial, and mostly in bunches on the floor.

  She swallowed again. Her mouth and throat were very dry. “I think it’s…I think there are bodies in there, Gregor,” she said. “Nine of them.”

  Gregor stood there for a moment, totally frozen, his espringal trained on the open door. She saw his brow and temples were covered in sweat. Then he walked forward, and Sancia followed.

  They heard the sound again—a strained whimper from within the room ahead.

  Sancia watched as one little bundle of scrivings and sachets twitched.

  “One of them’s alive,” she whispered.

  Gregor stepped into the doorway and held his lamp up high. The chamber had been intended as a meeting or planning room, Sancia thought, judging by the big table and chairs in the center, but it appeared to have been converted into an impromptu assembly bay for scriving work: hundreds of tomes had been stacked up on the table, along with styli and scrived bowls of heated metals, and there were pieces of parchment stuck to the walls, all covered with charts of sigils and strings.

  And below these, all over the floor, were the bodies of scrivers. And all of them had been horribly mutilated.

  Some had shoved styli into their necks. Others had opened up the veins in their arms, like the man in the hallway. One man had plunged a scrived stiletto into his heart. But there was a commonality to their injuries: all of them had apparently cut or gouged or clawed out their own eyes before finally resorting to suicide.

  Sancia stared at the scene around her. Inevitably her eye was drawn to the large door on the far side of the wall. It hung open, though she couldn’t see anything on the other side. Judging by the scrivings she could spy, it looked like there was a very large room on the other side.

  And what’s through there?

  A wet sob came from the corner. Gregor darted across the room to a man who lay crumpled on the floor, his eyes gouged out, his face and chest covered with blood. He’d tried to slash his wrists, but he’d done a bad job of it, and still lived.

  “Who is…who is there?” whimpered the scriver. Then, his voice shaking with terror, he said: “Is it you, My Prophet?”

  “Who are you?” asked Gregor. “What happened here?”

  “Please,” sobbed the scriver. His mutilated sockets gleamed in the light of their lanterns. “Please, whoever you are. Please, kill me, please…”

  “What has happened?”

  “Please…”

  “Why did you do this to yourself?”

  “Please!”

  “Tell me,” said Gregor sternly. “Now. Why?”

  “Not supposed…to see him,” whispered the dying scriver. “Can’t see what he is…underneath it all…”

  “Who?” demanded Gregor. “Who do you mean? Is it…Is it Cras—”

  “Please,” begged the man. “Please, kill me! Please, I don’t…I can’t live with this inside me!
I can’t have it inside of me!”

  Sancia looked at the parchments pinned to the walls. Most of them were scriving designs, but a few seemed to be maps—though they were maps of a place Sancia found very familiar.

  She studied the layout of the building they depicted, which was huge, circular, with many floors…and it had six specific areas highlighted, deep in the foundations of the structure.

  Why in the hell, she wondered, would they bring maps of the Mountain of the Candianos here? And what’s so interesting in the basement?

  She moved on to the scriving designs. They contained countless hierophantic sigils for many permissions and commands: symbols for change, for death, for strength, for recurrence…and then another parchment, with many strings she’d never seen before.

  She moved closer to it, held up her lantern, and began to read.

  “What did you do?” said Gregor. “What has happened aboard this ship?”

  “We had to…had to find a piece of him,” choked the scriver.

  “What?” said Gregor.

  “He’d left it behind. Hid it away. A tomb among the islands…”

  Sancia stared at the new sigils, but none of them were familiar to her. She wished Berenice were here—she had a near-perfect memory when it came to sigils and strings.

  She read the notes at the top, written in plain text. One said, Capable of convincing reality of shifting times…

  A horrible dread filled her. Oh no.

  “A piece of what?” said Gregor.

  “A tiny…a tiny bit of bone. You could put it in a living person, and…and argue that this was him, that he’d never died…”

  Sancia began ripping the parchments off the walls, folding them up, and stuffing them in her pockets.

  “Where are the slaves?” asked Gregor. “What have you done with the people aboard this ship?”

  “But…we couldn’t see,” whispered the man. “Weren’t allowed to see. Can’t see him. Cannot see the…the king behind the veil…” He coughed wetly.