The Bone Ship's Wake

by Rj Barker

  He thought on that. Knew it sensible and stout advice. He watched the harbour front. Four other ships sat in dry dock, all surrounded by Gaunt Island bonewrights finding and fixing their faults. Out in the harbour were twenty boneships of various sizes, all busy with crew and women and men. But around Tide Child was a circle of silence. He was becalmed. A haven of inactivity born out of the unwillingness of their hosts.

  “I have been here before, Brekir,” he said, pointing at the broken ship. “Meas brought him back to Bernshulme with his keel broken. Most would have written him off then, I think. Written the crew off. Written me off. But she did not.” He took a deep breath. “She rebuilt him.” He pointed at the sorry ship. “She rebuilt me, Brekir. He rebuilt the crew. And when she returns, she will return to the slate of her own ship, not find him some sorry hulk full of stonebound using his bilges as a dump for their filth and rubbish.”

  Brekir smiled at him, a flash of broken teeth in her face. Then she ran a hand down her face, from her forehead to her chin.

  “I knew you would say that, but I at least had to try and talk some sense to you.”

  “Will you tell me Meas is probably dead next?”

  “Of course not,” she said, “for I know you would not listen.” She smiled again. “You must get in to see the Tenbern, Joron.”

  “I will try again this evening,” he said.

  “Do not simply try; take Solemn Muffaz, Barlay, Farys, Mevans, and some of your seaguard. Turn up as if you intend violence if she will not let you in.”

  “She could crush us,” he said. “She has enough soldiers on this island to do so without thinking.”

  “She will not,” said Brekir. “Our people may be unpopular interlopers, but you are becoming a legend. The Black Pirate, the rock upon which the Hundred Isles breaks its ships. Tenbern Aileen is not foolish, she will not want to kill you in front of her people while they still hold you in esteem.”

  “What about when I am no longer in front of her people?”

  “Well, then she may kill you,” laughed Brekir, “but at least you will have got in, ey?”

  “Ey,” he said, and stood, brushing sand and grit from his trousers and causing the small flock of kivelly that had returned to once again go running back to their holes in the sea wall. “And what is life for us if we are not lurching from one life-or-death situation to another?”

  He left Brekir sitting by the harbour watching his ship and made his way to the drinking hole his crew had taken over and occupied in shifts. The rowdy room quietened as he entered.

  “Will no one bring me a drink?” he said, and one was brought and he sat in the corner alone, thinking of what he would do and what he must do and how no course seemed like a good one. Little by little, he became aware that he was dampening the mood of the place. That the usual rowdiness he heard in passing was gone. Oh, his women and men still drank, still talked, only more soberly and less freely. A game was afoot at one table, Black Orris perched above them, and bets were being taken on whether the corpsebird would say “arse” or “Hag’s breath” or one of his other foul-mouthed utterances when a scrap of food was offered up to him. Joron knew it for a rowdy game, usually, but this was verging on polite and it seemed barely any fun at all was being had. His fault, he knew it. He stood.

  “When Skearith’s Eye dips beneath the high peak,” he said to the room, “send Mevans, Barlay, Farys, Solemn Muffaz and ten seaguard to my quarters.”

  “Ey, D’keeper,” said a small woman – Vinsa, one of the best up the spines. She had a scrap of bread for Black Orris in her hand and had taken the bet on Orris saying “arse”. “I will do that.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I will leave you to your games now.” He left, and as he did he heard Black Orris call out, “Arse!” And though he was saddened that his place meant he must always be alone among his crew, he was glad, at least, that Vinsa had won the coin.

  Later, he met his small party.

  “Where is Farys?” he asked Mevans.

  “Took sick, D’keeper,” he said.

  “Very well, best she stay abed then,” he said, and they headed up to the Tenbern’s bothy. Twilight had descended and the warm air was full of the strong, heady fragrance of night flowers just opening. They did not call their larger buildings bothies here, they called them “stonehouses” but he could not stop himself thinking of them as bothies, it was ingrained in him. He found the Gaunt Islands strange, so similar to the Hundred Isles in many ways, and so different in many others. The buildings, for instance, were not rounded as he was used to, with no rising tenements of soft stone and varisk. All was grey. The Gaunt Islanders had access to stone islands, like Sleighthulme, but many more of them. They quarried a hard grey stone and they built hard grey buildings, rising tall from the harbour and up into the hills. The buildings had small slits for windows, the architecture of the colder north where the Gaunt Islanders had originally had their capital, built to stand against the Northstorm. Sparehaven was definitely no Bernshulme, no mad riot of streets here, not organic and untrammelled. Bernshulme architecture was created by Hundred Isles people without thought or plan as they explored the island and the places to live on it. When the Gaunt Islanders had moved their capital they had done it with a ruthless efficiency and Sparehaven reflected that. Its streets were built upon a grid pattern; wide roads led from the grand stonehouses at the top – which held their fleet training, Bern, Kept and hagpriests – down to the harbour, allowing easy transport of goods and stores and people through the town and into the market squares. The lesser people lived in tenements that were simply smaller versions of the grander buildings.

  Joron did not like the place, he found it as cold and hard and unforgiving as the people that lived there.

  Though, of course, now he counted himself and his people among them. Though they did not truly live in Sparehaven; the majority of those who had run from the Hundred Isles, or declared for him in the Gaunt Islands, made camp on the other side of the island, together with a flock of about a hundred gullaime – thirty windtalkers and seventy windshorn – in addition to those that served on his ships.

  “Do you think it is right to walk through Sparehaven armed, D’keeper?” said Mevans. “It will win us no friends.”

  “We need answers, Mevans,” he said. “And we need to be moving, doing something. It is even more important now that the rumour I called a keyshan to us is out. It will fly from here to Bernshulme quicker than a brisk south wind, and it will doom Meas.” Mevans nodded.

  “We will follow you then,” he said, and they did. Joron led them through the streets, and the people of Sparehaven – more mixed than Bernshulme, not quite as pushed into strata by their deformities as Joron was used to – regarded him and his party with suspicion, though also with some excitement too: he saw how they pointed and whispered at him. The Black Pirate, striding through their town, swathed in scarf, dark clothes and hat, bone spur clacking on the cobbled roads. Not one of them knew that he worried with every step that he would slip and make a fool of himself. That he worried he would slip constantly, whether on land or sea, though less physically and more in his duty. Always waiting to fall.

  They arrived outside the Grand Stonehouse. The Tenbern’s seaguard barred their way – women and men in her seaguard, another small difference to how the Hundred Isles was, though his own seaguard were mixed now. The Gaunt Islander seaguard’s leader, a small woman with a missing hand, would never have had such a place in the Hundred Isles.

  “What do ’ee want ’ere, Black One?” She spoke with a strong accent, often affected here by those with position in society.

  “What I want every time I visit, Seaguard, to speak to the Tenbern.”

  “Tha usually comes alone; a see tha now brought friends.” She gestured with her missing hand at his party.

  “Ey, I do. Merely so the Tenbern understands how serious I am, that I intend to see her today.”

  “You threaten blood?”

  “I a
sk to be seen, I think it is the least I deserve for the havoc I have wrought on the sea for her.”

  “For her?” chuckled the seaguard. “There’s some’d be fooled by that, Black One, not I. Tha wait ’ere and I will speak with my lady.” She looked over his crew. “Trouble not my guard,” she said, “for thar only act on my word. Be patient.” With that she vanished into the gloomy building.

  “What happens, D’keeper,” whispered Mevans, “if she comes back with fifty more seaguard and a thirst for blood?” He could hear the grin in Mevans’s voice; like all the crew, he had an odd lust for violence. Joron also felt that draw on occasion and he knew it for foolish, as no doubt Mevans did.

  “We die,” he said. Mevans’s looked about, at the cold, grey angular stone, and the hard-faced guards pointing spears at them. A drizzle was falling, and the smell of night flowers had been replaced by old fish.

  She came back alone, appearing from the blackness of the building’s interior.

  “She will see tha, Black One,” said the seaguard, “but only tha, the rest must wait here.” She pointed at the floor with the arm missing a hand, in case he was unsure where she meant.

  “Of course,” he said, “and do you want my weapon?”

  “Forward, that is.” She leered at him and grinned, making him feel uncomfortable. “Would be good to say I sheathed the Black Pirate’s weapon, ey?” When he didn’t answer she chuckled once more, letting it die away when he did not join her ribaldry. “Not one for humour is tha? No, Black One, I do not think I need to take tha sword, keep it. If you try to unsheathe it in the Tenbern’s presence tha will not live to bare the metal fully.” She turned away from him. “Now come.”

  He followed, into the darkness, through a small false hallway that opened out into a reception hall far bigger and more airy, lit by thousands of wanelights. Glowing eyes surveying him as the seaguard led him up a wide staircase that curved around, it was far less utilitarian than the rest of Sparehaven, not pretty, but some effort had gone into it. On the second floor, more seaguard eyed him warily. On the third floor a pair of large gion doors waited, seaguard before them with burning lanterns and pikes. They opened the way into the presence of the Tenbern. He took a deep breath; though Joron would never admit it, the woman frightened him.

  Like the room of the Thirteenbern in Bernshulme, the Tenbern’s receiving room was almost empty, though it lacked the light of the Bernshulme bothy. This was a dark place, lit by flickering torches and dim wanelights that peered through the gloom. The Tenbern sat at the end of a path of torches on a simple and unornamented chair, not for her the showy misery of a throne carved with the images of dead children. Hers was an austere authority. She dressed in very little, despite that it was cold in this room. A simple skirt fell over her knees to cover her feet. A fur coat fell around her shoulders but left her stomach and chest bare to show the marks of her battles and all the scars and wounds of childbirth. Her hair was cut to hang so it only brushed the fur of the cloak, straight and grey, and the face beneath it was unornamented with paint or expression, stark as the grey rock. He took off his hat, held it in his hands.

  “Joron Twiner,” she said quietly. “It has been a while since we spoke, aye?”

  “Too long, Tenbern.”

  “And yet, tha repays my hospitality by bringing arms to me door.”

  “That was not my intention, Tenbern. I simply walked with a retinue as befits my station.”

  She smiled then, a real smile, that lit up her face like stormlight – golden, beautiful, and threatening.

  “Tha plays politics and brinkship, man, and I knows it. But I ’ave played that game far longer than tha has and I know it too. I reckon also, man, that I play it better and harder, when my hand is forced.”

  “Then,” he said slowly, “I apologise for any insult you may imagine I brought to your door.”

  “Used tha popularity, and it was a clever thing to do.” Then she sat forward, her bird-of-prey eyes on him. “Tha is popular, among my people. Brought us victories with little loss of life, and though my shipwives curse you, I think thar are glad of it also. But jealous too. And, should tha die, Joron Twiner, do it out there.” She pointed straight out the building, through the walls and over the horizon. “Do it about and on the sea, for then I will make tha a legend. But push me, and die on the swords of my fellows, then tha popularity will not last, and them raggedy people tha chose to protect will be cut adrift and sure to drown. Understand?”

  “Ey, Tenbern.”

  “Good.” She sat back. “It is good to be sure where tha stands in a place, Shipmother Twiner.”

  “I am not—”

  “I do not care what tha thinks, I will call what is. Tha leads a fleet and tha commands a ship, tha is Shipmother. Tha is shipwife.”

  “It is about my shipwife that I come.” She shrugged, leaned to the side and rubbed her face.

  “Do not a hanker after what is lost, when tha has power in tha own hands.”

  “She is not lost,” he said. “We know where she is – Bernshulme, if not exactly where in the town. I know you have spies throughout the Hundred Isles, surely they have reported something by now.”

  “Little sign or speak of her. Thar either hide her good or thar have killed her.”

  “No,” he said, too sharp, and the Tenbern’s head shot round, skewered him in her gaze.

  “I had wondered why tha was so sure she lived. I have heard rumour and talk of thar who raise keyshans, put it down to fancy and foolishness. But then I hear one comes to tha rescue, and maybe I put one or two things together Joron Twiner. ’Tis it, that the Thirteenbern think tha shipwife can raise the beasts? ’Tis that why she lives still? But is the truth that it is tha who has the power?” It seemed to Joron that the temperature in the room rose a little. And in the corner of his eyes he saw movement in the gloom, realised there were seaguard there, waiting, watching. Had they been there all along? He had been too intent on the woman before him and the aura of power and beauty around her, as obvious as her fur cloak. Step careful, Joron, he thought, or your journey could end in a cell in Sparehaven.

  “There are those in the Hundred Isles who believe a woman or man can raise keyshans and they are hungry for that power. Meas simply used that hunger against them so her fleet and people could escape Sleighthulme, she offered herself as sacrifice. A keyshan turned up in Spantonnis Bank and that saved us, it is true. But it had no interest in us, it was interested in filling its belly, that is all. We were lucky to escape its wrath. Hold me here if you must, but you will reveal yourself as gullible as Thirteenbern Gilbryn if you do.”

  She stared at him, rubbing her chin with her hand.

  “Maybe, Shipmother, it would simply be careful of me, to hold tha here?”

  “But, Tenbern, if you imprison me and I can call the keyshans, what would stop me calling them for help? And what would happen to Sparehaven then?”

  She continued to stare at him. Then laughed.

  “Hag-cursed if I do, Hag-cursed if I don’t, aye?”

  “No,” he said, took a step forward, became more aware of the shapes in the corners, more sure of them as seaguard. The Tenbern held up her hand, stilling her soldiers. “You told me if I weakened Gilbryn, you would move against her. Now is that time.”

  “I did, aye,” she nodded. “But in truth, Shipmother,” she made the title sound mocking now, “I did not think tha would survive past a couple of weeks.” She chuckled, then pointed at him. “All credit to tha for doing so.” She sat back, set her fur cape more firmly around her shoulders. “We will move in, take what islands we can. But Gilbryn is no fool, she has withdrawn her ships, made a ring of stone around Bernshulme and what else she knows is valuable. I’ll not throw my ships against stone, Twiner. I am no fool.”

  “You promised me.”

  “Well, mayhap I did, but now I must break that promise, I am afraid. Not only cos I have no wish to waste my ships, tha understand. I have given much thought. And truthfully, I wer
e tempted to beard Gilbryn in her lair, even knowing the cost. But my spies tell me a plague has hit Bernshulme and I have no wish to bring it here. So I will let thar wallow, Twiner. And maybe, if the plague weakens them to the point thar have so few ships that ring of stone crumbles, I will take action then. But until then, my fleet and my people take precedence, does tha understand?”

  “You promised,” he said again, the anger within him burning, but he knew to unleash it was to die. Tenbern Aileen leaned forward.

  “Tha does not understand our ways, pirate. A promise to an outsider means nothing here. Even less when it puts my people in danger.”

  “You have—”

  She raised a hand, silenced him.

  “Tell me, Shipmother, that tha would do different? Cast tha people unto death when there is no real need nor benefit for tha, bar request of a rot-pocked stranger?” He stared at her. His anger eaten up by the cold shock of finding out that she knew his carefully hidden secret. And he knew she spoke true. He risked his people only when he must. “You should leave, Twiner,” she said, “afore tha says something tha would regret.” He stood there, unwilling to move, wanting the last word but having nothing in his mind, no clever turn of phrase to turn her to his cause. Meas would have, he was sure. Meas would not slink away with her tail between her legs.

  But he was not Meas.

  He placed his hat on his head, and made to leave.

  “One thing, Shipmother,” said the Tenbern, “I would not have tha think I am ungrateful. If tha can bring Gilbryn’s fleet out from her ring of stone, and away from her plagued island, then I will meet it head-on and smash her pretty ships into shards for tha.” She stared at him. “Is that enough for tha to feel less slighted?”

  “I suppose it must be,” he said.

  “Ey,” she said quietly, “tha suppose right.”

  22

  The Solitude of Command

  Joron sat in his room above a rowdy drinking hole, his meagre possessions – he had sold almost everything he had to re-outfit Tide Child – lit by two guttering wanelights. He felt cast adrift, lost. All he had done had been in pursuit of finding Meas. Either getting good intelligence, and freeing her that way, or having the Tenbern lead her fleet against Bernshulme and finding Meas through strength.