The Bone Ship's Wake

by Rj Barker

  Now he had neither option.

  A knock on the door.

  “Ey?” he said quietly, and tried to hide his despair.

  “It is the courser, D’keeper,” said Cwell from outside.

  “Let them in, Cwell,” he said. He pulled up the mask to cover the sores on his face, even though of all the crew, Gullaime apart, the courser was the closest to anything he could call friend and equal. They both existed outside the usual groups and cliques. The door opened and Aelerin slipped in, robe as pristine white as ever, hood covering their features.

  “Deckkeeper,” they said.

  “Courser,” he replied, “how may I help?” No answer came, but in every line and movement of the navigator he could read their discomfort. It was clear that whatever course the words they had would set, it was not a comfortable one to Aelerin. “The crew have sent you, to find out what was said by the Tenbern, have they not?” The hood moved as Aelerin nodded, their posture relaxed a little now that Joron had chosen to broach the subject, rather than being forced to bring it up. “Well,” he said, and shut his logbook, “I do not blame them for their curiosity, I understand it. Though,” he let his finger trace the keyshan worked into the birdleather of the logbook’s cover, “I do not think they will be glad to hear what I have to tell them.”

  “The Tenbern has let us down?”

  “Ey, and I cannot blame her, she has done what is right for her people. Why send them to die for just one woman and a crew of criminals and rogues?”

  “Powerful people, Deckkeeper, simply throw away those such as us when we are used up. She has no wish for the war to end, it is how she holds her power.”

  “You would not say that if you had met her, Aelerin. I think she has no problem holding on to her power.” He scratched at his scarf and the sores underneath. Had a sudden irrational desire to lash out at someone, but not Aelerin. They did not deserve it, and his words would hurt them more than most. He dug his nails into the palms of his hand. Was that desire for violence simply frustration, or was the rot reaching his brain, twisting his thoughts? “She has told me, if I can get Gilbryn’s fleet out of the defensive ring she has set up in the Hundred Isles, she will bring everything she has against it.”

  “And that is why you sit up here, to plan?”

  He nodded. “But it is all for naught, Aelerin,” he said. “How do I draw out Thirteenbern Gilbryn, ey? What do I have that she wants?”

  “Us,” said Aelerin.

  “A few ships will not draw her out.”

  “What about all of us? Our brownbones, our boneships, everything?”

  “She may consider it then,” he said, eyes flicking to a place in the future where his ships sat at sea trying to tempt out the Hundred Isles fleet. Then he shook his head. “No,” he said, “the trap is too obvious. Why would I parade my fleet for her to see if I did not want her to come out? She will suspect something and depending on how much she has learned from…” He let his voice tail off when he realised what he was about to do. To acknowledge what all thought, that after so long in her mother’s unkind company Meas would have cracked by now. That she would have told the truth. “If rumour of what happened in Spantonnis Bank has reached her, then she would not come to meet me for fear of a keyshan rising and dashing her fleet to shards.”

  “Then you must take the only other thing she desires from her, and make her chase you.”

  “And what is that, Aelerin?”

  “Meas, of course.”

  He stared at the courser, then laughed.

  “And how do you suggest I do that?” They shrugged. “I hardly think Bernshulme will welcome Tide Child into their harbour so I can look around.”

  “I am no tactician, Joron, but there is talk of plague in Bernshulme. Such things create confusion. Set your fleet to tempting the Thirteenbern from her town and all eyes will be on it. None will expect you to come into the town.”

  “But we do not know where she is,” said Joron, and as he spoke the door opened.

  “D’keeper,” said Cwell.

  “Ey?”

  “I could not help but hear what you talked of, and if I may make a suggestion?”

  “Of course, Cwell.”

  “If you wish to know where the shipwife is,” she said, “then ask her mother.”

  Joron laughed, so taken aback he could do nothing else. Then he realised that Cwell was deadly serious.

  “You mean it,” he said.

  “She will not expect it, and if all is lost, as you say, then a desperate gamble is the only play to make. For we are desperate.” He stared at her, then looked to Aelerin, expecting them to waver a little but they held his gaze as well.

  “You agree with this, Aelerin?”

  “If we have no other option,” they said.

  He looked from the courser to the small fierce woman in the doorway, and back again. “How I would get in to see her, I do not know.”

  “I am no stranger to getting into places where I am not wanted, Deckkeeper,” said Cwell. “In my other life, anyway.” He stared at her, wondering if she mocked him but she did not. She offered her help in a desperate moment, and did it in all good faith.

  “Very well, we can at least consider it. Bring me Jennil—”

  “The toothreach took Jennil, D’keeper,” said Cwell.

  “Of course,” he said, and for a moment wondered whether his mistake was a symptom of the rot, eating at his brain as well as his body. “Well, we must make plans and hope there is some way to do what we wish. Find me my shipwives, not all of them though. Bring Brekir, Coult, Adrantchi and Turrimore, that will be enough for now. We will talk among ourselves and decide if this is possible.”

  “Perhaps,” said Cwell, “it may not be best to discuss this here, D’keeper,” she said. Joron glanced around at the thin walls of his rooms.

  “You are right,” he said, “Tell Brekir to ready her ship, we will meet aboard Snarltooth.”

  Aelerin left, and Cwell returned to her place guarding his door and he could do nothing but wait and worry and listen to the rattle of rain against the windows and try not to think about the ache of the sores on his face or the ache of the stump of his leg or the tightness in his hands where the Hag’s Curse was beginning to take hold and swell his joints.

  “I am not even old,” he said quietly to himself, “and yet the sea takes its toll.” He stood, walked to the window, and something uncomfortable in the cup of his spur made him wince, but he did nothing about it. There was always something uncomfortable in the cup of his spur. Grey clouds scudded across the seascape outside and the sea beneath was blue, cut with white breakers as it rushed in toward the land. That land was not yet the riot of colour it would become, the growing season had just started and the night air was cold, like a memory of the sleeping season. The gion and varisk was only beginning to make its tortuous way out of the ground, and those first steps were always the hardest, he supposed. The first growth the most painful, when the plants were most likely to die; the strength that would hold the plant up through its life was not yet there. Did the pain of growing ever really stop? Or did you simply become used to the stress and hurt and strain of every day until it became normal to you? A background buzz of constant worry cut through with moments of transcendent joy, or terrifying fear?

  There had been little joy in Joron’s life since his shipfriend, Dinyl, had died and his shipwife had been taken.

  Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he saw the flaming projectile fired from Sleighthulme that had sunk Dinyl’s ship, but he did not see it as he had at the time, did not watch it arc over Tide Child. Instead he watched it as if from Dinyl’s eyes, felt what Dinyl must have felt. The triumph at finally being shipwife of his own ship, the joy of a new command. A shipwife’s calculating curiosity as he saw the projectile launched from the great mangonel on the island. His mind working with the wind and the trajectory to decide where it would land and how he should steer his ship. Worry, at first. Then concern. Then fear –
not for his life, not yet, fear for his ship, that it may land near. That his ship would be swamped and he would be tossed into the sea, and a deeper, darker fear, that his ship would catch afire and he would burn, for all deckchilder, from the lowest stonebound to the shipmothers who controlled the fleets, feared the bonefire. Then, at the last, the realisation that all was lost. That he was a dead man and all those who flew aboard Bonebore with him were dead too. The terror of death, of the unknown, not enough time to accept it and find peace and no doubt, knowing Dinyl as he did, his last fleeting thought was that he had let down Meas.

  At least it had been mercifully quick.

  Joron opened his eyes and stared out at the miserable sea. Though these images of Dinyl filled him with terrible sadness he was also thankful for them; their time together had been short, too short due to the strictures and straightenings that duty put upon them. Even a dream where he shared that last moment was a small gift, that he could be with him again.

  “Joron,” he said to himself, “you become melancholy and it is no good.” He walked to the door and grabbed a waxed coat from the hanger, wrapped it around himself. “Cwell!” he shouted, and the door opened, revealed the woman who had started as his enemy and become his protector. Another bound up by duty to become something she had never expected.

  “Ey, D’keeper?” Her voice, always just the right side of insolent, made him smile.

  “I cannot stay in here and stare at four walls wondering on what may be or what will be. I shall walk; let us go the lamyards and find the Gullaime. We shall take a walk up to the windspire and make sure it is happy.”

  “Madorra will not like that.”

  “That Hag-cursed windshorn will do as it is told, it is under my command and must learn its place.”

  “Good luck wi’ that, D’keeper,” she chuckled as he swept past her pretending not to hear her words. She wrapped herself in a stinker coat and followed, still chuckling to herself.

  They made their way out of Sparehaven town and wound among the low hills surrounding it. The growing vegetation had yet to take on its most violent hues and was a mixture of washed-out pinks and purples. If not for the breeze Joron knew he would have been able to hear the vegetation creak as it grew; still, he fancied he could see it growing, and knew that if he put a finger and thumb around a stalk and closed his eyes and counted to one hundred then when he opened them the new growth would have pushed his fingers a little further apart. Out of the shelter of the town the wind was stronger, plucking at Joron’s clothes and pressing the coat against his body. He could see children in the fields around the town, there to keep the varisk and gion from overrunning the food crops. It was hard, backbreaking work, he had done it himself as a child when the fishing had been poor and his father had needed money.

  Further along the road they came to the lamyards where his fleet’s gullaime had settled. He heard them first, their squawking and hissing and singing. Once he had found them unnerving but now he heard only music, a beautiful, turning, spinning, forever-mutating song. But that song was shot through by a sadness from the Gaunt Islands lamyards just around the hill, for their gullaime remained as all gullaime, blinded and caged. His fleet’s gullaime were free, or as free as the Tenbern would allow. There was a fence around their settlement, though the gullaime continually found ways to bring it down. Inside they had built their own dwellings. Their structures were strange to Joron’s eye, ramshackle, and they fell down as often as they stayed up, but Joron felt sure they were never meant to be anything but temporary. The gullaime disdained walls and each “nest” was under a crude shelter of old gion leaves. Many leaked when it rained, though this did not seem to bother the gullaime any. The roofs were held up by sticks. A haphazard selection of many different sizes so they leaned at odd angles, and under each roof was a nest built of more sticks and whatever oddments the gullaime had managed to collect. The gullaime village was not only noisy with their song, it rang with bells, and tinkling and chiming and clacking as they had collected all manner of things that made noise, from bones to bits of metal, and strung them across the encampment. It was a merry sound when set against their own singing. Tide Child’s Gullaime had a nest building set apart from the others, and Joron was unsure whether this was because they revered it or feared it, or maybe it was both. In the centre of the village was what Joron could only call an altar – no nest under that roof, only a crudely pecked-out model of a bird, and Joron could see Madorra there, its back to them, and around the one-eyed windshorn were gathered a gaggle of gullaime, both windtalkers and windshorn.

  As he approached the Gullaime’s building the wind died away a little, and Joron felt warmer, and smiled to himself. What point in controlling the wind if you did not use it for your own comfort now and again, ey? The Gullaime sat in its nest, huddled down in its brightly coloured robe. The leaf mask turned toward him.

  “Joron Twiner?” it said.

  “Ey, Gullaime,” he said. “I find myself restless and in need of something to do. I wondered if you would walk to the windspire with me?”

  “Walk walk,” it said, rising from its nest. “Like to walk.”

  “Then we would like to walk with you.”

  They turned, only to be interrupted by a fearful noise, the squawking and hissing and spitting of a gaggle of gullaime. Madorra approaching, flapping its wings and spitting.

  “Not take! Not take Windseer.” They found themselves surrounded by Madorra’s white-robed acolytes, predatory beaks open, long claws unsheathed. Cwell went for the blade at her hip but Joron stopped her.

  “We are not taking the Gullaime anywhere, Madorra, only going for a walk.”

  “Not ship,” hissed the windshorn. “Not order gullaime here.”

  “I have ordered nothing.”

  “Go away, man,” said Madorra and advanced on him; the rest of the circle of gullaime began to sway backward and forward, as if readying themselves for violence and Joron felt a tremor of fear, for he knew how fast gullaime could move when they wished, and that he and Cwell could not stand against them. Then he was pushed out of the way by a bundle of feather and bright colour and the Gullaime landed in front of them, stretched out its neck and opened its beak to let out a stream of noise at Madorra that made all the other gullaime take a step back.

  “Friend. Joron Twiner friend. Joron Twiner caller. Not hurt. Not hurt.” Madorra stared at the gullaime from its one good eye. Then seemed to shrink a little.

  “Windseer too precious,” it said, and it sounded subservient when Joron knew it to be anything but. “Too precious to risk among humans. Too needed.”

  “Not Windseer,” spat the Gullaime. “Just gullaime. Just gullaime.” Madorra cocked its head, sung something quietly in the Gullaime’s language and the circle around them vanished, those gullaime that had formed it losing interest and hopping away as if nothing had happened.

  “Will come with,” said Madorra. “Will keep safe. Not want bad things happen.” The Gullaime seemed to sag.

  “Yes yes,” it said sadly. “Yes yes. Come with.”

  23

  A Walk

  They set off up the hill and the light rain tailed off. Joron had been to Sparehaven many times before to outfit his fleet, but he had never been to the windspire as he was always busy. He had found, when matters were not pressing, that sitting by a windspire brought a sense of calm to him; their song was ever-present, each island different from the last, and each windspire different from the others.

  And more, he knew a truth about the windspires that few others did. That the spires meant these islands were not islands at all, they were as eggs, and within each slept an arakeesian. How long it had slept there Joron did not know. But the song he heard constantly was the great sea dragon’s song, and the windspire, he felt sure, was part of the dragon. Maybe it shed it, when it hatched and broke the island it lived within, or maybe it was some part of it Joron had never seen – but whatever it was, it called to him as surely as it called to the gullai
me. A longing within him, and maybe inside he hoped that if he ascended the island, and fed that longing, then that would be one less feeling, among all the loss and betrayal and grief, that he had to cope with.

  And for that he would be thankful.

  They wound their way up the hill, the cobbles making way for grit and the grit making way for dirt. On a plateau they came to another area set aside for fields, and a group of women and men were working, pulling vines so the crops before a small house of varisk were not overrun. They were dressed like deckchilder. One of the workers noticed them, pointed. The others stopped their work and Joron felt eyes upon him but ignored the attention. He was used to being watched. It seemed as there was no place he was trusted, and could he blame them? He was the Black Pirate – raider, murderer – and they may toast him when he was not here, when he was doing their dark work for them. But by the same count they did not trust him when he was among them. He may work with them but he was not of them, and he had given sanctuary to those of their people they did not trust or like. It was hard to find blame for the sidelong glances and he thought it a strange course for him to be upon here, one where he was both lauded and hated in the same breath.

  “I do not much like the look of them,” said Cwell.

  “You do not much like the look of anyone,” said Joron. Cwell did not reply and the farmers did not move against them, only watched as they made their way up around the path toward the windspire until they turned another twist on the path and the farmers were lost from sight. Not much further along and the windspire came into view, at the same time the Gullaime started to make a cooing, happy and content noise. It was a sound Joron had heard only a few times before; in fact, he felt sure he had not heard it since Madorra appeared.