The Bone Ship's Wake

by Rj Barker

  “Of course you do,” she said, looked up at him. “I betrayed you, Joron. I told them about you. I do not deserve your loyalty. Karrad will seek to use what—”

  “It does not matter,” he said. “We will escape, return to our fleet, they should be parading up and down just outside the Hundred Isles defence ring by now. He will not keep us.”

  “You have a plan?”

  He shook his head. “Truthfully, I never expected to get this far.”

  She coughed, bent over by it, all the pain and hurt flowing back, and when she spoke the shipwife was gone once again, the shattered woman below remaining. “But Cwell is here, Karrad thinks she has gone over to him but she has not. I have got this far, Meas. I will get us out.”

  “You trust her?” she said.

  “I have no other choice.”

  A noise from outside the cell. He let go of her and stood.

  The cell door opened as he turned to see the Thirteenbern stood there. Behind her was an officer Joron recognised. Gueste, and seeing her nearly broke him, nearly made him stumble. Sudden memories of darkness and the box and the pain in his throat. The terror the woman had put him through, the place she had intended Joron to end up. Fed into a cauldron of blood and bone in the depths of Sleighthulme.

  “Joron Twiner,” said Gueste, breezy and bright as ever. “Kept Karrad wishes to speak with you.” She pushed Thirteenbern Gilbryn into the cell. “I am sure Meas and her mother have plenty to talk about. Family reunions can be messy affairs, you are better out of it.”

  “You and I,” said Joron, “we have unfinished business.”

  “We do?” she said, a finely formed eyebrow raised in surprise. “I can understand how you may feel that way, but I have only ever done my duty, as an officer.” She stepped to one side and motioned him through. Joron saw Cwell behind her. Gueste paused a moment as she saw his unmasked face.

  “A strange sense of duty you have, Gueste,” he said, “to betray your ruler.” Gueste smiled at him and Cwell’s face remained stone. Was he wrong to trust her?

  “You try to rile me,” said Gueste, “I would expect little else. I, however, hold no animosity toward you, it would be unprofessional.” As Joron passed her she grabbed his arm and whispered, “That is the difference between you and I. One of us was born to this, the other is a usurper. Weak blood has no place on the rump of a boneship. You show the sores of the weak. You sicken me.”

  She let go and, for a moment, Joron considered striking her, but waiting further down the corridor stood two seaguard and he knew it would be fruitless; if anything, it would give them an excuse to beat him and he was sure Gueste would enjoy that. Joron gave her a small bow.

  “And yet,” said Joron with a smile, “it is me your master wishes to see. Despite he hates me, which must mean he sees some use in me.” Gueste’s smile faltered.

  “Or he simply wishes to see your face when he tells you that you are to die,” she said. Joron smiled. “Vile as that face is.” He stood taller.

  “I am crew of Tide Child, a black ship, a ship of the dead, Gueste. I have been dead for many years so it will take more than the threat of death to scare me.” He saw it, a moment of confusion on Gueste’s face, then it was gone. And was he imagining it or did Cwell also stand a little straighter?

  “Talk is easy, Twiner,” she said. “Follow the seaguard.”

  “Gladly,” said Joron.

  From there they went, and up and up. At first, Joron thought they may be heading to the throne room, and he expected to find Indyl Karrad sat upon the throne, the first man to ever sit there. But when they entered the ground floor of the Grand Bothy the seaguard led him to a side door and away from the main dome. From there down vaulting corridors into a smaller bothy, one Joron had never been in before. The echo of his feet and those around him on the polished stone floor was the only sound in this place. They stopped before a door, taller than Joron, made of cured varisk.

  “Go in,” said Gueste. Joron did, the door opening easily despite its size, and as he passed through he imagined the pulleys and counterweights that made the opening so smooth, all part of the mechanics of the sea, the lifting and moving and tying-on that had become so much part of him. Inside Karrad sat at a desk, full of papers, his quill working as he wrote something. Then he sat back, scattered sand over the ink to dry it before looking up.

  “Gueste,” he said quietly, “you can leave.”

  “But—”

  “I said you can leave.” The woman next to Joron stiffened, then gave a small bow.

  “Of course, Kept Karrad,” she said, backing away and closing the door behind her. When the door was closed Karrad motioned toward the chair in front of his desk. Behind him wanelights glowed, the eyeholes looking like strange spirits in the darkness, guarding the man. Joron stepped forward, foot and spur tapping on the floor. Sat in the chair, comfortably upholstered in birdleather, and looked at the man opposite him. Almost impossibly handsome, no scars, hair still thick despite the grey of advancing years. He was staring at Joron, eyes locked on to him, slight movements as they took him in. Then he took a deep breath. Let it out.

  “I hate you,” he said. “I want that out in the open, first, before we talk any further. I want you to know it.”

  “I know it. I killed your son after all. I can expect little else but hate from you.” Karrad sat back.

  “Oh, it is so much more than that, Twiner. I see the mark of keyshan’s rot upon your face and should not be surprised, the Mother writes your moral failings upon your skin. And yes, everything that has happened up to this moment. It is your fault. All of it.”

  “All of it?” He should have been shocked – a younger Joron would have been but not this one, not the man who had become the Black Pirate. “I think you give me more credit than I deserve.” Karrad still stared at him. Something missing from him, something empty.

  “Sometimes, Joron Twiner, the smallest ripple becomes the greatest wave. So it is with you. My son was my future, my chance of retirement. His mother was well placed, she died in a shipwreck. But his blood was good, he would find himself a Bern and father children. Relatives to ensure my safety in later life, that none would steal any money I had hidden away to survive on. That was all I wished for, Twiner, to survive. I did not want to join an insurrection.”

  “You were in touch with Meas before your son died.”

  “To watch her,” he said. “I had no wish to do anything more.” He leaned forward. “I never expected her to be so successful. Then when she was, her talk of a fairer world wormed its way within me.” He looked almost disgusted. “And I saw an unfairness she did not. As time passed the Thirteenbern became less trusting of me. The more successful Meas was, the less well it reflected on me. So I had to safeguard my position and that meant finishing her. You were never meant to survive that first journey, escorting a keyshan into the north. None of you. And yet you did. Still, I kept you away, bided my time for when you could easily be destroyed.”

  “But?”

  “But someone raised a keyshan. And with that everything changed.”

  Silence in the room.

  “You tortured her,” said Joron.

  Karrad stared back, showed no temper, or anger.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You could have just asked her to join you.”

  “To accept a man taking over? She never would.”

  “You may have been surprised.”

  Karrad smiled. “Says the man who is still a deckkeeper.”

  “I chose that.”

  Did Karrad waver, did he question himself for just a moment? If so it was not for long.

  “Then she has trained you well, I suppose.” Karrad leaned forward. “Still, I only ever wanted leverage. Then you presented me with a once in a lifetime opportunity. A third of the Bern’s shipwives in dock when they brought that monstrosity in. They had to empty the harbour of most of the ships, but her officers lined the dock to salute our victory.”

  �
�Not you,” said Joron.

  “I was not invited, I was not in favour. I was kept up here giving reports on your actions to the Bern while the whole town celebrated.” He looked away; to hide a smile, Joron suspected. “And later died.”

  “And all this was my fault.”

  “Little ripples, Joron Twiner.”

  “You tortured half to death a woman you once loved.” Karrad stared at him, tapped his finger on the desk.

  “It is not really love, if you are both ordered to do it, is it?” And Joron had no answer to that. Karrad sat back. “I brought in those loyal to me to replace the dead. I am in charge now and will ask you one thing, Twiner,” he said. “One thing and I ask you to answer me truly.” Joron stared, said nothing. “Is what she said true, Twiner? Is it you that raises the keyshans?” Joron stared at him. Wondering how much he should say and then realising it did not matter. Meas would have told her torturer everything, there was little point in lying. But also little point in saying too much.

  “The wakewyrm, I did not bring it. And most of the others risen since, where they came from I do not know.”

  “But you brought the wakewyrm to your aid? And you woke the keyshan that lived within McLean’s Rock?”

  “Yes,” he said. ‘I broke McLean’s Rock.”

  “Can you teach me?” he said. Joron shook his head.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I need our gullaime, and it is aboard Tide Child.”

  “We have plenty of gullaime here.”

  “Not like ours.” Karrad nodded.

  “The keyshans within the island, will they awake anyway?”

  “No,” said Joron, and he sounded so very sure when he was anything but. Karrad stared at him.

  “So you are exactly the weapon I surmised,” he said, as much to himself as to Joron, “on your say-so whole islands can be destroyed.”

  “Yes,” said Joron. Quiet filled the room. The only noise the tap, tap, tap of Karrad’s finger on his desk. “But without the gullaime on Tide Child I can do nothing.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  Joron leaned forward, picked up Karrad’s pen and looked at it.

  “Because if I could raise the keyshan that lives within Shipshulme now, Indyl Karrad,” he said, “when all looks rather bleak for me and mine, why wouldn’t I?”

  Karrad smiled, laughed. Clapped his hands slowly.

  “Well done, Twiner. I was going to have you put under the hands of my hagpriest, she is good at getting at the truth. But you do not lie, do you? If you thought bringing the island down around our ears may give you and Meas a chance of escape you would take it, I can tell.” He smiled. “A man who tells the truth is a rare thing. So, you are the Caller and your gullaime is the Windseer,” he said.

  “You know about that?”

  “It is gullaime talk, that is all. A windseer is always rising among them. We let them. But this is the first I have heard of a caller rising too.” He leaned across. “Is there a priest?” he said.

  “Priest?”

  “One who controls the Windseer, a fanatic.” Joron nodded. “They generally kill them quickly enough,” Karrad added.

  “The priests?”

  “No, the windseers. If they will not do what the priest wants, the priest kills them so the Windseer will reincarnate.” He sat back. “We generally leave them to it, they are little more than animals really.” He rubbed his hands together slowly. “I never thought there was anything in it.”

  “They say this power, whatever the Windseer has, will destroy the world.”

  “Well, Joron Twiner, they are an excitable species and are given to flights of fancy, that is why they must be controlled. By us, women and men. For their own safety. So I will make you an offer. I will make it once, and give you the night to think it over. I will put aside my hatred, Joron Twiner. The Hundred Isles are sadly depleted, and if the Gaunt Islanders push us hard enough we will collapse. We need a weapon, Joron Twiner, we need you. Join me.”

  “You are doomed. The hagpriests will never let a man—”

  “They blame the Thirteenbern for keeping Meas alive as a child, to them this is all her fault. Her family’s fault. A new Bern will sit on the throne, but I will control the fleet and with that comes the real power. This new Bern will be my puppet.” Joron opened his mouth but before he spoke Karrad raised a hand. “Do not answer me now,” he said. “Spend the night in the cells, with your shipwife and her mother. Look over your shipwife well, and ask yourself if you prefer the chair you sit in now, or the one she has been spending her time in since we took her. You were prepared to risk death to save her; all I am asking is that you live, but in my service.”

  34

  The Choice

  He entered the cell and Meas and her mother broke apart, both turning to look at him at as he stepped through the door, and it struck him again how similar they looked. The pain had aged Meas, her mother was wrapped in a simple variskweave cloak, their shared blood could not have been more apparent. They looked more like sisters than mother and daughter.

  “He asked you to join him,” said Meas. No question there. Joron nodded.

  “I will not.” She smiled, nodded.

  “You should,” said the Thirteenbern.

  “Joron has honour.” Meas snapped the words out, almost choking with emotion, then the words came fast, tumbling out of her. “And he knows Indyl cannot be trusted, he—”

  “He was an excellent spymaster but has never been trustworthy, Daughter. Few of the Kept are.”

  “A little late for you to say that,” said Joron. The Thirteenbern shook her head.

  “I misjudged him, yes. Circumstances moved in ways I could never have predicted, he gathered more power more quickly than I had expected when my garrison shipwives died.” She stood, took a step toward Joron. “I have people close to him. People I trust.” Laughter, from Meas, a slow, cruel, mocking noise.

  “You think you can return to power still, Mother? You think he would move without being entirely sure of his position?”

  “Meas is right,” said Joron. “He owns the fleet here. He has made sure all the ships are his people. Anyone who isn’t has probably been sent away to your defensive ring. The hagpriests support him also.” Gilbryn blew air through her nose, a half smile on her face.

  “Clever,” she said. “We kept my best away to defend us, kept those I need least nearest. He fed me my own prejudices and I gorged on them.” She shook her head. “And to lose the hagpriests also? What a fool I have been.”

  “You cannot walk out of here and take your throne back,” said Meas. Her mother stared at her. Then she let out a sigh, a great breath of air.

  “No,” said Gilbryn, but she stayed focused on Joron. “It appears not.” She took a step closer to him. Lifted her arm. Placed a hand on his shoulder and looked up into his eyes. “Black Pirate, here is my command to you. Do what you came to do, save your shipwife. Do whatever you need for that to happen and know you have my blessing.” She placed her other hand on his shoulder, looked directly into his eyes, holding him with the power of her gaze. “Save my daughter, Joron Twiner. Please.” Behind her, Meas stood, hissing with pain.

  “You left it a little late to care,” she said, the words vicious, aimed to wound. “I never so much as once doubted you would have me tortured.” Gilbryn rounded on her. Shouting like a shipwife in a gale.

  “I have always cared for you, Meas,” and did he see a tear in the Thirteenbern’s eye? “How many times do you think I kept you alive when hagpriests wanted you bled over a ship? Or saved your position when a shipmother wanted you stripped of command for ignoring orders? And how long do you think I wept at the end when I condemned you for—”

  “No!” Meas shouted. “Do not say it.” Then she bowed her head, unable to look at her mother, her broken body seeming smaller, meeker than Joron had ever known her.

  “He does not know?” said Gilbryn. “Your own deckkeeper and he does not
know? Well, some things are for you to share with those closest to you. Not I.” The Thirteenbern turned away from her daughter and looked to Joron. “But you should know this, Joron Twiner, if you escape Karrad will come after you with all he has. Not for vengeance, but because he cannot allow you to live. Meas has told me what you are, what you can do. He will think you will come back for him, for vengeance.”

  “We would not. We want peace. We only want the fighting to stop.”

  “He cannot understand that,” she said. “And even if he could understand it he still would not let you go; if I was in power, I would not either. You know why.”

  “The Windseer,” he said. She nodded.

  “Gullaime have spoken of it for ever.”

  “Madorra, their priest, says it will bring them peace through the destruction of everything.”

  “A little extreme,” said Gilbryn. “The birds are given to drama.”

  “Can you blame them?” he said. “We blind them at birth, force them to bring wind even though we know the price they pay is terrible. Though we are lucky – it does not matter what Madorra wants, our gullaime has no appetite for destruction.”

  “Often the way with the windseers, but it has never mattered before because there has been no caller, Twiner, so they have not had to make the decision. Now there is.”

  “How do you know what they believe?” said Meas from the back of the room.

  “I am the Thirteenbern of the Hundred Isles, I know everything that happens in my realm.”

  “Plainly not true,” said Meas, looking around the cell with a snort. The elder Gilbryn ignored her.

  “The priest, what do you call it, Madorra? It will be pushing your gullaime hard to burn, to pull all the power of the winds to it.”

  “The Gullaime will not,” said Joron. “Karrad said Madorra would kill it eventually.”

  “It may, they do. But if it feels it is genuinely close to their prophecy coming true? Then it will not be as quick to act as they have been in the past.”

  “The Gullaime will not do what Madorra wants.” The Thirteenbern shrugged.