by Rj Barker
“Deckkeeper,” said Coult quietly, “go up the spine. The mist is holding and I would have someone in the topspines to guide me in and set me on a path to collide with that four-ribber they have. The other ships are tied alongside it right in the centre of the harbour. Careless that is, they think themselves safe here. The fires will require at least a tenth of a sandturn to truly bite, so when you judge we should light this Hag-cursed tub shout down ‘ware your speed’ and I will know to act.”
“And what if I wish you to ware your speed?”
Coult grinned at him.
“I would not anyway. We want to smash into them with as much speed as possible.” He grinned into the smothering mist. “We will bring them all down in flames.”
“Very well,” said Joron. Then he was gone from the deck, climbing the mainspine to the topboy’s nest to become the herald of a chaos yet to come.
Somewhere before him the fog ended, to be replaced by the smoke from burning Safeharbour, but Joron could not pick out where one replaced the other in the swirling cloud. Smudgy lines of red, embers still glowing where a town had once stood, told him where the land was. Further out, a diffuse carpet of soft blue light, ship’s corpselights lost in the fug. Above that he saw the topboys of the boneships in harbour, the four-ribber tallest, a glowing wanelight at the point of its central spine. Either side the two-ribbers, their lights slightly lower. Before them another light, closer now, glowing in the mist. Atop one of the pier towers – it must have been rebuilt to act as a watchtower. Joron hoped it did not hold a great gallowbow, doubted there had been time to build something strong enough to hold one. The four lights made a triangle, the ship lights the base, the tower the point and it seemed to Joron they pointed at him, as if to remind him of his duty. The harbour beyond those lights he knew well, knew that once through the two piers their ship must swing to landward to bring it on its target. Knew he must concentrate on that.
“Ho! Brownbone,” the call came from the tower as they approached.
A figure resolving in the mist, from dark blob to crouching shape. Was she dark-skinned like himself? Always good for the night watch, us Long Islanders – his father’s voice, chuckling as he said it.
“You’re back early. Seven flags a-flying, ey?” The woman’s voice had no echo, the mist ate it, and for a moment it felt to Joron that they were the only two alive in the world. “I said, seven flags a-flying,” she shouted again and Joron knew there must be some agreed reply. Of course there was. And, of course, he did not know it. He loosened the knots holding one of the small crossbows within his jacket and pressed a bolt into the weapon. Placed the point of his boot through the cocking stirrup and pulled back the cord. Then used his arm as a rest for the weapon, sighting along the fletching of the bolt at the figure in the tower. “Ho! Brownbone,” came the shout again. Could he hear it in that voice? The oily taint of a growing suspicion?
The tower gliding nearer, how strange this was in the mist – it dampened the sound of water running along the hull and the sound of the deckchilder below. He and the tower guard moved through the air like Skearith’s Bones in the sky, inexorably coming into each other’s orbit. He could make out the woman’s clothes now. She was wrapped in a stinker, sat in a little nest with a small brazier – it was that which provided light, a glow on her chest. A perfect target in the lonely night.
“Seven flags indeed,” said Joron to himself as he watched the figure slide into his aim, applied pressure to the trigger and felt the kick of the weapon’s release. Watched the guard jerk. Saw them open their mouth and in his head he was wishing fervently, Be dead, be dead, be dead. And then the lookout slumped, and luck was with Joron for they did not fall from the tower or slump forward into their fire, and the Maiden’s Bounty moved on through the entrance of the harbour. Joron counted to five as he glided through the mist before passing his words down the spine.
“Bring us to landward,” and the ship came about. No further instruction was needed: all that had visited Safeharbour knew the place. He felt the Maiden’s Bounty straighten. The topboys of the three boneships were pointing at him. He raised his voice.
“Ware your speed!” And these words did echo, some quality of the air about them had changed. It was no longer the clean, damp scent of sea mist. Now it was the smell of sewage and rotting rubbish that was normal to a harbour – and the smell of charred earth and flesh, which was not. It was clear from the reaction of the topboys in those other ships Joron could see that they had realised something was wrong. Below him he saw the glow of torches as the deckchilder hurried to light the hagspit on the decks, and he knew Anzir did the same unseen in the places below, where rags soaked in hagspit had been gathered.
One of the topboys stood. “Treachery!” came a shout from the fug before them and a crossbow bolt split the air above Joron’s head. Time to leave. Down and down he went, spiralling around the mainspine, not taking the direct route for fear of some clever thinker with a crossbow who aimed at where a deckchilder climbing down a spine should be. Relief when his boots hit the cracked slate deck and the smell of burning hagspit filled his nose. The Maiden’s Bounty was moving at a rate of stones now. To seaward Farys was chaperoning the gullaime and the windshorn over the side and into the flukeboat. He could hear Coult shouting somewhere, though not see him as billowing smoke was pouring from the underdecks.
“Get up there, you slatelayers! Onto the maindeck! I need your curnows on the land, not your bodies burned at sea.”
Two deckchilder appeared from the smoke, coughing and spluttering, followed by Coult. From the rear of the ship Anzir and the rest of the crew came running toward the flukeboat while around them the corpse crew began to burn, slack mouths silently screaming.
With a cough so loud he thought a keyshan must have surfaced by him, something in the beak of the ship exploded, knocking Joron and everyone else flat, covering them with a blanket of heat. When he opened his eyes he saw a sheet of flame, the entire for’ard spine and its wings alight, burning bright as Skearith’s Eye, making women and men into strange beasts, their movements jerking in the twisting, living firelight. Making corpses dance and twitch. With the fire raging he could see more of Safeharbour, see the three ships, see that Maiden’s Bounty would make contact right between the two-ribber nearest the dock wall and the four-ribber. There was panic on those ships, women and men with axes laying into mooring ropes. Then Coult shouted, “Brace, you fools!” and Joron saw no more.
The Maiden’s Bounty’s journey ended with a crash that threw those only just recovering their footing from the explosion back to the deck. The air filled with the ripping and creaking and cracking of splintering bones. And in the crackle of fire he was sure he heard the gleeful cackle of the dead. The for’ard mast, all aflame, came down on the four ribber, spreading the fire across its deck and, by some fortune, the impact sent a flaming barrel of hagspit flying into the air to smash against the side of the two-ribber. Fire ran across the unfortunate vessel, eating into the spiked bone of its hull.
“Off!” shouted Coult. “Get off this ship, he’s already goin’ down!” And it was – another horrendous groan from the frame and the beak of the ship jerked, the deck slanted and one of their number, Tossick off Tide Child, slipping and rolling down the deck, shouting and screaming for help, only to be lost in the furnace that the water to seaward had become, hagspit flames an orange glow beneath the water. Joron stared after him. “Hag has him now,” shouted Coult, as the sound of roaring, crackling flame tried to steal his voice, eager as any wind. “Get to the boat.” He ran forward, pushing Joron on. The deck tipped further. The air full of screams.
Then Joron was over the side. Blessedly cool in the flukeboat, as the Maiden’s Bounty’s hull protected him from the worst of the heat. He tried not to think about the terror, the fear that must be running rampant on those burning ships. Then, in a panic himself he checked for Farys, found her at the front of the flukeboat already at her station, the gullaime and windshorn crouc
hed below her. “Hag take you all,” Coult was still shouting, “grab an oar, we’ll go round the back of the Bounty and head for land.”
“Shipwife,” said a woman near the front of the boat, “they’ll be less likely to search for us at the other side of the harbour.”
“And we’ll be more likely to run into the second two-ribber, you fool, I saw no sign of it burning. Now row! Row for your lives!” And Joron had an oar in his hands, was pulling for all he was worth, the sweat on his skin no longer the cloying sweat of heat and fear, now the cleaner sweat of physical work.
He felt the rocking of the flukeboat as someone moved up it and concentrated on his oar, not the screams, not the smell of hagspit or rich scent of burning flesh that both revolted him and made his mouth water at the thought of fresh meat. He was almost surprised when Coult spoke into his ear.
“Right, Meas’s boy, you’ll have to command from here.”
“Me?” he said, almost losing the rhythm of the oar stroke, “why me?”
“Listen to my voice, boy,” he said. And Joron waited for him to finish the sentence before realising what he meant. Of course, Coult was a Gaunt Islander, from the other side of Skearith’s Spine. Joron had spent so long under Meas’s service that what had once been unthinkable, to work with the Hundred Isles’ ancestral enemies, he now gave no thought.
“Of course,” he said, and started to stand.
“They’d be on us the minute I spoke.”
“I thought you liked a fight,” said Joron, and the smile fell from Coult’s face.
“Ey,” he said, then leaned in close, “but I like to get my girls and boys home more.” A flash of teeth. “Tell no one, they’ll think I’ve gone soft.”
“Do you have a plan, Coult?”
The old Shipwife nodded. “We get to the Grand Bothy, we free any remaining townspeople, meet up with our people, then get out.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“Ey boy, most things are, till others try and ruin it. That’s when problems start. Now give me that oar and get to the front of the boat where the shipwife would stand.”
He passed the oar across and made his wobbly way down the boat, stepping around the gullaime and windshorn who were hunkered down in the bottom of the hull, not moving, not even seeming to notice him. It was if they were in some sort of trance. He glanced to the side, and like a ghost he saw a white shape moving through the smoke and mist – the second two-ribber making its way out of the harbour. Fires burned on the rear of the ship but they were small. Coult was right, it had escaped the inferno engulfing the other two ships. He watched as it passed, imagined the frantic activity on board and the panic as fire took hold of the other ships. He commended the shipwife who, from the rate the small fires aboard were being extinguished, must have kept large quantities of sand on deck for just such an occurrence. Meas would approve of such an officer. Then the ship was gone, gliding into the mist and smoke and Joron turned to the front, seeing the wharves of the harbour – not stone, not yet, and now never to be, built from varisk and gion for the time being until there was opportunity to build them properly. Now the unfinished structures were full of women and men, some staring at the two burning ships, the hagspit melting the ships’ bones, making a puddle of fire around them that consumed a flukeboat desperately trying to make its escape from the burning two-ribber.
As they approached the wharf he saw an officer, a deckkeeper with his curnow out and his one-tailed hat in his hand. He was approaching where they aimed the beak of their flukeboat, shouting, but Joron could hear nothing but the roar of fire. Ash rained down, black flakes that fluttered like corpsebirds, and he saw deckchilder frantically scratching them from their heads in case they contained hagspit and set them to burning.
“You . . . whe . . . ?” yelled the deckkeeper.
“I cannot hear!” shouted Joron.
The man leaned over as the boat came up against the harbour edge. “You, where are you from?”
Hag save him, he did not know the names of those ships in the harbour. Words failed him for a moment, then he stepped back and pulled up the windshorn – not the gullaime, as he was never entirely sure how the gullaime would react. But he knew the windshorn would simply do as he asked.
“We managed to get off with these two gullaime,” he shouted. “Will someone catch a rope for us afore we burn too?” The edge of panic in his voice was real, but not through fear of fire. For fear of being discovered.
There was a moment when he thought the deckkeeper may question him further, and if he did then he knew they would never mount the wharf, they would die here under the crossbows he could see some of the deckchilder carrying. But the decision was taken out of the officer’s hands by the deckchilder around them – no crew could bear to watch their own kind burn – and hands were held out, the boat’s rope was thrown and their flukeboat was pulled up next to the wharf. More hands helped them out of the boat. His feet hit the land and the song of the windspire increased in volume within him as a space grew around the gullaime and windshorn. The officer stared at Joron, as if there was some recognition, but if there was the events of the night were moving too quickly for him. Something exploded on one of the boats – the hagspit stores – throwing a column of vivid purple fire into the air and making everyone duck.
“Well? What are you waiting for?” said the deckkeeper to Joron. “Take them up to the lamyard at the bothy, they’re too precious to risk burning. And Shipwife Barnt will want to talk to you and know what has happened to his glorious little fleet.”
“Ey, Deckkeeper,” he said, the words coming breathily with the sense of release at being accepted. “Come on then,” he said to the group around him, “and bring the windtalkers.” The gullaime let out a furious squawk and they set off through the chaos for the Grand Bothy.
13
The Darkest Port
It was difficult for Joron to recognise this blackened, smoke-rimed place for the same peaceful and cheery Safeharbour he had known. There was something within him, a mixture of anger and pain that burned, just as Safeharbour burned. If the song of the windspire that topped the island had not filled him to overflowing the moment his feet touched the land he would have believed he was in some nightmare place, some Hag-cursed land for those found unworthy of the comfort of her fire. But the song was there, vibrating through him, beautiful and alien and strange, something as unique to every island with a windspire as its coastline. So he walked, the little group of deckchilder surrounding the gullaime creating an area of calm while women and men ran hither and thither around them. All this given a terrifying otherworldly edge by the towering purple-and-green-tinged flames of the burning boneships.
Once, houses of mud or gion and varisk had lined the wharf and the streets leading up to the Grand Bothy. Now they were gone, only blackened ground and the occasional stubborn, carboniferous upright remaining to show where people had lived. The ground beneath Joron’s feet, that glorious singing ground, was scarred and blackened by hagspit that had been kept burning for weeks on end, and he knew a scar would remain on this island for at least his lifetime. Pure hagspit oil, distilled from the fiery hearts of arakeesians, was a poison so pernicious it could not be diminished. One drop of hagspit could make a thousand barrels of poisonous fire.
Would it were as easy to clean water as it is to dirty it, Joron. His father’s voice, speaking from a place a million miles away, where he flew across the calm oceans of the Hag’s realm.
“Would that it were,” he said to himself, watching as a bevy of deckchilder ran past him, their faces streaked with black from the smoke that filled Safeharbour, both from the burning ships and the burned town.
Despite the cold air everyone sweated.
“Hag’s tits, Joron,” said Coult, “I have spent more time here than anywhere else in the last few years of my life and I know not which way I should be going.” An errant wind split the smoke and mist for a moment and Joron saw a flag waving from the top of the
Grand Bothy.
“That way,” he said, pointing toward where the flag had swiftly vanished into the whirling smoke. They moved onward, coals crunching underfoot like a layer of ice on new snow, passing through groups of women and men who stood around, as if unsure what to do. “It seems,” he said quietly to Coult, “that most of the deckchilder were on land.”
“Ey,” said Coult, “unfortunate for us that, but it is the way it is. I see no workers though, Meas must have been right thinking they would be locked away. We can at least thank the Mother for that,” he grinned at Joron. “Come, we should hurry.”
They did, and at one point they paused to let a group of hard-faced and angry-looking officers past. Joron stared at them, hoping to see his sword at the waist of one but it was too hard to see in the smoke. The officers passed slowly, talking heatedly of who was to blame for this. He scanned their faces, seeing one he was sure he had run into in Bernshulme once. He looked away and stared at the ground, pushing at the coals under his foot until he found the hard, packed dirt of the road beneath.
“Listen, my girls and my boys.” Joron glanced up. One of the officers, young and angry-looking but wearing the two-tailed hat and pink-and-blue dye streaks of a shipwife, was stood on a barrel of hagspit, stacked where the roadside must once have been. At his side he wore Joron’s sword. “That fireship, it did not fly in alone.”
“Were flew in by ghosts,” came a voice from the deckchilder who had stopped at the sound of the officer’s call. “I saw ’em. Dead deckchilder lined the deck.”
