Call of the Bone Ships

by Rj Barker

  “Joron!” Meas’s shout came from the rail of Tide Child as the bigger ship came closer, white water rushing along the hull. “How does it feel to wear the two-tail, Shipwife Joron?” She was grinning as she stood on the rail, one hand on a rope, the other holding on to her hat. He strode across to his own rail, a little less steady and with no intention of testing his nascent skill with his bone leg by trying to balance on the rail when he could not always successfully balance on a deck. Like her, he had to hold the two-tail hat onto his head – not because he stuck his head out into the rushing wind, but because he was uncomfortably aware that the hat he wore barely even fit him. It was an old misshapen and much mended hat of Brekir’s. As ill fitting as the rank of shipwife felt to him..

  “Good, Shipwife Meas,” he shouted back, “I would wear it longer, maybe?” He said it as a joke, but there was nothing of the joker on her face when she replied.

  “A shipmother needs a shipwife, Joron, for she cannot be both. So maybe start thinking about saving for a tailor, eh? And who you will choose from Handy Alley to make your uniform?” She gave him a wave and jumped from the rail, returning to her deck and shouting orders that were whipped away by the wind, Tide Child’s . . . deckchilder jumping to action around her. Wings were dropped and the flying wings put out to grab the wind as the bigger ship peeled way, splashing the deck of Keyshantooth and all on it with salt water, much to the hilarity of all aboard.

  “The shipwife is in fine spirits.” Farys paused, scratched her head under the one-tail that she wore, then added, almost apologetically, “Shipwife Joron.”

  “She is indeed. Perhaps it is better if you call me deckkeeper still.”

  Farys looked troubled by that and Jennil turned from where she stood before the mainspine, the cord held in her hand. “Maybe, Shipwife,” she said, “it is best if we get used to calling you that so mistakes are not made once we are within Sleighthulme.”

  “Ey, she has a point, Shipwife,” said Mevans, who had chosen to play the part of deckholder. Joron did not quite understand why, since Mevans was by far the most senior deckchild – but he had let his people choose their own roles and would not question them.

  “Well,” he said with a smile, “then shipwife I will be while it lasts.” He grinned and stepped forward, feeling the rub of his bone spur against the stump of his leg and fighting not to wince. “It seems Meas and Tide Child think the Mother gives them all the speed of the storms – well, let us see what Keyshantooth has to say to that!” A cheer from the deck and his own sparse crew were running up the spines and letting down wings, pulling on ropes to tighten the sheets, and behind them Coughlin leaned in to the steering oar, veins standing out on the muscles of his arms as he fought to keep the ship on the line that best caught the wind. Keyshantooth clearly liked the attention for he leaped forward, cutting through the cold grey waves toward the horizon and the shout came from the front: “Nine beakwyrms ride our waves, Shipwife!” And Joron felt pride swell within him at that, for this seemed right and proper and how things should be.

  A pity only, that they flew toward death and despair and destruction.

  But he could enjoy the flight, enjoy the brisk winds against his skin that whipped the braids of his hair around his face, that twisted the two tails of his hat, filled the white wings above him, that stole the words and the breath from his mouth, lifted the water into choppy waves that the beak of the ship smashed through. Salt water rained upon the deck, making him laugh with joy. His joy was infectious, it ran through the ship and touched every woman and man on the slate or up the spines. As Keyshantooth cut through the sea, his beak a blade, neatly parting the water the way a butcher flenses meat from the bone, the crew began to sing and then the call came from up the spine.

  “Keyshan rising!”

  With that came another level of excitement in the deckchilder around him. “Where is it, topboy?” shouted Joron.

  “Two points of the for’ard shadow, far on the horizon!”

  “Steer us two point to shadow, Coughlin,” shouted Joron, “I do not think Meas will begrudge us sight of the beast.”

  He knew she would not. His crew, all the crews, would enjoy seeing a keyshan as the beasts had brought them nothing but good fortune so far, to their way of thinking. Maybe he should have wondered if his topboy could have been mistaken, and maybe another commander would have but Joron did not. He had felt a strangeness in the world, a vibration within him, a blueness within his mind and a sense of freedom that made no sense until that call went up. Of course there was a keyshan – it touched every part of him, and as if in answer, as if in affirmation, the gullaime hopped up from the underdecks, yarking and calling, dancing across the deck in circles with its wings outstretched.

  “Sea sither! Sea sither!” it shouted. And behind it came Madorra, joining the song. Joron noticed that the gullaime, though it seemed to be dancing in a joyous and carefree manner, was also very careful to never dance with Madorra. So the windshorn circled the gullaime, the way Skearith’s Blind Eye circled the world – together, but always apart.

  “Keyshan rising!” This time the call came from the beak, and Joron stumbled and limped down the ship, taking the old and battered nearglass Meas had given him as a present for his first command and raising it to his eye.

  There!

  Oh wondrous beast, oh creature of legend. Somehow, he had expected it to be the one that had destroyed McLean’s Rock, but the creature he saw in the nearglass was, even at this distance, entirely different. It swam away from them, towards the north, with its head out of the water and the wings on its back raised to catch the wind. The head was massive and blocky, giant branching horns sticking up. Even at this distance Joron fancied he could see the light of its eyes, like blurs around the beast’s snout. Its mouth was open and it was bearded with hair like seaweed. Behind the great head a stretch of sea and then the body, rising like an island and studded with wings. The overriding colour of this one was blue, dark and rich.

  He heard the shouts from the other ships – “Keyshan rising!” – echoing joyfully back and forth among them, until all he could hear was voices mixed in with the sound of the water as if the sea was whispering to him – rising, rising, rising . . . The creature tilted its head back and sounded, though Joron did not know that, not at first. It opened its mouth and he felt a thrill run through him, from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, both the ones he had and the ones he had lost seemed to vibrate. Then came the sound, even at this distance like a wall of a hundred thousand different screams and pitches and harmonies that shook the water and the ships upon it. In return a cheer went up from them. Behind him he heard a similar noise to the call and turned to find the gullaime and Madorra calling back to the keyshan, wings stretched out beneath robes, heads extended, beaks open and their throats distended so he could see the bright red skin between white throat feathers.

  There was something unbidden amongst all this joyous noise that made Joron cold. For if this keyshan was not the one raised at McLean’s Island and not the wakewyrm, then had another island broken open? Had it been inhabited? Had hundreds gone into the sea amid broken rock and collapsed buildings? Had thousands?

  Windseer. Fire and blood.

  “Put us back on course now, Coughlin,” he said but he could not keep the sudden worry from his voice.

  “One comes. More come,” said Madorra. “The sither will rise.”

  Had he done this? Had he started this all that time ago by singing to the wakewyrm? By waking the islewyrm had he sent some signal out across the islands that would bring them all crashing down?

  “Not rise, Joron Twiner,” said the gullaime quietly as it came to stand by him. “Not rise. Come when called. When needed. Not destroy, not kill,” it whispered. “Not want.”

  “No,” said Joron, “not want.” The gullaime called again as the ship heeled over, catching a stronger breeze as it slipped back into its original course and the arakeesian once more vanished over the hori
zon. The ship danced across the waves and felt to Joron as if it moved as swiftly and smoothly as the white clouds passing through the sky, while within him all was turmoil. The mood aboard the ship now joyful at the sighting, though Joron could not help feeling less so, for he was the only one who saw some worrying portent in the fact that this keyshan swam away from them.

  “Farys, the rump is yours,” he said, and from there he made his careful way down into the ship to find Anopp, Keyshantooth’s old deckmother. He now haunted the underdeck, trying to find a place he could lay comfortably while his back healed under the supervision of Garriya in what would have been the deckholder’s cabin. As Joron approached the cabin the door opened and the ragged old woman slipped out.

  “Caller,” said Garriya in a whisper – which surprised him as she was never usually one to mind her voice – “do you wish to speak to my charge?”

  “Ey,” he said.

  “Well, that is good. He is lucid now.”

  “Lucid? I thought he was healed?”

  She stared at him, piercing eyes beneath a mop of filthy curls, in a way she reminded him of Meas. “Keep your voice down. A great part of healing is to believe you can heal.”

  Joron did not talk immediately, instead chewing over what that meant.

  “I thought he was well, that he was up and about.”

  “Aye,” she said. “He was, but you have the skin removed from your back and see how you fare. I chase the filth from one wound to another, but always something is leaking or suppurating. Sew him up, open him again.” She shrugged. “It is a race I am losing.”

  “Does he know?”

  She shrugged. “I have not told him, but in his heart, inside, somewhere, he must feel the Hag draws near. Be gentle with him, Caller.”

  “I will be.”

  “Good,” she said. “Now I must eat. Never enough food on these boats.”

  “Ships,” he said quietly, “they are ships,” but Garriya did not care and was not listening.

  In the deckholder’s cabin he could smell the souring wounds on the air, but Anopp was sitting up, wrapped in a sheet that had been soaked in salt water. Wanelights burned along with a small brazier, making the room stiflingly hot after the fresh winds on deck.

  “You are a shipwife now,” said Anopp, his voice a croak.

  “Not for long.”

  “Yet you find time for me,” he said. “I can tell you no more. I have given your courser all the information I have, all the codes I know.”

  “It is not why I am here,” he said.

  “Then why are you ?” He stared at Joron and in his eyes Joron saw pain, a pain he recognised. A shared experience of agony beyond that which most would ever feel.

  “Only to say you are not bound to us. We shall tell no one where we got our information from. If you wish to be left behind on Sleighthulme when we leave, I will arrange that for you.”

  Anopp laughed quietly. “Go back? To that Hassith-lover who whipped me? No, from what I see you have it better on your ships. This is a happier place than I have ever known.”

  “Then you are welcome to stay,” said Joron.

  “I think we both know I will be staying,” he said softly, “whether I wish to or not.” And Joron felt the shadow of the Hag over them and, despite the brazier, he was suddenly cold in the small room.

  48

  The Killing Time

  The killing started early. The rise and fall of knives, the blood, the bodies falling to the deck, and still there was more to do. Every kivelly in Meas’s fleet had been rounded up, caged and brought to Keyshantooth for execution in the name of Meas’s plan. And, though there had been much grumbling about the coming lack of eggs, the butchery of the kivelly was viewed as a game more than anything. The small birds had been running round the deck, squawking and fluttering in panic while laughing deckchilder pursued them. Several were lost over the side only to be quickly snatched from the water by hungry beakwyrms. Despite Joron’s shouting the games had carried on until he had threatened the crew with the cord, then they had calmed and the butchery of the small frightened birds became a production line.

  Pull them from the cage.

  Cut off the heads.

  Hold the twitching body over a barrel to drain the blood from it.

  A team of pluckers, spreading white feather across the deck like snow.

  Slit ’em and gizzard ’em.

  Pack the bodies in salt.

  Occasionally the gullaime would dart in and grab one of the kivelly corpses, gulping it down whole while yarking to itself as deckchilder chased it away, and this was also seen as a merry game until Joron spoke severely to the gullaime. Though it complained at being told to stop, it did not complain too hard and sloped off to its cabin to sleep. Joron thought it had probably eaten too much and made itself feel ill, as the gullaime was not a creature that usually took well to being told no.

  How odd it must seem, to those unaware of the ruse to be played, that the morran before a battle they spent it butchering birds for food. Though, of course, it was not the flesh they really wanted. It was the blood.

  When Aelerin quietly came on deck and whispered to Joron that they neared their destination, the barrels of salted kivelly were put over the side onto waiting flukeboats, to be distributed among the fleet, and on the last boat Joron sent Aelerin and the gullaime with Madorra, back to Meas on Tide Child, as he would not risk them within Sleighthulme. Then all that could be done was to fly before the brisk wind, order his deckchilder to chase every feather from the deck, and wait.

  Wait while they pulled ropes and tautened wings.

  Wait while his stump throbbed.

  Wait while the blood thumped through his body.

  Wait while he tensed and slackened his muscles, all the while appearing to stand still and calm.

  Wait while a feather whirled around the deck, rose into the air and escaped the ship.

  Wait through those moments of inaction, pressed between fear and flight.

  “Sleighthulme rising!”

  He sent Farys up the spine, not ready to go up himself yet. Probably never would be. His leg ached and he could feel dampness in the cup that held his stump. No matter how thickly he wadded it with material it was never truly comfortable, and he hoped that dampness was sweat, not blood.

  Though, given their plan, it might be that blood would serve him well.

  “They’ll see us soon,” said Farys as she jumped from the bottom of the spine.

  “Very well,” said Joron, then he raised his voice. “Prepare the ship, loosen the wings, make us fly a little ragged.” Wings were furled and new ones let down, these prepared with holes and cuts as if the ship had been under shot. This together with a ship already damaged from its escape at McLean’s Rock made Keyshantooth look a sorry state, but not sorry enough, and it was to complete this illusion that Joron’s crew had spent the morran killing. “Bring out the blood!” he shouted, and the barrels of kivelly blood were rolled up. Two barrels, the blood of the birds diluted with seawater and with dye and a little ground seed to keep it thick. When forming this plan, Joron had briefly wondered if dye alone would be enough to create the illusion they required, but Farys had pointed out that one taste by someone on land would give lie to their ruse, so kivelly blood it had to be. Once the barrels were on deck Jennil and two chosen deckchilder took buckets and scooped blood out, pouring it over the side of the ship as if the Hag had cast her eye over Keyshantooth, bursting bodies and taking her due. When Jennil was satisfied with her work she came to Joron.

  “It is your turn now, Shipwife,” she said, standing before him with her bloodied bucket.

  “Ey,” he said, “I suppose it must be.” He reached down to undo the buckles around his leg, but before he could start Cwell was already there.

  “Let me, Shipwife. I will keep the spur close for when it is needed.” And though he still felt uncomfortable with the woman so near to him, he nodded, knowing it would do him only good for the crew to s
ee the woman who had once tried to overthrow him and Meas now acting as his servant. Once the spur was unbuckled – he felt strangely naked before the crew – Cwell carefully unfurled the rolled-up end of his trouser, that he had cut ragged with his bone knife, and helped lay him on the deck. Then she produced a thin birdleather cord and wrapped it around his leg above the knee, tight enough that it appeared to be a tourniquet. That done she looked up and nodded at Jennil who artfully splashed blood around him on the deck, then, with an apology, over his clothes, spattering them with the mixture of blood and seawater. What better to baptise a shipwife, he thought, than with the two elements that would soak their command.

  The fleet of black ships fell behind and Keyshantooth cut through the sea. Joron had them untruss the gallowbows, had crews standing around them as if ready for action. Two bows had been smashed escaping McLean’s Rock and they were left to swing wildly. Some of the deckchilder lay on the deck around them and, though Joron was sure it was partly an excuse for them to do nothing, it added to the illusion of a ship badly mauled.

  And he lay on the deck.

  And he lay on the deck and waited.

  And he lay on the deck and he waited to see Sleighthulme rise.

  Up it came, from the water, breaking the horizon with staggered, vicious promontories – black claws scratching at the sky and sucking in the light of Skearith’s Eye. Sleighthulme was nothing like the other islands of the Scattered Archipelago. No white rock, no windspire, no varisk or gion growing on it. The only native life was the cruelly beaked skeers which fed on carrion and the helpless. As he lay on the deck and watched the pyramid of basalt grow from the sea he wondered how it had come to be, this lonely black island ringed by white breakers and sharp rocks. The only other place in the archipelago like this was Skearith’s Spine, and it was as if part of the Spine had been picked up and thrown, to land here in this cold and lonely part of the sea. And though Meas and every ship and every woman and man that followed her was behind Joron, and though he was surrounded by those loyal to him, he still felt cold and lonely himself as they raced toward Sleighthulme.