Voyage of the Basilisk : A Memoir by Lady Trent (9781429956369)

by Marie Brennan

  But it is a real place, if not so fantastical as our literature has sometimes painted. Its boundaries are indistinct, owing to the fact that geographers divide the islands into different groupings, some of which do not lie wholly within the area customarily referred to as the Broken Sea. But in general terms, it is the sea between Dajin and Otholé, which is pocked with more islands than even the geographers can count. (They have tried, but some of the islands vanish at high tide, or become divided into smaller islands as the sea rushes through the channels between them. Meanwhile, volcanic activity in the region can raise up new land with very little warning. Add to this confusion some general disagreement over what size a rock must be before one can term it an island, plus the sheer scale of the endeavour, and it is no wonder that the numbers vary so widely.)

  This complex array lies between the Tropic of Serpents and the Tropic of Storms, but its climate is made extremely pleasant by the mitigating influence of the sea. Oh, it can become airless and despicably hot where the vegetation grows thick—but compared with what we had endured in Eriga, I could find very little to complain about here. Fruit trees grow in abundance, and fish swim the warm, shallow waters in even greater abundance, so that in many places dinner requires little more than pulling a breadfruit from the nearest tree and roasting it over a fire, alongside the fish you have scooped from a lagoon. It may not offer the comforts of what we term civilized life, such as padded armchairs and running water … but for those who idealize a return to nature, it is easy to imagine those islands as close kin to the world described in the very first lines of Scripture, before the Fall of Man.

  The social world of the Broken Sea is not so easily described. The geographers group the islands according to one scheme; ethnologists have different groupings entirely, following the divisions of culture. The peoples in the southwestern portion of the sea are generally Melatan, except where other countries have laid claim to territory, while those in the northeast are Puian. Neither group is a unified state, but like neighbouring peoples the world over, they have warred against one another (when they have not been warring against themselves), and in the zone between them a creole strain prevails, mixing the physical and cultural qualities of the two.

  The lack of a unified state meant that we could not be certain of our welcome anywhere we went. At each port of call we would have to negotiate with the inhabitants anew; a local king might rule as many as three dozen islands, but that is a mere pebble in the great expanse of the Broken Sea. I could not recall whether the princess’ diplomatic voyage included any ports of call in the region, but I doubted it; Scirland did not have a large presence there. We were therefore strangers in strange waters, even more than was usually true.

  We began our efforts in Melatan territory, for I wanted to see the beasts referred to as “komodo dragons.” Their claim to that term was not under debate by dragon naturalists for the simple reason that nobody had yet taken a good look at them and ventured an opinion one way or the other. They were said to be wingless and reptilian, perhaps three meters in length; beyond that and the name, I knew little.

  There were no ruins for Suhail to study on the island we chose, for which I apologized. He shrugged and said, “I have already seen what remains of the great complex at Kota Cangkukan.” (This he had done before visiting Tuantêng.) “After that, I am not certain anything in the Melatan region could compare.”

  He offered his services as a linguist, though. Tom and I had both studied the simplified Atau pidgin, which would suffice for basic requirements throughout much of the Broken Sea (and give us a solid base for learning any related Puian language), but Suhail’s gift for such things meant he spoke far more fluently than either of us. With his aid, we obtained a guide—and a warning.

  “They’re dangerous,” the guide (a swarthy fellow named Pembi) told us bluntly.

  “Do they have extraordinary breath?” I asked in Scirling, for I could not think how to render the concept in Atau. Suhail found a way, and got a shake of the head in return. “Not wind. Bite.” Pembi peeled his lips back from his teeth to illustrate, mime being the closest thing humans have to a universal language.

  Tom snorted. He was not going with me; his strength was not yet sufficient to face a journey through the island’s interior. He refused to lie quietly on deck, though, “as if an invalid”—never mind that he was an invalid, or at least a very tired convalescent. Thus he was with us at the teahouse where Suhail had found Pembi. “Sharp teeth, eh? That makes an improvement over most dragons. They’ll have to get close enough to bite you.”

  “After facing things that can breathe at you from meters away, it does seem almost tame,” I agreed. “Tell the man we shall take all due care.”

  Pembi, upon hearing this, shrugged with the philosophical air of a man who is willing to leave fools to their fate. We made arrangements to depart the next day, and returned to the Basilisk to prepare.

  Jake and Abby came with us, as did Aekinitos himself and two of the sailors, for there were apes on the island whose pelts were considered valuable. (Whether Aekinitos wanted to keep an eye on Suhail, since Tom could not be there to do it, I cannot say, though in light of what transpired I think it may be so.) We departed from the leeward side of the island, where the terrain is drier and the vegetation scrubbier; Pembi assured us the greater number of komodos were to be found there.

  I will not bore you with a full account of our days out there. We forced our way through tangled undergrowth that often required the assistance of a parang, a machete-like blade. Aekinitos and the sailors, two fellows named Rostam and Petros, shot various things for food and profit; Jake got lessons in wilderness survival from Pembi; and I stalked creatures that, I was increasingly sure, were not dragons at all.

  My suspicions began with my very first sighting. Apart from the fact that most dragon breeds are scaled, a komodo has very little in common with them. Its head is serpentine in shape, entirely lacking the ruff or other cranial characteristics that tend to mark the draconic from the merely reptilian. It has no extraordinary breath, and when Aekinitos shot one for me to dissect, I found no sign that it had ever possessed anything like a wing.

  The final test was to wait for the bones to dry, to see if they would decay. Pembi did not know; his people do not eat them (for good reason), and although they are shot as predators, no one particularly cares to do more with them than sling the carcass into the forest. We therefore defleshed a few and set them in the sun, then prepared to make camp a little distance away.

  It happened with very little warning. There was a rustling in the undergrowth, not far from where Rostam was pitching his tent. He turned to look—and then screamed, as a komodo charged at him.

  I would not have believed the squat creatures could move so quickly, had I not seen it with my own eyes. Rostam had only enough time to fling his arm up in a warding gesture; because of that, the komodo’s jaws closed on his hand and forearm instead of his shoulder. He shrieked, and then it was chaos everywhere as the men lunged for their guns and blades.

  I ran for Rostam as he fell. In hindsight, it was not a wise thing to do; I risked being shot by one of the others, or at least fouling their aim. But he needed aid, and in any event by the time I reached him, the komodo was dead.

  Rostam’s arm was a horror, blood soaking his sleeve up to the elbow. I knocked my hat aside and tore the kerchief from my head, pressing it to one part of the wound, shouting for someone to bring other bandages. Then Suhail was at my side, his own neckerchief in his hands, and his eyes met mine. They were wide with horror.

  “The bite,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s venom or infection—Pembi wasn’t clear—but it will kill him.”

  Aekinitos was close enough to hear this. He stood over us, gun dangling from his hand, and stared down at Rostam. “He needs a doctor.”

  “There isn’t time for that,” Suhail said violently. He cast about, as if looking for something, then shot to his feet, leaving me to try and stanch the
bleeding. “Help me,” I snarled at Aekinitos.

  Before the captain could move, Suhail was back. In his hand was Pembi’s parang.

  Aekinitos growled something in Nichaean and tried to seize Suhail, who evaded him with a swift step. “It’s the only chance he has,” Suhail said. “Damn it—the longer you wait, the worse his chances are!”

  “That could kill him!” Aekinitos shouted.

  “And if I don’t, he will die.”

  Even now, I can hear Suhail’s voice at that moment. Most men, when facing an ugly decision in a time of crisis, become harsh. Their voices grow hard and cold. His did not: it was soft, compassionate. He regretted the necessity—but did not flinch from it.

  Aekinitos said nothing. But he stood without moving as Suhail stepped past him and took Rostam from me.

  I think I screamed when the parang came down, severing Rostam’s arm above the elbow. Certainly Rostam did, just before he fainted. The world went dark around the edges for a few moments, and I stayed sitting in the dirt, because I knew that if I tried to rise I would find myself on the ground in a heap.

  When my vision cleared, Suhail had finished tying a tourniquet around the stump, to keep Rostam from bleeding out. I gathered my wits and went to fetch Petros’ bottle of arrack. I had no idea whether the alcohol would help, but we had nothing else with which to disinfect the wound. Suhail poured it over the stump before bandaging it in the cleanest fabrics we had. Then he stopped, looking helpless, for the terrain was entirely unsuited to beasts of burden, and so we had come out on foot.

  Aekinitos solved the issue by carrying Rostam on his own shoulders. He set out in the direction of the port without a word, leaving the rest of us to scramble in gathering our gear. I found Jake standing white-faced by my tent, and had to shake him gently before his eyes focused on me. “You have to help,” I said. “We cannot tarry.”

  He did help, as did Abby. Aekinitos outpaced us in any event, even burdened as he was; Jake could not endure a forced march of that speed for long, and it was vital that Rostam be taken care of as soon as possible. Not that anyone could do much for him, beyond washing the wound and putting him in a bed to rest. By the time we reached town, those things had been done, and Suhail, who had gone with the captain, was nowhere to be found.

  I weighed my options. Exhausted as I was, Aekinitos had to be even more tired, and heartsore to boot. He was not the sort of captain who behaved as a father to his crew, but their well-being was his responsibility. And yet … I could not allow this to go unremarked, for my sake or Suhail’s.

  Aekinitos was sitting in the shade of the house where they had put Rostam, a pipe in his hand. I do not think he had drawn on it other than to light it, for it dangled unused from his fingers the entire time I conversed with him.

  “I am so very sorry,” I said to him. Inadequate words, but all I had.

  The captain shook his head, a slow movement that soon halted. “We face enough dangers. Sooner or later, luck runs out.”

  “In this case, it ran out because of me. I was warned that the komodos were perilous, but I pursued them anyway.” I hesitated, then added, “I also brought Suhail. Please—I do not know if what he did was right, but I do know that his only thought was to give Rostam a chance of living.”

  The concealing mass of his beard made it hard to see, but I thought Aekinitos’ jaw tightened at Suhail’s name.

  The silence stretched out, like a ship’s cable pulled tighter and tighter. Finally, my voice very quiet, I asked, “Did you send him away?”

  “Yes.”

  My heart sank within me.

  Then Aekinitos said, “He wanted to remain until Rostam woke—or did not. But if he stayed here, I would have taken that parang and cut off his arm. He is on the ship.”

  On the Basilisk. At first I envisioned him packing, making arrangements for the diving bell to be extricated from the hold. But Aekinitos said nothing more, and then I understood: Suhail had not been sent away for good. Only evicted from the captain’s presence for the time being.

  “Thank you,” I said quietly. “Would you like me to remain?”

  Aekinitos shook his head. “You have your son to see to. Go.”

  I think he wanted solitude, and Jake was the first reason he could think of for occupying me elsewhere, but it was a good one. Up until now, this had all been a grand adventure for my son. Seeing a man’s arm cut off was shocking beyond words for a boy of ten. He had nightmares for some time afterward, and was much subdued.

  As were we all. We remained there long enough to know that Rostam would not die; infection did set in, but it was of a mild sort, not the horrific and lethal fever the islanders told us was the hallmark of a komodo bite. Suhail’s quick work with the parang had indeed done some good. But we could not stay there forever, and so Aekinitos left Rostam with the pay he was owed and the price of passage home, and I gave him more besides. Then we put to sea once more, but we were not the excited band we had been before.

  * * *

  I sat at the table in our snuff-box of a cabin, with a vertebra in front of me as I wrote. Abby had retrieved it while we were packing up and given it to me after our return. My feelings on the thing were quite mixed: it was for this that Rostam had lost an arm and very nearly his life, and all it did was prove that komodos were not dragons. The lack of any visible decay was the final nail. No decay, no wings, no extraordinary breath; even with my doubts about Edgeworth’s criteria, I could find no grounds to call the beasts anything other than very large lizards. It was a useful discovery—but when one’s subject of study is dragons, it is upsetting to think a man was so badly maimed in order to prove something about mere lizards.

  The air in that little cabin was stifling, even with the tiny windows of the skylight open to catch what breeze they could. I put down my pen and went out on deck.

  Suhail was in the bow. The crew’s opinion of him had grown even more dubious once they heard what happened to Rostam, even though the captain placed no opprobrium on him (and showed tacit approval by allowing him to remain). I did not blame him for trying to keep apart.

  His expression as I approached was a sad half-smile, and I realized with a start that Suhail had not been the only one practicing avoidance. I had hardly spoken with him since our return. The smile said that he had noticed, and did not blame me, but he mourned the loss.

  I straightened my shoulders. I had not been thinking about that matter when I came in search of him, but now it must be addressed before anything else. “Please forgive me,” I said, once I was close enough to speak in normal tones. “It must look like condemnation, that I have been avoiding you. It is not.”

  He nodded, waiting as I searched for a way to explain. “I have been close to violence,” I said at last. “My husband was murdered—stabbed in front of me, though he did not die until some days later. I have also seen men savaged by animals. But it is still shocking to be within arm’s reach when a man—” I realized the terrible irony in my choice of words, and winced. “You understand. And it is all the more shocking, I think, because you did not wish him ill. You were doing the best you could for him.”

  Suhail’s hands knotted about one another. I followed their motion, and remembered once more the way they had gripped the parang. “I have hunted,” he said, “and I have given aid when men have been injured. But I have never done that before.”

  I stilled. It had not occurred to me that the event might have left its mark on Suhail as well. Now that I looked, however, I saw shadows around his eyes, a slackness that spoke of poor sleep. I remembered the dove I had dissected when I was a small girl, and the way the visceral memory of it had stayed with me. The dove had not been screaming.

  “Are you all right?” I asked him, so quietly the wind almost stole my words away.

  He glanced away, shrugging. “I will be. I am not the one who lost an arm.”

  “If you would like, I can leave you in peace,” I said, half-turning. “I quite understand if you would prefe
r not to think about research just now.”

  A ghost of Suhail’s usual smile returned. “I would be grateful for it. Research, that is—not you leaving. I could benefit from distraction.”

  As that was much how I would have reacted, I needed no persuasion. I went to lean against the rail; Suhail rose and offered me the coil of rope upon which he had been sitting, and after a brief argument of polite gestures, I gave in. He leaned against the rail in my place. When this was done, I said, “I thought you might be able to assist me. One of the reasons I shoot the subjects of my research—or rather, ask others to shoot them for me—is because there is no easier way for me to observe them closely, except when they are dead. Few dragons will tolerate a human measuring them and poking at their joints.”

  Suhail nodded. “How may I be of service?”

  “Your diving bell,” I said. “It has windows in its sides, does it not?”

  “Small ones.” He cocked his head to one side. “Are you after sea-serpents?”

  I gave him a seated bow, acknowledging the point. “I know I would not be able to observe much from within the bell, but it would be a substantial improvement compared with leaning over the rail. And it would let me see them while they are alive.”

  It was our swim with the dragon turtles that had put the notion into my mind—or rather the desire, for at the time I did not know it was possible to observe from underwater for any longer than one could hold one’s breath. The notion seemed to have fired Suhail’s mind, too, for he came off his slouch against the rail in a burst of energy. “You could see much more than that! There is a suit—a waterproof one, with a bell that fits over the head and locks into place. A hose supplies air. It allows you to move about as you please, so long as you do not go too far.” He stopped, thinking, looking out across the channel we were currently threading between islands. “Though you would not be very safe if a serpent chose to bite you. We could construct a cage, though, with steel bars, large enough that you could float in the middle—”