“Want me to bring you one back?” Sabas’s face was all teeth and jowls as he waddled backwards down the jetty, waving up at Shader. “Numosian whores have the biggest buttocks.” He shook his cheeks and blew air through pursed lips. “And their boobies,” he cupped his own sizeable breasts. “Oh, I can’t wait.”
“Same as the Dolphin, uh?” Captain Podesta leaned on the rail beside Shader, smiling at his men like a doting father.
“Oh, no. That was worse.” Podesta’s crew might have been coarse and hard men, but Diaz’s had been killers, the whole lot of them. The absolute dregs of the world, the scum of virtually every country he’d heard of. All drunkards, gamblers, cutthroats and libertines. The Dolphin had been the only ship leaving Sahul for Nousia at the time; Shader probably would have foregone the tournament had he known she was a privateer.
A trio of white-cloaked soldiers were pushing their way through the throng, chainmail shirts dazzling in the breaking sunshine. Their hands never left the hilts of their longswords, and each bore a kite shield emblazoned with a complex red knot.
“Ahoy there, gentlemen,” Podesta called down to them. “It brings joy to my heart to see Nousian law and order in this pit of depravity. You want to come aboard, uh?”
The soldiers stopped at the foot of the gangplank and touched their foreheads. The man in the middle took a stiff step forwards and clicked the heels of his polished boots together.
“You are the captain of this vessel?”
“Indeed I am. Captain Amidio Podesta at your service, and—” He produced a letter from his inside pocket with a flourish. “—in the employ of His Divinity.”
Shader’s eyes flicked to Podesta and back to the soldiers. If he was bluffing, it was a dangerous game. Pretending to a Templum commission could well get them arrested. The last thing he needed was to have the sword come to light. Ipsissimus Theodore might be a moderate, but the desertion of his newly appointed Keeper might be just what was needed to sway him to the tougher stance advocated by Exemptus Silvanus and the traditionalists.
The lead soldier came closer and Podesta leaned over the side to hand him the document.
“What are you doing?” Shader whispered, but Podesta’s eyes never left the soldier’s, his face fixed in a broad grin, blood-shot eyes twinkling.
“All in order, Captain.” The soldier handed back the letter. “We’re with the Pleroma.” He indicated the galleon, as if there were any possibility of doubting where they had come from. I’m Lieutenant Scorm, serving under Captain Harkyl. I’m obliged to ask, Captain, whether you’ve had sight of a caravel flying the flag of Sahul.”
“Not this far north, surely?” Podesta looked flummoxed.
“Six days we’ve been following reports of it. If there’s any truth in the matter, captain’s a devil of a navigator. Not seen hide nor hair of it, yet we have it on good information she’s been spotted in Nousian waters.”
“Sounds like she’s given you quite the runabout, eh?”
“The men are calling her the Ghost.”
“That’s sailors for you, eh? I’m sorry to disappoint. We’ve seen nothing.”
“Thank you for your time, Captain. Ain be with you.”
Podesta’s arm draped over Shader’s shoulder as he watched the soldiers march back down the jetty.
“Bad times coming, eh, my friend? Hagalle is getting bolder, I think.”
Shader doubted that. The emperor scarcely had control of his own lands. He wasn’t likely to ruffle the Templum’s feathers. “Probably a hoax. Either that or mistaken identity.”
“Stranger things have happened.” Podesta raised his eyebrows in a manner that suggested agreement or a private joke.
“Seems you have friends in high places, Captain.”
Podesta patted his jacket pocket and opened his mouth in mock astonishment. “Even men as blessed as his Divinity sometimes require the services of simple men of fortune. Our business is in Gladelvi, but you will disembark before that and so need not worry yourself further, eh?”
The Emperor Hagalle was famously suspicious of the Nousian community at Gladelvi in the north of Sahul. In fact, he had a reputation for paranoia regarding supposed Aeternam plots. Shader wondered if he’d been too hasty a judge, and if Hagalle had a point after all.
“Now,” Podesta said, making a sweeping gesture towards his cabin, “I am too old for wenching, and I’ve no desire for another case of the pox. You, my friend, are too holy to succumb to the temptations of the flesh, am I right? In which case, I insist that you join me in a bottle of Quilonian red, and who knows, we may even get Elpidio to pour it for us. After all, it’s his family label; a brand soon to pass through my bladder into the piss-pot of history.”
* * *
The flickering of the hanging lantern lent a stuttering animation to Podesta’s bow scraping across the strings of the battered violin. The screeching and grating had softened to a muted melody behind Shader’s muddied thoughts as he lolled in the captain’s chair, vaguely aware he was smiling, the pleasant warmth of wine prickling at his skin.
Elpidio’s head was on the table, one hand idly squeezing the wax of a guttering candle, the other tapping out a rhythm with a spoon. Three empty bottles of the family label stood amongst the orange-smeared bowls and crusts of bread left over from their meal.
Shaking the grogginess from his head, Shader rolled himself out of the chair and took a stumbling step towards the walnut bookcase, running his fingers along the perfectly planed edges whilst squinting at the spines of the books. You could tell a lot about a man from his library, but in Podesta’s case the clues were somewhat conflicting. Nicolau Rama’s Science of the Navigators, and Carracks, Caravels, and Galleons; DuMelo’s Roots of Quilonian Democracy: A Graecian Legacy; Cuello’s Wonders of the Ancients, a somewhat speculative work Shader had read in Aeterna. Cuello had claimed that the Templum jealously guarded the scientific secrets of the Ancients, from time to time opening its archives to keep ahead of its dwindling rivals. If Sahul produced chainmail, it would manufacture plate; if Quilonia had carracks, it would make Galleons. The Templum had never denied holding the repository of Ancient knowledge, but it had always spelled out the dangers of releasing it. The world was not ready for such power; the Ancients had proven that and they had been duly punished. Cuello claimed that the Ancients’ science had not been solely destructive. They had developed cures for many diseases, answers to famine, feats of construction that had enriched people’s lives. He accused the Templum of depriving the world of the good along with the bad, an accusation that had neither been affirmed nor denied.
“What’s this?” He pulled out a dog-eared tome, boards visible through the frayed cloth cover. “Some Early Contemplatives by Alphonse LaRoche,”—a pre-Nousian spiritual classic that had been mandatory reading for new recruits to the Elect. All very dull, as far as he could recall—deicide, suicide, acts of mortification in the name of some greater good. Adeptus Ludo had described it as the fruit of a slave religion, which he claimed formed the basis of much Nousian thought. He reasoned that some of its adherents were the first luminaries—although he suspected LaRoche had called them something else, before the Templum’s Magisterium had edited the term out, along with a lot of other details, in the early days after the Reckoning.
Podesta set down his violin, took a swig from his empty wine glass, frowned, and banged it on the table until Elpidio took the hint and got up to open another bottle.
“Interesting man, LaRoche, no? Makes you wonder how he knows such things, eh? All those characters from before the Reckoning. Hundreds of years before. Either he’s making it up or he has sources that are lost to the rest of us. You see this one?” Podesta swayed from his stool and thumbed along the spines until he found what he was looking for. “LaRoche’s Fall of Otto Blightey. You heard of him? The holy man turned devil. Burned at the stake by the religious authorities of his day.”
“Every Nousian has. It’s a morality story, designed to encourage the v
irtues and steer clear of the vices.”
“Just a myth, eh?” Podesta tapped the side of his nose with a finger. Lamp light glinted from his eyes, threw wavering shadows across his face.
“More than that,” Shader said. He knew from bitter experience in the forests of Verusia. “But don’t tell anyone I told you.” He imitated Podesta’s nose tapping. “You’re not meant to know about the dark secret at the heart of the Templum.”
Podesta shot a look at Elpidio, who was struggling with the corkscrew. “You all right, boy?”
“Course.”
The captain leaned towards Shader. “What makes a man so, eh? Born bad? Bad choices? Bad friends? Maybe just bad chroniclers. You know, the victors writing history.”
Shader rolled his head from side to side. It was hard to think with all the wine flooding his brain. Aristodeus had said something similar about the Templum’s bogeyman. In the times before the Reckoning, Blightey had been an exemplary contemplative, largely recognized as the holiest man of his generation.
“Some people say he was the conscience of the world.” Hard to believe, having seen what Blightey was capable of at Trajinot.
“A conscience, eh? Good thing we have the Templum to separate out right from wrong, uh? What a mess the world would be in if we were free to act as we pleased; free to choose our leaders and think our own thoughts.”
Elpidio popped the cork from the bottle and filled Podesta’s glass. “We are free in Quilonia. Don’t see why anyone else puts up with it. Don’t know why we don’t just get rid of the bloody Nousians.”
And replace it with what? Mob rule and the elevation of wealth above people? There were always free-thinkers praising the Quilonian model, but Shader felt they were only free-thinkers because the Templum taught them to be so.
“Elpidio, my boy,” Podesta said, “there is a simple reason these things will never come to pass: power.”
“But we’ve got the best navy, the hardest soldiers.”
“Blah, blah, blah. Doesn’t every country say that? Clear the table and I’ll show you.” Podesta reached up to a shelf and pulled down a rolled chart. Elpidio stacked the bowls, but before he could collect the wine bottles Podesta swept them to the floor with a loud crash. Shader helped him unfurl the map and hold down the edges.
“This—” Podesta put an arm around Elpidio’s neck, drawing him close. “—is the whole sphere of the Earth. Flattened out, of course, but you get my meaning, uh?”
“I know what a map is.”
Podesta pointed to a large land mass south of Gallia. “This is Quilonia.”
The lad smiled, clearly missing the point.
“And this is Nousia.” Podesta stabbed at points all over the surface of the map: “Britannia, Gallia, Latia, Graecia in the middle. The Great West, too.” He traced the outline of the huge continent. “And most of Numosia.”—The sprawling land south of Latia.
Elpidio’s face fell.
“Little Quilonia is like a lamb hemmed in by wolves, you see?”
That’s hardly how the Templum would have put it, and neither would Shader. Without the glue of Nousia binding the nations together there would be nothing but petty rivalry and war. You only needed to look at Quilonia’s internal wrangling to see that.
“Whose is this?” Elpidio pointed to a cluster of islands in the far south.
“The big one is Sahul, bigger than Quilonia and even more independent. This—” Podesta indicated a smaller island to the east. “—is New Ithaka, Sahul’s bitterest enemy; and these, to the west, are the Anglesh Isles. We will pass between them on our way to Sahul, and if we are lucky—” He gave a look of feigned horror. “—we’ll not be eaten by the mawgs.”
“Mawgs? Thought you knew a safe route, Captain.”
Podesta let go the boy’s neck and plonked himself on a stool. Wine dripped onto the map as he took a gulp, looked up at the ceiling, and sighed.
“We will be quite safe, my boy.” He caught Shader’s eyes and gave a good impression of a sober look. “The mawgs only raid west, off of Ashanta, these days; ever since Governor Gen built up the Sarum fleet.”
“You ever seen a mawg, Captain?”
“Oh, yes, Elpidio.”
“Me too,” Shader said, seating himself once more.
Podesta shot Shader a look that was part surprise, part respect.
“Tracked a large band of them from Pardes.” The catalyst that led him to abandon the abbey. You could hardly be a contemplative and then grab a sword at the first sign of trouble. Of course, the Gray Abbot had tried to dissuade him from leaving. It seemed to Shader the old monk liked having a sword to hand.
“They were sniffing around the abbey for days, as if they were looking for something; then they seemed to pick up another trail and headed south. The Gray Abbot was worried about what they were doing on Sahulian soil and, knowing my background, sent me after them.”
He’d protested, but that was one of the drawbacks with vows of obedience. No matter how much he tried to be a better man, he’d never been able to outrun the shadows of the past.
“I came upon them outside the village of Oakendale.” He could still feel the jolt along his arm as his sword thudded into a leathery carapace, the beast falling on top of Rhiannon, snarling and aroused. He’d learnt quickly where to aim: a soft patch beneath the jaw where the blade had slid in effortlessly, the mawg’s black blood spilling on the half-naked woman beneath.
“You fought them?” Podesta sat bolt upright, staring straight at him, beads of sweat glistening on his brow.
“Killed them.” He’d been particularly adept at it. That was his problem. He had an aptitude for killing; a gift for all that was opposed to Nous.
Shader lowered his eyes to his wine glass, let the images play across his mind: mawgs engorged on the flesh of the villagers, victims stripped to the bone—right down to the marrow. Row upon row of needle-sharp teeth; feral eyes and spraying blood as he hacked into them. Images of slaughter. There was no point trying to suppress them. Once the seed was planted they took on a life of their own. He doubted he’d sleep much tonight, and the wine only seemed to make the flashbacks stronger.
“What were they like?” Elpidio asked in a voice hushed with awe.
Podesta scratched at his flaking scalp and drew in a deep breath. “Scabrous monsters, all bunched up and knotted. Fur like a wolf’s; scaly hide. Unnatural. Trust me, boy, not something you want to see, eh, my friend?”
Shader continued to stare into his wine. Podesta raised an eyebrow and went on.
“I ran into them, too, a long time ago. I was about your age at the time, Elpidio. It was off the southern coast of Sahul, when I crewed on the Crucible. We were hunting sharks—the big ones that can take a man, eat him whole. The Ashantans pay a fortune for their fins. Make them into soup.
“A mist came up with the dawn, so the captain had us stay put in case we ran into the reef. I was scrubbing the deck—”
Elpidio frowned at that.
“Oh, I’ve not always been a captain, my boy, so there’s hope for you yet, uh? The men started muttering and staring out into the fog, so I gets to my feet and I see this great black ship coming at us out of the gloom. A galleon, by the size of her, fully square-rigged and with a bowsprit set too low in the water. Wasn’t till she hit us that we realized why: big iron ram that cut through our hull and caught us firm.”
Podesta’s eyes seemed focused elsewhere as he blindly poured another drink, most of it running down his fingers and onto the map. Shader was watching him now, pulled in by the rasping timbre of his voice, his stillness upon the stool.
“Captain sent me below and I went, but not before I saw one. Gray it was, all shaggy but for its torso, which was like a molded breast-plate, ridged and leathery. The legs were bent backwards, ending in claws like a bird’s. They had three long fingers, and opposing thumbs that scraped the deck as they loped towards us. Their eyes were like the crescent moon, but the color of piss. Their mouths, though, that
was the worst of it.”
Shader grunted his assent. He’d seen what they could do to flesh, muscle, bone; seen how even if you smashed a sword into their teeth, another row slid forward to replace them.
“They are like the teeth of a plant,” Podesta continued. “You know, the ones that eat insects.” He shivered and gulped down his wine.
“I lingered too long on deck. You should always follow the captain’s orders promptly, eh? Got this scar from a claw.” He stuck his boot on the table and rolled up his trouser-leg, twisting the knee to afford them a view of his hamstring. Three puckered white lines crossed the flesh.
“I was lucky. The mawg slipped on blood, and I made it to the hatch. I guess the man behind me wasn’t so lucky.” Podesta winced. “Not judging by his screams, and the ripping, crunching sound that followed me below.”
“How did you beat them?” Shader reached for the bottle and poured himself another.
Podesta sat staring into space, his mustache quivering, the skin beneath his left eye twitching.
“We didn’t.”
Elpidio’s mouth dropped open. “But…”
“The screaming went on for hours. I found a space in the hold, tucked under some nets, and held my breath. I heard men hitting the water. Must have leapt from the decks to get away from the mawgs, but then they started screaming, too. Expect the sharks got them. Doesn’t bear thinking about, eh? Trapped between mawgs and sharks. Reckon I’d take my chances with the mawgs, eh? Especially with our friend Mr. Shader, here, to protect us.”
“But the crew,” Elpidio’s voice was growing shrill. “Why didn’t they fight back?”
“They did.” Podesta eyed Shader. “But it takes an exceptional fighter to take down a mawg, eh, my friend?”
Shader sipped his wine. He’d not considered himself exceptional at the time. He’d assumed anything he could do, others could do equally as well. The mawgs had been ferocious, rabid even, and that had been their weakness. Creatures of rage and instinct in the heat of battle. He’d always found an enraged enemy the easiest to conquer. It was the cold ones you had to watch. They’d been powerful, true enough, and terrifying in a way that would have paralyzed most men. Not Shader, though. When it came to danger, he’d always been blissfully at ease. The difficulties only came when he wasn’t fighting.
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