by Col Buchanan
Before Berl left, he turned at the doorway, one hand gripped on the frame. 'Are you really training to be Rshun?' he asked.
'I think that is supposed to be a secret,' replied Nico. The boy nodded and stuck out his lower lip, while considering it. Then he closed the flimsy door behind him.
Nico lay back and closed his eyes. It helped him with the sickness a little if he did not look at the sloping cabin.
Already his life in Bar-Khos seemed an awful long way away.
*
The next morning he felt better. It was as though his body had exhausted itself of its traumas, and had decided to relax in spite of his many anxieties. Nico sighed with relief and rolled free from the sweat-soaked bunk.
The cabin was located at the rear of the skyship. A ledge ran beneath the shuttered window at the back of the room, supporting a sink, and beside it, in the corner, was a lid concealing the privy. Taking a deep breath he fumbled with the shutter until it opened. He blinked at a clear blue sky, a few white clouds sailing past at eye level. A faint breeze brushed his face, fully waking him. Despite himself, he was drawn to peer over the sill. Far below lay a green and tan landscape – an island by the look of its curving coastline – with roads threading to and fro between a few hazy towns before converging on a sprawling, walled cityport. The sparkle of rivers running down from forested hills to a variety of lakes and then on to the sea was dizzying to look at. Nico gripped the window frame, and commanded himself to remain calm.
He tossed the contents of the bucket down the privy, just to clear the room of its stench, then stripped off his filthy garments. Ash had bought him a bag of travelling gear before they had departed, and from it he now took out a bar of soap and scrubbed himself from head to toe, soaking the wooden floor in his exertions. Then he dug out a new covestick, removed it from its waxed paper wrapping, and brushed his teeth long and hard.
As he was donning the clean change of clothes – a soft cotton undershirt, tunic and pants of tough canvas, boots of leather, a belt with a hardwood clasp – he realized how desperately he was in need of food.
Walking in short, careful steps, Nico left the cabin and followed the corridor, and the smell of chee, to reach a large, low-ceilinged common room. Crewmen sat in groups around the tables scattered around the room, muttering quietly as they broke their fasts for the morning, the dim air already filled with pipe-smoke. A few watched him darkly as he walked to the far end where the galley hatch lay open and where the cook, a skinny bald man with the swirls of a moustache tattooed to his face, served out warm mugs of chee and platters of cheese and biscuits. Berl was working in the galley, too, busy feeding wood into the fire that burned within a brick hearth. The boy nodded Nico a greeting, though he did not pause in his work. Nico contented himself by piling food on to a platter. The cook set a cup of chee in front of him before returning to his kitchen work, which seemed to consist of banging pans, flinging sodden clothes about, sweating and cursing to himself. Nico sat at an empty table and ate cautiously, testing his stomach. He gazed at the cannon sitting by the gun ports along both sides of this warm communal area and tried to ignore the occasional hooded glance cast his way. He wondered if the rest of the crew were always this friendly.
When he was finished, he thanked the cook and climbed the stairs that led to the upper deck. He took each step slowly, his hands sliding up the rails with each upward push of his legs. Near the top he paused, collecting himself.
He rose on to the weather deck of the ship, and for a moment he pretended he was standing on any normal sea-going vessel, afloat on fathoms of water rather than drifting on air. For the Falcon's decks looked no different than those of any ship he had seen in the harbour: a high quarterdeck rose behind his back, a foredeck to the front. A group of crewmen sat nearby talking while braiding together lengths of rope. Another group on the far side of the deck played a game of bones; they were arguing amongst each other, while one man firmly held back another who seemed ready to pick a fight. In all, the crew seemed youthful to Nico: few of them being out of their twenties. They were notably thin, all sporting beards and wild hair.
It was strangely quiet save for the snapping of canvas, and he looked up to see the great gas-bag of white silk rippling in the wind, sheathed in a fine netting of rope and wooden struts. Its bulk cast a great shadow across the entire length of the deck. From the nose of the envelope an assortment of sails stretched taut between tiq spars; two great vanes of the same material projected like wings from its flanks. Men were up there, miraculously clambering over the lattice of rigging that confined the silk curvature. Their feet were bare, and their dirty pink soles skated along ropes that seemed too frayed to warrant such easy confidence. Madmen, thought Nico. Bloody lunatics.
At this great height, the air was cold. The breeze bit through his clothing and he felt the prickle of goosebumps rising on his flesh. For a moment he thought of returning to the cabin to fetch his travel cloak, but then he spotted Ash sitting cross-legged on the raised fore-deck of the airship. The man seemed deep in meditation, and was wearing his usual black robe.
Nico found that he could negotiate the deck so long as he did not look over the rail, and therefore simply maintained the pretence of being aboard a normal ship at sea. Keeping his eyes fixed on the decking, he reached the steps to the foredeck and climbed up to join the old man.
Ash's eyes seemed to be closed, though a glint of pupil could be seen between his lashes, his half-lidded gaze focused on a point that could be near or far away. The old man sat like stone: not even his chest rose and fell with his breathing.
'How are you?' Ash inquired, without moving.
Nico folded his arms for warmth. 'Better,' he replied. 'Thank you for your concern, old man.'
A dry chuckle. 'I am not here to mother you, boy.' And Ash finally opened his eyes wide, looked up at him, held out a hand.
Nico stared at it for a moment, the fingernails bright against the pinkly black skin around them. Then he clasped it, rough as bark, and helped the old man to his feet.
'If you are walking, then you are well,' declared Ash. 'So it is time we began your training. Lesson one: you are my apprentice. Therefore you will call me master, or Master Ash, never old man.'
Nico felt the blood rush to his face. He did not like the other's tone. 'As you say.'
'Do not try me, boy. I will strike you down where you stand if you show me insolence.'
He sounded like Nico's father sometimes had after becoming a Special, or like one of the idiots his mother had taken in. 'Then strike me,' said Nico. 'That would be a lesson I already know well.'
Nothing changed in Ash's expression, but from the corner of his eye Nico could see the old man's right hand clenching into a fist, and he tensed.
Instead of hitting him though, Ash exhaled deeply and said, 'Come, let us sit together.'
He knelt again on the decking, this time facing Nico. After a moment's hesitation Nico followed his example.
'Take a deep breath,' Ash instructed. 'Good. And another one.'
Nico did so, and felt the anger draining away.
'Now,' began Ash. 'You are Mercian. Your people follow the Dao, or what they sometimes call Fate. You must know, then, the ways of the Great Fool.'
The question was an unexpected one. 'Of course,' Nico replied with some caution. The old man merely nodded: it was clearly a prompt for more. 'I have been to temples a few times, and listened to them reciting his words. And on every Foolsday my mother used to make me sit beside her during her invocations.'
Ash's eyebrows pinched together, as if unimpressed. 'And tell me, do you know where the Great Fool was born?'
'I was told he was born on one of the moons, and fell to Ers on a burning rock.'
The old man shook his head. 'He was born in my homeland, Honshu, six hundred and forty-nine years ago. That is the birthplace of Daoism. The Great Fool never set foot away from Honshu, despite all your legends to the contrary. It was his Great Disciple who brought the W
ay to the Miders, and it was because of her and her own disciples that it spread in its various forms across the southern lands, including your own. Now, tell me, do you meditate?'
'Like the monks?'
'Yes, like the monks.'
Nico shook his head.
'Hoh. Then you know nothing but religion, as I expected. In my order we are also Daoists, but we follow the teachings of the Great Fool without all this nonsense that has grown up around his words. If you are to follow his way, as you should do if you are to become a true Rshun, then you must forget all those things and focus on only one thing. You must learn how to be still.'
Nico nodded slowly. 'I see.'
'No, you do not, but you will begin to. Now, do as I tell you. Place your left hand in your right. Yes, like that. Now straighten your back. More so, you are still slouching. Good. Keep your eyes partly open. Choose a point in front of you and stay focused on it. Breathe. Relax.'
Nico breathed, perplexed. He could not see how this had anything to do with the business of Rshun.
'Observe the air as it enters your nostrils, moves through you, exits. Breathe deeply, into your belly. Yes, just so.'
'Now what?' Already his knees were beginning to ache.
'Simply sit. Allow your thoughts to settle. Let your mind become empty.'
'What is the point of all this?'
A slight rush of air from Ash's nostrils, but still a steady gaze.
'A mind that is forever busy is sick. A mind that is still flows with the Dao. When you flow with the Dao, you act in accordance with all things. This is what the Great Fool teaches us.'
Nico tried to do as the old man instructed. It was like trying to juggle three things at once: watch the movement of his breathing; keep his back erect; stay focused on a chip of wood on the rail in front of him. But he kept forgetting to pay attention to one or the other, and frustration began to build in him. Time stretched out till he was unable to tell if he had been sitting there for moments or hours.
It seemed that the more he tried to be still, the more his mind wanted to chatter to itself. His face itched, his straightened spine ached, and his knees throbbed with pain. It could easily have been a form of torture, and after a while he purposely set his mind to other things: where the ship was heading, and what was being served for dinner, anything that might take him away from his discomforts.
It felt like several hours had passed when a bell rang out to signal the end of the hour.
Ash rose with a soft rustle of his robe. This time it was the old man who helped Nico to his feet.
'How do you feel?'
He chose not to say the first thing that came to mind. 'Calm,' he lied, nodding. 'Very still.'
The old farlander's eyes lit up with humour.
*
Later that day the ship descended several hundred feet in the hope of finding a more favourable wind, and indeed she found herself in a stream of fast air bearing north-west. On the raised quarterdeck at the rear of the ship, his oiled black hair flapping over to one side of his head, the captain barked orders for the tailsculls to be trimmed and the mainsculls to be let out, his deep voice sending men scurrying into the rigging even before he was finished. Captain Trench was a tall man of perhaps thirty years of age, clean-shaven and gaunt in the extreme. His bony white hands rested in the pockets of a grey-blue navy overcoat of no visible rank; an affectation of sorts, or perhaps an indication of some earlier naval career, since his command now was of nothing more than a merchant vessel – though admittedly a rather remarkable one. His one good eye peered upwards at the envelope of gas keeping them aloft, which rippled ceaselessly along its windward side; while, on his shoulder, his pet kerido chattered in his ear as though in conversation, and shifted a leg for balance as he did the same beneath it. Like a fish, the Falcon turned, squirming, into the flow, her deck pitching over as she slewed around, still shedding height.
Nico gripped the rail with whitening fingers. He listened anxiously to the creaks of the wooden struts over his head that connected the envelope to the hull. The great curved mainsculls on either side of the envelope had caught the wind full now; next to the wheel, a crewman studying a spinning instrument called out the speed as the ship surged ahead.
They were leaving the Free Ports at last.
That evening they dined with the captain in his stately cabin beneath the quarterdeck, a low slab of a room that spanned the entire breadth of the ship. Windows lined the wall space, thick watery panes of glass divided into diamonds by crisscrossings of lead, some panes coloured in translucent green or yellow. Beyond them, the horizon merged with clouds lit by a falling ball of sun.
The meal was a wholesome affair of rice soup, roasted potatoes, green vegetables, smoked game of some kind, and wine. The courses were served on bone-white crockery ceramics, fine and expensive-looking stuff. Each piece was decorated with the central motif of a falcon in flight. A gift to the captain, Nico assumed.
There was little talk as they each fell upon the steaming food. Ash and the captain both ate with the concentration of men intent on savouring what they still could in life while the going was fair. Dalas, the captain's second-in-command – a big, dreadlocked Corician wearing an open leather jerkin with a curved hunting-horn slung from his neck – was a mute apparently from birth. Even the captain's pet kerido, excitable at first around the two guests present for dinner, now sat quietly on the table before his master's plate, softly clacking its beak and drooling in an attentive way as the man ate. The animal reminded Nico of Boon, back home in the cottage, when Nico had sat eating whatever half-heartedly prepared meal his mother had cooked for them, and surreptitiously passing morsels beneath the table. He had never seen a kerido before though had heard of them, from street performances of The Tales of the Fish recounting stories of merchants venturing to the forest-oasis in the shallow desert, and meeting with madness and death. The Tales always portrayed the kerido as a vicious creature despite its small size. With one of the creatures sitting before him now, Nico could imagine why. The colours of its tough hide invoked images of lush vegetation draped in shadow, and furtive movement, and the sudden pounces of a predator. He had not realized it was possible to make a pet of one.
Red wine had been produced from a locked cabinet fixed to the floor, and Ash and Dalas and the captain were now well into their second bottle, while Nico still sipped from his first glass. He suspected the pair of them were already a little drunk.
'It's good to see you on your feet at last,' Captain Trench observed quietly, as he used his handkerchief as a napkin to dab at his pale lips, and favoured Nico with a glance from his blind white eye, as though he could see more clearly with it. Even in the soft sunset hues that filled the cabin, his skin had a pallied complexion, like the slick greyness of rain.
Ash grunted at the remark, and Nico glanced towards the old man, but the farlander refused to return his gaze.
'A tricky business, adjusting to big sky,' Trench continued in his soft, clipped accent suggestive of a wealthy education. 'Worse than being at sea, most will inform you. Well, it's no shame on you, the reaction. Believe me, I am hardly any better myself when I make it back to land. It takes me – what – a full day in bed with a galloping whore before I feel steady again.' And he flashed Nico a good-natured smile, with a cock of an eyebrow, before looking quickly away again as though shy at having said too much.
Nico forced a smile in return, for it was hard not to like this man. Indeed, this evening he was gaining a sense that it was important to Trench to be liked by those sharing his company; which was surprising, remembering him earlier that day, as he screamed at one of his crew for fouling the rigging, his words flying incoherently with so much spittle that Nico had wondered if he wasn't in some way unhinged. Dalas had eventually stepped in to pull Trench into his cabin, out of sight of the crew, though not out of earshot.
Now, at dinner, the captain seemed calm. His smiles came easily and his sound red-rimmed eye held something of an apolog
y in it: clearly whatever demons plagued him, they were restrained just now by this softer nature, which also seemed his truer nature, so that Nico felt reassured in his presence, despite his earlier loss of control.
From across the table, Dalas observed Nico coolly while he shovelled food into his mouth with a fork. The big Corician lifted his free hand and made a gesture in sign language, almost too fast to follow: a balled fist tilting from side to side, a waving motion, a flat chop, a palm soaring.
'Pay no heed to him,' advised Trench, dismissing the other man with a wave.
But Nico continued to stare at the Corician's hand, which now rested on the tablecloth, the forefinger rubbing restlessly against the end of its thumb. 'Why?' he inquired. 'What did he say?'
Trench raised his bunched handkerchief to his mouth, and murmured from behind it. 'He says, my young friend, that he doubts you have ever even sailed before, let alone flown.'
The Corician had stopped eating, his right cheek stuffed with food, as he awaited Nico's response.
'He would be right, then,' Nico admitted.
'Yes, but you may not have noticed how he said it. That gesture just now, with a loose wrist, it meant he intended it to be insulting.' Trench shook his head at Dalas reproachfully, and Dalas frowned back. 'Dalas was born on a ship. All his life, he has lived on one type of deck or another. He is often this dismissive with people who have never been to sea. He reckons, somehow, that their priorities are all wrong.'
Nico offered an awkward smile to them both. 'Once, when I was ten, and swimming in the sea, I found a log and used it for a boat.'
Trench withdrew the handkerchief from his mouth by a fraction.
'A log, you say?'
'A big one.'
Trench choked back a laugh, which in turn became a cough that he stifled with his handkerchief. Even Dalas's expression softened, enough at least to swallow his food.
'You are hardly drinking,' the captain observed, as he caught his breath. 'Berl, fill him up, if you please.'
