by D. K. Fields
The captain called out good morning. She’d been at the wheel when Cora had turned in the night before, and was in the same position now. Had she left her post at all? She must have. But so far on this trip, Cora had only ever seen the captain here, at the wheel, pipe in mouth, a glass of the Casker spirit lannat close to hand.
‘Morning,’ Cora said in return. ‘We’re making good time, I hear.’
‘That we are. The Bore’s wind has been good to us.’
‘Long may that continue.’
‘It’s the making of a good story, isn’t it? With a worthy ending, with a worthy prize.’ Captain Luine glanced at the rushing water. Nullan claimed to have found a trustworthy crew, but what that meant these days was anyone’s guess. The Audience would likely have a few ideas. Trustworthy didn’t seem to equate to waterworthy.
‘Helps to have a bargehand who knows his canvas.’ Captain Luine nodded towards Harker who was once again on the roof of the barge, involved in a complicated business of undoing and tying down the flapping sails.
‘What about the return journey?’ Cora said. ‘Wind’ll be in the wrong direction for us, won’t it?’
The captain sucked deeply on her pipe. ‘I don’t think you’ll be needing to worry about that.’
‘Oh? And why’s that?’
‘Nullan paid me for upriver miles only. I got a cargo of my own to collect, once you lot disembark.’
‘But we’ll have to get back to Fenest. Ruth has to—’ Cora stopped herself just in time, just in case.
Captain Luine shrugged. ‘I got my sailing orders. Just doing what I’m paid to.’
They were drawing near another barge moored on the opposite side of the river. The captain seemed to know the crew and shouted over. Cora took her leave of the for’ard part of the barge and headed onto the deck proper.
Everyone else had got up before her and were making the most of the fine morning after the rain the evening before.
‘Suspect it suits him, being in the air,’ Ruth said, appearing beside her.
‘What?’
Ruth pointed along the deck to where Serus was rolling up his hammock. ‘Not a bad bed for a Rustan.’
‘I guess not.’
‘So are you going to tell me why the Chief Fire Investigator of Fenest is with us?’
‘The clue’s in his name, Ruth. Safety first. That pipe of the captain’s has got to be a risk.’
Ruth shook her head, but she was smiling. ‘He’s handsome, and you deserve some happiness, Cora. Audience knows, we all need to find it, with what’s happening in the south.’ Her sister’s smile had gone. ‘We need to grab any chance we get.’
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Better.’ She was at once brisk and business-like. ‘Nullan took out the stitches this morning and says the cut is healing cleanly. That Pruett didn’t do too bad a job.’
‘I won’t tell him. He thinks too much of himself already.’
Nullan herself appeared at that moment. With a nimbleness Cora could only wonder at, the Casker stepped onto the deck while carrying a tray well-laden with a blackened cooking pot and a stack of chipped, mismatched bowls. Steam curled from the pot, and Cora caught the smell of hot milk with spice. Pastries were a luxury left behind in the city, but maybe Casker cooking wouldn’t be so bad.
‘As none of you were coming inside for breakfast, I’ve brought it out here.’ Nullan set the tray on a crate, and people started to help themselves, Marcus elbowing her way to the front with well-practised form.
Cora hung back to roll a smoke – she wouldn’t be able to stomach breakfast without a bindleleaf before it. She joined Serus sitting on the other side of the deck, and as she caught sight of his face, she laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’ he asked.
Cora reached out and ran her thumb lightly over his forehead. ‘The hammock’s given your face something besides those metal cheeks. Printed you with its pattern.’
Serus smiled. ‘The price you pay for a good night’s sleep. And you?’
‘I was asleep as soon as I’d taken off my boots.’
He offered her a forkful of his breakfast – some kind of porridge, by the look of it, and the barge without enough spoons to eat it with.
Cora shook her head. ‘Once that lot have had their fill, I’ll get mine.’
‘The way that child is eating, there might not be much left.’ They both watched Marcus peering into the porridge pot, the long-handled spoon unwieldy in her hand. Harker lifted her up to get a larger spoonful from the bottom. ‘That’s her third serving,’ Serus said.
‘She needs it more than me.’
‘And you, Cora – what do you need?’
Cora leaned back against the side of the cabin, feeling the damp of the wood seep into her coat. ‘I’d say I’ve got all I need right here. Got my smokes, got the sun, got a Rustan beside me, and I seem to have finally shaken off the people who’ve been on my tail since I left the police.’
‘Maybe you were right,’ he said. ‘This will be a holiday after all.’
‘A short one. We have to get the Hook back in time for the Wayward story. If Ruth’s not there, others are waiting to take her place.’
‘And the Hook itself – you still don’t know what it is or where on the river your sister will pick it up?’
‘No, on both counts.’
Serus set down his bowl. ‘Aren’t you tempted to ask her?’
‘Don’t you think I have? Ruth’s as tight-lipped as a Perlish merchant’s coin purse.’
‘But she must have told the Caskers where we’re headed.’ Serus was looking at Nullan and Harker who were deep in conversation as they secured what looked to be fishing poles off the back of the barge. ‘Why not tell her sister too?’
She had no answer to that, other than a swift stab of frustration that he should say what was already on her mind. ‘Why are you so interested in our journey plans? I thought you were here to spend time with me.’
Serus looked wounded. ‘I am. Cora, I was only—’
‘Well, don’t.’
She went to see what was left of breakfast. Not much, but that didn’t matter. She had even less of an appetite now anyway.
Marcus was seated cross-legged nearby, head bent, entirely concentrating on something in her hands. It looked to Cora like a bit of twig.
‘Tell me you haven’t snapped that off something important,’ Cora said.
The girl looked up and grinned. She held up a V of wood, with a thong of leather tied between the two prongs. A slingshot. ‘Harker gave it to me. He’s going to teach me how to use it.’
‘I dread to think what for.’
‘For stoning birds, the ones that nest in the banks. They stone ’em, and then they fish ’em out of the water with nets and roast ’em.’ Marcus turned to look at the fast-flowing water. ‘Not here. He said the birds nest on parts of the Tun. I got time to practise because we haven’t reached that yet. This is still the Stave.’
‘Been looking at the charts, have you?’ Cora took a forkful of cold porridge and made herself swallow. ‘Starting to wonder if you’ve got some Casker blood in you.’
‘Harker showed me them maps. Says we should reach K’stera Point this time tomorrow.’ She pulled the slingshot’s strap tight as if to test its power. ‘Give me your fork, Detective.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. And what’s K’stera Point?’
‘It’s the river junction! Where the Stave splits into the Tun and the Cask.’ Marcus sighed. ‘Don’t you know anything?’
‘I know that you’ve got new clothes and that you weren’t wearing them when I saw you at the Water Gardens yesterday morning.’
It wasn’t just the trousers. Now that she could see Marcus in the daylight, it was clear the girl’s jacket was fine too – far better than Cora had ever seen Marcus wear in the years she’d known her. Green velvet with richly brocaded panels in black and silver thread. Fenestiran bordering on Perlish, and though Marcus was
now sitting on it, the quality was unmistakable. Even Cora could tell that, and she knew next to nothing about clothes.
‘Well?’ Cora said. ‘Where did you get them?’
A pause, and then the girl said, ‘Took ’em. I was passing the laundry on Gweek Street. There were bags of clothes going in, coming out. The washers stopped to have a chat and a smoke, and I had a rummage, didn’t I?’
‘That’s a good question: did you? Or did someone buy you these new clothes?’
Marcus gave Cora a look that said Cora was the biggest fool in the Union. ‘And who would be buying me nice clothes?’
‘You tell me. You sure no one told you to be here, to see what I’m doing with the new… with the crew? Someone who bought you clothes as payment?’
Marcus snorted. ‘You’re the only who buys me things, and it wouldn’t be this kind of fancy stuff, would it?’ As if to demonstrate, Marcus grabbed a handful of her new finely woven trousers.
‘So, I guess you just got lucky outside the laundry then,’ Cora said, ‘finding clothes that fit you so well.’
‘Being named on Drunkard’s Day, the Audience owes me some luck.’ Somehow the girl had got hold of Cora’s discarded porridge fork after all – pennysheet sellers were as light-fingered as they were loud, practically cutpurses in the making. Marcus put the fork into the slingshot. ‘I had to go through almost the whole bag of clothes,’ Marcus said. ‘Chucked loads into the gutter before I found this stuff.’
‘A bad day for the laundry,’ Cora muttered.
‘And anyway, you should be more worried about your clothes, Detective.’
‘Oh?’
Marcus looked her up and down. ‘Them Seeder things don’t suit you, and the blood on your shirt looks something nasty.’
Cora glanced down at herself. Marcus was right: she was still wearing the clothes she’d worn to hear the Rustan story, which were marked with Ruth’s blood. All at once, she could smell herself, too. Sweat and staleness. No wonder Serus hadn’t wanted to share a cabin with her. She’d have to see if Nullan had something in store she could borrow. Changing from a Seeder to a Casker. She was less and less herself these days.
She stood up, and while Marcus was distracted by her new friend Harker climbing onto the roof of the barge to see to the sails, Cora whisked the fork away. She quickened her step to outrun Marcus’s loud protests and was heading for Nullan at the back of the barge, still doing something with the fishing poles, when she saw it. Them.
Him?
A figure was watching the barge. They were standing on a low hill on the north bank of the river, a few houses and the spire of a Seat between them and the boat. Too far for Cora to see a face, or much of anything beyond the hood they wore and a dark coat, despite the sun. But she could feel the intensity of the gaze.
‘Cora? What is it?’ Ruth joined her at the edge of the deck.
‘Someone’s watching us.’
Ruth shielded her eyes against the sun. ‘Where?’
Before Cora could direct her sister’s gaze, the figure had gone, back down the far side of the hill.
‘Don’t tell me you’re worrying about livestock,’ Ruth said, and shook her head. ‘Not everything in the Union is out to kill me, and certainly not the beasts the Perlish keep to make cheese.’
Cora kept her eyes on the hill in case the figure should reappear, but there were only the goats, brown dots ambling across the green, the bells at their necks tinkling softly. It would be a beautiful sight, if it weren’t for the dread creeping up Cora’s back, wrapping its fingers around her neck.
‘I saw someone, Ruth. And they were very definitely looking at us.’
Ruth turned away. ‘People are allowed to look at the river, Cora.’
‘But there was something about them…’
Ruth took her by the arm and pulled her away. The sunlight was too bright, the way it flashed off the river, off the barge windows. Her vision was spotted with dark shapes. The figure. The goats.
‘Come and sit down,’ Ruth said, steering her to a crate set with a grubby cushion, beside an already seated Serus. ‘Nullan is going to tell us a story.’
‘Is she now?’
‘We might as well make use of having a storyteller on board.’
‘Does that mean you’ve got a tale for us as well, Ruth?’
‘I’m saving mine. But after the election, who knows?’
Eighteen
‘Hope this is a cheerier tale than the one you told for the election,’ Captain Luine shouted from the wheel.
Nullan smiled, for possibly the first time since Cora had met her.
‘Who could tell a sad story on a day as beautiful as this?’ Nullan called back, lifting her inked arms to the sky.
‘I’m sure you’d find a way,’ the captain muttered, and Cora tried to hide her own smile.
Nullan stood at the edge of the deck, her back to the water, while everyone else, bar Captain Luine, took up seats facing her. Harker stayed on the barge roof, and when Marcus tried to climb up to join him, the Casker took hold of her shirt collar and hauled her up as if he was plucking a fish from the river. She sat cross-legged beside him, triumphant yet still as grimy as ever. Not that Cora could say much about that, the state of her clothes. She’d been about to ask Nullan for something to wear from the barge’s stores when the figure had appeared on the hill.
Cora looked back at that bank. Nothing. No, that wasn’t true. There were people on the road that ran next to the river, people on the grassy slopes that led away from the road, people beyond that, in the fields. West Perlanse was full of people, none of them paying any attention to the barge sailing past.
‘Got somewhere to be, Cora?’ Nullan said softly.
Cora turned. The Casker storyteller was waiting to begin, her audience sitting ready, waiting, staring at Cora. Even though they were far from Fenest, and not in anything like an official story venue – with no purple tunics in sight, no garbing pavilion, no black-robed voters wearing the masks of the Audience – even without all that, the special hush of the election had descended. That was what happened when you spent too much time with storytellers. At any moment, they could change the air around you into something almost hot with expectation.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. With a quick glance at Serus beside her, she knew she was forgiven for snapping at him earlier.
Nullan closed her eyes. The world quietened, even the river beneath them. The creak of the barge’s planks – a constant since they’d got underway – stopped. The birds criss-crossing the rich blue of the sky above were silent, only shapes. And Nullan began.
‘Ralli’s tea kettle was famous. Upriver and down, those who sailed the Cask, the Stave, the Tun, from shore to shore at Bordair, the tea kettle was known to them all. People said, if anyone had ever managed to cross Break Deep and were still living on the other side of that graveyard then they, too, would have heard of Ralli’s tea kettle. They might even risk the crossing back if they knew they could drink the wonders it brewed.
‘And the reason Ralli’s tea kettle was famous on every waterway in the Union?’ Nullan said. ‘It was known that tea brewed in Ralli’s kettle had the power to make two good hearts fall in love. If two should drink the same brew made in the kettle, share the same cup to drink it, then as soon as they next looked into each other’s eyes, they would be bound together, a love match until the day they joined the Audience.
‘There were many happy couples who owed their happiness to Ralli’s tea kettle. Her family claimed a long line of water-readers. That was how the kettle had come into the family in the first place. A storm, predicted by a child who no one else believed, blew down from the Rusting Mountains. It caused a great wave to rise from Bordair itself – an inland lake with no current, no wildness in its water, and yet this wave ripped through the eastern parts of Bordair, upending huts and tearing up ’walks. Before it had blown itself out, the storm had sent a fleet of fishing smacks to the bottom of Bordair and dumped the tea kettle
at the feet of the water-reading child.
‘The powers of the kettle were discovered soon after this – the story of how is known only to the Devotee whose sightless eyes see such mysteries better than we ever can. But from the first time the tea kettle brewed a love match, Caskers came from every riverway to ask for its aid in matters of the heart.
‘Ralli was the great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of that water-reading child who’d predicted the storm that brought the kettle which had been handed down through the generations. Like all in her bloodline before her who had been custodian of the kettle, she asked no payment for the teas she brewed, though by then the kettle was so famous across the Union that she could have been a rich woman. Rich enough to leave the smoky, sweaty boardwalks that cling to the edge of Bordair, given that people came almost daily to the door of her hut to ask her to brew them tea they could take away and share with the object of their desires, to ensure a love match with the tea-buyer. Ralli could have left all that behind and moved back from the water, into the cooler streets and fine-timbered houses that look down on Bordair’s back. But she didn’t take so much as one penny for her teas.
‘And though she took no payment, Ralli did have a condition of another sort. When someone came to her door professing love for another that was breaking the visitor’s heart, Ralli questioned them as to the match. If in the course of these conversations it became clear that the intended lover was completely uninterested in the visitor, say if they loved another, or had decided love had no place in their already contented life, Ralli would refuse to brew tea for the visitor to take away and share with the object of their desires. This angered people, of course it did, especially those who’d travelled far to ask for help, but Ralli was firm. If there was no returned spark of love in the story the visitor told her, she would not help them.
