Farewell to the Liar

by D. K. Fields

  ‘But if the story told of thwarted love, of cruel captains standing in the way of crew transfers that would allow couples to sail the same barge, of other suitors who forced their affections where they weren’t wanted, of parents refusing permission, thinking only of the earnings another match might bring, then Ralli would act. She set the tea kettle over the fire in her hut, heated water from Bordair with a sprig of this herb, a cutting of that, no names of the ingredients ever uttered, and gave the visitor a cup to take back with them. Once shared with a willing lover, the obstacle to the match would cease to cause problems. Cruel captains changed their minds. Unwanted suitors found others to pursue. Money-minded parents saw the error of their ways. But if the visitor asking Ralli to brew them tea should lie to her about their match, if they took the tea and gave it to someone who did not love them, had them drink the love potion from the same cup unknowingly, then bad luck would fall on the visitor. Caskers don’t take such warnings lightly, and so no one risked a lie to Ralli.

  ‘Then one day, a Perlish woman came to the door of Ralli’s hut. She said she’d heard wonders of the tea brewed in the kettle and needed some herself. As with all who came asking for the help of the tea kettle, Ralli asked her visitor for the story of her love. The Perlish woman had fallen in love with a seamstress, a woman of great talents with her hands but who was herself in love with another. The seamstress and her lover owned a shop, a pair of happy women – the seamstress sewed the dresses and her lover made hats. It was clear to Ralli that there was no room in that union for the Perlish visitor to her door, so Ralli did what she always did in such circumstances: she told the Perlish woman she couldn’t help her.

  ‘As you would expect from a Perlish, the woman tried to argue with Ralli, offered her not just pennies for the tea, but marks – lots of them. And when Ralli refused even that, the Perlish woman grew angry and snatched the tea kettle from the flames. She would have burnt her hands had she not been wearing a fine pair of leather gloves.

  ‘The Perlish woman made off with the kettle, scuttling down the boardwalks, thinking herself very clever to have stolen the kettle because she could hear liquid sloshing inside: the dregs of the last tea to be brewed. When she thought herself far enough from Ralli’s hut, she quickly emptied the kettle into a flask she had brought with her, kicked the kettle into the waters of Bordair and took herself back to Perlanse as swiftly as she could.

  ‘The kettle didn’t sink. It bobbed around near the boardwalk until someone spotted it, fished it out and returned it to Ralli, because everyone in Bordair knew what it was, who it belonged to. Ralli cleaned off the dead leaves and the salt marks, tipped out the minnows that had swum into the spout, then settled back to wait for her next visitor, because her life would carry on as before, she knew that, just as she knew the Perlish woman would soon know the cost of her actions.

  ‘As soon as she was back in the small town in which she lived, the Perlish woman went to the shop owned by the seamstress and her lover, the hatmaker. Through an underhand contrivance that befits such a person, and which we needn’t concern ourselves with, the Perlish woman found a way to have she and the seamstress drink the tea from the same cup. The Perlish woman waited for something wonderful to happen, for the seamstress to fall into her arms, to kiss her, to pack a trunk of finely worked dresses and move into the Perlish woman’s house.

  ‘But nothing like this happened. Instead, the seamstress thanked the Perlish woman for the tea and said she had to get back to work. There were a lot of orders waiting. The hatmaker came out of the back room and the seamstress’s eyes lit up, not just as they had done on all the other occasions when the Perlish woman had gone to the shop, but even more powerfully. The two women were more in love than ever! How could it be possible! The seamstress and the hatmaker embraced, and they didn’t let go of one another. Instead, they began to undo one another’s clothes, though the shop had several customers, beside the Perlish woman. These customers blushed and averted their eyes, until the women were rolling on the floor, barely dressed, and modesty was no longer possible.

  ‘The customers fled, including the Perlish woman, who went back to the lonely house she had hoped to share with the seamstress, and cursed Ralli and her tea kettle. When her cursing was done and she had reached the point in her anger when she was vowing revenge, she made to go to bed, and so she went to pull off her gloves – the very pair that had saved her from being burnt when she’d snatched the tea kettle from the flames, and which she had worn every day since leaving Bordair and travelling back to Perlanse.

  ‘But now she could not remove the gloves.

  ‘No matter how hard she tugged, they would not move an inch. When she took scissors to them, she shrieked with pain for it felt as if she was cutting her own skin, and indeed she was. The same was true when she resorted to the open flame of the stove to burn the gloves away. All she achieved was to blister skin that was already sore from the cuts she had made with the scissors. The gloves would not come off, and because the woman was too proud, and too frightened, it must be said, to seek help, the wounds she had inflicted on herself were given no care, and so they went bad, and in a matter of days her blood was poisoned, and she was dead.

  ‘The seamstress and the hatmaker went on being happy for the rest of their lives and forgot all about the woman who used to come to the shop and run her hands across the fine bolts of cloth more vigorously than was thought seemly in that part of Perlanse.’

  The clapping came at once, and louder than Cora expected. How could their barge make so much noise? It was then she realised that it wasn’t just their barge that had been listening. The boat had stopped moving, and all around them were other barges which had stopped their sailing too to hear Nullan. And why wouldn’t they? It had been such a good story, Cora herself had stopped paying attention to anything but Nullan’s voice. There were even Caskers from other barges, right there, on the deck of the Pretty Lilly. She hadn’t noticed them, hadn’t noticed that the barge had stopped, and that meant she hadn’t been keeping an eye on the riverbank. Or the figure she’d seen there before Nullan began her story.

  ‘That was racy at the end,’ Marcus crowed from the roof. Several of the Caskers on the moored barges winced and glanced over to find the cause of the noise.

  ‘Maybe too racy for your young ears,’ Harker said.

  ‘That’s nothing compared to the things I hear on the streets or at Beulah’s place.’

  Harker helped Marcus climb down to the deck.

  Cora was trying to see the bank, but people were in her way. The Caskers from the other barges were talking with Nullan and Captain Luine. Someone took Cora’s hand. It was Serus. She’d forgotten he was even there, but the look he gave her told her the same wasn’t true for him.

  ‘A story about true love,’ he said.

  ‘Seems so.’ There were too many people in her way, and all of them broad as well as tall. Nullan had to be the only small Casker in the history of that realm.

  ‘Cora, I wanted to say…’

  If she could just get to the edge of the deck then she could see—

  That was when the attack came.

  Nineteen

  A young Casker woman with inked waves across the bridge of her nose and cheekbones gave a small gasp then crumpled into the arms of the bargehand she was talking to. Before he could call for help, Cora was striding over.

  ‘Make room!’ she shouted, shoving aside the walls of inked and sun-warmed Casker flesh that was now on Captain Luine’s barge.

  The woman was limp in her friend’s arms, and he was just about holding her up in his confusion.

  ‘Sanna? Sanna, wake up!’

  ‘What happened?’ Cora said, helping him lay the prone woman on the deck.

  ‘I don’t know. One minute we were talking about the story, and the next, she dropped like a stone.’

  Others had begun to notice, and a circle of anxious faces formed around the fallen Casker, a murmur of speculation and panic growing
louder – a noise Cora knew from too many crime scenes.

  The bargehand was pawing at his friend’s face. ‘Sanna!’ The woman’s mouth was slack, and her breath had a creak to it, though at least she still was breathing. ‘She never gets ill,’ the bargehand said. ‘Never!’

  Then Sanna jerked, thrashed her arms, and her breath became a rattle. Her eyes opened but seemed unable to focus on anything. She was gasping for air. Her friend began to whimper.

  Cora knelt beside them and felt something under her hand – cool, hard, as well as somehow soft. She grabbed it, and held it up.

  A thin spear of metal, half as long as her hand, one end a needle tip and the other decked with feathers. Black-and-white feathers.

  Those around her saw it too, and cries went up.

  ‘A dart!’

  ‘Sanna’s been poisoned!’

  ‘The shot – where did it come from?’

  The barge was at once a riot of rushing bodies, thumping feet. The deck lurched beneath her. She caught sight of Ruth amid the chaos and grabbed her sister’s arm.

  ‘Get inside – now!’

  For once, Ruth needed no convincing of the threat and hurried to get under cover, grabbing Marcus as she went. Then Nullan was there, kneeling beside the fallen Casker Sanna, her small hands busy checking the woman over in a way that spoke of stitcher training.

  ‘If this is what I think it is, she’s a dead woman,’ Cora said.

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ Nullan said, without looking up. ‘Leave her with me. You need to find out who’s firing poison darts at us.’

  Cora dropped the dart by Nullan’s side. ‘Keep that safe for me.’ And then she was running, forcing her way to the edge of the deck where all was movement.

  In every direction, Caskers were jumping back to their barges, and Cora wondered at how light they were on their feet, despite their size. Mooring ropes were flying through hands as the barges were set free, anchors hauled up, sails untied and shaken loose in a heartbeat. Were these crews going to flee? She’d never taken the Caskers for cowards. And where was Captain Luine when she was needed? The captain had barely left her post since they’d set sail and this was the moment she chose to leave the wheel?

  Another Casker dropped – a man this time, right in front of Cora, caught as he was jumping from her deck to another. She glimpsed the black-and-white of the feathers that tipped the dart, and then the man was sliding into the river between the barges.

  Cora grabbed his arm, but his weight was colossal. He was pulling her down into the narrowing space as the decks surged closer to one another in the bucking river. She slammed into the other deck, which hit her full across the chest. When she cried out, her mouth filled with water – the taste of earth, of old things, somehow – and then she was hauled clear, many hands around her, before they reached for the Casker who’d gone down first. His crewmates dragged him onto the other deck, and Cora fell back on hers, gasping for air, the pain in her chest – it was like a hot brand. But then she was on her feet again as quickly as she could stand, desperately searching the bank for the hooded figure.

  The traffic on the road that flanked the river had ground to a halt. People stared from their gigs, pointed, some even laughed at what was unfolding on the river before them, as if the Caskers were telling a funny story for the delight of the Perlish onlookers. From somewhere deep within her, Cora found the energy to hate the Perlish even more than she already did.

  And then she saw him. Tannir. He was watching from the shelter of a wagon, but he was so close now, she could see him lifting something to his mouth – a thin pipe. He was making ready another dart.

  ‘There he is!’ Cora shouted. ‘There – by the wagon! The one in the cloak. That’s who’s firing!’ But she couldn’t seem to get enough air into her lungs to shout and no one was listening. ‘Look! There – he’s there!’

  She doubled over coughing and could taste river water again. But then there was an arm around her and a face close to hers, metal cheekbones cool against her hot skin. She managed to croak to Serus about Tannir, and at once he roared the information to the Casker crews. The noise around her changed. The panic was gone, replaced by purpose, and she realised the barges hadn’t been preparing to sail away – they were turning in formation towards the bank.

  Something sailed overhead, and for a moment, her heart stilled – another dart. But it was going the other way, towards the bank. A scream went up from the parked vehicles, and then it was the riverbank’s turn for chaos as all those who’d stopped to watch now tried to flee. More volleys left the barges, and Cora spun round to see what was happening.

  Harker was on the roof of the barge, a slingshot angled towards the bank – bigger than the one she’d seen Marcus with earlier. That had been a toy, fashioned to keep a noisy stowaway quiet. This was a weapon, one the Caskers clearly knew how to use, given how quickly the rocks were being fired at the bank.

  The Casker crews directed their attention to the bank in one combined assault, and Cora sucked in air, each breath refilling her lungs more deeply.

  ‘Ah, that explains it,’ Serus said to himself.

  ‘Explains what?’ Cora asked, her gaze never leaving the bank which was now under a constant hail of stones. With the scattering traffic her view was obscured again. She couldn’t see Tannir, and thumped a cask in frustration.

  ‘Last night when I put up my hammock,’ Serus said, ‘I came across a store of rocks. I couldn’t understand what they were doing onboard as they don’t seem burnable for fuel.’

  ‘A weapons cache,’ Cora said, and spat something greenish onto the deck.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Serus said.

  ‘I will be once that snake Tannir has a hole knocked in his head.’

  Serus looked to the bank. ‘Tannir – the Wayward who wants to replace Ruth? Who burnt down the distiller’s?’

  ‘The same.’

  Serus whistled, and it took Cora a second to realise the sound was coming through his metal cheeks. The number of slingshot volleys was lessening, and the various Casker crews surrounding the barge were directing their craft to moor at the bank. Some disembarked and searched the long grass, the ditches. They called back their findings: no cloaked figure lying prone. No sign he’d ever been there. Tannir had escaped.

  *

  The other barges began to take their leave, resuming the journeys that they’d paused to listen to Nullan’s story. With backs slapped in farewell, pretend insults traded as to who could use a slingshot and who would be better off sticking to the cooking, the Caskers departed.

  The last crew to leave was that of Sanna, the woman who’d been hit by the first dart. Harker found some unwanted sail canvas and, with the help of the dead woman’s crewmates, wrapped her body tightly. But not before Cora had seen her purpled face, her eyes protruding. A familiar poisoning.

  Nullan tucked some dried herbs inside the canvas. ‘I tried… I tried, but I’m no sanga. I’m sorry.’

  As the sail was pulled tight over Sanna’s ruined face, all on deck murmured, ‘Widow welcome you, friend.’

  When the body had been safely stowed inside the other crew’s barge and the two boats were drawing apart, Cora asked Harker about the herbs.

  ‘To keep her fresh as they can on the trip to Bordair,’ he said, watching the other barge on its downstream journey.

  ‘She’ll be laid to rest in the water there?’ Cora asked.

  ‘That’s right. Sanna’s with the Audience now. For those she leaves behind, there’ll be a chance to say their goodbyes once the barge reaches the lake.’

  ‘With fire?’

  ‘Aye. A burning raft in the middle of Bordair is the best we can hope for, us who sail.’

  ‘Where is Captain Luine?’

  Harker frowned at Cora. ‘You get your vision knocked about in all that fuss, Detective?’

  ‘I’m not a… Never mind. And I can see just fine.’

  ‘Then I don’t know how you can miss the captain.’


  Harker nodded towards the wheel where Captain Luine was indeed standing, once more looking out over the river.

  ‘She’ll be in need of a sup, I should think,’ Harker said. ‘I’d better fill her glass or we won’t get underway. Doubt you’ll be wanting to hang around these parts much longer.’

  Harker loped away, and Cora wondered at Luine’s presence. She’d looked for the captain during the attack and hadn’t found her. Everyone else on board the Pretty Lilly had been around – Cora had seen them at one point or another. And yet Luine, captain of the vessel under attack, was nowhere to be seen. It could just have been chance that Cora hadn’t seen her. The Audience knew, there had been a lot going on, all those other Caskers thumping about, and Luine might have decided she was safer inside. Still, there was a worm of doubt twisting inside Cora, and it was connected to Tannir on the bankside.

  But mulling all this over out here on deck wouldn’t help anyone. She needed answers.

  *

  Everyone but Captain Luine and Harker gathered in the saloon. In the middle of the table was the dart that had hit Sanna. The sharp end had a greenish edge to it. The feathers had lost their lustre and been knocked about, but their colouring was unmistakable. Black-and-white. The colours of the election, and of too many other things left on the bodies of those who’d died for it.

  ‘Well?’ Ruth asked.

  ‘Two dead. Neither from this barge, but it easily could have been.’ Cora stared at the dart. ‘These things are hard to fight.’

  ‘Did you see how it flew!’ Marcus lunged to grab the dart, but Serus caught her.

  ‘I think Harker needs some help with those fishing poles you set out earlier,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and find him, shall we?’

  Without a word of protest, Marcus did as she was bid: the power of a new friend. As Serus escorted the pennysheet girl out of the saloon, Cora gave him a look of thanks.

  Then it was just her, Nullan and Ruth.

  Cora pointed at the feathered end of the dart. ‘This a Wayward thing?’