Farewell to the Liar

by D. K. Fields

  Ruth shook her head. ‘Never in my life have I seen something like this.’

  ‘It’s not Casker either,’ Nullan added.

  ‘And it’s not something I’ve seen in Fenest.’ Cora leaned back in her seat. ‘But the way the poison works, that I have seen before. It’s Heartsbane. The same poison used to kill Finnuc Dawson and the prisoner transport on the way to the Steppes.’

  At the mention of the Casker killer of Nicholas Ento, Ruth gripped the table edge. Nullan spat on the floor.

  ‘And the feathers,’ Cora said. ‘The same were left on Finnuc’s body.’

  ‘Like the black-and-white laces that Dawson used to sew my son’s mouth shut.’ Ruth’s voice was low but strong.

  ‘So, you’re saying this is the work of Chambers Morton?’ Nullan asked.

  ‘I’m saying it’s Tannir using Perlish methods.’

  Ruth stared out of the saloon window, and Cora followed her sister’s gaze. The water was streaming past. They were moving again, and again Cora hadn’t noticed.

  ‘I just…’ Ruth shook her head. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Even after he burnt down the distiller’s?’ Nullan said. ‘You have to face it, Ruth. There are those in your own realm who want you dead so badly that they’ll stop at nothing. It doesn’t matter who else goes down with you.’

  ‘But I’m not Wayward.’ Ruth wiped a smudge from the window. ‘There are some head herders who have never approved of my place in their circle. From the first days of my marriage, they’ve viewed me with distrust.’

  ‘It’s one thing to distrust someone,’ Cora said. ‘It’s another to want them dead at all costs. You have to realise you’re not safe on the river, not now.’

  Ruth sighed. ‘You can’t be about to suggest we go back, abandon the Hook. I’ve come too far to—’

  ‘I wasn’t going to say that.’ Cora took out her bindle tin and was dismayed to find the contents damp. She tossed it on the table next to the dart. ‘But it’s clear that word got out before we left Fenest. How, I don’t know. What we’ve got to worry about now is Tannir coming back to try again. Because he will.’

  ‘If we can just reach the Hook,’ Ruth said, ‘we’ll have protection.’

  ‘Oh really? It’s a big metal shield, is it?’

  Ruth smiled. ‘It’s a shield against Morton’s plans. A shield against the building of walls across the Union. But no – the Hook won’t protect us in Perlanse. The Wayward herd waiting with the Hook, now that should be helpful.’

  ‘How many more days’ sailing?’ Cora asked Nullan.

  ‘Two at most. With a good wind, we’ll reach K’stera Point by tomorrow morning, then the site of the Hook the following afternoon.’

  ‘Well, until then, we need to set a watch at all times,’ Cora said, ‘and we’ll need to keep the barge moving. Tell Captain Luine we sail through the night. No lamps.’

  Nullan laughed. ‘You’re not serious, Cora?’

  ‘Of course I’m serious. You saw that poor woman, Sanna, and the other Casker who was caught by a dart. Do you want that to be someone on this barge, their eyes forced from their head with their choking?’

  ‘But sailing at night… No Casker does that, even with lights. It’s not safe!’

  Cora stood. ‘Stopping this barge isn’t safe either. I’ll leave you to give Captain Luine my instructions. But before you do, tell me: How well do you know the captain?’

  Nullan frowned. ‘She’ll do her best to make this ridiculous plan work.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked.’

  An awkward silence fell, but Cora wouldn’t be the one to break it.

  Ruth sighed. ‘Cora, you’re starting to sound like Mother. Seeing enemies everywhere.’

  ‘That’s my job.’

  ‘And it was my job to charter a barge!’ Nullan said. ‘Luine is a first-rate captain. She likes a drink – who on a barge doesn’t? And I know the Pretty Lilly isn’t exactly a first-rate vessel—’

  Cora scoffed.

  ‘—but Luine has been at the helm of a barge since she was eighteen,’ Nullan said, ‘one of the youngest captains in our history. The Commission have the records. Why don’t you go back to your precious Wheelhouse and look it up?’ The saloon table rocked with the force of Nullan’s anger.

  Ruth reached out to her friend. ‘Nullan, please—’

  ‘I said, how well do you know Captain Luine?’ Cora said, not to be deterred. ‘You personally, Nullan.’

  Nullan slumped into her chair. ‘I met her for the first time the day we set sail from Fenest. A friend put us in touch.’

  Ruth withdrew her hand. ‘You didn’t tell me that. All these weeks we’ve been planning how to get the Hook, you made me think Captain Luine was a good friend.’

  ‘She’s a reliable captain!’ Nullan shouted. ‘That’s what matters!’

  ‘No, Nullan,’ Cora said, and grabbed her bindle tin from the table. ‘What matters is that we can trust her.’

  ‘You think Luine’s working with Tannir?’ Ruth said.

  Cora shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But I’m beginning to wonder, and that’s bad enough. I’ll take first watch.’

  Twenty

  ‘If you’re going to be out here,’ Serus said, shaking the pile of bunched rope that was the hammock, ‘you might as well be comfortable.’

  They were on deck, towards the back of the barge near the fishing poles. Cora had wanted to be as far from the captain’s wheel as she could be, while still having a good angle to watch the riverbank. She found herself wishing for a sign of Tannir so that Harker’s slingshot could fire a stone right between his eyes. Preferably a sharp one.

  Serus went to attach the hammock to one of the hooks on the cabins’ exterior walls, but Cora stopped him.

  ‘Too comfortable, and I won’t keep my eyes open.’

  ‘I thought that was where the smoking came in, to keep you awake.’

  He gestured to the saucer full of bindle ends beside the crate she’d been sitting on for the last few hours.

  ‘I could smoke in my sleep. Sometimes think I do.’

  He reached behind him and produced a bowl. ‘You need to eat as well as smoke, Cora.’

  ‘Surprised Nullan would save me anything.’ She took the bowl and sniffed the contents: some kind of fish stew. She’d seen Harker pull in the twitching fishing poles earlier that afternoon, heard Marcus’s loud excitement at the fish dangling from the lines.

  ‘What is happening, Cora?’ Serus asked, sitting against the cabin wall. ‘Nullan and Ruth have been holed up in the galley since you came out here, apart from when Nullan went to talk to the captain, and then there was all kinds of shouting.’

  ‘That I heard.’ Cora took up what she hoped was a spoon but found it was another fork. How was anyone meant to eat anything on this riddled old boat? Instead, she used the fork to poke a floating bit of fin in the bowl.

  ‘I don’t think Nullan poisoned it,’ Serus said.

  Cora dropped the fork back into the bowl.

  ‘I was only joking!’ Serus said.

  ‘That’s not funny.’

  She huddled deeper into the borrowed Casker clothes Harker had found for her – trousers and a shirt, each needing a complicated system of folds and buttoning to put on. The clothes weren’t clean, but they were cleaner than the bloodied Seeder clothes she’d had on since the Water Gardens. And at least the previous owner had been close to her height. She tucked her hands into the wide sleeves. The day’s warmth had all but gone and the last of the sunlight would soon follow.

  ‘You look exhausted, Cora. I’ve told Ruth I’ll take the next watch, and I don’t mind starting now.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Given that I’m sleeping out here anyway.’ He caught the look she gave him and was quick to say, ‘Don’t worry – I’ll stay awake.’

  ‘I can leave you my bindle tin if you want.’

  Serus shook his head. ‘You might want to ration that. Who knows when there�
��ll be a chance to restock?’

  ‘With any luck we won’t stop again until we get back to Fenest with the Hook, and if that means I have to go without smokes, so be it.’

  She rubbed her eyes and tried to blink the riverbank into sharper focus but she was too tired, there was no doubt about it. They’d just passed a small town that looked to have three Seats, going by the spires, but even that feature hadn’t been enough to stop her eyelids dropping.

  A noise from the other side of the barge made her turn, but it was only another boat going down river. The captain of that barge called out a greeting to Luine, but when no reply came, the captain of the down-river barge called out a curse instead.

  ‘I hear we’re not stopping tonight,’ Serus said. ‘Night-sailing, it seems.’

  ‘And did you also hear it’s dangerous to do so?’

  He picked up the stew and somehow began to eat using the fork.

  ‘There was some mention of it,’ he said. ‘Our crew seem… unconvinced that it’s the best plan.’

  ‘I don’t see we’ve got any choice.’

  ‘Fortunately, your sister agrees with you—’

  ‘First time for everything,’ Cora muttered.

  ‘—so the crew have agreed. Though Captain Luine says she won’t leave the wheel.’

  At this, Cora merely grunted. She was overwhelmed by tiredness all at once and pressed her hands over her face.

  ‘Cora,’ Serus said gently. ‘Get some sleep. You don’t have to do this all by yourself.’

  She stood, no energy left for words, but enough to kiss him.

  On her way to her cabin, Cora caught a glimpse of Ruth and Nullan in theirs, the door ajar. The Casker was tenderly unwinding the bandage from Ruth’s side, while Ruth had her eyes screwed shut, her mouth a hard knot. When the still-healing wound was visible – a red-and-purple crescent, the flesh all around it bruised – Cora turned away.

  Finally in her own cabin, she fell asleep at once. Not even Marcus in the galley shouting about fish guts could keep her awake.

  *

  At first she thought she’d dreamt the noise. A thump and then a shout. But then there were more noises. Feet running, voices calling. Voices she knew. Serus. Ruth.

  They were in the saloon. In the light of the single lamp, the windows shuttered to keep the glow sealed inside, Cora found Serus and Ruth looking at something, their heads close together.

  ‘What is it?’ Cora said.

  ‘A near miss, fortunately,’ Serus said.

  ‘You had all the Latecomer’s luck tonight, Serus,’ Ruth said. ‘If the course of that thing had been even slightly different…’

  ‘Here.’ Serus handed Cora his slipdog coat, bunched into an untidy package with the collar on top. And sticking through the collar was the barbed tip of another dart. As before, the point had a green tinge and the other end was feathered black and white.

  ‘Tannir seems to be one step ahead of us at every turn,’ Cora said, ‘and given he’s on foot, that makes no sense – how does he keep up with the barge?’

  ‘He must be travelling by horseback when he’s not right at the bankside,’ Ruth said.

  ‘And all the while, we’re out here on the water, a barely moving target on an unchangeable route.’ Cora pulled the dart clear of Serus’s collar and tried not to think of the coat as the Rustan’s neck.

  ‘A metal addition I wasn’t keen to try,’ Serus said. His tone suggested he was trying to make a joke, but even in the poor light, his face showed the strain of what had just happened.

  ‘Where does the captain keep her drink, that lannat stuff?’ Cora asked Ruth. ‘I think some of us could use a nip.’

  ‘The galley,’ Ruth said, wincing at the pain in her side as she stood. ‘I’ll fetch it.’

  As she stepped into the corridor, she made a sound of surprise which was swiftly followed by the gruff tones of Marcus.

  ‘Why is she not in bed?’ Cora asked, then realised she had no idea of the time. She glanced at the saloon’s clock – a little after two in the morning.

  ‘Well, her bed is currently in use,’ Serus said, and gestured to a small heap of blankets that had been squashed into the corner of the saloon’s seating.

  ‘But she wasn’t asleep before you and Ruth came in here?’ Cora asked.

  ‘Not that I saw. I’ll admit, when I first came inside, I wasn’t thinking clearly. The dart coming so close… Marcus might have been in here. I didn’t—’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She put her hand over his. ‘You’re all right, that’s the important thing.’ Ruth returned with a bottle and glasses, and Cora removed her hand. ‘And besides, Marcus lives in a games house. She keeps the hours of the chequers and their customers.’ Cora looked up at Ruth pouring the drinks: only two glasses. She’d remembered.

  ‘What have you done with her?’ Cora asked Ruth.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Marcus!’

  Ruth glanced at the open doorway, and Cora noticed how much her sister’s hair had grown since Nullan had cut it. It was curling at her ears, like their father’s had done. A thought that was good and hard at the same time.

  ‘The girl’s fiddling about with something,’ Ruth said absently. ‘She’s in the storeroom. Whatever keeps her quiet is fine with me.’

  Ruth handed a glass to Serus who sniffed it, winced, then put the glass down.

  ‘The captain drinks this?’ he said. Ruth downed hers in a single gulp.

  ‘Lannat is good for shock,’ Cora said, ‘if not for your insides.’ And pain relief too? Ruth was already refilling her glass.

  Serus took the tiniest sip. The curse that followed was a new one to Cora. She looked at him with fresh eyes, while Ruth clapped him on the back.

  ‘The watch?’ Cora asked.

  ‘Nullan’s taken over,’ Ruth said, ‘but from a safer position. After what happened to you, Serus, it’s clear we need to take more care. That Tannir should try to harm us at night…’

  ‘Which brings me to two questions,’ Cora said. ‘How did Tannir know we were still sailing, and how was he able to keep up with our course when we’re sailing in the dark without lights?’

  The only answer Serus and Ruth had was to drink Captain Luine’s lannat – one downing a third glass, the other still sipping at his first. Cora’s answer was to roll a bindleleaf, her papers having dried, thank the Bore.

  ‘You take the cabin,’ Cora said to Serus, and when he looked like he would protest, added; ‘I can’t see myself sleeping for a while. Go on. You deserve a night in a bunk.’

  ‘If you’re sure?’ He squeezed her shoulder, and she did her best not to lean into him, not with Ruth there. Whatever was happening with Serus, it was theirs, no one else’s. She closed the door behind him.

  ‘It’s at K’stera Point the river splits, yes?’ she said.

  ‘The Stave becomes the Cask and the Tun there.’

  ‘So it’s like a fork in the river?’

  ‘I guess you could call it that, though no doubt the Caskers have a technical—’

  ‘Which side of the fork is the Tun?’ Cora said.

  Gingerly, Ruth rose to her feet. ‘Let me get the charts from the captain.’

  Cora grabbed her arm. ‘Not now. I don’t want anyone else hearing this, Ruth.’

  ‘Who don’t you trust here, Cora?’

  Another question without an answer.

  ‘Which side of the fork is the Tun?’ Cora asked again, slowly.

  ‘The right,’ Ruth said. ‘We’ll bear right when we reach K’stera.’

  Cora used the saloon’s lamp to light her bindle, and though it took a few deep draws to get at the smoke, after the tin’s dunking earlier, it was better than nothing.

  Ruth was frowning at her. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘So far, Tannir has always appeared on, and attacked us from, the south bank. Once we’re past K’stera Point he’ll at least have to cross the river to keep up with us on the Tun.’

  ‘So yo
u think we’ll be safer from then on?’

  ‘Possibly. But we can’t count on it, which is why you and I should get off the barge for a spell.’

  Ruth had been about to pour another drink but her hand stilled. ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Tannir’s getting more desperate, Ruth. He took on crews of angry Caskers today, and now he’s firing darts into the dark. He knows he’s running out of time to stop you telling the Wayward story. We know he’s happy to kill others in the process. He set fire to the distiller’s. What’s to stop him swapping poison darts for burning ones? From the bank he could set the barge alight and have us all burn to death in our sleep.’

  ‘You really did bring Serus along as Fire Investigator. That’s a shame. He’ll be disappointed you don’t want more from him.’

  ‘Ruth, I’m serious! Once we’re past K’stera and well on our way on the River Tun, you and I need to get off and make part of the trip on foot.’

  ‘Won’t that be more dangerous than staying on board?’

  ‘Not as I see it. Tannir will keep attacking the barge, and that’ll likely get worse. If we can’t stop him, then our best bet is to find another way to the Hook. It’s too risky for you here.’

  ‘Risky too for those who stay on the barge,’ Ruth said, meeting Cora’s gaze squarely.

  She shrugged. ‘We can give you a better chance of getting to the Hook in one piece, that’s all. We’ll go overland for a stretch then re-join the barge just before we reach the Wayward herd. Until then, we need to keep Tannir guessing.’

  Cora decided not to mention that the trip overland would also give her the chance to test a theory that was taking shape. A theory that the leaks on this barge didn’t just involve water.

  Twenty-One

  Now that Ruth had agreed to Cora’s plan to go overland for part of the journey, Cora needed the maps, but there was a problem. She wanted to keep that plan a secret for as long as possible, which meant she didn’t want to ask Captain Luine for the maps, and neither did she want to be caught in the captain’s cabin taking them. But there was someone she could ask for help. Someone who could be found there without anyone asking questions.