by K. Ferrin
“You have nothing to take vengeance on him for. He saved you. Stopped you from committing a crime you’d never have recovered from, had the storm not taken your life anyway. You should be thanking him for trying to make you a better man, not trying to kill him while he’s unconscious, you coward.”
Fraser grasped her ankles, trying to yank them out of the way. His touch burned with a sickly heat, but there was no strength there. He stared up at her, his teeth bared in rage. “I broke your nose,” he said. “Demon, you are. I should have tried harder to stick it in you, you filthy whore.”
She stared down at him and felt nothing. It was a feeble attempt from a broken man, and all she felt was disgust. She bent, examining the man’s injuries. She reached out slowly and pressed her finger and then her hand into the large hole in Fraser’s side. Blood swelled out around her wrist as Fraser gave a feeble scream.
“How does it feel? Having something shoved inside you where it doesn’t belong?” she asked, moving her fingers around in Fraser’s guts.
Tears ran freely down Fraser’s cheeks as Ling cleaned her hand in the damp sand and straightened. He stared at her, and she stared back, watching, as the last of his lifeblood ran out onto the sand and the last gleam of life faded from his eyes. His face remained twisted in frustrated rage even in death.
She yanked off his left boot and pulled it onto her own bootless foot. It was big, but it would do the job. The sun finished dropping below the horizon as she straightened, and the chill of late fall settled heavily over the beach.
The need to run beat at her. The longer she waited the more likely it was she’d be caught as she reached the docks. But Dreskin was still alive. She walked to his side and leaned over, placing her cheek next to his lips. He breathed still, but wouldn’t for much longer if he were left out in the chill night.
She knew she should leave him. She didn’t have the time to help him. Every minute she delayed gave Hanner and Laera another minute to catch up to her.
But that same traitorous part of her brain kept picturing Dreskin reaching down to haul her onboard as Laera and Hanner ran toward them. He’d helped her more than once. She’d not be here if not for him. Besides, the mystery of who he was lingered. If he died here, she’d never learn why he’d helped when everyone else had turned away.
She scanned the debris in the darkness, searching for a piece of wood big enough to brace his leg and another large enough to carry him. She found several pieces of his crewmates before finding a few scraps of wood that could do the job.
She tied Dreskin’s leg snugly to a board with frayed remains of the Scarlet Float’s rigging. She settled him onto a large piece of shattered hull and began pulling him along the sand toward Middelhaern.
About twenty minutes in, she began cursing her maker for leaving her with all the feelings of a normal physical body. She didn’t need to breathe, yet she found herself gasping with the effort of pulling a large man across soft sand. She didn’t have muscles, yet her back ached and her legs cramped. What a cruel man he must be, to create a magical creature but hinder her with all the usual weaknesses of mortality.
As they drew closer to the port city, her mind focused on where she should take Dreskin. She’d visited Middelhaern many times with her father over the years, and she knew the city as well as she knew Meuse. The hospital was close, but she couldn’t bring him there without risking herself. They’d ask too many questions. There was only one place to go to get him the treatment he needed without bothersome questions to go along with it.
Dragging him along got easier when she crossed over onto the roadways of Middelhaern. The hard edge of the wood slid far more easily across the cobblestone surface of the roads than it had the sand. She moved slowly, wary of any attention she might garner dragging an unconscious and bleeding man behind her on a scrap of ruined riverboat. But this close to Ruggers, folks kept their thoughts and their gazes to themselves and paid her no mind.
She’d been to Ruggers plenty of times over the years, though her father had explicitly forbidden it. It wasn’t just the trifles at the Shadow Market, he’d tried to explain, it was the people. No Brielle folk lived in those underground channels. All the people who lived there were outsiders, folks from elsewhere who’d decided to settle in Brielle for reasons of their own, or through necessity.
But his rules and explanations did nothing but make Ruggers more appealing and interesting, and she’d always find her way to those sunken passages at the first opportunity.
Ruggers wasn’t so much a place as it was a level. Its roads and walkways meandered underneath the city of Middelhaern itself, an unruly warren sprawling chaotically between the rotting foundations of the city above. Like Meuse, Middelhaern was built far above the muddy ground, but if you spent any time in Ruggers, it was clear this city, too, floated in its way.
Middelhaern was held above water level by deep pillars, enormous piles of jumped stone, and an elaborate series of drains and pumps that had stopped working long before any of the current residents came along. At some point, those unwelcome in the city above had moved into the city below, calling the dank tunnels and mud-seeping structures home.
For all its openness in terms of trade, the people of Brielle didn’t like outsiders. No one born outside of Brielle could rent or own property, but there were no such rules in the shadowy city below Middelhaern. That made it the most fascinating place Evelyn had ever been. A person could find anything they could imagine in that tangled rat’s nest.
She tugged the board behind her, breathing hard. She scooted into the deep shadow of an alley and followed the path as it sloped steeply downward. She slipped and slid in the never-ending seep of mud that slicked every pathway in Ruggers, but the chunk of wood also slid easily, and she was thankful for that.
She’d never been to Ruggers at night before, and it was dark. No gas lamps lit the passageways, no moonlight made its way down to these subterranean tunnels, and no candlelight glowed through the gaps and chinks in what passed for homes down here. There were no windows. People were lucky to find a place with a door. Reaching the interior of most homes involved climbing through partly crumbled walls or sliding through the narrow gap between two floors.
She took several wrong turns along the way, but finally made it to the Shadow Market. It was the largest open space in Ruggers, and it was so layered in mud, the residents had built wooden platforms to keep the market up out of the slop. The last time she’d been here, the platform had been well above the muck, but as she crossed the expanse now, deep mud clutched at her boots.
The market was empty, and the shacks that housed merchandise during the day had been boarded up and locked down until morning; people left quickly when the last bit of light faded from the day. Here, fresh air drifted down from the gap far above, and Ling paused to stare up at the few cold pinpricks of light that had made an appearance. Built at the bottom of a very deep well created over centuries as layer after layer of city had been built up around it, this was the only place in Ruggers that was open to the sky. At its highest point, the opening was little more than a narrow gap between a handful of overhanging buildings built up against one another. Unless you happened to lean out of one of the few windows of those buildings and look down, you’d never know the Shadow Market existed at all.
Ling pulled Dreskin across the market and ducked down a narrow tunnel on the far side. She turned left, then right, then left again, and found herself in a small square. A single gaslight hung from an invisible pipe lit up a blackened door with a rough white owl painted on it.
Everyone in Ruggers knew the White Owl. The sailors whispered he could do magic, though Ling didn’t believe it. Such powerful magic would have been ferreted out long ago if true, even hidden down in Ruggers as he was. But there was no question he was a skilled healer; everyone spoke of him with deep respect and swore he could bring people back from the brink of death.
She dropped Dreskin and leaned against the door, panting, though she knew
she shouldn’t be. The door drifted open at her touch, and a tall man waited there as if he’d been waiting all night.
”Yes?” The man’s voice was surprisingly high pitched and breathy. He was the tallest man she’d ever seen, taller even than the captain of the Scarlet Float had been, and the whitest. There were plenty of pale-skinned folk that traveled through Meuse and Middelhaern, but this man wasn’t pale. He was so white she half thought she would see his guts right through his skin if she looked hard enough.
“This man is hurt. He’s a sailor, I think. I found him out on the beach among a bunch of wreckage.”
The man stepped forward into the light, and she saw his eyes were as milky white as his skin. He set his hand unerringly on Dreskin’s forehead and stood silent for several minutes. He didn’t blink, and his white eyes shifted around as if at random. It gave her the creeps.
“He’ll live. Though just. If you’d been much later, I’d not have been able to help him.” He stepped aside and gestured Ling inside. Dreskin’s blood left a lurid red smear on the man’s stark white hand.
Ling sighed and bent to lift Dreskin again, but several children swarmed out of the door and lifted him for her. She followed them inside.
She stood in a glaringly white, round room, with draped alcoves spaced evenly around the edges. A small hearth stood between two of the alcoves, and she watched as one of the children loaded it up with wood. Another pulled back one of the curtains, and she saw another round room, white from top to bottom, with a bed in the center of the space.
The children placed Dreskin on the bed and gently pulled off his clothes. They washed him, as if preparing him for burial. They cleaned up after themselves and vanished into another curtained alcove on the other side of the room.
Dreskin’s body was a map of bruises and gashes, his leg grotesque where the bone had broken. She could see it, jutting unnaturally within the glove of his muscle and skin. The wound on his head still seeped blood. Grabbing a clean cloth from a stack near the table, she put pressure on the wound and wondered what would happen next.
Where he wasn’t marked with bruises, she could see the artwork that covered both arms, his shoulders, and a fair bit of his chest and torso. Brilliant color and intricate designs spun and whirled across his skin. She leaned forward, fascinated. Ink was common among boatsmyn, but she’d never seen such complexity before. The images were like something imagined by a drug-fueled mind. Animals with semi-human features, or humans that looked strangely animal. It was beautiful and terrifying all at the same time. It made her think of the stories she’d heard the boatsmyn tell about Dreggs.
Who is this man?
“The Courser.”
Ling jumped at the sound and backed away when she realized Dreskin’s eyes were open and staring at her, their hazel depths clouded with pain. “Seek…the Courser. They’ll…help.” His eyes drifted closed again.
“What? Why would they do that? Why would you do that?” The questions burst from her before she could stop them.
“Folks…ought to be judged on who they are…not what,” he whispered, and then fell silent once again, his breathing deepening.
She crept close, willing him to speak more. She placed one hand gently on his cheek to wake him and ran it along his chest when he failed to stir.
The tall man, whom she assumed must be the White Owl, entered the room carrying a basket filled with jars and bowls. Ling jumped again and moved away from Dreskin’s body as if she’d been caught at something forbidden. The White Owl began humming in a high voice as he smeared ointments and oils and tinctures onto Dreskin’s body.
She watched for what felt like hours, pushing against the small voice that urged her to run. The man moved from one part of Dreskin’s body to another, placing his hands in places that seemed completely random to her. He’d hum then, sometimes for moments, sometimes for what felt like an eternity.
She’d expected him to stitch the deep cuts and yank on Dreskin’s leg until the bones lined up—that’s what the healers in Meuse did—but he did none of these things.
“You go rest now. This will be awhile. You can work payment off in the morning. The kids will show you what needs doing.”
“He’ll live? You’re sure?” she asked, disconcerted to realize just how much she cared about the answer. She wanted to know who he was and why he was willing to risk what so many weren’t.
“Yes, long as the stuff in his head don’t swell up like a pumpkin. Take one of the alcoves. Any one is fine. You’ll find what you need there.”
Ling backed away and let the curtain fall closed as she left Dreskin’s room. She chewed her nails as she stood in the center of the main room, wondering what to do. Should she seek out the Courser? He knew what she was; he could be setting her up. But she didn’t think so. He’d been first mate on a down-and-out riverboat, but when she thought of the way he’d tried to help her when anyone else in Brielle would have tried to kill her, she felt certain he was far more than that.
CHAPTER NINE
Ling stared at the wall for the space of five breaths, considering. The White Owl’s house was warm, suffocatingly so, and the white walls seemed to press down on her like a physical force. She didn’t know any of the ships that sailed the Dreggs route. The idea of sneaking aboard a ship headed to that place terrified her. She didn’t think any warlock would travel to Brielle, a dead zone when it came to magic, but if they did, a ship sailing out of Middelhaern would be how they got back, and she worried they might somehow be able to sense what she was.
Would they feel the same way about her that the people of Brielle did? They had magic of their own—maybe she would be just one more oddity in a world filled with them in their eyes. Perhaps not. She didn’t have the courage to find out.
She turned back, looking at the curtain covering Dreskin’s small alcove. Her heart fluttered in her chest. Or at least it felt like it did. If she were human her palms would be slicked with sweat. She didn’t know what to do.
But she didn’t have much of a choice. She needed a ship, and she needed to board it quickly and quietly in case Laera and Hanner had sent word and warned the docklands about her. The Courser was the best option at this point. She held onto the thought that Dreskin had helped her. Surely he wouldn’t betray her now, not after the risk he’d taken helping her aboard the Scarlet Float.
“Thank you,” she whispered into the darkness. She pushed her hair out of her face and made her way to the door. She inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of herbs and ointments, the sharp herbal odor of the stuff they used to clean and heal wounds. She doubted she’d ever see Ruggers again.
She pulled a coin out of the pocket hanging from her neck and placed it on the table by the door. She left the house, closing the door quietly behind her.
The soft click of the latch falling into place had such a sense of finality to it that Ling almost lost her nerve. She clutched at the bag that held the book as if it could offer her strength, and in a way it did. It was what connected her to herself. It was her memory, and having it was the only thing that allowed her to move forward.
She crept along the edges of the muddy courtyard in front of the healer’s house, the single light bulb throwing her shadow onto the ground in front of her. The darkness hid her, and the thick mud blanketing the pathways of Ruggers muted her steps. She knew where she was, knew the way back, and broke into the mists of early morning in half the time it had taken her to burrow into the heart of Ruggers. She moved much faster when she wasn’t pulling an unconscious man behind her.
She had no idea what time it was, but the city streets were deep in shadow. Thick fog muffled the soft scuff of her footsteps on cobblestone as she flitted along, moving quickly, darting from one shadow to the next.
She slowed as she approached the docks, studying the empty streets carefully. Hanner and Laera might be in Middelhaern, but they were definitely not down at the docks. Perhaps they’d heard of the wreckage of the Scarlet Float and assumed her dead.
With a shiver she realized the same storm might have taken their ship as well. Was her mother—Evelyn’s mother—still alive?
She didn’t know how to feel about that, or even how to consider it. She knew Laera was not her mother, but Evelyn’s memories were her memories. She remembered Laera reading her stories before bed, brushing her hair after a bath. But knowing a thing wasn’t the same as feeling it, and in her heart, Laera was still her mother, despite the horrible things she’d done. The thought she might have died in the storm was too big, too scary, and too confusing. Ling pushed the thought away, focusing on her search.
She crept along the wide platform beside the docks, looking for the Courser. She found the ship alone at the far end of the docks. She wasn’t surprised. As much as Brielle hated magic, it made sense they’d push any ship that sailed to Dreggs as far away as possible from everyone else. They wouldn’t forbid it from docking altogether, though.
At first glance, the ship looked like any other trading vessel. Three tall masts stretched toward the sky from the deck of the ship, sails cleanly stowed for the duration of their stay at port. But along the entire side was an odd contraption unlike anything she’d ever seen. What appeared to be paddles hung evenly spaced along the length of the ship, attached to what looked like pieces of metal anchored to the wood.
The hull was covered with strange shapes that had been painted boldly along the entire length of the ship. She couldn’t fathom what all that metal could be used for, but she thought the writing might be glyphs. She’d heard people mention them in the Shadow Market during past visits. They were symbols that held magic. What sort of magic, though, she didn’t know.
A guard stood dockside. He was relaxed, hands in his pockets, but clearly alert. He wore a long jacket that stretched almost to the ground and a hat pulled low over one ear. No lanterns hung from the Courser; the only light she could see came from the tip of the cigarette dangling from his lips.
