The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice

by Andrew McGahan

  The party descended a second flight of stairs – and Dow noticed at last that Fidel was walking at his side, watching him shrewdly.

  ‘You may not think it now,’ the first officer said quietly, ‘but you are luckier than you know, Mr Amber. There was every chance that you would be kept here forever, despite Vincente’s plea.’

  Dow – frowning – gave no reply.

  ‘You feel betrayed, no doubt. But your feelings are based on a misconception. You thought the captain your friend. But a captain’s lot is to make difficult choices for the greater good of all, not one. His personal feelings don’t come into it. Vincente is fond of you, no doubt, but your fate is not his prime concern. It can’t be.’

  Again, in his hurt and resentment, Dow said nothing. But in truth, a doubt came creeping – for when he had said goodbye to New Island, hadn’t he suspected deep down that there was a chance he might not return? Hadn’t he taken that risk upon himself, and done it gladly, his heart already given to the sea? Did the sting of being forbidden to return only reflect his shame at leaving his homeland so eagerly in the first place?

  Fidel – still studying Dow closely – might have guessed some of these thoughts, or not. But he said, ‘One good thing I can tell you. Now that your place on the Chloe is for the time being secure, we can assign you to proper duties. You’ll work your passage to the Ice and back.’

  Dow clung to his anger a moment longer, but then had to give in to curiosity. ‘What duties?’

  ‘The captain and I will consider. Whatever you might be, Mr Amber, you’re no common sailor. But a position can be found, I’m sure. Only be patient a while yet. A voyage to the Ice takes much preparation, and we’ll have little time to spare for you these next few days.’

  And more Fidel would not say.

  Their escort, meanwhile, led them down by a route that differed from their way up, so that instead of returning to the Great Hall, or to the lawn on the main deck – where no doubt the other dignitaries were waiting impatiently for the Lords to be reconvened – they passed unobserved to the gun decks below the palace, and thence to an exterior hatch and gangway.

  Here King Benito made his farewells. ‘Good sailing to you, Captain. I can’t believe that this is anything other than a fool’s errand, and that Nadal and all his companions are long dead – but if they do live, and if you can find them, then you may well be the saviour of the empire.’

  ‘The empire may well need saving,’ responded Vincente, ‘if the Stone Port attack goes un-investigated.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ promised Benito.

  The king strode off, and the rest of them moved down the gangway to the landing, where one of the Twelfth Kingdom’s boats was ready for them. They embarked and in moments the rowers were hauling them away from the sheer wall of the capital ship’s hull.

  Dow looked back, head craned to see up to the great dome under which he had just been sitting. He felt a clammy sense of relief, of having made a narrow – and only temporary – escape. No longer did the Twelfth Kingdom appear so magnificent to him, but instead oppressive and oversized. He could imagine the dark dungeons that lay deep within its giant hull, far below the turgid waterline – where the strange occupant of the wheeled chair had foretold he would one day be sent …

  He looked away, forward over the rowers’ heads, and saw the Chloe. Until this very moment, Dow had always thought of the battleship as an enormous, heavy thing, but he was pierced now by its beauty and lightness. It was the opposite of the Twelfth Kingdom. The Chloe was prisoner of no Golden Millpond. There was agility in its sleek lines, and swiftness in the subtle rake of its masts and in its taut webs of rope and sail; a coiled speed that would spring forth the instant a wind rose.

  And Dow realised now that he had never seen that speed truly uncoiled. Throughout the crossing from New Island he had been so engrossed in the sheer novelty of being at sea that he hadn’t noticed how untested the ship had been by the voyage. It had made steady progress through fair winds and smooth seas – but it had done no more than that. And yet it was capable, he sensed now, of so much more – as was Dow himself.

  The old sea-longing rose up in him as acutely as ever, a lust almost; the thought that there might be only one more voyage in his future, followed by a lifetime’s captivity on the Twelfth Kingdom, was too agonising to bear. No. He must never come back here – or at least, he must not come back as he was now, so ignorant, so powerless, so at the mercy of others. He must rely no longer on chance to see him through, nor upon the goodwill of Vincente. His life was not the captain’s responsibility, it was his own.

  The rowers raised oars as they came alongside the battleship. Dow clambered up the boarding ladder behind the others, his resolve expanding within him. He would not stand idly by on this voyage. Whatever task he was assigned, he would prove to himself and to everyone that he was a true seaman, so that Vincente would have no choice – for the good of the ship – but to keep him on board. And if Vincente would not, or could not …

  Then Dow would find some other way.

  Reaching the deck, he noted surprised looks on the faces of many at his presence. Of course – they had not expected him to return. They had all assumed he would be left behind, as law stated, on the capital ship. And when Dow went below to his quarters in the smithy, he was met with the greatest disbelief of all.

  ‘Dow,’ cried Johannes, throwing aside his hammer and grabbing Dow in his huge arms, his fists thumping on Dow’s back, as Nicky grinned up owlishly from beside the bellows. ‘We thought we’d never see you again. We were certain they’d keep you on that awful ship forever.’

  And even while laughing, Dow had to ask. ‘So you knew about their law too? Why didn’t you warn me?’

  At which the blacksmith dropped his arms and stepped back. ‘You are my friend, Dow Amber, but I am nevertheless a crewman upon this ship, and under the rule of its captain. Vincente ordered me to be silent, and silent I stayed.’ And at the dark, perplexed look on Dow’s face, he added. ‘It was also Vincente, you should know, who suggested I invite you to live down here with us. He knew you would never be happy in the officers’ quarters. And it was Vincente, too, who suggested I encourage you to train as an able seaman.’ He watched Dow absorb this, then said. ‘Can you forgive me?’

  And Dow found that he could – Johannes, at least. He still wasn’t sure if he could forgive the captain.

  Later that afternoon he went topside once more and found the Chloe making ready to depart. Vincente – so word said – had spent the afternoon closeted with the captains of the Thorn and the Dolphin, and now the order was to make sail as soon as darkness fell. The hope, it seemed, was to slip away unnoticed in the night before their enemies learned of their mission.

  But that hope was to be thwarted, for just on dusk, a boat came rowing swiftly from the Twelfth Kingdom – bearing none other than Lieutenant Diego of the Diamond, nephew to the King of Valdez.

  Dow watched from the rail as the boat pulled alongside and a ladder was lowered. He was sure that the captain had been quite prepared to sail without Diego – and the lieutenant, by the look, had not willingly come back. He climbed up the ladder with an expression as glowering as Dow had ever seen him wear. But no doubt his uncle, having somehow got wind of the Chloe’s expedition, had changed his plans and remembered that, conveniently, Diego was still officially a member of its crew.

  Dow glanced to the high deck, hoping that Vincente would appear and deny Diego permission to board – but there was no such development. Perhaps the captain believed that a spy who was known to be a spy could do no great harm. But watching Diego stride ill-temperedly across the deck to the stern castle, Dow was not so confident. And also, although his feelings about Nell were no clearer than they had been all afternoon, he hated the idea that Diego would now be near to her again.

  Night lowered, and around the Chloe the sea came alight with the many lamps of the fleet and the Twelfth Kingdom. But no lamps were lit on the battleship.
At a soft word from the high deck, the sails were raised in a faint night breeze, and slowly the ship made off northwards.

  Dow stood at the rail and watched the armada fall away behind, thinking over all the strange events of the day, and of the circumstances that had seen him launched on this, the second voyage of his life. It’d been the creature Axay who’d settled the matter, by pronouncing that the search for the Lord Designate could not be fateful if Dow was not on board – but how could it be that his presence was linked to the survival of someone so high and august as Nadal, a prince that Dow had never even laid eyes upon?

  But just as the last lights were slipping over the horizon, a realisation came. I’ve been sending merchantmen in pairs, the Sea Lord had said, speaking of the search for his son, most recently in the autumn of last year, and then again this spring. The autumn of last year! But it had been exactly then – over a year ago now, back home in the high forests of New Island – that Dow had looked out from the headland and spied two ships far below, battling the seas in the storm’s wake; the very pair that had so ignited his desire to leave Yellow Bank and seek for the sea.

  Surely they must be the same vessels. They had been driving north towards the Ice, had they not, where otherwise even the Ship Kings had little reason to go? Yes. He had wondered then where they were bound and why they would roam there – now he knew. They had been sailing in search of Nadal. And because of them Dow had left his home, and now stood upon a ship that was heading north upon the very same mission.

  He turned his face to the blackness of the north, feeling a coldness settle over him, a net of fate in which he was trapped inescapably. Or perhaps it was just an extra bite of winter, already in the air.

  5. OF ICE AND NICRE

  For that night and all the next day the Chloe crept northeast across the sluggish waters of the Millpond, and then in the evening sighted land at last, a lonely cape rising out of the sea, rocky and bare in the sunset. This, Dow was told, was the southern extremity of the peninsula that formed the Kingdom of Argive. They sailed on, and by the next morning had rounded the cape to leave the Millpond behind and were heading north along Great Island’s western shores.

  Here they were exposed once more to the weather of the wider world, and had to fight their way into stiff winds and choppy seas. For two further days they pressed northwards, and all the while Dow stood at the landward rail, staring at the distant coastline. There was little enough to observe other than stony hills and headlands, interspersed by a few small harbours and villages, for the larger ports and towns of Argive – one of the poorer kingdoms, by all accounts – were situated on its sheltered east coast. Nevertheless, this was Dow’s first foreign shore, and the otherness of the landscape, so different from green New Island, was strangely compelling.

  The hills grew higher the further north they went, and then midway through the second afternoon they passed a blunt cape that marked the border between Argive and Valignano. The Chloe was now officially in home waters. But little else changed. Dow could spy larger villages along the coast, and what appeared to be vineyards on the hillsides, but otherwise Valignano, like Argive before it, looked a hard and barren land.

  But at dusk Vincente steered the Chloe closer in to shore and entered a sprawling bay that opened eastward between wide arms, and here the country was gentler, tenanted with fields and farms. They sailed on through the darkness, guided by lights shining from several towns set around the bay, and before dawn had reached the narrowing head of the inlet, where stood Haven Diaz, the Chloe’s home port, and capital city of Valignano.

  The ship was warped in to the dock and tied up by sunrise, and Dow was on deck to behold the town. After the wonders of the Twelfth Kingdom, he’d expected similar grandeurs of a Ship Kings city, but as the light grew, Haven Diaz was revealed to be surprisingly modest in size. Indeed, as far as Dow could see, it was hardly any larger than Stone Port, and certainly nowhere near as large as the great New Island city of Lonsmouth.

  Haven Diaz did, however, possess an air far more ancient and venerable than either of those New Island towns. It was built on steep slopes around an elbow-shaped harbour and its buildings loomed straight out of the water, rising very tall and leaning together over narrow streets. Walls were painted almost universally white, but their foundations by the waterside were of naked stone, and the great blocks were dark and primeval, as worn and weathered as the hills, but solid yet, and enduring.

  This was a city much older, Dow guessed, than any on New Island. And wealthier too, for – despite its age – it displayed none of the dilapidation or neglect so apparent in Lonsmouth and Stone Port; there were no slum districts or crumbling wharves. Instead the docks were in full repair and jammed with shipping. Tall warehouses reared behind the waterfront, packed, no doubt, with tribute gathered from all over the empire. Glass-fronted shops lined neat cobbled streets, and on the hillsides above rose great houses and mansions, surrounded by terraced gardens and creeper-laden walls.

  In short, Haven Diaz spoke to Dow of a prosperity and privilege far beyond its size. And rising over all, atop a steep crag, was the castle of Valignano’s king, Benito of the Silver Tern – though he was not, as Dow knew, currently at home. It was in part a fortress, as forbidding as the Stone Port keep, but lofting above its outer bastions rose a palace far more ornate than anything Stone Port could boast, a soaring pink-walled chateau with gilded balconies and many windows that caught the rising sun.

  But then even the homes of the humbler folk, the crowded tenement buildings down by the waterline, were stately and proud by New Island standards. And from these tenements, as the morning progressed, the Ship Kings townsfolk – a well dressed and well fed people, to Dow’s eye – came to mass about the Chloe’s wharf, welcoming home the flagship of their fleet. In particular, a throng of laughing woman and children gathered by the gates; the families of the crew, waiting eagerly for their husbands and fathers to disembark and begin their shore leave, after four long months away.

  But in fact there was to be no leave for the crew, and the women and children were sent off weeping. This was no homecoming, but merely a swift stop to refit and resupply. There followed thus three days of furious activity, to ready the ship for the Ice.

  The great hatches on the main deck were thrown open, and huge amounts of stores were lowered down to be crammed into the hold, including special winter clothes for the crew. Moreover, the cannon from the First and Second Gun decks were lifted out by crane and deposited on the dock, leaving only the Third Gun deck armed. For the Chloe was embarking not upon a voyage of war but of rescue, and required speed above all else, as well as protection against the wild seas of the north.

  To that end, all the gunports – even on the Third Gun deck – were sealed tightly shut with a hard waterproof resin, leaving no quick way, should the unlikely need ever arise, to open them.

  Dow took no part in any of these preparations, for he had not heard yet from Commander Fidel regarding an assigned duty. Nor was he allowed ashore to explore Haven Diaz. He spent most of his time therefore idling impatiently on the main deck, either staring out from the rail to watch the townsfolk move about their busy streets, or gazing into the open depths of the Chloe, to watch the constant work of loading and unloading.

  In the early afternoon of the third day Johannes came topside to empty some furnace slag over the rail, and paused a moment by Dow to observe one of the last of the cannons being hoisted out.

  ‘I know they’re only dead weight now,’ the blacksmith said, as the gun, hung securely from the loading crane, soared slowly up and away, ‘but it’s always sad to see a battleship stripped down.’

  Dow nodded. Already the Chloe felt a lesser vessel; hollowed out and defenceless, even though the coming enemy would be the cold, not cannon fire. Some of the gunners and marines were also being put off, the crew reduced to the minimum number needed for sailing alone. And yet things were being added to the ship as well. Dow pointed to the bow, where large devices
of metal and glass where being fitted on the forecastle. ‘Are they lamps of some kind?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye. In the arctic regions to which we are bound – at this time of year – the darkness of night will be eternal. Those are ice lamps, so that we’ll be able to find our way through the many hazards of berg and floe, and mist and fog, despite the winter darkness.’

  Dow felt an ominous chill. Eternal night? He couldn’t imagine how any lamp, no matter how large or brilliant, could hope to defy that.

  ‘They are not normal lanterns,’ Johannes added. ‘They burn refined whale oil, the most rare and expensive of all oils. A cupful would pay a sailor’s wages for a month, and it burns with the fierceness of gunpowder, giving off a dazzling light. But you will never have seen it, I know. Few have, for the Ship Kings commandeer its entire supply for their use alone.’

  Dow glanced to his friend, puzzled by the sudden bitterness in his tone.

  The blacksmith shrugged in apology. ‘The oil is a product of my own Twin Isles. Whale hunters risk life and limb to obtain it, and then labour long to refine it. But the Ship Kings spare us none for our own use. It’s a source of much discontent.’ Johannes shifted his gaze further along the docks, his usually mild eyes smouldering for a moment. ‘They have grown fat off their empire, our overlords, and off the sweat of many honest folk, both in my homeland and yours. But what’s to be done about it?’

  Dow looked in the same direction. Beyond the Chloe the docks were crowded with smaller craft – fishing boats and coastal traders – and with many larger sea-going merchantmen; but there were also three warships, left behind apparently from the mustering of the Lords of the Fleet. Two frigates and a battleship. They were at ease, slumbering in their home port, but still they testified to brute force and dominion.

  Dow said, ‘And yet, for all their empire, Haven Diaz is no great city. I thought it would be bigger.’