The Bone Ships

by R J Barker

  “No.” Joron swallowed, looked away. “I have already killed with this blade – I am quite comfortable with it.”

  Before Joron could stop him Tassar leaned in and yanked the curnow from the hook on his belt.

  “Not a real sword,” he said, hefting the weapon. “Swordcraft isn’t just about waggling it around. It takes skill. You’d be surprised what a real man can do” – he left a long pause – “with his sword.”

  “May I have that back?” said Joron. The Kept did not look as though he had heard him and Joron pointed at the elaborate scabbard on Tassar’s hip. “Or are you proposing we swap?”

  Tassar laughed.

  “A wit! What a wit. Maybe you could have ended up one of the Kept had you been born stronger. But I hear your mother was weak.” He did not offer Joron the sword.

  “You know nothing of me or my mother.” The words whipped out of his mouth, fast as a rope snapped taut by the wind.

  “I know all about you, Twiner. I know you’ve been to see Karrad; no doubt he seeks to win the Thirteenbern’s favour. How would he do that, eh? If you knew, I could reward you.” He smiled, holding Joron’s sword loosely in his hand. For a moment Joron considered telling him everything, but only a moment. For all he hated Karrad he at least understood him, but this man was something different. He sensed some need beneath the innuendo, but it was not a deckchild’s fleshly pleasure he sought, not the company of a shipfriend. Besides, Meas’s warning still rang in his ears. He knew nothing of the world in the bothies, had no idea who could be trusted. He believed what he knew of Karrad was valuable, to the right person. But he did not think Tassar was the right person to tell, not at all.

  “I was not privy to what Karrad and my shipwife discussed.”

  “Your shipwife?” The eyebrow raised in amusement caused the glittering turquoise paint around his eye to flake away. “Well then, I suppose you are Kept, in your own way. You’ve been given Meas’s favour at least, eh? Though I reckon you spend your seed in vain there. If she were to be Bern she would be by now. Hag knows she’s tried hard enough. Still, better to seed a field in hope than hate, eh?” He leaned closer, grinning. “Though sometimes it adds a little spice if it is both.”

  “I am sure the Thirteenbern would love to hear you say that,” said Joron. Tassar’s broad, blocky face hardened, and Joron wondered if the Kept would draw on him, but instead he flicked the curnow into the air so the blade landed in his hand. Then he stared hard at Joron, grasping the blade tight enough to make the muscles in his arm ripple and for the blade to draw blood from his hand. Then he offered Joron the hilt.

  “Do not joke about such things.” He took a step closer. “Do not think to repeat any of my words to the Thirteenbern.” He stepped even closer. Joron took one step back on the ramp and had a moment of vertigo, realising how close he was to the edge, how far he had to fall. “Be very careful how you tread. Many people have slipped and fallen on their way down the spiral bothy, Deckkeeper Twiner. It is often a fatal fall.”

  “Meas would be upset if I fell.”

  The yawning void behind him.

  “You are presuming Meas will ever leave the room above,” he whispered. “I am afraid that sometimes a mother’s love is not all it should be.”

  “She will leave.”

  “And how do you know that, Deckkeeper?” He did not know. But not knowing did not make him any less sure. When he did not immediately reply a smile spread across Tassar’s face.

  “She will leave because she is Lucky Meas, Seaguard,” said Joron, and the smile swiftly vanished.

  “My title is Kept, Twiner, and I am Kept of the Thirteenbern. You should remember that. And if after what Meas did, you still believe she will come back? Maybe you are simple.” Joron must have betrayed something, made some tiny movement of his face that Tassar, schooled in the ways of deceit and politicking among the Bern and the Kept, picked up. “Oh . . .” He drawled out the soft exclamation. “You do not know, do you? Of course, stuck away on that black ship, you do not hear the news. Do not know what sort of creature you serve. And she is unlikely to tell one as lowly as you. Well, I do not think I shall tell you either; I shall leave you to wonder.”

  Before Joron could say anything else Meas appeared on the ramp. She had something of a air of a fighting bird that had, if not lost its contest, definitely not come off best from it. Though maybe it had done enough to keep its pride and stay out of the pot, for now.

  “Come, Twiner.”

  Tassar gave Joron a smile and nodded his head at Meas as she passed.

  “Go then, Joron,” he said, “and remember, my offer to teach you the sword remains open.”

  Joron ignored him. He caught up with Meas who, as they walked away whispered to him,

  “Tell me that Tassar did not bait you into a duel.”

  “He did not, though if I am honest I more thought he was trying to get me into his bed.”

  Meas laughed – a real laugh, a bright sound.

  “Oh, I did not think on how little you knew of their ways. No ship’s rules for the Kept, Twiner. Their lives depend on the strength of their seed, and they strut and preen like cock birds to gain the favour of the Bern. To be accused of loving men is a mortal insult among them. But you did not know that, and all his work to goad you into insulting him was for naught.”

  “I know no one who cares of such things.”

  “That is because you are fleet, ey?”

  “But I am not fleet,” he said, confused, and he could not keep the sadness out of his voice. “I have never been fleet. I am just a simple fisher boy.”

  “The Thirteenbern mocked you,” said Meas, coming to a halt, and when she spoke she was fierce, but that fierceness was not aimed at him. “Do not let that affect you. Do not worry about not being fleet, for I will teach you all you need to know. My mother’s words were loosed to hurt me, not you. And if Tassar mocked you it was for the same reason. This does not mean you cannot be angry – be angry, be angry by all means. But believe me in this, Joron. The greatest revenge is not that taken with a blade, it is that done by taking your enemy’s taunts and throwing them back in their face.” She stared at him, her tongue moving in her mouth. “You will be fleet by the time I am finished with you, Joron Twiner. I promise you that.”

  “Or dead,” he said.

  “There is that. But I would not dwell on it, for there is far less opportunity for revenge in death.”

  There were few things sadder in the Scattered Archipelago than the prison hulks, ships so badly damaged they were no longer salvageable, not even to become a black ship to carry a crew to glorious death or a brownbone hauling cargo in short hops from island to island. Instead they lay sluggish on the surface of the greasy water outside the harbour and rotted. Skeleton crews of seaguard garrisoned them. No one wanted the duty, so it fell to the worst of them to guard those who, through crime or poor luck, had been judged unworthy of the land and locked below. They barely lived on whatever slop was served up and were forced to prey upon one another to survive, begging the Sea Hag that their sentences be served out before the hulk’s bones finally gave way and the old ships went to the bottom. For if you were imprisoned on a hulk when it sank, surely your death was the Hag’s wish?

  No wonder the hulkbound flocked to the call when the black ships recruited.

  It was to the largest of the hulks that Joron rowed Meas. They were neither white nor black, but the awful brown of rotting bone. And as every bit of keyshan bone that could be salvaged became more and more precious, the hulks became as much gion and varisk as they were old bone. And the gion and varisk were kept up no better.

  They stank.

  Joron had believed Tide Child, sad and neglected in Keyshanblood Bay, was the worst thing he had ever smelled, but that was only because he had never been near a hulk before. First the stink of rotting bone, wet and organic. Then the stink of human filth. The hulks were little more than open sewers, and in the high heat the reek was almost unbearable.
Joron found himself retching as he pulled on the oars; Meas, as ever, seemed unaffected. And behind the louder scents that insulted Joron’s nose there was another – more subtle, almost undefinable but in its own way far worse – misery. The stink of women and men who were at their last, the desperate and the lost.

  Meas dipped her hand into her pouch and brought out a posy of bright flowers, holding it to her nose to ward off the stink as Joron, choking on the malodour, rowed them further into the miasma. At the side of the hulk a seaguard let down a rope ladder, done with no ceremony or care. Meas ignored the insult; she seemed to have skin thicker than a keyshan. The shipwife grabbed the ladder, shimmying up in a couple of easy leaps while Joron tied the boat on to the side of the hulk and then struggled his way up the rungs as they swayed left and right with his weight.

  When he crested the rail of the hulk, the once-ornate bone splintering in his grip, leaving brown smears and shards sticking into his his palm, he was met by a long line of prisoners waiting for Meas to cast her eye over them. Around them stood seaguard, and if women and men as different from those who guarded the spiral bothies could have been found, Joron could not imagine a better collection than those gathered here. Where they bothered to wear more than the birdskin leather hat of the seaguard, their uniforms were dirty, and their faces were pinched and mean.

  They had no respect for Meas. Mostly they ignored her and instead spent their time walking up and down the line, occasionally lashing out with small clubs for some infraction that Joron could neither see nor understand. The prisoners appeared completely cowed and subservient.

  A seaguard raised his club, about to bring it down on the head of the old man before him.

  Meas grabbed the man’s arm before the club fell.

  “No.”

  “No? This flotsam looked at me like I were nothing. He deserves a beating.”

  “This flotsam,” said Meas, “may become part of my crew, and if he is to be punished I will see it done. Put down your club.”

  “Make me,” said the seaguard. By the time he had finished that last word he was on the deck and his club in Meas’s hand.

  “If you can take this back,” said Meas, brandishing the club, “you can beat who you wish.”

  But the seaguard, mouth bleeding from a blow he never saw coming, made no attempt to reclaim his weapon.

  “Keep it,” he said, pulling himself to his feet and wiping blood from his lip. “There’s plenty more of ’em on this ship.” And he walked away.

  She watched him vanish into the bowels of the hulk and shook her head, dropping the club on the slate and glancing around at the other seaguard, who if they did not respect her at least watched her warily. The convicts, on the other hand, began to stand a little straighter.

  “Twiner,” she said, “join me while I pick a crew. Some I want for the ship, some I will use as soldiers. You will help me decide who goes where.” He stepped in close to her. His new boots bit into his feet, the barely cured fishskin of the clothes they had picked up on the way felt too tight around his arms, rubbed the tops of his legs where his skin was still damp from the bathhouse, but he did not let his pain show.

  “Yes, Shipwife.”

  “Now.” Her whisper was a warmth in his ear. “We need a deckmother to keep the crew in check and provide discipline. A purseholder, for I do not trust the man Tide Child has. Oarturner we have. I will not turn out Barlay – she proved herself at Corfynhulme. A bowsell of the maindeck to run the gallowbow teams, and some who at least have something about them to be bowsells alongside her. Bonewright we have also. I will forego a hatkeep for my clothing but I need a seakeep who knows boneships, and the same for a wingwright. Now, I do not say the women and men we find here will be trained, or used to those positions, but we may be lucky. However, if they know what I want they will all claim they have the experience I look for, and no one lies like a deckchild. So we walk the line, we talk to these women and men and we choose ones we like, ones we think we can use and ones with a bit of spark in ’em. And we want violent women and men too, the kind that are trouble, for I will make them our own seaguard if Karrad will not give me any. You understand?” He nodded. “Very well, then let us inspect our livestock. You speak to ’em; it is better if I appear distant.”

  Joron approached the first in the line, a woman he guessed was at least thrice his years. Long white hair, matted and caked with filth, reached down her back.

  “What is your name?”

  “Caller,” she said, but her eyes were far away and he did not feel that she was naming herself. Nevertheless, he took her answer for want of any other.

  “An odd name, for an old woman.”

  She stepped in close to him. A gnarled finger reached up and hooked around his collar, pulling him down to her.

  “Do you sing?” she said.

  “What? No, not since . . .” He stopped. He had no need to explain his songs had stopped with his father’s death. Not to this old woman.

  “We’ll be all right,” she said. “You sing boy and we’ll be all right. The Hag is coming, you’ll see. She’ll take us all to—”

  He was pulled away by Meas. “Not this one; her mind is gone.” She turned to a seaguard. “You can take her below. Move on, Twiner.” She leaned in close to him once more. “Don’t waste your time on the lame birds. Look for strength and intelligence – you can see it in their eyes.” She glanced down the line of ragged figures. “Though I suspect we might end up taking them all no matter what, as half will die before we get over the horizon. Find me my crew, Joron. Find me the ones who will make my ship fly.”

  He wondered why she was letting him choose. Was it really so she could appear aloof? Or was it a trap of some sort? Not that it mattered as he could not refuse. If it was a trap he must walk into it.

  Joron moved along the line, and if there were sorrier and weaker women and men in the Hundred Isles he could not imagine where they would be. Occasionally he would stop in front of one, considering that if they were fed up to full health then maybe . . . but Meas would shake her head and he would move on. The first lot were rejected completely, Meas looking downcast at the sight of them trooping below as the next batch were brought up.

  He walked over to her as the second lot organised themselves into line.

  “Not a one among them, Shipwife? Are you sure?”

  She nodded.

  “They have been here too long – would cost us food and then they’d probably die. I’d take a tailor or a cobbler over them, missing limb or no.” And so it was with the next and the next. And Skearith’s Eye moved over the spines and more were brought up.

  Another dismal lot.

  The only hopeful one was the last of them, a huge man though he stood stooped, staring at the deck, and his face was almost lost in ragged black beard and hair.

  “You,” he said, “what is your name?”

  “Muffaz, Deckkeeper,” he said. His voice was barely above a whisper. Joron almost moved on, thinking Meas would judge the man weak as he looked utterly beaten, but there was something about him he could not put his finger on, and it was not just his size. “What was your crime, Muffaz?”

  “I am Maiden-cursed, D’keeper.”

  Joron’s heart sank.

  “Unfortunate,” he said, as all he knew it was ill luck to take a man who had murdered a woman aboard ship.

  “Who did you kill?” said Meas.

  “I murdered my lover, Shipwife. Six month with child she were.” He coughed, choking back a sob. “I should take the short walk and feed the longthresh, but cannot do it. Drink, it were. Anhir and the temper it brings. Never touched her before in anger, but one moment and all is ruin. I have sworn never to touch another drop of the drink as long as I live, may the Hag make my life short.”

  “What position did you hold before you were condemned?” said Meas.

  “I was oarturner, Shipwife. On a four-ribber, see. Worked it ten years.” Joron looked him up and down again, a bad feeling in h
is gut about having his sort on the ship. Then glanced at Meas.

  “We are a ship of the dead, Twiner,” she said. “Cursed all, and a strong back is always useful.” Was there a light in the man’s eyes at that? A sudden flare of hope?

  “Go and stand over there, Muffaz,” said Joron. The man nodded and Joron moved on to find himself inspecting such a collection of ne’er-do-wells and ragged lasses that he could barely believe any of them had ever flown the sea. These people were as far from the image of fleet deckchilder given to him by his father as it was possible to be.

  In the next three lots they found one woman – Hasrin – nearly as tall as him and one of the few to look him in the eye. She had been a deckkeeper herself, and when he asked her crime she was cagey, dancing round the subject and refusing to meet his gaze. He was going to pass over her, but Meas was standing behind the line, scrutinising the prisoners from the rear, and she gave him a nod. So, despite him feeling it was a mistake, Hasrin joined the crew.

  The heat built up, his new boots and clothes rubbed, the quality of the prisoners got no better. Joron started to long for the drink he had denied himself. But a glance behind him at the bowed, guilt-broken, Hag-cursed form of Muffaz helped stop him reaching for the flask at his side. Meas had given up, gone to the rail to stare over the sea and no doubt fret about how she would complete her mission, any mission, without crew. All seemed lost before it had begun.

  The next in line was a small man, and unlike the rest looked barely broken at all by his experience of the hulk. He had a huge smile, and if the eyeburn on his bald scalp bothered him he did not show it.

  “And what is your crime?”

  “I punched my officer, D’keeper.” He seemed inordinately pleased about it. Before Joron could ask any more he heard Meas’s boots on the deck as she strode over and spun the man around.

  “Mevans?”

  “Ey, Shipwife.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “As I said to the deckkeeper” – he grinned, showing a full set of teeth – “I punched my shipwife.”