Chapter 4
on anatomising the hearts
we found them strange
nacreous, rigid,
ringing like a struck bell
—Excursions in the Near Wreck, Wicktwister
Dawn rises shyly off the Hesperian coast, East Tide retreating from the beaches where grey gulls sweep, cackle and war with fat green crabs over the bounty of last night’s swell.
Four or five fresh bodies, bloated and scoured by the sea. Shroudweaver watches them. Shipwright watches Shroudweaver.
Her arms enfold him from behind and she murmurs in his ear.
‘Recognise them?’
Shroudweaver squints and his mind falls into a quieter space, rattles and hums with detail. The weave of cloth, the cut of boots.
‘Wreck of the Volante,’ he says and feels Shipwright’s arms stiffen. His sharp eyes scan cuts, abrasions, peeled-back grimaces, and the crabs squabbling over charred fingertips.
‘She went down to something big and noisy. Maybe guns. Maybe magic. Maybe sabotage.’ He rolls his shoulders. ‘Lots of fire. Not quick. Not pretty.’
Shipwright snarls, ‘Fucking Crowkisser.’ She ruffles Shroudweaver’s thin hair. ‘No offense, but your daughter’s a cunt.’
She turns to the crew.
‘Bring us in.’
A few minutes later and they’re standing knee-deep in the surf, watching the broken boards of the Volante make their way to land for the last time. The crabs have retreated to a safe distance, their slick bodies jostling in oily, boisterous heaps.
The crew fan out, searching for salvage, and more importantly, for bodies. Names and faces to bring home to the widows on shore. Scoured fingers to break fathers’ hearts and salted hair to be clasped in lockets and shaking hands.
Shipwright squats on the tideline, an ache in the small of her back, and a harder ache in her heart.
Never too many drowned young faces for the sea.
She fishes around, pulls up a shattered plank, its edges burnt and curved smooth as glass.
She sniffs it – lemon and grease – and bites her cheek to stop her breakfast from coming up.
‘Slickwalker. He’s getting better.’
Shroudweaver turns. He’s shivering already, the cold of the water stealing up his thin legs.
‘He shouldn’t even be able to get aboard. I thought you fitted the remaining ships with spinners?’
She nods, sloshes towards him to push him gently out of the water and up the beach.
‘That I did. Stay dry.’
He pulls his hood higher, tightens a scarf against the wind. ‘I’ll try.’
His eyes wander up the cliffs, lingering on the distant spike of a gallowswatcher against the skyline. Closer, one of the Teeth smoulders. ‘We shouldn’t hang about. Any clue on the spinners?’
Shipwright rolls her eyes, hikes her trousers and heads back to the swelling scurf of the wreck. She lets her fingers sink into the waves, reading their rhythm, and trying to feel the hum of a spinner somewhere amid it all.
‘Nothing.’
Up the beach, one of the crewmen yelps, trips, flounders in the surf and dark sand. Shipwright glances across, down at his feet and sees it buried, just at toe height. Fairly rough and ready as spinners go, but she’d been working fast, and the smiths in Hesper hadn’t seen one for years.
When she draws closer, the problem is obvious – half the facing torn off, that same lemony stink.
‘The bastard shot them off,’ she calls.
Shroudweaver turns. ‘Shot them. From where?’
She shrugs. ‘The shore, I’d guess. I should have seen that coming.’
Shroudweaver’s eyes scan the distance between shore and deep sea. ‘You have to be kidding me,’ he mutters.
‘What?’ she shouts.
He walks closer. ‘What did she do to him that he can do that?’
She shrugs, pockets the spinner. ‘A mystery for another day.’ Then, rubbing a hand across her brow, asks, ‘Can we go? This is breaking my heart. And Fallon needs to know.’
He nods, places a hand gently in the small of her back.
‘Of course.’
From the gangplank, they look back at the shore as the ship casts off.
Shipwright’s eyes are narrow against the wind, her hair pulled across her face.
‘One of the last,’ she says.
‘Last what?’ he asks
‘Last of the great ships.’ Her hands tighten on the rail.
‘One of the last to sail south with us. One of the last still standing. One of the last with a crew still breathing. I should have seen this coming.’ The tears on her cheek are dragged by the wind.
‘She’ll come for all of them, eventually. Then us.’
He turns her face towards his. ‘We won’t let that happen.’
‘They took me in,’ she says.
He frowns, ‘Who?’
‘The Volante’s crew, when I first got here. Not a damn crew would turn their head. Afraid of me, afraid of the ship.’ She smiles wistfully. ‘Not the Volante though. It was two minutes of bristling then days of drinking something red and foul.’
‘Buckwater,’ Shroudweaver mutters, and grimaces.
She nods. ‘That was it. Tasted like burning goat’s piss.’ Her face softens. ‘They didn’t care that I wasn’t from here; that they’d never seen a ship like mine.’ She snorts. ‘I mean, they offered to sell their captain to me in trade for it, but I don’t think they were serious.’
Her face clouds again. ‘Wish I could remember his name. Poor sod never lived long enough to take a new one. I suppose he’s just blowing ash somewhere in the south now.’ She shakes her head. ‘Last of the great ships.’
Shroudweaver taps her arm, ‘Wait here.’
The shore pulls up to the horizon before he returns with two leather cups and a bladder that reeks like a drunkard’s nightmare.
She stares at him.
‘That isn’t?’
He grins, ‘I got the taste for it a while back, on the voyage down.’
He leans on the rail and pours, passes her a cup. Turns to the sea, and raises it.
‘To the Volante.’
She mirrors him, ‘The Volante. Those shabby bastards. The sea’s too good for them.’