Chapter 14
there is a deer who has come by the cairn in recent years.
a pale deer, and alone
its eye frozen on the line of birches
it sees nothing
not shadow, not new grass
not ancient blood
—Lament for the Back of the Land, excerpt
They reconvene in the port tower at evening bell.
A carillon running across the roofs of Hesper as windows are flung and kitchens sizzle with the tang of meat and spice.
Tonight, Declan Fallon has set a more sober table.
Shipwright can read his mood in the cringing of the servants who do their very best to fade into the walls, or dissolve into the dust that coats the tower floor.
Fallon has not been entertaining very much.
The man himself is already present, sat on the long side of the table, a half-drained mug by one hand, a sheaf of papers in the other. He looks up as she enters, and waves pointedly at the seat opposite.
‘Just you?’
She shrugs, which is enough to send the serving boy at her shoulder scurrying.
‘Shroud’ll be along. He slept like shit.’
She waves her own empty glass at the nervous boy. ‘Please, lad, I think I’ll need it.’
He pours a slug of some bitter black ale straight into fine gilded stemware. And if that doesn’t tell her the state of things, what would?
She sips. ‘Should we wait?’
Fallon snorts. ‘We should.’
Silence falls. The city rumbles along outside the window, cat squall and birdsong falling to the first tipsy shanties rolling up the walls from early starters taking shore leave.
Shipwright rearranges the cutlery and sips again, casting a plaintive look at the serving staff who studiously avoid her eyes. She stops drumming her fingers on the table when Fallon glances up from the papers; jigs her leg on the floorboards instead.
‘Widow’s tits, are you going to dance a full hornpipe for me, Ship?’
Shipwright sinks the ale, and straightens the forks again. ‘I’m not in the mood, Dec. It was a long voyage, and a longer night after.’
Something in Fallon softens for a second, then he turns back to the papers. ‘Your beau better get a shift on.’
As if on cue, Shroudweaver enters, ragged as an owl in an aviary, something feral in his gaze. His robe askew, with wisps of red, cindered thread trailing from his wrist. He sees their eyes on him, and seems to realise he is expected to speak.
‘There was a dream. I mean. Last night. And then this morning, I was experimenting. Trying to get a hold of it.’ He waves his right hand casually. Something stinks of saltpetre.
Fallon says nothing, just motions the servants to bring trays, salvers, platters filled with an excess of good food. Tense as she is, Shipwright’s mouth waters.
Shroudweaver settles next to her with a faint air of embarrassment, but there’s something worse beneath it. He’s thrumming like a violin string, taut with worry. She leans in, fixes his robes, tucks a particularly wispy strand of hair behind his ear.
‘Let’s just ride this out.’
Shroudweaver nods and makes a pretence of fussing with his cuffs. A splash of some pleasant fizz, and a little grilled bird wallowing in butter steadies him somewhat. She watches him start to come back together as he gently peels the meat from the bone. Good – she needs an ally.
Before Fallon even opens his mouth, Shipwright knows this is going to be a long dinner.
The old bull’s weighed down with the kind of misery that slides into spite.
He starts holding forth, the cup waving in his hand, his fingers stabbing at the papers fluttering in the other.
Shipwright lets it wash over her, admiring the patterns on the glassware.
She’d picked these out with Arissa in a little trinket shop, a long, long time ago.
They were passé even then, but there’s something in the cut of them that reminds her of home.
The thought of home holds her for a while. Fallon says something about the Volante and she nods. He curses out the guilds of the city for being stretched too thin to help, and she nods. He ticks a litany of dead ends off on his fingers – Errant, the Heron Halls, the Burners.
She nods.
Half of them Shipwright had already chalked up as lost. She’s sailed farther by far than Fallon over the past little while, but she knows he needs to strike them off his list, to balance the sheets.
She also knows that every fleck of spit, every slammed fist and dancing plate, every palpitation that runs through the staff is cover for something worse.
This table is set for three, when there should be four.
Arissa’s absence is a palpable, crushing thing. Not just for Fallon, for her too. It doesn’t quite floor her, but it almost does. Her fingers tighten on the glass. Beside her, Shroudweaver’s hands skip a quiet, fluttering dance.
Beware the shards of a broken pot. A wrist twist, a shoulder dip. Hawks most fear an empty nest.
And with that, Shipwright notices the other ghost at the feast. Quickfish, not long gone, but so dear to Fallon’s heart that the stupid man hasn’t spoken of him since.
She flicks a quick message back across the table.
Pups run and hounds howl.
Shroudweaver’s answering shrug is fluid.
Katkani is too poetic for this room, for this space that Declan fills with rage so they won’t notice the sour stench of his grief, or trace it in his rumpled clothes, his shadowed eyes, the yellowing of his large horse teeth.
She half expects Shroud to step in, but something else is tugging at his attention, his pale eyes flicking from Declan to the table and back.
This theatre of attention, she knows it all too well.
He’s running some calculations neither of them are in on, rolling something else around in the bone box of his skull. She’s on her own.
Thankfully, Declan blows himself out after a time. He slumps in the chair, one leg slung baldly over the arm, the curve of his belly clasped under strong hands, like an old wolf woken in the wrong season.
Not brought to bay yet though. Shipwright has sailed and failed with Declan more times than she can count, and she knows every movement that signals him limping back to the fray.
He strokes his moustache with thick brown fingers, slurps from the mug.
Shipwright can see his thoughts marshal themselves, and watches the confession bubble up like marsh gas.
‘Look, I don’t want to be the one to say it.’
She can see that he does, as if some perverse imp’s goading him on. She laughs. At least it’s humour, at least it’s something.
‘I don’t want to be the one to say it,’ he continues, as she rolls her eyes. ‘But I have begged and bartered and run every last rat road I can to get us the bodies and blood we need to push Kisser back properly.’
He flaps the papers. ‘I have offered favours and forbearances and things I should not even have considered. I have done everything possible save bending myself over the table and pulling down my breeches, but the fact of it is, I am down to one miserable option. It’s shaped like my worst bloody nightmare, and filled with fickle fucks I haven’t seen in years. ’
Shipwright looks at Shroudweaver. Shroudweaver looks at Shipwright. She can see the shape of that great, black mountain reflected in his eyes.
‘Thell,’ she says, the sound of it on her tongue like a stone down a well.
‘Aye, Thell,’ Fallon agrees.
Shipwright waits for Shroudweaver, for some comfort. He puts a hand on hers, but his smile is thin, absent. He’s seen this coming, and those numbers are still running in his head.
‘Thell’s a big risk, Dec,’ she says. ‘Worse than a risk. A millstone.’
Fallon sniffs. ‘Right again. Plus, there’s him.’
‘Him?’ Shipwright says, even though she already knows. Another ghost loping into the room.
Fallon sinks lower, mournfully ripping apart a quail.
‘Kinghammer.’ He sucks grease from a thumb.
Shipwright smiles weakly. ‘He’s not been returning your letters?’
It’s a bad joke that falls as flat as it deserves.
Fallon’s face twists as he works around a lump of gristle.
‘Worse than that. Keeping one toe just the right edge of hostile. And after what the rebellion cost us?’ The stripped leg waves expressively.
‘His weeping Republic is mortared with Hesper blood.’ He snaps, sucks marrow. ‘With my wife’s blood, Ship.’
Shipwright reaches for some fruit, digs in with her thumb. The juice stings.
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, then. For the sake of your heart, if nothing else.’
The look Fallon shoots her is venomous, but she ignores him, breathes deep.
‘What do we have left?’
Shroudweaver twitches, but Fallon answers.
‘Scraps. That slit shredded us good. The Volante was one of the best we had.’
‘What do we have left?’ Shipwright repeats, using the tone she saves for cabin boys. Arissa always responded well to that one.
Fallon picks at the skin on his lip. ‘The Hart’s Pride, the Maiden of the Forests.’
She waits.
‘You,’ he finishes lamely.
‘Shit,’ she says, her mind a mess of half-remembered faces. ‘We can’t keep Crowkisser penned in with three ships.’
Fallon’s fingers idly trace the table, running over a map of shipping routes, currents inked in blue and green and black.
‘There were a few others. They sailed north and west a while ago. It’s not their fight, and I didn’t have the money to keep them.
’ He laughs. ‘I only have the Hart and the Maiden because they’re in too deep to leave without collecting. ’
Shipwright shakes her head. ‘Never thought I’d see you happy to have creditors.’
She glances down at the map, at the couple of hundred miles of coast between Hesper and Astic further south.
Declan watches her with dark eyes. She can feel him waiting for a miracle, for her to be a clever, useful knife.
She shakes her head, and watches his shoulders drop.
‘Starving her out was a nice idea, but it’s out the window now. If we had the full fleet …’