Chapter 44 #2
They walk further down the avenue of rugs, the light striped and shaded by awnings stretched far above, against the dusty warehouse glass.
‘Cartography was a big Hesper industry, back in the day. No one made maps quite like us.’
Shipwright smiles, recognising his manner, that storytelling style, and eggs him on. ‘Oh really?’
‘Our maps aren’t always just maps. Sometimes, they can hold secrets.’
She raises an eyebrow, ‘How?’
He shrugs, sidesteps a sweaty, racing young boy, his face stamped with green ink.
‘It can be all kinds of things. The twist with which a mountain’s drawn.
The stippling on the edge of a swamp. Dots where there needn’t be dots.
Lines hidden inside other lines. Paper towns that don’t exist on the earth, but mean something when they’re on a map.
’ His smile is wicked, his arms conspiratorial around her shoulder.
‘Towns that exist on the earth that are just hinted at in a wash of colour, a choice of vellum.’ He taps the tube at her hip. ‘We’re clever bastards.’
She laughs. ‘So it would seem. How come no one cottons on?’
‘Smart question. The codes change all the time, and only the cartographers know. They’ll send them, interpret them, receive them, alter them.’
‘That’s a lot of trust to place in a few people.’
He nods. ‘It is, but they swear an oath, a real serious thing. Can’t even break it once they’ve gone to glass.’
Shipwright sighs. ‘You’re all so cryptic. “Gone to glass”. That’s dead, right?’
Fallon nods. ‘Almost. Story for another day. Let’s leave it at the maps for now.’
Shipwright smiles. ‘Agreed. My head’s spinning as it is. Impressive though.’
Fallon grins. ‘It’s one of the reasons Crowkisser’s so shit up about us. We have a whole language she can never read.’
Shipwright rolls her eyes. ‘You enjoy the idea that she’s furious out there somewhere, don’t you?’
‘Love it,’ Fallon grins.
The smile vanishes. ‘But seriously … Secrets. That’s how we survive. That’s how we beat her. Not trade. Not weapons. Secrets.’
His blunt face is soft, half-mocking. ‘It’s not what we’re known for. City of ships, right? That’s what brought you here.’
She nods.
‘City of secrets, Shipwright. And you need to learn a few more of them before you go.’
They cut away from the left wall, threading between heaps of merchandise as they push onwards into the Hall. Much of it isn’t really saleable, not really goods at all. More like archaeological finds. Relics.
Fallon picks up a helmet, half sheared through. ‘I remember seeing these on heads, at Luss.’ He hefts the green egg head of a mace, sundered from its haft. ‘These in hands. Gives me the creeps.’
Shipwright suppresses a shiver of her own. ‘These are all battle plunder?’
He shakes his head. ‘Some of it, but most of it’s too old for that. Relics, really. Archaeology.’ He turns a bent blade in his hands. ‘We’ve been killing each other since we learnt how to try.’
They step further into the press, gingerly, threading around tottering piles of metal, bone, and clay. The ossified arm of some great machine, turned black by a lifetime in the earth.
Fallon’s voice pulls at her like a loose thread. ‘You wouldn’t understand, Ship. Out east, you come from the sea, right?’
‘Just above it,’ she mutters, but the joke doesn’t land.
His smile is perfunctory. His mind elsewhere.
‘Here though, on the land, we’re on the earth.
And it goes down, down and down to who knows where.
And it’s all in the earth. All the history.
All the killing. All the betrayals. All the secrets.
’ He pulls a bent clasp from a pile, turning it gently against the light.
‘The land coughs them up every day. Ploughs pull them from the soil, they’re cut from the throats of seabirds, hooked from the guts of fish.
They’re dredged from nets; found in gutters, in attics, in tombs.
’ He runs a hand across the short wiry hair on his neck.
‘Hell, my da used to find them in sheep shit.’
He sets the clasp down, nods at the stall owner.
‘We’ve been selling secrets here since before Hesper was a city.
Turning over our past, brushing the dirt off, letting them get a little air.
He shakes his head. ‘Did you know the rich shits up on the hill used to keep some of this stuff as curios? A status thing.’ His lip curls, ‘Never mind the people that died to get them there. The ghosts hanging off the edge of their new lamp, their new vase.’
Shipwright frowns. ‘Better than it rotting in the earth, surely?’
Fallon shakes his head again, harder. ‘It didn’t mean anything to them.
They took the objects but not the secrets lingering on them, not the history, the understanding.
’ He shrugs, puts a hand in the small of Shipwright’s back to guide her around a stack of cages where black, thin-toothed, sleek-furred things squirm and fight.
‘Holdsnakes. Used to keep them to clean out the rats from the ships. Nowadays, some nutters are trying to use them to carry messages. Steal little trinkets.’ He shudders.
‘It’s hard to keep them out of anywhere.
If their head can get through, the rest of them can.
They bend both ways too,’ he says, flipping his wrist back and forth. ‘Nasty, noodly little things.’
They delve deeper still into the hall, the space seeming to stretch out in front of them.
Those vast intricate maps above their heads seeming a little stranger, a little older as they progressed.
Surely, Shipwright thought, this couldn’t be just one warehouse, more like two knocked together, as the Hall’s secrets sprawled out into the body of the city.
There’s a brief moment of awning and wood that might be the crossing of a street. The light swells fractionally brighter. She’s getting disoriented.
‘Where was I?’ Declan says, oblivious. ‘Right: artefacts; secrets; the bloody rich.’ He laughs.
‘Not that the poor were any better. If they weren’t scurrying around old burial mounds to dig the stuff up, they were setting it up in shrines.
Telling people someone’s old shinbone or crusty dagger could cure your child, let blind men see. ’
His voice softens. ‘Of course, that was back when we had hosts, and gods. Maybe some of it was true.’
He turns a corner. ‘I guess we can ask someone smarter than I am.’
The tent facing them is neat, brightly stitched from some stiff white fabric. A low wooden table set out in front, covered in copper bowls of some gently bubbling substance.
A man stands behind the bowls, stirring them assiduously with a long tool, half blade, half ladle. He’s cutting the liquid into patterns; wax, of some kind, Shipwright guesses.
His arms are thin and twisted as a wind-scorched tree, with skin only a shade or two lighter than the dark wood. His hair is a white shock that seems on the verge of erupting from his skull, like a half-blown seedhead.
One blue eye is alert, the other a mess of scar.
His head tips up, and he nods as he catches sight of them. He flicks the tip of the blade clean of wax, and rubs it dry with a rag.
‘Figured it wouldn’t be too long before I saw you, Fallon.’
He turns his head. ‘Nice to properly meet you, Shipwright.’
Shipwright smiles. ‘I’m afraid you’re a little ahead of me.’
The man nods, slips the blade into a thin case and pauses to cover one of the bowls.
‘It’s sort of my job. There’s been a lot of talk about you, since you first arrived, all those years ago.’ His sunken face softens into a smile. ‘Since you charmed the hell out of Fallon’s wife.’
She blushes. ‘I rather regret that entrance.’
He laughs. ‘No need. You made a name for yourself. Hesper likes flash.’ He wipes his hands dry, shooting a look at Fallon.
‘So, you’ll be wanting me to clue her in.’
Fallon’s expression is sheepish. ‘Am I that predictable?’
The man smiles. ‘You only turn up when you want something important, Fallon. Otherwise it’s just that vile thief you keep around.’ Seeing Fallon’s expression he waves a hand. ‘Don’t worry. I like it. It’s honest. Come in.’ He pulls aside the tent flap and ushers them in.
It is all neatness inside – neatness in the books, in the journals arrayed in stacks, bound by date and coloured, it appears, by city; neatness in the three clean blackwood chairs that sit in a circle; neatness in the pot that simmers gently next to a set of regimented cups.
He gestures to two of the chairs and waits until they’re seated. Shipwright shifts uncomfortably. The chairs are a little small. She wonders if that’s deliberate. Fallon looks like a sack on a pedestal.
The slight man sits, neatly.
‘You didn’t introduce me, Fallon. I’m not that ubiquitous.’
Fallon shifts awkwardly. Crosses his legs, uncrosses them.
‘Shipwright, this is Heartshamer.’
The slender man tips fingers to his brow, wryly. ‘As billed.’
Shipwright smiles, a little tensely. Something about this space, this conversation, makes her feel out of place.
Heartshamer catches her eye. ‘Feeling more foreign than usual?’
She nods, startled.
He smiles softly again, and she notices that one side of his mouth pulls higher than the other.
‘I have that effect on people. A legacy of my old profession. Let me pour you some tea.’ He rises, passes out cups, and fills them with a light amber brew that smells of flowers.
She takes a cup. Declan takes a cup. He sips. She sips.
Heartshamer drains his tea slowly, sets it down and folds his fingers in his lap. ‘I’ve heard good things about you, Shipwright.’
She watches his face. ‘That’s reassuring.’
He nods. ‘It is. You’d be amazed how few people I hear good things about.’
He gestures to the journals. ‘I daresay my notes are more comprehensive than most. It’s a point of pride now really. I like to keep track of the notables. The disreputables. The respected.’ He looks directly at her. ‘The novel. Sometimes, the brave.’
Fallon clears his throat. ‘Heartshamer is …’