Chapter 45
When the forest burnt it was with a single shriek
acres of pale wood sending tongues of flame skyward
—On Swallowing Gold, Heartshamer
A few days later, Shipwright stands on deck, watching Hesper sprawl under the heat of a spring sun.
The wind off the sea bites her cheeks, leaving salt on her lips.
Ropecharmer is at her back, settling the crew.
He passes a few words with the cook, an old woman who leaves him with an apple and a smile before he steps up beside Shipwright, his broad, fresh face well-tanned now. ‘Ready when you are, Captain.’
Shipwright glances down at him. ‘The crew behaved themselves?’
He shrugs expressively, waggles a hand. ‘As much as sailors ever do.’
She sighs, blowing her lips out mournfully. ‘I’ll take it. Get us ready to cast off. We’re leaving on the tide.’
Ropecharmer hesitates for just a moment.
A space grows between them, filled with the sound of gulls. ‘There’s others want to come with us. Afraid of Crowkisser, afraid of war. Chat is, Hesper’s next.’
Shipwright narrows her brows. ‘I know.’ Her eyes roam over the low docks; that last spasmic flurry of activity before the sun rose to a bright coin and work became something to curse in a shadowed backroom.
Sailors, stevedores, whores, merchants, soldiers, beggars, and in the middle of them all, Fallon, like a lead weight on a sheet.
The hustle of the docks ebbs around him like oily water, the citizens of Hesper leaving a space framed by respectful nods, shoulder dips, the occasional quiet greeting.
The Lord of the Grey Towers is putting on appearances this morning.
He’s topless, the bruised slabs of his muscles stained with the smoke of forges, discoloured by tanners’ dye.
His wounds are still easily visible, ragged, broad, but healing.
Ostensibly, he’s leaning on a cane supplied to him by the physickers, in reality he’s propping himself up with something more military than medical – five feet of black ash, with a hammered steel head.
Shipwright grins despite herself. The arsehole couldn’t even recuperate quietly.
Her smile fades as she watches the people milling around him.
Busy, noisy, arrogant, she loved Hesperians.
But beyond that brassy hubbub, the great walls, and beyond the walls, Crowkisser.
The latest reports from scouts put her a week out from the city, at most, moving at a leisurely pace, a grey-cloaked army at her back.
Or so they thought. It was hard to tell for certain. Some of the scouts could remember what they saw only in fragments. Others said Slickwalker moved with the host, in shreds and ebbs of shadow. Another man claimed there was no host, no men, but only a great cloud of wings and beaks.
They’d found him a day later at the base of the walls, twisted and broken.
Seeing her distraction, Ropecharmer makes a soft noise in the back of his throat and moves away, setting himself to meaningless tasks, pacing the boards over the hold. Shipwright glances after him briefly, but there’s nothing to say. Nothing to say and too much to do.
War here seemed to be about guesswork. Everything shifting more than the waves under the ship’s bow, and without a hint of their rhythm or sense.
She was fairly sure of one thing. If Crowkisser came to Hesper, Hesper would fall.
If Hesper fell, the people she saw in front of her would be given the same choice given to the people of Astic.
Accept a world without gods, under Crowkisser’s dubious protection, or die, and see what, if anything, still lay beyond.
Very few had chosen to die. Not after Astic, after the gallowswatchers. After what happened to the temple’s priests and the southern weavers. Leaving aside hosts like Heartshamer, shattered at a distance and left to rot.
The solution, it seemed, was to draw her out, to make sure her attention was on anything but Hesper.
And nothing seemed to catch Crowkisser’s attention like a ship on the sea.
Shipwright took a small point of pride in that.
Too many months of small, bitter defeats, stinging the back of that mad young girl’s mind like salt.
If anything, the mess in Fallon’s apartments had shown just how much Crowkisser and Slickwalker wanted them dead.
Still too many unanswered questions though.
Would Crowkisser really kill her own father?
There was no question she’d kill Shipwright.
As she’d recently been reminded, Crowkisser’s mother had left a long shadow, and she stood right in it.
Shipwright got a line, hanked it, stowed it, and tied up the twinge in her heart. Now was not the time.
The hope, then, was that the two of them together would somehow be a more tempting target for the crow-witch than the biggest coastal city on this side of the continent.
Threatening enough, for long enough, that her eyes would be pulled past Hesper, along the coast, and up into the grey mountains beyond. Optimistic, to say the least.
Pulling that off meant appearing to have an ace in the hole. And now the closest thing they had to an ace in the hole was Thell.
The last damn place she wanted to go. That ghost-ridden rock calling her again.
Thell had seemed important twenty years ago, when she was young, and the wars had been about anger, and liberty, and blood and sex.
Thell had seemed important right up until the point they’d helped the revolutionaries win.
Right up to the point where the Empire of the Dead had fallen, its ghosts and spirits apparently scythed out from under it by Shroudweaver and Skinpainter.
And then, in one glorious rush, that pair had somehow ushered in the foundation of the Republic with its rituals and its rites, its geometries. So much arcane window-dressing.
And the revolutionaries, the glorious revolutionaries, had taken the Emperor, and eaten him. Torn him limb from limb, and swallowed him down.
The revolution had seemed a little hollow after that. Of course, they’d had their justifications all ready. The symbolism of the act.
All she’d seen was people drunk on blood. Literally. Her stomach turns again at the thought, and she hears Heartshamer’s voice. ‘Feeling a little more foreign than usual?’
She twists some more rope under her hands, until the burn pulls her mind away. This is not the time for it.
Down on the docks, she watches Fallon stoop to whisper to Shroudweaver, sharing more of those secrets. Nothing changes. Both of them glance up at her and she waves laconically, before focusing on securing the water casks.
Ropecharmer’s done his job well. The ship rides low in the water, her belly full, the hold well-provisioned. There’s fresh fruit for the first leg of the voyage, and beyond that, salt meat, hard tack, furs, and black rope.
A corner has been set aside for Shroud’s weaving tools.
Bright red thread, sharp needles, saltpetre, old bodies stacked like cordwood.
She looks at them warily for a moment, like you would a sleeping snake, before she moves to the helm, ducking under rigging strung precisely across a bright canvas sky.
Oh yes, Ropecharmer knows his work. The boards of the ship gleam, the brass spinners chuck and worry quietly on the high masts.
For a few moments, all is as it should be, and her heart loosens at the thought.
At the prow, Ropecharmer watches her approach, his hair whipped sideways in the freshening breeze, one hand loosely on the ship’s wheel; a handsome boy. He smiles at the look on her face. ‘The sea’s always here.’
Shipwright nods. ‘Thank goodness. You have a list?’
‘Of people?’ he says, surprised.
‘Of people. Honestly, Rope, what do you take me for?’
He produces it within seconds. ‘Eighty new refugees, give or take.’
She raises an eyebrow. ‘I thought there’d be more.’
His shoulders twist awkwardly. ‘News got out we’re bound for Thell.’
Her voice is flat. ‘How?’
He shrugs. ‘It’s a big city.’
Shipwright thumbs her jaw thoughtfully. ‘So they know our heading?’
Ropecharmer is diplomatically quiet.
She moves brusquely, takes the list, runs her eyes over it. ‘There’s useful people on here. Physickers, soldiers, bloodworkers. Good work.’
Ropecharmer smiles proudly, ‘Thanks, Captain.’ He pauses. ‘There’s a lot of others that won’t come all the way north. But they don’t want to stay here.’
Shipwright watches him. Watches the slow rise and fall of his ribs, the determined set of his shoulders. Who did you lose? she thinks. Where did you leave them? A dock, a doorway, a grave?
She puts a hand on his shoulder. ‘Case the harbour. Anyone waiting draws lots. We take fifty more, that’s it. Red stick means you get on.’
Ropecharmer’s hand comes up to meet her wrist briefly.
She rests her eyes on it until it slinks back into a pocket.
‘Rope, listen. Anyone cheats, anyone steals, anyone bribes – they don’t get on.
You take Fireholder and Cloudwatcher. You give them blades.
Visible blades. Big, ugly ones. But you, you run this. ’
A question hovers on his lips. She taps him on the cheek with an open palm. ‘Maybe some kids, some families, some old sods that don’t deserve to be caught in this, maybe they’ll find red dye on their hands. Do you follow?’
Ropecharmer grins. ‘Clear as the deep blue.’
She laughs. ‘We’ll have to do something about that enthusiasm, Rope.’
As she talks, her hands pick carefully at the ship’s wheel, flicking the small levers that loosen the brackets and restraints on the rig spirits.
Ropecharmer watches her work. She shoots a lidded glance at him. ‘One more thing. Anybody we can’t take, you tell the other Captains that if they ship them out the city, clean and fair, I’ll owe them a right-handed debt. We clear?’
Ropecharmer beams. ‘Clear as … I mean, yeah, got you.’ His eyes flick up to the spirits which chirrup overheard. ‘Where did they come from?’