Chapter 87
No miracles without the gods. Except the sun. The air. The song that keeps singing itself.
—Notes on the Destruction, Wicktwister
Hesper’s great gates heave open with protest, followed by a cloud of roiling dust, tinged with gunpowder and sulphur.
The city has a reputation: the port of dock rats; fleet-fingered Hesper.
Tired shoulders and chipped teeth. It’s not a city for strangers, not a city for foreigners, unless they have too much coin and dignity, and are keen to lose both.
The streets throng with traders, the clatter from their throats promising food, water, charms wrought with split steel and bone.
In response, the refugees pull together like a worm contracting.
At their head, Shipwright lets the roan do the work, hooves thundering without a care for questing hawkers.
Her eyes are fixed on the horizon, waiting for the slope of the road to throw up the thin line of a mast, bright against the sky. Not yet. Not quite yet.
Plenty else on the skyline. Above, on the battlements, spikes and cannon have bristled outwards.
The song of Hesper stamped out in chain and sweat and fire.
Beyond the metal, ranks of solid men and women, their arms loose on blade and bow, their gold armour washed red by the lowering sun, silhouettes rendered slim and sharp by the helms pressed down on their brows.
Old seafarers’ gear. The mark of the vulture by the ocean.
Brighter than them all, in full regalia, stands the bear of the twin towers, Declan Fallon. Dipped in copper, black and bravado, swilling the streets with curses and commands.
Fallon’s horse is as bullish as he is, a scarred charger that drives through the crowds of hawkers and peddlers like the prow of a sweat-flecked ship.
The cracked stone of his voice is like a call to home for Shroudweaver.
Not so for the merchants. They flinch back like a struck animal, teetering on the edge of the canals.
‘Move you scoured gutterfucks. Clear a path, shift your corpses before I make more.’
One of Fallon’s broad hands holds a blackwood club to the sky, the tip swooping with promise. He rises in the stirrups, shoulders a broad slant against the spread of the opening road. ‘Let’s welcome our neighbours.’
A marked change then. The merchants are pulled back, bodily. Into their place step sturdy men and women, their confident hands taking bridles and wrists, pouring fresh water over dusty lips. They slip arms around hips, under armpits, steadying legs too tired of the ground to walk.
Hesper’s medicine is almost as aggressive as the rest of the city.
Bandages slathered in ointments that glow with a fierce, sinking heat, and blackstick, that Hesper specialty: thick, square pieces of a tacky substance that smells of fruit and tastes of pepper and salt.
It’s given to sailors too long off land, to horses run too hard.
To the foundry workers in the embers of this smoke-strained port.
Shroudweaver rolls the blackstick around his gums, and feels the shaking in his muscles slow and stop. He grins at Shipwright, black and tarry and she beams back, lips the colour of coal.
‘Two beautiful Hesper smiles.’ Fallon’s voice is different for them, warmed like spirits over a fire. ‘Hello, you idiots.’
Shipwright edges her horse next to his, leans across. His arm takes her in a fierce embrace and she returns it with a swell of relief in her heart.
Fallon sways slightly, lifts his free hand towards Shroudweaver. ‘Come on, skinny. Come here.’
Shroudweaver joins them and for a second, for one blessed second, everything is OK. Sweat and warmth and holding, with the distant sense of the crowd at their back.
After a span, Fallon turns them gently, their horses shouldering against one another. ‘You remember my wife.’ The understatement in his voice purring like a cat.
Scant metres away, her horse moving under her like weeping stone, her hands light on the reins, Arissa Fallon rides into view.
Shipwright stretches a shaking hand out to Shroudweaver and grips his fingers with a fierce heat.
He holds her steady, lets his arm move with the sway of the big grey dray.
Her breath steadies a little. Arissa grows closer.
Shipwright watches her friend move out of the distance like a memory.
Her face is still long, sharp, scraped with iron where her hair meets her temples; lips a familiar thin line, cheeks the weathered leather that screams Hesper bred.
That severe face softens like summer ice when she sees Shipwright, her heavy brows lift in delight and those spare lips slide into a smile bright as a lit knife.
Shipwright feels something kindle inside her, a spark of relief on the tinder of her soul.
The noise of the crowds and the smell of the city peels back like a turned page.
‘Riss?’ she says, ‘Riss?!’ Higher, louder. A name, a real name falling from her lips, word perfect. She can almost see the syllables interlocking.
She’s down from the horse in a bound, Fallon and Shroud left at her back. The cobbles under her feet could be the sand of a beach, Luss somewhere on the horizon of her mind.
Two steps and Arissa lifts her in the strongest hug, the steel of her spine softening into delighted laughter. ‘Ship, my beautiful girl.’
Her voice is husky, roughened by lack of use. She holds Shipwright in familiar places. One hand in the small of her back, one light on her neck. Arissa brushes her lips against her cheek. ‘I missed you.’
Shipwright holds down her racing heart, and squeezes back hard enough to push the air out her lungs. ‘Did you miss that?’
Arissa pulls her closer. ‘Amazingly, yes.’ She pats Shipwright on the cheek. ‘Let me get a look at you.’
Shipwright stops, turns a pirouette. ‘You see it all.’
‘You got tough, beautiful.’
She laughs. ‘I got something.’
Arissa smiles. ‘I see you’ve brought us guests.’
Shipwright looks over her shoulder anxiously. ‘Yes, a few, what do you think?’
Arissa shrugs. ‘I’d have preferred a cake, but …’
Shipwright grins.
Shroudweaver alights behind them, walks forwards with his arms open wide. ‘You’d have preferred one of Ship’s cakes? You have been asleep too long.’
Arissa grabs him by the scruff and pulls him into her arms, flashing a wicked smile over his head at Shipwright. ‘I see this one’s still a jerk.’
Shipwright nods. ‘Cute, though.’
Arissa tuts. ‘Passably pretty.’
She takes Shroudweaver’s chin and twists it each way. ‘Still not enough meat on your bones, Shroud.’
‘All part of my aesthetic, Riss,’ he smiles.
Arissa takes him by the hand, holds the other out to Shipwright, and gestures with her chin. ‘Let’s get back to that big old bull before he pounds too many heads.’
Shipwright laughs. ‘Would you deny him his fun?’
Arissa snorts. ‘Mercy on me for having married such a diplomat. I suppose a harried merchant or two is a small price to pay. Declan’s quite lively these days.’
‘I wonder why that might be?’ Shroudweaver murmurs.
Arissa sticks her tongue out at him. ‘Such a jerk. How do you endure it, Ship?’
Shipwright shrugs. ‘He’s useful when he’s quiet.’
Shroudweaver rolls his eyes disconsolately.
Arissa pats his arm. ‘Oh cheer up, Shroud. You’ll love what I’ve done with the place. By which I mean, absolutely nothing.’
‘Might want to cut yourself a little slack on that front,’ he murmurs.
Arissa shoots him a look. ‘Nonsense. I’m all for a good rest but three years is just excessive.’ Her tone light, but her smile a little strained.
Shipwright reaches for her hand. ‘Sorry to drop all this at your door, Riss,’ she says, glancing back at the milling refugees.
Arissa tuts. ‘Nonsense. Where else would you bring them? And besides,’ she says, her smile sharpening to a point. ‘Anything I can do to rattle that crowslicked bitch.’
Shroudweaver’s eyes dart sideways, before he takes a long, slow breath. ‘Riss. I need you to know. I tried. I tried so hard to undo what happened.’
She stops him short. ‘Not now, Shroud. Give me a moment. Out from under all that. Please.’ Her voice is still fragile from years of disuse.
He squeezes her shoulder, pretends not to notice the shaking. ‘Of course.’
Shipwright puts an arm around Arissa’s waist. ‘I like this new husky drawl, Riss. How’s Declan taking it?’
Arissa’s face lightens, seeming to come back into focus. ‘He never could handle me.’
‘My ears are burning.’ Fallon’s voice is light with laughter as he leads the charger across the cobbles, reaching a hand down.
Arissa springs up next to her husband, smiles down at Ship. ‘Are you coming back to the Towers with us?’
Shipwright shakes her head. ‘No, we have to see the survivors home first.’
Arissa nods. ‘I’d expect no less.’ She moves to put her heels to the stirrups, then stops and catches Shipwright’s gaze again. ‘We’ll keep the lamps lit for you, Shipwright.’
The crowd parts around her horse like starlings.
Shipwright watches the pair sway into the distance, then mounts up again, trying to ignore the ache in her thighs, the other stranger ache in her heart.
Behind her, the strong arms of Hesper stretch out to enfold the sea. Darkness slinks down from the hills and in the streets above the cold canals, one by one, the lights of evening kindle.