Chapter 88
Arcs of white stone, shadowed courtyards. The smell of flowers. Jasmine melting in the sallow heat. Laughter pooling in patios. Salt climbing the walls toward evening.
—On Arrival in Hesper, Hallowfeather
The refugees are taken in with the same haphazard efficiency which colours everything in Hesper. Houses are opened, there are tables, chairs, and eventually beds.
The city barely stretches. Shipwright is unsurprised.
Long ago, the people that used to move in and out of the port’s great loops were numberless.
Nowadays, Hesper is hollow. The ghosts of the men and women who burnt in the south have been left there, and the few that returned don’t mind the company.
There are beds to spare. The people of Thell sink into them like stones into a lake, they are swallowed and fall silent.
Even Icecaller eventually rests, setting her shield and spear down.
Exhaustion comes upon her all at once, taking the legs from under her.
There have been too many miles and not enough sleep.
Hesper’s cutters take care of her, straightening cramping muscles, dripping water into her drop by drop, sweetened with sugar and brightened with wine.
Whatever nests in her blood doesn’t seem to help.
Or perhaps Crowkisser’s ministrations had their limits.
Two days, they work at her. Two days Shipwright waits for news like a restless dog, the doors closed and the air thick with the scent of Burner’s bush.
On the third day, the woman treating Ice emerges, ashen faced, eyes widened to whiteness.
She brushes past Shipwright and stops at the high seawall.
Methodically, she removes her clothes, her shoes, her movements studied, careful.
Shipwright watches the shape of her limbs, but doesn’t understand their meaning – at least, not until something more familiar strikes the back of her seafarer’s skull, memories of pearl divers on the shore’s edge.
Panic shifts her, her legs a beat ahead of her brain, but still not fast enough.
She runs, reaches the wall in time to see the woman plunge, straight and white as a seabird, down into the crashing waves hundreds of feet below.
A shout tears loose from Shipwright’s lungs and her hands clench the white stone of the wall.
Far below, the water swirls, bubbles and coughs forth a pale stretch of tangled limbs that strikes out for shore.
‘Only the sea can wash her clean now.’
Shipwright starts at the voice.
The middle-aged man next to her nods in greeting as he digs beneath thick nails, scratching a jaw clouded with stubble, loosened by the wax and wane of starvation.
‘She’ll be alright?’ Shipwright asks.
His face softens. ‘She was a gull-girl, back in the day. Never seen one swim so fast and deep.’
They are both quiet for a moment, watching the woman’s pale, dark haired shape cut through the rising waves and haul up onto the spar-strewn rocks. Something lingers in the water behind her, a strange play of sunlight that fizzes and fades into the depths.
‘A city of birds we were. Pretty little gulls.’ He glances back at the Grey Towers.
‘Falcons. Mayhap falcons again the way it’s going.
’ His soft, round hands make talons. ‘Used to dive right into the deep water. Pull fish up, bright as a smiling eye, huge, huge.’ His voice quietens again. ‘Don’t see them so much no more.’
He turns his body towards Shipwright. ‘She’ll be alright.
I married that little gull-girl and she turned into the strongest, smartest woman you ever saw.
’ His eyes flick back to the healing house, the door ajar, faint coils of scented smoke still coiling onto the baked clay of the street.
‘Your friend is powerful afflicted. We can’t change what she’s suffered, but we’ve restored what she lost on the road.
A fierce spirit in her.’ He laughs, the sound boyish and light in his throat.
‘A firewater girl! A gull-witch in another life.’
Shipwright smiles despite herself. ‘I barely know her. I wish I did.’
His voice steadies, low and authoritative. ‘You will.’
She looks at him curiously. ‘What do they call you?’ she asks.
‘Saltseeker,’ he replies, with a soft, slow smile.
She smiles back. ‘Thank you, Saltseeker. I’m Shipwright. And I remember my debts.’
He grins. ‘We know well who you are. Memory as long as my father’s yardarm.
Think you we were ordered to this work? No, Shipwright.
We volunteered. Before I was Saltseeker, I was a sailor.
There’s no debt here. Never could be. We remember what’s been done in our name.
Remember the walls at Luss. Remember the south. ’
Shipwright laughs wryly, keeping one eye on the pale figure steadily pulling its way up over rock, rope and gantry. ‘A pity you can’t forget this last venture. Not our finest hour.’
Saltseeker grimaces, takes a nutshell from a pocket, pops it between thumb and finger, ‘Finer than most.’ He pauses, chews rhythmically, stolidly.
‘You think we don’t see, but we do. Those of us in the know.
Working with salt, spit and sea. You’ve shown it.
Shown it to all of us. Plain as a rotted keel. ’
Shipwright holds her hand out for a nut. He obliges. She pops, chews. ‘Shown you what?’
He laughs. ‘Don’t play a fool, ship-mender. Shown us all what Crowkisser’s capable of. What she’ll do when she thinks she’s right.’ He glances back at the city, at the refugees propping up the walls, weaving quietly through the streets. ‘What it’ll cost.’
‘We never intended this,’ Shipwright says. ‘We thought we could stop her.’ She picks bits of shell off her tongue. ‘He thought he could stop her.’ She spits. ‘Even I didn’t think she’d go this far.’
Saltseeker’s eyebrows raise slowly and he holds her gaze for a long time. ‘No, but a silver lining. You’re pragmatic. All ship-menders are. Before you treat a wound you have to see the blood.’ His face grows grave. ‘You’ve shown us all the blood now. There’ll be a waking in the city.’
Shipwright opens her mouth to deny it. The sea air hangs between them, salted and empty.
He smiles sadly, points over her shoulder.
‘See? Here she come. My sturdy gull-girl.’ He pulls a robe and towel from his shoulder and starts towards the dripping woman, then stops to rest a hand on Shipwright’s shoulder.
‘We all pick up the dirt of the world, ship-mender.’ His grip tightens, wide face creasing into well-worn lines. ‘We can all be washed clean.’
She grasps his fingers, feels them tighten briefly, then slip from her grasp.
The pair link arms and walk away. One dry and wide as the land, the other still a wet strand slipped from the grasp of a scouring sea.
Shipwright winces. The sun is fierce on her head, edged with the last taste of summer.
She bends for a moment. Watches the waters push against the cliff, watches the last twist of strange light sink into the ocean.
Straightens, shrugs, turns her back on the sea and heads towards the twin grey towers.