“Meas would speak with you, Gullaime.”
It squawked, a loud “Awk!” that was almost deafening in the small room. “Shipwife, shipwife,” it sang, then stood. “I come.”
They made their way back to Meas’s cabin, slower this time. The crew of Tide Child were checking over the gallowbows – the six great bows on the slate and the twenty lesser bows on the underdecks – and the gullaime, with its incessant curiosity, felt the need to stop and watch each crew. To inspect what they were doing, sharp curving beak darting in and out of the mechanisms as they were checked; and, when its curiosity was finally sated, it would say “good job” or “well done” in what, if not an exact copy of Joron’s voice, was at least close enough to make him uncomfortable. And in this stop-and-start fashion they moved through the ship, and if the deckchilder were at all bothered by the attention of the gullaime then none showed it. Indeed, it was met with a good humour and stifled laughter at its fleet and officer-like ways.
In Meas’s cabin they stood while she stared at the ledger. On her desk was a loose assortment of scraps of parchment, each scribbled over in her beautiful hand, and as they entered she gathered them together, twisted them into a taper which she lit from one of the wanelights on the back wall. When the parchment was burning good and well she opened one of the rear windows and let it fall, lost forever in the great waters of the Scattered Archipelago, and that probably for the best if those scraps were what Joron thought they must be: lists of who she considered loyal and who she considered not – and maybe her plans on how to deal with them.
“Gullaime,” said Meas.
“Shipwife,” said the gullaime, and it moved its head down, so it appraised her from just above the height of her desk, its head low and tilted to one side.
“You said we should kill the other gullaime?”
“Windshorn.” It snapped the word out, its predatory beak clacking open and shut three times after it said the word.
“You said we should kill these” – Meas paused – ”windshorn. Why?”
The gullaime made an odd sound, part snort, part outrush of breath through its nostrils and it spun around on the spot twice in a whirl of shining feathers and brightly coloured robes.
“Traitors! Egg snatchers! Tale tellers!” It stopped, stood utterly still. “Hated by great bird.” It angled its head at Meas. “Kill all.”
Meas stared at it, taking the time to consider the wind-talker’s words.
“I will take this under advisement. You may return to your cabin if you wish.”
The gullaime let out a squawk and bustled out of the great cabin holding its head beak-up, like it was a creature of great distinction, too important for the shipwife and her foolish ways. Meas waited for it to leave then sat back in her chair.
“And what of you, Joron Twiner? Would you condemn these creatures on the word of your friend?”
He waited, thinking. “Once, maybe,” he said, and sat in the chair opposite Meas. “But once I would have cast the gullaime adrift upon a bell buoy to escape my fear of it.”
“You think it is afraid of them?” A flash in her eye. She had her own ideas already; of course she did, she always did. He was her sounding board, something to catch her ideas and throw them back so she could consider them from different angles, see them anew as if they were some strange and new creature brought up from the depths.
“Maybe it is not afraid, but it is uncomfortable, definitely,” he said. “It is twitchy when it talks of them.”
“It is twitchy all the time.”
“There is a difference.”
A silence while she thought, while she moved ideas around in her mind. She stood.
“Come with me to the Maiden’s Bounty. We will talk with these windshorn, you can tell me what you think of them. See if you think they are also” – a smile breezed across her face – “twitchy.”
They were rowed across, the journey too short to bother with the boat’s wing – Mevans in the rump, calling the rowers’ beat, Narza at the rump with Anzir by her. Joron stood next to Meas in the beak of the wingfluke and they watched the brown sides of the merchanter grow.
“Have you decided what to do with it, yet?” he asked. She shook her head.
“I have sent Coxward aboard to look it over properly. It is a big ship, useful if it can be kept afloat, but if it cannot then it is weight only.”
“The bonemaster is the best judge of ships we have.”
“Ey, part of me hopes it is sinking and we can leave the thing here. Then there will be no need for me to split our crew.”
“Why not just say it is?”
She stared at the ship as it moved gently on the waves, thinking on that.
“Because we need it. The Hundred Isles, the Gaunt Islands, they have hundreds of ships to fight their war and our little movement for peace floats between them, ill equipped and ill prepared for when they chance upon us.” She grinned at him, then grabbed the ladder thrown over the side of the Maiden’s Bounty and nimbly made her way up it. He followed, more slowly and carefully.
At the top of the ladder the bonemaster, Coxward, waited for them. He too was wrapped in a thick stinker coat against the cold, and Joron knew that below it his body was wrapped in bandages to cover the lesions and sores of the keyshan’s rot that slowly consumed him, the fate of all bonewrights and those that had once worked the vast bodies of the sea dragons.
“It’ll fly the sea, Shipwife,” said Coxward; he did not look happy about it. “But this ship” – he stamped his foot hard twice on the cracked slate of the deck – “it is not a happy ship. Would be better sent to the Hag, as it will ever harbour the stink of misery.”
“You’ll find no argument from me there, Coxward, but the ship is needed. Can you make it bearable?”
“Well,” he took a deep breath, “we have removed the shelves from the seaward side. It still stinks like a keyshan’s guts and it always will. My crew have made a start on the landward shelves.” His face was downcast.
“They’ll be rewarded for this,” said Meas. “I know it must be hard work.”
“There’s more corpse than ship down there, Shipwife,” he said quietly. She nodded, reached out and touched Coxward’s arm. “We are stowing the corpses in the lower hold,” he said quietly. “We began to throw ’em over but so many dead are like as not to attract something big in these seas, something we’d rather not see, I reckon.”
Meas nodded. “Where is Garriya?”
“She has made the shipwife’s cabin into a hagbower. We are taking people to her for” – he looked away, uncomfortable – “for treatment.”
“I will speak to her,” said Meas. “Carry on with your work, Coxward, and know you have my thanks.”
From there they went to the cabin. Meas knocked, heard Garriya croak: “Enter, Shipwife. Enter, Caller.” Inside the small cabin had been transformed, most of the furniture removed, the brazier burned hot in the centre. Garriya, small and gnarled, squatted by the brazier and before her a young man, a boy, slumped in the shipwife’s chair, his eyes barely focused.
“Garriya,” began Meas, and the old woman held up a hand to quiet her. Had any other done this then Meas would have been furious, raised her voice for Solemn Muffaz to take out his cord, but here she acquiesced. Garriya had the boy leaning against her, the rags that clothed his bones did not hide the sores that marred his flesh. Joron noticed the old woman was chewing. She took what she chewed, a pellet of leaves, from her mouth and placed it in the boy’s. Then she dipped a cup in the bowl of water by her and helped the boy drink, rubbing his throat to get the pellet and the water down his gullet. Once she had worked the pellet down his throat she began to gently rock him backwards and forwards, singing a wordless tune with her eyes closed. Within that tune was something that Joron almost knew, and just as he was on the edge of recognising it the boy’s eyes shot open. He coughed, started taking great wheezing breaths. His weak muscles worked, trying to fight or run, but Garriya held him tight, crooning into his ear.