The creature’s head moved, a short and sharp movement almost too quick to follow. One moment the head was almost hidden, hunched up in the hollow between its shoulders, the next it was focused on the ship, on Joron, as if by thinking of it he had called its attention upon him. Each oar stroke brought them closer, and its unseeing gaze never wavered. The eyes painted on its mask, meant to represent Skearith the Stormbird, god of all creation, never left him, and he felt them as an accusation: You put me here. You left me on this thing. You gave no comfort.
It was true, though he told himself he did it to protect the creature, that if he had not removed it from the ship the crew would have tormented it.
No, he had removed the creature from the ship for the same reason he did so many things, because he was scared. The crew mostly took the gullaime for granted, ignoring it completely as if it did not exist. But Joron was not Fleet and had only seem them from afar, in the pens of the lamyard or being led to their ships. A ship the size of Tide Child would usually have more than one of the windmages, and he thanked the Sea Hag for the small mercy that it did not. The thought of them talking to each other in their high-pitched, whistling language, of having to hear that eerie and strangely beautiful chorus of communication made his skin itch.
Tide Child slowed, not at his order, simply because those rowing knew where they headed. The great ship came to a halt within an arm’s reach of the bell cage. The gullaime inverted its head, twisting it round all the way on its flexible neck, keeping its painted eyes on him all the time. Then, upside down, it opened its filthy yellow beak and screeched at him, showing the serrated teeth and tongue within that marked it as a predator. Its annoyance made known, the creature leaped from the bell cage – from still to movement without warning – and crashed into the side of the ship. The robes around it spread; the claws on the elbows of the naked wings beneath gripped bone, the beak doing the same, and the powerful hind legs found purchase on spine and blade. From there it clambered up the side of the ship, moving strangely, inhumanely, before finding the hatch that led into its underdeck quarters and slithering through into the pit it called a home.
“What do they call it?”
“What?” He turned to find Meas at his elbow again. She moved through the ship as if it were part of her already, as if Tide Child conspired to keep her movements secret from him.
“The windtalker, what do they call it? Crews always name them even if the creatures will not name themselves.”
“It has no name, Shipwife. They did not name it. They do not like it.”
“Never met a crew that did like them, Skearith’s beasts frighten any sensible woman or man, but to control it you must have named it.”
“I have never controlled it.” The words made him feel like a fool, and from her expression she thought the same.
“Never, why?”
“It will not come, will not help. Will not even speak to me, Shipwife.”
She nodded as if a question had been answered.
“I thought it unusual a black ship had a windtalker, but if it will not help maybe that explains it. Anyway, it will speak to me.” She leaned over the rail to shout for’ard at the fluke-boats. “Barlay, row us out of the bay, and call me when we have enough wind to let loose the wings.”
“Will, Shipwife,” she called back.
Meas turned to Joron.”You, come with me. We will explain to our gullaime its duties.”
“It will not talk to you. It will not . . .” He was filled with a strange panic at the thought of going near the windtalker. The beast was unnatural. Important, yes. Needed, yes. But that did nothing to make him comfortable with it. “It will talk to no one,” he said.
She turned away, and he felt himself drawn in her wake, as if she were north and he a compass needle. “It will talk to me, Deckkeeper Twiner, it will talk to me.”
Compelled, he followed her into the underdeck.
The great cabin sat directly beneath the rump of the ship, four times as big as any other. To the seaward sat the deck-keeper’s cabin, still to become his, and next to that the courser’s cabin. On the landward was the deckholder’s cabin, though the ship had no one to fill the position of third in command, and then the nest of the windtalker. It was a place that seldom saw visitors, for most deckchilder were just as superstitious and scared of the gullaime as Joron. The beasts were governed by many rules, as were the interactions of those who must deal with them: never remove the mask, never pronounce it free and never kill a gullaime on pain of your own death – unless the ship itself is about to founder. The gullaime were creatures of the Mother, born of the last egg of Skearith the Stormbird, who created all things, and this made them precious, made them creatures who must be protected. The fact that the gullaime controlled the winds, well that was rarely talked of; instead all things to do with the gullaime were done in the name of their safety and in the name of Skearith and the Mother.
“Gullaime,” said Meas, pushing the door open before she finished the word, “I enter in the name of your safety and in honour of the Mother and Skearith the Stormbird, who—” The crash of shattering glass sent Meas staggering back.
After the glass came the screeching voice of the gullaime.
“Out! Out! Not your place! Not your place!” The door slammed shut, and Meas stood, shocked, almost as if she was unable to understand that anything may defy a shipwife on her ship. Behind the door something heavy moved, then something else clumped and glumped across the deck. Then, after much squawking and crashing and smashing, there was quiet.
“This is not how gullaime act,” Meas shouted through the door. Her hands held at her side clenching as if kneading some unseen oar handle.
“This one does,” said Joron.
“And you let it?” She put a hand on the handle of the door. “It is here to serve the will of the Mother and Skearith, and that is done through the shipwife.” She pushed against the door, it refused to move. Something else smashed against it. Around them, crew gathered at the noise.
“Away go! Away go!” screamed from inside.
“It will not come out,” said Joron. “It has never come out.”
The look Meas gave him would have withered a vine. She turned to the nearest deckchild.
“Bring axes,” she said. “We will break the door down if we have to.” The woman stood unmoving, staring at Meas. “Bring axes or feel the cord!” she shouted, and the woman ran to obey, vanishing down the underdeck towards the armoury.
“They will not break the door down,” Joron said, and saw the words she was about to say, maybe not for you, forming in her mind before she realised it was not the case. Of course they would not break the door down. Deckchilder were the most superstitious of all women and men; they would not intrude upon the gullaime’s nest. As Meas thought, her mouth moving slightly, the woman returned with an axe. The deck-child made no move towards the cabin door, only holding out the axe towards Meas while the shipwife weighed up the damage this could do to her. What was worse? To let the windtalker defy her or to go against the geas and smash down the door of its nest? The shipwife took the axe, hefted it, getting a feel for it, and then stopped, considered the bone of the door and dropped the axe on the black-painted floor.
“Let the creature have its space. We will have to hope the storms bless us with good winds, and when we return to Bernshulme we will maybe find ourselves a gullaime better able to understand what the Mother and the Stormbird wish of it. This one will go to wherever those of its kind without use are sent.” She raised her voice, “You hear, beast?” She banged on the door. “You hear that?” She turned away, striding towards the ladder that led up to the slate and the rump of the ship, where she could stand and fume.