“Only cos you can’t count no higher, Farys,” said another deckchild. Laughter, but he clung to that unexpected bit of friendliness as tightly as he clung to the rail.
“You shut your trap, Hilan,” she said.
“Five is it?” said Joron. “Then let us count twice for it pays well to double-check all a ship’s numbers.” He’d heard his father say that, and from the way Farys and the old man behind her nodded it was clearly something they approved of.
“Ey,” said the old man, Hilan, as weathered and scarred as Farys but by time not violence. One ear was missing, a deformity that marked him as Berncast, his bloodline weak and he as a man who could never rise in the Hundred Isles. “Sea Hag’s arms open for them as don’t double-check every knot and number, and all know that to be true.” Again that little murmur of agreement, but behind them one of Cwell’s clique caught Joron’s eye and spat over the side of the ship. Joron turned away from her.
The sea was full of ugly creatures but beakwyrms were famously among the worst. They looked like the intestine of a kivelly when it was cut from the bird to make sausage: pink, glistening and shot through with blood. The creatures surfed the waves of foam that the boneships kicked up. Each was as thick as a big woman or man and about ten or fifteen paces long, not as big as he had seen but big enough. The wyrms ended bluntly, like fingers, and they had no eyes or nose or any way Joron could see for them to sense the world around them, but Hag knew they had teeth. When attacking, the whole end of a beakwyrm would draw back and reveal it was little more than mouth, row upon row of serrated teeth right back into the darkness of its throat, teeth that could chew through flesh and bone and so noisy to work few. Iridescent frills spiralled around the wyrms’ sickly pallid-pink flesh, propelling them forward in a twisting, shimmering dance through water and wave before the ship. They spun around one another as if they were lovers dancing.
“Five wyrms, Shipwife,” he shouted. “We trail five wyrms at the beak.”
“Five,” she said, and she made no attempt to hide her disappointment, though it was five more than had ridden with them when Joron brought Tide Child up to Keyshanblood Bay. “Five only, ey? Well, the wyrms are drawn to blood, so you can be sure we’ll ride many more when we make our way back to Bernshulme.” She nodded, but to herself, and though she spoke out loud he did not get the feeling she addressed the crew.
He had heard of deckchilder cheering the thought of action loudly and long as if they wished for nothing more than to put their bodies in harm’s way in the name of the Hundred Isles, but on Tide Child her words were met with sullen silence. Meas turned away from them, leaving Joron feeling as if he had disappointed her somehow, and angry with himself that somewhere, deep within, it bothered him.
Later, as Skearith’s Eye started to dip beneath the far islands and Tide Child made his way through the greying sea, Joron went to the deckkeeper’s – his – cabin. It had a bed, thin, barely wide enough for him to fit his body on, and he was by no means a well-built man, but Joron had grown up on a fisher boat sleeping in a hammock. He was accustomed to the way the hammock moved with the ship and communicated the sea to him. In a bed he was haunted by nightmares of stone, of land that shook beneath him and cracked and broke, swallowing him up, dragging him down to be entombed in the dark earth, whereas in the hammock he dreamed of soaring above the sea like a bird. So, in a cabin still full of Barlay’s possessions, he slung his hammock and tried to sleep.
He woke at the night bell to take his turn at the watch. Out the squeaking door of his cabin, head slightly bowed to avoid the overbones. Wanelights glowed, skyfish oil burning slowly and meekly within kivelly skulls. Most of the crew slept, and the air was thick with the bitter scent of sweat and bodies. Hammocks rocked and Joron moved between them, careful not to knock into any sleeper and wake their wrath.
No sign of Meas on deck; barely anyone there at all. A figure at the steering oar that he did not recognise and a few others cast about the deck like stones for fortune telling. He said nothing to them, only took his place on the rump of the ship, his bare feet cold against the slate. The breeze ruffled his hair, bringing a curse to his lips. He had left his hat in the cabin. What was worse, to stay where he was or to go back to his cabin through the dark ship? He did not know, remained there unmoving and undecided, appearing steady when he was anything but. The thick tangles of his tightly curled hair caught the wind, the sweat on his scalp gifting him some relief from the night’s heat.
Against the black of night Skearith’s Bones shone above, the final blessing of the vast bird that had created the land for them to live on when she needed a place to lay her eggs. Though Hassith the spear thrower had killed her with Myulverd, the spear made by his sither, she had given them her bones as a final gift, to light the night. Even when her Blind Eye closed and vanished from the night sky, her bones remained, tiny dots of bright white, smudges of colour smeared across the black like giftpaint on a doorway. Skearith’s Bones changed with the season, revolving through their thirteen forms, but Skearith’s Gift, the three brightest stars that made up the point of her beak, always pointed directly at the Northstorm. Though the rest of her bones moved with the coming of the cold days, the gift always pointed the way for a deckchild, and Joron found himself talking to Skearith. As a people they rarely prayed to the storm bird – through guilt for Hassith’s wrong? Possibly. They gave their prayers to the more apparent goddesses, the ones that felt more real and present, the ones that inhabited the world around them: the Sea Hag, cold and cruel; the Maiden, capricious and full of curiosity; and the Mother, who welcomed all in need of succour but was strict and unforgiving to those who disobeyed her. But this night, as they quietly cut through a calm ocean on the whisper of the Eaststorm, he found himself silently asking Skearith, “Show me the way, Stormbird, show me the way.”
But, of course, Skearith was long dead and no answer was forthcoming.
“Where is your hat?” Meas, out of nowhere, like the Sea Hag come to claim her due.
“In my cabin, it is a fine night, and I—”
“I care not for what the night it is; you wear the hat rain or shine, heat or cold. It is who you are. I will fix you up boots too, from Hoppity Lane when we return to Bernshulme. A barefoot deckkeeper, whoever heard of such a thing?” He did not answer, and did not think she wanted an answer. “Haime,” she said, and he felt the man at the oar stiffen at his name, “steer us a mite more seaward. We approach Frana’s Isle and though no one lives on it there are a fair few hidden reefs around it.”
“Where are we going, Shipwife?” said Joron.
She glanced at him, her face all angles and points, grey and unhealthy-looking in the pale light of Skearith’s Blind Eye, a creature of shadows. Only the gleam of her eyes gave a clue to how fierce and alive she was.
“North,” she said. “We go north, ever north, and as for what we do there, well, I will tell you with the rest on the morran. For now, Joron Twiner, go get your hat.”
Skearith’s Eye was barely above the horizon, a bloodshot smear seeping into the morning’s clouds, when Meas gathered her crew before the rump of Tide Child. It was Menday, when traditionally the people of the Archipelago rested from work, although that rest generally took the form of fixing ropes, darning clothes, checking hulls and spines for damage.