When she turned, he recognised her, knew her. Not socially, not through any action he had fought as he had fought none. But he knew her face – the pointed nose, the sharp cheekbones, the weathered skin, the black patterns drawn around her eyes and the scintillating golds and greens on her cheeks that marked her as someone of note. He recognised her, had seen her walking before prisoners. Seen her walking before children won from raids on the Gaunt Islands, children to be made ready for the Thirteenbern’s priest’s thirsty blades, children to be sent to the Hag or to ride the bones of a ship as corpselights – merry colours that told of the ship’s health. Seen her standing on the prow of her ship, Arakeesian Dread, named for the sea dragons that provided the bones for the ships and had once been cut apart on the warm beach below them. Named for the sea dragons that no longer came. Named for the sea dragons that were sinking into myth the way a body would eventually sink to the sea floor.
But oh that ship!
He’d seen that too.
Last of the great five-ribbers he was, Arakeesian Dread. Eighteen bright corpselights dancing above him, a huge long-beaked arakeesian skull as long as a two-ribber crowned his prow, blank eyeholes staring out, his beak covered in metal to use as a ram. Twenty huge gallowbows on each side of the maindeck and many more standard bows below in the underdeck. A crew of over four hundred that polished and shone every bone that made his frame, so he was blinding white against the sea.
He’d seen her training her crew, and he’d seen her fight. At a dock, over a matter of honour when someone mentioned the circumstances of her birth. It was not a long fight, and when asked for mercy, well, she showed none, and he did not think it was in her for she was Hundred Isles and fleet to the core. Cruel and hard.
What light there was in the sky darkened as if Skearith the godbird closed its eye to his fate, the fierce heat of the air fleeing as did that small amount of hope that had been in his breast – that single fluttering possibility that he could survive. He was about to fight Meas Gilbryn, “Lucky” Meas, the most decorated, the bravest, the fiercest shipwife the Hundred Isles had ever seen.
He was going to die.
But why would Lucky Meas want his hat? Even as he prepared himself for death he could not stop his mind working. She could have any command she wanted. The only reason she would want his would be if . . .
And that was unthinkable.
Impossible.
Meas Gilbryn condemned to the black ships? Condemned to die? Sooner see an island get up and walk than that happen.
Had she been sent to kill him?
Maybe. There were those to whom his continued living was an insult. Maybe they had become bored with waiting?
“What is your name?” She croaked the words, like something hungry for carrion.
He tried to speak, found his mouth dry and not merely from last night’s drink. Fear. Though he had walked with it as a companion for six months it made it no less palatable.
He swallowed, licked his lips. “My name is Joron. Joron Twiner.”
“Don’t know it,” she said, dismissive, uninterested. “Not seen it written in the rolls of honour, not heard it in any reports of action.”
“I never served before I was sent to the black ships,” he said. She drew her straightsword. “I was a fisher once.” Did he see a flash in her eyes, and if he did what could it mean? Annoyance, boredom?
“And?” she said, taking a practice swing with her heavy blade, contemptuous of him, barely even watching him. “How does a fisher get condemned to a ship of the dead? Never mind become a shipwife.” Another practice slash at the innocent air before her.
“I killed a man.”
She stared at him.
“In combat,” he added, and he had to swallow again, forcing a hard ball of cold-stone fear down his neck.
“So you can fight.” Her blade came up to ready. Light flashed down its length. Something was inscribed on it, no cheap slag-iron curnow like his own.
“He was drunk and I was lucky,” he said.
“Well, Joron Twiner, I am neither, despite my name,” she said, eyes grey and cold. “Let’s get this over with, ey?”
He drew his curnow and went straight into a lunge. No warning, no niceties. He was not a fool and he was not soft. You did not live long in the Hundred Isles if you were soft. His only chance of beating Lucky Meas lay in surprising her. His blade leaped out, a single straight thrust for the gut. A simple, concise move he had practised so many times in his life – for every woman and man of the Hundred Isles dreams of being in the fleet and using his sword to protect the islands’ children. It was a perfect move he made, untouched by his exhaustion and unsullied by a body palsied with lack of drink.
She knocked his blade aside with a a small movement of her wrist, and the weighted end of the curving curnow blade dragged his sword outward, past her side. He stumbled forward, suddenly off balance. Her free hand came round, and he caught the shine of a stone ring on her knuckles, knew she wore a rockfist in the moment before it made contact with his temple.
He was on the ground. Looking up into the canopy of the wide and bright blue sky wondering where the clouds had gone. Waiting for the thrust that would finish him.
Her sword tip appeared in his line of sight.
Touched the skin of his forehead.
Raked a painful line up to his hair and pushed the hat from his head and she used the tip of her sword to flick his hat into the air and caught it, putting it on. She did not smile, showed no sense of triumph, only stared at him while the blood ran down his face and he waited for the end.
“Never lunge with a curnow, Joron Twiner,” she said quietly. “Did they teach you nothing? You slash with it. It is all it is fit for.”
“What poor final words for me,” he said. “To die with another’s advice in my ear.” Did something cross her face at that, some deeply buried remembrance of what it was to laugh? Or did she simply pity him?
“Why did they make you shipwife?” she said. “You plain did not win rank in a fight.”
“I—” he began.
“There are two types of ship of the dead.” She leaned forward, the tip of her sword dancing before his face. “There is the type the crew run, with a weak shipwife who lets them drink themselves to death at the staystone. And there is the type a strong shipwife runs that raises his wings for trouble and lets his women and men die well.” He could not take his eyes from the tip of the blade, Lucky Meas a blur behind the weapon. “It seems to me the Tide Child has been the first, but now you will lead me to him and he will try what it is to be the second.”
Joron opened his mouth to tell her she was wrong about him and his ship, but he did not, because she was not.
“Get up, Joron Twiner,” she said. “You’ll not die today on this hot and long-blooded shingle. You’ll live to spend your blood in service to the Hundred Isles along with every other on that ship. Now come, we have work to do.” She turned, sheathing her sword, as sure he would do as she asked as she was Skearith’s Eye would rise in the morning and set at night.
The shingle moved beneath him as he rose, and something stirred within him. Anger at this woman who had taken his command from him. Who had called him weak and treated him with such contempt. She was just like every other who was lucky enough to be born whole of body and of the strong. Sure of their place, blessed by the Sea Hag, the Maiden and the Mother and ready to trample any other before them to get what they wanted. The criminal crew of Tide Child, he understood them at least. They were rough, fierce and had lived with no choice but to watch out for themselves. But her and her kind? They trampled others for joy.