She had taken his hat of command from him, and though he had never wanted it before, it had suddenly come to mean something. Her theft had awoken something in him.
He intended to get it back.
The tide it ran for miles,
Left ship and crew a-dry.
Don’t sacrifice the babe,
The sea put out the cry.
But the hagpriests didn’t listen,
Said, “The babe must surely die.”
Anon., “The Song of Lucky Meas”
From the hill above Keyshanblood Bay Joron could see his ship – her ship – Tide Child. The ship lay held by the staystone and, as befitting a ship of the dead, his bones had been painted black and no corpselights danced above him. His wings, which had been clumsily furled atop the wingspines jutting from the grey slate of the decks, were also black. Every inch of the ship should have been black, but the ship’s crew and his shipwife – and he – had been slack in their care and it looked as if a gentle rain of ash had fallen over the ship, dotting him with specks of white where the bone showed through. His prow was the slanted and the smooth hipbones of a small arakeesian, a long-dead sea dragon, angled to cut through the water. At the waterline the beak of the keyshan skull poked out from the hipbones, and curving back from it were the ribs, four long bones that ran the length of the ship and helped him slide through the water. Above the ribs were the bones of the ship that made his sides, and these were sharp and serrated, a riot of odd angles and spiked bone meant to repel borders, the shearing edges and prongs making him hard to climb.
Tide Child’s colour showed he was a last-chance ship, the crew condemned to death. The only chance anyone had for a return to life was through some heroic act, something so undeniably great that the acclaim of the people would see their crimes expunged and their life restored to them. Such hope made desperate deckchilder, and desperate deckchilder were fierce. Though if any forgiveness had ever been offered to the dead it had not been in Joron’s lifetime, nor in his father’s lifetime before him.
He should have been a terror, cutting his way through the seas of the Scattered Archipelago, but instead of roaring through the grey seas Tide Child sat at the staystone, weed waving lazily around him from where it had grown on the slip bones of his underside, the water about the black ship greasy with human filth: sewage, rotting food and the other hundreds of bits of flotsam a ship constantly generated. Across the spars of the wingspines sat skeers, lean white birds no more than dots from this distance, but he knew their red eyes and razored bills, always hungry.
“Mark of a lax ship,” whispered Meas from beside him.
“What?”
“The skeers. If a deckchild falls asleep they’ll have out an eye or a tongue – seen it more than once. Should have someone with a sling out there. Mind you, you don’t have to see the birds to know that ship’s not loved as it should be; you can smell it.”
He sniffed at the air. Even up here on the hill he could smell his ship, like a fish dock at the slack of Skearith’s Eye when the heat burned down from above and there was no shadow, no shelter, no release.
“Tide Child,” he said.
“A weak name,” she replied and strode off, vanishing into the foliage which grew strong and thick away from the old flensing yard. Her dark body disappeared among the riot of bright purple gion leaves, thick spreading fans providing respite from the slowly climbing eye of Skearith. Twined around them was bright pink varisk, vines as thick and strong as a woman’s thighs, leaves almost as big as the gion, fighting it for the light.
Resentment was his companion through the forest, not just because she made him struggle through the foliage, rather than taking the longer, clearer path kept by the villagers. It was also for the ship, for his command. In the six months since he had been condemned the ship had filled his life; thoughts of riding it to glory or escaping it completely had trapped him in a current of indecision. The ship may not have been much, but it had been his, and when she insulted it she insulted him. Hag’s curse on you, Lucky Meas. He had no doubt she would turn out to be anything but lucky for him, for the ship or for those aboard, though in truth he cared far less about them, keyshans take them. He stumbled after her, mouth dry, body aching for the gourd at his hip, shaking for it, but the one time he paused to unlimber it and take a drink she had stopped and turned.
“We’ll find water in the gion forest,” she said, “or we’ll tap a varisk stalk. My officers aren’t soaks.”
Her officers? What did she mean by that? And he added another item to a growing list of resentments in his head.
The huge gion and varisk plants were at their height now; any paths there may have been through this part of the forest had been quickly overgrown by bright creepers, and their sickly colours made his head ache even more. The plants fell easily to his curnow and a creeping sense of claustrophobia grew within him, a feeling of being trapped that joined the crew of his discomforts as he felt the path behind them close up, overtaken by the relentless growth of vines and stalk and leaf. The forest birds raised a cacophony at the clack of blade on stalk, some calling warnings, some singing out threats, and his knuckles whitened on the hilt of his swinging blade. This was the time of year when most were lost to firash, the giant birds darting out in ambush, opening guts with their claws and dragging their dying prey away to eat alive. He wondered if Lucky Meas would fall to one. But no, somewhere inside he knew Lucky Meas was not destined to die in a forest at the claws of a great bird.
Joron was so lost in his thoughts he barely heard Meas when next she spoke.
“Is your crew on board?”
He stumbled over a thick root pulsing with blue sap.
“All except the windtalker.”
She stopped, turned and stared at him. “Black ships do not have windtalkers.”
“Ours does, but the crew won’t have it aboard when the ship is still – say it’s bad luck.”
She looked at him as if wanting more, but he could not think why – surely everyone knew this? Just the thought of the gullaime made his flesh creep over and above the shaking and nausea wracking him for want of drink.
“Where is it then?”
“Where?”
“I’ll not ask again. Are you so cracked in the head by drink that you cannot answer a simple question?”
He could not meet her eye.
“On the bell buoy off the bay entrance. We cast it there.”
“And the last time it touched land? The last time it was brought to a windspire?”
“I . . .” His head refused to clear; the world swam before him in a thousand bright colours that twisted like his aching guts.
“Northstorm’s whispered curses, man, have the drink you long for and pray to the Sea Hag it brings you sense if not sobriety. I’ll ask the windtalker myself when it comes on board.” And she turned away, stalking through the bright forest. He brought the flask to his mouth, taking a gulp of the thick soupy alcohol. Something hidden by the gion and varisk around him screamed out its last moment as nature played out the endless game of prey and predator.
The nearer they came to the beach the stronger the smell of the ship became. He had never noticed it on his return before, never thought about it, but today it was nauseating. It was not the smell of death that drifted across the bay from the black ship, but the stink of life – carefree, chaotic and unconcerned. They had found this quiet bay where orders were unlikely to reach them a month ago and tied up the ship. The fisher village in the bay wanted nothing to do with the crew so Joron had felt it safe to leave. The very few among Tide Child’s crew who could swim were not enough to be a threat to the hard women and men there. His tumbledown bothy was far enough away that the deformed land hid the ship from him, and he wondered what it said about him that he had chosen somewhere where he could not even see his command?