some rivers open wide
deer step in them
some rivers, you can see clear to the bottom
still drown in them
—Proverbs of the Burning Forest, Heartshamer
Three days and a stiff salt wind later, and the Grey Towers of Hesper are visible on the horizon, cut against the coast like an old scar.
Hesper is barely changed from the first time Shipwright sailed into port with a heart full of hope and a hold full of spice, her hands jittery on the ship’s wheel. Then, the city had welcomed her like a surly lover, the massive barques of the other captains sliding past her as their crews alternately jeered, catcalled or cheered. The savviest waiting in silence, eyes wide at the sight of a ship from the East in all its long-beamed glory. Requests for boarding hollered and signalled. Ratlines helpfully tossed. Clods of shit. Bottles of rum. Arcs of piss. A mixed welcome.
Nudging into the lowest loop at the bottom of the cliffs, where the city finally dared to let her toes touch the sea. Above, the switchbacks and twists that brought up the smaller ships into the belly of the port, through the canals and straight to where the money was.
No room for her ship, even in those massive engineered channels, she needed more depth. Besides, Shipwright had thought, it was good to make an entrance. A few quick twists to the mechanisms at the base of the main masts, and the spinners atop roared to life, bigger than anything else she’d ever worked with, the size of a small globe, or a man’s skull. A little cocky, a little dangerous; a little exciting.
Their hum spread down the spars, shivering the whole ship and Shipwright along with it. Spinner magic disregarding the boundaries between bone and board, threading her muscles until she thrummed like a barely chained dog, wild with energy.
Out across the water, the ship began to sing. The sound flattened the tops of the waves, and lifted her bow. The speed with which she moved cut the rim of the ocean, sending waves of spume over the howling crews of the barques, spinning the latch boats and tugs that had come to greet her.
Her crew crowded the rails, shinned up the masts and opened their mouths to the song of the spinners, an old eastern shanty, one Shipwright had only heard in quiet whispers around the deck fires and mess tables before. Here, held in harmony by thirty voices, it sounded entirely different, the burr of the spinners a ceaseless bass. Beyond that copper twang, the cries of the sailors hit the water with force, the shout at the end of each verse almost a physical thing.
She felt the eyes of Hesper’s captains on her, and beyond that, attention from the shore. It didn’t take her long to find the source.
A busy port, Hesper, labourers and merchants and counters and cutters, hand over fist. All of them curious, some panicked at the speed of the approaching ship. A scurry of tar-boys with lines and no plan. A docksman shouting at them to get their worthless arses back.
At the heart of them all stood a great grey charger, motionless as stone. Atop it, back straight as a spear, a woman who put all the ships’ figureheads to shame. Tall as a tree, slender as a mountain ash, her back straightened by armour of sculpted steel. A grey cape settled across her shoulders like a cormorant’s wing, a sword at her hip. Lady Arissa Fallon, Lady of the Grey Towers.
Shipwright should have been humble – she knew nobility when she saw it. But she was the best captain on this sea, and she helmed the best ship. Humble could wait.
She wrenched the wheel and kicked the spinners into a flying hold. The ship turned, skewed broadside and kept thundering towards the docks, the wave building before it now like the skirts of a sea god, thrashed with kelp and fish and flotsam.
She watched the onlookers flinch back. All but Arissa. Thousands of tonnes of roiling, singing wood and water, and all she did was sit up a little straighter yet, something in her eyes, perhaps the shadow of a smile on her face.
Shipwright left it to the last moment, the docks reaching out for her like the mouth of a startled drunk. All that ship under her hands and only the faintest movement from her fingers to swing the spinners into a ghost hang. Two feet from the docks, from the yelling traders and scrambling guards, the ship simply stopped.
She felt the stress of the spinners in the back of her skull as they took all that forward weight and stored it. The faintest pine in their pitch, and then, still. She dropped them to silence with a gesture.
For the first time in months, the docks of Hesper hung quiet.
Held it for a second, two, and then erupted into cheers, hollering from the cobbles and the flung-wide windows; salt-wives corpsing into their baskets and old sailors pushing up from their lobsterpot perches.
A whip-thin gangplank out, and the crowd swarmed forwards. Shipwright set foot on the rail and waited a moment, watching the faces in front of her, the whitewashed stretch of the city above, its reddened roofs, its arches. Above it all, the bulk of those great grey towers.
The air split with sound as either side of that massive horse, soldiers pealed out on silvered trumpets. The crowd melting grudgingly from the foot of the gangplank, encouraged on by the hafts of pikes across thighs and backs.
The horse and its rider approached, hooves striking echoes from the wet stone.
Closer up, the Lady of the Grey Towers was still dignified, but more human, her cloak spattered with the spray. A wariness in her eyes, and something else; a lick of humour that Shipwright could stand to see more of.
She tilted down the plank, jumped the last few feet.
Down on the cobbles, Arissa Fallon seemed less approachable. The horse holding her up against the sky, and the cut ofher shoulders framed against the scudding clouds. The wind pulling at her cloak, at her hair in its severe ponytail. Beautiful. Shipwright felt a brief twitch in her stomach, tried to stay professional.
The cobbles slicked with fish guts and bird shit. It wasn’t easy.
‘Lady, I am …’
