—Caskheart, first mate of thePride of the Forests
The docks of Hesper embrace the water in long, lazy loops, switchbacks of solid stone, creating a series of calmer pools, a brief breathing space between the city’s ships and the ceaseless pull of East Tide.
A trade city from the very shape of it. Smaller ships and boats could make their way up the canals that climbed the cliffside, levered up on lock and muscle, and follow the waterways right out to the whitewashed merchant houses, with their low loading docks and broad, beautiful doors which opened with slowness, stillness, onto the sluggish waters. Shipwright could still remember the merchants carefully stepping down slick canal steps, lifting the trimmed hems of their gowns and robes free of the algae, running broad, confident fingers over wares which came from all corners of the world. Fruits shelled in hard black spikes, silks and linens and perfume. The bigger barges bringing the real trade; iron and brass and powder.
She could still remember the thrill of the mornings, floating markets flung wide, their owners crying out their newly arrived wares in a looping, liquid shout that was part song, part prayer, part auctioneer’s block. Browsing wares and delicacies in those low-arched salerooms, their roofs crisscrossed with geometric patterns that seemed to reflect and refract the water lapping inches from her feet.
Each shop had its own smell, a mix of the produce and incense, the sweat of the sellers and the pomade in their dark hair. Shemissed their confident, soft hands, offering up treats with a glint, a soft word, taking her money with twice the speed.
A good hustle, with everyone in on the con. And then breakfast on the canal’s edge, feet dangling above the water, stripping rind and spitting pips at the mouthy barge boys below. Behind her, that half-song, half-sale, growing and ebbing in the morning light. It almost felt like being home.
The ship’s sails snap uncertainly in the seaport’s breeze, jerking her loose from the soft grip of memory. Their sail-god is dying, a guttering pulse of buttery light in the struggling canvas.
Below decks, Shroudweaver holds the body of a dead man and weeps as he feels him buck and writhe. The last shreds of his existence burnt and cindered to feed the god that got them here. Shipwright wants to join him down there, but there’s no time. There hasn’t been time for months.
Above the looped entrails of her port, the Free City of Hesper squats like a vulture on a fresh kill. The talons of her grey towers spear into the twitching body of the city, their massive flanks writhing with rope and men. Once upon a time whitewashed and beautiful, perhaps; now stained by the smoke from a million foundries. The whole city stinking with the filth of war.
Shipwright watches her crew unload; barrels and bales, oilcloth swaddled blades bobbing and weaving their way down ropes and hawsers into the guts of the city. After that, thirteen long boxes, each bound with red ribbon by Shroudweaver. Proof against any final indignities for the crew of theVolante. The men and women were mostly quiet as they worked, focused on the task beyond what was necessary.
There had been precious little chat since the fall of Astic. The last of the border towns swallowed up by the grey tide of Crowkisser’s army. A few ragged survivors arriving in Hesper with tales that were too bloody familiar. Wild-eyed dissenters with their names peeled loose, fraying like chewed skin. Mad within a week, dead within two. And they were the lucky ones. Many of them hadn’t run fast enough. The sea and shore between Astic and Hesper were studded with bodies reeking of lemon androt. Slickwalker ranging ahead of Crowkisser’s armies, burning through shadow and twilight to keep the exodus slim. How he did it, she didn’t know, but it chilled her blood. Almost as much as the other tales. Not spoken as loudly, no froth of ale or madman’s roil to muddy them. The tales that Fallon’s scouts told, that Astic had welcomed Crowkisser in. That even now, warm lights burnt in that little fisher town, and its people gave themselves over to the new regime, so long as the boats still sailed, and their nets still pulled fish. Shipwright hadn’t mentioned that to Shroud, not yet. Scared to, if truth be told. Could be that’s how this war would be won. Folk got tired of fighting.
She looked at her crew, and marked the strain of it on them, the shadowed eyes and shaking hands. Too much time taken up with running and hiding, even if they called it raiding. Crowkisser hunted the ship like a coursing dog, and her crew were run ragged. Almost all of them new fish, brought aboard after the last disastrous sally towards the south. Shipwright barely knew their faces, much less their names.
She cracks her knuckles methodically. Ah, well. Time enough for that if they survive.
As the last barrel bellies off into the depths of the city, Shipwright beckons her first mate towards her. Sandy haired, wide-faced and blue-eyed, scarred along the collarbone where something hot and hungry has tried to put an end to him. Slickwalker’s blasted gun, most likely. Makes him distinctive though. Let’s her hang onto his name.
He dips his head respectfully. She smiles.
‘Ropecharmer. All swinging steady?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he says, ‘Smooth and easy.’
Gods, she thinks,he’s fucking enjoying himself. Maybe it was easier, when you were young. She stifles a twinge of envy and steadies a hand on his shoulder. ‘OK, Rope. Take the rest ashore. Get them fed, get them laid, get them drunk. I don’t care but get them out from under my feet. I need you back by first swell, but no sooner.’
Her eyes slide up to the city’s writhing talons.
‘Shroud and I have to go see the boss.’
10
the shepherd knows truths the sailor does not
that every byre is a fiction
that old heifers only rest in the teeth of dogs
A few hours later Shipwright and Shroudweaver stand in front of the High Lord of Hesper.
A decanter arcs lazily over their heads and bursts against the wall, spattering a room which looks like an antiquary’s wet dream. In the middle of it all, Declan Fallon, moustache bristling, arm in a sling and looking less than positive.
‘TheVolante! That skinny fucking bitch. That pallid, dead-eyed slut. I’ll take her apart bone by fucking bone and never mind that ratshit lover of hers. I’ll shove his fancy fucking gun so far down his throat he’ll be shitting lead for years.’
Another wave of the arm that had sent the decanter to a better place.
‘That. Fucking. Slit. I’ll end her, see if I don’t.’
Shipwright rocks back on her heels. That was what someone like Fallon expected, all noise and bluster, flapping his mouth because he’d found a problem that his money and his cock couldn’t solve.
