Shroudweaver hears the shout thunder above decks, watches the corpse’s fingers stiffen. Even in death, a sailor wants to sail. He leans low over the dead man’s cool skull and rubs saltpetre into its temples. A little touch of the soil to soothe the spirit. His long fingers move with exaggerated care, his thin heart flutters like a bird in a paper cage.
The raising of gods is a dicey business. Decades he’s been doing it now, with a catch in his throat every time. He still hears his teacher’s voice in his head. Red thread for binding. Holding the scraps of the soul in the body long enough for him to push them together into something new. Old notes reused for a new song. Stale air slipped into fresh lungs.
Above, the gunshot snap of canvas as the sails unfurl. The cries of the crew given sudden life. More distantly he senses the hot toffee taste of magic, a flash of crow wings, and stifles a frantic fear of being torn asunder.
Shroudweaver finishes his preparations and, inside the body of the dead man, a small god begins to sing. A halting thing, at first, for the god is fragile and unreal. Stitched from scraps of spirit and nested in a dead man’s chest. Yet it sings as it grows, its fledgling body stretching through meat and muscle. Filling dead flesh with golden light.
The song filters up through straining timbers and curls around Shipwright like a cat. The crew’s backs straighten and the sails fill with a wind hung with spices.
The ship is brightest in motion. Shipwright’s face is split by a broad grin and she throws back her whipcord arms to greet the freshening wind. Shroudweaver appears by her shoulder, his thin grey hair spidering in the breeze. She drops the grin on him, broad white teeth and sharp eyes.
‘Nice work,’ she says.
He shrugs diffidently. ‘I had good materials.’
The ship kisses the ocean, the tops of the waves a brief press against her surging bow.
‘We couldn’t move like this without you.’
Another shrug. ‘You couldn’t move like this without the god.’
She cuffs him around the head. ‘And who makes the gods?’
This time, with the shrug, a sly smile.
2
the body chases the flame of first creation
the name burns like tinder
the mouth still holds the song
Eventually they stop running, the crows far behind, the last gilded breath fading from the sails. They’ve both left the rail by the time the last swell subsides, sprawled around a bottle of wine in Shipwright’s cabin.
She takes a deep draw of her pipe and speaks through the smoke.
‘How long can we keep this up?’
Shroudweaver waves a hand loose with drink.
‘There’ll be gods as long as there’s corpses.’
Shipwright coughs, spits.
‘We can run a while yet then. Up to Hesper at least.’
She stretches, shoulders popping. ‘We need to do something more than just harry her though. Our luck can’t hold, not with the north locked down.’
Shroudweaver pours, marvels at the steadiness of his hands. Amazing what a drop of something good can do. ‘Locked down? Is that what we’re calling it? Last I talked to Fallon he said they were’ – he sips, adopts an enraged expression – ‘“Pissing over everything between hill and coast”, by which I think he meant, getting a bit more aggressive about their borders.’
‘Hard to tell with Fallon,’ Shipwright says. ‘He’s so understated.’ Shroudweaver raises an eyebrow and clinks her glass. Shipwright leans back, crosses her legs, drinks deep. Itisgood, this one. Nabbed out the hold of some unlucky merchantman a few days back. A bit opportunistic, perhaps, but if Kisser was sinking ships, there was no reason to let the wine drown as well. She swills it alittle as she wriggles her toes to warm them up. ‘I think aggressive is putting it mildly. Some of the caravels that used to run north have given up entirely. Trade routes are all locked down from the coast on in. Heard tell there’s towns burning there that haven’t been touched by Kisser.’
Shroudweaver’s expression is perplexed. ‘Why would they?’
‘Why do people do anything these days? Fear. There are still the remains of temples up there, still pilgrim routes that might pull people north. It’s clear they have no interest in that. Not in money, not in the war. Thell wants one thing, to be left the fuck alone.’
She sips again. ‘I can sympathise’.
