‘Shit,’ she says, her mind a mess of half-remembered faces. ‘We can’t keep Crowkisser penned in with three ships.’
Fallon’s fingers idly trace the table, running over a map ofshipping routes, currents inked in blue and green and black. ‘There were a few others. They sailed north and west a while ago. It’s not their fight, and I didn’t have the money to keep them.’ He laughs. ‘I only have theHartand theMaidenbecause they’re in too deep to leave without collecting.’
Shipwright shakes her head. ‘Never thought I’d see you happy to have creditors.’
She glances down at the map, at the couple of hundred miles of coast between Hesper and Astic further south.
Declan watches her with dark eyes. She can feel him waiting for a miracle, for her to be a clever, useful knife.
She shakes her head, and watches his shoulders drop.
‘Starving her out was a nice idea, but it’s out the window now. If we had the full fleet …’
He slumps back down, digging a finger in his ear. ‘If. But most of the ships on this side of the world are at the bottom of the sea. We can rebuild, but it takes time, takes money. Worse than money, it takes boots on the ground.’
He slaps the papers on the table. The staff recoil. ‘Money, I have, for a little longer. Arissa’s father was a parsimonious prick, and I’ve always been good at stretching it. Boots are trickier.’
Shipwright opens her mouth, but he holds up a finger.
‘People keep dying, Ship. And the ones we have left are looking after their own. No matter how hard I tug on the gilded hooks.’
She says nothing, drumming her foot under the table as the blood starts to sing in her ears. She glances at Shroudweaver for a bit of back up. Finally, he surfaces from whatever thought is holding him, his voice quiet, tired.
‘So it’s coming to a fight?’
Fallon scratches. ‘Might do. We’re fine here. We’ve got the walls. The guns. What we don’t have, like I said, is the people.’ His lip curls. ‘Most of them are growing weed down south with my fucking ships. And the rest are tied britches-and-bollocks to the guilds, who have no interest in burning bodies against that little witch. So, no people.’
‘I don’t think she has the people either,’ Shroudweaver mutters.
Fallon’s face is sceptical. ‘You know that?’
Shroudweaver shakes his head. ‘Not for sure, but you saw what happened.’ He presses his lips into a thin line. ‘I’d say at best, she’s got the northern line of towns. Astic, of course, but that was a stroke of luck.’ He ticks them off on his hands. ‘Sedge, Fallow, Vantage, Dryke.’ Holds up five fingers. ‘It’s not much.’
Fallon sucks his teeth. ‘Not much for now, but we didn’t expect Astic to fall so fast. That bitch is persuasive when she wants to be.’
Shipwright takes her eyes from the map. ‘There’s another problem.’
‘Oh good.’ Fallon waves a hand. ‘Go on. Keep shitting on my doorstep.’
She makes a face. ‘Thanks, Declan.’ Her fingers sketch a route on the map, from Astic, up the coast, and past Hesper.
‘She doesn’t need to come here, she just needs to push past us. If she can get far enough north or east, she’ll open up new supply routes, at the very least. More likely, she’ll roll up a few more villages into her loving arms. Tips the numbers against us even more.’
Fallon purses his lips. ‘Do you really think those Midlands swamp-lickers will fall for her shtick?’
Shipwright shrugs. ‘Maybe not. I can’t guarantee it though.’
Fallon tuts. ‘There’s not enough of them to make a difference. There’s nothing big enough to give her the bodies she needs, unless she makes a run right up to the mountains and the Republic.’ He raises an eyebrow, pointedly.
Shipwright blanches. ‘She wouldn’t?’ Just the thought of it chokes her. That mountain. That war. The blood hammers in her throat.
Shroudweaver looks between the two of them. ‘Just because we haven’t? She might, if she was desperate enough.’
Fallon pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘If for example, she’d been starved out by a ragged-arse naval blockade for the last two and a half years?’
He stabs the point of his knife into some unlucky squab.
‘Which brings me back to my original, miserable option. Wehave to beat her to it, to Thell. We need them back onboard before we get squeezed between north and south like a nut in a vice.’
