Her deep voice rough and husky with sadness. ‘All those beautiful boys, salt-chuck. And she took even their names.’
Shipwright steps forwards and hugs her, feeling the sobs riding her huge frame, the smell of the forest still in her hair.
‘I’m so sorry, Thorn.’
Thorndaughter holds her close like iron.
‘That’s why I keep you near, salt-chuck. The forest might have taken my boy-child, but spit and bone fore I ever let it take you.’
Shipwright stays with Thorndaughter that night, sleeping in her arms as the forest shifts and rustles beyond the red pavilion. She dreams of bright young boys, a stag whose antlers move like dawn light and of nights aboard the ship, before she was its captain. The dark within her skull is filled with the swell of the sea, with the lights of fires raised and tamed on deck; the call of the long-swimmers in the wake of the boat and the weight of friendly ribs against her side as they swam out into the darkness. And lightagain, years before even that, in a circle of wagons; the thump of moths against glass lamps, the thrum of badly tuned strings and a voice that might have been her father’s raised in song.
All those years held by arms spread against flickering light. And in the light, raised voices, singing off-key, shivering against the cold, or soft and steady in the winter winds. It always came back to singing. Her whole life has been filled with song; she hates to see people silent.
That’s why Icecaller worried her so. The girl has been practically wordless after Crowkisser raised her, and who knew howthathad been done? Every step she’s taken in the dwindling shadow of the mountain, has been a silent one, marked only by the hiss of breath, the shift of her body; her eyes flat as wet stone.
She spent her time only with the crow-witch, slipping in and out of living. Whatever magic Crowkisser had worked was struggling to take; death coming for the Republic’s first daughter like a cold hound. Every time Icecaller was hauled back from the dark with the same wet wrenching, every time gasping for light like a drowned swimmer. That couldn’t be good. Shipwright knew what it was like to drown, to feel water filling your lungs, the weight of the ocean behind it, all the basic rules upended, and breathing your worst possible option. Icecaller’s silence felt like drowning, like the girl’s world had been tilted upside down.
So, Shipwright had welcomed all the small sounds of change, even the first moans as Icecaller’s head inexorably turned back to the north, her feet stumbling bruised over unseen stones. A low, relentless keening that billowed the girl’s stomach, and only broke in waves of sickness, starting again as soon as the last drops of bile had spattered the ground.
Shipwright had taken over then, pushing Crowkisser aside with her body and confidence. She was good with words, that one, and a dramatist like her father, but Shipwright had seen better than her slip under the keel; had spent too long wrestling her father’s moods to fall for the bluster. More than that, Shipwright had a hunch that Crowkisser was scared of her, and she used it efficiently, controlling the space around Icecaller with her movements.She fenced her out with the unfurling of bedrolls, the brushing of hair, the feeding of soup, spoon by wretched spoon. The witch of Astic would lurk nervously for a while, then slip away, supposedly busied by forces or fears unseen, but Shipwright knew a flight when she saw it, and stoked the fires in her heart with a little scrap of bitter pride.
In that salvaged space, Shipwright could work. Icecaller was a scared, pitiful thing, mostly compliant, mostly vacant. The stark planes of her face twisted from the inside, her memories surfacing like sharks, but held just beneath the surface. Shipwright sensed pressure on the skin, and the heart beneath the skin; a release was needed, something to break the suffering loose, and soon. Thankfully, there were techniques for this.
Shipwright started slowly at first, moving the physical, her fingers and hands working Icecaller over in steady, relentless rhythms, moon and tide, sea and salt. She heard her father’s voice in her head as she shifted the girl’s body into healing shapes, recalled memories of sailors’ limbs brought straight, of backs unbowed. Later, she turned herself to Icecaller’s tortured skin, hauling with the steady pull of an oarsman, gradually unsticking knots and snarls of panicked muscle, grinding them loose. It was like sanding a piece of wood, finding burrs and imperfections half by touch, half by intuition and producing something kinder, more functional with the careful application of force.
But the Kinghammer’s daughter was no ship. Something more was needed to call her back from the brink. A little body work had helped Crowkisser’s ministrations stick, brutal and raw though they were, but the thing that moved in Icecaller’s skin was not yet her. Bringing her back from the dead hadn’t returned her to life.
Even this didn’t faze Shipwright. How many times had she seen a mind shaken loose? The sharp crack of a swinging boom, a fall from the topsail or the sight of a loved one, gut-stuck and ribboned. The soul’s anchor was a strong thing, but it could fray, clinging to the body like a half-torn web.
For that, there were teas, gathered and bound in waxed shells. Some from the Burner’s rootwitches, a couple of Thorndaughter’sbest brews kept close to her kirtle for months. A rare few from the blood-breathers of Astic, taken before the war. Still others gathered years ago from the Hung Forest, from the strange people who dwelt there, long-armed and stilt-legged above the shifting marshes. They were all blended by her own hands, and designed to do one thing – to bring a person home.
She brews them in a broad pot and humours herself by getting a ladle, listening to the shift and clunk against the rim, and breathing deep from the fumes that rise. She tries to make Icecaller drink it at first, holding her as she splutters and coughs and twists. Eventually, she abandons that and drapes her over the pot like ham on a skillet, tenting a blanket around her head and filling her lungs with the fumes. That works a little better.
Shipwright blocks the opening of the tent when inquiries come, answering them all with firm noises. She sleeps with Icecaller at nights, abandoning her excursions to the trees and the Burners for a cot and a vigil. She learns to recognise the sound of nails quietly tearing skin, and becomes attuned to the sound of muffled weeping as she raises the strange, torn child that Icecaller’s spirit has become. Time and again, Ship holds her close, just for the sake of warmth, for being there, solid and real, catching her wrists when they curve and stray.
The people of Thell begin to leave gifts, small pieces of foraged food, warm clothes, notes. Shipwright shows them to Icecaller, makes her name each thing and the person who gave it, and then makes her repeat them back. When the night terrors get too strong, she trains her to repeat the list. Gradually, the sound of tearing is replaced by the names of people who love her. This is how mending occurs, through the smallest replacements. It’s like caulking a ship, strengthening the vessel piece by piece. It only takes you so far though.
Icecaller barely speaks, barely looks at her. She moves with a tightness, a stiffness. There’s colour in her cheeks now, and strength in her body, but a deeper sickness lingers inside, like rot in the hold, pus in the wound, something filling her up and pressing against her skin from within.
In the weeks that follow, Icecaller spends her days by the column, in the light, unsticking wheels and hefting sacks, shuffling with the remnants of her people over the miles. As they move south however, something changes. Shipwright feels it testing her teeth. The sky weighs heavier on her temples. The paths become less safe as the Burners’ marks fade out, and their tracks are reclaimed by bramble, thorns and the lumbering bulk of boars. She’s never been a country girl, but even she can tell that there’s a different kind of space here, perhaps different kinds of spirits.
As the column lurches across the Midlands, the land opens up; the lakes of the Hollows off to the east, eventually fading north and out of view, as they swing towards the west coast and Hesper. The far horizon distantly coloured by the bruised sky that still hangs over the south. Two weeks of this, all the scrapes and cuts she’d picked up in the mountain healing into a lattice of itches.
Two weeks of the same trees, the same damp ground, of the column huddling behind her, hollowed around low fires. Two weeks of new families forming on the road, pooling their supplies and stories.
This feels like the shape of something new for Thell, budding out in the dark, marked by the odd grey cloak around the campfires, or in the bedrolls, the odd chunk of fishbone and fisher-herb tossed into stews with northern spice. Morning after morning, with the familiar fading into the forest, and the half-healed shape of the Republic’s first daughter stumbling behind. Shipwright stitches her together, seam by seam and hopes she holds long enough to see her people survive.
83
Shoes, rations for a week.
A name inscribed on the throat.
Charms against crows, against the dead.
—Provisions for the exodus, tallied, Lightmender
The fifteenth morning is dry and unrelenting. He awakes with a taste on his lips like dust, his mouth, dry, dry. The cracked leather of the tent creaks in a parched breeze. Shroudweaver fumbles for a mug, a pitcher. The water is stale and warm, flattened by the night, but still, a gift. The camp outside is unusually quiet, the familiar sounds of the morning being ruggedly manhandled into life conspicuously absent. His eyes struggle to focus on the shape of things, every edge softened and liquid. A thump in the back of his head like meat on a stone. His fingers are numb, his weaving charms hot against his wrist. Odd. He looks for Shipwright and sees her hunched by the remains of the brazier, the palm of one hand pressed against an eye socket.
