He stands. A little unsteadily, but for once his legs are mercifully free of pain. Also odd. He walks across to Ship and rests a hand on her shoulders. ‘I feel like shit.’
Shipwright looks up, grimaces, ‘There’s a reason for that.’
She sucks her fingers, reaches into the brazier, and crumbles charcoal into a cup, topping it off with a flask from her belt, then stirs. ‘Drink this.’
He takes it. ‘What a delightful gift. Why?’
She squints at him, winces against the light. ‘What happened before you fell asleep last night?’
He shrugs. ‘It’s hazy.’
She nods, swigs, swallows, spits. ‘Me too. And while that makessense for you, my little southern flower, it doesn’t for me.’
Understanding hits him about the same time as another wave of wet pain in the back of the skull. ‘We’ve been drugged?’
She smiles. ‘Well done.’ She raises a finger as her face turns green. ‘Excuse me a second.’
He watches her reel out of the tent. Damp retching sounds follow and he feels his own stomach turn in sympathy. They stop abruptly and her voice slides its way back in, wired with urgency.
‘Shroud. Get over here.’
He does as he’s told, his thick head lurching on his neck as he stumbles to the tent flap and throws it back.
His first thought is of death. There are bodies sprawled as far as he can see, around the ashes of cookfires, half out of sleeping furs and bedrolls. The scene conjures brief, horrific, memories of the plain below Thell, of other fields before that. His heart lurches, but Shipwright’s already out among them, checking pulses, moving limbs into safer configurations. Even as she works, he sees there’s fewer folk than there should be, and the marks on those left separate them, clear as day. Red and black geometrics, stark against the skin, bright against the mud. Thell’s people have been discarded. No sign of the grey men and women from Astic, and no sign of Crowkisser. His daughter’s gone.
A pang grips his heart, mixed with a strange relief. She’s left. Of course she has. He does a quick headcount. Not enough groaning people strewn in the grass to account for most of the column, unless there are others hidden out of sight, and the rolling plains of the Midlands don’t offer much cover. The refugees haven’t been discarded; they’ve been winnowed. Sifted for the best and the strongest. If Crowkisser has gone, she’s taken over half the survivors of the mountain with her. He smiles thinly into the cold grass. Of course she has. This is what she wanted all along – bodies for the cause.
The next few hours are lost in setting things right. Shipwright crouches over still figures, her laced fingers moving in steady rhythms over the heart or slipping into clogged throats, pulling forth snot and spit, until they shudder back to life.
Shroudweaver’s head’s a little clearer now, so he staggers a few paces and runs a finger around the lip of the water barrels that feed the camp. A few drops of sticky, brown sap still cling to the edge, lungfallow, most likely. They’d used it in the Aestering to dull pain and encourage sleep. He confirms his theory by flicking a few drops into the ashes, watching as they flare green with bitter smoke. It would be hard to calculate a dosage so large, he supposes, even for an expert. It’s inevitable that some would drink too much, be too thin, have sacrificed too much of their fat and strength on the slopes down from the mountain to soak the sap away from their bones.
A flare of anger sparks in his chest. Reckless girl, he thought he’d taught her better. Now’s not the time to worry about that, though. Out on the field, Shipwright is still working, splitting the sleepers into those that are just drowsy, and those that are a wet gasp or two from death.
She shoots Shroudweaver a meaningful look, and he wipes his hands off, before turning away from the flames. They’re not the only ones out here. Shipwright didn’t see her arrive, but Icecaller is prowling the field, ashen-faced and grim, cursing and calling out to her people as she works. She knows them all by name now, thanks to Ship. She stalks the camp, drags them back from sleep, from the cold ground, foul-mouthed and grumbling. There’s a change in her, a spark of life back in her eyes, but not sitting quite right, like an unturned gear in a millwheel. Still, she sets fires with brutal, rapid efficiency, and settles the injured close to the flames with care, as she talks to them, quiet and firm.
A few are almost beyond saving, despite the shelters she builds, despite Shipwright’s skilled hands. For those ones, Shroudweaver takes his time. Sets his eye on the faint glimmer of their loose-looped souls and stitches them tight to aching, groaning bone with strong silver thread. As he works, his mind flits back to the hold of the ship so many months ago, to the clean, open face of a dead West Tide boy, teeth straight and proud in his head.
He loses not a one.
84
a congregation moves out onto the moss
pale feet on the Green
mist lifts the skin of the world
we wait for the pull of black water
Days pass. There’s not much point in marking them, one by one. They accumulate organically, like rings on a tree, or salt on a shell. There are always times when smaller moments slip away beneath larger patterns. Shipwright finds it enjoyable, in a way. Time marches on, they march south with it, and Hesper draws closer. With Crowkisser gone, there’s an abdication of worry, of responsibility. She only has one strange, dangerous girl to keep an eye on now, and Icecaller has the decency to feed herself and keep herself busy most days. There’s still plenty to do, even with the grey crowds of Astic shucked off, a group this size takes work to feed. Once fed, they shit, fight, wander. Tempers fray and emotions are strung like wire. It’s not surprising, with no time for them to grieve, but wearying for all that. She feels like she’s picked up a guddle of quarrelling babes and been left to drag them overland to a city that likely doesn’t want them.
Land – that’s the other problem. She misses the sea with a pang like bared teeth in a keen wind. A sense of loss that burns down to a dull ache in the nights and flares again with each freshening breath of air, each outrider’s shout that steals from a sailor’s tones. She misses the ship, the feel of its deck under her feet, that cant and buck. The land here feels aggressively static. Farmer’s fields, turned by plough, hardened by frost and now soaked by rain. Home to birds that squat amid half-drowned stalks like marsh-wives, fluffing their feathers and preening the damp from their bones. Midland birds, long-legged and dappled, the brightfeathers at their throat and neck flashing like signallers as they ee-whit across the fields.
Shipwright spears a few with wet, regretful thumps, sullying breasts with blood, ruddying the water of the fields. They cook up well enough, though their long necks are full of seed, packed with the hard work of farmers, mixed with the occasional fragment of coin and clay and bone to help them digest their hauls. She’s fond of them, these ungainly birds. If she closes her eyes, their high preening call could be flitting over the morning waves, or skirting the deck on a twilight watch with the lamps just rising to flame.
She was far from the sea. The land hardened here, nearer to Hesper, the Midlands freeholders resurrecting their old forts as news from the north slid southward. Self-sufficient folk in the Midlands, taking their cues from the ruins of old Luss. Each homestead a fortress, their barn walls turned to outsiders, their thick wood gates bound with iron, and studded with charms and warnings dug from the bone-turned fields outside. They had fewer welcomes as they moved south, and each trade was made with cupped hands and reluctant fingers.
A scattering of little enclaves sealed against strangers and sky. Might it do them more good than it had done Luss; more good than in the stalking times. Shipwright shivered. She’d learnt too many tales of treachery with their roots in Midlands soil, heard all the gory details dripping from Arissa’s mouth, years ago, as they split a bottle of wine, and scared each other shitless by digging up the ghosts of their homes. Stories of knives, and dreamers, dark figures on the roads and worse in the ditches.
