Arissa pats his arm. ‘Oh cheer up, Shroud. You’ll love what I’ve done with the place. By which I mean, absolutely nothing.’
‘Might want to cut yourself a little slack on that front,’ he murmurs.
Arissa shoots him a look. ‘Nonsense. I’m all for a good rest but three years is just excessive.’ Her tone light, but her smile a little strained.
Shipwright reaches for her hand. ‘Sorry to drop all this at yourdoor, Riss,’ she says, glancing back at the milling refugees.
Arissa tuts. ‘Nonsense. Where else would you bring them? And besides,’ she says, her smile sharpening to a point. ‘Anything I can do to rattle that crowslicked bitch.’
Shroudweaver’s eyes dart sideways, before he takes a long, slow breath. ‘Riss. I need you to know. I tried. I tried so hard to undo what happened.’
She stops him short. ‘Not now, Shroud. Give me a moment. Out from under all that. Please.’ Her voice is still fragile from years of disuse.
He squeezes her shoulder, pretends not to notice the shaking. ‘Of course.’
Shipwright puts an arm around Arissa’s waist. ‘I like this new husky drawl, Riss. How’s Declan taking it?’
Arissa’s face lightens, seeming to come back into focus. ‘He never could handle me.’
‘My ears are burning.’ Fallon’s voice is light with laughter as he leads the charger across the cobbles, reaching a hand down.
Arissa springs up next to her husband, smiles down at Ship. ‘Are you coming back to the Towers with us?’
Shipwright shakes her head. ‘No, we have to see the survivors home first.’
Arissa nods. ‘I’d expect no less.’ She moves to put her heels to the stirrups, then stops and catches Shipwright’s gaze again. ‘We’ll keep the lamps lit for you, Shipwright.’
The crowd parts around her horse like starlings.
Shipwright watches the pair sway into the distance, then mounts up again, trying to ignore the ache in her thighs, the other stranger ache in her heart.
Behind her, the strong arms of Hesper stretch out to enfold the sea. Darkness slinks down from the hills and in the streets above the cold canals, one by one, the lights of evening kindle.
88
Arcs of white stone, shadowed courtyards. The smell of flowers. Jasmine melting in the sallow heat. Laughter pooling in patios. Salt climbing the walls toward evening.
—On Arrival in Hesper, Hallowfeather
The refugees are taken in with the same haphazard efficiency which colours everything in Hesper. Houses are opened, there are tables, chairs, and eventually beds.
The city barely stretches. Shipwright is unsurprised. Long ago, the people that used to move in and out of the port’s great loops were numberless. Nowadays, Hesper is hollow. The ghosts of the men and women who burnt in the south have been left there, and the few that returned don’t mind the company. There are beds to spare. The people of Thell sink into them like stones into a lake, they are swallowed and fall silent. Even Icecaller eventually rests, setting her shield and spear down. Exhaustion comes upon her all at once, taking the legs from under her. There have been too many miles and not enough sleep. Hesper’s cutters take care of her, straightening cramping muscles, dripping water into her drop by drop, sweetened with sugar and brightened with wine. Whatever nests in her blood doesn’t seem to help. Or perhaps Crowkisser’s ministrations had their limits.
Two days, they work at her. Two days Shipwright waits for news like a restless dog, the doors closed and the air thick with the scent of Burner’s bush. On the third day, the woman treating Ice emerges, ashen faced, eyes widened to whiteness. She brushes past Shipwright and stops at the high seawall. Methodically, she removes her clothes, her shoes, her movements studied, careful. Shipwright watches the shape of her limbs, but doesn’t understandtheir meaning – at least, not until something more familiar strikes the back of her seafarer’s skull, memories of pearl divers on the shore’s edge. Panic shifts her, her legs a beat ahead of her brain, but still not fast enough. She runs, reaches the wall in time to see the woman plunge, straight and white as a seabird, down into the crashing waves hundreds of feet below. A shout tears loose from Shipwright’s lungs and her hands clench the white stone of the wall. Far below, the water swirls, bubbles and coughs forth a pale stretch of tangled limbs that strikes out for shore.
‘Only the sea can wash her clean now.’
Shipwright starts at the voice.
The middle-aged man next to her nods in greeting as he digs beneath thick nails, scratching a jaw clouded with stubble, loosened by the wax and wane of starvation.
‘She’ll be alright?’ Shipwright asks.
His face softens. ‘She was a gull-girl, back in the day. Never seen one swim so fast and deep.’
They are both quiet for a moment, watching the woman’s pale, dark haired shape cut through the rising waves and haul up onto the spar-strewn rocks. Something lingers in the water behind her, a strange play of sunlight that fizzes and fades into the depths.
‘A city of birds we were. Pretty little gulls.’ He glances back at the Grey Towers. ‘Falcons. Mayhap falcons again the way it’s going.’ His soft, round hands make talons. ‘Used to dive right into the deep water. Pull fish up, bright as a smiling eye, huge, huge.’ His voice quietens again. ‘Don’t see them so much no more.’
