He turns his body towards Shipwright. ‘She’ll be alright. I married that little gull-girl and she turned into the strongest, smartest woman you ever saw.’ His eyes flick back to the healing house, the door ajar, faint coils of scented smoke still coiling onto the baked clay of the street. ‘Your friend is powerful afflicted. We can’t change what she’s suffered, but we’ve restored what she lost on the road. A fierce spirit in her.’ He laughs, the sound boyish and light in his throat. ‘A firewater girl! A gull-witch in another life.’
Shipwright smiles despite herself. ‘I barely know her. I wish I did.’
His voice steadies, low and authoritative. ‘You will.’
She looks at him curiously. ‘What do they call you?’ she asks.
‘Saltseeker,’ he replies, with a soft, slow smile.
She smiles back. ‘Thank you, Saltseeker. I’m Shipwright. And I remember my debts.’
He grins. ‘We know well who you are. Memory as long as my father’s yardarm. Think you we were ordered to this work? No, Shipwright. Wevolunteered. Before I was Saltseeker, I was a sailor. There’s no debt here. Never could be. We remember what’s been done in our name. Remember the walls at Luss. Remember the south.’
Shipwright laughs wryly, keeping one eye on the pale figure steadily pulling its way up over rock, rope and gantry. ‘A pity you can’t forget this last venture. Not our finest hour.’
Saltseeker grimaces, takes a nutshell from a pocket, pops it between thumb and finger, ‘Finer than most.’ He pauses, chews rhythmically, stolidly. ‘You think we don’t see, but we do. Those of us in the know. Working with salt, spit and sea. You’ve shown it. Shown it to all of us. Plain as a rotted keel.’
Shipwright holds her hand out for a nut. He obliges. She pops, chews. ‘Shown you what?’
He laughs. ‘Don’t play a fool, ship-mender. Shown us all what Crowkisser’s capable of. What she’ll do when she thinks she’s right.’ He glances back at the city, at the refugees propping up the walls, weaving quietly through the streets. ‘What it’ll cost.’
‘We never intended this,’ Shipwright says. ‘We thought we could stop her.’ She picks bits of shell off her tongue. ‘Hethought he could stop her.’ She spits. ‘Even I didn’t think she’d go this far.’
Saltseeker’s eyebrows raise slowly and he holds her gaze for a long time. ‘No, but a silver lining. You’re pragmatic. All ship-menders are. Before you treat a wound you have to see the blood.’ His face grows grave. ‘You’ve shown us all the blood now. There’ll be a waking in the city.’
Shipwright opens her mouth to deny it. The sea air hangs between them, salted and empty.
He smiles sadly, points over her shoulder. ‘See? Here she come.My sturdy gull-girl.’ He pulls a robe and towel from his shoulder and starts towards the dripping woman, then stops to rest a hand on Shipwright’s shoulder. ‘We all pick up the dirt of the world, ship-mender.’ His grip tightens, wide face creasing into well-worn lines. ‘We can all be washed clean.’
She grasps his fingers, feels them tighten briefly, then slip from her grasp.
The pair link arms and walk away. One dry and wide as the land, the other still a wet strand slipped from the grasp of a scouring sea.
Shipwright winces. The sun is fierce on her head, edged with the last taste of summer. She bends for a moment. Watches the waters push against the cliff, watches the last twist of strange light sink into the ocean. Straightens, shrugs, turns her back on the sea and heads towards the twin grey towers.
89
The horror is not in the fire. The horror is in the ash. Help me. For it stains, it stains.
—Confession three, execution writ, Mirth
‘I know where my loyalties lie.’ Ropecharmer waits by the gangplank, hands braiding a coil of thick hemp which sits like a fat snake atop a barrel.
They’ve been back in Hesper three days now. The ship lies quiescent in the harbour, lifted on the evening tide, humming with power.
Coglifter chucks his chin. ‘Good boy. Now, give me your words.’
He raises an eyebrow. ‘Seriously?’
She leans against a barrel. ‘I didn’t get old by being kind, kid.’
He rolls his eyes. ‘Keep your hand upon the tiller.’
She smiles. ‘And your eye upon the sail.’ Coglifter knocks her pipe against the heel of her boot. ‘You’re a pretty boy, Rope. If I was half a span younger.’ She chews her lip. Looks at him with goose-grey eyes.
Ropecharmer grins, winces as a hawser above squeals like a stuck steel pig. ‘I couldn’t handle you Cog.’ He tucks the wax-paper bundle she’s given him into the crook of his arm. It’s an awkward shape, the contents sloshing inside their wrapped clay shell.
Coglifter nods, pulls at an irksome chin hair. ‘A truth. A pity, but a truth.’ She steps forwards, places a hand on the back of his head, her fingers like knots through his short-cropped hair. Her brow hard against his, the sharp chemical scent of her against his skin and the urgent twist of her lips a breath from his own. ‘Youca’ canny, boy. Dear you are to me. Don’t think it doesn’t twist my guts to send you down this road.’
