She stares at him.
‘That isn’t?’
He grins, ‘I got the taste for it a while back, on the voyage down.’
He leans on the rail and pours, passes her a cup. Turns to the sea, and raises it.
‘To theVolante.’
She mirrors him, ‘TheVolante. Those shabby bastards. The sea’s too good for them.’
5
every map different
every river returning to
the same source
A few hours later and theVolante’s unlucky crew are just more bodies in their wake. Shroudweaver sucks on hard tack and looks at Shipwright with narrowed eyes as she buffs the scratches out of her thick deck-boots. Her broad lips curl as she spits and polishes, and he falls in love again. Almost twenty years now. Always the same motions when she’s worried. Boots polished and socks darned. Small repairs. Always the same motions. Probably the same boots, come to think of it.
He waves the biscuit pointedly. ‘Old habits, huh?’
She nods, tongue on teeth.
He grins. ‘So, what’s the plan?’
There’s barely a beat before she replies. ‘Two more days up the coast to Hesper. We see what’s left of their fleet, we talk to Fallon and we take on who we can. Get the civilians up the coast some before Crowkisser comes to stir up trouble. She’ll head for Hesper next.’
Shroudweaver frowns, tips his head. ‘And then?’
Shipwright snorts, slips thick grey socks on her broad feet and buckles up. ‘Then we find out if anyone else is as pissed off as we are, and we start to dream up some really inventive ways to fuck her shit up.’ When Shroudweaver laughs it’s dry as sand swilling around a glass.
‘Poetry,’ he says. ‘Pure poetry. Maybe just a hair short on ideas though.’
She sets the boot down, fixes him with a look. ‘We have thirteen fresh bodies in the hold. I’m a little light on ideas.’
He picks sand out from between his toes. ‘Me too. Well, I have one or two, but it depends on Fallon. And I don’t know if he can be depended on.’
She watches him. ‘That’s a little … off-putting.’
He flicks with a nail. ‘Sorry. Sandals.’
She shakes her head despairingly. ‘It’s just as well you’re cute. Do you think Fallon’ll be happy to see us?’
Shroudweaver shrugs and looks out to the coast. ‘I think so. We’re all he has left at this point, since the north shut its gates. Since Riss, and then Quickfish.’
She follows his gaze to where white-bellied birds wheel around the headland. ‘Time was we would have run north first. We had that heroic glow about us. A bit of cred to lean on.’
He snorts, but she continues. ‘Now, I wouldn’t set foot up there without someone watching my back. Too much god-stink clinging to our boots. Then after the fleet burnt, after we lost the ships, after the south …’
‘Hard to hold your head high’, he finishes
‘Hard to hold your head high.’
She moves closer to him, undoes a strap, starts rubbing the blood back into his feet.
‘I really thought it would work, you know? Time was, I thought there was nothing the three of us couldn’t achieve.’
