‘They ate him.’
36
what the sea brings sits in the bone
what the land brings sleeps in the soul
—Proverbs of the Burning Forest, Heartshamer
Those words hang in Shroudweaver’s head for the rest of the day. He can’t quite shake them loose. He takes to the streets for a while, trying to drown them in noise. He walks the loops of the city, through the bustling apartments of Mirestem, their windows pulled up like a widow raising her skirts, then higher, into the broader curves of Bitterhaven, where the rock that holds the Grey Towers pushes above the city, forest spilling down its flanks, cut into for parks and estates. Half of them are empty now, the ghost homes of Hesper’s old captain-gentry. Most of them dead, or gone, moved on to other cities, on other continents. Writing this one off as a dead loss. Or just dodging the spectres of their vanished friends around every corner.
Shroudweaver would give a lot to see a few old ghosts these days. He used to dream about getting rich enough to buy one of those cliffside mansions, up high on one of the sea-facing hills, where the balconies caught the sun, and the hot sap smell of the pines would rise in the evening. Declan had promised to gift him one, a hundred times over, after the war. Somewhere for him to sit and grow old and stiff with Shipwright, for them to recline in chairs that would soften to the shape of their bodies and bleach from the sun off the sea.
Those dreams had died a long time ago, hollowed-out like those great mansions, as desiccated as the soil that blew from the roots of the trees and swept in muddy curls down East Tide towards Astic.
Yet even so, he still felt a pang in his heart when he looked at them.
They’d been standing on the balcony of one of those great mansions when the news about Luss first came. He had forgotten who the owner was; that memory had faded along with their stolen name. But he did remember standing between the great pillars, lined with some stone that caught the brazier’s light, leaning into a wind that swirled scented herbs off into the greater dark of the ocean, which even then was alive with the bobbing watch-lights of ships flying back and forth.
That was before he’d even met Shipwright, as inconceivable as that seemed now. Just a naïve young Shroudweaver, fresh out of the Aestering. Kitted out and sent north to Hesper on his first placement, to study there, ostensibly to learn the rules of the city, their strange treatment of the dead in their shrines of clear glass. In reality, there to make friends among the great and good, most particularly the Fallons, but also the city’s hosts, those strange god-touched prophets who lived dual lives, uneasy with their symbiotes, roaming the streets in a welter of odd configurations.
Nowhere bred hosts like Hesper, and no one ruled a city like the Fallons. The Aestering had wanted a piece of both, and as the youngest and brightest of his year, he was a natural choice as both diplomat and confidante. Or alternately, as observer and spy. Shroudweavers had always been political pieces. Too powerful an institution to be entirely unaffiliated, the Aestering was smart enough to keep a toe in every camp, a finger in every pie. With each shroudweaver’s magic bound so inextricably to his own body, they became agents almost impossible to co-opt or subvert.
Nowadays, with all the shroudweavers gone but one, that balance was ruined. He almost missed it. Nowadays, there was just him. For good or ill, and he felt like he was losing the ability to tell which.
Back then, twenty years ago, with the trees rustling gently on the darkened hills and the spice of the braziers mixing with the wine in his head, he’d been glad to be part of the web.
When the news first came that he’d be headed out of the cityon a diplomatic assignment, he hadn’t known how to take it. He’d sipped wine out of a crystal glass, and watched as Arissa Fallon outlined the scope of his mission. North, on a specially sequestered ship, to discover what had befallen the city of Luss and, if possible, to find out whether this had anything to do with the strange and mysterious Empire filling the outriders’ tales.
Growing from the heart of a mountain she’d said, but Shroudweaver already knew of the Empire before it crossed Arissa’s lips in the evening light. The Empire of the Quiet Men, some called it, others the Stilled Mountain. He preferred its most prosaic title, the one that had first caught his interest. The one, he suspected, that might have motivated the Aestering’s sending him here. The Empire of the Dead.
He’d kept that to himself as Arissa and he had talked. Nibbled on canapés of some large insect, dried and spiced, crunching a little unnervingly. He’d choked at one point, utterly failing to arrest it with an overlarge draught of wine. Right at the moment that Arissa had gestured to the ship’s captain who would take him north.
When he’d first set eyes on Shipwright, he could barely breathe. His mouth a mess of legs and half-swallowed wine. She’d always pretended she didn’t remember him like that, but the laughter in her eyes gave it away every time.
He remembered her exactly as she had been. Leaning awkwardly against the balcony, a glass clutched deathly in one hand, trying to watch the guests move and mingle at the party, more often letting her eyes fall back to the sea.
Always outside the circle of light.
His gaze held on her for a long time, a strange anticipation in his heart. Half the soft heat of the wine stealing through his body, half the dancing shadows from the suspended flames. The sound of the sea just beyond, pushing rhythmically up against the shore. Her head had raised, her eyes caught his, and she had held him there for a span, until Arissa’s voice buzzed back into his consciousness.
‘She’s incredible, Shroudweaver.’
Odd how his brain recast it all. Letting Arissa’s name swim in his head, even though it remained locked behind his teeth, twenty years later. His own name scoured cleaner still, not even the shadow of it on his mind. Not a ghost of it in Arissa’s remembered words. Even in memory, he could see her lips move in the lee of the pillars. They didn’t make the shape of his old name. In fact, it was as if they never had.
‘Just incredible,’ she’d continued. Her voice as clipped and precise as always, like hooves on granite, but softened ever so slightly by the wine.
‘I’d heard of her before she arrived of course. No one like that could escape us for long. The agents I have … understated the case though. When she arrived at the docks’ – she took his arm in an uncharacteristically close gesture – ‘you would not have believed, Shroud. Come on, let me introduce you.’
He’d been steered across the intervening space with efficiency, around waiters and entertainers, the distant raucous howl of Fallon’s laugh spilling out over the terrace. Shipwright had watched him arrive, eyes widening in faint horror, but before anything could be done, he was standing in front of her.
Arissa had continued, mercilessly. ‘Shipwright, this is Shroudweaver, of the southern Aestering. Up to study the glass archive, and to make some friends. He is, I understand, at the very pinnacle of his profession. He will be accompanying you north.’
She’d nudged Shroudweaver forwards with a hand in the small of his back and brought Shipwright close in the same moment. ‘Shroudweaver, this is Shipwright. She has recently arrived from the east and entered our service. She has the most incredible ship.’ Arissa stopped, caught herself, smiled. ‘And she is proving, day on day, to be a most interesting young lady.’
A dazzling smile flashed at Shipwright, a blush rising on her cheeks.
‘I’ll leave you both to get acquainted,’ she’d said, and before either one could object, had swirled back into the light of the party.
