12

A Fire in the Night

“Ship of the dead, ey?” Coult was laughing into the night mist wreathing Maiden’s Bounty. “Ship of the dead,” he said again and wandered away down the long deck to be lost in the foggy darkness.

Joron was not in quite the same jovial mood; in fact, he had never in his life been so nervous. It was not that he headed toward a desperate attack on a wildly superior force, it was not that he feared for his life and limb, neither was it that – horribly – Meas’s idea to make Maiden’s Bounty appear to have a full crew was to take the corpses of those who had been his cargo and tie them on all over the ship – in the rigging, at the rails, by the steering oar. A hundred of the dead feigning life in a last act of vengeance. A funeral pyre.

No, it was none of this. It was the firepots, the barrels of hagspit that were dotted about the old brownbone, waiting for the touch to set them alight. Fire was every deckchilder’s nightmare and hagspit fire the worst of it – once it caught in a ship’s boneglue nothing could put it out. Even those old and seasoned hands that had volunteered to come were jittery about it. They swaggered up and down the deck with an exaggerated nonchalance, but it was not right and real, that bravado, and that communicated itself to Joron, who felt it as if through the slate of the deck and the old bones of the ship.

The corpses did not help, though.

As he walked up and down the deck in the mist that had gathered as Skearith’s Blind Eye rose he would see figures before him and raise his voice to greet them, for there is little more comforting in the cold and the dark and mist than a human voice. But he would be met by a silent, leering corpse roped to the rail and animated only by the rocking of the waves. So he had stopped talking, and now the Maiden’s Bounty made his way to Safeharbour in a pillowy bubble of silence.

“Not want!”

Or almost silence.

The gullaime did not observe silence, nor had its wrath at the windshorn following it around lessened any. Both continued their dance – the shrieking, the leaping away, the head bobbing, the subservient return, and this going round and round and round, as eternal as the seasons.

“Joron!” shouted Coult. “Will you stop your bird making its infernal noise. If it blares so when we approach Safeharbour our trip will be a short one.”

So Joron tracked the noise of the windtalker, finding it gently pecking at a barrel of hagspit and he had to restrain himself, then, from shouting.

“Gullaime,” he said, voice as stiff as his posture, “I must ask you not to touch that less you wish to send us all to the Hag in flames.”

“Fire?” It bobbed its head twice at the barrel. “Smells bad.”

“Yes it does, and yes, it is fire. We will send this ship into Safeharbour in flames, and hopefully set the attackers alight.”

The gullaime nodded thoughtfully. “Set windshorn alight.”

“No, Gullaime. And you must try not to squawk at the windshorn so while we are on this ship.”

“No squawk. Hate.”

“You must still try. All aboard this ship must appear normal, and the voice of a gullaime will alert the guards at Safeharbour that it is not so. Please do this thing for me.”

“Not want,” it said quietly.

“I know, but I ask you this thing.”

“Sing later?”

“Ey, we will sing later.” How could he not? He heard music everywhere. Even now a song, a strange and beautiful tune, was rising within him as they approached land and something in him longed to let it loose. The gullaime preened the feathers around its wingclaws.

“Will quiet.” Then it span on the spot, hissed at the windshorn behind it and scuttled off. Joron headed down the ship, toward the rump and through the stink of death that twisted through the mist. The moist air took on ghostly forms, as if the spirits of the wronged flew with them.

At the steering oar he found Anzir and Farys. Of all those on the boat he considered Farys the bravest; she had been scarred by fire in the belly of a ship and the marks of it on her face were clear for all to see. Fire still terrified her, she would do almost anything to avoid the galleys of Tide Child where a fire always burned for the cook, and yet she had volunteered for this. Because he had, and she served him.

“Land rising!” came the call from above. He imagined being the topboy, sat above the mist – it must be like flying across the clouds, like being Skearith itself as it opened the Golden Door and flew into the archipelago from beyond the wall of storms.

“Not long now, D’keeper,” said Farys quietly.

“You can leave on the flukeboat with the rest, Farys,” he said. “There will be no shame in it, you do not need to stay as part of the skeleton crew. Join up with the flotilla on the far side of the island.” The boat creaked and Joron found it hard not to imagine this sound, as with every other creak and crack, to be the sounds of the dead moving, testing the ropes that held them in place as if hoping to escape the fire that was sure to consume them.

“I go where you go, D’keeper,” she said, and behind her Anzir nodded. “Even if it be into the fire.” And something in Joron’s heart cracked at that simple belief in him. How could she not see that he lived his life scared and unsure?

“Deckkeeper.” Shipwife Coult appeared from the mist. “When we have turned for Safeharbour I would have you ensure all those who are meant to be leaving this tub do leave it. You girl,” he said, turning to Farys, “the Deckkeeper clearly trusts you, so you can light the fires. Start below on my order.” Farys, usually so quick to answer an order, only stared at Joron, as still as any of the dead in that moment.

“Shipwife Coult,” Joron said, “I would sooner give that job to Anzir and have Farys on the steering oar.”

“She seems slight for such a job, takes muscle.” He glanced at Anzir, huge where she stood. “But you know your people so you assign them as is best. I am going up the spine to join the topboy. Be ready for my shout and hope our enemies are complacent. If they are not and send out a boneship to investigate us we are lost before we start.” With that he walked down the deck into the mist to vanish up the mainspine.

They flew on, a gentle breeze filling wings hidden by mist, pushing the boat of corpses and jittery women and men forward. Joron felt the tension growing with each creak of the ship. In his mind he saw a boneship, pristine white, pulling up its staystone and unfurling wings to intercept them. A shipwife, Joron’s sword at his side, giving the orders to untruss the gallowbows. The smile on that shipwife’s face upon realising that this brownbone was an interloper. The merciless onslaught as the boneship stood off, launching volley after volley of bolts into the defenceless brownbone.

“Do you think they’ll come see about us, D’keeper?” said Farys from the steering oar.

“No, Farys,” he said, coughed, cleared his throat. “Meas says they are greedy and will simply wait for us to fly into their trap.”

“If the shipwife says that,” said Farys, “then that is what it will be.” Somehow, her utter acceptance of Meas’s plan calmed him.

“When the fires start, Farys,” he said, “you are to ensure our gullaime is first off this tub, you understand? Listen to none of its nonsense, get it in the boat and if nothing else get it back to Meas safe.”

“As you say, D’keeper,” she said, and he was gladdened slightly to know that, whatever happened, Farys at least would escape the fires they would bring into being.

“Steer us a little to landward,” came the shout from above. Farys leaned on the steering oar and he added his own strength to hers. “Enough! Hold this course.” Together they brought the steering oar to for’ard and then Farys made a quick job of lashing it straight. Coult came striding out of the mist.

“Meas was right, they’ve seen us but they either think we’re their own boat returning or they’re greedy enough to let us come in and presume to take us then.”

“They have sent no one out? I would expect at least a curious flukeboat.”

“Ey,” said Coult, “I would do that, but they may worry that in this mist we will simply fly right over it, and we would, but not for the reasons they think.” He wiped a gnarled hand down his face. “Get those off this boat that are not staying for the fire. My girls and boys staying are Tenf, Hallisy – he’s a big one – Colfy, Duny and Garent. They’ll all fight like the Hag is sat on their shoulders and the Maiden’s promised them a ride. You know yours that are staying, so get the rest off. Then gather all your people here for a quick speech and we’ll get your gullaime working, coast in on a gentle breeze. I’ll stand by the steering oar for the rest of the way.”

Joron nodded and did the job of gathering up the women and men who had crewed the ship this far and were now setting rigging, winding ropes and doing the myriad tasks they would do on any ship. Then he saw them quietly over the side with many whispered well-wishes of “Good luck, D’keeper,” “Mother hold you, D’keeper,” and “Hag take your enemies, D’keeper.”

That done, he returned to the rump where Coult had gathered those who remained, ten in all, including Joron and Coult. The gullaime and its shadow hovered behind them, waiting to be given orders. Coult spoke.

“My deckchilder will know I’m not one for speeches, and most on this ship wouldn’t appreciate it.” He nodded at the watching corpses. “But I’ll not lie about the danger we go into. Few, if any of us, will see the dawn, so hear me now. Get off this ship before it burns, I’ll wait around for none. When you meet the enemy, and you will, sell your life dearly. Remember the fallen.”

Those who had come with Coult echoed him: “Remember the fallen,” they said.

“Good, now, Joron here will have his gullaime take us in. You go splash paint around or do whatever will make you feel good about yourselves, then we’ve some of the Hag-cursed to kill out there, so make sure your curnows are sharp.”

That was it, the entire speech. Joron returned from there to the rump of the deck and cut away the rope, placing a callused hand on the steering oar, Farys by his side.

“Gullaime,” said Joron, “give us enough of a breeze to keep this course and this speed.”

“Wind,” said the gullaime. It crouched on the deck and brought into being whatever power it was that caused the winds to flow at its command. Joron felt pain in his ears as the air pressure changed, that strange woolly feeling in his mind as he heard echoes of the ancient songs he experienced whenever they took the gullaime to charge at a spire. At the same time it was as if heat washed across him; he felt a momentary warmth before the cold air once more bit at the end of his nose. He felt the world pause, felt a million tonnes of water run across his skin, felt himself entombed within a darkness and then with a pop he was sure must be audible to all around him the feeling vanished.

“Deckkeeper,” said Coult quietly, “go up the spine. The mist is holding and I would have someone in the topspines to guide me in and set me on a path to collide with that four-ribber they have. The other ships are tied alongside it right in the centre of the harbour. Careless that is, they think themselves safe here. The fires will require at least a tenth of a sandturn to truly bite, so when you judge we should light this Hag-cursed tub shout down ‘ware your speed’ and I will know to act.”

“And what if I wish you to ware your speed?”

Coult grinned at him.

“I would not anyway. We want to smash into them with as much speed as possible.” He grinned into the smothering mist. “We will bring them all down in flames.”

“Very well,” said Joron. Then he was gone from the deck, climbing the mainspine to the topboy’s nest to become the herald of a chaos yet to come.

Somewhere before him the fog ended, to be replaced by the smoke from burning Safeharbour, but Joron could not pick out where one replaced the other in the swirling cloud. Smudgy lines of red, embers still glowing where a town had once stood, told him where the land was. Further out, a diffuse carpet of soft blue light, ship’s corpselights lost in the fug. Above that he saw the topboys of the boneships in harbour, the four-ribber tallest, a glowing wanelight at the point of its central spine. Either side the two-ribbers, their lights slightly lower. Before them another light, closer now, glowing in the mist. Atop one of the pier towers – it must have been rebuilt to act as a watchtower. Joron hoped it did not hold a great gallowbow, doubted there had been time to build something strong enough to hold one. The four lights made a triangle, the ship lights the base, the tower the point and it seemed to Joron they pointed at him, as if to remind him of his duty. The harbour beyond those lights he knew well, knew that once through the two piers their ship must swing to landward to bring it on its target. Knew he must concentrate on that.

“Ho! Brownbone,” the call came from the tower as they approached.

A figure resolving in the mist, from dark blob to crouching shape. Was she dark-skinned like himself? Always good for the night watch, us Long Islanders – his father’s voice, chuckling as he said it.

“You’re back early. Seven flags a-flying, ey?” The woman’s voice had no echo, the mist ate it, and for a moment it felt to Joron that they were the only two alive in the world. “I said, seven flags a-flying,” she shouted again and Joron knew there must be some agreed reply. Of course there was. And, of course, he did not know it. He loosened the knots holding one of the small crossbows within his jacket and pressed a bolt into the weapon. Placed the point of his boot through the cocking stirrup and pulled back the cord. Then used his arm as a rest for the weapon, sighting along the fletching of the bolt at the figure in the tower. “Ho! Brownbone,” came the shout again. Could he hear it in that voice? The oily taint of a growing suspicion?

The tower gliding nearer, how strange this was in the mist – it dampened the sound of water running along the hull and the sound of the deckchilder below. He and the tower guard moved through the air like Skearith’s Bones in the sky, inexorably coming into each other’s orbit. He could make out the woman’s clothes now. She was wrapped in a stinker, sat in a little nest with a small brazier – it was that which provided light, a glow on her chest. A perfect target in the lonely night.

“Seven flags indeed,” said Joron to himself as he watched the figure slide into his aim, applied pressure to the trigger and felt the kick of the weapon’s release. Watched the guard jerk. Saw them open their mouth and in his head he was wishing fervently, Be dead, be dead, be dead. And then the lookout slumped, and luck was with Joron for they did not fall from the tower or slump forward into their fire, and the Maiden’s Bounty moved on through the entrance of the harbour. Joron counted to five as he glided through the mist before passing his words down the spine.

“Bring us to landward,” and the ship came about. No further instruction was needed: all that had visited Safeharbour knew the place. He felt the Maiden’s Bounty straighten. The topboys of the three boneships were pointing at him. He raised his voice.

“Ware your speed!” And these words did echo, some quality of the air about them had changed. It was no longer the clean, damp scent of sea mist. Now it was the smell of sewage and rotting rubbish that was normal to a harbour – and the smell of charred earth and flesh, which was not. It was clear from the reaction of the topboys in those other ships Joron could see that they had realised something was wrong. Below him he saw the glow of torches as the deckchilder hurried to light the hagspit on the decks, and he knew Anzir did the same unseen in the places below, where rags soaked in hagspit had been gathered.

One of the topboys stood. “Treachery!” came a shout from the fug before them and a crossbow bolt split the air above Joron’s head. Time to leave. Down and down he went, spiralling around the mainspine, not taking the direct route for fear of some clever thinker with a crossbow who aimed at where a deckchilder climbing down a spine should be. Relief when his boots hit the cracked slate deck and the smell of burning hagspit filled his nose. The Maiden’s Bounty was moving at a rate of stones now. To seaward Farys was chaperoning the gullaime and the windshorn over the side and into the flukeboat. He could hear Coult shouting somewhere, though not see him as billowing smoke was pouring from the underdecks.

“Get up there, you slatelayers! Onto the maindeck! I need your curnows on the land, not your bodies burned at sea.”

Two deckchilder appeared from the smoke, coughing and spluttering, followed by Coult. From the rear of the ship Anzir and the rest of the crew came running toward the flukeboat while around them the corpse crew began to burn, slack mouths silently screaming.

With a cough so loud he thought a keyshan must have surfaced by him, something in the beak of the ship exploded, knocking Joron and everyone else flat, covering them with a blanket of heat. When he opened his eyes he saw a sheet of flame, the entire for’ard spine and its wings alight, burning bright as Skearith’s Eye, making women and men into strange beasts, their movements jerking in the twisting, living firelight. Making corpses dance and twitch. With the fire raging he could see more of Safeharbour, see the three ships, see that Maiden’s Bounty would make contact right between the two-ribber nearest the dock wall and the four-ribber. There was panic on those ships, women and men with axes laying into mooring ropes. Then Coult shouted, “Brace, you fools!” and Joron saw no more.

The Maiden’s Bounty’s journey ended with a crash that threw those only just recovering their footing from the explosion back to the deck. The air filled with the ripping and creaking and cracking of splintering bones. And in the crackle of fire he was sure he heard the gleeful cackle of the dead. The for’ard mast, all aflame, came down on the four ribber, spreading the fire across its deck and, by some fortune, the impact sent a flaming barrel of hagspit flying into the air to smash against the side of the two-ribber. Fire ran across the unfortunate vessel, eating into the spiked bone of its hull.

“Off!” shouted Coult. “Get off this ship, he’s already goin’ down!” And it was – another horrendous groan from the frame and the beak of the ship jerked, the deck slanted and one of their number, Tossick off Tide Child, slipping and rolling down the deck, shouting and screaming for help, only to be lost in the furnace that the water to seaward had become, hagspit flames an orange glow beneath the water. Joron stared after him. “Hag has him now,” shouted Coult, as the sound of roaring, crackling flame tried to steal his voice, eager as any wind. “Get to the boat.” He ran forward, pushing Joron on. The deck tipped further. The air full of screams.

Then Joron was over the side. Blessedly cool in the flukeboat, as the Maiden’s Bounty’s hull protected him from the worst of the heat. He tried not to think about the terror, the fear that must be running rampant on those burning ships. Then, in a panic himself he checked for Farys, found her at the front of the flukeboat already at her station, the gullaime and windshorn crouched below her. “Hag take you all,” Coult was still shouting, “grab an oar, we’ll go round the back of the Bounty and head for land.”

“Shipwife,” said a woman near the front of the boat, “they’ll be less likely to search for us at the other side of the harbour.”

“And we’ll be more likely to run into the second two-ribber, you fool, I saw no sign of it burning. Now row! Row for your lives!” And Joron had an oar in his hands, was pulling for all he was worth, the sweat on his skin no longer the cloying sweat of heat and fear, now the cleaner sweat of physical work.

He felt the rocking of the flukeboat as someone moved up it and concentrated on his oar, not the screams, not the smell of hagspit or rich scent of burning flesh that both revolted him and made his mouth water at the thought of fresh meat. He was almost surprised when Coult spoke into his ear.

“Right, Meas’s boy, you’ll have to command from here.”

“Me?” he said, almost losing the rhythm of the oar stroke, “why me?”

“Listen to my voice, boy,” he said. And Joron waited for him to finish the sentence before realising what he meant. Of course, Coult was a Gaunt Islander, from the other side of Skearith’s Spine. Joron had spent so long under Meas’s service that what had once been unthinkable, to work with the Hundred Isles’ ancestral enemies, he now gave no thought.

“Of course,” he said, and started to stand.

“They’d be on us the minute I spoke.”

“I thought you liked a fight,” said Joron, and the smile fell from Coult’s face.

“Ey,” he said, then leaned in close, “but I like to get my girls and boys home more.” A flash of teeth. “Tell no one, they’ll think I’ve gone soft.”

“Do you have a plan, Coult?”

The old Shipwife nodded. “We get to the Grand Bothy, we free any remaining townspeople, meet up with our people, then get out.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“Ey boy, most things are, till others try and ruin it. That’s when problems start. Now give me that oar and get to the front of the boat where the shipwife would stand.”

He passed the oar across and made his wobbly way down the boat, stepping around the gullaime and windshorn who were hunkered down in the bottom of the hull, not moving, not even seeming to notice him. It was if they were in some sort of trance. He glanced to the side, and like a ghost he saw a white shape moving through the smoke and mist – the second two-ribber making its way out of the harbour. Fires burned on the rear of the ship but they were small. Coult was right, it had escaped the inferno engulfing the other two ships. He watched as it passed, imagined the frantic activity on board and the panic as fire took hold of the other ships. He commended the shipwife who, from the rate the small fires aboard were being extinguished, must have kept large quantities of sand on deck for just such an occurrence. Meas would approve of such an officer. Then the ship was gone, gliding into the mist and smoke and Joron turned to the front, seeing the wharves of the harbour – not stone, not yet, and now never to be, built from varisk and gion for the time being until there was opportunity to build them properly. Now the unfinished structures were full of women and men, some staring at the two burning ships, the hagspit melting the ships’ bones, making a puddle of fire around them that consumed a flukeboat desperately trying to make its escape from the burning two-ribber.

As they approached the wharf he saw an officer, a deckkeeper with his curnow out and his one-tailed hat in his hand. He was approaching where they aimed the beak of their flukeboat, shouting, but Joron could hear nothing but the roar of fire. Ash rained down, black flakes that fluttered like corpsebirds, and he saw deckchilder frantically scratching them from their heads in case they contained hagspit and set them to burning.

“You . . . whe . . . ?” yelled the deckkeeper.

“I cannot hear!” shouted Joron.

The man leaned over as the boat came up against the harbour edge. “You, where are you from?”

Hag save him, he did not know the names of those ships in the harbour. Words failed him for a moment, then he stepped back and pulled up the windshorn – not the gullaime, as he was never entirely sure how the gullaime would react. But he knew the windshorn would simply do as he asked.

“We managed to get off with these two gullaime,” he shouted. “Will someone catch a rope for us afore we burn too?” The edge of panic in his voice was real, but not through fear of fire. For fear of being discovered.

There was a moment when he thought the deckkeeper may question him further, and if he did then he knew they would never mount the wharf, they would die here under the crossbows he could see some of the deckchilder carrying. But the decision was taken out of the officer’s hands by the deckchilder around them – no crew could bear to watch their own kind burn – and hands were held out, the boat’s rope was thrown and their flukeboat was pulled up next to the wharf. More hands helped them out of the boat. His feet hit the land and the song of the windspire increased in volume within him as a space grew around the gullaime and windshorn. The officer stared at Joron, as if there was some recognition, but if there was the events of the night were moving too quickly for him. Something exploded on one of the boats – the hagspit stores – throwing a column of vivid purple fire into the air and making everyone duck.

“Well? What are you waiting for?” said the deckkeeper to Joron. “Take them up to the lamyard at the bothy, they’re too precious to risk burning. And Shipwife Barnt will want to talk to you and know what has happened to his glorious little fleet.”

“Ey, Deckkeeper,” he said, the words coming breathily with the sense of release at being accepted. “Come on then,” he said to the group around him, “and bring the windtalkers.” The gullaime let out a furious squawk and they set off through the chaos for the Grand Bothy.