23

Before the Shipwife

Joron was tied, hands bound behind his back. The knots as unyielding as the bone of Tide Child’s hull, for if there was a thing a deckchild could do well it was to tie a knot. He was led through Tide Child and he had not seen the ship, his ship – Meas’s ship – in such disarray since a time long ago, before the shipwife had come aboard. A time when he had, laughably, been called its commander.

This disarray was worse. He had simply been neglectful, this was the remnants of violence. The mutineers had taken Meas’s loyal crew utterly by surprise. There were fewer bodies than he would have expected, and this filled him with hope – had most of the crew survived? – and fear – had most of the crew turned against him? Signs of violence were everywhere, smears of blood, stores and tools and ropes thrown about, and still being thrown about. Mutineers cackling with glee as they destroyed the ship’s good order. Sprackin pulled him aside to allow four laughing deckchilder to roll a cask of good anhir past. Then he forced Joron up the stair and onto the deck.

Here he found his crew, tied and knelt before the mutineers’ leaders, who stood on the rump of the deck. Cwell, he saw, and would have expected even had Sprackin not told him of her. By her stood Dinyl, and though he felt he should not be surprised, he could not pretend he was not disappointed. He had looked up to Dinyl, once, loved him even, once. Loved him for his talk of duty, for his devotion to it. A devotion that, at the last, he had evidently thrown aside. Once he had stood against Joron, Meas and the entire crew of Tide Child for what he believed was right and that had cost him his hand, hewn from his arm by Joron’s blade. Other mutineers stood around the deck and he took in their faces; mostly those he knew had disliked him, who disliked the new regime Meas had brought to Tide Child, or those who simply loved to hate and had found an excuse for it in Cwell’s words. Before them all knelt Solemn Muffaz, singled out, bound and on his knees, and it was to kneel by Solemn Muffaz that Joron was brought. He glanced at the deckmother, his face a mass of bruises.

“I failed you, Deckkeeper,” he said miserably.

Joron shook his head. “We did not know this—”

“Quiet before your shipwife!” shouted Cwell. And there was laughter at that. “Who are you to speak on my rump without permission?”

“You are no shipwife,” said Joron. And Cwell lashed out with her boot, catching Joron on the chest and sending him toppling backwards, the back of his head slamming into the slate, causing another round of laughter.

“Do not laugh!” shouted Cwell, and the laughter died down. “Do not laugh at our deckkeeper,” she paced back and forth, “for he is an officer!” More laughter. “And besides, I would have him hear my judgement of the deckmother before he in turn is judged himself.” Rough hands picked up Joron, righted him so he was looking at Dinyl and Cwell. Cwell had fashioned her own two-tailed hat, a thing of rag and bright colour. A deckchild appeared with Joron’s one-tail, looted from his quarters, and gave it to Dinyl. He looked at it, but did not put it on, only held it. “Now, Deckmother,” said Cwell to Muffaz, “the charges against you are that you have enforced the cruel and disloyal regime of the traitor shipwife, Meas Gilbryn. That you have visited cruel punishments upon the crew, and with much enjoyment, in her name.”

“Never enjoyed it,” said Solemn Muffaz, “not a once, never enjoyed it.”

“That is fine defence,” said Cwell, “a fine defence. And unlike the old shipwife, with her autocratic fleet ways” – she raised her voice when she used big words, as if to cow the crew around her with them – “I will not simply decide your guilt. No!” She raised her hands. “I am a fair shipwife, who will run a fair ship.” She looked around, smiling. “So, I will ask my loyal crew to judge you.” She turned and Joron looked over his shoulder; mutineers now filled the deck behind the kneeling and tied loyal crew. “Do you find the deckmother, Solemn Muffaz, guilty of the charges or not?”

From the mutineers went up the shout of, “Guilty!”

Cwell nodded her head, made herself look grave.

“Well, there you have it, Solemn Muffaz. It gives me little pleasure to pass sentence but I must do it, and it must be a punishment fitting the crime.” She nodded to herself. “So, Solemn Muffaz, you will be tied to the mainspine, and every day, a member of the crew will give you ten lashes, until we have reached the amount of one thousand lashes.”

“You will kill him,” said Joron.

Cwell stared at him. “Well, that is the intent.” She smiled at him, as if he was a dullard, short of understanding. “But hush your impatient noise, Twiner, we will get to you in good time, but first, the matter in hand,” she gestured at the deckmother. “Now, my crew, who would give the first lashes to this sorry, wife-murdering man?” There was a commotion then, for not one of Cwell’s mutineers was without scars from Solemn Muffaz’s cord. But eventually the strongest of them put themself forward and Joron was forced to watch as Muffaz was dragged, with much jeering and shouting, to the mainmast, stripped of all his clothes and tied, face to the mast, arms around it. The cord was brought and the strikes were counted out, given with all the glee they had accused Solemn Muffaz of showing, though Joron had never seen a whit of evidence for it. Each cording cut deep, making a jagged map of blood on the deckmother’s back.

When it was done drinks were passed around, jokes were told and Solemn Muffaz’s torment did not end; he was not taken down and Joron noticed more than one deckchild, in passing, lash out and kick him. But this gave him opportunity to count the mutineers. There were few of them. Maybe thirty in all. Three had come from Coughlin’s seaguard but Joron was glad he did not see Berhof, Coughlin’s second, among them. He hoped the man was not dead. With so few crew he knew the mutineers would struggle to work the ship and maybe, when Cwell had dealt with him, those still loyal to Meas would find a way to escape and take Tide Child back.

Cwell wandered over to stand in front of Joron. Dinyl hung back, looking ashamed. As he rightly should.

“She will find you,” said Joron to Cwell.

“We will be very far away from here by the time she realises what has happened,” said Cwell.

“She will never stop looking.”

Did Cwell pale a little at that? It did not matter; she stepped away from him and raised her arms for quiet.

“Now, my crew! We must deal with our next criminal – Joron Twiner, a fisherboy who styled himself as a deckkeeper, and before that, as a shipwife!” Laughter. “The worst shipwife we have ever seen, eh?”

“The drunkest!” shouted one of the mutineers, immune to the irony in the fact they were liberally passing around shipwine.

“Now,” said Cwell, “I have learned, from our dear Dinyl here . . .” She put her arm around his shoulders, and did Dinyl, up until this moment stoical and unfeeling, flinch at that? “I have learned many things, but most of all, I have learned that Joron Twiner did not even study at the bothies.” Quiet on the deck. “Oh, and some aboard knew that, but plenty of us did not, ey?” Joron felt himself judged, not just by Cwell and the mutineers but also by the rest of the crew, those loyal to Meas who were tied and silent behind him. “He is an imposter. And I move to say we do not even need a vote on this one, for we have all suffered because of him. So I say, let us throw him overboard for the longthresh.”

The word No! wanted to leap into Joron’s mouth as he was grabbed by strong arms, but he held it back. He would not give them the satisfaction, he would not beg, he would not scream even as the longthresh ate him alive. Hag take every one of them.

“No.”

That word from Dinyl.

“No, my deckkeeper?” said Cwell. “Do you gainsay your shipwife?”

“You promised him to me.” An uncomfortable pause, “Shipwife. For what he did.” Dinyl held up his arm, shortened by lack of a hand. “For this.”

“Do you want to throw him overboard?” said Cwell.

“No,” said Dinyl quietly. Joron could almost feel the mutineers turning against Dinyl for spoiling their fun. “I want to do far worse,” he hissed. From the smile spreading across Cwell’s face Dinyl’s need for revenge was something she understood, would encourage even. “He took my hand, and that will be my starting point with him. But I want to do it on land. Where we have time, and space. Somewhere I can build a good fire to cauterise wounds. I do not want him to bleed out. I want to be somewhere I can make him suffer.”

Cwell nodded. “Well, I would not be stood here without you, Deckkeeper,” she said. “So he is my gift to you. At the first land we see we will stop, and you and your shipfriend over there,” she pointed at Joron, “can put on a fine show for us.” Dinyl nodded, glanced at Joron, still holding the one-tail hat in his one good hand. “But I feel we must give our crew a show now. For they have worked hard this day.” A shout of appreciation went up from the mutineers as Cwell scanned the deckchilder knelt behind Joron. “Bring Hastir forward.”

Two mutineers brought forward Hastir, who had once been a shipwife, once loyal to Cwell but no longer. A woman who was good at her job, a woman Joron had won over by giving her his trust. “You as good as spat in my face, Hastir, when you took up with that one.” Cwell pointed at Joron. “You and I were once friends.”

“If your creatures would bring me a little closer,” said Hastir, “I will spit in your face for real.”

Cwell let out a small laugh.

“You are spirited, I like that.” She smiled, then shrugged. “But insubordination is punishable by death on my ship. Throw her overboard.”

Hastir, kicking and struggling, was picked up by two of Cwell’s mutineers and thrown over the side of Tide Child. All heard the splash and knew her lost. Joron, no doubt along with many others, said a silent prayer to the Hag to receive Hastir by her bonefire.

Cwell let a moment of silence pass. “The rest of you,” she said to the women and men kneeling on the slate, “have a simple choice. Swear your loyalty to me, or join Hastir among the longthresh. I do not ask you to decide now, I am not unreasonable. Talk amongst yourselves and I will take your reply tomorrow. For now, I will have my crew take you all below to the hold.” She paused. “Except Twiner. Lock him in the brig with the courser. I don’t want him interfering with the crew’s decisions.”

It was a noisy and painful journey that Joron made from the deck of Tide Child to the brig, deep in the darkness of the ship’s hold. Those who took him by the arms were not well disposed towards him, and they made sure that any mutinous crewmember who remembered a slight, or felt that Joron had treated them unfairly, got to pay back what they thought was owed, either with fists and feet, or harsh words – and so it was a bruised and bloodied Joron that was thrown into the small dark room well below the underdeck. There he sat alone, and time passed and passed. Once Joron tried the door, and found it just as sturdy and strong and impassable as the brig had always been. The walls around him as tough as any bone on the ship, the only view out through a small barred square at head height on the door. He had little to do but think about the pain he was in and how this was merely a weak echo of whatever Dinyl would visit on him when they hit land.

The brig consisted of three cells up in the beak end of the ship, reached by a ladder from the underdeck and locked away behind a thick door. Joron was surprised to find himself alone. He called out and there was no sound, despite Cwell having said he would share with the courser, Aelerin. The three cells were serviced by a small corridor that cut them off from the hold, and the armoury in the rump of the ship. As Joron nursed his bruises he listened. Tide Child sounded like a ship under way, but he also sounded different, subtly different. Was it Joron’s mind that filled in an unhappiness to every creak and crack of the bones? Under this mutinous crew the ship was definitely more rowdy: more shouting, more laughter, though it was tinged with cruelty – and Joron well knew the sound of a cruel laugh.

Was it the Maiden he heard? Laughing cruelly at her trick, at Joron’s fate – that he had escaped one small box designed to ship him to a horrible death, only to walk straight into another?

The Hundred Isles were ever cruel.

He heard a noise and stood to look through the small barred opening. The weak glow of the wanelight in his cell was joined by the weak light from a shaft of illumination creeping along the corridor toward his cell as the solid main door opened.

“Get in there. We’ll come back for you when the shipwife needs you, or when we does.” The last words a leer as the courser was roughly pushed forward. The door of the cell opened and they were thrown in with Joron – a flash of robes and they collapsed in a corner, clasping their stomach and curling up. Quiet sobs escaping their mouth.

“Aelerin,” said Joron quietly. He had always wondered what they looked like under the cowl. The hood had fallen away, but the courser’s face was still hidden. All he could see was their scalp, covered in hundreds of tiny nicks where the courser had caught themselves with a blade as they shaved their hair to the skull. “Aelerin,” he said again, “did they hurt you?” He knelt by them, put a hand on their shoulder. The courser looked up, then twisted their body away from him, pushing themselves further into the corner of the cell. He could just see their face. He had always wondered if they were male or female, always been half tempted to peek under the cowl but now he could see he was no wiser – the shorn hair, the young, smooth skin: boy or girl, he could not tell. All he saw in them was terror.

“I will not hurt you, Aelerin,” he said softly, unsure whether to touch. Unsure whether that would bring the courser comfort or not.

“Why not? You do not like me,” they said. Their lip was split, bruises around the eyes. How could he answer that? It was true, the courser made him uncomfortable. They were a person he did not understand, had never understood, never tried to.

“I do not know you,” he said.

“And you do not want to,” they said. In those words was the same tone he had heard once when the courser had spoken of the gullaime and of loneliness. He wondered how he could have been so blind.

“You are different,” he said. “And I was raised in a way that did not expose me to different.”

“Yet you befriend our gullaime.” Was there betrayal in those big round eyes?

“Maybe,” he said slowly, “there is only so much different I can take at a time.” The courser continued to stare and Joron thought himself a fool. So much obvious pain and loneliness and he had chosen to look away. “Sometimes, Aelerin, I am wrong, and know I am wrong, and still I do not act because it is easier not to act.” He moved a little closer. “But I am not the man who first came aboard Tide Child, and maybe I ignored you because it was easy for me to do so as deckkeeper. So many duties, ey? But here, in this place?” He shrugged, motioned to the small cell that contained them. “I am all you have, and you are all I have if we are to escape.”

The courser stared at him.

“Escape?”

“Ey,” he said, calm as he could. “Meas will be expecting this ship to meet her.” He ripped a piece from the bottom of his shirt and moved to the back of the cell, finding a small pail of water and soaking the cloth in it. “Let me clean your wounds, Aelerin, and let us talk.”

The courser continued to stare. Then they gave him a small nod and it was as if, for the first time, they realised they no longer had their hood over their face and they reached back. A sharp, panicked action.

“Wait,” said Joron, “I will need to see your face to treat your bruises.”

“It is not done,” they said, the edge of fear in their voice. “It is an insult to the Mother.”

“Well, Aelerin,” said Joron quietly, “I assure you if there is a list of things that are ‘not done’ then losing your ship to a mutinous crew is probably more offensive to the Mother than me seeing your face, ey?” The courser stared more intently, and he thought he had lost them. Was it a foolish thing to say? Blasphemous to their cult, maybe? He knew so little. The coursers were so secretive. Then they nodded, closed their eyes and he approached, kneeling before them, trying not to block the weak light as he very gently began to clean the courser’s face. Not only bruises there, but scuff marks. “They threw you about?” A nod. “What did they want from you?”

“Courses. Navigation.”

“Dinyl cannot do that?” The courser shook their head.

“He can chart a course, but he cannot dream the winds, feel the storm’s moods, no, he cannot do those things. And I do not think he charts a course well—ow.”

“Sorry,” he said, taking the cloth away, wringing it out before he set once more to cleaning wounds. “Why do you think Dinyl does not navigate well?”

“I have set the ship against a strong current, it will slow us considerably, Deckkeeper. And he did not seem to notice.” Joron smiled.

“Brave of you.”

“I am not brave. I am weak and I am frightened.”

“You were in a room full of murderers who were beating you, probably threatening worse. Yet you had the forethought to slow the ship to help the Shipwife find us, even though you must know what they would do to you if they found out.” He gently dabbed at a graze on their cheek. “You were chosen by Lucky Meas. She only chooses the brave.”

“Meas will come for us,” said the courser.

“She will,” he said, though he, in that moment, was not as sure. The ocean was vast and Tide Child was small. Even going slow against a current, the odds of Meas coming across them, even when she realised what had happened, were vanishingly tiny. Still, the courser’s faith in the shipwife was touching and he would not gainsay it. “But we must do all we can to help the shipwife when she comes.” He moved back, placing the cloth in the small bucket to rinse it out. Then wanted to curse himself for spoiling their only drinking water.

“I do not mind drinking a bit of blood,” said the courser. “Blood is part of our lives.”

“Ey.” Joron let out a quiet laugh. “You are right there.” He went and sat close, but not too close, to the courser. “Did you notice any loyal crew?”

“They are all below, except Solemn Muffaz. They treat him most cruelly.”

“He is strong, and he will weather it. He will consider it payment to the Hag for his crime, and he will be right.”

The courser nodded. “He is always kind to me.”

“What of the gullaime?”

“They have barricaded it in its room with the other one.”

“It will hate that.” Joron could not hide his amusement, and he was sure he heard similar in the courser’s voice.

“It did not sound pleased.” The levity fled. “They tried to force it to come on deck and it killed one of them.”

“No better than they deserve,” he said. The courser nodded.

“The rest of the crew,” said Aelerin. “While I was there they brought their answer to Cwell.”

“I have been in here all night?” he said, surprised that so much time had passed. The courser shook their head.

“No, their answer was a swift one. They did not need more than a couple of hours.”

“And it was?”

“They serve the shipwife. Our shipwife.” Joron let out the breath he had not realised he was holding. Felt a sudden sense of relief.

“I imagine Cwell did not like that?”

“She had their messenger beaten, then they held her over the side, so she could see the longthresh, and sent her back. Told them to reconsider.”

“If the shipwife is coming I hope she hurries,” said Joron. “Cwell strikes me as someone determined to get what she wants, and I do not think she will be patient.”