CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

 

KULA WRAPPED HER cloak tighter about her and tucked in her hands and feet. The brisk wind was cold and the spray from the sticky saltwater colder still. Surging through the waves, strengthened by the air, she felt she was so big. At the same time she could feel that she was only a mote against the mass of life that lay beneath them: down, down and down. She had never been above something so deep that was still filled with living beings. She was a small thing, cold, huddled on her rope, but she now knew that there was so much more to the world than she had seen or imagined. For this she loved the sea.

It was time to let go of the life she had borrowed. She could have kept it. She held it now, and felt its potency, waiting to be unfurled, like a seed within her mind. She didn’t know how the magic of her people worked, only what it felt like. She had read the pattern of this beast, preserving it, and had taken out the life from it. Now she wanted to put it back in. For that she needed Lysandra. They had worked it out between them, with Horse’s help, tested it on midges and ants and leaves and twigs and one of the riverboat’s few remaining rats which had become cunning enough to navigate the galley without encountering any otters. It hadn’t navigated Horse, however, who summoned it to her hand for Kula to witness.

Together they’d pored over the creature, but it actually wasn’t as complicated as the midge pattern. Only when she sought to see this particular rat in all its individual, momentary detail—then it got complicated. She’d thought herself sitting a few minutes for the task, but hours had gone by and they were only lucky that the rest of the group had no interest in them or her stillness and fixity would have been noticed.

Under the cover of night they had crept off to the river-dragon’s nest where it had laid its stillborn eggs. Guarded by Lysandra, she had studied the beast and they only made it back to the craft in time to pretend to wake up. The creature was strange but it wasn’t the Ur-beasts of old, which had rivalled the gods for scale and ambition. She saw nothing unnatural in it. It wasn’t even as interesting as the midge in some ways and that seemed a shame to her. So in the night of boring adult business out at the Widow Demadell’s house, Kula had sat at one of the tables with the stone fruits and daydreamed about how it could be made better, more aware, more suited to this world, more great and impressive, more capable of being the thing she had wanted it to be—a creature of amazing powers.

Now she called Lysandra and handed over the dark little feather she had used to act as the anchor point for her work. Lysandra nodded to show she understood that they were going to complete their original plan to release the creature back into the wild where it was safe from idiot humans. They were sad that Horse was not there to see it, but Kula felt that she would find out soon and then she’d be pleased. That thought was exciting, so she hurried.

Lysandra leaned over on the leeward rail of the ship, the feather in her fingertips. Kula directed her to let it go. It was snatched away, down and down, onto the waters.

Kula closed her eyes and remembered the dragon of the river. It took shape in her mind with all the improvements: larger, better, its scale more glossy, its feather a deeper hue, its intelligence sharper and wiser with a vision that stretched into worlds beyond and wisdoms that only the oldest and greatest could reach, beyond Kula’s tiny form and little span. To her it had something of the magnificence and mystery of the sea itself. Without an awareness of changing the pattern she was focused on this sense of power and majesty and limitless grace as Lysandra released the fire of life.

There was nothing to see. A girl sitting on a coil of rope. A woman leaning over the rail, holding back her hair so she could see the water, seabirds circling and calling above them as they made headway away from the land.

Then a huge spume of white foam erupted from the mild race of the wavelets in the open water where the feather had been. It was a short distance astern of them and went up in a geyser that fell to shattering on the deck even as the sailors sent up alarms and the helmsman spun the wheel to take them around and away in an avoidance manoeuvre. The ship tilted with alarming speed to one side. Kula screamed and gripped her rope. She heard Heno and Bukham yelling as their feet went out from under them on the deck.

Kula’s rope was coiled on fixed pitons. It remained in place. Like most things on the ship she was battened fast in place. She reached out as the heavy form of Heno went slithering past her and a huge, rough hand grasped hers. The eyes that joined gaze with hers were the eyes of the mud-man, the Heart Taker. She could feel him resisting the urge to grab harder so he didn’t break her fingers as the ship began to right itself. In that moment he was quite open, quite unexpecting. She read him, one mage to another, and she saw him know what she did. His life, in all its detail, was lightning in her bones. White fire crackled where they touched and in that second he also saw her.

The ship tilted back, coming to its new course. The crew were running, pointing at a huge shape below the surface which created a humped hill of water as it came alongside them before diving deep. Among them the two Ystachi dragonspeakers were ululating in shrill tones, singing some kind of song, most desperate to get the best view. Atop their scaled heads their frilled crests were rampant, their colours vivid. Unlike the human crew their clawed feet had no trouble keeping them upright on the deck. Kula let go of Heno as the deck levelled. She felt sad for him and as he let go and recovered himself she saw in his long face that he felt sad for her. Then crew and Celestaine ran between them, harpoons in hand, gestures sharp and sudden. Lysandra leant out, her arm flung wide in a clear instruction to the creature—go!

Kula wasn’t worried. These people were too slow and too poorly equipped to hunt or defend against the creature. She felt their fear, intense, making their senses vivid, as they watched it go deep and then rise sharply, undulating in a single line from the wave to the deep. She felt them brace as they grabbed to whatever they could hold and held so tightly, holding to existence itself, as the dragon burst free of the water and powered up into the air, wings unfolding, riding currents of energy they could not see. It wound upwards into the sky a very different thing to its original form: shorter limbs, massive skull festooned with tentacles and weed-like vanes so that it seemed to swim there, circling them. Streams of water plummeted off its sides.

It circled them once, twice, the great crystal eye looking down.

Kula put up her hand and waved.

Then it bent away to the east, over the water and rising, into the clouds there. A few jags of lightning, white like Heart Taker fire, crackled and lit the huge thunderheads from within as it passed on and away through them. They watched until minutes had passed and there was no more to see. She was pleased. She had made something that didn’t belong into something that did.

 

 

HENO PICKED HIMSELF up slowly and sat down on the deck. He was only lightly wetted and ran his hands over his head to push back his rough hair and adjust his scarf against his ears. He took his time to gather himself after what had just happened. He waited as Lysandra helped Bukham regain his feet and the ship recovered its original course, tacking against the wind. He was a little seasick, truthfully, and it was good to stop trying to fight it and be still on the deck. Celestaine came back bloodied from hitting her head on a beam in the initial swerve, holding a cloth to her forehead. She sat with him. They watched as Bukham found that he had covered himself in mess from the chum bucket which had been prepared for deep sea angling, and the stink and the sight made him throw up. A big fuss took place involving buckets of seawater and brushes which gave them a moment of pause, knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder—well, to arm. He saw Celestaine watching Lysandra closely, amid the doings.

“What are we going to do with them?” she asked him quietly as the cleanup and chatter went on around them.

He knew she meant Lysandra and Kula. “Nothing,” he said. “What can we do? You saw that.”

“I don’t know what I saw. What did you see?”

“The thing that was dead at the river just came out of the sea, bigger, faster and very much more than it was before.”

“I didn’t see them do anything,” Celestaine said. “But imagine, if the Kinslayer had had that kind of power.”

“Kula wanted it to have a good life,” Heno said, taking down the cloth from Celestaine’s forehead and looking at the wound just inside her hairline. “It’s only a scratch. Just very bloody. It’ll be all right.” He let her hold it back in place.

“How do you know that?” Celestaine asked, keeping her voice low. She was shaken and her hand on the cloth trembled a bit.

“She stopped me sliding over the side and we had a moment,” he said. “I think we should be grateful that whatever Lysandra is, Kula’s got it covered.”

“And if we piss her off one day and she has a temper tantrum is she going to throw dragons at us out of thin air?” Celestaine hissed in a whisper, really not wanting Lysandra to overhear from her place at the rail even though the wind was blowing vigorously and noisily, the sails snapping.

Heno shrugged. “Let’s not piss her off.”

“I’m starting to think they shouldn’t be on this journey, should they? And she might see things like a child now but what about when she gets older? What about when all the compromises and the bad decisions and the obvious complete lack of control of anything and the temper and all of that kicks in?”

“What are you suggesting? Perhaps we should chain them up and put them in a mine under strict working conditions so they never think to do anything with themselves.” It came out harsher than he intended.

Celestaine looked up at him, nodding circumspectly. “You’re doing sarcasm now? A few more smiling lessons and you’ll be a regular ladies’ man.” Then she winced, “Oh, my head aches.”

“What’s a ladies’ man?” Nedlam asked coming to sit by them on the stashed barrels, Lady Wall carefully put by her. She was chewing a piece of sea tack, the sailors’ biscuit, and offered some to them which they both declined.

“It’s a man who has learned how to behave to impress genteel kinds of women,” Celestaine said.

“It’s a man who’s not a man,” Heno translated.

“Man who never gets any ladies. Right.” Nedlam nodded with the same satisfaction as if she had discovered a lost continent. “Funny way of saying it. Heh, did you like that dragon little Kula made?”

“Yes, yeah, it was great. Terrific,” Celestaine said. “Mmn hm.”

“That’s a good trick,” Nedlam said. She chuckled. “Hey, if Kinslayer’d had that. Can you imagine?”

“No,” Celestaine said. “Can’t imagine. Can not. Imagine. Ned, d’you think they’re dangerous?”

“Naw,” Nedlam said, breaking off another chunk of indigestible stodge and starting to work it down.

“What makes you so sure?” Heno asked.

“Because. If they were we’d already be rowing this thing and eating shit like this.” She spat the chunk out and then threw the lot over the rail into the sea. “I wish Buk wasn’t sick all the time. Then he could make a new biscuit.”

“Biscuits?” Murti edged closer to them and took a perch next to Nedlam, steadying himself with a foot hooked around some of the lashing that was holding the barrels steady. “Are there any?”

“Only if you want to kill someone,” Nedlam said.

“I was just wondering what to do about—” Celestaine nodded in a significant way in the direction of Lysandra and Kula, who had also been given ship’s biscuit and were throwing bits of it to the seagulls not far away.

“What makes you…”

“No,” Celest interrupted him firmly. “You’re not doing that again, the old throw the question back at me like I shouldn’t even have a question thing. We’re here because you wanted us here and I assume you wanted them here and maybe you even wanted Deffo here, wherever he is, so let’s have a straight answer.”

Murti blinked as if he was mildly befuddled. “Well, in that case there’s a bit of a situation that requires people like—” he nodded in a copy of Celestaine’s gesture, “—to get it fixed.”

“How’s that going to work?”

Murti shrugged. “I don’t know. I gave you a sword, that worked out quite well. I was thinking that this may also resolve for the best without too much of a stranglehold.”

Celestaine sighed and let the cloth drop into her hands. The bleeding had stopped and the wound was beginning to scab over. “So we’re what? The guards?”

“In case of heavy lifting,” Murti said. “Also, if you’re here then Deffo isn’t focused on trying to get me to promise to return the gods and restore him to glory.”

“Who promised to return the gods?” Lysandra sat down breezily cheerful beside Celestaine. “When are they coming?” She looked about at the skies and the deck with eager anticipation as if they might pop up at any moment.

“They’re um, not here right now,” Celestaine said warily. “We’re going to see what happened to them. Remember?”

Lysandra put her hands together in her lap. “Oh, yes. I don’t suppose you know why all the biscuits are so horrible? Is it sabotage?” She kept a close eye on Kula who had her head through the deck railings so she could stare down the ship’s side into the sea. Her accent, which had started out days ago as riddled with Tzarkish hard sibilants, was now almost a model of noble Forinthi intonation coupled with a bit of Ilkand society matriarch.

“I don’t know about the biscuits, I think it’s called preservation,” Celest said, for the first time in her life feeling actually faint, and not all down to the head bashing. “Will you be making a lot of dragons, at all, while we’re underway?”

“No!” Lysandra said as if that was a ludicrous question. “No, we were only putting that one back.” She patted Celestaine’s knee. “Don’t worry so much. You’ll give yourself grey hairs. Now, the wind is turning. If you want my advice we should avoid this hole the Ilkanders fear and head north with all speed. The hole is not something any of you could survive if you tried to use it as a way into Vadakh and you don’t have the ability to close it from here. It will swallow you up and even if you only go to look it will delay us. If you want to stay alive on this journey, then it’s as Wanderer says. We must go north, to the gate under the ice.”

A long shadow fell across them all and they looked up to see Deffo, very pale and unsteady but with a dignified expression of well-borne suffering on his face, holding onto one of the decking cross ropes as he edged towards them. “There you all are.” The ship tilted and he clung for dear life. “A messenger bird has come. It’s brought this for you.” He held out a narrow roll of parchment towards Celestaine who reached up and took it from him, unrolling it and holding it against her knees to read. “It’s from Tricky. What does it say?”

Celestaine scanned it. “Everything’s fine. She and Ralas got into a bit of trouble. They’ll be delayed. Wish you were here. Haha.” She was trying to close it quickly when Lysandra stopped her and leaned in.

“Ah, you forgot this bit,” Lysandra said, pointing with her finger and reading aloud with dramatic flair. “The mazagal and the girl are probably part of the Kinslayer’s plot to ensure total destruction of the human races and all of the Guardians. Proceed with extreme caution.” She looked up at them and smiled radiantly, throwing her arms out wide with joy. “See? I can read!”