So it went on for Joron, day after miserable grey day.
The day they saw the red wings of the arakeesian was a particularly taxing one for Joron. It was good to see the beast – he felt a strange kinship for it, a fondness – even though if they did manage to protect it from Hag’s Hunter – and he was sceptical they could – it would be only to kill it later. He felt it deserved more, should be more than simply a pawn in Archipelago politics. It had a majesty about it that nothing he had ever seen before possessed – more power and beauty than even a five-ribber under full wing.
But as Dinyl so often said, Joron had a duty. And Meas had a duty and a dream, a dream of a land without war, and Joron did not imagine for one moment that she would sell that out for some romantic notion of an animal’s nobility.
As Joron thought of the wakewyrm, Tide Child tacked, the great boom swinging over the deck and the ship creaking alarmingly as his keel complained, changing their course to catch the wind but losing ground on the arakeesian, which vanished from his line of sight as if it had never been.
“And soon we, or another, will undo you, and your kind will be gone from the world for ever,” he said to himself and to the grey water before him.
“Where do you think it came from, D’keeper?”
Joron turned, annoyed at himself at being heard musing on things he should keep to himself. But it was only Mevans, idly tidying a coil of rope.
“Outside the storms, I imagine, Hatkeep.”
“How do we know there are not more of them out there? It’s a lot bigger than the skull on Tide Child’s beak.”
“It is,” he said, staring out into the grey, looking for the creature.
“Only, by my reckoning, I think that makes it older. Cos it’s bigger, see.”
Joron nodded.
“If it is the last, it must be tremendously lonely, Mevans, do you think?”
“Ey,” he said, “if it is.” He finished tidying his rope and walked away, leaving Joron at the rail.
The next day they caught up to the arakeesian proper, and the wind moved around behind Tide Child so the constant, wearying tacking finally stopped. The convoy of animal and humans followed the deep-water channel towards where they would pass through Skearith’s Spine on their journey back to the Hundred Isles.
Joron’s dreams, which for days had been of his father’s death, constantly replaying that moment when the boneship Mother’s Wish had ground his father to mulch between his hull and their little flukeboat, changed that night. He dreamed once more of being something vast and eternal, gliding through the depths of the sea surrounded by water and strange, sad songs, and in those moments he found a calm entirely lacking from his waking hours.
They flew on through days grey with clouds, grey with damp air, grey within his mind.
In the third week they turned for Skearith’s Spine and Namwen’s Pass.
A fog blanketed them as they entered the pass, clouds falling from the great plates of black rock on either side to sit upon the ocean, masking Tide Child’s course as completely as time masked the future. Joron moved from job to job wrapped in freezing opaque air, the familiar sounds of the ship around him muffled and ghostly. In the evening he stood upon the rump with Dinyl peering forward, wary of reefs, listening to Seakeep Fogle as she cast the weight with a steady rhythm.
“Cast!” the shout. Then a splash, the sound held close to the beak by the enfolding mist. Fogle’s voice counting out the seconds as the rope ran through her hand until it hit bottom – or not. Namwen’s Pass was deep in the centre and shallow at the sides, but Meas had ordered them to avoid the deep channel as that was where wakewyrm swam, and she did not know how it would react if they ran into it. So they had to make their way carefully through the shallows. They could not afford the damaged Tide Child to even nudge the sea floor, so they edged forward with all but the topwings furled, listening to the calls from the front. “No bottom, no measure. No bottom, no measure. Fifty lengths and sand and shale. Forty lengths and sand and shale.” And as Fogle called out the depths, Dinyl directed Barlay at the steering oar.
Meas trusted them to do this. She was up in the topspines, hoping for a break in the cloud. Hoping not to see Hag’s Hunter.
“Were I his shipwife,” she had said to Joron earlier, “I would sit at the exit to Namwen’s Pass and wait for us. Our only real advantage is manoeuvrability and speed, and in our state we don’t have as much of either as I would like, though they cannot know that. But if they can catch us leaving the pass we have nowhere to go but through them. My sither could simply sit and pepper us with wingshot.” There was no emotion on Meas’s face at the thought of fighting her sibling. “They have enough weight to finish us in two or three rounds.”
“So we are finished?”
“I do not think so. My sither has many admirable qualities but patience is not one of them. It caused more than a little friction between us. I think it more likely she will patrol and rely on the watchtowers putting up a signal when we come through. We are tied to the arakeesian, so if Hag’s Hunter has maps of the old migration routes she does not have to worry about losing us.”
So they edged forward, and Meas watched for the ship that could end them. Fogle called out the depths, and Dinyl called out directions, and Barlay steered the ship, and Joron shivered and itched inside his stinker coat. When he had looked, the skin at the tops of his arms was red and raw, another little misery to add to the many that went with life on a fleet ship.
This was not the life his father had told him stories of: the dashing work of the fleet, a life of honour and good cheer.
He heard boots on slate and a moment later Meas appeared from the mist, hair and hat dewed by damp air.
“What news, Shipwife?”
“Fair news and foul, Deckkeeper.”
“Well,” said Dinyl, “best furnish us with fair, the better to stand the foul.”
“It was ever thus,” said Meas as she came to stand by the two men. “Well, fair is that my thoughts on Kyrie’s personality were correct. She had no patience for sitting and waiting, so I am sure she now patrols the northern oceans.”
“This is good, is it not?” said Dinyl.
Meas made a clicking sound, twisting up one side of her face as if to say, “All is not as it seems.”
“In a way, it is, ey, but I fear Hag’s Hunter is near. I had hoped this mist would let us pass undetected but we are seen. The landward watchtower sends up a plume of smoke that was not there three turns ago, so we must presume Hag’s Hunter is close enough to see the signal.”
“If it can see the smoke for this mist,” said Joron.
“The fog lies low. It is clear above the mainwing, and Hunter is taller than us.” She shrugged. “It will see the smoke.”
“Are the towers likely to fire on us?” said Joron.
Dinyl smiled, as did Meas, though with little humour.
“‘Tower’ is a rather generous description of them,” said Meas. “If the arakeesians truly returned, maybe there would be towers here again, but for now they are little more than huts. We need not fear much more than them spitting on us.”
Black Orris landed on Meas’s shoulder.
“Hag’s arse,” said Black Orris.