Karring returned, soaking and with a bloody rip along his arm.
“What happened down there, Karring?”
“Keel is caught in rocks, D’keeper. I tried to shift them and scratched myself. Is no great thing.”
“Well, see the hagshand. I do not want to see your wound festering. How bad is the damage?”
“Bad, D’Keeper. The keel has a crack right across it.” The man must have seen the dismay in Joron’s face. “He’ll fly, D’Keeper, he will. But if the Northstorm spies us out we won’t last a strong blow.”
“Is there any good news?”
“Aye, the current is turning. I reckon the tide’s as low as it gets now and it is coming in. It should lift us enough to get loose. We’ll not be trapped come higher water.”
“Right then,” Joron said, then raised his voice. “Rig for towing! We’ll not stay stuck on these rocks any longer than we have to.” He was amazed that the crew jumped to his orders. Most amazed that Kanvey, who was a minor power among the deckchilder, was first to lead a group of about twenty into the bigger of their two flukeboats. Then his amazement turned to dismay. As the crew of the smaller boat started tying on ropes and making things secure, he saw that Kanvey’s flukeboat was rowing for the open sea. Kanvey himself raised the wing on the flukeboat, before turning to shout some obscenity at Tide Child.
Meas ran to the side of the ship.
“You man!” She threw her words at the retreating boat like gallowbow bolts. “Get back here now!” But Kanvey only laughed. Then he knelt, grabbed something from the bottom of the boat and stood. He held a spear. He hefted it, leaning back, altering his grip on the shaft once, twice, until he found a balance in the weapon that pleased him, and then put all his weight into a throw.
Joron ducked. Meas did not. She did not move at all, only raised her head to watch the flight of the spear, which arced through the air. It landed with a heavy thud and stuck in the side of Tide Child just below Meas. She did not even flinch. Only remained there, like a statue, watching the fleeing boat.
It was a ship of bleak thoughts that limped his way back to Shipshulme Island. Limped through thick mist and with little assistance from the wind to Bernshulme, the capital of the Hundred Isles, there to beg for help and succour. Bleak because of the fell mood that had fallen on Meas Gilbryn, who glowered from the rump of the deck. Bleak because Joron Twiner could see no way he could have done anything more than what he had for the ship, and yet he knew he had failed. Bleak because the ship was holed and the pumps worked day and night, so hard to work they left those pumping exhausted and so noisy to work few could sleep. Bleak because twenty and more died fighting raiders and seven more died of their wounds on the way back – and they did not even have the good grace to die quietly. The cries of the dying haunted the ship as he stole through the mist, and it became easy to believe that they truly were lost to the dead and drifted, haunted, through the Sea Hag’s watery darkness.
The misery of those aboard should have fled when they finally arrived at Bernshulme – an end to the constant work at the pumps belowdeck and to the constant patching and mending above it. Some respite for Joron from the baleful glare of Meas Gilbryn, who seemed, as far as he could tell, to hold him responsible for all the ship’s ills.
Of all the Hundred Isles Shipshulme was the largest, and Bernshulme the biggest harbour and the biggest town. The island shared the slowly rising crescent shape of most of the isles – a flick of pen on parchment – only on a much larger scale, and was a riot of primary colours when the varisk and gion jungles came to life. Two long causeways curved out from the island, constructed when the bones of arakeesians were taken for granted. They could still be seen, sticking out from the rocks piled around them to make barriers against the sea, which, though it only gently lapped against the moles, and showed none of its fury, could, and often did, swell and crash over them, even though those walls of bone and grey slate were almost as tall as the spines rising from Tide Child’s decks.
The black ship’s approach was observed by armed women and men on the light towers that sprouted like jutting teeth from the end of each stone pier. Joron watched as two figures on the light tower to landward of them leaned in close to one another, evidently discussing them, and then a red flag was waved, telling them to stop.
“Shipwife,” shouted Joron, though he felt his voice waver, still nervous of her obvious anger. “They wish us to halt.”
Meas stomped down the slate of the deck and stared up at the woman waving the flag. Then glared at the pier and narrowed her eyes against Skearith’s Eye – just starting to touch the top of the mountain that crowned the island.
“Ignore them. We are no danger to shipping and we are sore in need of a dock.”
Joron was about to open his mouth, tell her that to ignore a warning flag was punishable by death, for all knew it to be so. But she grinned at him – no, she more gritted her teeth, for there was only the bleakest humour there at how a sentence of death was wasted on this crew. Bleak humour for a bleak ship.
Tide Child came about, his spines creaking, the pumps rumbling and the whole ship wallowing as no matter how they pumped they could not keep up with the leaks. The boneship had spent the entire journey on the point of sinking. Joron now got his first view into the harbour since he had left here, too grief-stricken to look about him.
Bernshulme was packed with ships: two-ribbers, threes, fours, even a five-ribber – all rising bone-white and beautiful from the slack water. From one ship a flukeboat was casting off, oars sticking out from its sides, a moment of confusion when they pointed in all directions before a shout brought them into unison, smoothly stroking the water and powering the boat forward. On the prow was a figure in a two-tail hat, bright colours across its chest. The harbour keeper no doubt. The boat made straight for Tide Child. Behind the harbour keeper stood three lackeys, all waving red flags at the black ship.
“All stop! All stop on that ship, in the Thirteenbern’s name!” The man invoked the name of Meas’s mother as if that alone was enough to halt a ship; he had the trilling voice of the Kept, the men who served the Bern. “All stop, that black ship. You have no permission to come into Bernshulme and shall not be given it. Come further and the harbour gallowbows will be turned on you.”
Joron glanced over at the huge bows on the ends of the moles. They were many times bigger than those on a ship and capable of ripping through even a four-ribber like Tide Child. They had already been spun up and loaded with wingshot, fires burning where the hagspit had been lit, making sure the threat of the harbour keeper’s words was not ignored. Meas leaned over the rail, looking down on the flukeboat.
“Harbour Keeper,” she shouted, “my ship has taken fell damage defending the children of Corfynhulme from raiders.”
“That is not the problem of Bernshulme,” returned the man. “You must—”
“There is no other port we could reach,” Meas yelled over him, though she sounded perfectly calm and reasonable. “This ship is taking on water faster than a purseholder can drink anhir. Now, if you wish to be the man responsible for five thousand jointweight of arakeesian bone sinking to the sea floor then, by all means, I will turn this ship about and we will sink.” She paused as if calmly considering her ship’s fate. “We may sink away from the harbour mouth so it is not entirely blocked, though in truth I doubt it we will get so far.” Joron saw fear start to cloud the harbour keeper’s eyes; his duty was to keep the docks safe and in use. “But, Harbour Keeper, you say the word and we will turn Tide Child around and see how far we get before the Sea Hag claims us.” Then she leaned further over the rail and let menace enter her voice. “But call this wrong, and you may find you bring my mother’s wrath down upon you, and you will end your days wearing a black armband and on my crew while your family go bankrupt paying the loss cost of this ship.”