And that should have been it. Justice is swift and harsh in the Hundred Isles – “A life for a life is a fair price.” But Rion’s father, the man he stood before now, was powerful. So Joron found himself called a murderer, accused of drugging the boy and called before the court of the Bern. Not that he had cared – he was ready to be sentenced, to go into the sea with his veins open and wait for the Hag to claim him – but Indyl Karrad must have seen that Joron wished for death. Joron could still see the moment the man had understood that the man who had killed his son did not fear for death – the cruel smile that crossed his face as he requested the Bern send Joron to the black ship, to a place where he was neither dead nor alive. Caught in limbo, snared by grief.
“Karrad,” said Meas. She almost spat the name.
“Meas.” He was little more welcoming. “You bring the murderer of my son to me?” He had a nightroom voice, warm and soothing despite the venom in it. Joron remembered that voice – sweet and thick as gion syrup – from the court of the Bern as it argued for him to be cast to away to a ship of the dead. “Send the flotsam away, Meas” – Karrad nodded at Joron – “and then I must speak with you.”
“He is my deckkeeper, Karrad, and I bring him so what is said by you is witnessed by another officer of the fleet.”
“Deckkeeper,” said Karrad quietly to himself, tapping a quill on the desk in front of him. “Well, how you have risen, eh, Joron Twiner.” His eyes flicked up to Joron’s and then back to his desk. “You are a joke which seems to have backfired on me somewhat?” He shook his head and laughed quietly to himself. “Still, I imagine a few days under Meas’s command will see you so far out of your depth you drown and the Hag will take you. I shall look forward to hearing of this flotsam becoming jetsam.”
Joron was about to speak but Meas stepped forward, physically cutting him off from Karrad.
“I thought I was rid of you when they sent me to the black ships,” she said. “I thought we were done. What use am I to you now?”
“What you did was stupid,” said Karrad. Joron almost held his breath. What was it she had done? He waited for Karrad to say, but he was to be disappointed. “You make a mistake though, if you think foolishness frees you from your obligations, Meas. If anything, a black ship gives you free rein in a way a fleet ship never could.”
“In what way?”
“You are outside the order of command, expected to cruise, looking for trouble. You are able, nay, required, to take orders that may not come through the usual channels, and though I am fleetwife, my lack of service on a ship gives me less access than I would like to our ships. But a black ship? You I can have.” Did he leer? “And you can go to places I could never send a fleet ship.”
“So, you intend to use me as a glorified messenger, is that it?” Meas shook her head. “I think we have spoken enough, Karrad. I think will take my chances with fleet orders.”
“Well,” said Karrad, “that is up to you, but how well has that gone, eh, Meas?” Before she could reply he stood. “And how will you get that old ship fixed, eh? Fleet orders for you will be to rot in Bernshulme while they break up your ship. Maybe a two-ribber will no longer hold the corpselights in its bones and take the black, if you are lucky.” He left a silence, interrupted only by the chirping of the night insects. “Besides,” he said more quietly, “that is not what I want you for. To have you delivering letters to spies is beneath you, and I know it.” Was there a warmth there? Something beneath the timbre of his voice? “And a black ship is hardly unlikely to draw no attention, is it? No. I have something much more in keeping with your talents in mind. I know you, Meas.” He came around the desk to stand nearer to her and Joron felt like an interloper, a voyeur watching an intensely private moment. “I know what you want,” he whispered. “I know what you will enjoy.”
Meas seemed to collapse in on herself. It was not overt, only a collection of minute changes in posture, as if all the cockiness and surety fled from her and left her stranded, out of her element.
“I am sick of this, Indyl.”
“Have you forgotten the dream, Meas?”
“That is all it is to you.”
“It can be so much more.”
“I am not sure I believe anything you say.”
“You believed in the dream at Harrit Bay, Meas.”
“And look what it has got me.” She held out her hands. Inside, Joron was jumping from foot to foot. What was all this about? “Where were you, Indyl? Where were you when they shamed me and stripped me? You did not come. Your word would have saved me.”
“I could not have saved you. Everything I . . .” Karrad took a deep breath. Picked up a small ornament from the edge of his desk and then put it down again. “Everything we have worked for would have been lost. They would have condemned us both.”
Meas raised a hand, almost touched his cheek, and it felt to Joron as if the air were harder to breathe, or maybe it was that he became a ghost to these two people. That to them he no longer existed.
“Indyl,” she said, “when I hear you speak” – that voice so soft – “I understand your actions.” Karrad smiled. Then something changed in his eyes – a warmth entered them. Then Meas’s hand came away from his cheek. “I think you even believe what you say when you say it.” She shook her head; the gentle sound of hair moving over leather. “But words mean nothing without action.”
“You were too overt, Meas.” He tried to grab her wrist, but she was too quick for him. He took a step back, putting space between them. “The rule of the Bern cannot be fought head on, Meas. It is not the way.”
And Joron did not want to know what they spoke of. He wished he was not here, that she had not brought him. He went cold from foot to fingertip.
Treason.
They talked of treason. Meas Gilbryn, the greatest shipwife of them all, was a traitor. He was about to say something, to ask to leave, when she turned to him.
“This is not what you think, Twiner,” she said. “This is Hundred Isles politics, so don’t get ideas about running to the Grand Bothy with tall tales and expecting to win your life back. You will not know who to speak to, and you are as likely to get a knife in the gut as you are to be rewarded. And remember who owns you – remember that – and if you think you have any honour, look to that before you act.”
“Honour.” Karrad laughed. “Sooner expect a kivelly to fight a sankrey than to find honour in one such as him.”
Again the silence, hot and suffocating, filled with the trilling of insects.
“He does for me, Indyl,” she said. “For now.”
“I heard he ran your ship into a reef.”
“I did that,” she said, and it shocked Joron that she did not hesitate, did not dissemble or blame him as she had done on Tide Child. “I was shipwife. I was responsible.”
“Not the way I heard it.”
“It is the way it happened.” She shrugged. “I suppose I should not be surprised to know you have spies on my ship.”
“I have spies everywhere. He’ll be the death of you, Meas,” said Karrad with a nod towards Joron. Then he returned to his place behind his desk. “But your command is your choice. Now, do you wish to hear what I have to say or not?”