Riverkeep Read online

Through the trees he spotted a frozen puddle, huge, nearly a lake, its white surface ringed with pearlescent swoops of ice, its banks tufted by spiky shoots of winter grass. A heron picked its way across, pin legs flapping on the surface, wings tucked against its body.

  “Gentlemen o’ the river,” said Wull to himself.

  The heron, hearing his muttered voice, darted its head and leaped into the air, a tangle of wing and limb that fumbled upward, leaving in its wake an emptiness that was more impenetrably silent and still than before.

  Wull stumbled on, his boots falling sullenly forward, catching his body with each step. The weight in his head returned, his skull wobbling. He felt so heavy, every part of him slipping: flesh from bone, bone from joint, his eyes cold pebbles in his head.

  He slumped to his knees.

  Cold like this didn’t kill painfully, he knew; it came as sleep, as a soft whisper that lulled you in peace. If he took off a layer and lay down he would feel the chill, but it would be quickly swaddled by a wave of comfort, of calm. . . .

  He pawed at the fastenings of his coat, tugging at the buttons with fingers that could no longer move.

  Then he spotted movement ahead, struggled upright—fell.

  “Pappa?” he said. “Pappa, I’m sorry.”

  The shape blurred—legs and feet.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  Boots appeared before him. He stared at the detail in the leather and slow-blinked, eyes flickering.

  “It’s you,” he said.

  “It’s me,” said Mix, kneeling in front of him. “Oh, you don’t look good, do you?”

  Wull sighed. “How did you find me?” he said eventually.

  She smiled. “We’ve been lookin’ for you. Even after you told us to bugger off.”

  “Thank you,” said Wull.

  “Not a bother. C’mon. Let’s head back.”

  “I jus’ need to find Pappa. He’s been alone out here for hours. He’ll freeze to death.”

  “You’re not goin’ to find him lyin’ on the deck then, are you?” said Mix, hoisting him to his feet. Wull caught his weight on his heels and blundered forward. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine, just achin’ from the rowin’. . . . No wonder the damn thing was that heavy with four people in it. Nearly popped out my shoulders.”

  “Be five people once Remedie comes on too,” said Mix, grinning. “A merry troop we’ll make.”

  “I can’t . . . I can’t take everyone,” said Wull. “I don’t mean to leave anyone, but there’s no room, an’ I need to get to the coast as quick as I can.”

  Mix turned. In the gloom of the woods, the white markings on her skin glowed faintly in the shadows of her collar: thin, elegant, repetitious lines—like the rings of a tree or the patterns of blown snow.

  “What are they?” said Wull, pointing.

  “Never you mind,” said Mix. She raised an eyebrow. “There’s no way you’ll leave us here.”

  “An’ how d’you know that?” said Wull. He coughed, tasted coppery blood.

  “’Cause I’ve been out in cold like this before; it’ll kill you so quietly you don’t even know. Besides, you said I could come with you, an’ that’s final. Even the homunculus agrees—said you were even rubbish at stealin’ food ’cause you were too decent an’ honest. I don’t think he meant it as a compliment, mind you.”

  “Right,” said Wull, “so along with my other faults, I’m too honest. Great. An’ his name’s Tillinghast.”

  “I know. I jus’ like the word: ho-mun-cu-lus. An’ I din’t think you’d stick up for him. He your friend now? Is that it?”

  “Hardly,” said Wull. “I don’t have friends—I’ve got passengers.”

  Mix jogged up alongside him, hopped over a log, and pointed. “An’ no wonder, if you—Look, there he is!”

  “Pappa!” shouted Wull. He ran forward, fell, and slid over the wet ground toward Pappa—slouched into the open trunk of a fallen tree, totally still, his skin bloodless with cold. Before him lay a red balgair, its neck broken and twisted, a thin, painful whine rasping from its bloodied mouth. Pappa was watching it dispassionately, his face empty and blank.

  Wull looked at him, felt his stomach sink, and reached for the animal—gave its neck the final snap it needed to end its pain.

  “Pappa! Sit up! Can you hear me? Can you hear me, Pappa?”

  He lifted Pappa’s wasted spindle body, felt with the memory of his skin the bulk he’d held in the forest outside the Bootmunch’s cave, and let go a deep, painful sob.

  “It that speaks,” said Pappa, his voice a whisper. “It that speaks . . .”

  Wull almost laughed. “I’m here, Pappa! It’s all right now. Here, have my coat.”

  He fumbled at his buttons, then bit off his gloves, throwing them to the ground and wriggling free of his coat. Without it, the cold came as an assault, scalding him, but he wrapped Pappa tightly, leaned in close to the big, sunken face.

  “It that speaks,” said Pappa again, and this time there was a note of weary affection in the voice, a recognition that lasted half a heartbeat, and Wull knelt before him and took his hand. Behind him, Mix picked up Wull’s gloves and stood back.

  “Pappa, do you know me?” said Wull, tears at the edges of his eyes. “Pappa, it’s me, Wulliam. Wulliam. You named me that, do you remember? Pappa, it’s me! Look at me! Please look at me!”

  Pappa’s eyes rolled in his head, untethered, like a doll’s eyes. Wull shook him, tipped him forward.

  “Pappa! Do you know it’s me? Wulliam? I’m sorry I’ve ruined everything. I’m so sorry. . . . The bäta and everything—I was trying to help you. . . .” Wull pressed his hands into the thin arms, pulling the frail threads of Pappa back to him. “I didn’t know what else to do! I’m sorry, Pappa, please stay here with me!”

  Pappa’s head fell onto Wull’s shoulder, and Wull held it there as the cold wrapped them both, his mind lost in a safe place where they’d been happy together, safe in the boathouse, safe in the bäta; when they laughed and floated on the summer currents and when Pappa would hold him tight in his safe bed.

  “Wulliam,” whispered Pappa, soft as the wind, soft as a thought.

  “Yes,” said Wull, holding him tighter, “I’ve got you here. I’ve got you. It’s goin’ to be all right. We can go home, I’ll stay with you there, I’ll stay with you always. I’m sorry. . . .”

  Pappa went limp. Wull felt carefully for the rising of the thin rib cage, waited to feel Pappa’s breath.

  Pappa sighed.

  “You’ve got no idea what happened to him?” said Mix softly.

  A bohdan took him, thought Wull. It’s living inside him and killing him slowly and I can see it happening.

  “No,” he said aloud after a moment. “He jus’ wasn’t the same once he came out the water.”

  He put his arm around Pappa’s waist and lifted him from the ground. Mix hurried forward, took Pappa’s other arm, and turned him slightly.

  “It’s this way,” she said. “You keep goin’ the way you were an’ you’ll end up hittin’ the wrong coast.”

  “Thank you,” said Wull again. They walked together, lifting Pappa over glassy pools of ice. “How scary are these people you’re runnin’ from?”

  “Oh, proper scary. Like, glowin’ eyes an’ shadows scary.”

  “Why did you steal from ’em then?”

  “I told you!” said Mix, sliding over a smashed trunk and reaching back for Pappa’s elbow. “I didn’t mean to! It is possible to steal by accident, y’know. You never made a mistake in your life?”

  Wull thought of the smashed shards of the whale oil bottle drifting downriver, of the oar that lay in ruined splinters on the bankside, and of the impossible distance that separated him from the safety of the boathouse.

  “Yes,” he said.


  “Well, then,” said Mix, “that was my mistake. One of ’em, anyway.”

  “One of ’em?”

  “Yup. We’s all made a few, I reckon. ’S jus’ livin’, ’in’t it?”

  “I need to get to Canna Bay, Mix. I need the mormorach, for Pappa—look at him.”

  “I know, but I’m tellin’ you, even if you get there—”

  “Don’t tell me that. I don’t need to hear it. I jus’ need to get there, all right?”

  “Sure. An’ don’t worry, I’ll go with you.”

  “But the extra weight . . .”

  “An’ what do I weigh?” said Mix. “Hardly a thing! I’s not worried anyway—you’re too good to leave us here, right out in the far end of nowhere.”

  Wull sighed, a lump of air that stuck in his throat as he helped Pappa over a frozen puddle.

  “I know,” he said.

  Canna Bay

  Dawn shone pink against the sky, the furrowed clouds stretching out from the horizon, talons grabbing at Canna Bay, boiled purple in their troughs and black where they met the sea. Balanced silently at their focus on the horizon’s edge raged a speck of shattering drama as the matchstick of another splintered mast tumbled into the brine.

  Gilt Murdagh was perched languorously on the statue of Mother Demlass, his eyeglass resting on her basket of pickerel. At the base of the statue’s marble plinth were strewn bow-tied pieces of wicker and seaflowers. To his left stood the white tower of the lighthouse, its beam left to die as the fish crews had deserted the port, its guidance no longer required.

  Murdagh’s tongue worked over his teeth as he watched how the mormorach swirled, how it tore its way through the sail. He watched as it rose, leading with its buttressed face to smash through the hull, the seas around it threshed into foam by the sinking ship and the frantic strokes of men and women swimming for safety. The shining tip of his whalebone leg tapped idly on the stone of the Mother’s bared feet.

  “It’s a fair morning,” said a voice behind him.

  Murdagh continued to watch the mormorach.

  “I’s quite aware o’ the weather, an’ not one for interruptions,” he said. “Also, you’s wrong—it’s bloody perishin’ and it’s no’ quite mornin’ yet.”

  “I’m sorry, Captain Murdagh,” said the voice. “I was told you would be here, and I don’t mean to interrupt—”

  “Now if tha’ was true you wouldn’t have interrupted me, would you?” said Murdagh, snapping his eyeglass closed and turning to face the speaker.

  A fat man in a fussy wig was knitting his fingers and chewing his lips. His startled owlish face, propped on his collar like a target at a fairground booth, was flushed with cold and confrontation. His clothes, brightly hued and lace-trimmed, were layered velvet, and his shoes gleamed.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, “but I must speak with you.”

  “So speak,” said Murdagh. He looked evenly at the man, blinking slowly, allowing the skin of his eyelid to linger on the raised red meat of his injured eye.

  “Yes, yes, of course. I am Dayl Seamer. I’m the—”

  “You’s the mayor of this town—I knows who you are. What c’n I do for you, Mr. Mayor?”

  “Yes,” said Seamer, satisfaction glazing his round face. “I am the mayor, and I . . . I wish to speak with you regarding the creature known as the mormorach.”

  Murdagh raised an eyebrow, deepening the lines of grime on his forehead. “‘Known as’?” he said, laughing. “It’s not a crook, Mr. Mayor; beast ’in’t got an alias. It’s known as nothin’ ’cept what it is—a dirty big mormorach, an’ it’s doin’ a grand job on all these boats what’ve gone after it.”

  “It is that grim fact that has compelled me to seek your counsel,” said Seamer, nodding. He took a step forward, hesitated, and stepped back. “The mormorach killed Blueloons Emory, our most senior magistrate, and the people of the town are in a panic: this is the longest they’ve ever been without fish, and they’re desperate. The town is built on fishing, Captain Murdagh, and completely dependent on the fruits of the sea for survival. Should this continue, people will have to leave to find work elsewhere to support their families. That means Oracco, and the gods only know what kind of work awaits them there. These are fishing people—generations of them. We have to do something to save the town.”

  Murdagh had been motionless throughout Seamer’s speech. Now he spat on the ground.

  “We does? Where does I fit into this?” he said. He slow-blinked at Seamer again and suppressed a snort as all color drained from the mayor’s face.

  Seamer was sweating. “The word of the people is that you are the only man capable of catching this leviathan,” he said.

  Murdagh nodded slowly. “That might be,” he said. “I takes it you’ve been watchin’ the others take their try?”

  “I have, of course. I’ve never had sea legs, but I’ve watched this coastline my whole life, and I’ve never seen aught like it; the fiercest machines of war could not do to a ship what that animal has done. Tonight’s is the third of them to fall. If these hunters are destroyed and you fail to act, the town is finished.”

  Murdagh dragged a slow lump of spit round his mouth and let it fall onto the ground.

  “‘Fail to act’?” he said. “You’d best watch the tone you’s takin’ with me, Mr. Seamer. There ’in’t no supposin’ I’d manage any better. ’S an awful lot o’ risk for me, takin’ the Hellsong out into these waters wi’ that thing swimmin’ around. ’In’t like my boat’s made o’ rock, an’ even if it were, I don’t reckon it’d make much o’ a difference. What call has you to be tellin’ me I’s got to be actin’?”

  Seamer wrung his hands. Desperation moved his feet and he came toward Murdagh, beseeching, his palms and face open and pleading. “But, Captain—”

  Murdagh stood and drew his dirk, held it loosely in the air between them. “You jus’ stay right where you is, Mr. Mayor. I din’t get this pretty by lettin’ strangers rush me unchecked.”

  Seamer looked perplexed. “You can’t think I meant to . . . Captain Murdagh, I’m here to beg for your help! I don’t wish to quarrel with you.”

  “You ’in’t begged yet, son,” said Murdagh. He lifted his head and gave Seamer the full benefit of his scarred, passionless face, his bone leg and bludgeoned eye, and watched the mayor wilt under their terrible heat.

  Seamer forced his eyes from the ground. Behind the old sailor, the sky had darkened to a violent red, the cloud furrows clenched to a fist.

  “I’m begging now,” said Seamer, his voice wobbling. “Please, Captain, help us. People are terrified. There’s talk of evil magic spreading: families have come to blows; there are outbreaks of violence every day. Last night a rider brought word of a trio of highwaymen torn apart, their body parts nailed to a dozen trees—this sort of thing does not normally happen outside of the city. The creature’s magic is poisoning the air—two days ago a dog was crushed dead under a cart and started barking on the slab. When the dead start walking, talk of heavenly judgment inevitably follows; some think we are being punished for our centuries’ feeding on the sea, that the mormorach is an agent of the water gods’ vengeance. You sit here on the statue of the Mother, surrounded by offerings, pleas for help; people are desperate! They look to me, as their mayor, and I find myself powerless—powerless unless you help me.”

  Murdagh spat again. “I ’in’t runnin’ a charity, sailin’ around bailin’ out every little town what’s in trouble. I got no claim on your people, an’ they got none on me—seems that if the gods’ve chosen to send this thing forth maybe it is a sign folk should stop plund’rin’ the waters. An’ what’s the trouble if there’s a trout farm? Why can’t they farm their fishes an’ leave the big beasts to Gilt an’ his crew?”

  “The trout farm belongs to one man and is not well loved. These are fishing people, Captain—they want to catch
their quarry, not have it penned like cattle. Surely you understand that?”

  Murdagh nodded. “I do. So they move themselves on to someplace else.”

  “And to where would they move? There are no other fishing grounds on this coast that would support such a settlement of—”

  “Then maybe they’s meant to start up again in Oracco!” shouted Murdagh. “An’ maybe I’s meant to be practical an’ take my little tub farther up the coast to spike myself a big whale or two or three, live on their oil, an’ drink myself into gin-soaked safety for the next year. But still,” he added, “you speak well. I like words—reckon I’d vote for you meself if I heard somethin’ like that comin’ from a soapbox.”

  Seamer smiled sheepishly. “You’re most kind,” he said, “but I rarely speak publicly. The mayor isn’t elected in Canna Bay; it’s a hereditary position.”

  “That so?” said Murdagh. He sheathed his dirk. “A gentleman, then?”

  “I try to be, sir,” said Seamer, clasping his lapels.

  “I imagine that comes with a tract o’ land, that title. Puttin’ you to livin’ in rarefied strata, so to speak.” Murdagh’s voice had softened. He cocked an eyebrow.

  Seamer felt the tug on the line, and his smile began to fall. “I have some land, a few acres only, but—”

  “It’s a common misconception ’bout sailin’ men that they only has love for the sea,” said Murdagh, turning his back on the mayor and looking out to the wrecked speck of the mormorach’s most recent victim. “I, f’r instance, loves land, ’specially valuable land. There’s no tellin’ what I might do for a good bit o’ land.” He turned and grinned at Seamer. “Needs a sea view, mind.”

  Seamer, colorless and clammy, swallowed. “I . . . I don’t . . .” he began.

  “I’ll catch this little thing for you, Mr. Mayor, an’ all this freedom’ll cost is that pretty land o’ yours,” said Murdagh, stomping off toward the village, his terrible crutch ringing on the stone. “We’ll let the others have their try, an’ then I’ll go huntin’. Doesn’t do Gilt any harm to watch the competition bein’ smashed to splinters—more whale meat for the Hellsong when all this is over!”