Riverkeep Read online

  “I snapped its neck,” said Remedie.

  “How’d you manage that?”

  “Oh, it was quite easy, really, once I’d found the gaps in the vertebrae.”

  “The what?” said Tillinghast.

  Remedie ignored him. “It wasn’t pleasant,” she said, “but necessary. He was going to tear Bonn apart. I’d have killed them all if that had happened. And there’s a lesson for you.”

  Wull shared a look with Mix. He turned the oars in his grip, massaging feeling back into his palms.

  “What’s the lesson?” she said.

  “Don’t trifle with a mother and child,” said Remedie, “because we will destroy you.”

  “Ha!” said Tillinghast, throwing back his head. “What a pile of tripe is that. Mothers is all thinkin’ they’s fearsome beasts—jus’ ’cause you’ve managed to push a wailin’ lump out your clam doesn’t mean you’re a bloody warrior. I could take that paperweight off you an’ snap it over my knee.”

  “That paperweight is my son,” said Remedie coldly. “If you even move toward me I’ll burst your straw and turn you into a bonnet.”

  Tillinghast laughed again. “A bonnet o’ my straw would be too pretty to sit on that face,” he said.

  Mix, her eyes flicking from Remedie to Tillinghast, held a fish head up for Pappa.

  Wull, his arms moving in a constant ache, looked at the bloodless, heavy head, the gray mouth opening for the cold silvery lump.

  “Eat,” said Pappa.

  “That’s what we’re doing,” said Mix.

  “It from boat,” said Pappa.

  “That’s me,” she said, smiling.

  Wull found her eyes, held them.

  “Untie the arms, it that speaks,” said Pappa.

  “I can’t,” said Wull automatically. “You know I can’t.”

  “Are you not tempted to try it?” said Mix. “Untying him, I mean.”

  Wull shook his head. “He’ll try to escape. Or something else. It’s for his own good. I jus’ need to help him, that’s all. An’ we’re nearly there, Pappa,” he added.

  “Stinking it that speaks boy,” said Pappa, a thick roll of white fish muscle clutched in his teeth like a cigar. He worked it into his mouth, chewing roughly and mashing it into a paste of tufty lumps.

  “What was he like, your paps?” Mix asked.

  Wull, caught off guard by the question, took a moment to answer. He rowed while the others waited, the sound of Pappa’s chewing filling the boat.

  “He still is a great man,” said Wull eventually. “He’s strong an’ brave, an’ he loves the river.”

  “An’ what about your mam?”

  Remedie glanced at Wull, whose face had deepened to a red that was beyond exertion.

  “You ask too many questions, young lady,” she said.

  “Sorry,” said Mix.

  “It’s all right,” said Wull. “Pappa found her near the footbridge. I was too young to remember.”

  He rowed through the quiet.

  “Quite a man, your paps, bringin’ you up on his own,” said Mix, handing Pappa another fish head.

  Wull nodded. “He’s my best friend,” he said quietly.

  He rowed a few minutes more, silence in the bäta but for the wet movements of Pappa’s mouth. In the space of a few strokes, they had broken through the skin of smog, under the slime-slicked stonework of the Old Oracco Bridge, and emerged with a noisome burst into a bacterial slurry of shouting, bumping craft. Above them poked the towers of hovels, lodging houses, apothecaries, and mongers that were the life of the famous old bridge, its gibbets filled with fabric corpses in a nod to its grisly history. Wull turned to look over his shoulder and found they were already in the heart of the city itself, leaned over by the steaming lump of its iron body, the air as foul as a blocked drain—feculence and staleness and decay.

  He slowed the oars until they moved no faster than the current. The bäta began to drift through the other craft, the multitude of heads before them as teeming as a market square.

  “It’s so big,” he said. “I never knew it was as big as this. An’ it stinks.”

  Tillinghast lifted his hat from his face and peered out. “Oh, the docks. They’s a fair size, right enough. Most o’ the city’s behind this, mind, an’ the docks go on for a mile or so. These is jus’ the shipyards.”

  Wull’s eyes bulged as he took in the industrial might of Oracco. Through fog that was brown and sour, the shipyards’ corpulent mass roared above him, a rusting beast skinned with metal and soot-blacked stone. The skeletal legs of cranes spidered across its body, while at its feet huge arterial belches of water and steam sluiced a constant effluence into the Danék. From inside the dock came pulses of sound—ringing hammers and humming flames—and men and women, innumerable and tiny, crawled like fleas on its back, sending bursts of sparks tumbling in such constancy down its great face that they became a waterfall of shining fire.

  “How could it be bigger than this?” said Wull. He remembered a time he and Pappa had found a walrös dying on the bank. The little things of the river and soil were already harvesting its flesh; the creature—agonized and bleeding internally from some stone-dashed wound—lying still, puffing helpless, desperate breaths.

  Tillinghast laughed. “’S a huge place—you could walk all day an’ not cross it. Oracco’s like a termite mound, ’cept with more drinkin’ an’ less work.”

  “I’ve heard the city is a place of such foul vice and debauchery it befits no good-thinking person to enter its gates,” said Remedie.

  “You’s absolutely right,” said Tillinghast. “I’s immensely fond of it.”

  “Seems like you two don’t agree on this issue,” said Mix casually, trailing her fingers in the water.

  “Don’t do that,” said Wull, turning to face her.

  “What? I’m jus’ sayin’.”

  “No, I mean with your fingers. You’ll freeze them off, or the seulas’ll have them.”

  “I think I’ll be all right,” said Mix.

  Wull looked at her. “That’s what Till said,” he said eventually.

  Mix laughed.

  “Well, I certainly don’t agree with Mr. Tillinghast,” said Remedie. “I don’t hold with pleasures of the flesh.”

  Tillinghast lifted his hat and peered at her, a sly grin on his face. He pointed at Bonn, clutched tightly in her arms. “Somebody held you,” he said.

  Remedie flushed and drew herself together, a gathering storm of indignation. “How dare you think to speak to—”

  “All right, both of you, drop it,” said Wull. “It’s gettin’ right busy here, an’ I don’t want you fightin’ an’ puttin’ me off so I crash.”

  He steered the bäta through the crowded boats on the water, shapes that loomed through the thick fog with suddenness and shouting, with strange voices and foul language rising above the knocking of wood as hulls and oars clacked together in the tangle of craft.

  “You, fine people!” shouted a man from a floating platform. He held up a brown, crimson-dripping bag. “You want t’ buy some meat? Fresh meat, only two days old! Is usually beef!”

  “Say no,” muttered Tillinghast from under his hat.

  “Yes!” said Mix.

  “No, but thank you!” shouted Wull, glaring at her.

  The man started to say something else, then switched his attention to a ferryman whose bow was nudging the bäta’s stern. Wull saw the bloody bag pass across the gap, the man running on his platform to keep pace and gather his coins. He vanished in the smog and was replaced by a square tug, itself bashing a fish skiff aside.

  “This is impossible,” said Wull. “Nowhere with this number of people can make sense.”

  “It’s exciting,” replied Tillinghast, “an’ it works.”

  A dead dog, split by maggots and r
ot, twirled past, plated by a droning armor of black insects.

  “Does it?” said Wull.

  “Oh, sure. More money goes through here ’n a day than you an’ I could count in a lifetime.”

  “And that’s how you judge success and virtue, Mr. Tillinghast? By how much money is made?” said Remedie.

  “’S as good a way as I’s found,” said Tillinghast, grinning.

  “But the river should flow,” said Wull. “There’s so many boats here, you could walk across them like a road.”

  “Handy if you’s bein’ followed, that,” said Tillinghast.

  “Followed by who?” said Mix.

  “Oh, anyone: guards, crooks—husbands.”

  “What d’you think o’ that, Miss Cantwell?” said Mix, tut-tutting.

  “You stop that,” said Wull.

  “Where?” said Pappa, waking with a splutter. “Untie the arms!”

  “Hello, Paps,” said Mix.

  “We’re in Oracco jus’ now,” said Wull. “We jus’ got here, an’ we’re goin’ to row through the docks.” A transportee bell sounded above his head as he guided the bäta through a narrow channel. The boat’s eyes seemed half shut in a grimace, he thought, like it was unused to sharing its water.

  “What’s Oracco?” said Pappa.

  “The city. You like comin’ here, said you’d take me one day when I was the keep.”

  “Never did.”

  “You did so,” said Wull, struggling to control his voice. “Oracco, the city. Biggest city in the world. Remember?”

  “Never did,” said Pappa again.

  “What’s this about rowin’ through?” said Tillinghast.

  “That’s what we’re doin’ now. Won’t take long.”

  “But I’s wantin’ to stop now, jus’ for a bit. Just a couple o’ drinks—come on. You c’n watch me drink potœm.”

  Wull scanned the bankside buildings, through which scaffolds poked like bone. The huge white names of trade posts were painted on crumbling brick made grimmer still by the fog’s wetness, and their feet were greened by the creeping moisture of the river. Their walls hid the city beyond, as impenetrable and dark as a forest’s matted face, and with the same seething sense of unseen life within.

  “We’re not stoppin’,” he said.

  “We’re certainly not!” said Remedie. “I wouldn’t soil myself by setting foot there.”

  “I sincerely hopes you ain’t goin’ to soil yourself under any circumstances, Miss Cantwell. . . .”

  “You cheeky bugger,” said Mix, laughing as Remedie fumed. “Right, Paps, I’m goin’ to sit next to Miss Cantwell.”

  She patted Pappa’s cheek and clambered awkwardly over Wull, who had to drop his left oar and lean away.

  Tillinghast sat up and wedged his hat on his head. “Look, I’s the payin’ customer here . . .” he began.

  “You told me you wanted to jus’ pass through!” said Wull, reclaiming his oar and sculling around a barge. “You said that was a good idea.”

  “An’ now I’ve decided to go an’ see what’s what in the city for a bit. Could be there’s some excitin’ stuff happ’nin’.” Tillinghast craned his neck. “See there? That’s Slack Jenny’s place. I’d only be a minute! You could time me!” He tucked the hessian sack farther beneath the thwart as Remedie shook her head in disgust.

  “It’s to do with that mandrake, isn’t it?” said Wull. “That’s why you want to go ashore?”

  “Never you bloody mind,” said Tillinghast.

  “What is it?” said Wull. “Tell me what a mandrake is if it’s so important to you.”

  “You really wants to know?”

  “Yes!”

  “All right—it’s a plant grown from the spilled seed of a hanged man,” said Tillinghast. “They’s shaped like men too, an’ it’s growin’ well already near the water, jus’ soakin’ it up. This un’s from a very well-known man, an’ not a pleasant one. Some even less pleasant people had it, an’ I took it off ’em.”

  Wull’s hands slowed. “Why?” he said.

  “It’s a little life, so it is. Wun’t right for folk such as they to have it.”

  “So you’re a thief, too?”

  “Weeell,” said Tillinghast, “I s’pose if you wants to be technical about it. . . .”

  “I do!” said Wull. “You stole that? From who?”

  “Weeell,” said Tillinghast, “I s’pose you’d technic’ly call ’em gangsters. . . .”

  “Gangsters!” said Wull. He picked up the oars’ pace, speeding blindly and bumping lighter boats aside.

  “And do they want it back, these gangsters?” said Remedie.

  “Oh, a great deal, I imagine,” said Tillinghast.

  “And they’ll be following you?”

  “I very much hopes so,” said Tillinghast. “I’s not punched anyone for hours.”

  “So, you’ve come onto my boat knowin’ there’s bloody gangsters followin’ you?”

  “Yup.”

  “Which means they’re followin’ me an’ Pappa now an’ all?”

  “’S right,” said Tillinghast. “Excitin’, ’in’t it?”

  “What happens if you plant it?” said Mix.

  Tillinghast winked at her. “It all depends,” he said.

  “You wish to grow this thing into a person, yet you sneer at my Bonn?” said Remedie. “You, sir, are the most foul-mannered, selfish—”

  “Pipe down, toots,” said Tillinghast. “Don’t you feel like you could be usin’ some fun, Master Keep? It’s jus’ a quick stop, an’ then we can be goin’ again.”

  “This is not a passenger boat!” said Wull. “I’m takin’ you because I have to, because some scummy bradai took my money, and because they”—he jerked his head back toward Remedie and Mix—“ended up in my bäta through bad luck and sneakin’ around . . .”

  “Um, Wull . . .” said Mix.

  “. . . otherwise, I’d be flying all the way down to Canna Bay on my own,” Wull carried on, not hearing, “an’ a damn sight better for it an’ all! I’d still have my own bloody oars, an’ I’d be a damn sight happier!”

  “You couldn’t do this on your own!” said Tillinghast.

  “Wull!” said Mix.

  “Shouting!” said Pappa. “Untie the arms!”

  “I can’t!” said Wull, reaching across to press Pappa back into his seat. “Look,” he said to Tillinghast, “I can’t stop. I know you want to, but—”

  “Wulliam!” Mix shouted, kicking the bottom of his seat.

  “What?”

  He looked around the riverscape. The other craft had vanished, emptying the hull-bumping waters so that the bäta was alone, the river’s width suddenly vast, its naked water slicked by the colors of its trade: white flour, black coal, and the red sheen of spilled offal.

  “Why’s it gone so quiet?” said Remedie.

  “I don’t know,” said Wull. He turned the bäta’s nose into the current again, kicked forward.

  “Where’ve the other boats gone?” said Mix.

  “I don’t know!” said Wull, rowing harder.

  Tillinghast turned around. “I dun’t know either, but it’d be even easier f’r us to be gettin’ across the water now, see down by—”

  “Be quiet. Something’s happening.”

  They all looked around at the empty fog. Wull stood, oars gripped on his chest, ready to throw the bäta forward. The Danék pulled on the blades, and he felt the current’s edge turn the handles against his skin.

  “This can’t be good,” he said.

  “What’s all that commotion?” said Remedie.

  Wull turned to follow her arm and saw, pointing through the murk, the V-shaped hull of an enormous ship lurching through the doors of a dry dock. The crowd inside the dock was visible only by the faint
dots of faces, and the sky-filling grind that replaced the noise of their cheering came as the nose of the ship leaned forward on its slipway and began to drop toward them.

  In an instant Wull saw what was going to happen.

  “Grab Pappa!” he shouted to Tillinghast, dropping to the keep’s seat and pulling as hard as he could on the oars. The bäta shot forward, eyes locked and focused, and Wull found the current instantly, giving the heavy boat another surge of speed.

  “What? Why?” said Tillinghast. “Why ’in’t we goin’ ashore?”

  “Will you just grab hold of him? When that ship hits the water we’ll be swamped by the wave—you need to hold on to him, or he’ll be washed overboard!”

  Tillinghast turned to look at the ship, now more than halfway to the river. “It’ll be fine, jus’—”

  “It won’t! We could die—just hold on to him!”

  “Untie the arms!” said Pappa.

  “I ain’t holdin’ anyone. We’s not goin’ to—”

  “Hold on to Paps!” said Mix. “I can’t reach him from here!”

  “I’s not holdin’ another man,” said Tillinghast, shifting on the thwart. “I’ll shake ’is hand. . . .”

  “You selfish pig!” cried Remedie, Bonn clutched to her neck.

  “Will you hold him please?” shouted Wull, the veins in his neck bulging with the force of his rowing. He risked a glance over his shoulder, saw a natural breakwater up ahead.

  And realized as the ship dipped into the river that there was no hope of making it.

  He dropped the oars and leaped across the bäta, pushing Tillinghast aside and grabbing at Pappa, who fought back, howling in protest, kicking him away.

  “Hold on!” Wull shouted as a wave the height of a building smashed him into the water, Pappa beyond his reach alongside the flailing lumps of the others, swirling, blind-panicked in foul, silt-clouded water, up and down lost—only the freezing pressure of the river pushing on them with such intensity the air was forced from their lungs.

  The cold of the water sliced Wull as he twirled in the spinning thump of the ship’s wash. He threw out his arms and legs, tried to steady himself, and forced his eyes open.