Riverkeep Page 9

  “I thought you wanted me to leave?”

  “I do! I mean, don’t move the bäta—you’re slowing me down!”

  “What’s a bäta?”

  “This boat, it’s what you call—”

  “So don’t move it like this?” said Mix, rocking the bäta from side to side.

  “No!” said Pappa. “Eat!”

  “Stop it,” said Wull. “You’re upsetting him.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Mix. “Why don’t you let me help him eat, then you c’n keep rowin’ at the same time an’ drop me off in a minute?”

  “Eat!” said Pappa.

  Wull looked back down the river. A few days ago he’d been sleepwalking toward becoming the keep and dreaming of an escape from the stagnancy of the boathouse.

  “Fine,” he said, moving to the side, “but then you’re goin’, all right?”

  “Not a bother,” said Mix, sliding past. As she hovered above him and rearranged her feet, her collar slipped, and Wull saw her neck was marked with delicate white patterns that swirled like a dusting of frost.

  “What’s that on your skin?” he said.

  “Nothin’,” said Mix, shrugging into her coat and holding up a fish head for Pappa.

  “It’s not nothin’. Is it a tattoo?”

  “Do I look like I’d have a tattoo?”

  “I don’t know,” said Wull.

  “Same as again,” said Pappa, chewing the fish head in slobbering bites. Mix hadn’t seemed to notice the dribble of scales on her hand.

  “So what are they?” he said. “The white marks, I mean.”

  “A childhood thing.”

  Wull watched her passing Pappa another fish head, felt the flames of pain on his cheek.

  “What’s wrong with your paps?” asked Mix.

  Wull rowed a few strokes, thought of the bohdan.

  “He’s jus’ not himself,” he said. “Something took him under the water a few days ago. When he came back, he was different, aggressive, didn’t know who I was. I had to tie him to a chair to stop him hurtin’ me. Now he barely knows my name, doesn’t remember anythin’ ’bout who he was.” He gripped the oars tighter. “But he’ll be fine.”

  Mix reached across the bäta and patted Wull’s boot. Wull looked at her wrist: the same white patterns disappeared into her sleeve.

  “That’s horrible,” she said. “What did the doctor say?”

  “We’ve no money for doctors,” said Wull. “Whenever I’ve been ill, Pappa’s mixed me a poultice from one o’ the keep’s books. Doctorin’ means the city anyway; none’ll come out to the boathouse.”

  “I’s right thirsty,” said Mix. “How come the doctors won’t come see you?”

  Wull paused, nodded at the water pouch, slowed the oars.

  “I don’t know. They jus’ don’t. It’s how things are—we live out on the edge o’ things, an’ we get along by ourselves. I need to get him help, an’ I’ve only days to do it, so I’m takin’ him to the coast—there’s somethin’ there. It’s the only thing that can help him now.”

  Mix grabbed the pouch. “The mormorach?” she said, drinking deeply.

  Wull stopped moving and looked down at her. “How’d you know that?”

  Mix shrugged, wiping her mouth, then rummaged for a good-size fish head and held it up. Pappa tore into it ravenously.

  “I think anyone’d have guessed. It’s in all the newspapers—the bradai were talkin’ about it an’ all. Mormorach this an’ mormorach that. Everyone with a gun’s headin’ down there to have a shot at it. Worth a fortune, apparently.”

  “Oh gods . . . I need to get there! If someone else kills it then there’s no way we’ll be able to afford the stuff Pappa needs. . . . I’ll have done all this for nothin’!”

  “You don’t think you can kill it, do you?” said Mix. She laughed, then stopped when she saw Wull’s face. “I’m sorry, it’s jus’ that . . . I mean, the papers are sayin’ the place is full o’ whalin’ ships now—big boats what’re made for huntin’, with sailors an’ things. All you’ve got is a rowin’ boat. How’re you even goin’ to get there in time?”

  “I’ll manage!” said Wull. “I have to get there. The current’ll help us.”

  “Some current,” said Mix. “It’ll take you days, at least. An’ it’d be suicide to hunt this thing. I mean, it can’t be your fault what happened to him. . . .”

  “What do you know of it?” said Wull, rounding on her, his eyes burning. “What do you know ’bout my life?”

  “Nothin’, I s’pose. I reckon I know a bit ’bout your paps, though. He jus’ needs takin’ care of.”

  “An’ what do you know o’ that?”

  “Nothin’. Jus’ that I’ve cared for sick people before. Sometimes they jus’ need lookin’ after an’ bein’ made comfortable.”

  Wull looked away from her, his eyes shining.

  “I’ll help look after him if you like,” said Mix, “if you can stand to let me stay here.”

  “It from boat,” muttered Pappa.

  “See?” Mix leaned across and wiped some fish-scaled dribble from the corner of Pappa’s mouth. “Your paps likes me well enough.”

  Wull looked at Pappa’s face, felt the fevered pulsing heat of the bradai’s cut draining him.

  He turned the bäta back to the current.

  “Sit still an’ don’t make any loud noises,” he said. “We’re goin’ to the inn at Lauston. The plan was to tie up behind the ursa bars, but now they’ve stolen my money, so I’m goin’ to have to try an’ get somethin’ to eat.”

  “Don’t mind me on that score,” said Mix. “I’s not hungry at all.”

  “Well, I am, rowin’ this damn thing. You c’n stay and look after Pappa.”

  “No bother at all,” said Mix. She wiped another trickle of drool from Pappa’s chin.

  “Why would you even want to come with me?” said Wull, watching her.

  “Oh, I’ve nowhere else to go. I’m jus’ wanderin’. Or runnin’ away, really. Might as well run that way as any other.”

  “Why are you runnin’?” said Wull.

  Mix said nothing, but smiled at him.

  “You’re a criminal, aren’t you?” said Wull wearily. “Brilliant, now I’m an accessory to crime.”

  “No!” She laughed. “O’ course not. I mean, technically, I stole somethin’. . . .”

  “Oh gods . . .”

  “Wait, though—d’you think it’s possible to steal somethin’ by accident?”

  “Yes, def’nitely. Def’nitely.”

  “Then I stole somethin’.”

  “Somethin’ valuable?”

  “Oh, beyond value, really. Priceless.”

  “Perfect,” said Wull. “What was it?”

  Mix shook her head. “Another time, maybe.”

  “Fine. Jus’ don’t steal my mormorach. I really need it.”

  “I’m tellin’ you, it’ll be long gone by the time you get there,” said Mix, holding another fish head for Pappa. “An’ if it’s still there, it’ll kill you.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I’m just sayin’ . . .”

  “Don’t.”

  The Hellsong

  Deep in the fetid heat of the Hellsong’s armory, Samjon blinked sweat from his eyes and stuck to his task. The ship’s great ribs swung with the waves, and he shifted his feet to catch his balance, leaning toward the single lamp, away from the swoops of sharpened steel around him.

  After hours below, the paraffin smell was beginning to lighten his head. He blinked again, fluttering his eyes to keep his focus.

  “’In’t you done?” said Ormidale, his broad face looming at the doorway.

  “I’s goin’ as fast as I can,” said Samjon, sliding a flensing saw the size of his leg into a leather scabbard.
<
br />   “Well, go quicker: we’s needin’ these oiled and stored an hour ago an’ you’s barely halfway done! Here . . .” Ormidale hefted a harpoon the thickness of an eel, spinning it as though it were made of paper. He snatched the rag Samjon was holding and swirled it along the metal’s length, then slid it inside the calfskin wrap, alongside the others. “See? Don’t go as fast as you can—go as fast as I can.”

  Samjon sighed. “Why we even puttin’ all these away? How we goin’ to kill anythin’ with no weapons?”

  “You jus’ button your yap an’ keep workin’,” said Ormidale, giving Samjon a soft kick on the rump as he left. “’S not for cabin boys to ask questions, least not if they don’t want to stay cabin boys forever.”

  Samjon gripped the cloth, lifted another flensing saw, and dribbled oil on its surface. The liquid rainbowed in the flickering lamplight and rolled from the shimmering blade as the waves battered the Hellsong’s keel.

  “No weapons,” he muttered, sheathing the saw and stacking it in the hold. “An’ how d’you catch a fish wi’ no bait, I wonder?”

  Lauston

  Slumped in the dimness of an animal-fat candle, Tillinghast watched the groups of drinkers. The floor of the inn was like a poorly coordinated folk dance: people moving in wavering lines, bumping together, shouting, and throwing up their hands.

  Tillinghast remembered such occasions. Somewhere in him slumbered that feeling, a tapeworm in his soul that spoke to him of noise-soaked evenings and riotous fun. Of the company of other people.

  After drinking volumes of potœm that would have killed a horse, he had retired to a quiet table at the back of the inn. There, in his roaring, unconquerable sobriety, he picked through the entertainments left to him, his fists itching.

  He scanned the faces of the men.

  They had to be bigger than him—no crowds like to see small men being picked on—a little battle hardened (facial scars were always a bonus), slightly lumbering, transparently obnoxious, and accompanied by enough friends to make it interesting, but not so many that he might lose. Tillinghast liked winning.

  He sipped his water. The candle died above his head, and he watched happily from the shadows, enjoying playing out each contest in his imagination.

  Just as he reached the point of giving up, a boulder-headed lump was revealed by the parting of a group in the middle of the room. The man was gigantic and had a face that dripped aggression.

  “Hello,” said Tillinghast, “dun’t you look unpleasant?”

  As he spoke, the man stuck out a leg and tripped the barkeep, who was passing with a stacked tray of empty glasses. He didn’t even laugh, just carried on drinking his ale while his friends exploded in laughter. The barkeep was left sprawling in the broken glass, a silent crowd watching him collect scattered shards from the flagstone floor.

  “Oh! That’s jus’ lovely, super,” said Tillinghast, chuckling. Rifling through the list of provocations in his head, he toyed with pretending to be the barkeep’s brother, but settled instead on a reliable staple: the indignation of having been looked at funny.

  He rose, finishing his water and testing the new stitching on his shoulder.

  But as he was about to cross the room and unleash the full force of his boredom, he saw a tall, lean boy moving among the tables, lifting food from half-finished plates and scraping it into a canvas bag.

  Tillinghast laughed at the brazen lack of guile. There was no misdirection or subterfuge—the grubby boy, his chestnut-colored face crudely bandaged, was simply scooping up crusts and veg and the remnants of meat cuts as though performing a service. Occasionally he would tip the last inch or so of a tankard into a wide-necked bottle, mixing beer and wine and water.

  “What are you doin’, little man?” muttered Tillinghast to himself.

  The boy was nearly at his target’s table.

  Tillinghast moved through the crowds just as the boy’s wrist was grabbed in the act of lifting bread.

  “Tha’s my dinner,” said the boulder-headed man. “What-choo doin’ with my dinner? I ain’t finished tha’.”

  “Never mind that,” said Tillinghast, emerging and placing clenched fists on his hips. “You, thick neck, were lookin’ at me funny.”

  “’Ere, Ruby, he called you thick neck,” said one of the big man’s friends.

  “Why you takin’ my dinner?” said Ruby, unwilling to be swayed.

  “I work here,” said the boy, trying to pull his wrist free.

  “No, you don’t. I’s here all the time, an’ I ain’t never seen you afore, an’ if you did work here, you’d take my whole plate.”

  “I must insist you acknowledge the funny look you jus’ gave me. . . .”

  “It’s a new way of doing things,” said the boy. “Saves money.”

  Ruby’s brows knotted. “How?” he said.

  “Smack ’im, Ruby,” said one of the men gathered round the table.

  “You, fat guts, looked at me funny!” said Tillinghast, who felt that matters were leaving him behind.

  “I gather the food, an’ someone else gathers the plates,” said the boy. “Makes sense, when you think about it.”

  Ruby’s brows knotted tighter. “No . . . no, it doesn’t,” he rumbled. “I think I will hit you now . . . you little worm! Tha’s stealin’ from me! I’s the one norm’ly does the stealin’. Ain’t nobody stealin’ nuffin’ from me!”

  “. . . sad times indeed if a man thinks ’e can go around lookin’ at folk funny an’ nothin’ll come of it. . . .”

  “’Oo’s this?” said Ruby to the boy. “Your dad?”

  “Heavens no!” said Tillinghast. “I’s jus’ an innocent bystander who’s been wronged by the funny looks what you’s been shootin’ around this here inn, an’ let me tell you, big face, that—”

  “Hit ’em both, Ruby,” said a voice from the table.

  “It makes perfect sense,” said the boy. “This way, the person gatherin’ the plates won’t have to waste time takin’ the bread off them. Let me help you with that last bit o’ beer you’ve got there. . . .”

  As the boy reached for the tankard, Ruby’s pupils narrowed to dots and the sinews of his broad neck seized.

  “Oh, I wun’t do that. . . .” said Tillinghast.

  The boy lifted Ruby’s beer, Ruby’s hand caught him a huge blow across the face, and Tillinghast sighed happily.

  “That’s my son, you blaggard!” he cried, and head-butted Ruby on the nose.

  10

  Oathlaw

  One does not have to believe in magic any more than one does the weather! For while the tornado and sand wind are rare, they exist; and just as these tempests remain outwith our control, so too does magic. It will erupt in unpredictable bursts within nature, manifest in its growths and beasts, as untamed and potent as the sun, as far and unknowable as the cosmos. Magic is like the weather in so many ways—and sometimes there are storms.

  —Emmeline Porter, Observed Phenomena in Nature

  Remedie dug with her bare hands, as fast as she could, ripping and tugging at the turf until it yielded in crumbling chunks. The soil, odorless in the freezing air, was agony on her hands, hardened to razors that sliced her skin and pulled at the seams of her fingernails until they split and bled. Still she dug, faster, the calls of the dogs and their men growing closer and closer.

  Sweat frosted on her face, wrapping her in a skin of cold before it could drip into her eyes. Finding the first thin roots of the tree, her heart rate quickened.

  “Soon you’ll be in my arms, my love,” she whispered, cutting away a root that blocked her path and throwing it into the basket at her side.

  She dug past worms and beetles and the white root buds of grasses, stubbing her numbed fingertips on the stones that riddled the layers of earth, pushed her blood into the soil, ignored the baying and the shouting that had now passed the dyke and was
closing on her.

  A year had passed since she had last turned over this mud; a year to the day since misery had fallen like a blanket, suffocating her and blocking the world’s light and sound.

  A dog barked—closer than she’d thought. Remedie recognized in its deep timbre the growl of Masler, Pastor Dybilt’s slavering ridgeback.

  I have not lived as I have this past year to be taken into the judgment of that whip-necked oaf, she thought.

  A thicket of roots appeared. She scrabbled ever more desperately, feeling her fingernails flake away like fish scales.

  “And there you are,” she whispered, pulling aside the last thin tangle of wood to reveal the object of her search. She lifted it, slick with earth-water and crumbed thickly with mud, and held it to her breast. Far in that moment from the world of gods and judgment and the pain in her cold-lashed body, she brushed its face clean, planted a kiss on its nose, and smiled.

  “It’s all afoot, my love,” she whispered. “Just as I told you. And now here you are, after a year in that cold ground—ready to be born again.”

  She swaddled it in her shawl, placed it in the basket, and stood. Then she ran, faster than men, faster than dogs, faster than rumor, letting the wind guide her and carry her scent toward the sea and the hills, so that when the pastor and his men arrived they found no sign of their quarry: only a wet hole in the earth filled with broken roots, a scatter of torn fingernails, and a vacant space the size and shape of a newborn child.

  Lauston

  “Oh, that was fair good fun, wun’t it? There was six of ’em tryin’ to get me at one point, I reckon. Fat bloke tried stabbin’ me an’ all—put a hole right through my shirt.”

  Tillinghast was leaning on the inn’s fence, idly chewing a piece of frozen grass as he examined the torn material. “Did you see when I swapped their hats around? You’re welcome, by the way.”

  “For what?” said Wull. He paused in collecting the food scraps and smashed a rotten cabbage against the ground. “Interruptin’ me an’ ruinin’ everythin’? You got us thrown out the only inn in the village! Now what am I goin’