The Empire of Ashes (The Draconis Memoria) Page 9

  “I had a dream in which I was drowning in piss,” Sigoral replied, grimacing as he took another spoonful of broth. “It tasted better than this.” He shrank back as Loriabeth aimed a swipe at his head.

  “That was the mask,” Clay said, taking a seat on a near by barrel. He went on to explain about the gas and Jack’s role in hauling them clear of Mount Reygnar. “We had us an eventful voyage so far. And it ain’t over.”

  “Have you told the captain . . . ?” Sigoral trailed off, affording both Clay and Loriabeth a questioning glance.

  “That you’re a lying, double-faced Corvie shithead?” Loriabeth said. “Sure, we told him.”

  “Needed to know there was another Blood-blessed on board,” Clay added. “It’s his ship after all, such as it is.”

  He turned as a stream of muttered gibberish sounded from the neighbouring bunk. Scrimshine had sunk into a semiconscious state after Skaggerhill dosed him with all their remaining Green. His colour was better and his bouts of coughing had abated, but he showed little sign of waking save for the occasional bout of babbling in an unfamiliar Dalcian dialect.

  “I bet Skaggs twenty scrip he don’t make it,” Loriabeth said, the callousness of the remark contrasted by the softness of her voice.

  “You’ll lose,” Clay told her. “Seen his kind before, they only ever die old. It’s like life just ain’t mean enough to kill them.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Jack still hadn’t returned by nightfall, although the images of reddened waters and dismembered seals told Clay he had at least partially sated his hunger. The crew shared a sparse meal of soup, Sigoral joining them for the first time. He wore an eye-patch over his still-unhealed orb and Clay saw how his features tensed as he fought to control the repeated spasms of pain. Conversation was muted and frequently interrupted by Scrimshine’s delirious outbursts.

  “Least he’s got the energy to swear,” Loriabeth observed after another lengthy Dalcian diatribe.

  “He’s not cursing, miss,” Hilemore told her. “He’s praying.”

  “You know Dalcian, Captain?” she asked.

  “A little. I spent a year or so in Dalcian waters before the Emergency. It’s a difficult tongue to pick up, there being so many variations between islands. But prayers to the ancestors are always spoken in the same holy language, which also serves as a common tongue for commerce.”

  “I had heard, sir,” Steelfine said, “that there was much fine combat to be had in the Dalcian Emergency. I’m aggrieved to have missed it, I must say.”

  “There was combat, Lieutenant,” Hilemore said, his face taking on a grim aspect. “And plenty of it, to be sure. But I wouldn’t call it fine.”

  “An alliance of pirate clans attempted to seize corporate holdings,” Sigoral said. “And were soundly defeated. At least that’s what we were told.”

  “Curiously the Dalcians have no word for pirate,” Hilemore replied. “Whether a vessel is to be taken, sunk or allowed on its way is determined by a complex array of clan loyalties and unsettled feuds. They call it the ‘Mehlaya,’ which roughly translates as ‘a web of many spiders.’ It’s what they have instead of written law and proved remarkably effective at keeping some semblance of order for centuries, until the corporate world came calling, of course.”

  “The old will always fall to the new,” said a rarely heard voice. All eyes turned to Preacher, who finished the last of his watery soup before getting up and making for the stairs without another word.

  “Seer scripture,” Braddon explained after Preacher had ascended to the upper deck. “Seems the only thing he speaks these days. If he speaks at all.”

  “Silent or verbose,” Hilemore said. “I’m still grateful for his eyes.”

  Scrimshine’s muttering had abated into a sibilant whisper by the time a new sound came to them, a faint whoosh and boom from outside followed by a hollering from the look-outs on deck.

  “That cannon?” Braddon asked as they scrambled to their feet.

  “Signal rocket,” Hilemore said. “It appears we have company and it might well be friendly.”

  Clay joined the rush to the upper deck and the starboard rail where one of the look-outs was pointing into the darkness. “About thirty points off the bow, sir,” the crewman told Hilemore, who was busy scanning the gloom with his spy-glass. After a short interval there came another whoosh and Clay saw a thick stream of sparks ascend into the night sky before blossoming into a bright yellow flower followed a heart-beat later by the flat thud of combusted powder.

  “Light torches!” Hilemore ordered, Clay seeing a grin play over his lips as he lowered the spy-glass. “All hands step to it. Quick as you can, lads.”

  Soon every crewman had a blazing torch in their hand. Hilemore instructed them to stand along the rail and wave them high whilst shouting as loud as they could. Within moments two shapes appeared in the gloom some two hundred yards off, a narrow, sleek warship moving wraith-like through the placid waters and a markedly less elegant Blue-hunter with paddles that churned the sea white as it drew closer.

  Clay heard Hilemore give a soft sigh as he murmured, “I told her not to wait.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “You look like a drake ate you up then shat you out,” Zenida Okanas greeted Hilemore. They had rigged a gang-plank between the Superior and the Dreadfire. As was apparently custom, the captain had been the last to leave the old sailing-ship.

  “Then I must look better than I feel,” Hilemore replied, before giving a formal bow and adding something in Varestian. Clay only spoke a few words of this tongue but noted a certain gravity to the exchange that followed, almost as if they were observing a ritual of some kind. Zenida said a few short lines then gave a bow and moved aside, Clay recognising the last sentence she spoke as Hilemore stepped from the gang-plank and onto the frigate’s deck: “Welcome home, sea-brother.”

  Hilemore cast a glance around the Superior’s deck and upper works, nodding in approval. “Glad to see you’ve kept her in good order.”

  “There wasn’t a great deal else to do,” she said before inclining her head at the Farlight, which was anchored a short distance away. “Apart from a small matter of mutiny.”

  “Mutiny?”

  “Seems about half the Farlight’s crew weren’t too keen on honouring our bargain once they’d blasted a channel through the Chokes. That old captain managed to save his skin thanks to your Mr. Talmant, though the lad was obliged to take a pistol to the ship’s bosun. We happened upon them when we were making our way out, persuaded Tidelow to come back with us, not that he needed a lot of persuading. I think he didn’t like the notion of sailing north alone with so many of his crew locked in the hold. I offered to cast them overboard but he wouldn’t have it.”

  “I recall instructing you not to linger.”

  Clay saw the woman avoid Hilemore’s gaze as she pointed at the distant glow on the southern horizon. “Took it as a sign we should wait awhile longer. Besides, Akina thought it was pretty.”

  Clay saw the pirate woman’s daughter hovering near by, though her eyes weren’t fixed on the volcano but on Kriz. She had placed herself close to Clay’s side, her expression a mix of guarded uncertainty and fascination as he drank in the sight of the Superior.

  “Who’s this?” Akina demanded, stabbing a finger at Kriz, small features bunched in suspicion. “She’s new, and she looks wrong.”

  Clay saw the girl wasn’t alone in her fascination, several of the Superior’s crew were also staring at Kriz.

  “I’d guess you didn’t find her at Kraghurst Station,” Zenida said to Hilemore.

  “Her name’s Kriz,” Clay said, matching the stares of the crew. “She’s with me.” It’s different, he realised, watching the uncertainty on their faces. Mostly they displayed a basic fear of the unfamiliar mixed with a desire for this long
, wearisome expedition to end. Before it hadn’t been like this, they had all followed him across miles of ocean through many perils without any real question or reluctance. Now he saw many of them were asking themselves why.

  He had seen Hilemore and the others exhibit the same diminished faith in him on the Dreadfire and had put it down to the extremity of their situation, but now saw it went deeper than that. Didn’t you ever wonder why they were so willing to follow you? Silverpin’s ghost had asked, making him understand that somehow he had cast a spell over these people, just as Silverpin had cast a spell on the Longrifles during their search for the White. Now that spell was gone. Now he was just an unregistered Blood-blessed from the Blinds who had returned to them with something impossible.

  The answer came to him as Hilemore stepped forward, casting out a string of orders that had the crew rushing off to their allotted tasks, albeit with many a suspicious or baffled glance at Kriz. Silverpin, Clay thought. Part of her lived on in me, the part that could compel the un-Blessed to follow me on the promise of little more than a waking dream. And I killed it when I killed what was left of her.

  “Are you alright?” Kriz asked and he realised his face must have betrayed his thoughts.

  “Just fine,” he lied, forcing a smile. “But I think we got us a long and trying trip ahead.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “Krystaline Lake?” Zenida’s face betrayed a curious mix of amusement and foreboding. “That’s where we’re going?”

  Hilemore had convened a meeting in the Superior’s ward-room. He stood at the map table, face scraped clean of his previously copious beard and wearing a fresh uniform. Although Clay thought the captain had weathered the depredations of the ice better than all of them, the uniform still hung loose in several places, though Hilemore stood as straight as ever. Braddon and Kriz were the only others present besides Clay and Zenida.

  “You know it?” the captain asked the Varestian woman.

  “I know of it, as I should. My father died there.” Zenida gave a rueful grimace as she surveyed the map, a more detailed rendering of the south Arradsian coastal region than that offered by the antique maps of long-dead Captain Bledthorne. “The last of his many foolish and expensive jaunts in search of mythical treasures. I never knew what truly became of him. He went off exploring and never came back. I hoped to go looking for him myself one day but the pressures of commerce always prevented me. And I had a daughter to think of.”

  Clay opened Scriberson’s note-book as something chimed in his memory. Thanks to the leather binding, the pages hadn’t been ruined when he dropped his pack in the sea. “Mr. O.,” he said after finding the series of entries that corresponded to their journey across the lake. “The River Maiden was charted by a Mr. O.”

  “For Okanas.” Zenida frowned at him, her gaze fixed on the note-book. “What is that?”

  “A dead man’s journal,” Braddon said before going on to relate the story of their time on Krystaline Lake. “It was Dr. Firpike who had the most interest in it. Pity we left all his papers in the grave where we buried him in the Coppersoles.”

  “Looks like Scribes took plenty of notes,” Clay said, continuing to leaf through the book. “Guessing he didn’t trust Firpike to share what he knew later on.” He stopped as he came to a particular notation, a line of text underscored with the words “Translated Dalcian text—Early Satura Magisterium.” “‘A vessel of wonder,’” Clay read aloud. “‘Unbound by earth or sea, come to rest with precious cargo ’neath the silver waters.’” He raised his gaze to Zenida. “You have any notion what it all means?”

  “Relations between my father and I were . . . poor in the three years before his disappearance. I know that he spent the better part of two years paying out a good portion of his wealth to an artificer. A renegade Corvantine who had a design for an apparatus that would enable a man to breathe underwater. So whatever he was after will not to be easy to reach. The location would be marked on one of his many maps, but they are all locked away in the family archive at the High Wall.”

  “Firpike said the story came from a Dalcian legend,” Braddon said, brow creased as he strove to recollect the details. “Close to three thousand years old, he said.”

  Clay turned to Kriz. “Seems too recent to be Hezkhi.”

  “The legend may be three thousand years old,” she said. “But the story that inspired it could be much older. And we don’t know exactly when he woke. He could have been sleeping for centuries.”

  Clay sighed as Zenida and Braddon squinted at Kriz in bafflement. “It’s . . . a really long story,” Clay began.

  * * *

  • • •

  Kriz yelped and shrank back as the flames consumed the candle in one fierce blast of heat, leaving a patch of dripping wax on the stern-rail. “I don’t get why you ain’t better at this,” Clay said, watching her straighten quickly, smoothing a hand through her hair in an effort to cover her embarrassment. “You can fashion a crystal into a rose but you can’t light a candle with Red?”

  “Red plasma was never my speciality,” she said, somewhat stiffly. “The blessing, as you call it, was only marginally understood in my time. Your people have had centuries of practice. As for the crystals, they were much more easily manipulated than other material. It was almost like they wanted to be altered.”

  “We’ll try again.” Clay took a box from his pocket and extracted a single match. “Something smaller might work better,” he said, setting it down on the rail and stepping back. “Concentrate on the head. The fire goes where your eyes go. You can feel it, right? The Red in your veins. Try to think of it as a barrel, full of power. You only need to let out a little at a time.”

  Kriz kept her gaze locked on the match, frowning in concentration. Clay was soon gratified to see a slight heat shimmer appear between her and the rail just as the match-head flared into life. The fire was still too fierce, consuming the match in a fraction of a second to leave a speck of black ash on the rail, but it was her most controlled effort so far.

  “I want to try again,” Kriz said. “Something bigger.”

  “The captain’s got us on a strict product ration,” Clay said. “No more than a few drops at a time, just for practice.”

  “This ship truly runs on Red plasma?” she asked, casting her eyes over the frigate’s upper works.

  “Didn’t think we had just sailing-ships, did you?”

  From her slightly chagrined expression he saw that she had in fact been thinking that very thing. Although they had shared much in the trance, it was clear they still understood relatively little about each other and the eras that had produced them. Contempt, Mr. Torcreek, Sigoral had said during their sojourn through the strange world down below. That’s what she thinks of us. To her we are just useful primitives.

  “It’s called a thermoplasmic engine,” he said, watching closely to gauge her reaction. “Just a vial or two of Red is enough to shift this whole ship at a right old lick, and she’s a tiddler compared to some.”

  “Remarkable,” Kriz murmured, though her gaze darkened as it alighted on the rear gun-battery. “So much progress, and yet you’re still fighting wars.”

  “It’s a big world. Guess there’s a lot to fight over.”

  They both turned in unison as an upsurge of shouting came from the deck of the Farlight moored some fifty yards to port. It was still early as Hilemore wanted to wait for a fully risen sun before commencing the voyage north. However, there was ample light to make out the tall spines cutting through the Whirls towards the three ships. Although the Blue-hunter’s crew had been warned that Jack no longer posed a threat and might appear at some point, it seemed their long-held instincts were not so easily assuaged. Clay saw a group of sailors feverishly loading the ship’s forward harpoon cannon as others formed up along the side with rifles in hand.

  “Lesson number two,” Cl
ay said, opening his wallet and extracting a vial of Black. “How to stop a missile in flight.”

  The harpoon cannon fired just as Jack raised his head above the water, blinking in apparent bemusement at the sight of the huge barbed length of iron as it hovered in mid air a few yards away. Clay knew he was showing off and burning more product than he should, but it wasn’t just Kriz who needed to learn a lesson. The harpoon gave a loud squeal as Clay twisted the arrow-head point back at a sharp angle. The crew on the Farlight could only stare in shock and then duck as he hurled the projectile back at them. It slammed into the Blue-hunter’s stack with sufficient force to leave a sizable dent.

  Clay cupped his hands around his mouth, raising his voice to full volume. “Any of you fuckers casts so much as a nasty look in his direction again and I won’t blunt it next time!”

  He heard a faint hiss of steam and turned to see Jack letting out a contented puff of flame as he slipped below the water.

  CHAPTER 7

  Lizanne

  She exhausted most of her Green rowing to the aerostat, the oars blurring like paddles as they propelled the launch through the choppy sea. By the time they reached the craft it had settled on the waves, the boat-like gondola bobbing on the swell and sinking ever lower as water lapped over its shallow sides. Above, the elongated gas-filled balloon swayed in the wind, threatening to twist the ropes that bound it into a tangle that would no doubt see it fall and the whole craft subside along with it into the ocean. It appeared to have been fashioned from overlapping panels of silk, which fluttered as the gas inside grew thinner by the second. There were three people in the gondola and the sight of them flooded Lizanne with a relief that made her pause in her labour, though it was shot through with an awful realisation. Father, Jermayah, Tekela . . . No Aunt Pendilla.

  “Get a rope over there,” she commanded the two burly sailors at the front of the launch. They duly cast a weighted rope to the gondola as the ensign at the tiller steered them alongside. The last of Lizanne’s Green gave out as she closed the distance between the two craft. She slumped in her seat, chest heaving thanks to the effects of burning so much product so quickly. So she barely heard the thump and clatter of feet on the boards, sitting with her aching head bowed and chest thumping like a drum.