Call of the Bone Ships (The Tide Child #2)

by R.J. Barker

This was the Hagsbreath, the Northstorm’s fury. In the midst, one figure stood unmoving and uncomplaining – but watching, always watching. She stood at the rump of her ship and it was as if the storm could not touch her. The ship bucked and rocked as towering waves pulled him seaward to landward, landward to seaward, but she did not move. Lucky Meas, the witch of Keelhulme Sounding, the greatest shipwife who ever lived.

“Sometimes, Aelerin, I am wrong, and know I am wrong, and still I do not act because it is easier not to act.”

Cwell stared at Joron, a smile on her face, and he felt he almost understood her then – she was fierce, and orders and discipline made no sense to her. But vengeance, that she understood. “I have no time for cowards, Deckkeeper,” she said, and for the first time he heard no sneer when she used his rank.

Meas does not expect miracles from us . . .” “She deserves them.” “Well,” he smiled, “she definitely believes that, but we cannot undo what is, Joron. We must work with what we have.”

“I lost my child and man at Safeharbour, Shipwife, so if I join your crew, do you promise us action? For I thirst for vengeance.” Joron saw the smile creep across Meas’s face. “Oh Jennil,” she said, “if you thirst then follow me, and your cup will overflow.”

He had learned there was nothing more dangerous than his own kind. And nothing more likely to want to kill him. Even the myriad toothed and tentacled creatures of the sea’s hatred were not as bad. At least their anger made a kind sense to him, for women and men invaded their domain, or pulled them from it, and killed them to eat, or just because they could.

She gave him a wolfish grin. “Strange, is it not, Joron, to feel most alive when so close to death.”

“We are nothing, Shipwife,” she said. “If we do not try we are nothing. You are right there. Better to lose it all for what is right than to live in fear.”

“Maybe that is the true nature of prophecy – we can only change what is within our reach. So do not worry about the gullaime, do not worry about their prophecy. Hold close those you care for. Worry only about tomorrow, and the day after. Think not on the day after that for we fly a ship of the dead, and the Hag calls us all. To plan far ahead is to ask for the Maiden to thwart all you are. We live in the now. We fight for what we believe is right. We can do nothing else.”

That done she looked up and nodded at Jennil who artfully splashed blood around him on the deck, then, with an apology, over his clothes, spattering them with the mixture of blood and seawater. What better to baptise a shipwife, he thought, than with the two elements that would soak their command.

Then they settled in to wait, to let time wash over them like sea over rocks – though time was even more dependable and relentless than the sea.

“You wish to do something dark, Deckkeeper, then you do it in darkness.”

“We could drop whoever it is they send,” said Mevans, “by accident.” “I suspect the shipwife would frown on that, Mevans,” said Joron. “Ey,” he said, “she has never been too fond of a joke, right enough.”

and the call of “and I’ went around the ship and even those who could not know what Joron had said joined it, because they did not care. They only knew that their shipwife believed in the deckkeeper, and that he had proven worthy of her. And so he was worthy of them. And whatever he promised, well, they would promise also. Joron knew he should have felt thankful for that belief. But did not. Because there had been so much pain, so much loss in the name of the Hundred Isles. His mother, his father, his lover, his leg, his voice, his shipwife. He felt that pain as a raging, furious hate for those who blew wind into the wings of this eternal war, and he understood now his shipwife’s burning desire for peace. And though he did not know how he would return Meas Gilbryn, Lucky Meas, the witch of Keelhulme Sounding, to the deck of Tide Child, he knew he would do anything to make it happen. Anything. There would be no quarter. No surrender No mercy. He would do anything. And within him, a powerful song became louder.