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

by R.J. Barker

we were not warriors, just those people as what were tired with the way of things.

Then he was gone from the deck, climbing the mainspine to the topboy’s nest to become the herald of a chaos yet to come.

“Death is hard to wash away,”

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

“Look in the mirror when you return to your cabin. Ask yourself if people can change, ask yourself if people can surprise you.”

“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.”

The Tide Child is a babe brought to land by the sea, a lost daughter of a powerful family. Unable to die on land, or by the blade of woman or man. She sweeps all foes before her. Sound familiar, to you, Joron?” “It is you,” he said, in wonder, and fear – a tide of fear, washing over him. “Do we live in an age of prophecy?” She smiled and shook her head. “There is more to it, yet. Eventually it is said the Tide Child will unite Gaunt and Hundred Islander in peace. War will end.”

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.”

What better to baptise a shipwife, he thought, than with the two elements that would soak their command.

“Horror?” The hagpriest smiled. “Every time you walk upon the deck of your ship, Shipwife, you walk upon the bones of those sacrificed by our foremothers. Did you ever wonder why we sacrifice children to our ships? Simply for corpselights to shine prettily above them? No. It is in memory of the great sacrifices made to hunt the arakeesians.” She stepped forward. “This”– she pointed at the vat – “is what the Hundred Isles’ greatness, and what the Gaunt Islanders believe is their own, is built on. Corpses.”

And within him, a powerful song became louder.