The Ruling Sea (71 page)

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From the New Journal of G. Starling Fiffengurt, Quartermaster

Thursday, 26 Freala 941
.

If this is what victory feels like, you may spare me the distinction for the rest of my days. We are alive (most of us) & the Gray Lady took no immediately fatal damage in the engagement, & no ship in Alifros can follow or even spot us now—yes, for all that I am thankful. And who could fail to be relieved that the storm is abating, this the 3rd night since our escape from Sandplume Cove? Two cheers for the mercy of the Nelluroq & the undeniable cunning of Captain Nilus Rose
.

But never was I less inclined to celebrate. Sixteen men lost overboard & twenty more laid out dead in our surgical annex, among them Coxilrane “Firecracker” Frix, busybody, coward & a dedicated sailor to his entrails. Like me a product of Wasthog Strand, that unpaved, unloved corner of Etherhorde, pinched between the ironworks and the slaughterhouses. I used to see him with his pack of boys when we were young. They dressed like Burnscove thugs, a sort of fashion then, & threw rocks at us over the King’s Canal. Frix always looked apologetic & out of place, a skinny dog trotting along at their heels, needing to be noticed & at the same time afraid to be. Nothing much ever changed in his life, Rin rest his soul
.

Courage. One might celebrate that, I suppose, & set aside the question of whether it was given wisely or in vain. Our dead gunners
had courage: with waves like cliffs bearing down on them, they kicked open their gunports, blasted the
Jistrolloq
’s rigging to pieces, slammed the ports again in the nick of time—and suffocated on their own smoke, in a deck sealed tight as a crypt. Tanner wept for his boys, though his own lungs were burned black. I sat by him three hours tonight in Chadfallow’s surgery. Even his last wheezing breath smelled of gunpowder
.

Pathkendle & Undrabust have courage: that spankermast would have been the next to fall, if the chaser-guns on the
Jistrolloq
had gotten off another round or two. The boys have bullwhip-scars all over their bodies, from ropes cracking in the wind. Thasha Isiq has courage, facing Rose’s lunacy concerning ghosts, & fighting to get her friends brought down off that lethal spar even when the captain threatened to pitch her over the stern. Elkstem & I exchanged a look: we were with Rose in 927, when he
did
pitch a girl off the stern of the Great Ship; but that is another story
.

Felthrup has courage, wherever he is. The youths are beside themselves, searching for him everywhere, sniffing about the lower decks with Thasha’s dogs. All to no avail
.

And tonight a woman I might once have killed without a thought told me
I
had courage. I refer of course to the crawly, Diadrelu. She was back in the stateroom when I brought Pathkendle & Co. their dinner & she walked up bold as brass & looked me in the eye. “Quartermaster,” says she, “I salute your wisdom and bravery.”

Now that the crisis was over it seemed even less natural to be talking to a crawly. I looked away & mumbled about how they’d picked up the pieces well. For the stateroom had been in pieces: a 24-pounder had sailed right through the big stern window, split the dining table in half, shattered the washroom door, put a whopping dent in the cast-iron tub, ricocheted back into the main cabin & blasted a stanchion to woodchips. By the grace of Rin no one was in its path; Thasha had locked her dogs in her own cabin
.

I gestured at the shattered window, sealed for now with a nailed-up tarpaulin. “We have glass stowed away for repairs,” I added. “We can fix the casement, too, though it won’t hinge no more.”

The crawly held me in her bright-metal gaze. “History itself shall hinge on the choice you made,” she said
.

“Don’t know that I have made it,” I grumbled, “if you’re talking about the choice not to smoke you cr—you individuals, off this ship.”

“I am talking about the choice of reason over fear,” she said, “and I’ll wager my life that you have indeed decided, though Rin knows I should have no right to condemn you if you change your mind.”

“I don’t want blood on my hands,” I told her. “Nobody’s blood. Not yours, even, if it ain’t required.”

“You have the courage to see, Mr. Fiffengurt,” she said. “All other forms of courage spring from that well.”

I was tongue-tied with confusion. It was crawlies who sank the
Adelyne
off Rappopolni, with my uncle & his babe aboard, or so the few survivors claimed. After that my own dad started collecting crawly skulls to make a necklace, though he had just four by the time he died. Ma still keeps the gruesome things on his dresser, beside his service ribbons & his false teeth. Hating ixchel is a family tradition, you might say
.

But in my fifty years no woman has ever spoken to me with more respect than this Diadrelu. Of course she’s not human & so not properly a woman (though I saw evidence unforgettably to the contrary when I cut that shirt away). My kin in Etherhorde—Pitfire
, everyone
in Etherhorde—would call me a mutineer, a fool, the dupe of a shapely ship-louse; Dad would say I should be the first to drown when the crawlies strike. These past nights I’ve pictured their faces as I lay down to sleep & it stabs me through the heart to know how they’d condemn me. Last night they entered my dreams, bitter & scornful & hurrying off with hostile glances, & “Shame, shame” was all I could get them to say
.

But when I think of the noble bearing of that Lady Diadrelu, I feel suddenly more ashamed of my certainties about her people than the displeasure of my own. All my life I’ve laughed at the righteous fools who hate Mzithrinis at a personal level, who assume that whole vast land to be populated by mindless killers with bloodshot eyes. And all my life I’ve thought of “crawlies” as something worse. If I’m honest (& where shall I be honest if not with you, little whelp?) my reasons make no more sense than the next man’s reasons for hating the Sizzies: because someone long dead or far away set us on this path, and told us never to turn. I cannot forget the
Adelyne.
But the fact that Pazel and Thasha love this Diadrelu settles the matter: she may not be human, but she’s a person all the same
.

The dream ended with a rain of ash from the heavens, falling in a thin band between me & my kinfolk, & when I saw them through the ash it was like seeing figures in a painting, or on the deck of some boat heading off to the East Reach or points beyond
.
People who’ve slipped away, who you can’t have back at your side under any circumstances, people gone already & forever
.

Saturday, 28 Freala 941
.

Palo Elkstem, our sailmaster’s nephew, succumbed to his burns this morning. He was right under the foremast when the dragon’s-egg shot exploded, & the battle netting came down upon him in flames
.

These last days have been bitter. Storm raging again, so that we cannot dream of shifting either of the great timbers on the lower gun deck, although the carpenters have already cut & shaped one into a new foremast. Waves at 40 ft. & breaking on our port quarter: no danger to the ship provided the helm keeps us true, but lads who I’ve never known to be ill are heaving over the side
.

Rose has called off the imprisonment of Pathkendle & Co., though he left one Turach on duty at the invisible wall, to observe who comes & goes. This presents certain difficulties for me: now that they can get their own food, what excuse do I have to visit? And if I persist, & that soldier notes it again & again, how long will it be before the captain pulls me aside & demands a report?

Tuesday, 1 Norn 941
.

I start to wonder if a gale rages perpetually on the Ruling Sea. No end is in sight; if anything the wind is somewhat fiercer with each passing hour. Gloom among the sailors, a dangerous glint in the Turachs’ eyes. And this before we have even finished the fresh food we loaded at Bramian. What is to come in the months ahead I do not like to imagine
.

There were at least two hints today, however—unpleasant hints, to be sure. First thing this morning came the accusation, by a Plapp’s Pier man, that three members of his gang who’d died in the battle had been stripped of their rings, knives & other valuables by the lad assigned to prepare the corpses for burial at sea. The accused man belonged to neither gang, but he took the Burnscove Boys’ oath almost as soon as he learned of the charges, saying he feared for his life without their protection. Wish I could be certain that he was wrong
.

Of course it’s the worst breach imaginable of the Code to pledge oneself to anything save the ship & her captain, & Rose was in a holy fury when he heard of it. As I write the man hangs by one ankle from the main yard, slamming about like a loose wheelblock & lashed by the storm. If the Burnscovers take this as punishment
for his stealing (a charge for which there is no evidence), we may yet escape a gang war
.

Then at the strike of the noon bell I met Uskins near the tonnage hatch, just standing there in the rain. He caught my eye & for once there was no mockery or sneering, so I drew near & asked what ailed him. Uskins said not a word, just looked away southeast, & when I did the same I saw a purplish glaze on the underside of the farthest clouds, & a little bulge downward
.

“Humph,” said I, squinting, “I can’t account for that, Pidetor, but we’ve both seen stranger things.”

“You cannot account for it,” said Uskins, “but Arunis can. He says it is the sign of the Nelluroq Vortex.”

“The Vortex! Oh, surely not. We can’t be
that
far east.”

“One can see its effects for thousand of miles. It alters the weather, makes its own winds. Arunis says that they bear down through its depths and vanish from this world. That one can watch a whole skyful of clouds being sucked into its maw, with thunderheads and flocks of birds, and even cloud-murths struggling in vain against its power.”

“But why in the bubbling black Pits are you talking to Arunis?” I demanded
.

Uskins looked at me sharply, & his warthog nature came back to him. “I bring his meals,” he said, “as you would know if you paid less attention to those youths in the stateroom, and more to our captain’s directives.”

“I know Rose is trying to keep him away from the crew,” I said, trying to ignore the provocation. “But anyone could bring a plate to his door.”