Blood Storm: The Second Book of Lharmell (6 page)

‘Where would we find him?’

‘O’er there, at the Krill ’n’ Mermaid.’ The sailor pointed at a lean-to on the far side of the docks. We thanked the sailor and struggled over to it, the way mostly blocked by rigging and crayfish pots.

A white-haired man in a threadbare blazer sat blinking in the sun, a pint of ale and a bottle of dark
rum at his elbow. It was barely two in the afternoon, but maybe there were such things as sea-time and land-time and it was quite acceptable for him to be drinking hard spirits at this hour. Or maybe he was a sot.

‘Captain Krig?’ asked Rodden.

The man nodded.

‘We’re after passage to Pol. Is the
Jessamine
heading on there?’

‘Aye,’ the man said. ‘For t’bird and moggy, too?’ he asked.

I nodded. Leap had his head inside a crayfish pot and was sniffing with interest.

‘We’ve already got a ship’s cat. Don’t think my Smokey’d like ’im,’ he said.

‘He’s very friendly,’ I insisted, as Leap tried to back out of the trap. It was rather one-way and he had his big silly ears stuck.

‘Oh, aye.’ The captain downed a slug of rum from a sea-green tumbler. He eyed our crossbows. ‘Can ye shoot those contraptions?’

‘Certainly can,’ said Rodden, bending down to extricate Leap.

‘Oh, aye.’ The captain took a moment to squint up at us. ‘We don’t up anchor until tomorrow evening. Goin’ with the tide. Y’in a hurry?’

‘Well, yes. But we can wait, for the right price.’

The captain ‘hmphed’ at that. ‘Ten pieces each. Bird and cat free. Now, if that ain’t a bargain, I know not what is.’

He and Rodden shook on it and we made our way back into town. A whole day and a half in Jefsgord. I hoped Captain Helmsrid was doing as good a job as he said and we weren’t about to run into any old friends.

We needed supplies, especially clothes for me, but the market was already closing. We checked into an inn with a view of the sea from the first floor. I asked the keeper for a bath in my room, intending to soak myself into a pleasantly pruned state. Before I got into the steaming tub I locked my door and gave it a rattle to test its strength. Not totally harming-proof, but it would do.

I could see the ocean from where I bathed and watched the ships slipping over the horizon. I was looking forward to this journey, though my excitement was tempered by Helmsrid’s story of missing ships. I hoped the
Jessamine
had a good lookout.

SIX

R
odden was bashing on my door at dawn, telling me to get up.

‘Don’t you ever sleep in?’ I called through two inches of wood. I had hoped we would lie around for a while on our last morning on dry land. I threw the blankets off in a huff and climbed once more into my filthy clothes.

The humidity of the air in Jefsgord, even at this early hour, was playing havoc with my hair. As we walked along the street I tamed it into a braid. ‘Are we going to the market?’ I asked, nodding at our horses, which he was leading.

‘Yes. We’ll sell our horses and pick up some gear for Verapine.’

We stopped at a stall selling heavy winter clothes
and Rodden began searching through a stack of coats.

‘I thought it was hot in Verapine.’

‘It is. But at night the temperature plummets to just above freezing. There’s never any cloud cover so the heat of the day escapes back into the sky.’

I pulled on a woven poncho and a heavy pair of trousers over my clothes. They were very warm, so I took them off again quickly and bought them. From another stall we picked up pairs of plain breeches and shirts.

‘Do you want any dresses?’ Rodden asked.

I shook my head. As I was going to be on a ship full of men I wanted to look as sexless as possible. Coarse shirts and badly cut breeches were prudent choices.

The horses we sold to a dealer and then, tucking our parcels of clothes under the table, we sat at a tea shack for some breakfast.

‘Are we going to have enough yelbar points if we’re attacked?’ I asked.

Rodden swirled his mug of milky
camai
, an import from Pol. It was spicy black tea, brewed with milk and sweetened with honey. He broke a small loaf of currant bread in half.

‘I don’t know,’ he muttered. ‘I’m beginning to
think this mightn’t be a good idea.’

‘But we need the bennium.’

He watched me for a moment. ‘Even after what happened to you in Ercan, you’re not afraid?’

A shiver went up my spine. I
did
find my mind returning to that moment, reliving the harming’s attack. ‘Of course I am. But that fear seems to be buried so deep, under layers and layers of other fears. Do you know what I mean?’

He nodded slowly, looking at his
camai
. ‘You’re more afraid of other things. Like what might happen if we do nothing.’

‘Yes, that’s exactly it. What about you – are you afraid?’

He looked at me, the sunlight making his white-blue eyes sparkle. ‘Who, me? I know no fear, princess.’ The words were said lightly, but without humour. Looking in the other direction, his fingers brushed mine, and then held. I could feel his heart beating in the veins of his hand.

There was something I hungered for that wasn’t blood, nor water, nor food. I felt it keenly when he was close, when he let down his guard. When he touched me as he was doing now. I didn’t know how to satisfy the hunger, or even if I should want to.

‘Why do you think the harmings have started
attacking ships?’ My voice sounded hoarse, and I coughed to clear it.

‘I suppose because there aren’t any witnesses on the open sea, not if you kill everyone or take them prisoner. Sailors are tough. They’d make good attack harmings. The children they took from Ercan, on the other hand, some they’ll train to fight, but most they’ll train to be spies and infectors.’

The general picture of harmings I’d had in my head diversified into three sub-categories: attack harmings, spies and infectors. Then another category occurred to me: rebel harmings. Rarely seen in the wild, these harmings enjoyed throwing themselves into the path of danger and certain death. They were stubborn, cranky creatures, chronically under-slept and easily identifiable by the haunted look in their eyes.

‘How long will it take to sail to Pol?’

‘A week. Maybe a week and a half. It’s not the best time of year for the crossing as the winds are weak. At the peak of the season you can do it in four days with a good ship like the
Jessamine
.’

A week and a half was a long time to be without anything to do. I would have liked to browse for books to read on our journey across the ocean, but Rodden had other ideas. ‘One more job. Remember
what the captain said? He’s got a ship’s cat. That means no rats for us, and I was counting on them for our blood supply.’

‘Oh, of course. So now what do we do?’

‘Rabbits. We’ll say they’re meat for Griffin and Leap, which will explain why they’ll be disappearing one by one.’

The only rabbits we could find in the marketplace were children’s pets. They were fluffy and white with big floppy ears, and much fatter than wild rabbits. Rodden counted them. ‘Fifteen. We’ll just have to ration them. One between us every day.’

The stallholder overheard and widened her eyes, but the coins he slapped in her hand kept her mouth shut. We lugged the hutch of rabbits back to the inn with our parcels.

‘We’ll have to be discreet about feeding,’ he cautioned as we laid the hutch in his room. ‘Sailors are a superstitious bunch and I think blood-drinking would make them nervous.’

‘That’s all right. I’ll just do it in my room.’

‘Room? You don’t get a room. You get a patch of deck to lie down on. This is a trade-ship, not a passenger boat. We eat, sleep and wash on deck.’

‘I see,’ I said, my voice tight. ‘You didn’t think that as probably the only female on board I might like a
little privacy?’ I was beginning to get the impression that Rodden enjoyed putting me in situations that tested my limits of being filthy and uncomfortable.

He shrugged. ‘Can’t be helped. No passenger ships between here and Pol, Your Highness,’ he added.

I rankled at the use of my royal address. He only said it when he wanted to annoy me. I put down the other parcels and stalked back to the market.

‘Back by four,’ he called after me.

I ignored him and kept walking. The rest of the day I spent browsing the bookstalls and sitting in tea shacks with more mugs of
camai
, and I only returned to the inn at the very last minute.

Rodden was standing outside. ‘You’re late,’ he snapped.

I shrugged. ‘Can’t be helped,’ I said, mimicking his words from earlier. We walked to the dock in silence, me carrying our bags and weapons and Rodden with the rabbits.

The ship wasn’t quite ready for us to board, so we sat with the captain at the Krill ’n’ Mermaid. Rodden was fidgety and drank an excessive amount of rum and I got the feeling he was nervous about something. The seagulls were annoying Griffin again and she sat on the back of my chair, hackles raised.
Leap was preoccupied by the crayfish pots, peering at them suspiciously as though they were about to swallow him whole. I was still sulking and the captain was drunk, so there was very little conversation at our table.

At last a sailor waved to us from the deck.

‘That’ssusss,’ the captain slurred, getting unsteadily to his feet.

I cast a baleful look at Rodden. He’d checked that the boat was sound but had neglected to do the same for the captain. But Rodden was ignoring me, his face pale and clammy. As he stepped up to board he went green and vomited off the dock. Wiping his mouth he muttered about something he ate. A handful of sailors sniggered from the rigging.

We found a spot on deck that seemed to be out of everyone’s way and sat down. Leap’s ears were flat, and he had his paws splayed to steady himself against the rocking of the boat. Griffin was in the rigging, hunched up with slitted eyes as several gulls swooped around her. Rodden was still an unnatural colour. He slumped against the rabbit hutch and put a hand over his eyes.

Several sailors grinned at me as they passed and gave me cheery hellos, clearly pleased to have a female on board. I helloed back, and shielded my eyes from
the sun to watch them shimmy up the rigging. Rodden managed to open his eyes long enough to glare at them. Turning to me he said, ‘Stop distracting them from their work.’

‘I’m not. Don’t puke on the rabbits.’

From the helm the captain gave the call to cast off, rather too loudly and with lots of flinging of his arms. All manner of garbled instructions poured from his mouth but the sailors seemed to understand well enough. The sails filled, the ship gave a lurch and we were away. There was a bit of tricky manoeuvring to be done to get past the other ships but the captain seemed to be managing it well enough, though his tongue was poking out the corner of his mouth as he spun the wheel to and fro.

We’d been going less than a minute when Rodden leaned over the side and threw up again.

‘Do you get seasick?’ I asked, passing him the water skin.

‘Yes,’ he said thickly. ‘I thought I might have grown out of it by now but apparently not.’ He rinsed his mouth and spat into the sea.

I, on the other hand, felt perfectly fine. I wasn’t quite ready to feel sorry for him so I left him where he was. His moans and retching followed me all the way to the prow of the ship. We were sailing west,
straight into the setting sun. The tor-line tugged at me as we pulled out of port, but I felt strong enough to ignore the pain.

Leap jumped up onto a crate next to me and peered over the railing. He gave the sea a long, hard, distrustful glare. Then, apparently deciding that was enough to keep the sea down there and him up here where it was dry, he looked up into my face and purred.

I wondered if he knew he was going home, if he would remember Pol. His history was unknown to me and I didn’t even know if he had been born there. It occurred to me that, once we arrived, he might even want to stay. Patting his sleek fur, I knew the noble part of me would be happy for Leap if that was what he decided. But the rest of me would be terribly sad without him.

I woke the next morning to screaming gulls and the smell of porridge and seawater. I’d spent the night stretched on my cloak with Leap’s warm body curled against me and my new poncho covering both of us. By midnight Rodden had thoroughly expelled the contents of his stomach and managed to fall asleep.
He awoke looking very drawn and unhappy and refused water, breakfast or blood. I left him dozing in the shade and went to get some porridge.

The sailors were excessively polite, urging me to the front of the line and fetching a bowl and spoon for me. The cook was a tall, thin man with auburn hair and wide-set eyes. There was something familiar about his aspect. I realised when I turned away what it was – he reminded me of home. He was Amentine. Before I could go back and say hello properly, the first mate, Orrik Lobsen, introduced himself.

‘Best ship on the Osseran, the
Jessamine
,’ he said proudly. He was about Rodden’s age, and sandy-haired and robust. ‘It’ll be a smooth passage to Pol, mark my words.’

We sat on a bench near the captain’s cabin with our breakfast. Loud snores emanated from within; the captain was still abed.

‘He was up most of the night,’ Orrik explained. ‘Right now it ain’t safe when the sun goes down. Been attacks. He likes to stay up and keep an eye on things.’

I wondered if it also might have something to do with all the rum, but I kept that to myself. ‘How many of you can shoot?’

Orrik shook his head. ‘Not a one. But we’re all deadly with a cutlass. Sailors fight hand to hand,
where we can see the whites of our enemies’ eyes.’ He made it sound as if this was the only honourable way to fight. No wonder they were dying like flies. If it came to an attack there would just be Rodden and me to defend the ship – if he got over his seasickness.

‘What’s wrong with your man? He got no sea legs?’ Orrik asked.

‘He’s not my man, he’s my friend.’ Even that was a stretch right now.

Orrik perked up. ‘Oh, really? That so?’ He flashed a smile at me. ‘Get him some root ginger tea from the galley. Sometimes helps.’

‘I will, thank you.’ I put my porridge down half-eaten and chewed a thumbnail. I was thirsty. What with all the sulking I had done the previous day I had forgotten to drink. ‘Orrik, say I wanted to wash up and do some . . .’ I waved my hands vaguely. ‘. . . women’s things. Where could I find some privacy?’

‘The hold,’ he said. ‘Just cargo down there. And Smokey. Anyone stops you, you tell ’em Orrik said it was okay.’

I thanked him, and then chewed my nail some more. That solved one problem, but not the other. I had been counting on Rodden to do the unpleasant business of slaughtering the rabbits, but clearly
that wasn’t going to happen. If he tried to move he would probably start retching again. I’d killed plenty of rabbits with a bow and arrow but never with a knife. I didn’t have the faintest idea how to do it, but with a sharp blade in my hands it wasn’t as if the bunny was going to come out the victor. Still, the idea was exceedingly distasteful. Orrik was right. There certainly was a difference in killing up close and killing from afar, and I knew which I preferred: the cowardly, far-off way.

But I couldn’t sit there all day. I was thirsty and the rabbits weren’t going to exsanguinate themselves. I bid Orrik goodbye and went to see the cook. He was eating his breakfast, his lean body propped up against a narrow counter when I tapped on the wall outside the galley and asked for some root ginger steeped in hot water. I couldn’t resist asking as he picked through a cupboard, ‘You’re from Amentia, aren’t you?’