The Scar (21 page)

The
Grand Easterly
stretched out overhead like an ominous cloud. The metal was riveted to its underside with ancient bolts bigger than a man. Through the centuries of growth that encased the ship’s hull, Tanner realized that another link connected to the first, flush against the steamer’s hull. Beyond that, the weed growth and the charmed water had obscured his vision.

There were great chains below the city. And, knowing that, it did not take him very long to guess what was planned. With an almost rueful surprise, Tanner Sack realized that he now knew the secret that had seemed always to hover at the edge of conversation in the docks. The source of unease and winks and shared glances, the unspoken project that shaped all their efforts.

We’re going to raise something from the sea
, he thought calmly.
Some beastie? Are we going to tether some sea serpents or kraken or Jabber knows what and . . . what then? Could it pull Armada? Like a seawyrm does a chariot ship?

That makes sense enough
, he thought, awed by the scale of the thing, whatever it was, but not afraid nor disapproving.

Why hide that from the likes of me?
he thought.
Ain’t it as if I’m loyal?

It took Tanner days to recover from the dinichthys attack. His sleep was poor; he broke into fearful sweats. He remembered the feeling of the burst man’s bowels in his hand, and although he had seen and held the dead before, there was a quality of terror to that corpse’s eyes that distressed him days later. He could not shake the memory of the bonefish plunging at him, as implacable as a geological event.

His workmates treated him with respect. “You tried, Tanner, man,” they said to him.

After two days, Tanner went back to the pool between Garwater and Jhour, to swim and soothe his cracking skin. He watched the men and women in the water; there were a few more of them in these hospitable temperatures. Other pirate-citizens watched from the side, marveling at the esoteric skill of swimming.

Tanner saw the spinning drops of water shed by inexpert paddling and up-flung arms, saw the fractured surface of the water, and he found himself twitching uneasily as swimmers ducked below, out of sight, into the deep water. He could not see them, could not see what was below them. He moved forward, made to jump, and felt his stomach pitch.

He was afraid.

Too late now
, he told himself with an edge of hysteria.
It’s too late now, man! You’re Remade for this! You live in the damn water, and you ain’t never going back.

He was doubly frightened: of the sea and of his own fear that threatened to landlock him, turn him into a freakshow, gilled and webbed but airbound, skin peeling and gills drying painfully, tentacles rotting, too scared to swim. So he forced himself in, and the brine soothed him and brought him some peace.

It was terribly hard, opening his eyes and forcing his gaze down into diffuse, sunlit blue below him, knowing that he would likely never see rock beneath the water again, but only that stretching deep where predators flicked their tails and eddied out of sight.

It was appallingly hard, but he swam, and felt better for it.

At Shekel’s insistence, Angevine let Tanner rummage in her metal innards. She was still uncomfortable about it. For him to operate, they had had to put out her boiler, immobilizing her. It was the first time for years she had allowed that to happen. She lived in fear of her fires going cold.

He tinkered as he would with any engine, tapping at pipes and wielding his wrench with gusto, till he glanced up and saw how bloodless her knuckles were as she clenched Shekel’s hand.

The last time anyone had put their hands in her like this, Tanner realized, was when she was Remade. He was gentler with her then.

As he had expected, she was powered by an old, inefficient engine. It needed replacing, and with a curt warning to Angevine, and to the sound of her horrified yells, he began to dismantle it.

Eventually she calmed down (too late to back out anyway, he explained somewhat ruthlessly: she’d never move again if he left her like this). And when, after several hours, he had finished, and he rolled out from under her, sweating and oil-covered, and began to light the fuel in her reconfigured boiler, it was clear she could feel the difference immediately.

They were both tired and embarrassed. When the pressure built in her engine, and Angevine began to move, to feel the new reserves of power he had given her, to check on her fire and realize how much longer the coke was lasting, she recognized how much he had done for her. But Tanner was no more comfortable being thanked than she was in thanking him, and there was little more than overlapping mutterings on each side.

Later, Tanner settled in his tub of seawater and thought about what he had done. She shouldn’t have to scrabble continually for scraps of fuel anymore. Her mind was freed up: no more thinking all the time about the boiler, no more rousing herself in the small hours to feed her fires.

He grinned.

When first he had stood up, Tanner had noticed a newly gouged mark on her chassis, from the edge of his spanner or screwdriver. He had scratched a wound in the stained iron. Angevine always made an effort to keep her metal parts clean, so the mark Tanner had made stood out. He had shifted uneasily.

When Angevine had seen it, her mouth and face had stiffened with anger. But as the minutes went on, and she swayed with the sense of steam, her expression had changed. And as she had left, while Shekel waited for her in the doorway, Angevine had rolled to Tanner and spoken to him quietly.

“Never mind about the scratch, eh?” she had said. “You’ve done a great job, Tanner. And that mark . . . Well, it’s part of rebuilding, eh? Part of the new.” She had smiled at him quickly and had left without looking back.

“Oh, you’re welcome, for Jabber’s sake,” murmured Tanner out loud at the memory, pleased and embarrassed. He sat back in his bath. “For the lad, really. It’s for the lad’s sake.”

There were only ten ships of any size in the haunted quarter of Armada, tucked away at the city’s fore-port corner, bordering Dry Fall and King Friedrich’s Thee-And-Thine.

The subjects of Friedrich’s violent mercantile rule for the most part ignored the eerie ships next to their riding, concentrating on their bazaars and glad’ circuses and moneylenders. In Dry Fall, however, the baleful influence of the haunted quarter crept over the little fringe of sea and stained the Brucolac’s riding. Where Dry Fall neighbored the deserted ships, its own vessels were subdued and unpleasant.

Perhaps it was the presence of the Brucolac and his cadre of vampir lieutenants in Dry Fall itself that sharpened the inhabitants’ senses to the dead and ab-dead. Perhaps that was why unlike those in Thee-And-Thine, the citizens of Dry Fall riding could not forget the presence of the fearful haunted quarter beside them.

Uncanny noises emanated from it: mutterings that carried on the wind; the faint grind of motors; things grating against other things. Some claimed that the sounds were illusory, the product of wind and the bizarre architecture of the ancient ships. Very few believed that. Sometimes a foolhardy group—invariably the recently press-ganged—would enter the hulks, to emerge some hours later closed-mouthed and pale and refusing to speak. And on occasion, of course, they did not return.

Attempts to sever the ten ships from the fabric of the city, to scuttle them and scour the haunted quarter from Armada’s map, were reputed to have been tried and to have failed in alarming ways. Most citizens were superstitious about that quiet place: frightened as they were of it, they would have argued strongly against any attempts to remove it.

Birds would not settle in the haunted ships. Their skyline of old masts and mast stumps, their moldering bituminous carcasses and ragged sails were stark and deserted.

The border of Dry Fall and the haunted quarter was where one went to be undisturbed.

Two men stood in the night’s cool drizzle. They were alone on the deck of a clipper.

In front of them, thirty feet away, was a long, slim vessel, some ancient galley that creaked in Armada’s incessant wind and motion, empty and unlit. The bridges that linked it to the clipper were rotting and blocked with chains. It was the foremost ship of the haunted quarter.

From way behind the men rose the noises of the city center, the irregular shopping arcades that wound across the bodies of several vessels, the playhouses and dance halls. The clipper itself was silent. A row of tent houses on its deck was mostly uninhabited. Those few who lived there had realized who stood on the clipper’s deck, and were staying very carefully out of sight.

“I’m bewildered,” said the Brucolac quietly, not looking at
his companion. His quiet, hoarse voice was only just audible.
Wind and rain pushed his shaggy hair back from his face as he looked out past the galley at the black sea. “Explain it to me.” He turned and raised his eyebrows, in a look of mild consternation, at Uther Doul.

With no bodyguards, no yeomanry or bystanders to see this interaction, the glowering tension that characterized the two men’s public confrontations was absent. Their body language was only a little cautious, like people meeting for the first time.

“It’s not like I don’t know you, Uther,” the Brucolac said. “It’s not like we haven’t stood together. I trust you, sincerely. I trust your instincts. I know how you think. And we both know it’s just a matter of . . . of fucking chance that you’re their man . . . rather than mine.” There was regret in his voice, a small note of regret.

The Brucolac stared at Uther Doul with his pale eyes. His long, forked tongue tasted the air, and he spoke again.

“Tell me, man. Tell me what’s happening. Moon’s Tits, you can’t support this idiotic idea. Are you feeling guilty? Is that it? That it was you who gave them the notion? That they’d never have thought of this if it weren’t for what you told them?” He leaned in a little as he spoke.

“It’s not the power, Uther. You know that. I don’t give a sailor’s toss who runs Armada. Dry Fall’s all I want. Garwater’s always been the strongest, and that’s fine by me. And it’s not the fucking avanc, either. Shit, if I thought that would work, I’d be with you. I’m not one of those Curhouse arseholes jabbering on about what’s ‘against nature,’ and ‘tampering with deadly forces’ and crap like that. Shit, Uther, if I thought doing deals with
daemons
would strengthen the city, don’t you think I’d do it?”

Uther Doul glanced at him, and for the first time his face moved, twitching in contained amusement.

“You’re ab-dead, Brucolac,” he said in his singer’s voice. “You know there are plenty who think you’ve already done deals with the Hellkin.”

The Brucolac ignored him and continued. “I’m against this because we both know this won’t stop with the avanc.” His voice was cold. Doul looked away. The night was without stars or horizon: the sea and sky bled ink into each other. “And it’s not going to take long for others to clock that. Shaddler might do whatever it’s told till the fucking sea boils, but do you think Jhour and Booktown will stick with the Lovers when they realize what the plan really is? Uther, you’re heading for mutiny.”

“Deadman . . .” began Doul, and paused heavily. Doul was the only man in the city who used the foreign honorific. It came from his homeland. “Deadman Brucolac. I’m the Lovers’ man. You know it, and you know why. And maybe it could have been another way, but it isn’t. I’m a soldier, Brucolac. A good soldier. If I didn’t think they could do it—if I didn’t think it would work—then I wouldn’t support it.”

“Bullshit.” The Brucolac’s voice came hard and throaty. “Gods fuck and damn it, Uther, that . . . is a lie. Do you remember, do you even remember how I found out what they want to do with the avanc?”

“Spies,” said Doul levelly, meeting his eyes again.

The Brucolac was dismissive. “Spies could only ever get insinuations and hints. Don’t lie to yourself. I know because
you
told me.”

Doul’s eyes went quite cold and sharp.

“That is slander and I will not have you repeat it—“ he said, but the Brucolac broke him off with laughter.

“Look at yourself,” he urged, incredulous. “Who do you think you’re talking to? Stop being so fucking pompous. You know what I mean. Of course you didn’t
volunteer
the information, or even damn well admit it. But shit, Uther, I came to you and confronted you with what I’d worked out, and you . . . Well, you’re too professional to give away anything that could come back to bite you, but if you’d wanted to mislead me or leave me thinking I was wrong you
could have.

“You didn’t. And I’m grateful. And fair enough, if you want to play this stupid game where you’ll not admit what we both know to be the case, and you won’t confirm my suspicions but you damn well won’t deny them either, then that’s . . . that’s fine. Just keep on being silent.

“The facts remain, Uther.” The Brucolac absently picked splinters of wood from the guardrail and let them drift down into the dark. “The fact remains that you let me know. And you know the other riding leaders won’t trust me if I tell them. You’ve given me something I have to carry alone. And I think that’s because you know it’s a stupid, dangerous plan, and you don’t know what to do with that knowledge, and you wanted an ally.”

Doul smiled. “Are you so arrogant?” he said lightly. “Are you that sure of yourself, that you can turn any conversation, any miscommunication, round?”

“Remember the razor golems?” said the Brucolac suddenly, and Uther Doul fell silent. “The steamwind plain?” the Brucolac continued. “Remember that place? The things we
saw
? This city owes us, Uther. We were the ones who saved it, whether they’ll admit it, whether they
know
it or not. Where were the damn Lovers then? That was you . . . and me.”

The call of gulls. The sound of wind between the boats, the creaking of the haunted quarter.

“I learnt things then, Uther.” The Brucolac spoke quietly. “I learnt how to read you. I know you.”

“Godsdammit!” Uther Doul faced him. “How dare you play old soldiers with me? I am not on your side, Brucolac! I do not agree with you! Can you understand that? We have history, it’s true, and Khyriad knows I’ll not willingly turn on you, Deadman, but . . . that is all. I’m a lieutenant, and you were never my captain. I came here tonight as you asked, out of courtesy to you. Nothing more.”