A Blight of Blackwings Page 6

  But all that feeding activity I had sensed was right underneath that boat at the dock. My kenning kept me safe from the water but not from the creatures in it; I could of course kill anything quickly by pulling water through its nervous tissues, and I could move quicker than most anything that might want to eat me, but I had to see them coming first. My ability to scramble brains would do me little good if a bladefin managed to chomp me in half.

  I dove off the edge of the boat and sought the bottom of the inlet, letting my eyes adjust to the gloom of the deep water. It was clouded with the sediment being thrown up underneath the ship.

  Slowly, my senses alert for vibrations in the water that would warn me of danger far in advance of sight or sound or smell, and keeping low and searching for threats from above, I advanced toward the dock.

  There were at least two bladefins, some smaller scavenger fish, and a whole army of blue crabs crowded around a churning mess of blood and sand underneath the keel of the strange boat. The crabs were responsible for most of the suspended debris in the water, for they were tearing at a buffet of bodies. Bone Giant bodies—or Eculans, as the scholar Gondel Vedd told us they call themselves. In a strange moment that echoed the night the Bone Giants attacked Pelemyn, I saw a crab sidestep across the bottom of the sea with a severed hand grasped in its claws.

  I moved forward until the water was so cloudy I couldn’t see a length in front of me. Going in there blind would be unwise, and it was unlikely I’d find anything beyond what I already knew: The bodies of a whole lot of dead Eculans were being eaten. I could feel that there were plenty of teeth and claws in there. I rose to the surface, slowly, so as not to alert any creatures of my presence. Whatever they felt of my passage in the water, it wasn’t the cavitation or flailing of prey. I moved inside the currents of the water itself.

  Upon breach, I saw that I was only ten lengths or so from the ship. It was not like the Eculan ships at all, nor like any ship I’d ever seen. It possessed elements of Brynt design in that it had a finely carved bowsprit and a deep-keeled hull, but it also had fine carvings along the deck rails and the main cabin in the Fornish style. Its sails and rigs looked as if a Kaurian had advised the shipwrights. But the lower boards of the hull were smeared with a black substance that was unfamiliar; it wasn’t pitch or tar, precisely, which was occasionally used as a water repellent, but something like a varnish. The black substance came about halfway up the hull, and then it transitioned to a different varnish, which brought out the green in the wood and gave the whole thing a wet sheen even though I was sure the boards were perfectly dry.

  And there were bodies on deck. Eculan ones. There were more on the dock and the beach, which I hadn’t seen from a distance. But these few didn’t account for the whereabouts of three and a half thousand troops on those ships. There might be something close to that number underneath the ships, however, and scattered about the lagoon now, albeit in pieces. They would have died weeks ago if they died at the same time as the ones on the shore, and the crabs would have plenty to eat for a while.

  What had killed them? They weren’t riddled with arrows, and I saw no obvious wounds from spears or swords. Were they bitten by poisonous insects, perhaps? Or was the boat itself cursed?

  The boat had to have something to do with it, or else their corpses wouldn’t be grouped underneath it and the dock.

  I scooted a little closer to the shore, circling around the churn of the feeding grounds to get a better view of the trees. Something about them looked strange to me. The canopies were fine, leaves gently undulating in the sea breeze, but something bothered me about the trunks. They were blurred or indistinct somehow, which was strange considering that it was such a clear day. I blinked and wiped my eyes to make sure there wasn’t salt or something impairing my vision, and I looked again. The trunks were still hazy.

  It wasn’t until I was five lengths from the beach that I understood what was happening. The trees were perfectly normal. But their outlines were blurred because underneath their canopies, taking shelter from the sun, was a haunting of wraiths, just waiting for me to set foot on dry land.

  Once I knew what I was looking at, I could make out some individual shapes. The wraiths were gaunt, translucent creatures with mouths yawning in an eternal scream—and I wanted to scream myself, they were so horrifically twisted from anything human. As one of Bryn’s blessed, I’m not affected by the temperature of the ocean, but I shivered nonetheless. How the wraiths could ever be considered alluring, as the old Drowning Songs taught us, I could not fathom. Unless their allure was actually some kind of magic they worked across the land, and the water was protecting me. Or perhaps they simply hadn’t seen me yet.

  I ducked underneath the waves and sleeved out to the Eculan ships, protecting my ears from any songs of temptation they might sing to get me to come ashore. Once I surfaced behind the stern of a flatboat in the middle of the fleet, I peered back at the strange ship moored at the dock and tried to make sense of it.

  The wraiths certainly could have killed the Eculans without weapons. But there weren’t any wraiths on the dock or on the boat—a strange boat that was, in all likelihood, the Seven-Year Ship for which the Eculans had been searching. There would be no reason for their bodies to be on it, around it, and mostly underneath it unless they had tried to board it and perhaps sail it away. Someone or something had methodically slain them all.

  But who? The wraiths? Possible. Even probable. But who owned the ship, and where were they? Why was the ship docked here? Had it been here all along? And what, if anything, did this island have to do with the Seventh Kenning?

  That Kaurian scholar had said the faithful would be taken on the Seven-Year Ship and shown the truth of the Seventh Kenning. Did that mean the Mistmaiden Isles were the source of that kenning?

  Was this inlet, in fact, the source of it? And all those dead Eculans on the boat and underneath it were seekers who hadn’t been blessed? If so…where were the people who did get blessed?

  There were too many questions and not enough answers. But I did have a few important facts to take back with me.

  The Eculans had found their Seven-Year Ship. But none of them survived finding it, so the rest of the Eculans weren’t aware that it had been found. That meant the Bone Giants would continue with whatever they had planned.

  I stopped and reconsidered: unless sixty-five boatloads had survived finding it and moved on. All the other Eculan fleets had been a hundred ships.

  But that theory didn’t make a lot of sense to me; I couldn’t believe the Eculans would just leave the Seven-Year Ship behind after they’d mobilized such huge resources to find it. Greater minds than mine would need to solve the puzzle once I gave them the few pieces of information I had.

  To be thorough, I searched the island’s circumference to ensure that there weren’t sixty-five more boats anchored somewhere. I didn’t find any, but I saw plenty of wraiths. Once I knew where to look for them, I saw them everywhere, waiting among the trees.

  And then, on the northern coast of the island, when I surfaced to check the shore, one of them saw me. I did not realize it at first. I heard no irresistible call, felt no yearning in my chest for some ethereal beauty. But I was sleeving closer to the shore anyway, a casual, unthinking detour, and a wraith was emerging from the trees, its form shimmering and wobbling in the sunlight, to meet me where the water lapped at the sand.

  And I wondered why I was moving forward, why in the wide deep blue I would ever think it might be a good idea to swim up to one of these nightmares, a ghastly spectre that clearly intended to consume me or my spirit, its mouth yawning ever wider for me to step in, yet I could not stop my progress, could not even slow down.

  Panic rose within me as it became clear that I had been snared, not with any song or beckoning gesture but by some invisible, unheard magic, and if I did not figure out a way to turn or re
verse course, I would crawl dripping onto the beach and into the wraith’s ravenous embrace.

  I tried to use my kenning to spray water at it, but that didn’t work. I could do nothing but propel myself closer. I tried to blink and that didn’t work either: My gaze was locked upon my target, my eyelids glued open.

  Could I move my arms, I wondered? Yes! But only in certain ways—not, I discovered, to swim backward or tread water. But I could move them forward and accelerate toward my doom. Not that it made much difference, since I was moving well under the propulsion of my kenning.

  Desperate as I entered the shallows—I’d hit the sand soon and have to stand up—I shot my arms forward as if to perform a breaststroke, then flipped my hands palm up and convulsed my fingers, thereby splashing some water into my face, directly into my unblinking eyes.

  Freedom! My eyes closed and I kept them shut, ducking my face down into the water and feeling my kenning return to my full control just as my hands ran into the ocean floor, the wraith only a length or two away at the water’s edge, silent and hungry. I turned and sleeved myself away from there, remaining underwater and safe from any further enchantment.

  I shook and shivered, my physical revulsion coming late. The legendary power of wraiths to lure people was real. Terrifyingly real. But water’s ability to defy their powers was also real.

  I paused and floated in place once I’d achieved some distance, my heart hammering against my ribs. I remained there for a while, taking deep breaths, until I calmed down and felt safe again. Then I resumed my circuit of the island, peeking up from the surface only briefly to check for ships before dipping underwater. I did not want to be snared again, even if I knew how to break their enchantment.

  When the sun sank in the west, I was too exhausted to travel all the way back to Pelemyn. I spent another fitful night on the crag off the coast of Bolt. I didn’t see wraiths among Bolt’s forest—I looked—but I couldn’t be sure they weren’t there somewhere.

  When I headed home on the third day to report, I knew what I’d name the big island: That one would be called Blight, and I’d argue with the master of charts until she accepted it. She could call the other islands what she wished, and the pelenaut might want to fully explore them and establish a small seasonal fishing camp on one of them someday, but that big island should be named after its nature.

  * * *

  —

  The murmurs and conversation at the end of that tale continued for a while, and Fintan let people talk a bit before he moved on to the next. The Mistmaiden Isles have always been spooky for Brynts; as Tallynd suggested, we tried not to think about them, and if we did by accident, then we’d actively try to think of something else infinitely more pleasant, even if that was damp underwear, creeping mold, or reading aloud an entertaining story to one’s parents and suddenly running into a steamy sex scene. But now we had actual names for the islands and knew about the prospect of plentiful fishing and maybe even settlement on three of the islands. And we had the possibility that the Seven-Year Ship had been found, which might prove pivotal to securing our safety. There was more than a little wondering aloud at why we were learning about Tallynd’s discovery only months later. Obviously the pelenaut had seen fit to keep that information close, just as he now saw fit to release it.

  “Next I have a new narrator for you,” Fintan said. “You have met her before, briefly, in some of Abhi’s tales. But now you’ll get to hear her story in her own voice. This the hivemistress, Hanima Bhandury.”

  The young woman who took shape in the smoke looked a little bit different from many Nentians—frail and malnourished, I suppose, with well-defined cheekbones. Her clothes didn’t fit her and didn’t even seem like they were hers; she was practically swimming in a hooded tunic, and her boots were too big and looked like a men’s style. Her hair, while straight and black like that of all Nentians, was cut short about her head and something of a tangle, which I was fairly certain meant she was the poorest of the poor, because she couldn’t afford to keep it long; when one lived outdoors and the next meal was uncertain, baths and brushes and shampoos would be luxuries. Still, her eyes were alive with light and she smiled easily, her voice musical. With apologies to Fintan, I am not sure I’ve met anyone with more personal charisma.

  The city blats before me, rude and smelly like old Khamen Chorous soon after he gulps down his borchatta soup, and if you wrinkle your nose and curl your lip in disgust, he laughs hoarsely, showing you his three brown teeth, amused that you have no choice but to smell the fruits of his ass. Yes: That is the city of Khul Bashab.

  The city has always been this way, but only recently have I begun to suspect it doesn’t always have to be. That certainly seems to be the opinion of foreigners who visit Khul Bashab; they comment on its smell as if cities should be fragrant. They look at the desperate people living by the docks and wonder aloud how the government can let it happen. I never thought much about how Khul Bashab got this way, or what could or should be done about it, until I left the city to seek a kenning. Now that I’ve been blessed by the Sixth Kenning, I’m experiencing the world much differently and imagining how it can be better, and you know what that feeling is like? It’s the best!

  I mean, apart from making me a hunted fugitive, it’s the best. Hiding from the viceroy’s muscle-y military guys gives me plenty of time to think about how to get rid of the city’s stench, I suppose, among many other problems I need to solve.

  What does the viceroy do all day up in his tower, I wonder, instead of solving the city’s problems? I bet he shouts at people for things to be done and then slips marinated eels down his jiggly throat.

  That thing! Do it now! Om nom nom! Shout and chomp. Shout and chomp. Except he never shouts about how many of his people are going hungry or makes sure that they have something to chomp on. He works to keep us down, not lift us up. That is, if he works at all; mostly he’s letting people with money exploit the people without it and directing his soldiers to protect the money.

  I am probably being unkind, and I should stop. But I’m forced to think of him up in that tower since I have to hide from him in the daylight.

  Adithi is feeling sorry for herself because she didn’t do anything wrong and yet she has no choice but to ride in our wagon now. Sudhi has left us, horrified and guilty and thinking he’s somehow unfit to be around other people. And I get it, I do, especially the horror if not the guilt.

  All right, all right, I guess I have to face it, but here’s the thing: Killing the guards at the gate was an accident! Though I doubt anyone will believe that. We are in a churning pond of poo, and Tamhan had warned us we’d probably be in one no matter what once our kennings became known, but we didn’t think it would get so skyboned so fast.

  When I arrived at the Hunter Gate with Sudhi, Adithi, and Tamhan, the guards acted like we were criminals, because we were riding horses no one was using anymore. We hadn’t killed the cavalry guys—that was Abhinava who did that, and he wasn’t with us. What were we supposed to do, just leave their horses out on the plains to be eaten by wheat dogs? I think if we had left the horses behind and simply lied, saying we’d never seen any cavalry or anything, no, sir, we could have entered without incident—or at least without more than the normal level of harassment. But Adithi wanted to make sure those horses were taken somewhere safe, which was fine, except the guards fixated on what had happened to the men riding them. We did lie about that—or, rather, Tamhan did. He told the guards we’d just found those horses on the plains and didn’t want them to die. We dismounted and held out the reins and I even smiled at them, which is something I’d never done to someone working for the viceroy.

  Maybe my smile wasn’t very convincing. Or maybe they didn’t believe us because we were covered in blood. It was our own blood, from the seeking where the bloodcats had bitten us, and I had lost a nipple to one of them, but the guards weren’t concerne
d for our welfare or grateful that we’d been thoughtful enough to save those horses and return them. Instead, they came out of the gates with spears pointed at our bodies and threatened us with angry voices, and I thought maybe I was going to die, because I’d seen soldiers kill folks like me before. And my hive, which had followed me the whole way from the seeking in a sort of dispersed swarm, just…acted. I didn’t tell them to fly into the face of the guard coming at me and sting him until he died screaming, but they did it anyway. And Sudhi didn’t tell his kholeshar viper to strike out and bite the face of the guard coming after him either, but that’s what happened, and we were left standing at the open gate with five cavalry horses and two dead guards and a growing crowd of ogling spectators.

  I am glad Tamhan was with us. He’s not blessed with a kenning but instead with a keen mind and a treasury. His father is a crony of the viceroy’s, so Tamhan knows something of how their games are played.

  “Inside,” he told us, and we entered, stepping over the bodies. He asked Adithi to tell the horses to return to the garrison stables on their own, and then we had to go into hiding while Tamhan went home to his protection and privilege and a bed made out of fine soft cheeses, probably, I don’t know. I would totally sleep on cheese if I were him.

  Tamhan said he was going to clear our names and help us get a beast callers clave established. I’m not sure that those things are possible now, but I’m hanging on to that hope like a cheek raptor with two fresh scoops of someone’s face. Hope that tomorrow will be better is how I survive each day.

  Sudhi took off after that, very upset, his face scrunched into lines of distress. He said he had a place to go and he’d contact Tamhan as soon as he could. And once he was gone, Tamhan led us down a six-brick street—an alley, really—and said we’d need to disappear. And I’d need to keep my hive dispersed or someone would use the swarm to find me. Adithi was not supposed to do anything with the horses from that point on; Tamhan wanted to cast some doubt about her abilities and spread different rumors.