It occurred to her dimly that no one would wonder at her absence. They would assume she had gone after him. Whenever she chose to let herself be seen, she could tell them that she had done just that. No dishonor, that way, no confinement, chained at wrist and ankle, like others who tried suicide and failed.
Unless he had denounced her.
Suddenly she could almost hear the letter: Nothing to me. Unsuitable from the start. Could he have gone so far? How should she know? It was useless to pretend that she could guess, now that she understood how little she had ever known him at all.
To be missing, but not missed… it was strangely appealing to be answerable to no one (that is the wine, the wine and the chill you took, do not trust it, do not follow your whim). She had no clan duties, for she had no clan. She had no promise to keep to herself. What self? Only her nose and lips had stayed dry. Everything else had been submerged in death.
The Dremland Spirit! That was what she had become. Myett smiled at the thought of the woman from the children’s tale (stop thinking, stop crying, go somewhere and sleep) whose people, husband included, had let her die out of cowardice. They had been gathering shellfish at low tide; the woman had fallen and broken her leg. And though they could hear her calling to them in the fog they told themselves that it was too late, the tide already turning, and they stole away and left her to drown.
But after midnight, back in the safety of the clan house, the woman’s cries had resumed, ethereal and cold. Here I am! Your clan-sister, your wife! I’ll not be abandoned again!
Myett scaled the inner hull, past the catwalks, seeking the ixchel door that gave entrance to the mercy deck. Taliktrum had admitted to a fondness for ghost stories. He had trusted her that much (only briefly, don’t start lying now, only in those minutes while you waited for his body’s appetite to build). They chill my blood, he’d whispered once, sharing a secret grin. Can you keep that to yourself, my little guardian?
How did the story end? With the moan growing louder and louder, putting all the clan in danger. First the mice and burrowing creatures heard it, then surface animals, the prowling street dogs, the cats. Finally the giants themselves began to hear the ghost. What could be done? Myett’s grandfather would have known the right sort of penance, the act of contrition that a ghost would accept. But in the tale, the foolish clan heaped all the blame on the husband, and threw him into the sea at the place where his wife had perished. Monsters, murdering fools! Couldn’t they see that the woman had actually loved him? That she might love him still? They had earned their final punishment; they had begged for it.
The hidden door-latch opened to her fingers. She crawled into the mercy deck and wandered aft, leaving the secret door ajar. Past the empty rice barrels, the swept-out bread room, the brig where guards stood exclaiming to their prisoners: Them fish-eyes have shipwrights underneath us already! They’re going to fix this old boat after all!
The Mzithrini girl, Neda, looked out through her prison bars and saw her plainly. But that did not matter. All crawlies look the same in the shadows, don’t they? And besides, no one listens to the enemy.
Minutes later she was teasing open another door: above the scrap-metals storeroom. The strongbox lay bolted in place, and wedged beneath it, Taliktrum’s key. She pried it out and laid it on her palm. How it had hurt, with all his weight pressing down. It had always been between them, a witness to his hunger, her addiction; a painful proof that she would never get closer than his skin.
They had driven him away. With their worship, their torturous need. They had exiled him to a city of dark giants, a city without Houses, without safety. He might already have met his death.
He’d been tender with her. More than once. But their worship had made his love impossible.
She opened the box, set the other treasures aside, took out all the remaining antidote. She would give the clan what it had earned. No one could stop her. No law applied to a woman who had ceased to exist.
The dlomu erected a stone oven on the quayside and kindled a fire within. Soon a sweet-smelling woodsmoke drifted over the Chathrand. Then carts began to arrive, some drawn by stout little horses, others by dogs. Crowds of workers assembled around these carts, making it difficult to see what they contained. Then someone scurried up to the fighting top and gave a shout: “Food, food! And loads of it, by the Tree! Bless them fish-eyes, they’re going to feed us at last!”
It began with sausage, seared to bursting on the open flames, and ample servings of thick-skinned tubers. The hot food was placed in baskets like those of the first night, and the baskets were placed on hooks at the end of long poles and swung gingerly over the chasm to the Chathrand’s quarterdeck. Even as they passed out the food, the dlomu kept silent, although the humans and ixchel thanked them with great feeling. Still, as he watched the orderly business unfold, Pazel caught smiles, and even an occasional wink of a silver eye. They were covert, those looks. The dlomu were hiding their kindness, but less from the humans than from one another.
Pazel mentioned the looks to Neeps. “You see? These blokes aren’t unfriendly-at least no more than they were that first night. They’re afraid of us, sure. But this not-talking business: it’s coming from somewhere else. I’d bet my right foot they’ve been ordered not to speak.”
“Maybe,” said Neeps, watching the baskets collect on the quarterdeck. “Or maybe it’s spreading, that old woman’s idea about us bringing the end of the world. Maybe they even think we have a choice about it. ‘Treat us nice, see, or die in storms of fire.’ ”
After the sausage came pies-round, glistening, stuffed with meat and curious vegetables and aromatic herbs. Rose fed his men in reverse order of rank: tarboys and ordinary seamen first, then rated sailors, Turachs, petty officers, lieutenants. The senior officers waited stoically: they had known all along that they would be last. Rose was merely applying the Sailing Code, and most of them knew the wisdom of the old law. Nothing would break a crew’s loyalty faster than injustice with food.
But there was no shortage. Fresh bread followed, and olives cured in wine, and small cuts of fish wrapped in aromatic leaves, and a second round of pies stuffed with sweet orange tubers and sprinkled with a spice that tasted like nutmeg and licorice at once and yet was neither. There was no shortage. They ate and they ate. Mr. Bolutu sat with his back to a hatch comb, using both hands, and Pazel saw tears in his eyes.
Twenty years since he tasted his people’s food, he thought. And suddenly he wondered if he would ever again bite into an Ormali plum.
For a time the Chathrand was a happy ship. The tarboys sang a tarboy shanty, but collapsed in disarray before the obscene punch line (even this was more than they had ever dared in Rose’s presence). The steerage passengers wolfed down everything they were given. The door of the forecastle house was opened just long enough for five baskets to be slid within, and all who stood near heard Lady Oggosk’s delighted cackle. When the dlomu sent over boxes of sticky mul as a final offering, the sailors even managed to finish a few out of politeness, though no one had yet explained what they were.
Hercol brought Felthrup, Jorl and Suzyt to the topdeck, tied the dogs to a steel deadeye and brought them bread and fish. The dogs ate. Felthrup sat snug by Thasha’s knee, and ate. Deep in the ship, someone managed to wake the augrongs; their groans of monstrous satisfaction made the dlomu freeze, and the humans laugh.
Even the ixchel celebrated, in their way. They were in shock over Taliktrum’s disappearance (the rumors had escaped already, and sprouted hydra-heads: He’s a runaway, a coward, some said, and others, He’s off talking with the lord of the dlomu. He and Talag planned it all from the start) but they still had appetites. They ate well, but in shifts, guarding one another as ixchel always did at mealtime. Only Ensyl ate alone, not quite joining the humans but shunned by her people.
Pazel, Neeps and Marila sat in a crowd of tarboys near the spankermast. Marila made little chirping sounds of happiness as she chewed her fish. Neeps dipped morsels of bread in the juice from the meat pies, grinning as he popped each one into his mouth. Overhead, the dlomu watched in fascination, murmuring and occasionally pointing.
“Feeding time at the zoo,” said Marila, glancing up at them.
Neeps frowned at her. “There’s a cheery thought. What put that into your head?”
“The way you eat,” said Marila.
The tarboys laughed, and so did Pazel, for there was nothing mean or cutting in the other boys’ voices: they appeared ready, for the moment anyway, to let Pazel and Neeps back into their fold. About blary time, he thought.
Then he saw Thasha a short distance away, eating olives from Fulbreech’s hand. She was turned away and did not see him-but Fulbreech did, and raised an eyebrow in his direction, a wry salute.
Rage went through Pazel, sudden and murderous. He turned away with the remains of his meal. And found
