C L Clark - [BCS296 S01] Read online

  Forgive Me, My Love, for the Ice and the Sea

  By C.L. Clark

  I promised you I was finished with the sea. I’m sorry. Apparently, she was not finished with me.

  When I first climbed aboard the Pirate Queen’s ship, I didn’t know why she wanted to sail to the bottom of the world.

  I knew three things. First, that you were a guest in the High Court’s most crowded, disease-ridden prison, in my stead. A fine place for a criminal, especially a failed pirate captain, to be sure. You are neither. I was. Am again, since they dragged you in and “convinced me” to work for “our” pardon.

  Which leads me to the second and third: that Issheth was offering unheard of sums to seasoned pirates who would hunt for myth’s treasures at the end of the world, and that if I wanted to see you again, I would make sure Issheth never made it back.

  Please, do not think less of me for striking the bargain. If I had not broken my oath to you, I wouldn’t be writing to you of miracles.

  One month in, I woke up to Captain Issheth howling with sorrow. At first, I thought it was the wind shrieking through the sails. It did that sometimes, and this far south, the wind had the same keening wail as a grieving woman.

  (Of course, she isn’t truly our queen. We have no queen. But if we did.)

  I rolled out of my bunk and padded barefoot onto the deck. I gripped the wood with my toes. The night was cold and darker than it had any right to be. Behind us, stars stretched as far as I could see, but in front, the sky was thick and blacker than my own locked hair.

  Someone else made the call before I did.

  “Storm!”

  We scurried like rats, the lot of us. Useful rats, with an eye to our purpose and the skill for it too, but we were no match for the roiling mess of clouds speeding toward us.

  The man next to me smiled wide and wild. He kept the cannons in place with brute strength while I tied the knots. His name was Dolimé. He was a dark man, with locked hair longer than mine, pulled back with hemp. A gold tooth gleamed. “Aye, and they only get worse after this. The goddess welcomes you into her world with a storm.”

  And then Issheth was there, giving orders as if she hadn’t been weeping moments ago.

  “Oil bags out!” she barked.

  “Done, captain.”

  “Sea anchor!”

  “Aye!”

  “And get your damned boots on! Not a one of you gets frostbite or I’ll throw you whole entire to the goddess!”

  I flexed my cold feet.

  “Who’s pumping?”

  Issheth’s quartermaster met her on the deck. “I sent Two-Men, Nrigo, and the twins.”

  She looked at him once, then back at the edge of the rolling clouds. “We’ll need more.”

  A storm like that would have us full of water in no time.

  A storm like that would give me a chance to make good on my orders from the High Court. I couldn’t take her in an open fight, and I’m not a slight woman. I’d seen her practice with some of the crew. The fact that she practiced at all put her at an advantage. I’ve taken up the practice since—it’s a long trip to the bottom of the world—but she outclassed me like your perfume outclasses the stench of twenty filthy men. And a dagger in her back would be impossible to explain to a crew that adored her.

  Issheth didn’t get to be the bane of the Court’s sea trade by incompetence. She stood as though a throne waited behind her. Her eyes were hollow, though, and her cheeks sunken. When I hired on, I thought she was just old. It’s a rough business, after all. Her braids were gray-black from the roots Like a wave, cresting at the top of her head.

  Then the storm hit. She moved like water across the deck, comfortable with the pitching as she steered us, cutting above the waves. I had never seen anything like her.

  I had never seen anything like this storm, either. The waves rose high above the deck of the ship. We rotated the pumpers over and over again. When the ocean battered us back and forth, Issheth held fast to the helm, muscles straining. Sometime in the middle of it, hail salted our hats, our faces, the deck.

  The water sloshing in the bilges was so cold that we worked in short shifts to keep from losing our toes. Then, we understood why at the last port stop Issheth had ordered everyone to spend wages on good boots.

  We found calm water at dawn. Calmer, rather. The wind hadn’t stopped, and thick clouds still blotted out most of the stars, but the waves and the snow had ceased.

  Like old nags, our steps stuttered before we collapsed to the deck or against the rails or rigging. Issheth clung to the helm; crystals of ice clung to her eyelashes. We watched her, waiting for her assessment.

  She smiled. The ship had come out clean. We gave a ragged cheer, even I, whose true task remained unfinished. Captain Issheth was still alive.

  While the freshest men and women got the ship aright, the rest of us huddled in our bunks below decks, clutching blankets and beer, safe from the wind.

  To my surprise, Issheth followed us and stopped beside my hammock. Her strength steadied my hammock against the rocking of the ship.

  “Tell me, all, that this isn’t a sign from the goddess herself!” She raised her flagon in a toast. “She’ll give us a warm welcome.”

  “If this is warm, I’d hate her to get frosty with us,” I said. My hand shook around my beer, sloshing it into foam.

  The crew laughed, and Issheth raised her cup to me and grinned. An uncomfortable itch grew between my shoulder blades. The storm had been my best chance for a gust to flick her off the ship or a poorly tied cannon to crush her, or even for a desperate ex-pirate to knife her quickly, quietly, before she fell overboard. I told myself it was because I was in the bilges; I would do better next time.

  After seeing her maneuver us through the storm, I wondered if killing her this far south was a threat to survival. She was a master. No wonder the empire had to resort to dregs like me to end her. No captain could match her on open water.

  Issheth cracked her neck and shook her shoulders out, as if she were bracing for a fight. “Dolimé, let’s have a song. A good one, mind—none of that mournful shit you like so much.”

  I stifled a chuckle. As a type, we seafarers sing some awful songs, so I thought it was a joke. No one else laughed.

  Dolimé began to sing, his voice low. The cheer felt forced.

  “In Haversham there was a maid, mark well what I do say...”

  The shanty proceeded in its usual bawdy course, but instead of singing along with the chorus, I watched Captain Issheth. She mouthed the words, chorus and verse, but her eyes were distant. When the crew belted out the last line, she smiled, clapped Dolimé on the shoulder.

  “This is the last easy night you’ll have, my loves,” Issheth said. “Half of you get to enjoy it.” Then she left for her cabin, and the rest of the night was lost in raucousness.

  Her attitude that night was only strange as I think back on it. I didn’t truly take note until I was pulling halyards with Dolimé the next day. He hummed a tune I recognized, so I joined in. My voice hadn’t been the finest on my old ship, but it was clear and hit true, at least to my own ears.

  “My love she came, dressed all in white, heave, haul, away. I dreamt my love came in my slee—”

  Dolimé shook his head sharply at me, just as I heard Issheth’s boots clomp behind us.

  “If you’ve breath to spare, Laema, I’ve work to fill it.” She glared at me as she passed, and the shanty died in my throat.

  “She’s got to know it makes the work easier,” I grumbled when she’d gone. “And I know my voice isn’t that bad. Is her taste so high?”

  Dolimé raised his eyebrows. After a moment,
he nodded his head side to side. “S’pose yes, in a manner of speaking. Her wife was our shanty woman.”

  I paused, mid-pull. “Was.”

  “Aye. Taken by the goddess. Drowned in a storm, saving one of the younger lads. Then the bastard died trying to save her back, so it was all wasted, the lot of it. Captain was at the wheel.” Dolimé looked sideways at Issheth, who stared south. “Hasn’t been much for singing since. Yesterday’s was the first song in an age.”

  I nodded. A dangerous rope of kinship wrapped around my ankle, but I swore I wouldn’t let our shared pain tangle me.

  A while later, I asked, “Does she really believe there’s a goddess who shelters those lost at sea?” I always thought it a pretty idea, something to keep you from freezing with fear in a storm, but it melted under reason and daylight.

  Dolimé shrugged. “She’s going to ask the goddess to give her back.”

  That was a surprise. “When did she die?”

  “About a month before we started this journey. Sounds mad, I know, but... agh. You should’ve seen her before.” He shook his head sadly. “She’s paying us, in any case. So maybe there’s no miracle and we’re rich, or maybe there is a miracle and we’re rich. Or... well. Wouldn’t question her, in any case.”

  Or we’d be dead. In which case the money and the miracle wouldn’t matter.

  But then, you would die alone because of me. So I couldn’t help but question it. The captain was a madwoman. A madwoman was going to sail us all the way to the end of the world.

  I remembered her howling in pain before, then guiding the ship through churning ocean. Mad, but talented. Maybe even blessed.

  I nodded again, and put my back to the rope. It didn’t change what I had to do. Every time I thought of her lost wife, I thought of you. I imagined my own cries, if I came back too late to save you. I told myself I would not become her.

  For the next month, we sailed through wild seas, farther and farther from land. It felt like the world had gone as mad as Issheth and the ocean had turned devil, not the beautiful, if temperamental, creature I had fallen in love with. We had nights of blissful calm, only to be wracked by vicious storms all day—or the opposite. The further south we sailed, the longer the days became. One night lasted only a couple of hours. Frost coated everything—ropes, rails, coats, even beards for those of us that grew them.

  Despite my exhaustion, the constant daylight made it hard to sleep. One bright midnight, I found myself bleary-eyed and half-frozen at the starboard rail. The wind made my eyes water, and the tears froze. I flicked the ice crusts off.

  I heard Issheth’s heavy boots before she spoke.

  “You don’t sleep well?” she asked. She clapped the back of a gloved hand across her mouth as she yawned. A low-born gesture, meant to keep a demon from snagging your spirit while you were too tired to fight back. For some reason, it surprised me. “Get some herbs.”

  “I’m fine, Captain.” I saluted, tugging the front of my furred cap.

  “I know it’s hard.” Issheth looked down into the water. Massive growlers of ice crawled through the ocean around us like strange ships. I could imagine what she was looking for down there.

  “Pardon?”

  She met my eyes full on. She had beautiful eyes, dark brown, fine wrinkles fanning from their corners, but they were bloodshot and shadowed. In all my time as a lesser captain, I never imagined that I would find the scourge of the seas beautiful. Terrifying, perhaps. Formidable. Overrated, even. But never beautiful.

  (You saw her in the Court. You know what I mean.)

  “Dolimé told me you lost your lover to the High Court’s cells. You hope to buy her out with your earnings?”

  I cursed Dolimé in my head, then cursed myself for even telling him the half-lies I’d concocted about you. My mouth tightened. I couldn’t think of anything more clever than silence.

  It was clever enough.

  “I’m sorry to hear it, Laema. How much did they ask?”

  My heart and head tumbled over themselves. My mind was certain she had found me out. It heard trickery in her voice, an attempt to draw out my own treachery.

  She shook her head and turned back to the water. The sun sparked on it like silver coins. She picked at a thread on her coat. “Whatever they told you, they’ll ask you for more when you go back. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you have enough.”

  A muscle in her jaw worked as she clenched it against memory. My heart ached with her. Had we just been two lonely sailors grieving, we might have clutched at each other in mutual understanding.

  She put a hand on my back, comforting. The knife I kept up my sleeve called to me. So did the one on my belt, and the one in my furred boots. Her arm was warm there, and my heart won out, against all my mind’s protests. I let myself believe her. She was wrong about the reason, but my pain was real. I missed you so.

  My hand strayed to my hip. I locked my thumb around the knife hilt. I envisioned the motion—unsheathe, plunge. A hard thing, with the thick gloves, but I’d had plenty of practice in the frigid weeks past. Just a matter of leverage to push the steel through the layers of fur and cloth.

  The potential slumped out of my body, and I let my arms go slack. There would be another chance. And the longer we spent in the demon south, the more I wasn’t sure any of us would return without Issheth at the helm.

  She let her hand fall, too.

  I cleared the itch in my throat. “Dolimé says she had a lovely voice. What was her favorite song?”

  She smirked sideways at me. “You know it. The Maid in White.”

  I blushed. “I’m sorry—”

  “No, I am. It’s hard when I see her in every plank, when I hear her in every snap of the sails. I’ve thought of giving it all up after this.”

  “No!” My vehemence startled us both. “I— But—you’re a hero. To us. Or at least, a rival. Without you...” I slowly realized what I was saying as the words came. “Every pirate in the world would grieve.” I would grieve.

  “It’s hard to be a legend, Laema. Especially when you feel so very humanly breakable.”

  She leaned on the rail, arms and back straight as her head and shoulders sagged. I don’t think she would have noticed the knife if I’d pulled it, but I didn’t. I put my empty hand on her back, instead.

  One day—or night—I woke from a drugged sleep to the ringing of the ship bell, and I staggered to the deck.

  We’d come to land.

  Months after we’d started the journey, I could finally see a mass of white, like the chunks of ice we’d been dodging, but it stretched into the distance to our starboard side. To port, the ocean stretched, placid and infinite. Its beauty caught my breath. Perhaps, even in daylight, you cannot do away with the goddess so easily.

  I made my way to Issheth, my boots crunching on the deck frost. Her eyes shone wet in the sunlight. Maybe it was the glare. Maybe it was not.

  She grabbed my bicep, held me at her side. “We made it,” she whispered. Not because she spoke for my ears alone, but because the moment was choking her. I could tell. We’d grown closer—succumbing to that loneliness after all. I don’t say this to spark jealousy; only to help you understand my hesitation, my unsteady grip on the knife. And yet, I told myself that my own ruse was stronger this way. That her trust in me would offer further opportunities to—finish what I came to do. It was something of a lie—at least, I had never planned to kill her in her bed. I had been waiting more for something like this.

  They were preparing a boat for her. Dolimé looked askance at the little dinghy and the massive sheaf of ice masquerading as land. He eyed the smaller pillars of ice, floating obstacles in Issheth’s path to... the goddess’s home. Even I swallowed against dryness in my throat.

  “You aren’t going it alone, captain?” he asked.

  Issheth eyed her crew in return. “Am I?” She looked like it didn’t matter if we all tramped along behind her or if we drowned ourselves in our own frozen blood right then. She was a woma
n near her heart’s desire. A half-gray braid whipped across her face in the wind. While the others fell silent, I said the words I’d been planning for weeks.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  I, too, was a woman near my heart’s desire. Or at least, near enough.

  I steeled my stomach against the gratitude in her eyes.

  The rest of the crew, released from the choice and the shame of refusal, could function again. Supplies were loaded, the boat lowered, and orders given.

  “The ice moves, captain,” Issheth’s first mate said. “If you don’t come back in the hour, maybe two, it may not open wide enough for the ship in... weeks.”

  The way he hesitated told me that “weeks” was his most optimistic estimate.

  “Then we have perfect timing. The goddess smiles on us.”

  And if I don’t come back, I’m with her, goddess willing. I knew Issheth well enough now to finish her thought in my own mind. And yet, even knowing how she felt about her own death, my stomach had its first doubts, and I almost lost my last meal over the side of the dinghy.

  A chorus of shouts came from the ship, and all the sailors turned after. Issheth and I craned around, too—and saw a pod of ice leviathans, crystal blue and spouting.

  “A sign.” Issheth grinned. We heaved to, with the shouts of the crew speeding us forward.

  I don’t know how long we walked before she found us.

  I stopped counting my steps across the ice after three hundred. I couldn’t distract myself from the thought of that gap closing between me and the ship. Between me and you. Issheth, always steps ahead of me, tireless, trying in vain to close her own gap. Frenzied. I kept my eyes on her back. At my belt I had the long knife I used for cutting ballast.

  “Issheth! Wait!” I picked up my pace, as much as the uncertain path would let me. My eyes honed in on the soft opening under her right arm. I kept my hand on the knife.

  Issheth didn’t slow, but several minutes later, she stopped.

  “Look.” She pointed just ahead. A ridge of snow that might have a rocky outcropping beneath. I looked for any of the strange animals we’d seen on our march, anything that might be striking in her the awe so plain on her face, in her voice.