Beneath Ceaseless Skies #159 Read online

But: Oh, little wizard, Tante Ankolee’s now very far away spell-voice told him, softly, sadly—water-warped, as though filtered through every watery mile between them. Be it here a-Sea, or on Veritay Isle where that half-me-blood brother o’ mine first saw light, or them Cornwall marshes you an’ ya mother call home, cunning-folk go only ever one o’ two ways. Others we can make love for, but ourselves... to such as we, love is dangerous; worse than iron’s kiss, an’ far more lastin’.

  An’ as for you—you damn well know you love this sea-girl already, fast an’ hard enough to drown in. You nah the triflin’ sort, worse luck. If ya had been, well....

  (...if so, I still have a “cousin”, ‘stead of his ghost. An’ you nah be stuck afloat for the rest of ya life, just ‘cause ya too proud ta bear the proof of someone else’s love, true though it might be, so long as you nah share it.)

  Almost a whisper now, yet still he fought to rail against it, twisting in his sleep... ‘til another voice again intruded, equal-familiar, if far more unwelcome. Commanding, in its turn—

  Jerusha, rouse yourself! Jerusha! Spring up and don your breeches, man, lest ye crave t’ put down a full mutiny bare-arsed!

  What—?

  That hammering at the cabin door, tweaking him sharply up from slumber into immediate waking danger—less like flesh than wood and metal, staves and mattocks, grappling hooks. The din of many feet and the blabber of many voices, all of them calling for his blood... or hers. Clione’s.

  His Clione’s.

  Rusk’s ghost stood by the door, gesticulating peremptorily. There, out there! Arm yourself, fool, for they come in force, and will not be long denied entry!

  “Those damnable dogs,” Parry exclaimed, torn between shock and rage, as he fumbled at his buttons; flame bloomed all ‘round him, a blue-green protective conflagration, and by its prompting light Clione Attesee arose likewise, stumbling to her feet whilst still in a sweet state of nature, with only her long black hair for clothing. Grasped for his arm with one hand, her soft fingers now slightly webbed between with crepey folds of skin, and asked: “Jerusalem, what is it? Has the madness come upon this ship, too? Are we safe?”

  “While I yet have strength to make it thus, my dear, yes. But perhaps you should cover yourself, before we find ourselves in slightly less agreeable—”

  ‘Company’, he might have meant, before the door gave way at last, rendering the point moot. Men spilled in over the threshold, howling various obscenities and execrations, but Parry did not pay them much heed. Instead, he let loose at them full-force, much as he had with that earliest attacker—but doing so intentionally cost him more than he’d bargained for, causing blood to gush from his nose as though punched. The resultant blue-green wave bore the two closest hands away entirely, reducing them to fragments, and flayed the wall itself away behind them a good ten feet on either side, leaving the doorway’s frame to wobble a moment in the wreckage before falling backwards, resolving to splinters. Other men took it in their eyes or across their half-turned faces and thrown-up hands, like vitriol, before it finally broke over the railing; the deck was awash with dissipating force, rising screams punctuated by general discharge of pistols, and a ball had struck Parry’s upper shoulder before he could shield himself, spinning him Clione’s way.

  “No!” she cried, face white with horror. Then: “To me, sir!”

  Who can she mean? Parry wondered, queasily; he wavered, grabbing his wound and pumping yet more magic into it to push the lead forth and speed its healing, weeping bloody tears with the effort. At the same time, however, the question answered itself—Mister Dolomance came threshing into the back of the crowd, summoned by Clione’s cry like a dog to his whistle, and made wholesale bloody work of two more men before getting his teeth stuck into a third, slowing his slaughterhouse passage to a stand-still.

  Up on the fo’c’sle, Parry glimpsed the bo’sun waving his arms like some carnival mountebank, trying to shout his damage-bent brethren down; when this had no effect, he seized the next one rushing to offer violence and fetched him a buffet that almost pitched him over the side. So perhaps Parry had, indeed, underestimated him—annoying to think Rusk might have been right on that score, or any—

  —but that hardly mattered right now, not with Clione hissing beside him, teeth bared, and the shark-were finally pulling his head free with a wet red crack. Not with one more fool (a master’s mate, he thought) pointing his blade at her while snarling, in Parry’s direction: “You’re leakin’ power, man-witch. So call yer beast off, an’ quick-smart, or I’ll slit this wet bitch’s throat!”

  Parry felt his eyes narrow, blood-clogged lids slow and sticky. “You will not touch her,” he heard himself grind out, barely recognizing his own voice. “She is mine.”

  The closest on scoffed. “Don’t think ye’ll lose yer whole crew over some skirt, Cap’n.”

  “Then don’t think, I pray—you’re none of you good at it, since you’ve failed to grasp that every man here stays aboard only at my sufferance. I can run this ship myself, if needs be.”

  “Aye, ye talk a good game! But we’re many, you one. What can ye do, if we attack all at once?”

  Parry smiled, grim as a blade. “This.”

  For: his stores were running dry, true enough—but there was yet something else to call upon, in worst circumstances: a force he only seldom felt stir against his presence, stroking itself on him and purring, like some great spectral cat. It lurked all ‘round him in the very wood and weight of the ship itself, Rusk’s Bitch turned his Salina, and if Parry did not pretend to understand it (being no sailor, as Rusk had pointed out on so many different occasions), he nevertheless knew it ever faithful to his touch, eager to do his bidding and willing to lend him its connivance in all sorts of mischief, no matter the cost to others... or itself.

  I will have to hurt you now, he told it, soundlessly, this invisible daimon, and I am sorry for it, truly. I wish there was some other way.

  I understand, something seemed to reply, meanwhile—but no, not so clearly. More consent as a twinge, at the very edge of consciousness, as he reached out with the next-to-last of everything in him and scooped a great chunk from the ship’s own side, planks spraying everywhere. The hull cracked, deck tipping to slide the bulk of the troublemakers brine-wards, below the water-line, which Parry proceeded to suture over their screaming heads with a solid blue-green seal like ice or glass, two feet at least in depth. They hammered at it, desperate, but got no relief; he saw their lungs empty out, bubbles rising, and smiled through his bloody flux, straining to not cough up his guts.

  Give me a moment, he thought. Only a moment... I can recoup. Can move the ship’s parts back in place, fit nails to holes, trust in motion to keep us from taking on too much water....

  (Dolomance had made short work of those remaining, all but the bo’sun, who’d wisely gone aloft, taking refuge in the rigging. Those stubby fin-hands Parry had fashioned were not made for climbing, so the man was safe enough, for now. Parry would have to calm the creature’s blood-lust to make sure that stayed true, later on—)

  Oh God, it hurt. It hurt so magnificently, all over. But ‘twas almost worth it to see Clione gaze on him with worship, for all he could now clearly see the lines of gills fluttering open along her neck, neat-frilled as Mechlin lace.

  And now ye’ve gutted your own ship, Rusk’s ghost observed, from where the cabin had once stood, as though it were some great insight.

  And: How fortunate I am, to have you to note such things for me! Parry snapped back, using a blue-green thread-net to fold the planks—haphazardly yet finally, all the same—back over the bulk of his thrashing, swearing, blood-maddened crew’s heads.

  “There,” he said. “We are done, now. It is resolved.”

  “I knew you would save us, Jerusalem. Ah, but yet....”

  “But yet?”

  Turning to her, seeing her shake her head, fine eyes already growing bleached and transparent-lidded. The tentacle-sway of her naked body, dorsally r
aised spine barely concealed by hair. The Dolomance, snuffling to his knees, keen to lay that terrible head at her similarly-webbed feet.

  “I cannot stay,” she said, sadly. “My air is almost gone—I know it. Come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “Down. Down. Oh, my magician... only come below, and we will rule together; you will be king of a dark place, beyond all their reaches. Dark, and deep, and shining.”

  (Her sea-colored eyes, her weed-thick hair, her skin green-tinting. Oh, how he longed to change along with her, to rip his own skin off and take his chances with whatever he found beneath—or didn’t.)

  “The land does not love you, Jerusalem Parry; it never has, and never will. But I do.”

  “Clione... madam. We... barely know each other.”

  “Call it what it is, then. Call it magic.”

  Rusk at his shoulder one more time, a buzzing bloody gnat: No, my Jerusha, no. She’s not for you, nor you for her. Do not try to make yourself over in her image, I pray, lest you lose your grip on life entirely—

  Reaching out a hand to stop him and failing to take hold, miserably; how it made Parry crow to watch the bastard’s grip slip straight through, his living flesh a mere ghost’s ghost. And think, crazily—

  Why not? I could make myself breathe water, I’m certain. I can do... most anything.

  The storm again, but only in his head. And weak as they were, he hated Rusk’s efforts to detain him worse than he ever had the cold iron tether, the spectral keloid burn ‘round his neck which tightened halter-tight as he heard the bastard yell:

  Jerusha, behind ye—’ware, damn you, contrary man! The shark!

  For here was Clione, damp hand slipping from his with a pitiful look, stepping backward towards the gap’s scooped-out rim, gravity already taking hold—in another second she would arc backwards and down, hit water, be gone in a trice. And here was Mister Dolomance, thick legs already bent, poised to follow—

  ‘Til Parry reached out one more time, with a single massive frozen shout of NO!, and stopped him.

  * * *

  He came to expecting to find himself dead, torn to pieces by the monster he’d made—he knew it would happen, eventually. The spell itself required such a sacrifice. Instead, Parry found Dolomance fast-tethered once more, staring his usual sullen hatred at him; the deck was cleared, stuck back together at all angles, blood from Dolomance’s kills dried under the same sun that had tanned Parry’s hide almost to burning. And Rusk’s ghost leant nearby, inevitably, his arms once again crossed, with an odd look on his one-eyed face—was that satisfaction, or sympathy? Did it matter?

  Not to me.

  No. For Clione was long gone, down deep, into that impossible darkness. And he had only the man he’d murdered left for company, along with the foolish-loyal bo’sun, unless one also took Dolomance into account.

  “I would not let this creature of mine go,” he said, out loud, meeting the shark-were’s black doll-eyes head on. “That’s why. If I had, I’d be with her still.”

  And drowned as well, belike, Rusk pointed out. For I’ve never known ye t’go without air overlong, wi’ all your craft.

  Parry did not seem to hear. “To keep him with me... make sure our bond stayed unbroken. Because, in the end—I wanted power, more than love.”

  False love, man. She was not for you, or any upright creature. A thing apart, only.

  At these words, a great wrench pulled hard at Parry’s heart, shivering it so sharp he almost thought he felt the organ itself (which he’d otherwise supposed merely vestigial, given how little it normally troubled him) shake apart entirely.

  “Then what am I?” he cried out, in a tone that made Rusk’s ghost wince before replying, gently as that gentleman knew how—

  That too, I s’pose, in the end. But better here than down there, surely.

  A frost fell on Parry then, hardening him within and without, thinning his voice to bitterest poison as he replied: “Yes, that would suit you best to have me think, I warrant.”

  Oh, Jerusalem. Yes, tell it yourself thus, if ye will—for I am culpable in much that brought ye to this pass, and can easily bear th’ extra burden. But think on this, and know it true, Hell-priest: we cannot help our natures. Not she, nor you, nor I....

  Do not speak to me, sir! Parry broke out at last, internally, all his other words leaving him in a rush, blood-hot and galling. Never speak to me, ever again, ‘til we both be fleshless and Hell-bound alike. For I have more than done with you, along with all the rest.

  Though Parry expected protest, perhaps Clione had passed so far below already that Rusk truly could not, for the bastard only shook his head at him, an egregious look of sympathy on his face. And faded from his sight, leaving Parry blessedly alone at last, at least to all appearances.

  Mister Dolomance turned, mulish and still with his cold blood up, only to cringe away from the heat of Parry’s glare. “Get from me, you lump,” Parry told him, hoarse, every breath agony. “Do as you please with those in the water, but do not let me see you ‘til I call.”

  He stared the creature down until it turned those lidless eyes away, stumping to the side, where it disappeared without a splash. Then let himself sit down, panting, too exhausted even to weep.

  He glimpsed the bo’sun peeping down at him through the rigging, half-hid behind a foremast, where he’d held on for dear life against his fellows’ punishment. The man would come in handy later, of that Parry had no doubt, but for now he did not acknowledge him. Only looked at his own hands, flexing and unflexing of what seemed like their own accord, studying his fingernails for any trace of hidden claws.

  “Ensign Parry’s a Jonah,” he thought, without rancor. A monster amongst monsters, loved by them alone... this is what I’ll always be. My very blood foretold it.

  Yet: If you’d gone in you’d have lost hold of the spell for sure, another voice told him, insinuatingly, coldly logical—and was that voice his own, finally? The only one left in all his hollow aching head? Beneath-waves, Dolomance becomes truly shark once more; neither you nor she could have hoped to stand before him, then. You saved her, thusly, and yourself as well. She will live on because of you... if that anything matters.

  Was that enough?

  Well, it would have to be.

  Later, he would bring those of the crew left yet intact by Dolomance’s hunger back up, salt-cured and only slightly rotten, to pilot the Salina towards its next prize. Those who survived the attack he would offer the Articles, after dealing with whatever witch-finders might prove to be hidden amongst them in such a fashion as to honor his poor dead mother. Of Clione Attesee, or the thing that had once called herself by that name, he was careful not to think; his mind he sent skipping from her, forming a habit that would eventually wipe her from him entirely. Until, one day, he closed his eyes to find he could barely recall the lines of the woman who he would have killed himself protecting’s face, let alone her touch, or the sweetness of their time together. Not even the scent her dark, thick masses of hair had seemed to give off, when dragged across tender human skin.

  And in the background, Rusk’s dark form, always watching. He have his hand ever on ya heart, Tante Ankolee had told him, once... a thing Parry knew for nothing but uncomfortable truth, much though he might pretend otherwise.

  “Do not speak to me,” he repeated one more time, out loud—knowing himself bereft, yet somehow knowing also that it would not be long at all before he forgot his present wounds entirely. Then buried his face in his hands, shoulders shaking, ‘til he raised it again with an exclamation over the odd clamminess of his cheeks, unable to remember why he had been crying.

  Copyright © 2014 Gemma Files

  Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

  Former film critic and teacher turned award-winning horror author Gemma Files is best-known for her Hexslinger novel series (A Book of Tongues, A Rope of Thorns, and A Tree of Bones). She has also published two collections of short fiction and two chapboo
ks of poetry, and she is currently hard at work on her fourth novel. The adventures of Jerusalem Parry and Solomon Rusk from “Two Captains” (BCS #125) and “Drawn Up From Deep Places” continue in “Trap-Weed” (Clockwork Phoenix 4) and “The Salt Wedding” (Kaleidotrope, early 2015).

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  THE BURNED MAN

  by Hannah Strom-Martin

  Having failed once more to win the hand of fair Dulcina, who sighed for countless suitors from her father’s balcony, I was returning across the market when noon fell.

  In the Raga all good men fear noon—a time when shadows shrink and true forms are concealed. In the dust and the heat you might doubt your own heart or that the man standing next to you is quite human. He smiles at you just like a man, but unless you see his shadow, lacking horns, are you sure?

  In Div Kamia, noon also brings the tower—that bone-white shard in its shimmering square. If you are careless you will enter the square and encounter the being we call the Burned Man.

  Everyone in Div Kamia knows the Burned Man. Everyone has seen his tower appear. The Burned Man stands before the tower with the white dust both rising and settling around him, and his face and his form are as black as the candles that Sanjiib fortunetellers burn in their tents. He is diminished, also, like a candle, and there are stripes—awful red—on his melted skin. His hands though, when he bares them from his shroud, are lovely: brown and sinuous as the river. No one knows why his hands were spared. No one has ever seen the Burned Man’s shadow.

  I met the Burned Man by mistake, thinking neither of danger nor of noon. My thoughts were all with fair Dulcina; her rippling black hair, her strawberry mouth. For weeks I had stood with the other young men under her bower in the green part of town. Now I had taken the lute from my back and was plucking the strings with quiet despair. By the time I smelled the blowing white dust it was far too late to escape the Burned Man.

  “You visit the goddess of the balcony,” he said, taking my arm as if we were old friends.