The Tower of Living and Dying

Chapter Nine

The ships pulled back raggedly, like crows flying up from a field when the farmer comes out with a sling and a pouch of stones. Moving fast, with a wind driving them. Sixty had departed from Malth Calien. Perhaps thirty remained. They straggled down along the coast, hugging tight to the line of the cliffs. Looked smaller, weaker, the planks of their sides crushed in like the flanks of a broken-down old horse.

The king’s ship was the last, as was fitting. It sailed blindly, the king looking back staring blindly, the dead thing that was a portent of nothing flopping from the mast with the crows and gulls fighting over its unborn eyes and the blue tongue lolling in its unborn mouth.

There is no plan to get out. There never was. You didn’t really think this bit through, did you?

Luminous creatures rose from the deep of the water, called up by the setting sun. The surface of the sea shimmered, solid as metal to a man’s fooled gaze. Usually they only came in deep water: Marith had only seen them this close to the land a handful of times, and seldom this bright. They’d gone out in a little boat once, him and Carin, paid a fisherman to take them. Sat floating on the water pulling up pure colour hand over hand over hand. It ran through the fingers like milk curds. Smelled sweet as rotten fruit. Eltheia’s tears, the shore people called them. The tears she wept for joy and for sorrow, that her husband was dead.

There is no plan to get out. There never was. Not for any of us.

But he hadn’t thought he could fail. Everything had been so easy. The black ships dancing, the wind strong in their gleaming sails, coming in all together with the men’s armour flashing in the light. The dead foal had seemed such an omen. He had seen them staring, calling it for luck, awed whispered voices as they pointed. Eagles. Horses. The old, old things of the White Isles, even before his ancestors came. Sacred things that knelt at the king’s feet. The men in their coloured armour like a flock of birds on the decks of the ships, his men who would fight for him forever, onwards and onwards forever to be king. They would die for him. They would kill for him. Bright they raised up their voices and shouted the paean, drew their swords to take the enemy, certain in their faith in him. Two battles he had fought for his crown. Two battles he had won. All the men of his father’s army had turned in their allegiance to come to him. They loved him. They knew him. Saw what he was. Ti’s men should have loved him. Known him. Thrown down their swords to bring him joyously to harbour, cheering his name. Bid him welcome to his hall in clouds of dried flowers to place his crown on his head.

And then the fighting! His soldiers fierce and confident, Ti’s ships meeting them in flights of arrows, the water lurching, the fire, but still he’d been so certain he would win. Kill them! Kill them all! So wondrous, fighting on the cramped confines of the deck, penned with nowhere to go, slaughtering. Sending a man crashing down into the cold water, bleeding into the water, the hungry sea claiming him, the white fingers taking him, his body too weak to keep himself afloat, the look of panic in his eyes as he bled and drowned. Wondrous. Fighting pure and without thought. Nowhere to go. No one who could come. One false step and the water beckoned. Nothing could be controlled; he could not even order his men. Maelstrom like the water. Death like the breaking waves. So certain he would win.

Thalia had seen him fighting. That would have been a good thing also, that she had been there and seen. Her kiss of welcome as he turned back to her, perfumed with his enemies’ blood, raising her hand with his as they came into harbour, leading her up the roads of the town to his home, the people acclaiming him, her face bright with pride and desire; ‘Be welcome to your home and the home of our children, my beloved,’ he would have said as the doors were thrown open, the men and women and servants kneeling in the blare of silver trumpets, a victory feast and then up to his bedchamber with crimson hangings, the windows open to the sea, her eyes wide.

That was what it should have been. Not this. He could not even bear to look at her.

A splash, the iridescent colours of the water rippling. A body, thrown overboard from the next ship. It sank straight as a stone. Coated and covered in luminous colour. He remembered his own hands, out in the rowing boat, dipped in it, the tiny things sticky and shining, a thin film like dipping his hands in the honey in which his father’s body lay. Carin’s hands covered in it. Carin placing his hands sticky and shining over his heart. The water closed, the ripples stilled. They couldn’t keep the dead on board the ships. Weren’t going to take them with them to wherever they were headed for. A pile of corpses, lined up on the decks. A pile of the dying, needing water and aid. Throw them over into the deep. Forget them. The iridescent colours of the water. The red painted eyes of the ships. Kill them! Kill them all! Dead’s dead.

He’d killed so many, fighting on the ships. Seen one of his brother’s ships holed and sinking, sinking with men jumping screaming from its sides. Oh gods, that had been beautiful and worth seeing! The great crack as the wood shattered where two ships met, the water rushing in hungrily, the enemy’s ship lurching and mawing and breaking, coming apart into pieces, disembowelled. An animal gutted, its life pouring out in thrashing bodies. Life spilling. Men as the entrails of some great blind beast.

Thalia had been in danger, then, Ti’s soldiers coming over the sides with swords while he stared at the dying. He should never have taken her. Left her safe with Matrina to wait on her and teach her good eastern ways, had her brought over in triumph, crowned and robed in gold. But she had insisted. Said she would be safe. And he had so wanted her to see. And the fear in him, when Ti’s men came at her, there were so many between him and her and the thought for one moment that she might die, her beautiful body sliding down into the water, lost to him, and the thought of what he’d do to the world if she died. He’d come running, killing as he came towards her, killing everything, Ti’s men, his men, the things in the air, the things in the shadows calling him as king. All the blood coming down. She had saved herself, blazing up in light, the men falling back from her, falling into the water, screaming down on the planks of the deck with their eyes buried, so that he’d killed them where they lay, Ti’s men and his men, until she was safe, and he knew then that he’d kill everything in the world that ever was and ever would be, apart from her.

Fighting. Killing. Nothing but killing. Perhaps that was when it had started to slip away from him. And his men had been fighting. And he had been fighting. And the ships had crashed and holed each other and fought as living things. And the swords had been bloody. And the water had been bloody. And his men had been fighting. And somehow, somehow the battle had been lost. The ships had turned in panic with Osen cursing him pointing out he’d been wrong, and he hadn’t had a chance to kill anything more. And he’d lost his kingdom and his crown and his father and his mother and his brother, and everything in the world that had ever mattered, apart from her.

Chapter Ten

‘Do you need anything else doing in the village, Ru?’ the woman Lan asked. ‘While I’m down that way?’

Ru thought. ‘Not the village. But you could check on the goats. Saves doing it later.’

‘I will, then.’ Lan adjusted her headscarf and went out. Took a deep breath of air after the smoky tallow damp of the house, that was one more thing she could not get used to. Physical weariness. Hunger. Her skin itching, her hair itching, her clothes itching. She had a grim and certain horror that she had become infested with lice.

‘If the young one’s a bother, slap him on the nose and tell him “no”,’ Ru called after her. Lan called back yes. Her hands were rough and callused, broken nails, red scabbed raw knuckles. Slap him on the nose. She walked quickly down the track leading to the village, that ran out over the cliffs over Telorna Head.

A bed by the hearth and three meals a day and a clean dress. What Ru gave her, in exchange for work. She checked on the goats, did her errands in the village, went back to Ru by the fire to cook them an evening meal. Thought about walking on to Morr Town. Never did.

On the first day Lan had walked on shaking legs up the beach over the moorland of Seneth, following smoke from a village where she thought she might get directions to Morr Town. And the villagers had been kind enough, given her directions, if not to Morr Town then to a town called Ath west along the coast from where the road ran off towards Morr Town and the seat of the king. She knew the name, she thought. And that had been good and easy, along a well-made road banked with beech trees fiery with dried leaves, beech mast crunching pleasantly under her feet. On the second day her body shook and her mind screamed and she could not walk for seeing fires burning, and she had stumbled down the road off into the wilds, and there she had found a rundown house, and an old sickly woman, who was called Ru.

‘Did the young one bother you?’ Ru asked.

‘Yes. But I hit it on the nose as you suggested.’

‘He’s the next to be slaughtered. When needs be. Difficult, that one.’

Lan served the food. They sat quietly to eat.

Ru said when they had finished eating, ‘I’ll teach you to spin, if you want. If you’re staying here.’

‘I can’t stay,’ Lan said.

‘My husband died,’ Ru said. Lan looked up at her, confused. ‘A long time ago. Years. Years and years. Still young, he was. I was young. He died in a brawl in a tavern, the innkeep said he was attacked by thugs, but … He died and I stayed here, learnt all the things I needed to learn, did what needed doing, worked hard. It’s not much of a life. But he had locked my skin away somewhere, you see, and I never found it. So I have to stay. I’ll teach you to spin and cook and work if you want. If you’re staying.’

This thin tired old woman bent double from her work. A selkie. A sea maiden. A god thing. She swam in the sea as a seal, shed her sealskin and danced on the shore as a woman, until a man came and stole away her skin. And while the man had her skin she must stay with him. Marry him.

Ru said, ‘Always, for someone, the world is being broken, Lan, girl. I’m not so resigned to it. Still long to go back to the sea. Dream it. But it was a long time ago. So many years.’

They stared down at their empty plates. Lan said, ‘My brother was murdered and I couldn’t bear the grief of it. So I went far away to try to forget. And while I was far away I walked out of a shop doorway and saw my brother’s murderer’s face. And I dragged my brother’s murderer all the way back here with me to punish him. And everyone I ever cared for died as a result. If I hadn’t walked out of the doorway. If I hadn’t seen his face.’

‘If,’ said Ru. ‘If.’

‘I could search the house for you. For your skin.’

‘I’ve searched. You think I haven’t? It’s not here. Wherever he put it, it’s hidden somewhere fast. Under a stone on the shore. Buried in a box in the cold earth.’

‘Let me search. Please.’

Ru said, ‘And what would I do, if you found it? Go back to the sea?’

This thin tired old woman bent double from her work, her hands gnarled and shaking, her eyes half blind. Seals swimming, lithe and glossy and beautiful, twisting and diving in the water, wild and nameless and free.

Ru said, ‘Don’t search for it.’

Ru said, ‘There are a thousand cruelties in the world, Lan. Cruel dead things. Monsters. Chance. Tidy the plates away. Then I’ll teach you to spin.’

The woman Lan nodded, took the plates away to the slops bucket and the bowl of water for washing she had been heating on the fire. Hot water, lye soap that made her hands dry and sore. The soap was a new thing, like the bread, got from the village where she had taken the wool Ru spun. Great massed coils of it, fine for weaving, thick for knitting blankets and mittens and caps for the winter cold. Ru had spun it and saved it, unable now to reach the village on the other side of Pelen Brook to trade. So some tiny good comes from my ruin, Lan thought. Someone’s world kept alive. The cottage was filthy where Ru could not see the dirt. The goats were wild with uncombed coats where Ru could no longer walk to them. If I leave she will die, Lan thought.

They sat in the half-dark by the fire, and Ru taught her to spin.

‘I will show you a special thing,’ Ru said a few days later when Lan had returned from milking the goats. She went to a cupboard at the back of the house by her bed, brought out a bundle wrapped in leather. Unfolded it carefully and there on the leather was a piece of yellow cloth. Fragile as cobwebs, with a sheen like a child’s hair. Ru held it up. It shone and glowed and blazed. Not just lit from the sun but lit from itself. Like mage glass. Like magic fires. Like laughing eyes.

‘Oh!’ Lan cried. One beautiful thing. Such a beautiful thing. ‘Is it … Is it magic?’ Mage cloth, worked from dreams. A princess shining in the light of her own gown. Eltheia herself must have worn such things.

‘Smell it,’ said Ru.

Lan bent towards it, carefully, fearful she might damage it by breathing, so delicate it seemed. It should smell of spices and honey and the petals of new flowers. It should smell, she thought with a pang of rage, like Thalia’s hair. She breathed in the scent of leather, the worn skin smell of Ru’s hands. And under it … Salt. Seaweed. Fish. She looked up, shocked.

‘Sea silk,’ said Ru. ‘The threads of tiny sea creatures. In the sunlight it glows. If left in the sun it will glow at night. Touch it.’ Soft as thistle down. So soft Lan could barely feel it. Glowing. But the smell of the sea. A dress for a mer princess, perhaps, a selkie to dance on the sands in the moon. No human woman would wear it, smelling like that.

‘Is it yours?’ Lan asked. She imagined Ru as a young beautiful sea maid, silvery haired and slender ankled. This the last precious fragment of her gown.

‘I wove it,’ said Ru. ‘I gathered the silk. Wove it with my own hands.’

‘But I’ve never heard of such a thing.’ There would be a way to take the stink out, and all the lords and kings and queens of Irlast would want such a fabric. Eltheia and Amrath, shining like the sun. Landra Relast should have had wardrobes full of it.

‘I made it,’ Ru said again. ‘The most beautiful fabric in the world. No one else knows how to make it. It took me forty years to make.’ Held it to the sun again and again it glowed. ‘If you stay, I can teach you.’

An image for a moment, the two of them, the sea witch and the burned woman, bent at their work, weaving dreams and light into cloth that would never be enough to use and that smelled of salt and sea and fish so that no one would wear it even if they ever made enough to wear. Bolts of shimmering, stinking gold falling through their hands. All the lords of Irlast could not conceive of such a treasure.

‘I can’t stay,’ Lan said. Still mesmerized by the silk, but the silk made her think of other things. Silk gowns, gold bracelets, the glitter of drinking cups in her father’s hall.