The Coldest Sea Read online

  The smile drained off her face. Everything beneath her skin looked as though it had turned to marble, enclosing her eyes in cold stone, and Vinsen felt viciously glad that he’d struck home for once. Though since he didn’t know how to use that advantage, it wasn’t of much help.

  “Joama.” He turned away. “Take her topside within the hour. Whoever sees her anywhere near the ship afterwards can kill her with my blessing.”

  “Yes, sir,” Joama said with evident relief. Whether they’d obey the last order or not, he had to make certain Ruay was gone.

  Not much time now. He’d already picked the dozen men who would go with him, and they’d be waiting at the other hatch—best not to be on the deck, where Ruay could see them. The catapult the carpenters had built would also be uncovered once the Bleakhavener woman was out of sight. But now something he’d forgotten came to mind. The dead Bleakhaveners’ clothes would come in useful for subterfuge.

  He needed to give Ruay a head start. While she might suspect she was being followed, if she didn’t know it for certain, she was less likely to double back or lead them into a trap. That also gave him a chance to collect some of the ragged furs from the infirmary.

  One last howl echoed through the ship, but the dog fell silent as he reached the infirmary. He would have to tie a rag loosely around her muzzle; that kind of sound would bounce off the sheer walls of ice cliffs and reverberate to the other end of the iceberg. In the silence, he heard flute music, faint and far away as he opened the infirmary door.

  A few candles burned around an operating table on which a naked corpse lay, already cut open. Vinsen’s stomach lurched into his throat, though despite his disgust he noticed Joama had been right—the blazes did run all the way down. The patients had been allowed to return to their own quarters and Dray was nowhere in sight, but the dead men’s furs were piled neatly on the floor beside the table. The table itself, Vinsen realized, had been designed with grooves so fluids drained into a bowl rather than getting all over the floor. Unity, he had to stop looking.

  The other bodies were in their corner, covered, but as he stooped for the furs, he decided to remind Dray to have them buried as soon as possible. If the other Bleakhaveners spied on the crew, witnessing the—the—whatever was being done would make them more murderously angry.

  A click made him jolt, but as he started up he knew it was the door closing. Probably Dray coming back. Arms full of furs, he turned.

  The first thing he saw was the empty table.

  The second thing he saw was the Bleakhavener’s corpse, standing beside the table. A dry fixed stare fell on Vinsen, looking at him and through him.

  Vinsen couldn’t breathe. He was encased in ice, his heart gone as cold as if he were the corpse instead. The man was dead, his body a hollow, but he moved slowly to the door.

  Behind Vinsen, canvas flew back with a heavy whap.

  Dropping the furs, Vinsen spun around. In the corner, the shadows rose. Half-turning to keep just the side of his body to the dead Bleakhaveners, he pulled his knife.

  The man nearest to him had been the one bitten by the dog, and his face was laid open to the bone. He took a step towards the door as if he was jerked by unseen wires, and Vinsen drove the knife so deep into the man’s chest that his own fingers brushed cold skin.

  Without so much as looking at him, the man flung an arm out. The swat was jerky too, as impersonal as if shoving some obstruction out of the way, and his arm moved as though an iron pole had been tied to it. But his hand was hard as stone, and it smashed into the side of Vinsen’s head.

  A soundless explosion went off in Vinsen’s ear, and the world turned a dazzling white. He hit the nearest wall, then slid down it in a heap. Everything was blurred. Shaking his head, he blinked hard; his ear rang like a bell, but through that he heard heavy shuffles that creaked the floorboards, and some medical tool fell with a metallic clatter.

  His vision cleared. He’d expected to see a circle of Bleakhaveners, their naked bodies pale-skinned where they weren’t red-hollowed, a ring of dead men closing in on him. Instead none of them seemed to notice him. They moved single-mindedly towards the door, more smoothly now, as if recovering control over their limbs. One of them tilted his head as if trying to hear a whisper.

  Vinsen scrambled up. “Here!” Why hadn’t he called for help in the first place? Never mind, he knew why. “The Bleakhaveners! They’re here!”

  If he’d wanted to distract them from the rest of his ship, that worked. As one, they turned towards him. Fighting back panic, Vinsen glanced around for something, anything better than a knife. How was he supposed to kill men who were already dead?

  Between him and the nearest corner was an operating table, without so much as a splinter on it. He caught the side of the table and shoved it over with a crash as the Bleakhaveners started towards him. He was behind the table at once, though it wouldn’t hold them off.

  Steady and implacable, they closed in. Vinsen slid into the corner. Triangular shelves crammed it to take advantage of every inch of space, but all they held were bottles behind the raised edges of the shelves. Spirit of hartshorn, perchloride of mercury, diethyl ether—

  Someone flung open the door of the infirmary, but he couldn’t look away from the dead Bleakhaveners—and at that moment he remembered what Dray had said about ether. He grabbed the bottle, whirled around and threw it.

  Under any other circumstances, it might not have broken; the bottle was heavy and thick-walled. But the Bleakhaveners had skin as hard as ice. The bottle hit one of them in the chest and shattered, spattering the Bleakhaveners with clear liquid. A sharp smell, pungent and sweet at once, filled the air.

  Vinsen snatched an oil lamp off its hook. He flung it in their direction and dropped at once, arms over his head.

  There was a soft whump, as if velvet-covered mallets had struck his ears. Then a roar of fire swallowed all the air in the room, vomiting it out as heat. A scorching tide flowed over him. If he had been standing, it would have seared his lungs like bacon. He didn’t dare open his eyes, but he heard lurching movements that ended in heavy thuds, almost drowning the shouts in the distance. Closer, bucketfuls of sand came down with soft heavy hisses to smother the flames.

  Slowly he lowered his arms, coughing as he breathed in. His skin was filmed in sweat, but his clothes had saved him from the worst of the heat. The infirmary was filled with smoke, and a shape made its way towards him, footfalls gritting on sand. Vinsen started up, reaching blindly behind him for another bottle.

  “That’s nitric acid,” Dray said. “Put it down and step away from my supplies, will you? Sir.”

  There were no windows in the infirmary, but with the door open, the air started to clear and lanterns glowed indistinctly through the smoke. Vinsen was half-afraid any remaining fumes would ignite, but everything seemed to have burned away at once. The walls were covered with scorch marks and a strong unpleasant smell of burned hair filled the room.

  Joama came into view through the dissipating smoke, a lantern in one hand and a drawn blade in the other. With the toe of her boot, she turned over one of the bodies on the floor. The corpses were unrecognizable after the flames, but thankfully no longer moving.

  “Weigh those down with ballast stones and drop them,” Vinsen said. “Then come to my cabin.”

  Maggie stood just inside the bedroom, one palm flattened on the doorframe. She could hear and see everything from there, without being in the officers’ way. They were gathered around the table and Cutwater had brought breakfast in, but no one seemed to notice the food. Vinsen opened a bottle of rum instead and gave the officers a brief account of the events in the infirmary.

  She wasn’t sure if she should have left, either by retreating into the bedroom or out of Vinsen’s quarters entirely. But after hearing the shouts—and smelling the sharp chemical stink of smoke—she had to know what had happened.


  Joama came in to say that the bodies had been dealt with. “Hands behind backs, ballast stones tied to hands. Though the Unity alone knows whether that will be enough,” she said as she pulled out a chair and sank tiredly into it. She rested her elbow on the table, her forehead in her palm.

  The room was silent. Finally Evrett squared his shoulders as though preparing to carry a weight across them.

  “Maybe we should discuss terms,” he said, though from the tone of his voice, he didn’t like that solution any more than the rest of them did.

  “What terms?” Vinsen’s brows came together. “They want the ship. They’re not likely to be satisfied with anything else. What can we do—offer to trade places so we’re stuck on the iceberg?”

  “They can raise the dead, sir.” Evrett spoke quietly, though Maggie knew everyone on the ship would have heard about it by then.

  “I suppose it makes sense,” Dray said. “I mean—I’ve heard they have the Tree of Life, that they’ve derived immortality from it.”

  “They died!” Vinsen’s eyes blazed out from a tight mask. “Doctor, you cut them open. Were they or were they not dead at the time? They’re not immortal.”

  “Then how were they moving?” Dray shot back.

  Vinsen set his glass down with a thud. “We could question that woman.”

  “She won’t talk,” Joama said flatly, rubbing the pads of her forefingers over her forehead. “Not about the Faith. You know that. Short of torturing her, I don’t know what to do.”

  Vinsen took a moment to reply. When he did, the words were evenly paced, but his voice made everyone turn to look at him. “They did not come back to life,” he said quietly. “I know that because I was closer to them than any of you were. They were cold. They weren’t any more alive than a glove is alive when a hand slips into it.”

  “So you’re saying this Faith moved them to attack you?” Evrett said.

  “Yes. If it can change other dead things, like driftwood or a broken watch, why not corpses?” He paused. “I think this is a distraction from our real objective. If the Faith caused those men to rise, then it has nothing to do with dead Bleakhaveners—just with the living ones in the iceberg somewhere.”

  Joama dropped her hands into her lap. “Sir, I’m all in favor of stopping the problem at its source. But what concerns me is that if you leave with a dozen men, and this happens again…”

  “Wait, why did it happen at this time?” Dray said. “Think about it. I don’t sleep in the infirmary and it wasn’t locked. Those bodies were unattended last night. If they’d come back to—I mean, if they’d started moving, they could have killed us all in our beds.”

  Maggie shivered involuntarily, although she knew Vinsen would have put himself between her and any number of dead men. But Dray had made a good point. Why not animate the corpses in the night?

  “You’re right,” Vinsen said, frowning. “Why now?”

  Joama shrugged. “You were close to them. They wanted to kill you.”

  “I was close to them before, when Dray first showed them to me.”

  “And you didn’t…touch them or anything this time?” Dray asked.

  Vinsen gave him a look of disbelief. “I didn’t do anything I wouldn’t have done if the Unity had been in the room.”

  “What if it wasn’t you, sir?” Evrett said. “There’s that woman.”

  Vinsen shook his head. “She’d have benefited more from raising those corpses in the middle of the night to free her.”

  Dray took his glasses off and polished the lenses. “Three possibilities,” he said. “First, the living Bleakhaveners raised the dead ones. They may have been trying to kill you, sir, but—”

  “But if that were the case, I’d be dead now.” Vinsen finished his rum. “They outnumbered me and they couldn’t be hurt with a knife, but they just weren’t so purposeful at the start. They seemed more interested in getting out of the infirmary.”

  Dray nodded. “You have a point. Raising the corpses accomplished very little other than burning out the infirmary, so I’m not convinced the Bleakhaveners deliberately did so, especially considering what their previous takeover attempt was like. The second alternative is, this normally happens to Bleakhaveners when they die.”

  “I’ve never heard of anything like that,” Vinsen said. “But they’re so secretive, I suppose it’s possible.”

  Maggie remembered how she’d reacted when Vinsen had first asked her to question Ruay, but that seemed like a memory from years ago, a faded drawing in an old book. If she had known Bleakhaveners were likely to rise as corpses, to fight their enemies dead as they had done living, would she have thought of it as exciting, a bold escapade of the kind she’d never experienced before? She wasn’t sure.

  Joama leaned back in her chair. “We can always kill that woman and have her corpse watched, but then we won’t get to follow her.”

  “What’s the third option?” Vinsen said.

  “That someone here unwittingly caused them to start moving. And to stop, because when we came running, they were trying to get at you, sir, although they were burning. Then they dropped in their tracks. But if you didn’t do anything—”

  Something snapped inside the bedroom. Maggie spun around. There was nothing in sight, but she hadn’t imagined that sound. From the other room, steel was drawn and chairs scraped back, but Vinsen ordered everyone to stand down.

  “It’s all right,” he said as he went past her. He knelt beside the bed and glanced under it, then straightened up.

  “Was that a mouse?” Maggie asked. The thought of having to dispose of a dead mouse made her skin crawl.

  “No, we don’t often have mice on a ship.” Vinsen went back out. “The rats kill them.”

  Maggie shifted as far as she could get from the bed. Ridiculous though it was to be afraid of rodents when Bleakhavener magic might strike them all, she couldn’t help it. She was only grateful none of the officers could see her cringe. Either someone else would have to deal with the trap, or she’d find a chest to sleep in that night.

  Quick footsteps crossed the dining room, and she glanced at the doorway, because that wasn’t Vinsen. Instead Joama looked in. Her face was drawn, but she had as much authority as always, and when she said, “Come out here, would you?” Maggie went into the dining room, wondering if Joama wanted her to leave. Perhaps they had something more private to discuss.

  Joama studied her with narrowed eyes, but before Maggie could feel uncomfortable under the silent scrutiny, she said, “You were playing music, weren’t you? I’m guessing you stopped when you heard the commotion.”

  “You think my music has something to do with this?” That was grasping for straws. She understood being open-minded and considering every possibility, no matter how remote, but that made no sense. “I don’t think so. I’ve been practicing since I came on board.”

  “That woman didn’t give you any Bleakhavener music to play, did she?” Vinsen said.

  Maggie shook her head, though it would have been a smart move on Ruay’s part. Of course I would have tried her music. “And these are my own instruments. I clean or assemble or tune them every day, so I’d know if they had been tampered with.”

  “Humor me. Play what you were playing before, with the same instrument.” Joama pushed a piece of crockery across the table, a china plate with a split kipper across it. “And imagine this coming to life.”

  This is crazy. “Why? I didn’t picture those—those men coming to life.”

  “Maybe that’s why everything happened the way it did,” Joama said dryly. “You didn’t command the Faith, so it did whatever the hell it wanted. Give it an order now.”

  Maggie glanced at Vinsen for support. The other officers wore looks of mingled skepticism and wariness, as though they half-feared Joama’s mind was giving way under the strain, but only Vinsen spoke. “If you want
to,” he said.

  Giving her a choice made it a little easier. Evrett got up and gave her his chair, so she sat and took her flute out of its case. She had been playing the overture from Masque of the Marionettes, she remembered.

  From childhood, she’d been used to her father evaluating her performance, and she told herself it was no different to have the watchful attention of a ship’s command. This was a performance like any other, like the one she’d give in the Ferament Academy when Lwisa Cadder made certain of her qualifications as an instructor.

  She closed her eyes, but that didn’t make matters any better. Without vision to ground her, nothing real might have existed except for her flute and the chair she sat on. Fitting the mouthpiece between her lips, she tried to take in a deep breath.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Vinsen said, as if they had all the day ahead in which to listen. His calm voice helped, and a tightness in her throat relaxed. This was music, and she had always loved music. Her chest filled and her hands moved to the keys.

  When she breathed out, the flute sang. She didn’t bother with any warming-up exercises. Instead she started on the first long notes of the overture, quiet and dreamy, but which slid rapidly into the glissando that signaled the puppets rising from their box as they began to dance.

  Surely that couldn’t have anything to do with it. Of course not; she’d played the overture a dozen times before without anything happening. Joama was sure to ask if she’d followed orders, though, so she pictured the smoked fish as she continued to play. In her mind’s eye, she closed its split body, nudged its long-gone heart to beat again and sent it into a shoal of its kind, darting through warm waters far away.

  A gasp cut through the music. Maggie opened her eyes. A fat fish in silver armor flopped on the plate, mouth open and eyes bulging. The smell in the cabin was no longer that of hair and fur with the ends crisped, but the salt tang of a harborfront market.