Кейт Форсит - Relics, Wrecks and Ruins - Anthology of Speculative Fiction Short Works

“Ara!” As soon as Nona let Ruli’s feet touch the flagstones she was off again, throwing herself at Arabella. They embraced and Ara manufactured the expected smiles, managing a more convincing job of it than Nona had. Ara had always been better at stepping clear of an argument and, even though she’d started this one, Ara seemed, at least outwardly, less affected by it than Nona.

“Is the boat ready?” Ara asked.

“It’s a ship!” Ruli rolled her eyes, showing another flash of the girl she’d been when they were all novices back at the convent. “Boats are for bobbing about by the shore. My ships cross the sea!” Ruli had inherited her father’s fleet and made her money exporting wine to the Durns then bringing back coal. War and invasions made surprisingly brief interruptions to the necessary business of trading across the waters. “And yes, it’s ready. Clera arrived this morning. She’s waiting aboard.”

Nona glanced at Ara who kept her steely gaze on the ship in question. The argument had been about half a dozen things, anything either of them could lay hands on to hurt the other in the heat of the moment, but Clera had been the heart of it.

“She delivered you to your enemies!” Ara had shouted that morning, her face shadowed by more than dawn’s grey light. “She tried to skewer me with a spear!” She’d rolled from their bed to haul up her nightgown and show the scar on her back. As if Nona had forgotten. As if she hadn’t traced the site with her fingertips a thousand times and didn’t know it better than any wound of her own.

Nona shook her head. “She knew the shipskin wouldn’t give.” The armor that Red Sisters wore was thin but of legendary toughness. “And she helped us as often as she hurt us.”

“You say that like it’s a good thing , rather than just enough to let her live!” Ara had thrown up her hands and stalked out of Nona’s cell without even stopping to pick up her habit to keep the cold from her flesh.

Nona shook off the morning’s memory. She followed Ruli and Ara to where the ship lay tied to the dock bollards. Sailors paused their tasks to watch the nuns approach, the devout making the sign of the Tree while others tapped a hand to their chest, acknowledging Ruli.

Clera came to the rail. Like Ruli, she wore her hair uncovered, black locks flowing over her shoulders. When she’d been a novice it had always been a wild tangle, but as a merchant, her wealth had tamed it. She wore face paints too. Just a touch here and there, dark around the eyes, red on the lips. Even through her disapproval, Nona had to admit she looked good.

“Does she think we’re going to a ball?” Ara hissed.

Nona wanted to tell Ara to put her envy aside. The paints Clera’s silver paid for still didn’t make her as beautiful as Ara after a hard training session with her face flushed and sweat plastering her golden locks to her skull. Mud and blood couldn’t tarnish Ara’s Ancestor-given splendor, even with her hair hidden beneath a nun’s headdress. The only thing that had ever looked ugly on her was jealousy.

It was just a kiss . Nona wanted to say the words. It was just a kiss. But they were fuel to the fire that was burning Ara up.

“Why is she even here?” Ara aimed the question at Ruli as they followed her up the gangplank. “She’s at the convent two days in seven. And now she’s here, too!”

“You know Clera.” Ruli shrugged. “Maybe she smells gold to be made. She must have spent enough of it to get the emperor to send her along. You know what they say: the emperor can’t be bought, but he can certainly be rented.”

Once aboard, Ruli went to speak with the captain while Nona and Ara slowly made their way to the prow, passing Clera without comment. Ara stalked past. Head high. Nona, burdened by shame, looked everywhere but at her, finding sudden fascination in the sailors’ tasks of knotting ropes and shifting nets.

Nona turned her gaze from decks to the flat gray expanse of the Marn Sea. The ice walls that corralled the sea were a white fringe on both horizons, over thirty miles distant to the north, nearly twenty to the south. Further than that—Nona reminded herself—she and the others were here because the Corridor had been widened. She opened her mouth to say something to Ara, then closed it. The ice may have thawed but something between Ara and Nona had frozen.

Nona wanted to say that she’d never seen the sea before. She wanted to share her wonder at the way the wooden floor beneath her feet rose and fell. The taste of salt on the wind, the cry of the gulls, all of these things trembled on her tongue, needing to be shared, but Ara’s eyes were ice blue and fixed on the distance.

“An island full of monsters!” Clera came up behind them, bold and unrepentant. “Sounds exciting. And unlikely.”

Nona turned. Ara didn’t.

“If it’s unlikely, why are you here?” Ara asked in a cold voice.

“I like a challenge.” Clera shot Nona a wicked look. “And unlikely bets can be where the money is. With the war over, this could be the next big thing.”

The war had delivered into the emperor’s hands the means to unlock a frozen world. Or at least parts of it. With the power to focus the rays of their dying sun, he could broaden the horizons of nations that had been locked for millennia in the shrinking Corridor that encircled Abeth’s equator: a zone carved through the miles-thick ice sheets in which the whole planet was clad.

But while thawing land ice would cause disastrous flooding, only vast seas extended beneath the ice-bound edges of the Sea of Marn. There, the creatures of the ocean emerged from darkness and could be hunted by a starving population. Recent battlefields yielded poor harvests. So, the emperor had ordered the Sea of Marn to be widened.

When the melting ice cliffs had revealed an island, the shock was not that it was there but that it seemed to have existed within its own bubble under the sheet. Rather than the scraped-clean rock one might expect, gnawed by glacial teeth, the place, according to the tales of passing sailors, boasted monsters larger than houses. The emperor had requested Nona’s participation in the investigation. The abbess had sent her alone, her tender heart not willing to risk others to these reported monsters and her faith in Nona’s invincibility unshakeable.

Ara had come because, kiss or no kiss, she’d told the abbess: “What? No! I’m not letting her go alone. Are you stupid?”

“We’re making good time.” Nona found Ruli beside the ship’s wheel.

“The Corridor wind is either with you or against you when navigating the Marn. When it’s with you, your ship fairly skips across the waves.”

“What’s that man doing?” Nona pointed to a sailor struggling with a complex set of ropes and pulleys beneath the main sail.

“Nautical stuff.” Ruli dismissed the question. “What’s up with you and Ara?” Ruli lived for gossip but genuine concern colored her voice.

“We argued.” The word was too small. As Mistress Blade, Nona was expected to understand every fight, but in this one, Ara could so easily reach past all her defenses and stab her in the heart.

Ruli nodded. “For warriors the peace can be harder than the war.” She set a hand to Nona’s arm. “It’s difficult to let go of that time. To still have the memories and the anger but not have someone to fight.”

Nona studied the deck. “It’s more than that.” Though Ruli was right—the peace they’d longed for was hard.

“You argued about Clera,” Ruli said.

Nona had hoped it wasn’t so obvious. “I didn’t know she—”

“You never do.” Ruli shook her head, a wry smile on her lips. “Everyone else knew.”