The surface of the ship—its beams, its sails and lines, even its figurehead, a woman with the head of a fox, arms extended high into the air to grip the prow in her fists—was caked with barnacles, glutted with them, like a flower in full seed. The living mast was coated in the white miasma, branches choked with it like some foul snowfall. There were not more than patches here and there where the stony shells had not fixed themselves, where the red sheen of the original ship shone through. It was nearly solid, like armor plating on a warhorse, and even Grog looked at the mass of creatures in dismay. Yet, on the deck of the ship many figures could be seen moving about, seemingly perfectly healthy and hale.
And from the bow, a woman’s head appeared, a figure in leather breeches and a billowing white tunic, with skin the color of myrrh. Her tawny eyes were framed by dark hair which fell to her waist and gleamed like nothing so much as a great store of costly spices—and it was knotted through with gold, strung through ornate braids like beads. Just behind her stood a shadowy woman whose very skin seemed to be aflame, her fiery hand poised on the hilt of an enormous sword. But the dark-headed woman beamed at them, her face open and warm. She put her hand on her girlish hip and grinned at the newcomers.
“Welcome to the underworld!” she said with a laugh.
And it was then that Sigrid finally did begin to weep, brought face-to-face with her Saint at last.
“That is an odd reaction, if I may say so,” Saint Sigrid remarked, and gestured for two of her women to lay a plank across the two ships so that the newcomers could come aboard.
“The Maidenhead,” Sigrid whispered, in awe as her foot rested on the famed ship’s decks, encased as they were in stony white.
“Well, isn’t that interesting? You must be one of the Sigrids.” The Saint looked mildly disapproving, as if stepping delicately over a drunken priest slumped over in her path. Sigrid stared.
“You know about the Tower?” she gasped.
“Tower? No, I don’t know of any tower, but that little cult was springing up even before I became a permanent passenger in this roving whale-turtle. They’re tiresome, but what can I say to dissuade them? Whenever one does extraordinary things, someone is bound to try to repeat them for themselves. It’s the way of the world.”
Sigrid looked as though she had been slapped. “I have searched my life over for you, for the Saint of the Griffins, of the Boiling Sea, of the Red Ship. I have never tried to repeat your miracles. I have performed my own. I have only tried to be like you in spirit, to be brave, and noble, and to find my place in the world. To find you.”
The Saint leaned in close to Sigrid, her face as round and ruddy as the day she vanished, and laid one finger aside her nose, her mouth spreading into a conspiratorial smile.
“Gods are always a disappointment,” she clucked.
Grog whipped her tail noisily through her brine, demanding attention like a kid who cannot reach her dam for the suckling of her siblings.
“I don’t rightly care who you are, you fancy sea dog. Your ship looks like it fell bow-first into a barrel of old cheese. Not what I’d call prime captain-ship, you know, Saint or not.”
The Saint glanced dismissively at Grog’s gesticulating tail. “Misadventures at sea are as common as apples in autumn…”
LONG-EARED TOMOMO WAS THE FIRST CAPTAIN OF this ship—we carved that figurehead to remember her—but I’d wager at least one of you already knows that. She was a fine woman, and I loved her. But a fox’s place isn’t really at sea, any more than it’s in a Palace. She gave the wheel over to me after we had been on the waves together for many a year, despite many other women being senior to me. She said that a lady should always leave her worldly goods to a daughter, not an aunt or even a sister. She touched my hair, just a moment’s touch, and went into the forest when we made port, with a bag of gold under each arm.
I never saw her again, and the Maidenhead was mine.
And for a while, our lives were bright as moon reflected in black water.
I suppose it was my fault. I became convinced that we were charmed, that Tommy had gifted us with her fox-magic before she left our berths, and like that clever, black-nosed fox, we would never be caught. My first mate, Khaloud, was always the best of us when it came to finding treasure for us to plunder, and she usually tried to make sure that it was ill-gotten, so that we could sleep easy. It is a talent of the Djinn; they can smell gold like game in a wood. Unsurprisingly, it was a great number of Djinn, led by the great Kashkash, who founded the city of Shadukiam in all its jewel-drenched glory. Or so they claim. I have never heard the name of Kashkash except that Khaloud swore by him constantly.
It was night, after our dinner of roast pork and fresh apples plundered from the stores of some local governor or another, that Khaloud took watch with me. We stood in our customary place, smoking—I with my whalebone pipe and she with the little silver one she had brought with her from the Rose Domed city. In the evening, she cuts quite a figure, with her hair of smoke and spark, her fiery skin banked to a contented glow. Her eyes could still scald me like a pair of hot tongs, though—and so they did that evening when she told me of her latest scheme.
“It would be easy, Sigrid. Easier than stealing corn from a crow. There is no one to guard it but an old woman with a lame leg—she couldn’t even hobble after us. And the stories I’ve heard about the treasure she keeps! A magic satchel, plain leather on the outside, but within, a supply of gold that never runs dry! By the beard of Kashkash! What madness it would be if we did not seek it out?”
I drew deeply on my pipe. “Khaloud, heart of my heart, I know your lust for coin has never failed us, but this sounds like a child’s story. We have had a good year. Why go chasing after magic purses when our own, very real purses are full?”
“Do you believe that the purse which brims today will brim for all time? Perhaps you can sleep sweetly, believing it is summer. But my duty does not let me rest, and I must see after our purses in winter, as well. And as for magic and children, here we stand on a ship whose mast bears oranges and pomegranates for our pleasure, and a woman of fire speaks to the mother of Griffins.”
“As ever, you are wiser than I, you old genie. May the Stars grant that you are always here to look after me.”
“Are you taking up religion in your old age, then, Captain?”
“Hardly. Habit, my love, habit.”
Thus it was that we set out for a small island in the midst of a murky, misty bay, as they all are, a rocky, barren place full of slate and basalt, festooned with silver clams and deep blue mussels clinging to the sea-worn stones. In the center of the island was a hut, and that was all that marked out this island from hundreds of other dead reef-shards floating in the ocean. Khaloud had traded a vial of her heartsfire for the chart, and when we saw the pitiful little house, we called that too highly bought. There would be hardly a need for blades; I took only my Djinn ashore. How foolish I was—but it seemed such a desolate place. The wretched hut was thatched in straw and leaves, and poorly thatched at that, as haphazard and tangled as a bird’s nest. Its walls were wattle-and-daub, stinking of dung. It rested on splayed feet that seemed to be a pelican’s or a heron’s, the talons gripping slick rocks for purchase.
And sitting in its doorway was an ancient woman, her lap full of clapping mussels.
Her head was bent so that Khaloud and I could not see her face, a mass of ash gray hair snarling from the crown of her head to her heels. But behind her arms, the crone had long black wings; at their crest bunched small clasping claws which were something like hands, and at her calves began leathery black talons which were something like feet. The feathers gleamed in the sun and seaspray. Her clothes were ragged, falling apart, no more than a few strips of animal pelts stitched together with sinew. She grumbled as we approached, and slurped the orange flesh from a mussel, pitching the empty shell straight past my head.
“Old woman!” Khaloud announced, speaking before I could. She often did that, so that if some hapless soul were to become enraged with us, they would leap at her before they would cut my own throat. “We’ve come for the satchel. You can give it to us, or we can take it from you, as you like, but by the flame of Kashkash, we’ll have it.”