“Jean,” he gasped, one last time; then he fell forward onto his face, unconscious even before his head struck the ground.
6
THE LIGHTS became visible in the third hour of the morning, perhaps a mile out to sea due south of the Dregs, where a nucleus of greater darkness slid low against the water, tacking slowly and gracelessly. The ship’s ghostly white sails flapped in the breezes as it made its way toward the Old Harbor; the bored watch in the three-story tower at the tip of the South Needle were the first to spot it.
“Right sloppy sailor, that one,” said the younger watchman, looking-glass in hand.
“Probably Verrari,” muttered the senior, who was methodically torturing a piece of ivory with a slender carving knife. He wanted it to come out like a sculpted terrace he’d seen at the Temple of Iono, alive with lovely relief and fantastical representations of drowned men taken by the Lord of the Grasping Waters. What he seemed to be producing more closely resembled a lump of white dogshit, life-size. “Sooner trust a sailing ship to a blind drunkard with no hands than a Verrari.”
Nothing else the vessel did warranted much attention until the lights suddenly appeared, and their deep yellow glow could be seen rippling on the dark surface of the water.
“Yellow lights, sergeant,” said the younger watchman. “Yellow lights.”
“What?” The older man set down his piece of ivory, plucked the spyglass from the younger man’s hands, and gave the incoming ship a good long stare. “Shit. Yellow it is.”
“A plague ship,” whispered the other watchman. “I’ve never seen one.”
“Either it’s a plague ship, or some bum-fancier from Jerem who don’t know proper colors for harbor lights.” He slid the spyglass casing shut and stepped over to a brass cylinder, mounted sideways on the rim of the watch station’s western wall, pointed toward the softly lit towers on the shore of the Arsenal District. “Ring the bell, boy. Ring the damn bell.”
The younger watchman reached over the other side of the little tower’s parapet to grasp a rope that dangled there. He began ringing the station’s heavy brass bell, a steady repetition of two pulls: ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding.
Flickering blue light flashed out from one of the Arsenal towers. The watch-sergeant worked the knob on the brass cylinder, turning the shutters that concealed the light of the unusually powerful alchemical globe within the cylinder. There was a list of simple messages he could flash to the Arsenal stations; they would flash it in turn to other ready sets of eyes. With luck, it might reach the Palace of Patience, or even Raven’s Reach, within two minutes.
Some time did pass; the plague ship grew larger and more distinct.
“Come on, half-wits,” muttered the watch-sergeant. “Rouse yourselves. Quit pulling that damn bell, boy. I think we’ve been heard.”
Echoing across the mist-shrouded city came the high whistles of the Quarantine Guard. This noise was joined in short order by the rattle of drums: a night-muster of yellowjackets. Bright white lights flared to life in the towers of the Arsenal, and the watch-sergeant could see the tiny black shapes of men running along the waterfront.
“Oh, now we’ll see something,” he muttered. More lights appeared to the northeast; little towers dotted the South Needle and the Dregs, overlooking the Old Harbor, where Camorr set its plague anchorage by law and custom. Each little tower held a stone-throwing engine that could reach out across the water with fifty-pound loads of rock or fire-oil. The plague anchorage was one hundred and fifty yards south of the Dregs, directly over sixty fathoms of water, well within the throwing arcs of a dozen engines that could sink or burn anything afloat in minutes.
A galley was sliding out of the Arsenal gate, between the brightly lit towers-one of the swift little patrol vessels called “gulls,” for the winglike sweep of their oars. A gull carried twenty oars on a side, rowed by eighty paid men; on its deck it carried forty swordsmen, forty archers, and a pair of the heavy bolt-throwers called scorpia. It had no provisions for cargo and only one mast with a simple, furled sail. It was meant to do just one thing-close with any ship that threatened the city of Camorr and kill every man aboard, if its warnings were not heeded.
Smaller boats were putting out from the northern edge of the South Needle; harbor pilots and crews of yellowjackets, with red and white lanterns blazing at their prows.
On the opposite side of the long breakwater, the gull was just getting up to speed; the rows of graceful oars dipped and cut white froth in the black sea. A trail of rippling wake grew behind the galley; a drumbeat could be heard echoing across the water, along with the shouts of orders.
“Close, close,” muttered the watch-sergeant. “Going to be close. That poor bastard don’t sail well; might have to get a stone across the bows before she slows up.”
A few small dark shapes could be seen moving against the pale billow of the plague ship’s sails; too few, it seemed, to work them properly. Yet as the vessel slid into Old Harbor, it began to show signs of slowing down. Its topsails were drawn up, albeit in a laggardly and lubberly fashion. The remaining sails were braced so as to spill the ship’s wind. They slackened, and with the creak of rope pulleys and the muted shouts of orders, they too began to draw up toward the yards.
“Oh, she’s got fine lines,” mused the watch-sergeant. “Fine lines.”
“That’s not a galleon,” said the younger watchman.
“Looks like one of those flush-deckers they were supposed to be building up in Emberlain; frigate-fashion, I think they call it.”
The plague ship wasn’t black from the darkness alone; it was lacquered black, and ornamented from bow to stern with witchwood filigree. There were no weapons to be seen.
“Crazy northerners. Even their ships have to be black. But she does look damn fine; fast, I’ll bet. What a heap of shit to fall into; now she’ll be stuck at quarantine for weeks. Poor bastards’ll be lucky to live.”
The gull rounded the point of the South Needle, oars biting hard into the water. By the galley’s running lamps, the two watchmen could see that the scorpia were loaded and fully manned; that the archers stood on their raised platforms with longbows in hand, fidgeting nervously.
A few minutes later the gull pulled abreast with the black ship, which had drifted in to a point about four hundred yards offshore. An officer strode out onto the gull’s long bow spar, and put a speaking trumpet to his mouth.
“What vessel?”
“Satisfaction; Emberlain,” came a return shout.
“Last port of call?”
“Jerem!”
“Ain’t that pretty,” muttered the watch-sergeant. “Poor bastards might have anything.”
“What is your cargo?” asked the officer on the gull.
“Ship’s provisions only; we were to take cargo in Ashmere.”
“Complement?”
“Sixty-eight; twenty now dead.”
“You fly the plague lights in real need, then?”
“Yes, for the love of the gods. We don’t know what it is… The men are burning with fever. The captain is dead and the physiker died yesterday! We beg assistance.”
“You may have a plague anchorage,” shouted the Camorri officer. “You must not approach our shore closer than one hundred and fifty yards, or you will be sunk. Any boats put out will be sunk or burned. Any man who attempts to swim to shore will be shot down-assuming he makes it past the sharks.”
“Please, send us a physiker. Send us alchemists, for the love of the gods!”
“You may not throw corpses overboard,” continued the officer. “You must keep them on board. Any packages or objects somehow conveyed to shore from your vessel will be burnt without examination. Any attempt to make such conveyance will be grounds for burning or sinking. Do you understand?”