Page 55 of Fate of the Argosi

‘So we’re not sailing to the island at all. We’re . . . sailing the island to us. Only it’s not getting any closer and you can’t bring it to us.’ Ala’tris had come up behind me. I turned to her. ‘You never would’ve risked so many lives if you hadn’t been absolutely sure you could pull this off. You’ve tested this journey before, you and your coven. The only thing that’s changed—’ I held up a finger to keep her from interrupting.

Sar’ephir wasn’t what you’d call a talker, and hardly ever used unnecessary words. She could’ve simply said,‘We’re shifting the space we occupy,’but instead she’d said,‘We’reallshifting the space we occupy.That innocent little ‘all’ was the missing piece Ala’tris hadn’t factored into her equations when she’d set us off on this journey into the shadowblack.

‘The Mahdek . . .’ I began, my mind racing, struggling to catch up with this bizarre phenomenon of navigating by shaping the space around oneself through spells guided by thoughts.Thoughts. That was the answer. ‘Two hundred and eighty-seven Mahdek on this ship compared with five Jan’Tep. It’stheirthoughts, theirfeelings, that are affecting where we are. That’s why we’re not lost, yet not where we’re supposed to be.’

Ala’tris nodded. She looked almost relieved at the look of confusion on my face. ‘The spell draws on the caster’s ability to envision a specific pattern of complex esoteric geometries. Sar’ephir and myself are capable of doing so, but Jir’dan’, Gab’rel and Ba’dari cannot. In and of itself, this does not hamper our efforts because—’

‘Having three people who don’t know how to row the boat isn’t a problem, so long as the two whocanrow the boat are strong enough.’

She chuckled, shaking her head at me. ‘You do have a way of simplifying incredibly sophisticated metaphysical phenomena, Ferius Parfax.’

‘Yeah, my talent for dumbing things down is legendary. So what’s the problem? All those bodies making it too heavy?’

‘That’s not it. Weight is an almost irrelevant concept within the shadowblack. It’s your people’s spirits. Somehow they’re . . .’ Frustration sharpened her tone, though it was directed more at herself than anyone else. ‘I don’t understand how this can be!’

I found my hand drifting to the pocket of my waistcoat that contained my deck of ruses. Cards depicting different ways an individual without magic can trick their way out of a mage’s spells. None of those cards described this particular situation, but many of those schemes relied on the fact that every Jan’Tep spell requires an anchor, and more often than not, that anchor is the mind of the victim. That’s why the Argosi are so good at slipping magical bindings: we spend our lives training our minds to work in twisty, turny ways, which makes it difficult for mages to anchor their spells to our thoughts. The Mahdek . . . well, they may not study the Argosi ways, but that doesn’t mean their minds work like everyone else’s.

‘My people can’t envision destinations any more,’ I said softly. There was a heartbreaking simplicity to why the spellship had become dead in the water. ‘You can’t arrive at a place if the concept of arrival, of homecoming, has no meaning.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Ala’tris asked. The ship settled once more as Sar’ephir’s arms dropped by her sides, her futile spell fading into the nothingness all around us. The two of them stared at me, waiting for an explanation.

‘You wouldn’t underst—’ I stopped myself, the irony not quite lost on me of my instinctive prejudice that these two privileged Jan’Tep mages couldn’t possibly appreciate how deeply ran the differences between them and their passengers. ‘You both saw how fast the Mahdek picked up and left from that Daroman marshal’s fortress. Two hundred and eighty-seven refugees, born into that life, all walking away from a place of comfort and safety into the unknown. No other people could do that.’

Ala’tris still looked confused, but Sar’ephir got it at once. ‘The Mahdek haven’t experienced permanence for hundreds of years. They perceive all places as temporary pauses in an endless journey. They can speak nostalgically of their former territory, even fight for a new one, but they cannot envision . . .’ The last word came out as nothing but a sigh: ‘Home.’

Ala’tris turned towards the railing, looking out over the black water that wasn’t water in this place that wasn’t a place. When she spoke, it was in a whisper that was quickly lost in the shadows, but I saw her lips move, and heard the shame in her words. ‘There’s no such thing as a destination in the mind of someone who’s never allowed to remain anywhere.’

Sar’ephir took a more practical view, straightening her shoulders as if readying herself for battle. ‘This emotional paralysis afflicting the passengers explains why the ship cannot shift the space around its hull, and why the constellations in the sky keep changing without ever holding their position.’ She wiped beads of black sweat from her brow. ‘No wonder it feels as if I’m trying to push a galleon through quicksand that only hardens with every inch.’

I followed her gaze over the bow. Quicksand was the wrong word for the way the onyx waves no longer moved at all. Clay, maybe, or concrete. Something more pernicious started to worm its way into my thoughts: if Sar’ephir’s attempts to sail us through the shadowblack were being impeded by the hopelessness of the passengers, and the space the galleon occupied was beginning to reflect their anguish, then what would all that hardening despair be doing to the Mahdek?

And there it was. The peril I’d missed in the darkness gathering all around us. I leaped from the forecastle, racing across the deck towards a tragedy I couldn’t yet see but knew deep in my bones was already taking place.

‘Someone stop her! Someone stop—’

But I didn’t know her name. Only her face. The face of a little girl smiling up at me because she knew that’s what was expected of her. But it hadn’t been her smile; it was Remeny’s. She couldn’t remember her own smile because she’d lost all sense of who she was – because she was convinced she was already dead.

I can run fast when I need to. Matter of fact, on a good day, I can .?.?. But there are no days in the shadowblack, only a single endless night, and this one that wasn’t good at all.

The child whose joyous innocence had once been so potent as to melt Chedran’s cold heart was perched atop the railing when I found her. Remeny lay unconscious on the deck below, black blood staining black hair, a black rock discarded next to him. The girl heard me screaming for her, calling out to her, but never saying her name because I hadn’t bothered to learn it. Maybe that’s why she said, ‘It’s okay. I’m already dead.’

Despite its name, the onyx ocean wasn’t made of water. I guess that’s why I never heard a splash.

32

Overboard

Spray glistened off the railing, a shimmering of black droplets beautiful as the night sky, deadly as raw, liquified despair poured down your throat. The beads that landed on my face and arms seeped into my skin, filling me with the morbid certainty that my time was done, draining me of hope for a future worth living.

‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ asked an old man a few feet to my left. He was pushing himself awkwardly up onto the railing, looking out into the dread sea where the little girl had disappeared beneath the onyx swell. Her great-uncle, I knew, just by the look of him, and the placid, fatalistic way he’d made the word ‘good’ mean ‘proper’. Resigned acceptance of the inevitable slithered its way into my own thoughts as I mouthed that same word with that same awful meaning. ‘She’ll be with her parents now, my niece and her husband,’ he went on, one knee on the railing as he awkwardly yanked the trouser leg of the other to get it over. ‘We’ll all be together.’

‘No,’ I said, but it wasn’t a bold, unyielding ‘no’ that could deny his macabre ‘good’, but instead a whining, pitiful moan that asked,‘Why me? Why must I endure this?’

Like a drunk, I stumbled towards the railing, hand reaching out to grab hold of the back of the man’s tattered coat. Even in this, I was too feeble, too slow. My fingers barely stroked the frayed wool before the old man plunged into the shadowblack depths. The last thing I saw of him was the smile on his face, devoid of any joy, longing only for oblivion. He found it too, disappearing beneath the onyx depths to leave behind not so much as froth in his wake.

‘Kid, don’t let th—’Durral’s voice was so quiet it wasn’t even a memory any more. More like the last gasp of a dying animal.

A strange envy came over me. What right did this old codger have to meet his end before me? What was so special about his misery compared to mine? I’d lost my parents as a child, my entire clan before I’d even chosen a name. I’d been tortured and tormented by Jan’Tep mages, faced every kind of death imaginable. Even now, the madness of the Red Scream whispered its destructive verses in my ears in an endless urging to utter them aloud, spread them to every living soul. If anyone had a right to tumble headlong into oblivion, it was me.

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