ARC: The Corpse-Rat King (13 page)

His mother had berated him for a thug and a visitor to whores. She had risen in a fury and snatched the kerchief from his grasp, throwing into the fire that roared in the hearth. His father had said nothing, merely shaking his head in disappointment. Marius had been banished from their presence, sent to his room to consider the behaviour, and the company, expected of the only son of an ambitious merchant. Marius had dried his tears and left them. It was not until he threw himself onto his bed that he gave his emotions full reign once more, promising unutterable things to the dark and to the memory of Mischa’s fall.

His mother had come to him, later, after the evening meal, to apologise. Fear born of worry, and anger born of fear, and she had not meant the things she had said. He was her son, her good boy, and she knew he would have nothing to do with that type of person. She was just glad that he had escaped harm. She had kissed him, and held him in her arms, and left him to his sleep.

But harm
had
been done to him, and his mother was never again the hearth of his home.

The dead lay on the ice wherever they fell, and nobody made any move to collect the corpses and see them to a burial. After the dogs had eaten their fill, and the birds, and the lizards that crawled out of the sewers in search of easy meat, the spring had come. The iced had thawed, and the bodies slipped beneath the surface of the swollen river, to tumble out into the harbour and provide a bounty for any fish that had survived the winter. But Marius was already gone, apprenticed to a Tallian court scribe recruiting entertainments for the Emir’s summer palace. As soon as it was safe to escape the scribes’ clumsy attempts at seduction he had done so. Later, upon his first return to the city, he had asked around, and found out the truth about Mischa.

She’d been in her late thirties, at least as old as his mother, as far as anyone could tell. In the capital they’d have called her a courtesan, and confined her to the richest end of town so that she’d never have to sully her perfect white feet with the dirt of the common quarters. In Borgho she was known by a more prosaic title, and she worked where the most money resided, among the ambitious merchants and those who fancied themselves so important, that a drab late thirtyish wife was no proper accompaniment when being seen among other ambitious merchants. Marius understood, then, exactly why his father’s name had been so familiar. He did not think badly of her for it. People made worse compromises every day. He never discussed it with his father. No matter how often he had returned to Borgho in the intervening years, he had crossed the river by other bridges.

Marius would have cursed his subconscious for bringing him back to the spot, but in truth, it fit his mood perfectly. The tossing water mirrored his thoughts, and he stared at it as if it could provide some sort of answer. But the water was just water, and his thoughts remained turbulent, and no beautiful green eyes stared back for him to dive into, and in the end, all he could do was turn his back on the water, and take the ninety-first step across the bridge.

The wharfs on the north bank were a mirror to those on the south, although the overall impression was of, somehow, a better class of dockyard. It was cleaner; more orderly. The ships seemed in better condition, and the wharfies and navvies who bustled about wore the livery of whatever stock supply company they represented, rather than the dusty, careworn leathers favoured by their brothers over the bridge. Clear lines of progress could be seen through the crowds, as each individual ship was served by its own orderly queue of human worker ants. Marius threaded his way through, an object of complete indifference to those around him. On the south bank he guarded his hidden money pouches with a combination of secret pockets, attitude, and careful scrutiny of his surrounds. Here he felt at ease enough to stride through the mass of bodies with his concentration solely devoted to identifying the ships he passed. It wasn’t difficult – even from a distance, the
Minerva
stood out against the backdrop of hulls and masts, a hulking monster looming over its surroundings.

Marius had been no more than a child when Mad King Nandus had received possession of his flagship, the
Nancy Tulip
. The north side docks had been created to cope with the construction, and they maintained the gloss that comes with living under a monarch’s auspices, even an insane one who built his castle on an ancient, crumbling bridge, and commissioned a five hundred-tonne clinker-built warship for the sole purpose of waging war on the Gods of the ocean. Marius remembered sitting on his father’s shoulders at wharf-side, as the ship slowly made its way from its berth a mile away on the opposite shore to the Magister Bridge, where it pulled alongside the single door and balcony built onto the palace’s outer side. As soon as it had pulled up, Nandus appeared and gave a great speech about liberty, equality, and the need for giant clam slaves, then stepped directly from the balcony to the poop deck of the great ship, thirty feet above the water. The
Nancy Tulip
and its four hundred-strong crew of sailors, soldiers, and gunners, as well as Littleboots, the horse he had appointed to the Borghan Senate – which had surprised most citizens, who weren’t aware Borgho had a senate – wobbled its way down the river and out onto the open sea, where the horizon swallowed it for all time.

The
Nancy Tulip
had been a massive ship. No clinker-built vessel had been commissioned that even approached its measurements. Marius had heard estimates of one hundred and forty feet in length, and its height was part of folklore. It had been so large that available technology had been unable to complete the task. New ways of manufacture had been invented: the nails were eight times as large as previously necessary, necessitating a whole new way of manufacture; hull planks were longer, wider, heavier, needing new methods of harvesting and cutting; the sails alone weighed as much as some small ships, and hoisting them by traditional methods would have broken any normal winch. Marius remembered gazing up at the side of the ship as it had passed by on its way downriver, seeing a nail head the size of his father’s fist go by a few feet from his face, feeling a sudden chill as the sheer bulk of the ship blocked out the sun and a wall of shade engulfed the wharf. In all his years of travel he had never felt so overwhelmed by a structure as that day, when the
Nancy Tulip
seemed like the biggest object in the entire world, and its movement made him sick with vertigo.

The
Minerva
was bigger.

Ship-building technology had advanced in the last thirty years. Clinker ships were a thing of the past – the
Nancy Tulip
, ironically, had seen to that. Ships could not be built big enough or stable enough for modern needs using the old methods. Cog built ships like the
Minerva
were the order of the day – smooth-hulled, wider at the keel, safer and more stable in heavy seas and high winds. Ships were bigger, as a rule. Rarely as big as the
Nancy Tulip
, but on average, the cog-built ship was the way forward.

Even by the standards of the new technology, the
Minerva
was huge. Marius stood to one side as a stream of navvies climbed the steep gangway. A dozen barrels rolled their way upwards to disappear behind the gunwales, as did a constant stream of wrapped bales. Chickens in wicker cages were carried past. A navvie staggered under the weight of a dozen crossbows. As quickly as the labourers entered the ship they returned, jogging down to disappear inside a massive warehouse twenty yards further down the wharf. Marius stepped back into the shade of the building and admired the industry with which the navvies climbed the sheer face of the walkway. The deck of the
Minerva
towered at least forty feet above the wharf, and the hull was a good one hundred and sixty five feet from prow to stern, if Marius was any judge of size. Where the
Nancy Tulip
, for all its master’s lunacy, had been a fully-functioning warship, weighed down with cannon and armouries, the
Minerva
was built for trade. Marius swept his gaze across the vast expanse of wood, estimating how much of the ship’s innards might be given over to empty holds. He whistled. With the kind of load the
Minerva
was capable of carrying, it was likely to be headed out on a long, long voyage. Exactly what Marius was seeking. He stepped out of the shade and made his way to the foot of the gangway.

“Hold your horses, pal.” A massive, anvil-jawed man in shirtsleeves sat on a barrel at the walkway’s base, ticking items off a sheaf of paper as they passed. Without looking up from his task he tilted his head in dismissal. “Unless you’re carrying supplies you’re in my way, so piss off.”

Marius stared past him towards the deck of the ship. “I’m to speak to the captain.”

“Captain’s already seen the dock master. Papers are all in order. Now you’re in my way
and
you’re getting up my nose.” The sailor stood, laying his sheaf on the barrel. The passing navvies immediately stopped, and laid down their burdens. “I hope you know how to fly, laddie.”

“My name’s Helles,” Marius said, as the sailor raised fists the size of a small child’s head. “My… friend saw him last night, regarding passage.”

“The lady?” The sailor lowered his hands, looked Marius up and down in something approaching surprise. “Red-haired lass, built like a long night in the tropics?”

“Her name’s Keth.” Marius said, feeling a disconcerting stab of jealousy.

“Bloody hell, son.” The big man stepped back, and nodded towards the top. “If you can keep her to yourself you’re more energetic than you look.” Marius stepped on to the gangway, and the sailor returned to his seat. “Captain’s in his cabin at the rear castle. Tell him Spone passed you through.” He glanced up at the resting workers, dismissing Marius from his attention. “Right, you horrible lot of lazy old whores, sleep time’s over. Shift your arses!”

Marius scurried up the gangway ahead of the belaboured navvies. He turned sternward at the top, away from the stream of labourers, and made his way past teams of labouring sailors as they made their way to various holds arrayed across the deck. Everywhere was industry, energy, and organised panic as the crew made the ship seaworthy. A set of steps led upwards to a poop deck above his head, dominated by an enormous wheel that looked over all the terrestrial endeavours below it like a god’s unblinking eye. Marius stared up at it for a moment, wondering at the size and strength of the man who could turn that massive wooden circle. The space between decks was closed off by a pair of doors. Two stained glass windows faced out onto the deck – Marius would need to pass multi-coloured impressions of the Old Gods Oceanus and Aequoris in order to speak to the captain. He drew no comfort from the knowledge that the man responsible for his safe escape was so superstitious. He tugged the brim of his hood further down over his face and knocked upon Oceanus’ blood-red nose.

“Enter.” The voice from within was imperious, clipped. Whoever was knocking was interrupting something far more important than their errand warranted, that much was made clear. Marius pushed open the door and stepped through.

A trading ship is a working ship. All available space is devoted solely to the making of money. The only room not devoted to that noble purpose was used to house the absolute minimum number of sailors it took to make the journey possible. There is no room for frippery, for useless substance, for baggage or personal items not utterly necessary to the trader’s only mission – to make as much money in as quick a time as possible. Everything is streamlined, cut back, minimalist, functional. This was not the case within the walls of the captain’s cabin. The moment Marius stepped through the door his feet left bare wood. The cabin was floored with mosaic tiles, patterned so that he stood upon the lower paw of a puissant lion, whose roaring head poked out from under the oak four-poster bed underneath the starboard window. Heavy velvet drapes were parted to allow sunlight in, where they fell directly across the captain’s desk, a slab of black wood so large the cabin must have been built around it, rather than try and fit the thing through the door. The captain himself was sitting in a high backed chair that looked like a replica of the throne of Lenthus XIV, the so called Moon-King of Ureen. Marius hoped it was a replica – its cost would be merely breath-taking, instead of impossible to comprehend. Massive gold-framed paintings adorned the walls. Marius counted at least two Fermenis, and one Cabdur that, if genuine, was probably worth as much as the rest of the boat added up. Tables abounded, and shelves, piled high with ornaments collected from around the five oceans. Marius frowned. How could any of this survive even the most moderate sea, never mind the massive swells such as those he had experienced crossing the lower equator? Either everything was glued down with the strongest glue known to man, or this captain must have a boy solely employed to pack and unpack the room depending on sailing conditions. Marius caught movement in the shadows of the far side of the room. As if in answer to his thoughts a young lad emerged, no more than eight or nine years old, polishing a small picture frame and replacing it on a low shelf by the door to the captain’s wash room. He looked up at Marius and nodded a greeting. Marius returned it, and took a small step to the side, positioning himself so he stood in front of a small table that bowed under a field of velvet-mounted brooches and pins. He stood with his hands behind his back, and willed his torso to stillness. The captain looked up from a spread of parchment, and raised his eyebrows.

“And you are?”

“Marius Helles.” Marius gave the captain a good looking over. He was tall, thin, with a nose like a flamingo’s beak and a chin to match. His hair was tied back in the style favoured by certain Scorban nobles who had the sense to know exactly how long their family was, and wished for it to continue. His uniform, while certainly conforming to the standards of the Scorban Trading Guild in cut and style, looked to have been hand-sewn by merchants who wished to keep all their fingers, and knew exactly which material would be most costly for the job. Almost every trader Marius had ever met dressed for comfort first, warmth and dryness second, and protocol last. This man looked as if none of these attributes rated quite as highly as dancing. He drew up a pince-nez on a chain, and stared down at Marius from a mental distance of many miles.