The Singer of All Songs (20 page)

‘S’pose I’d better untie you,’ she said, almost to herself, and a moment later Calwyn was spitting out the filthy cap that had been choking her, and gasping while the girl wrenched at the knots that still bound her hands.

‘Thank you,’ coughed Calwyn as soon as she was able.

‘Don’t go thankin me too quick. I’ll get em to tie you up again like
that
, if I want.’ The girl snapped her fingers under Calwyn’s nose; then she retreated to her perch on the lower bunk, drew her feet up beneath her, and resumed her unblinking stare. There was nowhere else for Calwyn to sit but on the floor, so she remained where she was.

‘My name’s Calwyn. I was captured off our boat just now.’ She struggled shakily to her feet and peered from the tiny porthole, but
Fledgewing
was out of sight on the other side of the ship.

The girl shrugged. ‘I heard a racket, I thought they must’ve found somethin to chase after. But I can’t see nothin, locked up in here.’

‘You’re a prisoner too? How long since you were captured? What happened to your ship?’

‘I weren’t taken from no ship. I’m their windworker.’

Now it was Calwyn’s turn to stare. ‘Your captain thinks I’m a windworker too.’

‘Ain’t you?What else would they have a girl on board for?’

‘Why shouldn’t I be a member of the crew like any other?’

The girl snorted. ‘I guess your ship ain’t from Doryus. It’s the evilest luck there is to have a female on a boat, unless she’s a windworker.’

Calwyn said nothing. Did that mean that if the pirates found out she had no gift of windcraft, they would throw her overboard? She asked suddenly, ‘Are you truly a windworker?’

The girl shrugged again. ‘I’m still here. I s’pose I must be.’

‘What’s your name?’

The girl hesitated, then said, ‘Mica.’

They both looked up together as there came a sudden shout and the thud of running feet on deck. ‘Gettin under way again,’ observed Mica. ‘They’ll come and get me soon. They’ll be headin back to Doryus now, but the wind’s in the wrong quarter.’

Sure enough, there was a thumping at the cabin door and the noise of the bolt being drawn back. One of the sailors, his cap dangling by one ear, poked his head inside and growled, ‘Come on, witch. You’re needed on deck. Not you.’ He pointed at Calwyn with a warning finger. ‘You stay here. One of you’s enough for now.’

‘Even one of us is too much for you to handle,’ retorted Mica rudely, but she got up and allowed herself to be hustled outside, and the door slammed on Calwyn once again. Presently she heard the creaks and groans of the ship moving under sail, and felt the familiar motion as it cut through the waves. Mica did not come back, and at last Calwyn leaned back on the hard bunk and fell asleep.

She was woken by the return of Mica, with a bowlful of stew in one hand and a large hunk of bread in the other. ‘You might as well eat, I s’pose,’ she sniffed. ‘Move over, can’t you.’

For some time there was silence while the pair mopped up the thick stew with the dry bread. Calwyn was ravenous, but it was obvious that there would be no more. Mica tossed the empty wooden bowl away into a corner and pulled her feet up onto the bunk, staring at Calwyn again with those disconcerting golden eyes.

Calwyn tried to look back at her calmly, as Marna would have done. ‘Don’t they need your arts any longer on deck?’

‘They’ve caught a true wind now to take em north. They keep me locked up in here, cept when they need me.’

‘That must be a dull life for you.’

Mica shrugged. ‘Better here, and alive, than burned like the rest of my village was, when the slavers came – Where’re you from?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Antaris.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘In the mountains, beyond the riverlands and the plains of Kalysons.’

‘The western lands?’

‘Antaris is the westernmost land of Tremaris. Beyond it there’s nothing but mountains and forest, as far as the eye can see.’

‘That must be a dull life for you,’ Mica mocked her. But Calwyn wouldn’t let herself be provoked. Mica reminded her of the little girls who were chosen sometimes from the outlying villages to train as priestesses. Some would weep with homesickness in the first days, but some would be angry and rude, disguising their own hurt by hurting those around them.

She asked, ‘Where did you learn to be a windworker?’

Mica gave a derisive laugh. ‘You can’t
learn
windwork. It’s in the blood, or it ain’t. I took the gift from my grandma. She were a famed weatherworker on Emeran. That’s in the Isles of Firthana, if you don’t know.’

‘I thought you must be from Doryus, like the rest of the crew.’

‘Not me!’ Mica spat. ‘I ain’t no Doryan. I’m a daughter of the Isles, I am – I seen your ship,’ she added abruptly. ‘They’re towin her behind. What were you doin sailin in such a little boat so far out from the westlands?’

‘We were caught in a storm.’

Mica stretched her arms above her head and entwined her fingers, then let them fall into her lap. ‘The captain’s got plans for you. He’s got a buyer who’ll pay good coin to get hold of a windworker. There was someone tried to buy me, see, but the captain wouldn’t sell. Windworkers ain’t so common that he could throw me away. In my grandma’s day, it were different,’ she added. ‘She always told me, when she were a little girl, every fisherwoman in the Isles could sing up a wind. Not now.’

‘Where is your grandmother?’

‘Dead,’ said Mica shortly.

‘Oh.’ Slowly Calwyn tucked her feet beneath her, so that she and Mica were sitting cross-legged, face to face. Thinking that it might make a bond between them, she said, ‘My mother is dead too.’

‘Was she killed by slavers, and your home burned while you stood by?’

‘No. She died of a winter fever when I was very young.’

Mica sniffed. There was a short pause. Then Mica said, ‘Your friends are still alive. They’re on your ship.’

Calwyn’s heart skipped; she longed to know what had become of Darrow, whether he was badly hurt. ‘Have you seen them?’

But Mica shook her head.

‘Do you know what will happen to them?’

Mica shrugged. ‘The captain’ll sell em in the slave market in Doryus Town.’

‘And me?’

‘No. He’ll try and find the man who offered that good price for me. That were days ago, he could be anywhere by now. But
he
thinks it’s worth lookin.’

‘But I’m not a windworker,’ said Calwyn.

‘I know,’ said Mica. ‘But you don’t want to go tellin
him
that.’

Calwyn’s heart was beating hard, but she tried to keep her voice level. ‘What will happen if you tell him? Would he sell me in Doryus Town with the others?’

‘Don’t think you’ll all be kept together,’ said Mica sharply. ‘Don’t think
that
. And he might decide it ain’t worth keepin you at all, for the bad luck you bring. He might just toss you over the side.’

Calwyn said, ‘It would only take one word from you.’

‘I know,’ said Mica simply. ‘I’m thinkin about that, ain’t I.’ Then there was silence in the cabin for a long time.

They cleared out the top bunk as well as they could, making just enough space for Calwyn to lie down if she kept her legs curled up and ignored a stiff fold of sail that dug into her back. Calwyn thought she would never get to sleep, her mind churning over what had happened, and what might happen. Long after night fell she lay in the moonlight, listening to Mica’s steady breathing, before she too slid uneasily into sleep.

Thumping at the door woke them; a pearly half-light at the porthole showed that it was just before dawn. ‘Get up, girl! The wind’s died. Captain needs you on deck!’

‘Give me a breath!’ shouted Mica, sitting up, her hair all tousled, and pulling on her shoes. A fat sailor flung open the door.

‘Hurry yerself, can’t you?’

Mica stood up. ‘She can come too,’ she said, nodding toward Calwyn. ‘I’m all worn out from blastin your ship along. If
he
wants a wind, she’ll have to help me.’

‘Please yerself,’ grumbled the sailor.

Calwyn was frozen with doubt, but Mica beckoned her down with an impatient gesture. ‘Just do the same as me,’ she murmured in Calwyn’s ear, so that the sailor couldn’t hear. ‘We’ll fool em between us.’

Filled with unease, but grateful to be out of the stifling little cabin at last, Calwyn followed Mica and the sailor through the maze of cabins and narrow passageways and ladders, up onto the deck. The sky was grey with the cold clear light of early morning; two moons hung like shining baubles just above the horizon. Calwyn’s heart leapt at the sight. Two moons, close together, the Swollen-Belly Moons: a good omen for the birth of partnerships and joint endeavours. The Goddess surely smiled on her and Mica, and whatever plan it was that Mica had. She turned around quickly, and caught sight of poor broken
Fledgewing
, limping some distance behind the pirate ship at the end of two immense ropes. There was no sign of movement aboard. But Mica tugged her onward, up some more steep steps to a higher deck, where the captain stood near the wheel with a few of his men. They were all staring gloomily up at the enormous square sails hanging limp and lifeless in the still air.

‘What’s this?’ said the captain as soon as he caught sight of Calwyn.

‘Two windworkers are better’n one,’ said Mica. ‘We can work together.’

‘One windwitch is too many for me, and two worse than one,’ muttered the helmsman.

‘We’ll go back below then, will we, and leave you with your calm?’ flared Mica.

The captain looked displeased. ‘Stop your chattering! Hold your tongue and make haste. We’ve been long enough without a breath of breeze.’

Mica led Calwyn to a place on the upper deck where they stood facing the flapping sails, with the helmsman and the captain behind them. ‘Just follow me,’ whispered Mica. She raised her arms, and Calwyn raised her own. And although she hadn’t meant to begin a chantment, she could feel the tingle in her hands and behind her eyes that signalled the power of the Goddess stirring. The ship rose for a moment into a wave, and she could see again the pale spheres of the moons coming into view, and feel the cool fresh air on her face like the Goddess’s own perfumed breath. Then Mica’s clear voice rang out in a chantment of her own craft, and although Calwyn didn’t recognise the words she sang, the power that thrummed through them was plain. She felt herself slipping into that dreamy state in which magic was wrought, almost a trance, all her senses clear but somehow distanced from her, and she found that she could hear and copy Mica’s words almost as soon as she sang them. So they stood, side by side, as the sun rose, with Calwyn’s chant following close on Mica’s, threading in and out of it, rising and falling with the rhythm of the waves themselves, and slowly she began to feel the stirring of a wind. The two squares of canvas billowed out before them, bellying fatter and fatter as they sang, until every inch of the sail was stretched taut as a drumskin, and the huge ship was racing along so swiftly that
Fledgewing
, bobbing behind, flew out of the water at the crest of every wave.

‘Steady! Steady!’ cried the helmsman. ‘I can hardly hold her!’

‘I asked for a wind, not a hurricane!’ shouted the captain, and Calwyn let her voice die away so that Mica sang alone. The wind lessened, and the ship settled back to a steady speed. The freshly risen sun was warm on Calwyn’s cheek, and she exalted. She hadn’t thought she would be able to do it. Truly the Goddess had smiled upon them both.

But it was clear that the captain was not happy to have them both on deck at once, and before long she was hustled below, back to the little cabin.

Mica came back partway through the day to eat her midday meal. The captain never allowed her to eat with the crew; he was afraid of her making friends, though most of them avoided her in any case, thinking her very presence on the boat unlucky. ‘They’ll want me again afore long,’ she said, tearing hungrily into the bread and fish that had been brought to them. ‘Leastways, they’ll want one of us. Why’d you tell me you weren’t no windworker? I thought we’d trick
him
into sparin you. But then the gale came up, and I knew it weren’t no trick of mine.’

‘I’ve never learned windcraft,’ said Calwyn. ‘But I have other arts. I was as surprised as you. It must be all one: the power of the Goddess.’ Marna’s words came back to her:
All the chantments
are but aspects of that one unknowable mystery, just as each face of a jewel
strikes light in a different direction.

‘I don’t know nothin about no goddess,’ said Mica matter-of-factly, wiping her nose on her sleeve. ‘All I know is how to raise the wind at my fingertips, and the words my grandma taught me, back in Emeran. But just the words ain’t enough.’

‘Not enough in themselves,’ agreed Calwyn. ‘But they are necessary. Quickly, teach me, so I can take your place this afternoon.’

Mica laughed, the first laugh that Calwyn had heard from her, and it was a rusty little sound, as if she had not used it for a long time. ‘I can’t teach you all the words of power in the space of a meal! I couldn’t teach em all to you in the turnin of the moons.’ She took a sip of water from the beaker, considering. ‘But I could teach you the words we used this mornin. They’ll want to keep northbound for a long time yet.’ She eyed Calwyn doubtfully. ‘The words ain’t too easy. You sure you can learn em right off ?’

But Calwyn was well-used to memorising difficult words and tracts of lore and long chants. All the rituals of the sisters were learned by heart, and she was soon able to hum the notes and repeat the words of power back to Mica without a stumble.

‘You’re quicker’n I ever was,’ said Mica at last. ‘My grandma had to give me ginger biscuits to make me keep still. Course, I were only a little girl then,’ she added loftily, though it seemed to Calwyn that she was barely more than a little girl even now.

When the sailor came to fetch the windworker, it was Calwyn who went with him, and Calwyn who kept up the steady chanting that drove the ship northward all that day. She and Mica took it turn and turn about, the next day and the next, and in the brief periods when they were confined to their cabin together to eat, Mica taught her more and more of the craft of windworking. In return, Calwyn tried to teach Mica some of her own skills, but even when Mica succeeded in repeating the words of chantment exactly, she couldn’t summon up the magic of ice-call. ‘It’s no good, it ain’t in my blood,’ said Mica with a shake of her head. ‘You must’ve had someone from the Isles back in your history, to sing up the winds like you do.’