I woke with a quick intake of breath. I lay listening, afraid to look around, feeling that something was standing over me. I was used to the wide sky and the enduring size of the Castle-the Melowne was a claustrophobic floating wooden box. I forced myself to ease the cabin door open and look out at the empty night. I thought: shit, someone’s stolen half the moon. But it was only clouds, I think. I must be more careful what I drink. Thin purple cirrus whipped past under the stars. There was no one about. Just a bad dream, I told myself. Go out and have a breath of fresh air.

I climbed down to the gallery and looked at the water. The open ocean was a wasteland. From edge to edge of its black expanse there was no visible life. But its endless sound and movement made the ocean itself seem like an animal. The whole febrile sea was horribly alive in a way that the static mountains could never be. A cold feeling lapped over me again. Something was wrong. What was that? Running alongside Melowne, about ten meters out from the hull, was a hollow in the inky water, silvery with the reflection of Melowne’s lamps. Is the hollow real? It must be, a trick of the light wouldn’t persist for so long. I thought I knew all the sea phenomena by now. I shrank back; was something sentient there? I glanced up to the lookout in the crow’s nest but he stared straight out ahead. Either he hadn’t noticed, or he thought nothing wrong. The wind was directly behind us. The indentation in the water was pointed at the front and rounded inside. I could see the far side of the wall of water inside, about two meters deep. The waves broke around it but didn’t fall into the hole. It was as if something pressed down on the brine, like it was being displaced by the hull of a nonexistent ship.

The indentation overtook us and veered away, gradually dissipating as it went. The hollow filled, leaving the surface smooth. I stared at the sea for a few minutes. Had I imagined it? Then a fin broke surface. I struggled with the perspective as the black triangle rose. Its wet tip came up to Melowne’s gallery, then passed it to the height of the deck. I could have touched it. It was fully five meters high. At its base, the rough back of a shark emerged, a thinner, more elongated shape than the ship. Way behind our stern, the tips of its tail flukes projected like a second dorsal fin, moving back and forth in the water. I froze. The shark was the same length as Melowne. It was fifty meters long. There were monsters out there. A flick of its tail would turn us to floating splinters.

The shark swam alongside. I suddenly wondered why the lookout hadn’t seen it. I leaned over the gallery. “Tarragon?” I called. “Tarragon? Tarragon!” The dorsal fin rolled away from the ship, bringing the pectoral fin to the surface. The shark’s silver fish eye, as big as a buckler, stared straight up at me for a second. Water washed through open gill slits like loose meter-long wounds. It rolled back. Water rose up around the wave-cutting dorsal fin as its body sank to the level of our keel.

“Tarragon…?” The shark gave a slow wriggle, left-right along its length. Its immense power sped the fin past me, then its long arched back, the vertical tail flukes. It was gone, deep under the ship.

I became aware of panic on the main deck above. Pale, frightened faces appeared at the rails. Shouts in three languages stopped abruptly when Fulmer’s voice bellowed something.

Tarragon said she would watch over us. Was it her down there? I thought she was a cute fish; I expected her to be girl-sized. I didn’t know she was a hundred-ton leviathan.

Fulmer slid down the ladder and confronted me with an intent look. “Are you awake, Jant? There’s nothing there.”

“Whatever it was,” I whispered, “she’s gone.”

For the sake of my reality, I was relieved I couldn’t see where Tarragon had gone, or what she could see underwater with her cold, filmed eyes.

WRENN’S DIARY

June 1, 2020

Today Mist and Fulmer had a blazing row and one of the sailors was put to death. He had been caught stealing a gold boot-scraper from a chest in the Melowne’s forecastle. He was one of the sailors who didn’t go ashore because we left before it was his turn. The men who missed their chance to see Capharnaum are very restless. Fulmer insisted discipline had to be kept, and for stealing cargo while under way the sentence is death. All seagoing vessels operate under Morenzian law. It is harsher than Awian justice-I think because Awia is in more danger of being wiped out by the Insects, we know better than to harm our own people. But Fulmer says that ruthlessness is needed at sea to stop mutinies happening.

This ship in Fulmer’s charge is worth a dynasty’s fortune. It’s so crammed that I have to sleep sitting upright between sacks of all-spice. Fulmer said that if the men before the mast can thieve as they wish there’ll be nothing left by the time he reaches Tanager.

Mist Ata yelled, “I forbid you! After all the losses to the Insect I’m not losing another crewman. Just put him in the hold and lock the hatch. Take your ‘I must make an example’ and stuff it!”

Fulmer yelled, “I’m sick of interfering Eszai! You’re no better than anyone else just because you can handle a tiller or sword!”

I learned that at sea a captain is like a governor; on a matter of law Eszai can only advise him, not overrule. Fulmer was adamant and he had the law on his side.

Mist piled extra sail on the Petrel and swept ahead as if she was abandoning us. Fulmer said, “Never trust a woman who has a point to prove. Yes? All hands to witness punishment!”

Jant refused to attend; he said it was stupid and brutal. He said that only Zascai exercise power so crudely and severely, but then only Zascai need to. He’s been acting even more weirdly than usual, he keeps saying how vulnerable our cobbled-together hollow ships would be, should any sea monsters actually exist.

The thief was bound, wrists and ankles. He begged and struggled all the time. He was thin as a lath, a weather-beaten man from Addald Island off the Ghallain Cape. I was sorry his life had to end this way when he had seen so much, navigated the storms of Cape Brattice on the southern tip of Morenzia, Tombolo and Teron Islands off Awia, the reef of Grass Isle, and the wild seas around the empty coast of the Neither Bight. He was brave enough even to have anchored in the rending whirlpools of the Awndyn Corriwreckan.

Two of Fulmer’s sailors passed a rope across the bow and paid out line until the loop dragged in the water. They each held it at their waists and walked the loop down under the ship to the main deck.

One end was made into a noose and the man’s ankles fitted through it. He kicked, both legs together, and screamed for mercy so horribly every man on the Melowne was chilled to the bone.

They picked him up and threw him over the side like a parcel. He splashed in, curled fetally, the loose rope snaked about him in the water. He bobbed to the surface, waggling his head and gasped, screamed.

Fulmer gave the order and a team pulled the other end of the rope that ran under the hull. The Plainslander’s yells cut short as it tightened and he sank under. His body was drawn down a long way, still thrashing and bubbles rising all around. He disappeared from view.

I heard knocks as his body scraped over the rough, barnacled hull. Blood swirled up, it looked black. I hoped that he had exhaled the air from his lungs and breathed brine in before the scraping started.

The wet rope coiled onto the deck, water ran from the hands of the men pulling it in. Behind them a team of men paid the dry rope out. Halfway through, Fulmer wanted to stop the teams and offer each man a tot of rum, leaving the body under the boat while they drank Queen Eleonora’s health. But the rope snapped. It went slack. Fulmer said, “Lads, reel him in, yes?”