Issue #296 • Jan. 30, 2020

“Forgive Me, My Love, for the Ice and the Sea,” by C.L. Clark

“The Moneylender’s Angel,” by R.H. Cloake

For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

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FORGIVE ME, MY LOVE, FOR THE ICE AND THE SEA

by C.L. Clark

        I promised you I was finished with the sea. I’m sorry. Apparently, she was not finished with me.

        When I first climbed aboard the Pirate Queen’s ship, I didn’t know why she wanted to sail to the bottom of the world.

        I knew three things. First, that you were a guest in the High Court’s most crowded, disease-ridden prison, in my stead. A fine place for a criminal, especially a failed pirate captain, to be sure. You are neither. I was. Am again, since they dragged you in and “convinced me” to work for “our” pardon.

        Which leads me to the second and third: that Issheth was offering unheard of sums to seasoned pirates who would hunt for myth’s treasures at the end of the world, and that if I wanted to see you again, I would make sure Issheth never made it back.

        Please, do not think less of me for striking the bargain. If I had not broken my oath to you, I wouldn’t be writing to you of miracles.

        One month in, I woke up to Captain Issheth howling with sorrow. At first, I thought it was the wind shrieking through the sails. It did that sometimes, and this far south, the wind had the same keening wail as a grieving woman.

        (Of course, she isn’t truly our queen. We have no queen. But if we did.)

        I rolled out of my bunk and padded barefoot onto the deck. I gripped the wood with my toes. The night was cold and darker than it had any right to be. Behind us, stars stretched as far as I could see, but in front, the sky was thick and blacker than my own locked hair.

        Someone else made the call before I did.

        “Storm!”

        We scurried like rats, the lot of us. Useful rats, with an eye to our purpose and the skill for it too, but we were no match for the roiling mess of clouds speeding toward us.

        The man next to me smiled wide and wild. He kept the cannons in place with brute strength while I tied the knots. His name was Dolimé. He was a dark man, with locked hair longer than mine, pulled back with hemp. A gold tooth gleamed. “Aye, and they only get worse after this. The goddess welcomes you into her world with a storm.”

        And then Issheth was there, giving orders as if she hadn’t been weeping moments ago.

        “Oil bags out!” she barked.

        “Done, captain.”

        “Sea anchor!”

        “Aye!”

        “And get your damned boots on! Not a one of you gets frostbite or I’ll throw you whole entire to the goddess!”

        I flexed my cold feet.

        “Who’s pumping?”

        Issheth’s quartermaster met her on the deck. “I sent Two-Men, Nrigo, and the twins.”

        She looked at him once, then back at the edge of the rolling clouds. “We’ll need more.”

        A storm like that would have us full of water in no time.

        A storm like that would give me a chance to make good on my orders from the High Court. I couldn’t take her in an open fight, and I’m not a slight woman. I’d seen her practice with some of the crew. The fact that she practiced at all put her at an advantage. I’ve taken up the practice since—it’s a long trip to the bottom of the world—but she outclassed me like your perfume outclasses the stench of twenty filthy men. And a dagger in her back would be impossible to explain to a crew that adored her.

        Issheth didn’t get to be the bane of the Court’s sea trade by incompetence. She stood as though a throne waited behind her. Her eyes were hollow, though, and her cheeks sunken. When I hired on, I thought she was just old. It’s a rough business, after all. Her braids were gray-black from the roots Like a wave, cresting at the top of her head.

        Then the storm hit. She moved like water across the deck, comfortable with the pitching as she steered us, cutting above the waves. I had never seen anything like her.

        I had never seen anything like this storm, either. The waves rose high above the deck of the ship. We rotated the pumpers over and over again. When the ocean battered us back and forth, Issheth held fast to the helm, muscles straining. Sometime in the middle of it, hail salted our hats, our faces, the deck.

        The water sloshing in the bilges was so cold that we worked in short shifts to keep from losing our toes. Then, we understood why at the last port stop Issheth had ordered everyone to spend wages on good boots.

        We found calm water at dawn. Calmer, rather. The wind hadn’t stopped, and thick clouds still blotted out most of the stars, but the waves and the snow had ceased.

        Like old nags, our steps stuttered before we collapsed to the deck or against the rails or rigging. Issheth clung to the helm; crystals of ice clung to her eyelashes. We watched her, waiting for her assessment.

        She smiled. The ship had come out clean. We gave a ragged cheer, even I, whose true task remained unfinished. Captain Issheth was still alive.

        While the freshest men and women got the ship aright, the rest of us huddled in our bunks below decks, clutching blankets and beer, safe from the wind.

        To my surprise, Issheth followed us and stopped beside my hammock. Her strength steadied my hammock against the rocking of the ship.

        “Tell me, all, that this isn’t a sign from the goddess herself!” She raised her flagon in a toast. “She’ll give us a warm welcome.”

        “If this is warm, I’d hate her to get frosty with us,” I said. My hand shook around my beer, sloshing it into foam.

        The crew laughed, and Issheth raised her cup to me and grinned. An uncomfortable itch grew between my shoulder blades. The storm had been my best chance for a gust to flick her off the ship or a poorly tied cannon to crush her, or even for a desperate ex-pirate to knife her quickly, quietly, before she fell overboard. I told myself it was because I was in the bilges; I would do better next time.

        After seeing her maneuver us through the storm, I wondered if killing her this far south was a threat to survival. She was a master. No wonder the empire had to resort to dregs like me to end her. No captain could match her on open water.

        Issheth cracked her neck and shook her shoulders out, as if she were bracing for a fight. “Dolimé, let’s have a song. A good one, mind—none of that mournful shit you like so much.”

        I stifled a chuckle. As a type, we seafarers sing some awful songs, so I thought it was a joke. No one else laughed.

        Dolimé began to sing, his voice low. The cheer felt forced.

        “In Haversham there was a maid, mark well what I do say...”

        The shanty proceeded in its usual bawdy course, but instead of singing along with the chorus, I watched Captain Issheth. She mouthed the words, chorus and verse, but her eyes were distant. When the crew belted out the last line, she smiled, clapped Dolimé on the shoulder.

        “This is the last easy night you’ll have, my loves,” Issheth said. “Half of you get to enjoy it.” Then she left for her cabin, and the rest of the night was lost in raucousness.

        Her attitude that night was only strange as I think back on it. I didn’t truly take note until I was pulling halyards with Dolimé the next day. He hummed a tune I recognized, so I joined in. My voice hadn’t been the finest on my old ship, but it was clear and hit true, at least to my own ears.

        “My love she came, dressed all in white, heave, haul, away. I dreamt my love came in my slee—”

        Dolimé shook his head sharply at me, just as I heard Issheth’s boots clomp behind us.

        “If you’ve breath to spare, Laema, I’ve work to fill it.” She glared at me as she passed, and the shanty died in my throat.

        “She’s got to know it makes the work easier,” I grumbled when she’d gone. “And I know my voice isn’t that bad. Is her taste so high?”

        Dolimé raised his eyebrows. After a moment, he nodded his head side to side. “S’pose yes, in a manner of speaking. Her wife was our shanty woman.”

        I paused, mid-pull. “Was.”

        “Aye. Taken by the goddess. Drowned in a storm, saving one of the younger lads. Then the bastard died trying to save her back, so it was all wasted, the lot of it. Captain was at the wheel.” Dolimé looked sideways at Issheth, who stared south. “Hasn’t been much for singing since. Yesterday’s was the first song in an age.”

        I nodded. A dangerous rope of kinship wrapped around my ankle, but I swore I wouldn’t let our shared pain tangle me.

        A while later, I asked, “Does she really believe there’s a goddess who shelters those lost at sea?” I always thought it a pretty idea, something to keep you from freezing with fear in a storm, but it melted under reason and daylight.

        Dolimé shrugged. “She’s going to ask the goddess to give her back.”

        That was a surprise. “When did she die?”

        “About a month before we started this journey. Sounds mad, I know, but... agh. You should’ve seen her before.” He shook his head sadly. “She’s paying us, in any case. So maybe there’s no miracle and we’re rich, or maybe there is a miracle and we’re rich. Or... well. Wouldn’t question her, in any case.”

        Or we’d be dead. In which case the money and the miracle wouldn’t matter.

        But then, you would die alone because of me. So I couldn’t help but question it. The captain was a madwoman. A madwoman was going to sail us all the way to the end of the world.

        I remembered her howling in pain before, then guiding the ship through churning ocean. Mad, but talented. Maybe even blessed.

        I nodded again, and put my back to the rope. It didn’t change what I had to do. Every time I thought of her lost wife, I thought of you. I imagined my own cries, if I came back too late to save you. I told myself I would not become her.

* * *

        For the next month, we sailed through wild seas, farther and farther from land. It felt like the world had gone as mad as Issheth and the ocean had turned devil, not the beautiful, if temperamental, creature I had fallen in love with. We had nights of blissful calm, only to be wracked by vicious storms all day—or the opposite. The further south we sailed, the longer the days became. One night lasted only a couple of hours. Frost coated everything—ropes, rails, coats, even beards for those of us that grew them.

        Despite my exhaustion, the constant daylight made it hard to sleep. One bright midnight, I found myself bleary-eyed and half-frozen at the starboard rail. The wind made my eyes water, and the tears froze. I flicked the ice crusts off.

        I heard Issheth’s heavy boots before she spoke.

        “You don’t sleep well?” she asked. She clapped the back of a gloved hand across her mouth as she yawned. A low-born gesture, meant to keep a demon from snagging your spirit while you were too tired to fight back. For some reason, it surprised me. “Get some herbs.”

        “I’m fine, Captain.” I saluted, tugging the front of my furred cap.

        “I know it’s hard.” Issheth looked down into the water. Massive growlers of ice crawled through the ocean around us like strange ships. I could imagine what she was looking for down there.

        “Pardon?”

        She met my eyes full on. She had beautiful eyes, dark brown, fine wrinkles fanning from their corners, but they were bloodshot and shadowed. In all my time as a lesser captain, I never imagined that I would find the scourge of the seas beautiful. Terrifying, perhaps. Formidable. Overrated, even. But never beautiful.

        (You saw her in the Court. You know what I mean.)

        “Dolimé told me you lost your lover to the High Court’s cells. You hope to buy her out with your earnings?”

        I cursed Dolimé in my head, then cursed myself for even telling him the half-lies I’d concocted about you. My mouth tightened. I couldn’t think of anything more clever than silence.

        It was clever enough.

        “I’m sorry to hear it, Laema. How much did they ask?”

        My heart and head tumbled over themselves. My mind was certain she had found me out. It heard trickery in her voice, an attempt to draw out my own treachery.

        She shook her head and turned back to the water. The sun sparked on it like silver coins. She picked at a thread on her coat. “Whatever they told you, they’ll ask you for more when you go back. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you have enough.”

        A muscle in her jaw worked as she clenched it against memory. My heart ached with her. Had we just been two lonely sailors grieving, we might have clutched at each other in mutual understanding.

        She put a hand on my back, comforting. The knife I kept up my sleeve called to me. So did the one on my belt, and the one in my furred boots. Her arm was warm there, and my heart won out, against all my mind’s protests. I let myself believe her. She was wrong about the reason, but my pain was real. I missed you so.

        My hand strayed to my hip. I locked my thumb around the knife hilt. I envisioned the motion—unsheathe, plunge. A hard thing, with the thick gloves, but I’d had plenty of practice in the frigid weeks past. Just a matter of leverage to push the steel through the layers of fur and cloth.

        The potential slumped out of my body, and I let my arms go slack. There would be another chance. And the longer we spent in the demon south, the more I wasn’t sure any of us would return without Issheth at the helm.

        She let her hand fall, too.

        I cleared the itch in my throat. “Dolimé says she had a lovely voice. What was her favorite song?”

        She smirked sideways at me. “You know it. The Maid in White.”

        I blushed. “I’m sorry—”

        “No, I am. It’s hard when I see her in every plank, when I hear her in every snap of the sails. I’ve thought of giving it all up after this.”

        “No!” My vehemence startled us both. “I— But—you’re a hero. To us. Or at least, a rival. Without you...” I slowly realized what I was saying as the words came. “Every pirate in the world would grieve.” I would grieve.

        “It’s hard to be a legend, Laema. Especially when you feel so very humanly breakable.”

        She leaned on the rail, arms and back straight as her head and shoulders sagged. I don’t think she would have noticed the knife if I’d pulled it, but I didn’t. I put my empty hand on her back, instead.

* * *

        One day—or night—I woke from a drugged sleep to the ringing of the ship bell, and I staggered to the deck.

        We’d come to land.

        Months after we’d started the journey, I could finally see a mass of white, like the chunks of ice we’d been dodging, but it stretched into the distance to our starboard side. To port, the ocean stretched, placid and infinite. Its beauty caught my breath. Perhaps, even in daylight, you cannot do away with the goddess so easily.

        I made my way to Issheth, my boots crunching on the deck frost. Her eyes shone wet in the sunlight. Maybe it was the glare. Maybe it was not.

        She grabbed my bicep, held me at her side. “We made it,” she whispered. Not because she spoke for my ears alone, but because the moment was choking her. I could tell. We’d grown closer—succumbing to that loneliness after all. I don’t say this to spark jealousy; only to help you understand my hesitation, my unsteady grip on the knife. And yet, I told myself that my own ruse was stronger this way. That her trust in me would offer further opportunities to—finish what I came to do. It was something of a lie—at least, I had never planned to kill her in her bed. I had been waiting more for something like this.

        They were preparing a boat for her. Dolimé looked askance at the little dinghy and the massive sheaf of ice masquerading as land. He eyed the smaller pillars of ice, floating obstacles in Issheth’s path to... the goddess’s home. Even I swallowed against dryness in my throat.

        “You aren’t going it alone, captain?” he asked.

        Issheth eyed her crew in return. “Am I?” She looked like it didn’t matter if we all tramped along behind her or if we drowned ourselves in our own frozen blood right then. She was a woman near her heart’s desire. A half-gray braid whipped across her face in the wind. While the others fell silent, I said the words I’d been planning for weeks.

        “I’ll come with you.”

        I, too, was a woman near my heart’s desire. Or at least, near enough.

        I steeled my stomach against the gratitude in her eyes.

        The rest of the crew, released from the choice and the shame of refusal, could function again. Supplies were loaded, the boat lowered, and orders given.

        “The ice moves, captain,” Issheth’s first mate said. “If you don’t come back in the hour, maybe two, it may not open wide enough for the ship in... weeks.”

        The way he hesitated told me that “weeks” was his most optimistic estimate.

        “Then we have perfect timing. The goddess smiles on us.”

        And if I don’t come back, I’m with her, goddess willing. I knew Issheth well enough now to finish her thought in my own mind. And yet, even knowing how she felt about her own death, my stomach had its first doubts, and I almost lost my last meal over the side of the dinghy.

        A chorus of shouts came from the ship, and all the sailors turned after. Issheth and I craned around, too—and saw a pod of ice leviathans, crystal blue and spouting.

        “A sign.” Issheth grinned. We heaved to, with the shouts of the crew speeding us forward.

* * *

        I don’t know how long we walked before she found us.

        I stopped counting my steps across the ice after three hundred. I couldn’t distract myself from the thought of that gap closing between me and the ship. Between me and you. Issheth, always steps ahead of me, tireless, trying in vain to close her own gap. Frenzied. I kept my eyes on her back. At my belt I had the long knife I used for cutting ballast.

        “Issheth! Wait!” I picked up my pace, as much as the uncertain path would let me. My eyes honed in on the soft opening under her right arm. I kept my hand on the knife.

        Issheth didn’t slow, but several minutes later, she stopped.

        “Look.” She pointed just ahead. A ridge of snow that might have a rocky outcropping beneath. I looked for any of the strange animals we’d seen on our march, anything that might be striking in her the awe so plain on her face, in her voice.

        “I don’t see anything, Sheth.”

        As I pulled my knife, I thought I might actually be doing the madwoman a favor. But as I yanked my arm back for the blow, the sound of waves crashed on my eardrums. I buckled to my knees. It sounded like—my head pounded like—I had been smashed into a ship’s hull by a hundred tons of ocean.

        As quickly as it came, the pain vanished. In its place, just ahead of Issheth, stood a woman in hues of the ocean—skin the sleek brown of a seal, eyes the turquoise of the warmest beaches, and dreadlocked hair the white of ocean foam.

        Issheth stumbled toward the woman, one gloved hand outstretched.

        I pushed back onto my feet, clumsy in my furs and boots. I picked up my knife. “Issheth?” I called. “Wait!”

        “You both would do much for one you love.” The goddess’s voice was gentler than her entrance; the whisper-scuff of boots on ice.

        Are you the goddess of love, too? I thought, bitter with cold and her mysterious air. Part of me thought I was imagining her, that I’d spent so much time listening to Issheth that I’d fallen prey to her delusions. The other part of me knew she was real, and that she would reveal my treacherous heart and smite me where I stood before her.

        “Is it so hard to believe that I could be master of that, too?” She answered my unspoken question with slitted eyes. “When you all love so fiercely, for knowing—even when you do not admit it—that it all must end?”

        Issheth dropped to her knees on the snowy ice, sobbing.

        I stepped toward her, then stopped. This was not my pain. It wasn’t my place to step into Issheth’s hope and grief, to get between her and her wife.

        I knelt beside her anyway and wrapped a thick, clumsy arm around her.

        “Please,” I said. “She wants to speak to her wife one last time.”

        Issheth’s tears froze. The goddess stepped closer and pricked one of the droplets off her face.

        “Salt water. Ever my domain.”

        She leaned over to whisper in Issheth’s ear, and the captain straightened. I rose and stepped back. My knees were stiff, and the air grew colder by the second. The ship’s passage out of this frozen wasteland narrowed each moment we lingered. We had to get back.

        But Issheth’s face was full of light and peace. She murmured back to the goddess, tears falling anew, but this time she was smiling. Somehow, I knew it wasn’t the goddess she was speaking to. Tears crusted on my own face. If the goddess could let Issheth speak to her wife again, what could she do for me, if only I asked?

        I scrubbed my tears away and looked back towards the ship to give them privacy. With such long days, it was hard to tell how much time had passed, especially in the presence of the goddess—was she manipulating time, too? For time was of death, the present moment dying for the sake of the future, every second bringing us closer to our own endless night in a quiet bed or a briny grave—but we needed to go.

        Come, Issheth. I couldn’t bring myself to say it aloud. Instead, I argued with myself.

        Let her have her last wish.

        And if it costs you your life? Your own love’s life?

        It won’t.

        Abruptly we were alone. Issheth sagged to the ground, and I rushed to drag her up. A dazed smile played on her lips. A woman in rapture. I thought of you, back home, and how it felt to see you every time I returned after a long haul. I imagined you now, crusting over with prison scabs as you wait for me, like a ship’s keel barnacled.

        I dropped Issheth and ran.

        The cold air whipped against my face, ferocious. My wrapped legs trudged, heavy, as I fought the headwinds. Snow crunched behind me, but I made it to the rowboat first. She called out behind me, waved a hand. Even from a hundred paces I could see the grin on her face.

        Row. No one would ever know.

        Unless they were watching from the ship with a telescope. Likely.

        I pushed off just as she sprinted up. She leapt, dove into the boat, and sent it wobbling. Icy water sloshed over the side, and I screamed from the shock of the water and fear of falling to a frozen death. She yelled too, boisterous and laughing. She clapped me on the back once, then pulled me into a tight hug.

* * *

        They dragged us back onto the ship, too awestruck for words. I said nothing, either, but Issheth’s smile, this halo of joy and peace that followed her—that told them enough.

        What did I get from the goddess? A screeching headache that pulsed with the waves, nothing more.

        We turned north.

        Issheth still sought me out, but she was no longer the same kind of lonely—not the same desperate I was. And I couldn’t face her, knowing that her presence meant I had failed at every opportunity to save you, my love. I even avoided Dolimé, who tried to ply me with the last dregs of alcohol on board.

        I only told him, “I have a headache.” Which was true.

        The headache throbbed for months as we sailed back north its intensity rising with the thrashing of waves against our hull. During the storms we fought through, I was almost blinded by pain. Issheth pitied me and let me pump below.

        Tell me how I could see her tender look towards me, her concern, and think only, Is this my last chance?

        Because I did think it.

        The throbbing in my skull lessened the further north we went, spiking only during the storms. The night I died, my headache struck again, the echo of waves against the ship sounding between my ears. I covered them, my knees buckling. I barely caught myself against the rail. And Issheth, her fur coat open, helping me up. Her eyes asking, because she knew, she understood—what did she do to you?

        The ship pitched. Bucked unnaturally. Issheth slammed against the railing and somehow, I heard her cry of pain over the batter of the wind.

        If she were Dolimé, I would not have hesitated. When my hand shot out in reflex, I would not have checked the gesture. Would not have watched his face hover between surprise and fear and suspicion, like Issheth’s did. I would not have measured the twinned guilt upon my soul and reached out after all, a hair too late to yank her back and still keep my balance.

        I would not have fallen in.

        I traded her life for yours, that night, and even now I am ashamed for breaking my word.

        I still could not kill her. I hit the water and went stiff with cold immediately, my blood ice.

        I don’t want to tell you how it felt to die, but if I would tell you the story entire, you should hear it.

        I would have frozen before I drowned, I think, so imagine a bucket of snow. Put your hand in it. Shock, at first, and shortly after, repulsion at the chill. Leave your hand in. The cold seeps. Layer by layer of skin, it creeps to the core of your bones. It leaves numb flesh behind, and finally even the bones begin to stiffen.

        The cold took mere seconds to get to my heart, and in between the slowed beats, she appeared. White dreadlocks floated about her head. One touched me, like a curious sea serpent.

        In the water, she had a powerful naked torso, but her lower body wasn’t static at all. I don’t know if it was my proximity to unconsciousness, but I’d swear it, yet—

        Her lower body shifted from vertically finned tail, like a fish—a shark—to horizontal, like a scaled whale, to smooth furred seal, to webbed bird feet, to tentacles, over and over, all scaled to her size as she appeared before me.

        I have the feeling she restrained herself for my sake.

        Frost crept through my brain. Slowed my limbs. I let my eyes droop shut.

        A fish or clump of seaweed brushed against my cheek. Or perhaps, the caress of a webbed hand.

        Remember this when we meet next. You cannot have one part of me without the other.

        Love without death? The ocean without grief?

        Then clammy lips brushed mine.

        With the kiss, the cold reversed; not quickly, no, but the death chill receded. She gripped me in strong, shadowy arms, and we sped to the surface as my thawing lungs spasmed for air. I crashed onto the deck of Issheth’s ship, vomiting sea water.

        The cruelest of the waves ceased, though rain still lashed the deck. I struggled to my hands and knees and wiped back my sopping ropes of hair. Half the crew gaped at me in horror. Only Dolimé reached for me, and even that after hesitation. Then Issheth’s boots pounded over to me. She didn’t push him aside, not exactly, but she wedged herself between us, held my head between her hands, checked my eyes. Such heartbroken relief when she discovered I was all right. The fear that she would suffer twice what no one should have to. I hoped, for her sake, that I had not been gone long.

        She kissed me there, in front of the whole crew. When our lips parted, she shivered and her breath misted with cold. Her eyes narrowed and she stepped back, though she held fast to my arms.

        I was not all right, not quite.

        My headache had gone, but within my chest, a shard of ice lay wedged between my lungs and heart.

        “Issheth,” I said. “We need to talk.”

        As I spoke, I felt the water at the corners of my lips crystalize.

* * *

        It was—is—strange to be on land again. I cannot call it dry, because it seemed we brought a tempest with us, but the earth didn’t pitch beneath my feet, nor beneath Issheth’s beside me. Her chains rattled as I led her up the stone steps to the High Court. Somewhere beneath us, you waited. I hoped.

        Above us, pigeons flew and shat and fought over scraps before ducking back under rafters. The people stared as they passed us, some of them even spat; you know the stories. There is a reason the Court struck so hard a bargain for her head.

        “Are you ready?” I murmured, before we went inside. I kept my hand at her back to steady her. Her heart beat so quick under my fingers without the layers of fur between them. I never felt so cruel except when I left you behind to find her.

        “I owe you a debt.”

        I nodded. A chill coursed through my bones. She shivered, too.

        A ship is small and usually crowded, and a sailor is stuck with their crew for weeks to months at a time—and yet I never felt so pinched, so panicked as I did when the Court doors slammed shut behind us.

        And yet, there you were. Chained, like Issheth, sores weeping; your braids wild and undone, grown into knots. My knees shook, as if I wasn’t used to walking unmoving tiles. The hope in your eyes, though—and Issheth’s whisper, “Steady, Lae”—stiffened my back.

        I led her forward by her chains until we stood before the judge who had offered me our bargain half a year before.

        “I’ve brought the Pirate Queen Issheth. As agreed. In return for two full pardons.”

        I had forgotten what he looked like, and even now, barely an hour later, I forget again. I remember his voice, though. The smugness, and how his condescension echoed through the wooden room. How other lords of the Court, men and women, laughed when I pushed Issheth forward and she stumbled, tripped, fell. I forced myself not to rush forward, not to apologize and help her up. I have not forgotten the heavy ache of iron against my own joints.

        The chill in my breast spread, a strange numbness that also ached.

        “Issheth, of the Sea Wife.” He spat the name of her ship. “You stand accused of piracy, murder, theft of government property. Years worth of each offense. How do you plead?”

        She stood.

        You have had to stand up in chains. You know how they try to drag you down, and standing straight isn’t worth the effort. Surely, you can imagine why it was that moment, as she stretched to her full height and shook her hair out of her face, that I knew I loved her, as surely as I love you.

        The cold in my chest frosted my throat.

        Issheth smiled at him. “Guilty.”

        And then I let the ice building within me escape. The goddess’s breath curled in the air like a dense sea mist—then froze the heart of everyone in that room but you, Issheth, and me. The walls rimed with the frost like a winter morning. The lords’ eyeballs went glassy like icicles under a spring thaw, their limbs outstretched and immobile. I still cannot believe it, though the ice sits quietly in my chest once more. Waiting.

        I unlocked your chains and held you for one bittersweet moment—you were so thin, and you winced at my touch.

        I had hoped you would follow me and Issheth to the ship to collect our things, but I understand. You need time. I expected you might need convincing, so I leave you this letter. Don’t worry; the innkeeper is a friend of Issheth’s, and she will keep our secrets.

        There is money enough here to buy you passage almost anywhere in the world

        But... if you decide otherwise, find Dolimé at the inn. Look for the big man who smiles too much. He’ll have a horse for you. We’ll be in the woods east of the city; he’ll know how to find us. Word will spread, and they will make no more bargains for my life. But they will not expect the Pirate Queen to flee by land.

        I hope that when you read this, you’ll understand why and how—for everything. I hope you will forgive me for making you wait.

        Now, I wait for you—on solid ground.

Copyright © 2020 C.L. Clark

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Cherae Clark graduated from Indiana University’s creative writing MFA. She’s been a personal trainer, an English teacher, and an editor, and is some combination thereof as she travels the world. When she’s not writing or working, she’s learning languages, doing P90something, or reading about war and [post-]colonial history. Her work has also appeared in FIYAH, PodCastle and Uncanny and she’s currently a PodCastle co-editor. You can follow her on Twitter @c_l_clark.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

THE MONEYLENDER’S ANGEL

by R.H. Cloake

        We had been living small, Gareth and I, and no one troubled us. We shared a room in Siltspar, the seaport district of South Jericho, above a pub called The Southern Anchor near the docks. It filled up each week with new faces on shore leave belting shanties in strange languages, but until that evening no shadow had fallen between us.

        It was payday. We were walking back together along the docks, meager wages in our pockets, and the sea-breeze had lulled for a moment as if the district were taking a breath before hard-earned coin began to slip easy from fingers, when we heard the crack of a pistol. In Siltspar it’s a dull payday if the rising moon doesn’t shine down on carousing, gambling, and brawls.

        When we heard the shot, we stopped short and looked around, prepared to take shelter if the violence was coming our way.

        A man burst out of an alley to our right, sprinting down the plankway. His boot snagged on a loose board as he passed us, and Gareth reached out and grabbed a fistful of his filthy shirt to keep him from falling. The man paused and took a heaving breath, then looked up into Gareth’s face.

        He must have liked what he saw. He spoke hurriedly with a Nazreen accent: “Thanks, Mate.”

        Then he looked over his shoulder at the shadows boiling in the alley where he’d appeared.

        “Hang onto these for me, would you?” he said.

        He slapped something in paper against Gareth’s chest, and Gareth grabbed it by reflex. Before he could respond, the man threw himself forward and began running down the docks again.

        His pursuers emerged from the alley: three men in the sea-green uniform of Siltspar’s watch. They paid us no mind and dashed after the stranger. One raised a short, fat pistol and fired again, and we saw our new acquaintance, yards down the plankway, lurch sideways, clutching his chest, and pitch headfirst off the dock into the water.

        I felt Gareth tense beside me, and I knew he wanted to dive in and keep the man from drowning. But violence in Siltspar is like grime on the bottom of a tankard, unavoidable, part of the flavor, and you can’t stick your fingers into every mess that comes along, particularly if it involves the Watch. I took Gareth’s arm in a tight grip; he understood, and he remained still.

        Only a cloud of thick red bubbles marked where the man had gone down. The watch clustered on the dock above him, discussing something, until it became clear the man would not be surfacing again. Then they walked away into the evening like sharks robbed of their prey.

        Gareth and I looked at each other. He opened the paper package. It held a thin silver necklace with a small, beaten silver pendant in the shape of a thorn.

        “I know what this is,” I said. I took it, fingered the thorn and measured its strange weight and watched it glitter with more than reflected light. “There’s power in this. A sacrifice I think.” I looked around to see if anyone was watching us. This was the sort of prize you killed for. Obviously it had been stolen.

        I hadn’t touched an object infused with a sacrifice in a long time, but I knew the sensation well.

        Gareth didn’t ask how I knew, and I didn’t tell him, not yet.

        I raised my eyes to his face and saw something I’d never seen before. Hope. Only that prevented me from dropping the chain into the harbor like I wanted to, letting the whole incident wash over us and recede. I handed back the chain, and he put it in his pocket.

        We walked to The Southern Anchor in silence, found a table, and spent some of our pay on a hot loaf of bread, a roast chicken, curried vegetables, and ale. Gareth pulled out the chain and puddled its links between us on the table. He wrapped his hands around his tankard. They were rough-skinned, scratched and calloused from work, and—I knew—so gentle. I longed to hold them.

        “We could sell it,” I said, on impulse. “And then we could go away. Anywhere you want. We could pay for your training. Or buy a farm. Or a boat.”

        Gareth didn’t say anything. I wondered what he was thinking about, and it reminded me that we were separate people, with different memories hidden in our separate bodies. The silence stretched so long I began to wonder if I’d broken what was between us by conjuring a joint future; as if it could only exist unspoken. Then Gareth took a gulp of ale, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and shook his head.

        “If it’s stolen,” he said, “we could get in big trouble selling it.”

        I hesitated, made up my mind to say that we didn’t have to sell it, that we could use its power ourselves, but he muttered something into his cup.

        “What’s that?” I said.

        “I have a—” He broke off and fortified himself with another gulp of ale.

        What he was going to say? I have an idea? A problem? A really good joke I want to share? Then he started over, speaking quietly, not looking up.

        “I have a confession to make.”

        But he didn’t make it then, and I didn’t press him.

* * *

        Soon after I had first arrived in Siltspar, I began working as a longshoreman, loading and unloading the ships, receiving my wages from the paymaster once a week. It was there I first saw Gareth. He collected payments for a money-lender.

        He sat by an iron box near the paymaster so that men with fresh wages wouldn’t miss him in their haste to go spend their money, and I wondered about him. He was beautiful, in a city where young men were mostly broken by work and violence and poverty and lust. His job shouldn’t have made him any friends, but everybody treated him with respect. He didn’t have to call out or stare down his boss’s debtors for their copper. They’d see him and his iron box and veer aside to pay up of their own accord, while he sat, aloof and abstractedly smiling—the money-lender’s angel. I considered taking out a loan so I’d have a reason to speak with him. Fortunately, I was never that stupid.

        One day I had just walked past him when I heard a deep voice. I looked back and stopped walking. A big sailor, with arms the size of Gareth’s head, had sauntered up and flipped open the collection box, slurring a monologue to himself. He stuck a fat fist in and pulled out a handful of coins, staring straight into Gareth’s face. He was drunk—he had to be, to do something so dumb.

        A few other longshoremen were frowning at the scene. But that man’s arms were big. In Siltspar, you learned to pick your battles.

        Gareth blinked uncertainly, like it was hard to stoop from the clouds where his head was to the situation in front of him. I felt I should intervene, but I’m not a big man myself.

        The sailor decided no one was going to stop him, he could do what he liked, and he turned his back on Gareth with the coppers clutched in his massive paw. I admit, I sighed with relief as the possibility of a confrontation dwindled. But Gareth stood up from behind his table.

        “Put that back,” he said.

        It was the first I’d heard his voice. It fit badly with the rest of him. It was a hoarse voice, and it caused me to revise his age upward.

        The big sailor smiled. He turned back to Gareth. And then a funny thing happened. I guess the sailor really was very drunk, because before he could respond to Gareth, he trembled. His face turned grey, and he released his grip on the coins. They clattered onto the dock, and the sailor fell to his knees. He hung his head and started retching.

        To my surprise, Gareth, instead of seizing on his antagonist’s sudden illness and securing the coins, dropped down beside the sailor. He put an arm around the big man’s shoulders and tucked the man’s lank hair behind his ear with the other hand, so he wouldn’t soil it vomiting. He sat like that, comforting the man who had tried to rob him until his nausea spent itself. The man looked at Gareth, and all the malice ebbed from his eyes. He dragged himself upright and hurried away.

        Watching that, I felt something welling up in me I’d never felt before. It wasn’t lust, or not only that. I envied the big sailor who had tried to rob Gareth and had felt his gentle hands instead.

* * *

        The day after we came into possession of the necklace, I ate my lunch on the quarterdeck of a merchantman out of Nacre. I’d been unloading its heavy barrels of wine all morning. I chewed cold chicken and hard bread from the night before. Hot sunlight dried my sweat. Sea-breeze kissed my face.

        I leaned on the deck-rail and contemplated my city. I searched the low, dirty jumble of the Siltspar district for the peaked roof of The Southern Anchor. I’d felt very aware of it all morning, and the room within it, and the bed in the room, and the sacrifice-infused chain tucked beneath the blankets. All morning, I had been clumsy in my work, distracted. Every time I saw the uniform of the watch, my heart sped up as if I had committed a crime. At the same time, I suddenly felt at a distance from Siltspar; the whole district seemed smaller, now that we might possibly be able to leave it, instead of laboring here until our bodies decayed and we joined the beggars in the streets, or we died in a cargo accident or were casually knifed in the raucous dark.

        I’d hoped never to be in proximity to a sacrifice or its effects, ever again, but the chain’s mere presence changed things. It burst the bubble in which we lived from week to week, ignoring the past and not thinking about the future.

        It had to be dealt with.

* * *

        The first time I spoke with Gareth was the day I saw the sailor try to steal from him. I waited until the paymaster closed his window and Gareth stood up and tucked the box under his arm. Then I approached and asked him if he would care to drink with me.

        He didn’t say anything, but I fell in beside him as he walked, and he didn’t object. We went along the docks to a locked warehouse where Gareth knocked on the door and delivered his box to the pale arms that emerged from the shadows. Then we walked back into Siltspar to The Southern Anchor. I didn’t live there yet, but I drank there.

        Already it felt right. Our strides matched up like we’d been traveling together for years. The slight heat of Gareth’s body, the way his silhouette filled up my peripheral vision, felt like the supply of something I had been missing without knowing it. I wanted him to stay there.

        We sat across from each other as we ate the first of many meals together. It was a raucous public house, filled with singing and shouting, the slap of playing cards and rattle of dice on wooden tables, the tramp of booted feet, doors slamming and cheap windows rattling. Gazing at each for the first time, for us it was as if all that background noise receded. We could speak in soft voices and hear each other.

        When I told him I admired the way he did a hateful job without being hated, he replied, “It’s fine, but I’m going to quit soon.”

        I asked him why.

        “Because I’m almost free,” he told me. He didn’t say of what.

        “If you don’t mind my asking,” I said, “what will you do instead?”

        “There’s always work for a man on the docks.”

        I nodded, sadly. Work there was, but it ground your body down. My own, still young and strong, already ached at the end of every day.

        But he continued, “What I’d really like is to be a healer.”

        “A healer?”

        “I know it takes training, and that takes money. But I can already read, so I could do the training. And I have the art in my fingertips, you know. I can feel where people ail.”

        Somehow, this didn’t surprise me. I was already entranced by his fingers, the way they did ordinary things with grace, moving precisely but smoothly from point to point; breaking a crust of bread, flicking a crumb from the table.

        When our food was almost gone, Gareth suddenly waxed philosophical. “What’s most important,” he told me, “is to get in the black with the universe. To lend more than you’re owed. You know?”

        I nodded, thinking he was talking literally, like a moneylender, but he continued.

        “I keep a running balance in my head. Good things I’ve done, and bad. The only way to come out on top, for me, I think, is to become a healer.” And I saw he was talking about something bigger than money.

        After dinner we walked back along the docks.

        “Thanks for the food,” said Gareth. “You’re good to talk to. You listen. I’m sorry if I bored you.”

        The docks were a different place at night, the few smoky torches no competition for the blazing stars above the sea.

        “Let’s eat together again, tomorrow,” I said, and reached out on impulse and took his hand. He didn’t tense or draw it back, or even look down at where we touched.

        That’s how all the best things were for us: unspoken.

        “Alright,” he said. “Tomorrow.”

        And he vanished down the docks toward the warehouses. I waited until I could no longer hear the sigh of boards beneath his feet.

* * *

        Gareth said nothing more about wanting to become a healer, even when he finally quit the money-lender’s employ and became a longshoreman like me; even when our meals at The Southern Anchor extended into nights in one its rooms. But I remembered. I started to keep aside a few coppers of my pay each week, stuffed under the pallet on our bed. It added up very slowly. I didn’t know how much it would cost to train a healer. A lot, probably. When we came into possession of the chain, it had a bed of coppers to lie on.

        We’d had that object of power for almost a week when we finally discussed it. My eyes were tired and dry from staring at the ceiling in our room, tortured by the knowledge of the chain below our mattress and what it represented: the possibility of a different life, but also a curse. I told Gareth we had to decide what to do with it, right now.

        Smoky orange fingers of sunset were creeping into a purple sky, and we sat, legs dangling, at the furthest end of the furthest dock, all alone above the sea. The din of rowdy Siltspar murmured distantly behind us.

        “How do you use it?” said Gareth.

        “You understand what a sacrifice is?” I said.

        “Not really,” he admitted.

        “In some religions, they have a ritual. If a volunteer with life ahead of them agrees to it, a priest can put their life force in a sanctified object. All the work they might have done in the life remaining to them is stored up as pure power.”

        “The volunteer dies?”

        “Yes. They’re killed in the ritual.”

        “Why would anybody do that?”

        “For children, for love, for guilt, for devotion, to pay a debt—all kinds of reasons.”

        Gareth held up the chain. The sunset made it glitter red.

        “There’s a life in here?”

        “Well, not exactly,” I said. “It’s more of a reminder, like a banknote issued by a god. What really happens is, the priest who managed the sacrifice gives the volunteer’s life to the god, in exchange for a divine intervention in the future. It’s like a coin that can be used to buy divine power.”

        “A coin, that I understand,” said Gareth. “Would we need a priest to use it?”

        I looked away from him, out into the water’s inky depths.

        “I can make it work,” I said.

        Gareth was silent for a long time. I didn’t press him. I could tell he was working up to saying something. I thought it would probably be a suggestion of how we use the chain. But he surprised me.

        “I used to torture people.”

        I looked at him. He had that expression I remembered on his face when he would sit with the money-lender’s box. Angelic abstraction, head in the clouds.

        “Really?” I said.

        “My parents worked for Desmoth, too,” he said, referring to the moneylender. “Mum died when I was little, but my father was an enforcer. I grew up playing in the warehouses.” He gestured toward the dark buildings behind us. “He made people pay up, did Dad. But he was stupid. He got into debt himself. I don’t even know why he needed the money. Eventually, he owed so much that Desmoth locked him up. Probably afraid he’d run. I made a deal. I’d work for him until I paid off my father’s debt.”

        I’d heard of things like this before. It was how crooks kept whole families in their thrall, one generation laboring to pay off the debts of the last.

        Gareth had fallen silent. I looked over at him and saw tears running down his cheeks.

        “That’s why you collected money for him?” I asked.

        “No, that was later,” said Gareth. “Turns out,” and he spread his hands carefully on his knees, “these fingers know where the pain is. They can find it. They can make it better. Or they can make it worse. Desmoth had use for that.”

        I thought about what those fingers had done for me.

        “I did that for a while, but my father died before I could pay what he owed. After that I refused to hurt people anymore, and Desmoth put me in charge of the collection box instead.”

        “You did what you had to,” I said, and immediately regretted it. I remembered what he’d told me about wanting not to owe the universe more than he’d given. What a monstrous debt he must be laboring under. I knew what that felt like. You had to come to terms with it yourself. No amount of consolation could bring you peace. That kind of guilt could kill you. I felt useless.

        But I was glad Gareth had told me his secret.

        I took the chain from him and stowed it in my pocket. We could deal with that later.

        “Look,” I said, “let’s walk, let’s go someplace. Out of Siltspar.”

        He smiled at me, a sad smile that said, I know what you’re doing, it won’t help anything, but sure, let’s go.

        As we walked I took his hand. Those fine, precise fingers dangled limp, but their touch still tingled on my skin.

* * *

        The other districts of South Jericho are all uphill from Siltspar. We were too dirty for the Spire and in no mood for Nightlace, so we walked up into Soddenside, past its quiet row-houses. Soddensiders don’t stay up past nine, so we had the gaslit streets to ourselves.

        “It’s so strange to be alone,” said Gareth. A dog brushed past us, rushing from one alley to another.

        “We live in a hive,” I said.

        “I forget there are places where it’s quiet sometimes.”

        I wondered where we would go from here. Though I felt closer to Gareth now that he’d told me the secret that weighed on him, I also felt that the past had been awakened, and it was reaching for the future with dead fingers. I imagined the succession of future nights, groping for each other in the shadows as acrid Siltspar filled our nostrils and the sounds of riotous nightlife disturbed our peace.

        Then Gareth said something, surprising me, reminding me how separate and individual we still were.

        “Let’s run,” he said, pointing ahead of us, where the street angled down the far shoulder of Soddenside’s hill, to the district’s beach. And, releasing my hand, he took off. I stood a stunned two seconds, then dashed after him.

        In the dark, running downhill, I felt like I was flying. I laughed and remembered that we were young and healthy.

* * *

        We arrived breathless on the beach and splashed to a halt in the water. The beach was washed by the same sea as the docks, but silence and clean sand made it feel like a different world. We took off our shoes and kneaded the warm sand with our toes.

        The chain had shifted in my pocket as we ran, and I could feel the hard knot of it against my thigh. We began to walk along the beach, which would eventually take us around Soddenside and back to the docks. Gareth’s silhouette was sharp against the sea and dark purple night sky.

        “I also have a confession,” I said.

        Gareth didn’t respond; just continued walking beside me, receptively.

        “I’ve killed people. My parents were Almohetians. Almoha granted their prayers when they were caught in the plague that struck Nazeer, and they made it out alive. They decided they owed it to Her to consecrate their firstborn. So when I was born, they gave me up to the Almohetian priesthood. I was raised to handle the knife. An altar boy, they called me. I must have slit a hundred throats. I would catch the blood in silver ewers.”

        “That’s even worse than what Desmoth made me do,” said Gareth, in a low voice.

        Maybe it was, I thought, or maybe not. I wasn’t sure how you could weigh these things against each other.

        “I was killing people before I was old enough to think about whether it was right or wrong,” I said. “I remember their faces, down where I could see them while the priest stared at the sky chanting the ritual. They were all volunteers, but sometimes they regretted it, at the last moment, after they were trussed up like cattle on the altar. I could see it in their eyes, wild, right before I killed them.”

        We walked around the curve of the beach, and Siltspar came back into view, smoky and bright-lit in the distance.

        “So, you ran away,” said Gareth.

        “No,” I said. “When I came of age, the Almohetians let me choose whether to complete my training and join the priesthood or go my own way. They gave me their blessing when I left. Not that it mattered at that point, they’d already done their worst.”

        Gareth took my hand. His deft torturer’s fingers wrapped around my blood-stained executioner’s.

        After our mutual revelations, it made so much sense to me why we had been attracted to one another. Somehow it must have shown on our faces, and we recognized it before we really knew one another. It almost seemed inevitable.

        “We shouldn’t use the chain at all,” said Gareth. He shivered. “We don’t deserve it. We’re overdrawn against the world. We’ve used up all our grace.”

        The despair in his voice was like the ground falling out from under me.

        “Don’t talk like that,” I said. “We’re still young. We could still do anything. You make it sound like we’re dying.”

        But I knew he would never change his mind, and that I didn’t want him to. This was exactly what I had been dreading. His vision of a cosmic balance sheet and a hopeless debt had infected me.

* * *

        We brought the chain to the office of the watch. The officer on duty eyed us as we explained how we had come into possession of it. I could see the question forming in his eyes: whether we had killed the man it belonged to. If so, why would we give up our prize? He found us unnatural, operating by no known principle of life in Siltspar. An act of voluntary law-abiding was almost more suspicious than natural self-serving criminality. But he had no grounds to detain us. He would probably just take the chain for himself.

        Afterward, we trudged silently down Siltspar’s alleys, back toward The Southern Anchor. The crescendo of a shore-leave night was approaching its midnight climax. Drunken sailors lurched past us, shouted from the windows of taverns and inns, spilled into the street embracing or fighting.

        Gareth and I retired to our room, knowing that another day of lifting and carrying, ache and sweat, lay before us, and another and another. I wrapped my arms around him, and we lay with both our faces turned toward the moonlit window.

        “Thank you,” he said, in the dark with his hoarse voice.

        “For what?”

        “For understanding that some debts have to be paid.” And he fell asleep in my arms, somehow more at ease now that he had given up the hope that briefly dangled before us.

        I thought of the money beneath the bed, the coppers I had been saving from my weekly pay, the little stash I had crouched above in snatched moments over the past week when Gareth was briefly absent, multiplying it with the power of the sacrifice in the chain, even though each priestly incantation I murmured brought back horrifying visions of terrified eyes and bleeding throats and gave my nightmares greater power. I had done this furtively, guiltily, suspecting beforehand that Gareth would never agree to use it or sell it.

        Secrets were stealing back into our relationship already. Yet with them came those cracks of light, those filaments of hope that make the future bearable. As I held Gareth in my arms, moonlight through the dirt on our window illuminating his tired face and roughened skin, I thought how I would offer him all that money, someday, and pretend I had saved it up. He would accept it from me, and study healing, and begin, I hoped, to pay down the debt he thought he owed. And it would ease my own guilt to give him that.

Copyright © 2020 R.H. Cloake

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R.H. Cloake is a writer of speculative fiction whose works has appeared in or is forthcoming from Asimov’s, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Interzone.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

COVER ART

“Ice Road III,” by Rytis Sabaliauskas

Rytis Sabaliauskas is a freelance artist from the small Baltic country of Lithuania. Since childhood, he’s been surrounded by nature but nevertheless ended up spending a lot of time playing video games, which made him fall in love with all those virtual worlds crafted by talented digital artists. Eventually he made it his goal to become an artist as well and create those worlds himself. In only several years of freelancing, he has worked on various projects ranging from small book illustrations to completely new IPs and other projects. See more of his artwork online at www.artstation.com/mrfloki.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

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