IN THE PARAMETERS OF CANVAS, THE COFFIN OF THE FRAME -
the art of wreckage, how to figure ourselves in the ruins of what we can't traverse.
The sea is grey today, greyer than even the clouds that hang heavy and too-full in every inch of the midday sky; when she wakes tomorrow morning, Locust suspects that she will find Denocte covered in a thick, white blanket. It makes her all the more determined to finish the work ahead of her before nightfall. She was raised in tropical seas, and did not even see snow until she was much older and willing to traverse far waters, where chunks of ice jutted from a sea that was no longer crystalline with clarity and blue, radiant blue. She still dislikes the cold, and she likes the snow even less, so, though she has to grit her teeth to keep them from chattering, she is out on the docks, moving cargo. She doesn’t know why she has lingered so long in Novus, and, despite appearances, she isn’t leaving yet; the boxes of supplies are bound for Solterra, and it is the idea of spending a few days in the desert’s warmth that keeps her moving. Fortunately, very little of what she plans to transport to the desert kingdom is contraband, and nothing that she is moving today should cause problems, if the guards decide to do anything more invasive than greeting her with suspicious stares whenever she passes.
(She flashes them a devil-may-care grin whenever she passes. They might not like it, but Denocte’s always had a thriving underbelly – they know when it is wisest to turn a blind eye. The captain of the Dark Strider is always more trouble than she is worth.)
Cold water coats the dock in a thin sheen, washed up by the waves; the tide is high, and the water is especially temperamental today. The Strider is rocking something terrible whenever she crosses up onto the deck. It isn’t anything near the worst she’s ever seen, but she hates the way that it makes her think of what it feels like to be trapped on a boat during a storm at sea-
She hates that it makes her think of the water, and how it is not the serene blue of her girlhood but something black and hungry, with a maw crafted from the crests of waves, foam like a mass of dripping teeth. She knew, even before the Sea Star went down, that the sea was not a kind mistress. She knew that she was a dog who could bite; but she had never expected to be the one who was bitten. But there is no use in fighting the sea. She cannot do that any more than she can fight the wind or the sky.
Perhaps that is why she hates the water-horses. They are the only tangible thing to blame.
She is checking the dock lines when she stops short, her ears twitching back, and straightens.
Locust smells him, first, a certain bite of something to interrupt the salty air. Come crawling back to find her, did he? She doesn’t know what he could want – she doesn’t know what he wanted, beyond the blood of water-horses, and that is why she tolerates his presence. (Frankly, quietly, she is not sure that he is much better than the creatures that he hunts; but, then, is she? She supposes that it doesn’t matter. You devour or you are devoured, and that is the way of things. She knows it as well as any land-creature that spends her life on the sea – life is precarious, and delicate, and survival is so often dependent on who is willing to draw the most blood.) She snorts, tossing her head to stare at him over her shoulder. Vercingtorix – blue-eyed, gold-plated in all the ways that she is silver, deceptively elegant were it not for the scarred character of his hide. Locust’s eyes are slits of sea, and her lips curve up in the trappings of a smile. She is not smiling.
“So,” she says, her tone flat, “you killed that grey bastard.” What Locust wants to say is I hope you had the good sense to skin him, when you were seeing red; he would have fetched a pretty penny. What Locust says instead is, “Was it painful?” If Locust were a better person, or at least the same Locust who’d captained the Sea Star, the Locust who had swam with sharks and delighted in the rush of adrenaline that came from dancing within range of their jagged teeth – that Locust might have felt something (but not pity) at the thought of the kelpie's death. But this Locust is prone to think of a kelpie like a tiger that has developed a taste for a particular kind of flesh. You have to hunt it down, lest it hunt you, and, if you have a scrap of good sense, you’ll wear its skin around your shoulders; what tiger would hunt a tiger-hunter?
@
"Speech!" ||
