The Cloud Cutter

The Rest

There was no wind the night my grandfather died. To say it was quiet does not give the stillness credit, for not even the gentlest breeze whispered between the sealed and silent shutters. The silence felt insatiable, as though any spoken sound would be swallowed by it, sucked deep into an unseen void more complete than the expanse beyond the towns docks. It was stagnant, haunting, and indescribably empty.

At fifteen, I'd long since shed my fear of dark and quiet places, yet there in my cot, surrounded by the many books and model ships that lined my grandfather's study, I couldn't help but recall the darker stories set upon the shelves. Tales about harpies of Hale's Hearth, sirens of the deep, and ghosts of the expanse; ghosts said to be inky black and hollow, as though the shade of a man had chosen to stand unaided. Such accounts were surely the yarns of swaggering sailors, retold and reused to impress both brethren and barmaids. Of course, as well versed as most sailors were in regaling tried-and-true stories of the sky, few were creative enough to invent them from scratch, and every story started somewhere.

When the knock came at the door it sent a bolt of surprise through my chest. I quickly threw on a pair of breeches, and slipped an undershirt over my head. I answered the door as a second knock rapped through our small home. It was morning, still dark, but bright enough to make out the man at the threshold.

Standing before me was Tagus, the town seer. He was thin faced, with harsh cheekbones and a long beard that came to two points beneath his chin. His eyes were as blue as deep sky on a cloudless day, and though to a stranger he might seem a man of severity, I knew him to have a quiet manner and a reserved passion for his work. He stood slightly hunched, a cap in his hands, a far cry from the poised picture of a man I had known for so many years. His expression was solemn and his eyes downcast. I took a second look at the cap clutched near his waist; it was a tricorn, and nothing like the form-fitting skull caps often worn by men of the Deaconry. It was a faded black, with dark patches where armada insignia had long since been removed. I had seen it many times, even worn it on my own head as a child. It was my Grandfather's.

The funeral ceremony was heartbreakingly modest. Of the six men and women who'd gathered that morning, half were strangers who attended simply to help usher the body to the burial site at the east pier. I'd oft heard tales of processions in the larger cities, like Verta or Grey Sands, lasting days or even weeks. But those stories were of nobility and the affluent, of which my grandfather was neither.

He had died that morning not far from where we now stood, loading quarried ragstone into a ship bound for Cape Helen. Though a shepherd in his final years, my Grandfather had spent most of his life at sky, and I knew the dock work he'd chosen to take on in the early hours of each day was not for the extra income, as he'd claimed, but instead to be close to the ships he'd called home for so many years. How cruelly ironic that his life would end pinned to a ship by an errant block of stone, forced to stare at the dusty rock as it stole his final breath from him. My grandfather had loved the wind. And it seemed clear to me he would have preferred to die by it. It was surely a small consolation to know he'd be laid to rest in it, as we all shall be.

With the help of those around me, I laid my grandfather in the wood braces of an empty slip. He had been wrapped from head to toe in a delicate shawl, nothing else with him but a single gold medal pinned to the material. It was a medal of merit; two interlocking triangles, with a golden eagle at their center. A commendation for a decade of service to the Arbiter's armada.

Tagus stepped forward onto the suspended wood planking to lead the procession. He was dressed from head to toe in traditional seers robes, the silk glimmering as it flowed behind him. When he spoke his voice was hoarse, but he projected it well, raising it over the ever-present drone of the western winds.