The Cloud Cutter

The Climb

My body felt light, dreamlike. I'd felt the feeling many years before when a loose rock on a climbing trip had left me momentarily exposed to a treacherous fall. The sensation had been truly revelatory. My grandfather had called it "the maker's medicine." In the moments before death it courses through your body, making your surroundings seem surreal and your pain blunted. In its natural state, the body is prepared for pain, and eager to pronounce it. Pain is meant to help us, to alert man or beast to an imminent threat. But if the threat is unavoidable, if it is truly the end, then what need is there for the alert? The mind is smarter. Dull the pain, escape the reality. Trick the body to prepare it for death.

I found myself on the top deck, the weather deck, in the early morning light, encircled by yelling faces. I stood with my shoulders hunched, and my hands bound.

"We damn near lost Bon out the crow's nest! Could have lost Ivicca too had she not been wearin' her bloody safety line!"

"Should be the short walk and the long fall for 'em! Ain't no other way to slice it!"

A sword glinted near my face. "I'll show you another way to slice it!"

The voices overwhelmed each other, talking fast. I recognized a few voices among them. The sailors Ashy and Jerdon, the bosun Leghorn, and the stoker covered in grey ore dust. Others I didn't recognize. There were a handful more sailors, and a tall thin man with wire glasses who looked like a butcher in an apron a size too large. Beyond them the falconer who had taken my book watched with arms crossed from the forecastle. He seemed eerily calm, his hawk on his shoulder.

The lean man in the apron shouted at my side. "Let him over the edge, and be done with it! No need for another mouth to feed!"

"Maybe we should just feed 'em your food Ibis! Kill 'em that way!"

There were laughs amongst the crew, but they were quickly silenced as a course shout overpowered all of them.

"Avast, you squabbling hens!" The booming voice had come from another man I'd heard before, his foreign accent easily recognizable. I had heard him called Bahir. He strode into view on the deck, parting the crowd to get a better look at me. He had dark skin and a closely cut goatee. On his head was wrapped a black bandana that matched a hide vest. His long sleeve shirt was flared at the sleeves, and rippled as he walked. He was tall, powerful, and frightening. He loomed over me, picking a piece of rice from beneath a fold on my coat.

"Stumbled onto the wrong ship, I think." The man's words felt like a hot flame, seeking flesh to scar.

I swallowed, trying to find my voice. "No... No sir. This be the ship I sought."

"To what end?"

One of the men in the crowd shouted out. "He must be a spy for the Lord Protector, a stowaway!"

Another joined in. "Could have been with us since the Vallis Observatory!"

"No— No no!" I started trying quickly to explain.

Bahir waved a hand and showed me his back. "The long fall it is."

Fear ripped through me, my worst nightmare twisting into my mind, becoming clearer as the men around me grabbed my arms. I pleaded with them. "Wait! Wait I'm no spy! I swear it! The atlas bearing the inscription is mine!"

Bahir stopped walking and turned to face me.

I tried to keep the panic out of my voice. "It was taken from me by your falcon, that is where these wounds came from." I twisted my arm free to show them the bandages.