The Deepwater Trilogy

And somewhere in the fog was her lighthouse, waiting for her.

She had not entirely been truthful with Mrs Sage today, when she had said the Seamaster’s Guild had requested she to go to Vigil – and that her father approved. They had merely relayed the instruction. The request came from altogether another, deeper branch of government, and one not entirely known for sincerity.

Her Portmaster father had not been pleased at the Guild orders. Had begged her not to go. But she had gone anyway, because of what had been promised. It was worth risking everything. Before she’d departed for Vigil, Portmaster Beacon had taken Arden aside. The post was an unlikely request from them, he’d cautioned her. He’d fought hard for her to receive her little signaller position after she’d matured so late and so weak in her talent. The Seamaster’s Guild had been so reluctant in even that small concession. Now here she was, being offered a prime flame-keeper’s position … in Fiction granted, but still a full-degree holder posting.

Refuse the post, Daughter. I fear you are in the sight of Lions. If you agree to go to Fiction you will be a puppet. It’s not for Fire they’ve called you. Just give me the word, and I won’t sign your release papers.

She should have taken his advice, but an odd, resentful stubbornness had made Arden disagree with her father.

And yet …

It’s not for Fire they’ve called you.

The Dowager spoke then, interupting Arden’s thoughts. ‘The season is too early for kraken, they come in deep winter, most of the time. If the fisherfolk can bring in at least one or two small hens, it will certainly stave off the hungry months.’

‘That’s good,’ Arden replied absently, her mind still on her father’s reproach. Had he been right and her wrong? What if the Lyonne Order only wanted her to stay in this mansion for a Coastmaster who desires to have a high-bred wife?

‘Yes the kraken are important to our economy, and that’s why the Riven man is tolerated here, despite what he did to his wife.’

‘Suspected to have done, I assume, given that he’s still living among you.’

‘Suspected.’ The Dowager nodded at the coat. ‘Because he can bring the giants to shore in the winter time.’

‘They’re worth covering up a murder?’

‘Krakenskin is precious. Not just for leather.’ The Dowager picked up the coat and stroked it reverently. ‘Keep the skin wet, put it on the deepest burn and there will be no scar. The ground-up beak is medicinal against all sorts of tumours and growths. Kraken eye-jelly dissolves cataracts, can make the blind see. The oil is health tonic for a heart, and fuel and perfume, and is far more expensive than either jasmine, civet or ambergris.’ She nodded. ‘The flesh makes for a fine meal, if the fishermen butcher it early enough.’ The Dowager counted the treasures off as if they were the accounts of a banker.

‘I heard the monsters are worshipped as gods, here.’

‘Yes. They once were. The old religion is gone now, but we still host many tourists in this Manse during Deepwater season, the winter time. There is even a masque on the longest night, where men dress up like a sea-serpent and rampage through the town until a king is crowned among them, for a day. More than one child owes their beginning to the Deepwater Night. More than one dispute finds its permanent end as well.’

‘It sounds very, ah … primitive.’

‘They love their brutalities, do our Vigil folk. And with its history, and that devotion, are you sure you want to keep that odd coat? It would fit no sea dog of course, but a good tailor could unpick the seams and marry the panels with a dress suit. I could get you an entire bonefish wardrobe for the price of the leather.’

Arden shook her head. ‘I could never destroy such a beautiful thing. It would be a desecration. More to the point, this coat is equipment I need. I will be able to attend my duties at the lighthouse and relieve Mr Harris sooner, especially now that I don’t have to worry about freezing to death.’

‘I am surprised you are not out there already.’

Arden bundled up the coat so that it might fit into the steamer trunk she kept under the bed.

‘Mr Justinian has such concern for my wellbeing, you see.’ Her irritation prickled her tongue. ‘He will not sign a certificate for the interim Lightkeeper’s release until he is certain I am ready. He has undertaken to prepare an extensive list of equipment.’

She didn’t add that she’d never heard of a keeper charged with such a list, full of items not so easy to obtain and that required delivery via a postal network that worked only when certain people felt that it should. Poultices for exotic ailments and shipping encyclopaedias for irrelevantly distant shores. Hot-water heaters and a strange pachyderm-fibre blanket rather than the goat-hair one that suited just as well. Three kinds of leather shoe, the manufacture of which could be carried out only in Portside. An expensive coil of Mi’kmaq coal-ether rope, for no purpose whatsoever. What was wrong with Lyonne-laid coir?

‘My son has been a Vigil Coastmaster and proxy for the Lyonne Seamaster’s Guild for quite some time too, Mx Beacon. You have a dangerous position out there, literally between the devil and the deep blue sea. I’m sure he knows what he is doing.’

‘I need to start my job, Madame Justinian. Soon. The chemistry of the perpetual flame requires tending by a sanguinem, and if it goes out, the Lyonne Navy will be down here in a flash wondering why half their marine fleet is littering the rocks of the promontory.’ She widened her eyes for emphasis. ‘I can’t imagine what the Seamaster’s Guild will say if they start getting invoices for fuelling a regular lamp.’

The Dowager muttered words in a Manhattanite tongue, gave a little hiss between her teeth. She frowned up at the dusty lamp-covers. ‘Ah, it reminds me. Best I light the house lamps for the night. It comes quickly on these shores.’

Arden was being dismissed. The staff could very well have lit the fifty lamps within the Manse themselves and the Dowager could have made a promise to convince her son to hurry up and release Arden to her lighthouse. Instead, even the black-veiled woman seemed complicit in Arden’s extended stay.

‘I’ll give you time to freshen up,’ the Dowager concluded, as she lit the first lamp in Arden’s room. ‘Supper will be in an hour.’

Arden waited impatiently until the Dowager was gone before she opened up the flame-embossed lid of her steamer trunk. Though Mr Justinian’s mother was harmless, she was just as guilty of familial designs as her son, and possibly just as curious as to what was stopping Arden from falling into Mr Justinian’s arms.

Arden’s trunk was her life reduced to a painted tin box, four foot by two. It contained all the certificates of her career as a signaller, ten years as a Lady of the Lights upon the Clay Portside docks. It was an odd paradox that she was both nobility and labourer in a country where there was such a deep and unfathomable division between commonblood folk and the sanguinem with their precious and valuable labours.

She paused before the trunk and studied her gloves before sliding one off. Her hands were strong as any common worker’s, with calluses from the endless winding mechanisms of signal-work and canal locks.

But the new coins in her palms made her weak.

A metal disk in the centre of each inflammed hand – a silver moon stitched in between the heart and head-line. They were protective grommets for the act of blood-spilling required to keep the lighthouse fire burning.

The small fires of the signal lights she had tended before had needed far less blood. She hadn’t needed the disks before now.

With a hiss of discomfort she pulled the gloves back on and shifted books and papers aside.

‘Only a few months,’ she said herself. ‘Then you’ll have everything you ever wanted.’ All her shuffling of the contents of the trunk to make way for the coat ended up uncovering a small trinket-chest carved of bone. A small noise escaped Arden’s throat.

‘Don’t open it,’ she said to herself sternly. ‘Don’t open it, Beacon.’

But she couldn’t help herself. The enchantment within was too great. Love was venomous, its toxin poisoned you forever. Arden opened the box and the past fell out.

A silver-print on paper floated onto the bedspread, no bigger than her palm. A clean-cut man in an airship officer’s uniform looked out at her, his black hair grown long from a military shave, rakishly tilted cap, twinkling, good-natured eyes.

On the back, a blue-ink cursive. Thinking of you always – Richard.

The regret hit her hard. A bitter memory came, of a stolen kiss at the Guild Ball a year before. I’ll come back for you, Richard Castile had said to her. I will be a Captain at last. We will be married in the winter. Wait for me.

She had wanted to spirit him away to her apartments that night. But Richard had been evasive, preoccupied. Danced with other women. She’d tried not to be upset. Their love was forbidden, so of course he wouldn’t risk affections in public. He’d told her that he had already bought a ring for their upcoming elopement. All she had to do was wait. Fretting would only be foolish.

The cracks in their relationship, so easily ignored, could not be ignored forever.

That Guild Ball was the last time she saw him. He left before dawn on his packet-ship to Vinland. Arden didn’t arrive in time to catch him, but had caught instead the girl coming out of his apartment, the one wearing Vinland pearl earrings and the rose-gold stag-brooch of the Castile family crest. Perhaps Richard had told her about Arden, for upon seeing a frantic sanguis marching in her direction the girl had blushed ferociously and ran off, dropping the silver-print in the gutter. Arden was about to call after her when she’d seen the face staring up from the cigarette butts and orange peels.

Richard’s face.

Thinking of you always – dr.

The pain had been an assassin’s dagger, slid between her ribs. She had always wanted a picture of him, but Richard had constantly refused. Too risky, he said. If an Order agent found an image of a common-blood man in a sanguis trousseau, then he would be demoted, if not worse. Arden was a Beacon, that oldest and most ancestrally fortified of sanguine genealogies. She would need to wait for Richard to catch up. Until he was a Petty Officer. Flight Lieutenant. Captain. Or the god-damned King of Lyonne, it seemed. Ten years of waiting, with no end in sight.

She snapped the opal box shut. No. He would never change his mind and she’d not lock the damn krakenskin coat away with her other failures. She would wear it, defiantly and proudly. She shared something with Mr Riven’s wife, after all. She too had been betrayed by someone she loved.

Arden stood up from the steamer trunk, the photograph still in her hand. Walked woodenly to the fireplace and threw it in. The flame leapt green, the paper crisped black. His eyes, twinkling and knowing. Eyes saying, do what you like, lantern girl. It’s really because of me that you are out here.

The eyes were the last to burn.

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