ASIM issue 55 Read online

  Mort bristled at the delay.

  “Is there anything else you need?” the page asked after Mort tallied what he had brought.

  Mort shook his head, unwilling to exercise his right to ask for more when the people he oversaw had suffered such loss.

  “Can I ask for something?” the boy asked.

  “It is your right,” the page said.

  “I’d like someone to regularly tell me how the blasting of the mountain pass is going.”

  “It will be done,” the page said.

  The page descended the stairway, which led from the receiving room to the ground. As his footsteps faded, a sad sense of disconnection fell upon Mort. He had not felt it in years.

  Mort tallied the supplies again, then spoke. “Leave the outside world outside.”

  The boy ran a hand over his bare scalp. “It is my right.”

  Mort nodded. “So be it. Let us prepare.”

  He lifted an empyrean powder keg and instructed the boy to carry what he could. The boy lifted a coal sack and followed Mort up the stairs. As the boy huffed and stumbled and fell against the railing only to pick himself back up, Mort realised he felt protective of the boy, but did not say anything. There were some things, he believed, people can only teach themselves. How to endure the pain of loss was one of them. How to endure loneliness was another.

  * * *

  With the angel air gone and the bodies of the sick burned, Mort opened the shutters and worked the beacon fire’s white bed of embers back to health. The boy helped. He followed instructions so well the ache Mort usually felt after restocking the tower was a memory. His thinking about the boy changed; he was not such a nuisance. Mort asked for scoops of blue and green empyrean powders, and they appeared.

  The boy ran back and forth between the beacon fire and the powder hold two flights down. The distance was a tiring inconvenience, but a necessary one. Even if the beacon fire got out of hand, it’d have to travel down the stone staircase before it could reach the powders and explode.

  When the boy slowed, Mort saw it was not from lack of effort, but lack of energy. He felt guilty and selfish, and told the boy to go and rest. With a fidgety tickle in his muscles, the idea of doing the work himself seemed appealing. Before he could second guess his command, the boy was out of sight. Mort returned to his work with excitement, fishtailing the ships back and forth through the hidden shoals. He got a thrill as they barely skirted danger, again and again. Once night descended, not even he could read the sands, and distant ships held off for dawn.

  Feeling his age in his bones, Mort went to wake the boy and tell him that he had done well. The boy’s hammock hung empty. One level down, the kitchen lay unoccupied. The powder hold and even the receiving room hummed with silence.

  Mort stood trembling before the dark stairway, afraid that in focusing on his job he had not noticed the boy fling himself from a window, when the sound of snoring echoed up from far below. He descended flight after flight and found the boy asleep near the old, wooden exit door.

  Mort wondered if the boy was so anxious to get his first bit of news about the mountain pass that he waited by the door for it. But that felt wrong. The boy knew the pages’ schedule. It never varied. No, that wasn’t it, Mort thought. After his first long, hard day of running the tower, he had considered stepping out the door to receive the death that waited for him on the other side. He had thought it would be better than the life he just tasted.

  “Wake up,” Mort said.

  The boy started and faced Mort as if he were ready to be condemned. The braid Mort had snipped from his head hung from the boy’s fist like a length of dark rope.

  “I’ve stood before the door, too,” Mort said. “I’ve opened it and stared out.” Mort held a hand out for the boy. The boy stood on his own and seemed to count the ridges on his braid with his fingers.

  “You draw strength from that knot of hair?” Mort asked.

  “It’s my birth braid,” the boy said. “My people are supposed to grow out our braids until we die, then they’re cut and given to our families. Since this is all I’ll ever have, someday I’ll give it to my family.”

  Though it had been necessary, Mort felt like he had committed a crime by cutting the braid without knowing what it meant to the boy. He stepped aside as the boy slunk past and up the stairs.

  The boy’s defeated slump was familiar to Mort—the boy had determination in him; he was regrouping.

  Mort rapped the worn, wooden door with a knuckle, then followed the boy up the stairs.

  * * *

  Each day when the first page came, he brought a blast manager, who updated the boy on the progress the merchants guild was making on their route through the mountains. From day to day, the boy’s verve seemed to be linked to the reports. When news arrived of particularly difficult rock layers below those already cleared, the boy seemed distant. Mort’s lessons were wasted. When reports of headway came in, the boy could hardly focus; he was so giddy.

  It was troubling to Mort beyond the waste of his lessons. The boy failed to understand that if the merchants guild succeeded, what little respect the beacon master had would diminish. The beacon master would become an overworked assistant to those who controlled the mountain pass, instead of the port’s lifeline. Where would Mort stand in regard then? What would his life, and the lives of the beacon masters that came before him, have amounted to? Most troubling of all, though, was the fact that the guild had killed the boy’s family with their careless boulders, yet he seemed to cheer them on.

  After several arduous weeks of frustration, Mort told the boy to watch the shifting sandbars, then met the morning’s page at the receiving door. A blast manager stood behind the page.

  “I’ve told you before,” Mort said, pointing at the blast manager, “he cannot come to the tower.”

  “Pardon,” the page said, “but you’ve made no such prohibition.”

  It startled Mort to realise the page was correct; he had only been thinking it. Still, the page’s solicitous tone rankled Mort. As Mort continued, his voice was stern. “Send him away. He may never come back.”

  “But the beacon master asked for him,” the page said.

  “I am the beacon master,” Mort said. “The boy is my apprentice.”

  “But it is his right.”

  “And it is my right to contradict the boy.”

  The blast manager moved to speak, and Mort cut him off. “No more stories about the mountain pass. None.” His tone was final. The page and blast manager looked at their empty hands and left. When Mort rejoined the boy at the perch, in the distance, the page and blast manager followed the long, rough path back toward the port. He felt vindicated.

  “There’s the blast manager,” the boy said, pointing. “What did he say?”

  “You were watching the path and not the sea?”

  The boy grunted from the impact of Mort’s fist and cowered at his feet.

  “I sent him away, boy. There will be no more tales from the mountains. You need to focus. The port was here long before Southlanders even built ships, and if you don’t learn to appreciate how dangerous its waters are, you’ll be the end of it. Someday, I won’t be here to help you.”

  With saying that, Mort realised that, yes, someday, perhaps soon, he would die, and the boy would be alone. He couldn’t ignore the tightening of his joints forever, or the growing ache behind his eyes. It struck him with a sudden sense of duty and fatigue.

  The eye where Mort had struck the boy was already swelling closed. Mort was surprised by the strength of his anger, as though he had sabotaged himself. His hand hurt. He did not know how to make a fist; he suspected he had broken something.

  “I have a name,” the boy said.

  “You are just an apprentice,” Mort said, “until you are master. And then, as it has always been, I will give you my name.”

  For a moment, the boy looked contemplative, as though he was weighing something precious on delicate scales.

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p; Finally, the boy said, “Yes, master. So be it.”

  When Mort turned his gaze out toward the port, he feared for its future.

  * * *

  Mort taught the boy how to guide ships through fog, though it obscured the sand, the sea, everything but the crow’s nests atop the tall masts.

  “You have to know what the sand was doing so you can tell what it will do,” Mort said. “It takes vigilance and patience. You must understand how it behaves.”

  He waited for the boy to question how such a thing was possible after being socked in for several days, but the boy remained silent, his lips set in a thin, hard line. Mort felt the boy’s silence like it was a form of retaliation. As Mort continued, it was as though he jabbered to himself.

  “You must feel the temperature of the wind, take in the angle of the sun, listen to the surf, smell and taste the brine in the air, and watch the fog like it is the new surface of the sea.”

  The boy stared at Mort. His eye had healed. Not so much as a bruise from Mort’s blow remained. Mort flexed and relaxed his sore hand. It had not broken, but it still ached. His body was not as fast to remedy injury as the boy’s had been.

  Mort motioned out toward the fog, which blanketed the port below. On the seaward side of the bay, a distant crow’s nest peeked above white, curling wisps, like a barrel set adrift with a short, bare mast. A small, red flare flickered from the mast’s tip. The crow’s nest’s sole occupant was the mere suggestion of a sailor’s silhouette.

  “There is only the one man with whom you are communicating,” Mort said. “But you must care for that man like he is many. If you do not care, that man has no hope.”

  The boy continued to stare at Mort and rubbed a hand over his fuzzy scalp.

  Mort frowned. “Go get more coal.”

  The boy left.

  It unsettled Mort that the boy now readily obeyed every order and listened to his lessons without giving in to distraction. The boy’s transition to loyal servant had been too swift. His silence suggested that he was biding his time until Mort let down his guard, then he would abandon Mort, or worse, ruin the powders. Mort wished he had never struck the boy, but he had, and now he had to deal with it.

  The boy returned with the coals, and one by one, Mort tossed them into the fire where they filled guttering holes and glowed.

  As the crow’s nest floated toward the bay, it became apparent the ship intended to make port. Mort sent the boy for powder scoops. When he returned with the first scoop, he strode toward the beacon fire as though he would guide the ship himself.

  “Give it here, boy,” Mort said.

  The boy handed Mort the scoop.

  To Mort, the boy’s expression was impenetrable. Had he thought he could do it? Had he wanted to make it look as if Mort intended to crash a helpless ship?

  “You’re too young,” Mort said.

  The boy’s expression remained unchanged, though Mort now saw defiant confidence in it.

  “Not yet, boy,” Mort said.

  Mort guided the ship toward port. The crow’s nest glided through the fog, disappearing in gauzy swells and reappearing where he did not want it. Its mast’s flare dimmed to pink behind passing sprays, and he became jittery. The crow’s nest slowed. He feared the ship had clipped the crest of a sandbar, but hoped it had simply lowered its sails. The crow’s nest slowed further. Mort became certain the ship was gliding in on its momentum and the force of the tide. He screamed at the boy for his empyrean powders. When he received them, he hesitated. One then another, he sent the ship flares for major course corrections that took their time to appear. Slowly, the masts of the ships already in the bay became closer, then closer still, until the oncoming ship seemed to reach the guidance of the moorings.

  Mort dropped to the floor, exhausted.

  “What was the ship carrying?” the boy asked.

  The boy looked like he knew he had broken his own vow of silence, but that he hoped the answer would be worth the compromise.

  “I don’t know,” Mort said. “I never know. Empyrean powders, maybe. Each ship has the same potential, and none of them can be treated differently. Sometimes, though, they treat you differently.”

  The boy returned to silence.

  When the next morning’s page arrived, Mort asked him for a replacement apprentice.

  “That’s never been done,” the page said, his voice shaky.

  Mort glared at him as though that changed nothing.

  “Why?” the page asked.

  “I don’t trust him,” Mort said.

  “But the boy will be killed,” the page said.

  Mort tightened his jaw. He thought of how he had been indirectly responsible for the boulders that had killed the boy’s parents. He thought of how he had been hard to live with. He thought of the port he oversaw, the many people dependent on him to make the tough decisions.

  “In the long run,” Mort said, “it’s either the port or him.”

  * * *

  Weeks passed, and no replacement apprentice arrived. An apprentice could only be an orphan, and if Mort kept the port running smoothly, families remained whole and safe with the plenty the ships provided. Mort found himself resenting the port’s happiness and wishing for the return of the angel air.

  The more diligent the boy became, the more Mort distrusted him. Mort deliberately sent him down to the powder hold for the wrong powders and yelled at him when they arrived, as though he should have known better. When he brought the right colours despite the wrong instructions, Mort yelled at him for disobedience, then lapsed into a silence that matched the boy’s own. The boy filled the coal and wood hoppers without the slightest word or gesture of command exchanged. He all but vanished from sight. Powder scoops appeared ready for the beacon, hot meals appeared at the dinner table, and the dishes seemed to clean, dry, and stow themselves. The tea kettle always remained hot. The beacon fire stayed stoked. Only the rush and thump of the catch bins emptying ash down the sides of the tower told Mort where the boy was. The boy’s body became an extension of Mort’s own, though distant, like a phantom limb. Mort never touched the boy, never spoke to him, never so much as looked him in the face. As Mort performed fewer tasks and spent more of his days staring out to sea watching the shifting sands, he wondered if he was the one becoming the phantom limb. He hated the boy for it. When he added wood to the hopper himself, he realised the absurdity of how full and unmanageable he made it. When he fixed his own meals, he realised he had not been hungry. Still, he ate, and his fullness deepened his feeling of emptiness.

  He held on to his duty and never let a ship enter the bay without his personal guidance. They zigzagged into the port, safe. But the boy’s silence became too much for Mort. He wanted to speak to the boy, to hear his voice again, to be challenged, as if that would reassure him.

  He spoke to the shadows that descended the stairs. He spoke to the warm breath at his shoulder as he watched the sea. He spoke to the steam rising from his tea. He wanted to know that the life the boy wanted was the life Mort had taught him, that the port Mort had helped grow would continue on after him. He received no answer. When he found himself again stifled by silence, he stopped a page before he left.

  “I would like paper,” Mort said.

  “How much?” the page asked.

  Mort levelled a hand at his waist. “And quills and ink.”

  “It will be done.”

  When the page returned, Mort hauled the supplies up to the kitchen and wrote a note for the boy.

  “Get fantasies out of your mind,” he wrote. “Write down the way you would have liked your life to have been, and be rid of it.”

  Later that day, Mort sensed the boy behind him. The solidity of his presence was startling. He turned around slowly.

  “What does it say?” the boy asked, and held the note out. He seemed older than Mort had remembered, his limbs thickened with work-shaped strength. Fuzz no longer bristled his scalp; he had been maintaining his shave.

  Mort r
egarded him with deep sadness. “It says that you should tell the story of the life you would’ve wanted, so you can face this one unencumbered.”

  “I don’t know how to,” the boy said. “Teach me.”

  And Mort did.

  The boy was a fast learner, as though he desperately wanted to say something and had been hungry for a way to say it that was not out loud.

  To teach the boy, Mort wrote stories about the life he would have liked, using examples from his observance of the port. In them, Mort was a brave ship captain sailing to faraway lands; a shrewd shipwright framing a hull; a swarthy southland porter raising his family. When the boy copied them, Mort folded the papers into winged darts and launched them from the perch. He did not know if anyone would ever find the stories, but it gave him a thrill to know they were out where he could not go, taking on a life of their own. The darts glided out over the bay where they crashed and churned in the whitecaps.

  When the boy could write without help, he wrote on his own after tower lessons, then winged his fantasies out the window. Months passed. The boy never seemed satisfied by what he wrote.

  Disturbed by the boy’s fixation, Mort woke at night, went to the kitchen to send the boy to bed, and found him asleep at the table. The boy held his birth braid like it was a quill. Ink glossed its tip. In places, tears marked the finished story that lay before him. Mort read it over the boy’s shoulder.

  From it, Mort could tell that the boy felt responsible for his parents’ deaths. He had not been off playing when they died. He had run away, and they were searching for him when the boulders fell. For him, if the mountain pass was not completed, it meant that he’d be nothing more than a murderer who had cooperated with malign forces to draw his parents into a trap. If the mountain pass was completed, then the falling boulders had been inevitable—the fault for the tragedy would be shared with the grand plans for the port and its prosperity. The boy wanted to learn everything he could to keep the port running in anticipation of that day. He was determined not to let his parents down. He could not bear to let them have died for nothing.