Sean

Two days pass, slower than expected. I spend my time bouncing between Íde and Iseult and the various echelons of the Ildathach upper crust that have started to trickle north to Inskoet. Evin has done something rather curious, in his rush to advance the actual day we hunt the moon. In Ildathach, Colt & Tumble has claimed the moon will be shot down on date about a week from now, rather than this new aggressive timeline that Wynne Colt has agreed to. The end result is that only the more bored, adventurous, or punctual members of Ildathach’s aristocracy are likely to be here on the actual firing date. Such an oversight is surprising, and unexpected.

Iseult isn’t done, isn’t willing to let go of her suspicions. Every day, she spends at least an hour studying the great moon-cannon from afar. She’s realised that I sincerely do not believe that Evin is up to anything overwhelmingly nefarious, and has decided to shift this mistrust onto his partner.

“Do you believe what Colt told us?” She asks, when we’re putting on our coats to join Íde for lunch. “About the cats of the Far Coast?”

This is shakier ground, I think. I’ll concede that Colt & Tumble are hiding something, potentially a great deal of somethings, I just don’t believe that these machinations will create problems for specifically us. But the idea that Colt is driven through some sort of cultural grudge against the Tecuani- that is a bit harder to swallow.

Conversely, the profit motive does seem rather neatly predictable. So maybe this is all just about some deep sense of hate.

My ring catches on the inside of my coat, and I shuffle and push my hand through the sleeve. “Sorry Iseult. I’m not actually sure on that one. But no, I’m not sure that Wynne Colt really wants to spend probably millions of spirals to shoot down a flying mountain, just because she thinks that it will give Ildathach some edge on some future showdown with the Tecuani. Why? What do you think?”

She looks at me like I’m stupid. I’ve seen it a hundred times before, and remain unruffled. She doesn’t even need to speak; not only does she not trust Evin Tumble, she doesn’t trust anything even tangentially related to him, Wynne Colt included.

I wonder where I fit in this her judgement of people’s motives and honesty. I know I must be in there somewhere. Hopefully on the ‘honest’ side.

After lunch, which is a two-course affair of salt fish and roasted gulls, I leave Íde and Iseult as they set about some small sigilry in Iseult’s cabin. Something to do with a tarot reading, ‘for calibration’. I know better than to ask for a more thorough explanation, and walk out to green, blustery Inskoet. At the top of our hill looms the gun, which seems far too spindly for the job we’re expecting of it. This far north, the sun is so swaddled by cloud cover that the weapon’s skeletal frame is obscured by foggy shadows, even at mid-day. The weapon is attended by a handful of slow-moving figures, tiny against its cheerless silhouette.

I wonder why we couldn’t have this sort of thing in Ildathach proper. Would’ve made the Aergan uprisings a bit different. I fold my arms and feel the salt breeze ruffle my hair, watching a great oilbird flock wheel slowly above the cannon.

A precise cough eventually jolts me back to attention. I turn and spy a group of Ildathach gentry who are, in the politest way possible, staring at me. Like all of us, save Evin Tumble, they have hybridised their aristocratic garb with more pragmatic footwear. Of the trio, I recognise two: Lady O’Conchobar and her husband. The third is unfamiliar.

I wave, make my way to them, and crash into their chat like a tree falling. Thus ingratiated (the third man’s name is Benen Tilian, and he is indeed a cousin of Drustan’s), we make our way down the slope to Inskoet’s one functioning social hall.

It’s a cyclical thing, then- I’m useless for knotwork, so opt instead to join or indeed create a party where there was none prior. This is the third time it’s happened, since being reunited with Iseult and meeting Íde.

*

There were lamps. So many lamps. Oilbirds are cheap and plentiful on Inskoet, and oil presses were one of the first things Colt & Tumble built when it started constructing this little industrial outpost. It’s a charming effect, to be constantly bathed in warm amber, and to be surrounded by merry Ildathach socialites. An excellent use of an evening. At the beginning, before we make significant headway into the gallons of alcohol that have been brought to the island, there is food. Haggis with a whisky sauce. Seaweed mayonnaise, coarse bread, braised pig cheeks.

“Another drink, perhaps?”

I glance down, surprised at my empty glass. Ildathach’s jolly whisky has spread even here, to chilly Inskoet.

Evin Tumble himself appeared, for only half an hour, at some point before midnight. I remember that despite the fact that I resisted drinking at the beginning of the party, by the end I have once again fallen into that slick and easy rhythm. I meet and wheel with dozens of men and women. My conversations are loud and reflexive. I can recall none of them.

I return to the cabin alone, to the idiot calling of morning gulls, having appeared at the front door without remembering precisely how I got there. There’s a lonely ship leaving the harbour, lit by sun-sigils and a single warm oil lamp. Who precisely would leave Inskoet now, a day before the shot?

And then it is the day that we kill the moon, and I nurse my hangover and my cold and elect this time to stay close to my actual friends.

*

According to Captain Holofernes, who explained this concept to me with a certain unnecessary density of innuendo, Inskoet itself is a fairly interesting geographical oddity. It’s obviously the tip of a mountain that’s somehow sprouted out of the ocean, and is slightly warmer than basically everything else around it. Normally, the seabed around the coast will dip very gently before plunging, abruptly, into the frightful abyss of the deep ocean. Not so with Inskoet, where we can sail a quarter of the way to the horizon and still weigh anchor. A nice little quirk of the sea, and actually useful for what we’re accomplishing today.

Also according to Captain Holofernes, when the sea is quiet like this, and when all of our best predictors suggest that no storm is likely, it’s possible for a group of ships to anchor themselves in close proximity and lash themselves together, creating a massive floating raft that is comprised of all manner of different sized vessels. The ships still flex, still rub and groan against each other, and great pains have been taken to protect their hulls from wear.

I’m not entirely sure how ships work, so I have no idea what the technical term for this gigantic raft is. But it seems to be working quite well. Captain Holofernes is happy, at least, and I know better than to potentially jeopardise the situation with further questions. The last time I saw her, she had been caustically berating a hapless pair of Ildathach aristocrats who had made some probably trivial misstep aboard the Gundog Walking. She’d winked at me as I’d climbed up the temporary ladder to the centre of this raft of lashed-together ships, and had returned to what I understand now to be one of her favourite hobbies: abusing various hapless peoples who have made the mistake of wandering onto her vessel. I leave earshot just as she begins a particularly withering diatribe at an aghast Ildathach Countess, which begins with the phrase ‘You aimless, thimble-rigged scrimshanker...’.

We’re aboard the Village Idiot, by far the largest vessel in our little armada. Her deck is busy with a swelling collection of Colt & Tumble workers, Ildathach bourgeoisie, and a handful of more exotic aristocrats from the Wraithwild and Khazraj. This crowd spills onto several other vessels too, and I watch as sailors on the Gundog Walking grumble and shove their way through the new arrivals. I myself have chosen not to wear the clothes of an Ildathach gentleman- mostly to avoid highlighting myself amongst the crowd, and minimising the risk of having to speak with anyone from last night. The physical side effects of the partying are mostly gone, though the sea is not helping my nausea. Sadly, the sense of regret spawned by the drinking has not yet begun to decay. I blow my nose into a handkerchief, and take a swig of the absurdly thick potion that I prepared to blunt the force of my hangover. A modification of a Nan Murphy special: molasses, salt, burnt earth, and whisky.

The Village Idiot is an older ship, battered by years of salt and sea worms. She’s been lashed to three other ships- our own Gundog Walking, a merchant vessel called the Summerlong, and a small, slick clipper dubbed I Prefer the Grave. This little boat, captained by a talkative captain by the name of Fiachra, hosts a single Al Khazraj dignitary from the Hubal Queendom. Captain Fiachra does his best to maintain a mysterious air while shooing various civilians from his own deck, directing them instead to the rest of the armada. Behind us, on the other side of the Summerlong, lurks the Feist and Calico, Evin’s personal yacht.

I notice more than one sailor stare apprehensively at the currently powered-down halo that hovers above the boat’s single mast. Another sleek black yacht, on the far side of the raft and almost diametrically opposite to Evin’s, also sports an inert flame wreath. That must be Wynne Colt’s.

After spending only a few weeks on the Gundog Walking, I find myself able to pick out a surprising number of differences between the Village Idiot and Captain Holofernes’ ship. Size, of course, but also the configuration of the rigging and the demeanour of the crew. The sailors on this vessel, greater in number though more uniform in appearance than the crew I’m used to, had laughed when one of the Ildathach aristocrats scurried up one of the masts to watch from the Village Idiot’s crow’s nest. Up that high, even lashed together in this wide creaking raft, the sea-sickness for anyone but a sailor would be unbearable. I can imagine the dilemma she’s in, hemmed in by pride on one side and horrendous queasiness on the other.

The crew’s schadenfreude will certainly not be sated, however, because there’s no chance at all she’ll vomit in sight of anyone. In fact, it’s far more likely that the main victim of this event will be the unlucky sailor who inspects the crow’s nest after the socialite hastily makes her escape down the rigging.

We all look east, eyes locked on Inskoet, but the dark island is almost lost in the sleek dimness of the ocean. It’s mid-afternoon, yet the dismal waters in the north sea blend with the leaden sky and the overall effect smudges Colt & Tumble’s outpost against the horizon. Even her crown of greenery is surprisingly difficult to make out from this distance. Without the merry oil lamps of the buildings, or the crown of seabirds that perpetually circles the island, it’d be near impossible to spot.

There’s a small murmur from the crowd when the first immense beacon activates on Inskoet, creating a visible pillar of light even during the day. Three others are eventually ignited, and begin dragging like fingers across the sky. Workers on the island must find them near blinding. Iseult leans over to inform Íde and me that the lights have certain interestingly charmed properties. Each has a fiery chemical core of lime, harmonised with alchemical mixtures and a series of Al Khazraj optical lenses and light sigils. She and Íde didn’t work on them directly, but the technology is something that is apparently quite impressive.

Even these ferociously burning lamps have limits. The light columns eventually dissipate to nothingness as they stab into the afternoon sky, all converging at the same nexus, midway to the horizon and several miles overhead. A scarce minute after the last judders and locks into place, the new moon begins to peek over the horizon, almost invisible against the sky. I would not have spotted it were it not from the whooping call from a sailor in the rigging overhead. All heads turn to follow that outstretched finger.

The crowd is getting thicker. A knot of chattering tourists beside us murmur their discontent as a sailor pushes her way through them. Íde looks over, then back to Iseult. “Clear the space,” she murmurs to Iseult. Iseult stares at her, then at the sailor who is making his way towards her, and doesn’t move. The crewmember pushes her way through the group of tourists and takes one look at Iseult before exhaling forcefully and squeezing around her.

I’ve checked: Drustan Tilian is not present in the milling crowd of socialites. He’d mentioned he’d had some important event or another. Come to think of it, Lady Keir is noticeably missing as well- oh. I have just now put two and two together.

Our bobbing crowd is spread over several ships and is host to a dozen fashions, and at least two hundred men and women from all over the continent. Through the thickening canopy of hats and fascinators, I can see one magnificent incandescent feather the length of a man’s arm, jutting up proudly from a tiny woman with last year’s bowler hat. At least one representative from the Cabochon government of Far Shore then: what an interesting voyage that must have been. Colt & Tumble has spread word of the event very wide indeed. She is enveloped by the crowd, meeting and laughing with curious men and women from all over the continent. Eventually all I can see is the foot-long feather secured to her hat, a little flitting brilliance that darts quickly throughout the crowd.

Before us, about fifteen yards away, the crowd parts. I spy a familiar face, one that I haven’t seen since the end of the Aergan skirmishes. He’s aged significantly, as if for him the intervening years have been packed into with a spare decade or two. Last I saw him, he was glaring daggers at me at the Chaplain’s banquet, the welcoming celebration for the heroes of the four thousand. Chief Sigilist Sheridan Afnysin, magician-aide to Colonel Fandh. The glowing brooch on his lapel is gorgeous. I don’t remember the spray of red across his nose, the first telltale of dipsomania. I do remember his attitude, for the distaste he sinks onto Iseult and me is near identical to what he employed on us half a decade ago.

It’s strange. When I first met Sheridan, I was awed by his rank and the reputation of his office. Now, five years later, I cannot bring myself to even acknowledge the man. He’s drifted closer, obviously aware of us and close enough to speak. He ignores Íde entirely, attempting to bring down Iseult with a withering glare. We could exchange greetings, if we wanted to.

He says nothing, baiting us. Sheridan was arrogant in the Aergan. He is apparently still arrogant, but also he appears to be the sort who does not easily learn lessons, because Iseult is entirely immune to awkward silences. The violence of his scowl is ignored, until it wilts. The next time the crowd swells between us, he is nowhere to be seen.

Íde gives us a lopsided look, then shrugs. I’ve already told her about our previous experience with the Chief Sigilist. At least now she can put a face to the name.

Over an hour, the deck of the Village Idiot reaches its maximum capacity, and the raft swells with more and more carefully-secured ships. All seem to avoid connecting themselves with the airship-crowned vessels that must belong to Evin and Wynne, so from this higher deck I can see that the boats have arranged themselves into a sort of fat hourglass configuration.

After the tenth introduction, another round of handshaking and introducing and loud conversations, I feel a tug at my coat sleeve from Íde. She’s wearing her best dress, which is adequate, though not precisely stylish. Her shoes are much the same. A white scarf protects her from the worst of the spindrift, pinned in place by Iseult’s necklace. The little iron ball earrings she’s wearing pair well with the Bani Yahtrib bullets at her throat.

Iseult, conversely, has done little to change her clothes to match the occasion. Only her sigilist’s brooch and her lack of firearm distinguish her outfit now from her outfit in the Wraithwild- her black boots still bear the scratches and dents they acquired in the Bloom. Her headscarf is draped around her shoulders, revealing the ink on her throat and face. Ildathach’s socialites are polite enough not to stare openly.

I can see yet more acquaintances circle through the crowd around me, all talking and performing and delivering the ritual chit-chat of the Ildathach socialite. Íde tugs on my sleeve again, and I look down at her before I accidentally lock eyes with someone else I know.

“How do you remember all of their names?” She asks, urgently.

I pause. “I beg your pardon?”

Iseult, Saints bless her, actually laughs. “We do all the heavy lifting with the knotwork, Íde. But Sean does all the heavy lifting with talking to people. Don’t upset the balance, and don’t worry about it, unless you’d rather do his job.”

I wink at Íde. “Where I’m from, it’s called being nice.” Ildathachers are always happy to chat- especially as I’ve been out of the social scene for a month, on a proper adventure. It’s funny how people seem to always be friendlier when they don’t see you for some time. We idly chat for a few more minutes, until there’s a little thrum in the crowd as we begin to slowly fixate our attention on one man.

Evin Tumble stands on a small stage near the bowsprit of the Village Idiot, freshly hewn by the ship’s sullen carpenter. The difficult job of distilling a boisterous mob into a respectful audience has been thrust upon him, and he’s absolutely loving it. He’s making a grand job of it too, and we are all inevitably pulled into his orbit. Arms held high in cruciform, face shining, he looks more like a shaman than an executive. Men, women, aristocrats, workers, sailors, dignitaries, ambassadors- they scutter about him in droves, fawning and congratulatory, a still figure amidst a storm. His partner, now shorn of her aide, is behind him, quietly watching. I get the impression that Wynne Colt is happy to excuse herself of showmanship. Reminds me of Iseult and me, to be honest. His voice raises, like a tide.

That booming voice. He could’ve been Ildathach’s greatest preacher. "Ladies! Gentlemen!" Cheers from the crowd. “Today is the day! Six long months! Some of you have been with us since the beginning, some for only a few weeks now. But no matter! Before me and before the Saints, you are all part of something bigger here. Something delightful! Something beyond ambition! Something perfect." He draws a fat brass pistol from his pocket, points it skyward. His face is drenched in elation.

I’m an idiot and am still staring directly at him, so the flare blinds me, a shocking blue star that bolts skyward then falls, feather-slow, far above. After blinking away the searing afterimages, I squint and see that the armada has been flooded in harsh cobalt shadows. Wynne Colt pivots first, neatly, and Evin Tumble follows suit. I crane forward, looking at this new blue star and the crowd, trying to figure out what has just happened

Hushed conversations ripple through the throng. We wait, and wait.

Evin’s smile has fossilised, but his eyes gleam like wine. The new moon is halfway up the horizon, tracked by the ponderous limelights on Inskoet.

There! We all see it at once, no reason to point. A pinprick of light from the island, a tiny flare and a quiet puff that from this distance seems comically small. From the mountain rises a dark dot, barely visible against the grey afternoon clouds.

The shell streaks upwards, barely visible, until it detonates in a spray of violet that expands over a fraction of the sky the size of my hand. It leaps and splashes like sea spray, a cloud of burning air that expands and diffuses from a tight sphere into a cloud of roiling violet. It reminds me of the aurora, or of lights on choppy waves. From that initial cloud emerges the projectile in its second form: it’s white, roseate.

Arcing. A heartbeat later and the earsplitting thunderclap from the cannon firing washes over the ship. I screw my eyes shut, involuntarily.

The molten bullet bursts upwards, pulling with it a tail of scorching smoke. The cloud shivers, unable to keep pace with the shot, and soon the comet is alone, turning gently towards the new moon. Its ponderous target barely moves at all, unaware of the blistering shot below. Colt & Tumble’s bullet races, obscenely quickly, reaching across the entire sky. I can clearly see Iseult’s handiwork. The same techniques as her sharpshooting, reworked on a hundred-fold scale.

Inskoet’s stabbing limelights start to sputter. The expanding amethyst fog from the bullet activation has brushed against the island, and the muted fire from the immense searchlights is dyed purple. I want to ask Iseult if that is supposed to happen, but I can’t tear my eyes away from the sky. Nobody can. There is nothing but the shot, which has stopped its slow turning and is now hurtling in a straight line towards its stately prey.

The crowd gasps as the comet detonates against the moon, an explosion that throws a labyrinthine tangle of hitherto unnoticeable designs on the underside of the moon’s skin into obvious relief. The impact rocks the moon, and it lists from side to side, huge fragments of regolith detonating off of its flanks. Great gouts of rock and debris start sloughing away from its bulk, dropping with what must be terrible speed towards the ocean below.

I feel the impact deep in my stomach.

​

It didn't work. The moon is still going.

​

Finally, the audience talks again. Not loudly. Neither Evin nor Wynne have spoken, and both are simply staring at the moon, serene on the little stage at the bow of the Village Idiot. The crowd grows louder. They have to, because they’ve noticed the spreading mist from the shell burst has now started to creep towards our raft.

Murmurs swell to exclamations. The feather-adorned Far Coast representative points openly, bobbing in frenetic motion, and more than a handful of heads in the crowd are beginning to pivot, concerned at Evin. The fog creeps closer. His smile is beatific. I see Wynne frown, then slowly look at her partner.

Again- again! A dark pinprick hurtles up from the Inskoet gun, and just as before blossoms into a wave of treacle-thick smoke. The crowd is silent, this time. Íde clutches the railing, mouth agape. Once more, a comet emerges from the fog cloud, razing the tortured air just as the first one did. This time I pull myself from the sight, and lock eyes with Iseult. When the second thunderous boom from the cannon washes over us, she doesn’t even flinch.

I’ve never before seen her look so uncertain.

She glances back, and her mouth closes back into a hard-set frown as she begins to speak. Before she can say a word, the moon is struck again.

The first impact must have shattered an immense section of the moon’s interior. There’s barely even an explosion as the second shot, curving shallowly, slams headlong into the rock. It snuffs out, burrowing. But we feel it, all the same. We all feel something. Dislocation. The shell emerges, burning white, from the far side of the moon. It blasts into the afternoon sky and dims, quietly, until it can no longer be seen against the drowned light of the afternoon. The expanding cloud residue from the first shot is fifty yards from the armada, flowing feather-light and inescapable towards us.

Strangely, the shot dislodges one of my own memories. Something that Evin told me last night, over cups of dry gin. The hard part of this whole operation, he posited, would not be generating enough force to crack the moon. He had enough “little helpers”, as he called them, to deal with that. Pragmatically, the problem would be the result of the moon actually hitting the planet. Colt & Tumble would have to somehow mitigate the resulting tidal wave, which would obliterate an enormous swathe of whatever coast was even remotely near the impact site. He claimed this type of impact had happened before, more than once, and he had promised to show me slides and images of islands around the continent, shorn of life. Even the Bay of Grace at Ys, he pointed out, was suspiciously circular.

His solution was, or is, somewhat unbelievable. He wanted to calculate a way of dropping the moon so it would fall into a vortex.

“Some vortices could swallow the Shorn Peak, we think. Nobody’s seen the bottom of one of those things! Well, almost nobody,” he’d said, conspiratorially. “We heard some very interesting stories from a group of Al Khazraj, and their submarine experiments. Vortices don’t follow normal rules. But the trick is to map them as well as possible, because if we find one that’s just the right size...”

Shouting snaps me out of the memories. I can’t believe it.

The shimmering violet mist from the first shot is almost upon us. But through it- through it we can see the moon. There’s no sound, of course. Not yet. But something is wrong with it. It’s been cored, run through, and it’s shedding boulders the size of blockhouses. We can clearly see that it is beyond listing, now, and is absolutely falling, asymmetrically, plummeting in a tumbling sweep towards the horizon.

I can make out the dark guts of the rock, revealed by the cannon fire. Coiled and dismal forms that are shrouded in the darkness of the moon’s falling bulk and the onrushing amethyst smoke. The moon’s flesh is confusing, punctuated by fractal edges that must be hundreds of yards across. The beacons on Inskoet sputter again, the light flickering and foggy. Only one still turns, trying to track the murdered thing.

Tongues of flame blast from the moon. Defences? Ruptured furnaces? Moon-blood? The inferno dwarfs the Inskoet lights, burning hotter than any summer sun. Each pillar begins sliding, questing. Searching for the weapon that wounded it. They thunder into the sea, angling into a single scouring column that boils and seethes with hellish intent. It is lashing back as it dies, and plummets into a colossal veil of vaporised water. Inskoet somehow remains unscathed.

We never see the moon touch the water, and are bathed in the fog from the first shot. I stare at Evin and Wynne, notice that he is fumbling with his pockets and she is shouting something at him, livid. The last thing I think, really think, before the cloud rushes over me is how truly beautiful the moonfall is.