‘What about the weather?’
‘It’s going to change.’ Murakami sniffed. ‘That storm that was supposed to blow itself out in the southern Nurimono? Didn’t. And now it seems it’s picked up a scoop from some freak north-westerly run-on, and it’s hooking. It’s coming back around.’
Ebisu’s Eavesdrop.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m not sure, Tak. It’s a fucking weather forecast. But even if we don’t catch the full force of it, a bit of hard wind and horizontal rain wouldn’t go amiss, would it? Chaotic systems, just where we need them.’
‘That,’ I said carefully, ‘depends very much on how good a pilot your shaky friend Vlad turns out to be. You know what they call a hookback like this down here, don’t you?’
Murakami looked at me blankly.
‘No. Rough luck?’
‘No, they call it Ebisu’s Eavesdrop. After the fisherman host story?’
‘Oh, right.’
This far south, Ebisu isn’t himself. In the north and equatorial regions of Harlan’s World, JapAmanglic cultural dominance makes him the folk-god of the sea, patron of sailors and, generally speaking, a good-natured deity to have around. Saint Elmo is cheerily co-opted as an analogue or helper god, so as to include and not upset the more Christian-influenced residents. But in Kossuth, where the East European worker heritage that helped build the World is strong, this live and let live approach is not reciprocated. Ebisu emerges as a demonic submarine presence to scare children to bed with, a monster that in legend saints like Elmo must do battle with to protect the faithful.
‘You remember how that story ends?’ I asked.
‘Sure. Ebisu bestows all these fantastic gifts on the fishermen in return for their hospitality, but he forgets his fishing rod, right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So, uh, he comes back to get it and just as he’s about to knock he hears the fishermen running down his personal hygiene. His hands smell of fish, he doesn’t clean his teeth, his clothes are shabby. All that stuff you’re supposed to teach kids, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Yeah, I remember telling this stuff to Suki and Markus, back when they were small.’ Murakami’s gaze grew distant, hazed out on the horizon and the gathering clouds there. ‘Got to be nearly half a century ago now. You believe that?’
‘Finish the story, Tod.’
‘Right. Well, uh, let’s see. Ebisu’s pissed off so he stalks in, grabs his rod and as he storms out again, all the gifts he’s given turn to rotting belaweed and dead fish in his wake. He plunges into the sea and the fishermen have crap catches for months afterwards. Moral of the tale – look after your personal hygiene, but even more important, kids, don’t talk about people behind their backs.’
He looked back at me.
‘How’d I do?’
‘Pretty good for fifty years on. But down here, they tell it a little different. See, Ebisu’s hideously ugly, tentacled and beaked and fanged, he’s a terrifying sight, and the fishermen have a hard time not just running away screaming. But they master their fear and offer him hospitality anyway, which you’re not supposed to do for a demon. So Ebisu gives them all sorts of gifts stolen from ships he’s sunk in the past, and then he leaves. The fishermen heave a massive sigh of relief and start talking it up, how monstrous he was, how terrifying, how smart they all were to get all these gifts out of him, and in the midst of it all back he comes for his trident.’
‘Not a rod, then?’
‘No, not scary enough I guess. It’s a massive, barbed trident in this version.’
‘You’d think they’d have noticed when he left it behind, wouldn’t you?’
‘Shut up. Ebisu overhears them bad-mouthing him, and slips away in a black fury, only to come back in the form of a huge storm that obliterates the whole village. Those not drowned get dragged down by his tentacles to an eternity of agony in a watery hell.’
‘Lovely.’
‘Yeah, similar moral. Don’t talk about people behind their backs but even more important don’t trust those filthy foreign deities from up north.’ I lost my smile. ‘Last time I saw Ebisu’s Eavesdrop, I was still a kid. It came off the sea at the eastern end of Newpest and ripped the inland settlements apart for kilometres along the Expanse shoreline. Killed a hundred people without even trying. It drowned half the weed freighters in the inland harbour before anyone could power them up. The wind picked up the lightweight skimmers and threw them down the streets as far as Harlan Park. Round here, the Eavesdrop is very bad luck.’
‘Well yeah, for anyone walking their dog in Harlan Park, it would have been.’
‘I’m serious Tod. If this storm does come in and your methed-out pal Vlad can’t handle his helm, we’re likely to find ourselves upside down and trying to breathe belaweed before we get anywhere near Segesvar’s place.’
Murakami frowned a little.
‘Let me worry about Vlad,’ he said. ‘You just concentrate on building us an assault plan that works.’
I nodded.
‘Right. An assault plan that works on the premier haiduci stronghold in the southern hemisphere, using teenage junkies for shock troops, and a hookback storm for landing cover. By dawn. Sure. How hard can it be?’
The frown again for a moment, then, suddenly, he laughed.
‘Now you put it like that, I can hardly wait.’ He clapped me on the shoulder and wandered off towards the pirate hoverloader, voice trailing back to me. ‘I’ll go talk to Vlad now. Going to be one for the annals, Tak. You’ll see. I’ve got a feeling about it. Envoy intuition.’
‘Right.’
And out at the horizon, thunder rolled back and forth as if trapped in the narrow space between the cloud base and the ground.
Ebisu, back for his trident, and not much liking what he’d just heard.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Dawn was still little more than a rinsed-out grey splash thrown over the looming black mass of the stormfront when Impaler cast off her moorings and blasted out across the Expanse. At assault speed, she made a noise as if she were shaking herself to pieces, but as we headed into the storm even that faded before the shriek of the wind and the metallic drumming of rain on her armoured flanks. The forward viewports of the bridge were a shattering mass of water through which heavy-duty wipers flogged with an overworked electronic whining. Dimly, you could see the normally sluggish waters of the Expanse whipped into waves. Ebisu’s Eavesdrop had delivered to expectations.
‘Like Kasengo all over again,’ shouted Murakami, wet-faced and grinning as he squeezed in through the door that led out to the observation deck. His clothes were drenched. Behind him, the wind screamed, grabbed at the doorframe and tried to follow him inside. He fought it off with an effort and slammed the door. Storm autolocks engaged with a solid clunk. ‘Visibility’s dropping through the floor. These guys are never going to know what hit them.’
‘Then it’ll be nothing like Kasengo,’ I said irritably, remembering. My eyes were gritty with lack of sleep. ‘Those guys were expecting us.’
‘Yeah, true.’ He raked water out of his hair with both hands and shook it off his fingers onto the floor. ‘But we still trashed them.’
‘Watch that drift,’ said Vlad to his helmsman. There was a curious new tone to his voice, an authority I hadn’t seen before, and the worst of his twitchiness seemed to have damped down. ‘We’re riding the wind here, not giving in to it. Lean on her.’
‘Leaning.’
The hoverloader quivered palpably with the manoeuvre. The deck thrummed underfoot. Rain made a new, furious sound on the roof and viewports as our angle of entry to the storm shifted.