Strange Noises Fiction by Rachel Greenham

Port Denhall approximately triples in size when Market comes in. That’s not just in numbers of people. Jalese tells me to go and watch as the marketeer ships arrive and I take myself off to find a vantage point on the small headland above the harbour mouth. I know that Lotan and Samila are down there somewhere, part of it all. I don’t know where Kerilas is.

‘Market’ appears to be a small floating town in its own right. I count something like twenty craft approaching Denhall’s small harbour. Dominating the flotilla are four sizeable wooden sailing ships, with three masts, banking and sliding into the narrow harbour like dancers.

I notice one of the ships is different: It’s at least as long as the others but wider; so wide I wonder if it might be a catamaran sitting low in the water, laden with cargo, but I can’t tell from my vantage. It just looks faster, with curves that just look so right; less like a made thing and more like a creature of the open ocean. It has triangular sails, in contrast to the square and gaff rigging among the other ships. They shimmer in the sun, iridescent, like the wings of a dragonfly. It’s a Neri familyship. If I didn’t just know it I’d know it had to be. I long to see it up close.

Following after them came a collection of barques, yawls (I’m gradually picking up the vocabulary) and sloops barely bigger than our own, steering themselves to their places on the pontoon jetties expertly under sail alone. There are other ships; faster, sharper ships with gun-ports; one of them a Neri ship too, I think. They don’t come into the harbour. Some drop anchor just outside; some tack back out into the open sea again, clearly on a patrolling pattern.

People are scurrying around like crazy on the quay and the pontoon jetties. Lanterns are being lit. I have to head back down now; Hethan wants me installed by the hearth with the box-harp in time for when the new customers start arriving. I can already see why he needed extra hands; and also why he didn’t, really, when he first took Jalese and myself on. We weren’t going to get away with not paying attention to the customers tonight.