Niamh appeared next. She was the first one not to fall. The slick dampness of the wood didn’t seem to trouble her in the slightest. She grasped it, slithered over, and stood tall and calm next to the anxious Crow Girl. Avery stared at her, unable to fathom how she could have passed the sailor on a narrow, damp ladder. She met the captain’s eyes and nodded acknowledgment, but she didn’t bow. Instead, she moved to the side to allow the sailor to dismount the ladder.
He did so gracefully, clearly long practiced at this particular arrival, and even balanced atop the rail for a moment before hopping down. “Captain!” he said, spreading his arms. “I found strangers on the beach!”
“Not so strange,” said the captain, with a hint of amusement. “What were they doing there?”
“They broke into your cottage and were taking advantage of its luxuries,” said the sailor.
Avery, who had never considered a single bed or a working pump to be luxuries, startled slightly. The captain turned to look at him, her expression growing cool. “Is this so?” she asked.
“Um, uh, yes, ma’am,” he said. “We didn’t know it was your cabin, though. We just knew that it was late and we were cold and we needed a place to go. Um. Ma’am. We were careful. We didn’t make a mess.”
As he said that, he thought of the berry stains he’d left on her quilt, and it was all he could do not to wince.
“I understand what it is to be lost and to be cold,” said the captain. “But trespassing is still a crime, and I would be a poor pirate captain if I allowed such an insult against myself to stand. The four of you violated my property, and so you will replace it.”
“You want us to build you a whole new cottage?” asked the Crow Girl. “I don’t know how to do that. I don’t think any of us know how to do that. Or where we would get the wood, or the windows, or any of those things.”
“No,” said the captain, lips harboring the shadow of a smile. “You will be my property, to replace the sanctity you stole. For one week, you’ll serve me on this ship and do whatever I command.”
“Pardon, Captain, but your man said he would return us to the shore whenever we asked,” said Niamh. “How will you reconcile making us your property and offering us no avenue of escape with the promises made by a member of your crew?”
“There’s nothing to reconcile,” said the captain airily. “We will return you to the shore when you ask. If you ask now, you do it without paying your debts, and all the Saltwise Sea will know you for cheats and scoundrels. You’re a drowned girl, aren’t you? From the city of Sylphan, beneath the Unmelting Lake. The sea reaches that far, through tiny channels in the earth. It flows into the waters of your lake, and it will carry the message of your malfeasance to everyone you’ve left behind, everyone who wonders where you’ve gone and if you’re ever coming home. Are you willing to do that to your family?”
Niamh’s eyes darkened. She looked down, first at her own feet, and then away. The captain nodded. “I thought not,” she said.
“I’m not from a city in a lake, and I don’t care if people think I’m a thief,” said the Crow Girl. “People already think crows are thieves, even when we don’t steal anything at all. So it’s no real matter to me.”
“But it’s a matter to your friends,” said the captain. “Would you have people start to think that you stole them, instead of earning them fair and square, the way friendships are customarily acquired?”
The Crow Girl looked uncertain. The captain smiled.
“I am Captain Άlas, and this is my ship,” she said, to the new arrivals. “Here, my word is law, and you do not argue with me. For the next week, you are junior members of my crew, until you’ve worked off your debt for the use of my private, personal property. At the end of that week, we will return here, and you may go ashore if you so desire. You will not be harmed while you sail with us. You will be fed, and given a safe place to sleep, all four of you together, even”—and here her mouth pursed in disapproval—“the flock of crows. They’ll be staying as they are now as long as they’re onboard, of course, we can’t have birds flapping all over a working pirate ship.”
“Pirates?” gasped Avery, breaking out of the soothing spell her words had cast. “But if you’re pirates, we can’t sail with you! Pirates are cruel, wicked people, and we aren’t cruel, or wicked, or thieves. If we stay, you’ll make us all those things!”
“Maybe that’s true of some pirates, but we’re not pirates because we want to be cruel, or wicked, or thieves,” said the captain. “We’re pirates because the King of Cups refused us the sea. We sail against his command, which makes us outlaws at the very least, and when his ships attack us for the crime of sailing without his flag on our mast, we fight them off and, yes, raid their holds, as a form of payment for the damages they do us. If that makes us wicked, then wicked we must be, but all we ever intended to do was sail. The sea calls us all, and we had to answer, or be denying the will of something much greater and older than ourselves.” The captain turned her face into the wind, and spoke the rest of her words in profile. “It does no good to deny the sea. She’ll have what she wants in the end, however hard we try to deny her. The King of Cups thinks she can be trifled with, but some of us still fear death by water. We sail under her flag, not his.”
Zib looked up at the mast, and indeed, the flag waving there was blue, only blue, solid blue from side to side. If ever the sea had designed a flag, it was this one. She looked back down again, focusing on Captain Άlas.
“Why does the Crow Girl have to be a girl all the time while she’s here? Why don’t you like her?”
“The crows belong to the King of Cups,” said the captain. “It’s easy for a single crow to slip away and carry secrets to the King. I won’t have that. I need to protect my crew.”
“I don’t serve the King of Cups!” protested the Crow Girl. “Well, not anymore, I mean. I ran away and he let me go.”
The captain blinked quizzically as she turned to face the Crow Girl. “He … let you go?”
“He saw me going and he didn’t pull me back. That feels like letting go to me.”
The captain held her eyes for a long beat before she nodded. “Then you’re welcome here, but I still need you to stay as you are. The ship will keep you in one piece, for your own safety. My sailors view crows as bad omens and spies for the King. They might react before they think.”
The Crow Girl nodded, shrinking back on herself so that she was pressed up against the rail. The slightest touch would have sent her toppling over the side, toward the waiting, hungry sea.
For the first time, the captain smiled. It was a radiant expression; it made her harsh features somehow beautiful, in the way a mountain can be beautiful. It can still be dangerous, for it is still a mountain, and mountains are not forgiving to climbers simply because those climbers love them, and its body will still lie littered with their bones, but beauty and danger are not exclusive states. In that moment, she was lovely, and Avery fell a little bit in love with her.
Zib did not, for Zib had already fallen. She didn’t need a mountain to be beautiful in order to love it. She only needed it to be a mountain, tall and deadly and waiting to be climbed.
“Then will you pay your debts?” asked the captain, in a mild, quizzical tone.
“We will,” said Niamh.
“Excellent,” said the captain. She snapped her fingers, and the sailor who had escorted them to the ship hurried to her side. “Jibson, find them a place to bunk down, and get them shoes.”
“Shoes,” said Avery, excited and relieved. “Really?”
“Shoes,” whined Zib, disappointed. “Really?”
“Yes, really,” said the captain, to both of them at once. “The deck is slippery and full of splinters. You’ll need shoes to work properly without hurting yourselves. I aim to get a solid week’s work out of you, and I’ll not have you skiving off because you stubbed your toes on the mast.”
“As you say, Captain,” said Jibson. He spread his arms
enough to let him gesture them forward, like he was trying to command a flock of sheep. The Crow Girl looked at him, blank-eyed with fear, and allowed herself to be herded. Avery and Zib shrugged and followed her, leaving Niamh to trail along behind. The captain stayed where she was, watching them all go.
SIX
IT’S ALWAYS THERE
The cabin our foursome would be sharing for the next week was located below the deck, tucked away in what seemed to be a largely unused section of the hold. It was near enough to the hull that they could hear the waves slapping against the side, as well as every creak, rustle, and groan of the wood itself. There would be no silent nights here, not surrounded as they were by the singing of the sea.
The cabin itself was small and square, with four bunks attached to its walls by carefully polished chains. The mattresses were spare and hard, each equipped with a single thin blanket and a pillow that was scarcely any thicker. There was a narrow wardrobe in which they were all expected to store whatever clothing they weren’t wearing at any given moment; it would have been more of a problem had any of them possessed more than a single set of clothes. Jibson ushered them inside.
“Each of you pick a bunk,” he said. “It doesn’t matter which one, and don’t fight. The captain doesn’t like it when her sailors fight, and for right now, I suppose we’re to treat you as sailors. Not proper sailors. Cabin boys, perhaps. We’ll train you up until you earn the title!” He laughed, deep and hearty, like he had just said something deeply funny.
The children, clustered as they were in the center of the cabin, looked at him mistrustfully, and said nothing. Jibson sobered.
“Oh, come,” he said. “You had to know you’d be called on to pay for what you took. Nothing’s free when the King of Coins is involved.”
“How many kings does one sea need?” asked Zib crossly. “The King of Cups means we can’t trust the crows, but the King of Coins means we have to pay for sleeping in a bed that no one else was using and drinking a few cups of water, even though we didn’t hurt anyone, and didn’t take anything away from anybody else. I don’t want any more kings. I’m done with kings.”
“So are we!” said Jibson, for all appearances happily. “That’s why we sail under the banner of the sea herself, for the ocean knows no kings, and the tide knows no queens, and those who pledge themselves to the sea need fear no crowns. I’m sorry if you feel I misled you, but if you’ll let me get shoes on your feet, I can take you to the ship’s mess for a proper meal.”
Zib wanted to argue. As her stomach growled and prowled within her like a starving beast, she found she could do no such thing. Perhaps this would be a good thing after all. She had always wanted to see a real pirate ship, and now she could. They would be fed, and have a safe, warm place to sleep, and at the end of it all, they could return to the shore.
But they would be a week further away from home. Her parents were often distant and distracted, having decided long ago that she would learn to take care of herself more quickly if only they gave her the room to do so, but surely even they would notice her being gone for an entire week. It was difficult to say how long she had already been in the Up-and-Under—day and night seemed disinclined to follow their old familiar patterns here, and happened as it suited them, but she was sure it had been at least a day. Surely her parents had noticed when she didn’t return from school! And yes, sometimes she would sleep in the yard when the weather was warm, but she normally showed up for dinner before she got her pillow and went to find herself a convenient tree. So they must have realized by now that she wasn’t where they expected her to be.
Avery’s parents would be even worse than hers. He wasn’t the sort of boy who slept in the field because he thought the stars were pretty; he was the sort who slept in his own bed every night, with his pillow tucked just so under his head and his laundry already in the basket, tidied away and ready for the wash. There was no way that his mother and father could possibly have overlooked his absence. Adding another week to their waiting seemed cruel.
But then, it wasn’t like there had been any guarantee they’d find the Queen of Wands in that week, and if she was here, somewhere on the Saltwise Sea, having a boat made it much more likely that they’d be able to locate her.
“Get us shoes, please,” said Zib. “We’ll wait here, we promise.”
Jibson looked at her warily, waiting for some sign that she was trying to trick him. Finally, he nodded and said, “I’ll be right back.” He slipped out of the cabin, leaving the door to bang shut behind him.
As soon as he was gone, the Crow Girl climbed up to one of the top bunks and said, “I don’t want to be a sailor! I don’t like having wet feathers!”
“You won’t,” said Niamh soothingly. “As long as we’re here, you won’t have feathers at all.”
That didn’t seem to help as much as she had intended it to. The Crow Girl glanced at the door, as anxious as a fox with its leg caught in a trap, and shrank deeper into the corner of the bunk, huddling in on herself.
“Well, we’re here now, and we need to make the best of it,” said Avery. He sat down on one of the lower bunks, smiling a bit to find the bed well-made, the covers tucked in tightly at the corners and the whole thing smelling distantly of laundry soap. It was nice to learn that pirates knew about laundry. He had always assumed that a pirate ship, if such things still existed, would be filthy and crawling with rats. Well, this ship was perfectly clean, and he hadn’t seen a single rat since they’d arrived. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so terrible after all.
“Indeed we do,” said Niamh, climbing up to the other top bunk. “It wouldn’t do to have the sea decide to take us all for liars.”
“Can the sea really reach the lake where your home is?” asked Zib earnestly.
“It can,” said Niamh. “It doesn’t, for the most part, because our lake is one of the coldest places in the entire world, and the sea doesn’t like to be so cold as all that. Oceans aren’t fond of freezing, in the main. But it can, and if my parents should hear that I’m not only still alive, but that I’ve become so corrupted by the land that I’ve started refusing to pay my debts, they would die of the shame, and no daughter wants to kill her mother with simple selfishness.”
“No,” agreed Zib, who was learning to take everything in the Up-and-Under literally, since no one here ever seemed to say anything they didn’t think could at least be possible. She sat on the remaining lower bunk, feeling oddly reassured when she saw Avery sitting across from her. Yes, it was good to be at floor level together, if it meant they wouldn’t be parted even by that much.
The door swung open again as Jibson returned, a wooden crate in his arms. “Here,” he said, dropping it on the cabin floor. It rattled and clanked. “Your shoes.”
“Shoes?” asked Zib, bewildered. “Shoes don’t clank like that.”
“These ones do,” said Jibson. “There’s a pair for each of you. Move quickly if you want time to eat before the captain calls you back on deck. We run a tight ship here, and everyone works.” He took a step back, clearly expecting them to go for the box. When none of them moved, he crossed his arms and demanded, “Well? Are none of you hungry? Move if you want to be fed today!”
Zib slipped out of her bunk and stood, crossing the room to open the box and pull out one of the pairs of shoes. They resembled the dancing slippers she’d had when she was younger, when one of her grandmothers had believed she might be coaxed into appropriate activities for a little girl. But instead of being made of leather or canvas or any of the other materials she considered sensible for shoes, they were made of solid iron, heavy and dull in her hands.
“Iron?” she asked, bemused.
“Iron belongs to the King of Coins,” said Jibson. “He owns all the metals. Gold and silver and suchlike. Iron, though … iron he has the least use for, for he wishes to put none of his own people in chains, and he wishes to give the other monarchs no ability to put his people in chains either. So he keeps it for himself, save w
hen he can put it to other uses. The captain called for shoes, and he saw a chance to spend his iron in productive ways. Shoes. Put them on. Keep yourself safe from the splendors of the sea.”
“If you say so,” said Zib, and sat on the edge of her bunk, sliding the shoes over her feet. Then she blinked, looking surprised, and stood again. “They fit so well!” she said. “It’s like they’re not there at all. Avery, you have to get a pair!”
Avery, who had been wishing for shoes since losing his, grabbed a pair of shoes from the pile and stepped into them. They had no shine to them at all; they were dull gray metal that seemed, if anything, even duller after they were on his feet. He looked at them and thought they could never be polished to a proper sheen, no, they would always be flat sheets of unyielding metal.
But they fit his feet so perfectly that they scarcely seemed to weigh them down at all, and he stayed standing as he beckoned for Niamh and the Crow Girl to come down from their bunks. “I’m hungry,” he said reasonably. “You need to be wearing shoes before we can all have breakfast. Come get shoes.”
“I’ve never worn shoes,” said Niamh, climbing cautiously down. “We don’t need them in the city beneath the lake, and on land I’ve always walked barefoot.”
“I don’t wear shoes,” said the Crow Girl, doing the same. “I have too many feet for that, and only my feather dress can go to crows and still come back again after. I would shred them into a hundred pieces, or leave them lonely in the road, if I tried wearing shoes.”
“Put them on anyway,” said Avery.
Both girls donned their own shoes, grimacing at the feeling of something wrapped so tight around their toes, but they didn’t kick them off again, and that was good enough for Avery. He turned to Jibson.
“We’re all wearing shoes now,” he said. “Can we have breakfast?”
“Yes,” said Jibson, and led them out of the cabin, back into the hold of the ship.
Now, there is no “right” way to construct a pirate ship. Some of them are lean and fast, intended for vicious attacks and swift robberies. They are the sailing sharks of the sea. For all that her name was fleet and fine, the Windchaser was not one of those ships. She was plump and overbuilt, riding low in the water from the weight of the cabins and walkways clogging her hold, taking up space that a better pirate ship might have devoted to stolen goods and cargo. For while she was a remarkable vessel that had seen her crew through many a storm and terrible hardship, she was a very poor pirate ship, and should not be used as an ideal for their design.
Along the Saltwise Sea Page 7