Quill was not silent when half a sledful of ice exploded into sleet and rain directly over his head. Either he or Mantid had been in the process of shifting them thaumatically from the levered platform the foreman had set up to the hold. There were crew working down in the hold who were on the receiving end of the unexpected show. Their curses mingled with Quill’s, mostly directed at his rival navigator. The other thaumatic did not take it lying down though, aggressively waving his forelimbs at Quill and half-charging him with both raised. Both appeared to blame the other and neither was willing to back down.
“What happened?” Violet asked. “How’d they get it wrong?”
“Didn’t do it wrong,” Gabbi clucked her tongue from inside the relative warmth of the galley. “Problem was that both of them were doing it in the first place.”
Violet recalled the exploded tubers from a week ago when Gabbi and Quill had clashed. How the opposing forces had ripped their impromptu missile apart. She asked as much.
“No,” Gabbi said. “Not that. Even worse. Things get hot when you try and push and pull them around like they were. Do that to something cold, it shatters. Every other time.”
“Really?” It seemed astounding to Violet, not so much the concept but rather that neither Quill nor Mantid had anticipated this.
“Really,” Gabbi confirmed. “Lost more than a couple of saucepans because of it. Good thing though. You’d be eating biscuits and cold porridge most nights if I had to rely on tinder and coal to keep the fires going. Didn’t you ever wonder that?”
“No,” Violet admitted.
“Aye, which is why I’m the cook and you’re the cook’s help,” Gabbi winked.
“Ain’t the help,” Violet complained. “Jack’s the help.”
Gabbi laughed. “Jack ain’t no help, lass.”
“How come the sails don’t explode, nor catch fire?” Violet asked. Seemed like they should if Gabbi was right and thaumatics did what she said.
“Too big, aren’t they, spreads it all out. And folks like Quill who push ships ought not to be throwing their weight around on little things.”
“Skipper won’t be happy,” Violet predicted. “Going to need more ice now.”
“Or more sawdust,” Gabbi predicted. The skipper had been down in the hold, helping pack the empty spaces around their cargo with salt and sawdust. Salt so it wouldn’t melt so fast, though Violet didn’t understand that part so much, seemed to her salt ought to do the opposite, and sawdust so that it wouldn’t shift around during their run. Several hundred tons of frozen water being thrown loose deep in the black was something nobody wanted to see happen.
And there she was, emerging from the hold like a drenched cat, sodden red hair clinging to her scalp and twice as mad. Her sharp voice cut through the others and made everyone stop and stare as she started laying into both navigators.
“Time to look scarce, lass,” Gabbi advised. “Skipper’s not looking to make friends right now. Just be back later, we got work to do.”
“Be out on the ice,” Violet told her promptly.
“Gods only know how you don’t freeze to death out there, lass,” Gabbi wondered aloud.
“Because it’s not that cold,” Violet said.
Gabbi pointed at the skipper, still admonishing a pair of non-repentant navigators. The woman had ice already forming in her hair,
“Be fine, Gabbi,” Violet grinned at her. She grabbed a rope, casting one last look at the drama on deck, before swinging herself out over the edge the ship. The Tantamount had dropped itself into a thin tributary river, full of slush and floating ice but not yet solid. It was banked by snowdrifts along the edge. Snowdrifts which Violet had since discovered made excellent cushions.
Her landing left a girl-shaped imprint, and Violet soon added a shallow trail of footprints as she made her way towards the Draugr picket line. There were still a few unloading their deliveries before making the return trip. Violet wondered if the foreman would let her ride back with one of the sleds. There was little to do and she was curious to see how they cut the ice from the source.
The snowball caught her right on the jaw, so unexpected it took her clear off her feet and dumped her onto her side. She’d barely recovered from the shock and sat up when the second one got her, again in the face.
Violet shook her head, rubbing snow off of her face. She saw a small furry head atop a snowbank only a few feet away and felt a flash of unfamiliar anger at the sight. Bandit watched her cautiously, poised in that fight or flight instinct. Violet waited, and sure enough a face just as wizened as the loompa’s popped up next.
“It was Bandit!” the captain called out earnestly. “I tried to stop him. It was a valiant effort, Violet, it was, but he got the better of me.”
Violet hesitated, her hand curled around a fistful of snow. Would it still be insubordinate to strike your captain? Did she care?
There didn’t seem to be anymore fire incoming so Violet discard her own ammunition.
Too undignified. I’m no child to be throwing snowballs. It was a strange thought, maybe prompted by the constant disappointment she was always drawing from the crew. Or perhaps she was just growing up.
Violet decided she didn’t much care for the notion.
“Respectfully, Captain, I surrender,” she called out.
“Ah,” Horatio doffed his hat, using it to brush snow off his coat. “I suppose that means I win? All well and good then but rather unsatisfying. Very bright out here, isn’t it?”
He wasn’t wrong. When they’d first arrived, it had been overcast, but now the sun had emerged and the glare forced all to squint their eyes. The captain was only making it worse for himself, shading his face with hat but peering up towards the sun.
But as it happened he had a reason. “It seems we’re not the only ones to pass this way, my girl. Can you tell me what manner of ship that is?” He pointed to a faint shape passing overhead.
Violet peered up, having to shade her own eyes to do so. There wasn’t much to make out from below. All her lessons had focused on being able to identify other ships by the silhouettes: how many masts there were and whether they rigged as square or fore-and-aft. With some, they had wings to the side to make it easier, but this ship had none of those. And it was passing at such an angle that she couldn’t make out any masts at all. Without that she couldn’t even hazard a guess at the size.
“I can’t tell,” she said.
“Nor can I,” Horatio admitted. “Bothers me that. Feel I’m failing as a sailor if I can’t tell from looking. Old eyes, Violet. Never get old, not if you can help it.”
“No, sir. Never get old.”
“One does require less sleep though. I suppose we have that in common. Thank you for the tea, by the way.”
“Captain?” Violet frowned.
“The tea we shared the other night, during the Loompa’s Last Watch.” The captain reached down to scratch Bandit and the loompa pushed up into his hand. “Far too much tea in fact, very dark, stained my teeth. And I was up the rest of the night visiting the privy. And thinking about what you said.”
Violet clenched her teeth, not wanting her feelings to escape to her face. That wasn’t me. That didn’t happen. Captain . . . oh Captain.
“Think you’re confused, some, Captain,” Violet said, trying to find the words. “Can’t make tea, never learned how.”
The captain frowned. “Strange. I was so sure. I wrote it down.” He tapped his jacket, striking something solid inside. His journal, probably.
Violet shrugged. What could she say?
“Very industrious workers, Draugr, aren’t they?”
The captain’s change of tack took her by surprise. From snowballs to ships to Draugr in as many breaths.
“How do you feel about them these days, Violet?” The captain watched her as he spoke. He didn’t do that often, look you right in the eye.
“Wonder about them,” she said. “If they think, if they feel. If they know.”
&nbs
p; “Stoker said they did not.”
“People say a lot of things, Captain.” There was ice under them, Violet realised. The frozen river that the Draugr sleds had been using as a makeshift highway. Covered by only a thin layer of snow where they were standing. She began kicking at the loose snow, moving it aside with her foot, tracing a pattern of lines and abstract curves with her foot.
“Yes, yes, I suppose they do at that. Though not often about Draugr, which is surprising if one were to consider what might happen if they weren’t there anymore.”
She could see the ice now, thick and dark, enough to cast her reflection as good as any mirror she’d ever seen. She could even see the distant ship overhead, not much more than a dark smudge on the ice but still there. Everything looked darker on the ice, more so as the ship passed in front of the sun, momentarily blotting it out and casting a shadow over the landscape.
Violet’s own reflection became blurred and indistinct, and the captain’s beside her was one hulking shadow, huge and distorted by the ice. Except for the eyes, deep set and luminous, almost glowing.
My mind playing tricks, she thought. I know what you want me to think. You want me to whimper and moan, to jump at my own shadow. Captain’s shadow anyway. Those eyes, that’s just Bandit sitting on his shoulder. Not gonna work, you’re gone, at worst back in Port Border. You’ll never see me again, and I don’t have to think about you no more neither. So get out of my head, you big rock. No one needs to know about you. No one.
“All right there, Violet?” The captain’s voice cut through the daydream and it was just the three of them standing there on the ice.
“Fine, Captain,” she said. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Wouldn’t be much of a captain if I didn’t worry, lass. Gabbi is waving at us. She never waves at me like that so it must be for you. Best we not keep her waiting.”
SALT PORK. IT made a change from the hard-as-nails biscuits the crew had been surviving on. Except that there was still a pile of the slablike bread on the bench next to the galley oven. The cast iron monstrosity that was the most solid and complicated thing on the wooden ship. It had sheet-iron stoves mounted on fireboxes, with large holes within which sat large round pots. Below that was a cavity for baking covered by black iron doors. Copper pipes, a considerable expense, were wrapped around the oversized hearth and connected to a water tank the crew couldn’t have moved if they tried. Violet had measured it once, and it would never have fit through the doorway so she was unsure how it had arrived in the galley.
It was designed to be efficient. Violet had long ago decided efficient meant complicated. The only simple thing about it was the open tray of bricks and sand the galley oven rested on to prevent excessive heat being transferred to the ship. And burning them all alive.
The ship was in the process of turning into an icebox itself. Violet thought the crew might appreciate some additional heat being transferred.
“How long does this need to cook for?” Violet asked, peering over the rim of one of the bubbling pots.
“Until the worst of the salt boils away,” Gabbi said. The woman was upending her own cupboards in a search. Hadn’t said what for. Had the face that suggested it were best not to ask.
“How long is that?”
“I’ll tell you.”
“But how will I know?”
“Because I’ll tell you. Don’t make that face at me. I’ll tell you and then you’ll know.”
“But . . .”
“Biscuits, Violet. Take that sulk out on them. Need them to fill out the chowder. Crew need something hot or I won’t be able to keep them out of here.” Gabbi was sweating from the heat in the kitchen. Everywhere else on the ship was freezing, icicles forming on the brightwork, and those crew with beards or fur were all brushing out ice.
Violet glared at the hardtack, a meat hammer held between both her hands. “We got to boil the pork and pound the bread before we can eat it. Jack is right. We do need better food.”
“Shush. Less talking and more pounding.” Gabbi stepped back, hands on hips, looking glum. “Damn.”
“What?”
“Lost my favourite jug. Pretty thing, all glass and perfect for tea. With flowers cut into it. Think Jack broke it and won’t tell me about it.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Think that because I cut my foot on broken glass this morning, and I didn’t break no glass.” She gave Violet a suspicious look. “You break my jug, Vi? Was it you?”
“No!”
“Good. Biscuits, now!”
Violet sighed and began to grind up the biscuits, hitting them until they broke into smaller portions. Then those until she was left with more malleable crumbs.
“Twice baked and now we’re cooking them again,” she complained.
Gabbi reached over and flicked her ear. “Stop your whining, lass. If this was an Alliance galley it would be thrice baked, at least. They don’t stop at port as often as we do. And you’d be lucky to see half so much meat.”
“Jack says they serve fresh kill on Alliance,” Violet recalled. “Only good thing I ever heard him say about them.”
“Ha,” Gabbi laughed. “That’s what I say. Stiff collar starchies are too soft for fresh kills. Have to swap out the butcher every tour. Heard one kept a pig so long it died of old age, all fat and gristly. Heard the crew were so touched in the head with grief they buried the hog at sea. And if we was Alliance, I’d have a peg and you’d have a hook. That’s how they do things there.”
“What? Why? I don’t want no hook! Why would I have a hook?”
“Because you gotta do something with sailors who can’t man the ropes, so the thinking goes. And cooking for a crew of ungrateful louts, why that’s easy, ain’t it?” Gabbi shook her head in disgust. “Stop worrying so much, Violet. Nobody’s looking to trade your hand for a hook.”
“Jack might,” Violet said, louder than she’d meant.
“You ought not to listen to Jack so much. We don’t keep him on for what comes out of his mouth.”
“It’s cause of his pretty face, ain’t it, Gabbi?” Violet nudged the woman.
“If you must know, it’s what’s in his breeches that’s real pretty,” Gabbi winked.
“Ew, no, enough, enough!” Violet covered her face with one arm and tried to wave it off with the other. “I don’t want to be thinking that. Why would you make me think that?”
“Because you’re a brat, Violet,” Gabbi smirked.
“You’re evil.”
“And don’t you dare forget it.”
Not likely, Violet thought. Damned well be trying though.
HOUNDS EXHALED, LONG and slow, breath misting in a billowing plume. Nel found it an impressive display. The woman had big lungs on her. Bosuns often did. Bellowing came with the job.
“Remember the first time I saw snow,” Hounds said, rubbing her arms against the chill. “Was a little kid still riding my da’s shoulders. Took a snowball to the face from my brother. Squealed my head off. Spent the rest of the day thinking I was a dragon. Spent the whole of the next day trying to get warm.”
“Never done an ice run before?” Nel asked.
“Swore I’d never do one again.” Hounds shook her head ruefully. “Save I like eating and drinking and having a bed to rest my head in more than I care to mean what I said. And now I feel as I’ve earned that drink, it must be time for grog, yes? Where’s the blasted grog, woman?”
“Half a bell yet,” Nel said, tapping the hourglass by the ship’s bell. “I’m early. It happens.”
“Something to help me sleep then, when it does happen,” Hounds said. “Night watches are the worst.”
Nel snorted. Night watch. The woman wasn’t wrong, but there wasn’t a true night or day on the ship. Just the three watches. Hounds would have two watches, Nel’s and Quill’s, before she had to stand watch again. If the woman had sense she’d use that to sleep but there were always jobs to be done and distractions to be had. It had happen
ed before that Nel had stood three watches or more without pausing to sleep. It was easy to lose track when the sun didn’t set. And on the occasion that it did, it was the wrong sun, the wrong colour or size. Or there were too many suns. That one was the worst. In some ports the suns never set. Made one long for the black.
That and sleeping on an ice run was proving as difficult as she remembered.
“Where’s your man?”
“Which one?” Hounds tilted the sandglass slightly on its axis with one finger. Nel recognised the temptation to flip the timepiece, thus ending her watch and making it grog time. It was a temptation most sailors succumbed to at some point, though rarely in front of other officers and usually broken before long. A navigator’s logs and dead reckoning would usually be thrown out by the flip and that would send the more fastidious ones into a frothing frenzy. On occasion it could even throw them off course if the navigator misunderstood the error.
“The one with his mitts tied to your apron strings,” Nel said, not commenting on the timepiece.
Hounds looked at her. “Which one?” she repeated. “They’re all momma’s boys. Which one?”
“Denzel.”
“Ah, that boy. Sent him off a bell ago. Hasn’t been sleeping well, on account of your captain. Kept forgetting to turn the piece.”
“The captain?”
“Poor lad woke to find the man watching him sleep. Said he had glowing eyes. Think he were just walking that pet ferret your girl Violet keeps, but it was right unnatural to wake to. Gave the boy mares and been giving me a headache all watch because.”
Nel winced. Captain was sleepwalking again. Perfect.
“Captain does that,” she muttered. “He’s . . . eccentric.”
“More than that, Vaughn,” Hounds said. “Seen it before. Not hard to recognise when you have.”
Black & Mist Page 12