Compass Rose

by Anna Burke

  That turned out to be easy.

  The clear wall commanded my full attention. Beyond it hung empty air and the choppy sea, still frothing from yesterday’s storm. The effect was dizzying, but at least there was no wind buffeting me or spray slicking the rungs. The top of Orca’s head rushed my feet and I climbed faster. The tower had to be at least twenty feet tall. I couldn’t see the top past Miranda, and looking up was far too distracting. I hadn’t realized how form-fitting her loose trousers were.

  The top took me by surprise. Miranda offered me a hand up, and I reached out unthinkingly with my right. The pressure of her grip on the bandage made me wince.

  Orca swung herself up without assistance, and Kraken emerged like something out of a watery nightmare. I thought instantly of the jellyfish trapped in the light tube.

  We were in a small room, no more than fifteen feet wide at the stern and fifteen feet long where it narrowed into a point at the prow. The walls were clear, but the ceiling had a smoky tint to it that kept the room from cooking.

  “Captain,” said a voice from the prow. A man swiveled around in a chair. I did a double take, and glanced from the ladder back to his legs. They ended at the knee.

  “I’ve got arms, girlie,” he said, noticing my stare. He flexed his biceps at me. They were as thick as my thighs, if not thicker.

  “Crow’s Eye, this is Compass Rose, our new navigator.”

  “Huh,” he said, his dark mustache twitching. Gray streaked his beard. “Guess we got something in common. It’s a curse, getting named for your job. Means you can never get away from it.” He grinned, revealing crooked teeth. “But I bet you know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes sir,” I said.

  “Sir!” His laughter broke into a fit of coughing. “I could get used to that. The mercury settled nicely in you. She’ll do just fine,” he said, nodding at Miranda.

  Orca crossed her arms over her chest, clearly irritated at Crow’s Eye’s reception.

  “Not much gets past Crow’s Eye, above or below water,” Miranda said to me.

  “That’s very impressive.”

  I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. I saw Orca shake her head out of the corner of my eye. Crow’s Eye’s laugh was less kindly this time.

  “Impressive? That’s a high compliment, coming from a fleeter. Tell me, little navigator, what else do you think of our ship?” There was a warning glint in his eyes.

  “I didn’t mean to offend,” I said, feeling my face burn.

  “We don’t have fancy toys here like you’re used to. No lush stations to run home to. This ship, here, is our home and harbor. If you ask me, I’d say that’s a bit more impressive than anything you can do with your computers and your hydraulics and your antibiotics.”

  He emphasized the last word harshly, and my eyes flicked again to his legs, wondering.

  “Keep your hand clean, fleeter, or you’ll lose it before you get to use it.”

  With that, he swiveled back around to stare at the open ocean. I could have fried a fish on my cheeks.

  “You’ll work up here and below,” Miranda said. Her blue eyes masked her emotions.

  I nodded.

  “Keep a weather eye out,” she told Crow’s Eye as she descended the ladder. Orca followed, but I hung back for a moment, staring at the back of Crow’s Eye’s head.

  “Spit it out, fleeter,” he said without turning around.

  “I said it’s impressive because I know.”

  Kraken waited by the ladder and Crow’s Eye swung slowly toward me, one bushy eyebrow raised. I took a deep breath and gambled.

  “Most sailors need the instruments. There aren’t many who can do what we do.”

  “Huh,” he said, leaning forward. “Come a little closer.”

  I took a step towards him, hoping he wasn’t about to spit in my face. He stared into my eyes for a few long seconds.

  “You ever heard of the Sea Wolves?” he asked. Kraken grew very still behind me.

  “Orca has a skull in her quarters. She said it belonged to a sea wolf, but we call them orca on the Polarian Fleet.”

  “I see,” he said. His tone suggested that whatever it was he saw, I did not. “Don’t keep the captain waiting. She’s not a patient woman.”

  I bolted down the ladder as fast as my sore ankle and sliced hand could manage.

  Chapter Six

  I was exhausted by the time dinner rolled around. Miranda’s articles hadn’t mentioned lunch, which had escaped my notice at the time, and my stomach growled ominously as I followed Orca to the dining hall. My mind reeled with the effects of prolonged stimulation. If someone had asked me to find due north right then I would have given them a blank stare.

  I had spent several hours going over charts with Miranda while Orca paced the room, scowling, until Miranda ordered her to explain some of the more obscure shorthand used by the Man o’ War crew. Talking about the ship eased the irritation from Orca’s voice, and there was a fierce joy in her eyes as she laid out the ship’s systems for me. She even forgot to mock my ignorance of life outside of the fleet.

  When Miranda was satisfied that I could read the charts, she explained what she wanted me to do for the next week. As I turned the list over in my mind, I found myself agreeing with what Orca had said earlier. I only needed to know the way to the mess hall, my room, navigation, and the head, because those were the only places I was going to have time to go. If I wanted to explore the rest of the ship, I would have to forgo sleep, and wandering the ship by night didn’t strike me as the wisest course of action.

  After we’d left the charts, Orca took me to pick up a blanket and a change of clothes and get me on the ship’s books. I repressed a vivid memory of the woman in charge of supplies. Her tattoos had put Kraken’s to shame.

  “Here,” Orca said, shoving a tray into my hands and snapping my attention back to the unfortunate present. On closer inspection, some of the shells in her narrow braids turned out to be fish skulls. Gray eyes glared at me from beneath dark brows. If it weren’t for the orca tattoos on her arms she would have fit right in on Polaris.

  The noise in the hall was much rowdier than what I was used to. Meals on North Star were orderly and taken in the presence of officers who never quite let you forget you were beneath them.

  A limp fish steak flopped onto my plate through the buffet window, followed by a wet lump of what I assumed were stewed greens and sprouts. I filled up my new water flask at the filter station and took my place beside Orca at the captain’s table. Maybe if I ate slowly, I reasoned, I could make the small serving last longer. Orca spoke with the woman on her other side, leaving me to eat in silence.

  I remembered my first days on Polaris, waiting to take the Fleet Prep entry exam and too scared to leave the tiny room my mother had rented for me, and then the first few months onboard North Star before Harper befriended me. No one had spoken a kind word to me for weeks. I didn’t mind the brusqueness of my instructors, because they were that way with everyone, but I’d had friends on Cassiopeia before I left and had fully expected to make new ones on Polaris. Harper ended my solitude one morning with a yawn, plopping down on the bench next to me.

  “Hi, I’m Harper. I like your eyes,” she’d said, and just like that we were best friends.

  This was different, I told myself. I was not expecting a warm reception from the mercenaries and, if anything, I was the one looking down on them. I didn’t need to make a place for myself here. It meant nothing to me if Orca chose to judge me before getting to know me. Miranda, at least, seemed impressed.

  Thinking about Miranda sent a thrill through my body. The mercenary captain was a few years older than me, but, I remembered involuntarily, age hadn’t stopped Harper from hooking up with one of the more attractive techs from the greenhouse. Not, of course, that I had any interest in Miranda.

  I didn’t typically fall for blue-eyed women, anyway. For starters, there weren’t many of them around, and as a navigator I spent way
too much time already staring out over blue sky and blue water. Blue was a dangerous color.

  I am not falling for anyone, I reminded myself, least of all a mercenary captain with a penchant for slicing up her sailors’ palms.

  I finished my last bite of fish and looked at her empty seat, feeling an unwarranted wave of disappointment wash over me.

  Kraken, I noticed, was also absent. His empty seat opened me up to scrutiny from the rest of the table. I tried not to sink lower in my chair.

  “Hey, fleeter,” said a woman’s voice. I started as a hand touched my shoulder. Orca glanced over and frowned.

  I looked up to find Annie standing behind me. I opened my mouth and thought of nothing to say, so I shut it again.

  “What’s up, Annie?” Orca asked.

  “Miranda’s finest are a little curious about what we hauled in. Mind if we borrow her?”

  Orca raised an eyebrow and shrugged.

  “If you like bad company, sure, she’s all yours. Just don’t lose her.”

  “I hear she doesn’t get lost.” Annie offered me a hint of a smile and stepped back.

  “Clear your tray, fleeter. We pick up after ourselves here.” Orca didn’t even bother looking at me as she spoke.

  My ears burned, and I carried my tray to its stack amid a low chorus of laughter.

  Annie had made room on her bench by the time I made it back. The group around her was as motley a bunch as I had ever seen. I recognized the woman with the shark tattoo from the parley vessel. Jeanine, the one who had handed me the bucket.

  “Feeling any better?” Jeanine asked. I met her eyes, feeling a flash of irritation burning through my embarrassment.

  “Come sit next to me and find out.”

  Jeanine’s eyes widened at my reply, and then she laughed.

  “Got some spit in you when you’re not spitting up.”

  “Here,” Annie said, saving me the effort of coming up with a response. She poured a small measure of amber liquid from a flask into a tiny cup. This time I was ready for it, and knocked it back.

  “You drink a lot of rum here, don’t you?” I said.

  “Sugar beets are the only thing that grows reliably,” said Annie. “Something got into the rice and we’ve had trouble with seed, so rum it is.” She poured a glass for herself.

  “Orca didn’t give you your rum measure yet?” Jeanine asked. There was a gleam of mischief in her eyes.

  “No.”

  “We’ll have to fix that. You’re one of us now, I hear.”

  “What’s that?” asked the man sitting beside Jeanine. He had waves shaved into his short, dark hair, chasing themselves around his head in an endless wake.

  “Finnegan, this is Compass Rose. Show us your hand, fleeter.” Jeanine tapped the table top pointedly.

  I placed my bandaged hand on the surface.

  “Miranda marked an Archipelago sailor?” Finnegan narrowed his eyes at me. “I don’t believe it.”

  I unwrapped the bandage carefully, feeling the rum going to my head. The red lines were still raw on my palm, and one broke open as the cloth came unstuck.

  “Well, shit,” Finnegan said, leaning back to give me another look. “There’s a first for everything. I thought she hated the fleets.”

  “Apparently this one is special.” Jeanine’s voice implied that she had some serious doubts.

  “You should clean that,” Annie said quietly. “And get a fresh bandage.”

  “I don’t know where to find one.”

  “I can get you some supplies if Orca hasn’t already. They’re not far from here. All crew have access to the ship’s doctor, especially at first signing. We don’t like losing people to infection if we can help it.”

  “Thank you,” I said, meaning it.

  “It’s what I’d do for anyone on this ship,” Annie said, raising her voice so that Jeanine could hear her. “Once Miranda marks you, you’re crew for life.”

  “I thought we could leave at the end of the contract,” I said, rewrapping my hand.

  “Oh, you can leave,” Jeanine said. “But unless you cut off your hand, no other ship will sign you on. You’re Miranda’s now, kid. Didn’t anyone tell you?”

  I looked at my hand with a sinking feeling in my stomach.

  “Maybe she was planning on going back to the fleet,” Finnegan suggested. I didn’t like his tone.

  “The fleet doesn’t take in pirates,” said Jeanine. “And if you wash up on one of your stations with that mark, they’ll hang you before you can say ‘parley.’”

  Comita had said she would have me back no matter what happened, I reminded myself. Jeanine’s words registered with a jolt.

  “Pirates?”

  “Pirates, mercenaries, it’s all the same to the Archipelago, isn’t it? Why are you here, anyway?”

  “If Miranda didn’t tell you, then you don’t need to know.” Annie’s voice cut through Jeanine’s like fins through water.

  “So you’re either a traitor or a spy.”

  I met Jeanine’s eyes as I realized with a plunging feeling that whatever I said here would make its way around the ship by the end of the night. I clung to due north as I struggled to think of the right words to say. I could put an end to speculation now, if I played my cards right, or I could set myself up for months of misery. I looked around the table, trying to read their faces. Everyone was thinner than I was used to, and there was a haunted, hunted look in some of the eyes that met mine. I remembered how Polaris had looked to me when I first arrived, overflowing with abundance and full of happy, healthy people. My mother had had the same look as these sailors when she said goodbye. She’d bought me a one-way ticket off of Cassiopeia, but there was no room on Polaris for an aging eel farmer.

  “You know what they called me on the Polarian Fleet?” I said, flexing my sliced hand. “Jelly. My father was a drifter.”

  “Trawling scum,” Finnegan agreed.

  I ignored him. It was nothing I hadn’t heard before.

  “I’m not a traitor, and I’m not a spy. I’m a navigator. I don’t have time for politics.”

  “I don’t care much about your politics. It’s who you’d choose, when push came to shove, that concerns me. Never met an Archi-pelagean who wouldn’t choose their own skin over mine.”

  “I’m a drifter half-breed,” I said. “You think they’d choose me, either?”

  “But you got their fancy vaccines and good food, didn’t you?”

  “I did. And if Miranda has her way, you will too, am I right?”

  Annie watched me with a faint trace of approval in her scowl. I was guessing here, but my gut told me I was right just as surely as it knew north. I didn’t know the whole of Comita’s bargain with Miranda, but if I were a mercenary captain in a position to make demands of a fleet admiral, I would ask for seeds, drugs, and whatever else my crew needed that was outside my reach.

  “You gave her too much rum, Annie,” Jeanine said. “I liked her better when she was too busy puking to talk.”

  “So, drifter,” Finnegan said. “Who would you choose? Me, or you?”

  “If it was just the two of us?” I said, leveling what I hoped was an impenetrable look at him. “Me. But if it was a choice between my hide or my ship, I’d choose my ship. You just better hope you’re on it.”

  Jeanine choked on her rum and spluttered out what sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

  “Well said.” Annie nodded. “That’s good enough for me, and she was good enough for Miranda. Does that satisfy you?” she asked Jeanine and Finnegan.

  “Only one thing satisfies me.” Jeanine took another swig of rum, kissing her flask when she finished. “What about you, Finn?”

  “You know what satisfies me.” He leaned toward her, puckering his lips. She shoved him away.

  I relaxed very slightly as I tried to gauge the shift in the conversational current. Real currents were much easier.

  “Now there’s a thought,” Jeanine said, throwing me a wink as she hel
d Finnegan at bay. “Maybe Miranda is looking for a little satisfaction herself. I hear they do it differently on the Archipelago.”

  I blushed to the roots of my hair.

  Am I that fucking obvious? I thought, wishing a whirlpool would open up beneath me. Several vivid images overpowered me at once, and all of them involved Miranda.

  “Oh, and by the way, kid, you should never have told me people call you jelly.”

  • • •

  “Wake up, jelly.”

  I groaned and burrowed underneath the blanket and deeper into the hammock. The familiar insult overrode my sense of direction, and for a moment I thought I was back on the North Star. Then someone shook my hammock and reality came rushing back in.

  “How long do I have to bunk with you?” I asked Orca as I sat up to meet her glare. It had been five days now since I’d arrived, and I was ready to strangle her in her sleep.

  “Until Miranda stops punishing me. Good news, though. You’re on your own today. You get to spend the day in navigation all by yourself.”

  “And here I was just getting used to you holding my hand.” I reached for my shirt.

  Orca pulled on her boots and stretched before answering.

  “Listen up. Maybe you’ve gotten the wrong idea, with me running around with you all over the damn ship, but I’m Miranda’s first mate. The only reason you are even speaking to me right now is because Miranda was worried you’d get eaten alive without my protection. Does that make sense to you? Miranda didn’t trust you to Annie, who you seem so cozy with, or any of the other people who should have been stuck with you. No. She gave you to me, because I’m the only one she trusts to make sure you’re still breathing at the end of the day.

  “The crew doesn’t care that you’re special. All they know is that they grew up hungry and you didn’t. Most of them were pirates before they jumped ship. Do you know what pirates think about your precious Archipelago? I thought so. So don’t you dare complain about bunking with me. I don’t like you, but as long as Miranda wants you alive, I’ll make sure you stay that way. Now get your ass up.”