“Nolan! This isn’t a pleasure boat,” Walker said, glancing up from the small stack of papers in his hand. “Get over here.”
Nolan jerked to his feet and jogged the few steps closer to his uncle. Walker gestured to a large man beside him.
“This is Nut. You’ll follow his orders to the letter. Nut, my nephew, Nolan. Yours to keep busy however you like. Let me know how he does.” Walker clapped Nolan on the shoulder and left them.
Nolan’s first impression of Nut was that the older man looked bored. Clearly experienced—steel-haired, with the weather-beaten face of someone who’d passed decades at sea—but uninterested in the boy standing in front of him. Nut’s face didn’t change expression at all as he looked Nolan over. Finally he nodded.
“Come on then.” The older man led him down a ladder to the galley and began pointing out various barrels and cabinets.
“Onions. Peel’em, chop ‘em. Potatoes. Peel ‘em, chop ‘em. Use this knife. The vegetables go in that pot for tonight’s soup—I want it one quarter full, half and half with each. Peels go in the barrel in the corner. Men come in, we feed ‘em. They go out, I get the pots and you get the dishes. Wash ‘em, dry ‘em, store ‘em. We mop up when we’re done and that’s usually when all but the watch is asleep. Food changes day to day—if you don’t know how to do something, ask questions before you do anything stupid. Don’t ask stupid questions. You do your work, don’t complain, keep to your time and we’ll get on fine. Clear? Get started.”
Nolan felt each short sentence hit him like hail pattering over his skin. And they didn’t feel like little slushy raindrops, but rather gave him the feeling that someone had upended a bucket of rocks over his head.
“That’s all I’m going to be doing? Cooking?”
Nut snorted. “No. I’m the cook. You chop, wash, clean and watch. And you’ll have your night-watch duties, same as everybody.”
Nolan couldn’t help the sour expression that crossed his face. “I didn’t think I’d be working in the kitchen…er…galley.”
The corners of Nut’s eyes crinkled. “The glory of seeing the world, eh Nolan? Nothing but glamour and glitter from end to end. But don’t worry. ‘All’ you might be doing is prep-work and cleaning, but that’ll keep you plenty busy. Now get a start on it.”
Reeling from a wave of dismay, Nolan numbly took the knife from Nut’s hand and eyed the onions.
He’d never peeled an onion before, and as fluid as he was with bridles, saddles, and harnesses, he was slow and awkward with a knife. He also had to stop every two minutes to mop his streaming eyes on his sleeve. Nolan cut himself twice in the first hour and was told sternly to keep his blood away from the vegetables. He did half of what Nut had listed in the time before dinner, leaving the visibly ‘patient’ cook gliding around the room at an ever-faster pace as men began to file in. By evening, sore, exhausted, over-heated, and humiliated, Nolan resolved to make up for his ignorance if it killed him.
The men came down to dinner in high spirits, grabbing bowls away from Nolan as fast as he filled them, slapping each other on the shoulder, and shaking out decks of cards. Nolan winced as the pot slipped and burned his fingers, making a ruddy-faced sailor in his forties chuckle.
“This is the end of soft living, boy. Best toughen up.”
Nolan tried a smile and offered the sailor his hand. “I’ll get used to it. I’m Nolan.”
The sailor didn’t smile back. “You’re the captain’s nephew,” he said. “A witch’s brat.”
Nolan flinched and dropped his arm back to his side. “My mother’s a witch,” he agreed. “Mostly a healer.”
“Well keep clear of me, you hear?” The man tugged a silver necklace so it fell outside of his shirt. A medallion on the end showed a stamp of the Night God priests. “We don’t need any sorcery around a ship.”
“I’m not a—”
The man leaned towards him. The hard muscles through his neck and shoulders strained against the seams of his shirt. His gray eyes were icy.
“I’m only going to say it once.” He grabbed his bowl and moved to another table.
“That’s Carver,” a sandy-haired young man beside Nolan commented. “The navigator. He likes to scare anybody new.”
“I don’t have any of my mother’s talent,” Nolan said, and then winced at his cowardice.
The sailor shrugged. He wore no earring, but otherwise he was so like James that Nolan assumed they must be twins. “I grew up mostly hearing about the Mother. No skin off my nose.” He held his hand out. “I’m Sam.”
Nolan nodded and gripped his palm. “Nolan.”
“Oy! We’re hungry here!”
Nolan gripped the youth’s hand in a quick greeting, then turned to serving the others. He shrugged off the dark feeling Carver had given him and focused on the other conversations around him. The sailors he served mentioned ports in three continents in the space of twenty minutes. Better, four of them had fought off pirates.
A singer, a fiddler and a concertina player traded songs when Nolan started washing dishes, but the music ended long before he finished his work.
The brightest moment in Nolan’s day came when Nut released him for the night. Nolan finally made his way above deck for a few moments of reprieve from the damp heat below, and gasped at the sight that awaited him. The night sky was absolutely clear, and bedecked in stars that extended endlessly through the sky. Cresting waves caught the light of the moon, and the mixture of starlight and moonlight sparkled over the water for as far as Nolan could see. He couldn’t tell where the sea ended and the sky began, just like he’d always heard about. For a few moments, he absorbed the beauty before him. Then weariness drove him below deck again to his bunk, in a room that was already heavy with the smell of sweat and tar.
Before he fell asleep, he spent a long time fingering the new cuffs and collar on the winter coat that his mother had insisted he bring with him. He was sure she’s spelled it for something—drowning, maybe, or good health. He hoped nobody in the crew asked about it. It was strange to Nolan, when some people wouldn’t leave River’s End without one of his mother’s protections on them, but he believed his uncle’s warning about the crew’s superstitions now. Charmed coats would not be welcome. Eventually he stuffed the coat in the very bottom of his bag and decided to forget about it. His last thought of the day was to hope that his mother never had reason to meet someone like Carver.
Nolan quickly became far too familiar with mops, soapy water, rags, and kitchen knives. Every day he rose before dawn, spent the day cooking and cleaning and serving the men as they trickled or poured through the galley, and gathered the empty dishes while the men pulled out dice or cards. Days dragged by in a haze of mopping and chopping and brief glimpses of open sky when he went above deck.
The small speech Nut gave at their first meeting held the most words Nolan ever heard Nut produce at one time. Hours of silence might stretch between directions or comments on Nolan’s work. Nut listed chores, gave brief directions for the improvement of those chores, and listened to any man that came through the door with a stoic patience that Nolan never saw break. He listened, and nodded, and kept any comments soft and simple and for the ears of one listener at a time. On their third day away from Brine’s dock, Nolan saw him pour a small vial of something red into a tankard of beer and hand it to James.
James sipped it and made a face. “It tastes horrible.”
Nut chuckled. “It’ll cure your earache. I never said it tasted good.”
James rolled his eyes and sipped again. “Will this do it or do I need to come back?”
“It’ll do it. A few hours, a little tingling, and it’ll be gone. Just drink it fast, and keep it quiet.”
Nolan looked up from his mopping and raised his eyebrows. Nut frowned at him, and he turned the motion into a stretch.
James fished a half-copper out of his pocket and laid it on the table in front of Nut. “Thanks.”
Nolan turned back to the mop, please
d with this new secret. It seemed Nut had a reputation as the ship witch, as well as the cook.
Nolan didn’t wonder at the secrecy, even though male witches were generally considered more trustworthy than their female counterparts. In the Seaglass’s crew of fifteen, Nut had half a dozen visitors in the first week, but four others wore bracelets or earrings stamped with the Night God’s seal daily. In River’s End the Night God priests had been almost as friendly with Nolan’s mother as the Mother’s and Sun Lord’s priests, but here Nolan could sense that these men had a different kind of faith, almost as anti-magic as he’d heard the Ustengard religion was. Every day Carver started stories of double-crossing sorceresses, pirates’ illusion spells, and other hazards of magic at sea whenever Nolan entered the room. Walker had not exaggerated the men’s superstitions by much.
Between dawn and his break for the evening meal, watching Nut do his small bits of magic was the only thing to break up the monotony of Nolan’s day. He kept waiting for something, anything, new to happen, but it didn’t come. He didn’t see any other ships on his watch. No one blew an alarm for pirates. James and Sam only laughed when he asked if the ship had ever been attacked.
“The navy’s been wiping out pirates for the last ten years, Nolan,” Sam chuckled. He reshuffled his deck of cards and started dealing a fresh hand. “Practically no problem anymore.”
“Not that we want to invite trouble,” James said. “The bandit scum back home was bad enough.”
Nolan slowly dragged his cards back to himself. “There must be some though, right?”
Sam raised his eyebrows mockingly. “Sure you got on the right ship? You wanted to join the army? The navy?”
Nolan shrugged. “I’d need to be another year older. I thought I’d travel more here.”
“Don’t worry. There’s plenty of excitement here without fighting off pirates.” James laid down his card. “Your bet.”
Nolan hoped James was right. He hadn’t left home to spend every day up to his elbows in dishwater.
Nut gave him one free hour every day between serving the evening meal and starting the last round of dishes, and Nolan spent most of it with the twins or his uncle. Walker made a point of talking to all of the men regularly, but he always found Nolan for at least a few minutes each night. Walker liked to tell brief but gripping stories from his years at sea, usually ending in one captain or another coming to grief. The captain who didn’t read the signs of an oncoming storm, the captain who turned a blind eye to his crew’s drinking, and the captain that let the crew’s food stores go to rot, then drove them on until they mutinied, were his three fall-back tales.
“A captain walks a fine line, son,” he said repeatedly, pointing his fork at Nolan for emphasis, “between soft and hard. Too much the nursemaid, too much the tyrant, and people get killed. Nothing easy in it, not for one minute of the day.” Then he’d smile. “But it’s worth it, I tell you. If you have what it takes, if you have the drive and the brain, like you and me, it’s worth it. You remember that.”
Nolan remembered. He memorized. The few minutes talking with his uncle, who had managed to live five lifetimes in one, were what he looked forward to through each hour of cutting vegetables and mopping.
The rest of that free hour was also good, though. James and Sam were always happy to deal him into their card-game, and the trio of musical sailors gave a welcome break to the quiet that settled over most of Nolan’s day. In the second week, the fiddler let him join them with the flute he’d brought from home.
Later in the same week, Nolan pulled out the day’s bread and found small beetles crawling through it. James barked a laugh at Nolan’s expression.
“The glories of the seas, eh Nolan? Comes as a mix.” He palmed a piece of bread and bit in, still chuckling. “Just think of it as extra meat.”
In two weeks, they saw only a small shower of rain. Damp and chill as that day was, Nolan found himself wishing the wind might pick up a little bit. He wasn’t fool enough to wish for a hurricane—he’d heard too many stories of injuries and deaths at sea to wish that on any of the crew. But to see the men handle some wind, at least, to feel a touch of danger—that didn’t seem like too much to ask.
Nolan wondered that night when he’d come to the exciting part of the ship life he’d been hoping for. For all of their stories of danger and thrills and more exotic places, even the crew spent a large part of every day washing and polishing and mending.
Two weeks may not have been very long in the scheme of things, he thought, flexing his bruised knuckles, but if he never scrubbed another bowl in his life it would be too soon.
When Golden Isle first appeared on the horizon, Nolan’s first hopes for the summer stirred again. To see another county, a new land, and different people; that was why he’d left home to work on the Seaglass.
Nolan’s first breath of the island breeze as filled with delightful foreignness, a mix of warmth and sand and spice. The Golden City gleamed bright white in the sunlight, built of a stone he’d never seen before. Small terraces sprang from every window he could see, and virtually every window boasted an array of potted, exotically colored flowers.
A light rap to the back of his head brought Nolan’s happy reverie to a temporary close. “Wipe that grin off your face, boy, and look sharp. Take a pleasure jaunt on your own time.”
Nolan felt so enthralled with everything he was about to see that he barely registered the boatswain’s reprimand. Luck even followed him when he reported back to the galley—Nut took him along with him when he went ashore for supplies.
The streets of the Golden City were just as satisfying a mix of bright white stones and colorful accents as the harbor. Better yet, now Nolan could see the people, who dressed as brightly as the flowers outside their homes in dramatic reds, purples, blues, and greens. Their skin was a creamy brown, shading to gold—entirely different from everyone Nolan had ever met. The streets were full of merchants calling out their wares in a language Nolan couldn’t understand, of boys jogging on deliveries, and women carrying cloth-wrapped bundles on top of their heads. If Nut hadn’t kept one hand on his shoulder, Nolan would have been lost in a moment.
Nolan spent the first day ferrying fruit and spices on board, carrying out lumber and copper, and following Nut through the markets. The light shining off of the buildings and off of the sea hurt his eyes. Besides Nut’s simple instructions, he didn’t hear a single word he understood that entire afternoon. When Nut, with a sly grin on his face, bought him a pastry stuffed with beans, the food scorched everything from the tip of his tongue to his throat. Nolan walked lighter that day than he had in weeks. And he’d have two more days to see the city after this. Even the shift of watch duty while the others roamed the city didn’t touch his high spirits.
The next day Nolan couldn’t remember a time when he’d ever felt lower.
CHAPTER TWO
A sharp whistle brought the Seaglass’s crew to the deck very early on their second morning in Golden Isle. Walker held Sam’s arm in a white-knuckled grip. Sam stood with his eyes on his feet. What Nolan could see of his face was pale. Nolan stared. He’d never seen a grown man tremble the way Sam did now. Behind him, he could hear Nut suck in his breath. Other sailors swore softly.
Walker shook Sam hard. “Samuel Mullen, why did I call the crew here?”
Sam licked his lips and muttered something.
“Speak up!”
“I fell asleep at my watch, sir.”
“Idiot,” someone muttered.
“Why did you fall asleep?” Walker barked.
Sam dropped his head lower. “Sir, I was drunk.”
“Drunk on your watch?”
“Yes, sir.”
Walker shook him again and looked up at the rest of the crew. “A watch keeps us safe, protects us from storms and attackers and thieves. On another night, one careless, lazy fool could have gotten us all killed.”
The men murmured agreement.
“Carver, tie his ha
nds.”
“Mother, Sun Lord, and Night God guard him,” James murmured at Nolan’s elbow. Nolan looked at him questioningly, but James’s eyes were locked on his twin.
With hands that shook, Sam pulled his shirt off, then let Carver push him up against the mast and tie his hands above his head. Nolan’s heart began to pump harder. Then Carver passed a coiled whip to Walker, and Nolan understood James’s comment.
The first blow left a red path across Sam’s back. The third drew blood. The whip didn’t crack, as Nolan might have expected; instead each lash ended in a dull thud. Nolan flinched every time the whip landed on its mark. After five lashes, Sam’s back was dripping with blood, and he was breathing in thick, wet gasps. Walker lowered his arm and turned back to the crew, his face expressionless. Nolan felt his fingernails relax back out of his palms.
“All right, then,” Walker said. “It’s all of our necks he risked. One lash from each of you.”
Nolan’s stomach dropped. While he watched, unable to look away, the other crewmembers passed the bloody whip through their small crowd. The wood beneath Sam turned dark with blood. Sam’s grunts turned to shrieks, his nails digging at the wood of the mast in front of him. Then the shrieks turned quiet. He was sobbing, hanging limply by the ropes around his wrists, by the time that someone pushed the twisted leather of the whip’s handle into Nolan’s hand.
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