Of all the people in our town, of all the people who regularly came and went through trade or through the seasonal worker exchange, who fished from the walls or the boats out to sea or tended the livestock and crops of Sanctuary, it just had to be Lucien who saw me.
“My love,” he said in accented English which always sounded more melodramatic than the French translation, “are you okay?” He reached out for me, concern morphing into fear on his face as I tried to brush him away and stand up straight.
“I’m fine,” I said, “just seasick from being out on a boat all day.”
“Are you sure?” he fussed. “You look the colour of the seaweed…”
“I’m fine!” I snapped, the effort of not being sick making me speak more harshly than I intended so I tried to soften it with a hand on his arm. “I’m fine,” I said again, “I just feel like shit.”
“Come with me,” he said as he put an arm around my shoulder and tried to pry me away from the wall and force me to lie down somewhere.
“I said I’m fine,” I insisted, pushing him away gently but firmly. “Aren’t you supposed to be on watch anyway?”
“Dan is taking a turns there,” he explained. “I wanted to find you and check you were okay and I find that you are not.”
“Seriously,” I told him in French so that he understood me better, “I am fine.” My eyes held a small hint of warning which he seemed to detect and he relented. His interruption had worked, miraculously, as I no longer felt sick and proved that I was fine by walking away with a smile.
The Ugly Truth
Joshua’s story came out in parts and the chronology was all over the place. Kate said it was normal for the brain to rearrange things after trauma and Marie agreed, saying that the sailor probably blocked out long parts of memory which were only now coming back to the surface because he was safe.
“He’s probably going to have a period of high mood before he crashes again into depression,” she explained to us in a private discussion that evening. Her anger at Dan getting himself into conflict had abated temporarily but she was still a little frosty. Kate agreed with her, saying that Joshua needed to be watched as the risk of suicide was heightened after rescue from long-term imprisonment.
“And watch what he eats, too,” she warned. “He’ll get sick if he starts shovelling fresh bread and sweet stuff down his neck after living on shitty scraps for years.”
“How are we going to monitor that?” Dan asked. “Keep him in medical?” He still referred to the French infirmary as ‘medical’ even after almost a decade since the first incarnation of the department had sprung up in an old prison thousands of miles away.
“For a few days at least,” Kate said, “we can keep an eye on him, but I’ll attach one of the trainees to stay with him after that.” Kate and Sera, their veterinarian turned part-time surgeon, had their own rooms opposite the infirmary and had spent years training others in emergency care and basic diagnosis and treatment skills.
Like Victor in his tower, they had recorded their knowledge in large books which were added to every time a new symptom was presented to them. They had trained people who had returned to other areas inland like the now-sprawling farms and The Orchards, and had even travelled to Andorra at times and used their surviving medical facilities.
“One of the more experienced girls, I think?” Sera suggested, giving everyone the impression that she believed putting a young girl in charge of his recuperative care might not be as effective as someone else.
“And what about the bigger picture?” Dan asked, forcing the issue of Joshua’s captors onto the table in front of more minds he thought inclined to support him.
“What of them?” Marie demanded. “Weren’t you telling me that they’ll never find this place and will leave us alone now?”
“That’s not exactly what I said,” Dan began awkwardly. “We need to keep the armed patrols going out on the boats for a few more weeks at least.” Kate and Marie opened their mouths to protest but it was me who silenced them.
“No armed patrols means no fishing boats go out,” I said flatly. “Not safely anyway. And no fishing boats going out now means no peak haul of fish. No excess fish means less winter stores, which means less trade in winter for other food from settlements inland. It means we go poor and hungry for the next year if we don’t take advantage of the season, and that means we have to stay on alert.” I had tried to soften my words a little so that I didn’t sound like I was slapping them down, but I think it still came out a little like that. I smiled to show some humility and tried to bring it back.
“I’m not a fan of being out there,” I admitted sheepishly, “and I felt sick after a day on the water but it needs to be done. We need to use our best people to keep our fishing boats safe until we can afford to dial it back. Until then?” I spread my palms open to show that we really had no choice and had to just roll with it.
“We’re all agreed then?” Dan asked, seeming like he wanted the discussion brought to a close quicker than usual. Nods rippled around the table and he stood, snapping his fingers for Ash to follow as he snatched up his carbine and pushed out of the doorway.
“Where’s he going in such a hurry?” I asked nobody in particular.
“You mean you don’t know he’s opted to take the evening shifts at the dock on a permanent basis?” Marie asked in a sweet voice that I knew disguised a wickedly sharp edge.
“No,” I admitted, “I didn’t.”
Everyone else filed out as I stayed sat at the table opposite Marie. Lucien hovered at the doorway, one hand scratching Nemesis under the chin as he waited for me until I gave him a subtle nod to go and leave me alone with Marie. She knew I was loitering to speak to her, knew that the hostility between her and Dan was palpable, and seemed prepared to defend her position.
“You going to tell me?” I asked gently.
“No,” she said, ending the conversation before it had begun so I tried a different method: talking until she told me to leave.
“I was thinking about this,” I said as I leaned back and looked up at the high ceiling, “and you were pissed off with Dan even before the pirates showed up.”
Argh, my brain echoed until I told it to shut up.
“I think there’s something you’re not telling me,” I goaded her as she tried to pretend that she was reading something and ignoring me. “I think you two are arguing over something and his way of coping”—I emphasised the word theatrically and stitched the air with double fingers curling over in air quotes— “is to go out and try to get himself in a fight or just do stuff so he doesn’t have to talk about his feelings.”
Marie took a sharper intake of breath through her nose as her eyes still pretended to focus on the words on the page in front of her, but still said nothing.
“I think,” I went on, having smelled blood in the water in search of an answer, “that you two are fighting over something that he refuses to listen to or accept is real, and I think tha—”
“Do you remember a little over a year ago when I got sick?” she asked quietly, turning to face me for the first time. I did, just about, because the whole thing was played down at the time. I thought more about it and wondered why Dan chose that time to go off for over a week doing the rounds of the other settlements.
“Yeah…” I answered, eyebrows meeting in the middle.
“Well I had a miscarriage then,” she said, “just as I had another one a couple of weeks ago.”
“Oh,” I said, not knowing what to say and only just managing not to show visible relief at keeping my own secret from everyone.
“Yes,” Marie said softly, “oh.” She dropped the page of writing and folded her arms while staring at me. “I didn’t tell him, I just asked him to stay inside the walls for a while and not run off to look for a fight. I feel like he’s literally itching to get himself shot at so he doesn’t have to worry about me.”
“I, err…” I said.
“And instead of just hangin
g up his bloody guns for a couple of months,” she went on in an angrier tone as though I hadn’t spoken, “instead of staying home with me like I asked, he goes out spoiling for a scrap with… with… bloody pirates, and you aren’t helping.”
“Me?” I shot back, failing to recall that I was the one spoiling for a fight with the bloody pirates. “What am I doing?”
“Well you aren’t helping by suggesting gunfights on boats and bringing back hostages, are you?”
“Bringing back… hang on,” I said as I pointed an ill-advised finger at the older woman, “I’m not even sorry for that. Not one bit. These bastards are out there; I didn’t choose for them to show up and I didn’t go looking for them. They came here looking to steal and hurt people just like every other tosser has since all this”—I waved a frustrated hand over the air in general—“this shit started. I’m sorry the timing sucks for you but it sucks for me, too. You thi—”
“Why does it suck for you?” she asked. My face froze and for a second I didn’t know what to say. My mouth flapped like a cat flap in a strong wind for a second or two which was long enough for her to know with total certainty that I was hiding something.
“Why,” she asked me slowly, “does it suck for you?”
“Because it just does,” I moaned. “Spring and summer are supposed to be fun and happy and warm and… and busy. Not full of twenty-four-hour guard rotations and spending all bloody day on a boat making me feel sick.”
“Urgh,” Marie let out involuntarily as she puffed her cheeks and put a finger to her closed lips, as though just raising the subject of sickness had a negative effect on her. I knew enough from having suffered three of my own unexpected waves of sickness already that day to be quiet and let it pass instead of forcing her to speak in response to stupid questions like, ‘are you alright?’ and ‘can I get you anything?’
It passed and she came back to me. “So we just have to suffer?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, meaning more than she knew I did. “We’re just going to have to suffer. For a little while, at least, until we’re safe again.”
~
I managed to avoid going out on a boat just once over the next three days, as Lucien had caught me having another turn at the cruel hands of nausea and insisted that I rest to allow him to go in my place. I took the offer willingly, because another second spent in the company of fish-stinking water was definitely going to bring my breakfast up for everyone to see.
I got myself to the little bit of cover on the end of the sea wall and leaned on the barrel of the fifty-cal to suck in fresh air from the refreshing breeze whipping in from the sea. By the time Lucien’s face, almost pathetically worried for me, went out of focus on the fishing boat I felt better. Nemesis whined beside my leg and danced all four feet on the spot for a second, which was her signature move for showing her concern for me.
“I’m fine,” I told her, reflecting that all I seemed to say to people at the moment was that I was fine.
The patrols had encountered no other boats, and despite taking an extra person on each voyage to keep a careful watch through powerful binoculars, the tense mood began to abate.
Joshua had slept for a day and a half, waking only to rush to the bathroom and void himself of the rich food he had enjoyed in spite of the warnings to avoid such things until his body had begun to adapt to a better standard of living. As anticipated, he seemed full of life and on top of the world whenever I saw him, and the knowledge that he would crash back down soon saddened me. He waved to me every time he saw me, and stopped once to thank me again for saving him. I told him I didn’t do much, leaving out the fact that I was literally about half a second away from dropping him, and just said that I was happy he was with us.
A week of inactivity was all it took for almost everyone to go back to unsuspecting normality, and the few of us who were still on edge were exhausted by the constant state of alertness.
The Storm on the Horizon
Despite trying to hide how I felt the second I opened my eyes each morning, it started to become obvious to anyone paying attention that there was something up with me.
I countered some of the effects, the effects of people noticing that was, not the actual nausea, by working later into the evening and staying in bed while Lucien got up as quietly as he could to leave me asleep. I had to admit that there was something of a contrast on the rare occasions that I got up before him, as he accused me of playing a one-man band as though my intention was to wake him.
I woke every time, despite his silent creeping, but I just pretended not to so that he didn’t see me hanging my head over the bowl I kept under our bed as a chamber pot. It hadn’t been used for that purpose in a long time, but at that point it was a god send.
As soon as he clicked the door latch shut like a burglar making his stealthy exit I threw back the covers and slid the bowl from beneath the bed frame and tried not to groan out loud too much. Willing myself to not throw up and breathing hard in the hope that it would pass I reached for the glass of water beside my bed and took small sips. Nemesis woke to my grumbling and moaning, yawning loudly through her wide mouth and turning the noise into a whine of concern as her long muzzle nudged my face.
When the door burst back open to reveal me half out of bed and dribbling water from my mouth and eyes over a large ceramic bowl, with a startled looking dog staring back at the door beside me, Lucien took the scene in with a confused look until he shook it away.
“You must come,” he hissed with more than a hint of panic in his words. “The dawn is breaking and there is a ship.”
It’s always amazing to me how quickly the mind can exert control over the body. I’ve been hurt before and not noticed it until afterwards, and I’ve seen plenty of people with injuries that should be debilitating, yet they were still running around shouting and fighting. On that occasion, my mind simply chucked out the crippling nausea as though it was no longer a priority and replaced it with the need for sudden physical action.
I sat up, not even thinking that such a rapid change of body position should’ve emptied my stomach all over the bed, and swung my legs out to throw clothes on as I found them. I was glad I had switched to a lighter pair of boots for the summer, ones I only had to lace once as the sides fastened with a zip. I stuffed my feet into them and pulled on the zips simultaneously before shrugging into my vest and nodding in the direction of the corner of the room for Lucien to pick up my carbine.
He bent and retrieved it, standing straight to pull back the charging handle a fraction and check the chamber to ensure it was safe before handing it over.
When you handled weapons enough on a daily basis, these things just happened automatically.
“What ship?” I asked pointlessly as we fast walked in synchronicity towards the sea exit to the castle.
“I do not know,” he whispered back over the stereo sounds of our footfalls and the sharper clacking of Nemesis’ claws, “but it must be big.”
Lucien wasn’t exaggerating. We jogged side by side towards the sea defences, my bladder screaming at me for having neglected it when I woke, and as the faint grey sky lightened with each passing second, a looming feeling of foreboding nagged at my senses from the direction of the dark expanse over the water. When I stopped and focussed I saw it. Not directly, but if I let my eyes wander out of focus and glanced to the side of the darker patch of dark ahead of me then I saw a glimpse, a snapshot of the outline.
It was huge. Bigger than any single mode of transport I had ever laid eyes on in real life. It was the size of a city; longer than our walled town and taller than the tops of our ramparts and it spanned a distance of the sea wider than any one thing had a right to.
I stared at it, trying over and over again to see more and focus on the shape of it just hoping that we were all wrong at it was a kind of pre-dawn mirage or just a simple trick of the light and we could all go back to bed.
The silence hung heavy like there was an electrical charge in each
of us ready to arc and jump outwards should any conductor stray into reach. I became aware of three other people on the pier beside us, no doubt the three members of our town militia on night duty, and none of us said a word as the sky grew lighter with each passing second. A slight cough and a scrape of claws on cobblestones behind me snatched my mind away from the boat but my eyes stayed glued to it. The faint sounds of an artificial packet rustling preceded the click of a cigarette lighter before the pungent aroma of smoke drifted over me.
It was too much. I turned and hung my upper body over the stone wall, my equipment scraping on the rough surface, and I vomited noisily into the black water below. Twice more I heaved, expelling the remnants of the small meal I had eaten late the night before and stinging my eyes and nose with the acrid smell of bile. I spat twice to clear my mouth and stood, leaning on the wall to steady my dizziness, to see Lucien, the three militia members and Dan staring at me. A whine from beside my left boot reached me and I looked down to see Nemesis’ eyes reflecting the weak light of the pre-dawn back at me.
I returned their looks of concern and shock, only for the backdrop to their silhouettes to snatch my full attention.
“Ho-ly fuck,” I said, drawing out the words as they left my mouth of their own accord. As one, the other faces turned and looked out to sea as the first slither of light emerged far off to our left beyond the high cliffs in that direction. Curses in French echoed my own inadequate language until I pushed myself away from the wall and brought my weapon up to my shoulder. Scanning through the optic I saw the outline of the gigantic ship in slightly better detail, only to feel the very opposite of reassured when the unimaginable size of it was solidified in my view. I lowered the carbine and spoke out loud.
Piracy: The Leah Chronicles (After it Happened Book 8) Page 10