by Hilari Bell
The men told tales as they worked, mostly of comical mishaps, but also of storms that blew up unexpectedly and sent the ships racing to strange shores it took weeks to return from. They also spoke of the need for new tiller straps, or a new set of sails. Edoran slowly realized that the bluefish migration—whatever a bluefish was—was the longest and most profitable voyage the fishermen would make all year. His tentative hopes of being included dropped even lower. Judging by their tales, there was no place on this important voyage for a clumsy amateur.
But helping the rest of the village during their men’s absence was important too, Moll informed him, and Edoran resigned himself to staying. So much so that when a peddler came through, selling pots and pans, ribbons and lace, he took notice of a bag of hard candy in the man’s pack. With the men gone, Edoran would no longer be able to threaten his young charges with telling their fathers if they made trouble… but perhaps he could bribe them.
Moll had neatened up the ragged edge of his collarless shirt, exclaiming over the fine “city” linen, but she’d deemed his britches past mending. The peddler also sold buttons, and Edoran delved into Moll’s rag bag and cut off the button that had fastened his waistband. It was made of polished bone, not silver or brass, but some craftsman had carved a stag’s head onto its face, and the work was finer than anything in the peddler’s button box.
The man was impressed by the workmanship, though he haggled long and hard. Eventually a bag of candy changed hands. And if three-quarters of it was gone before the fishermen left the village, well, those children’s skill in argument could have put law clerks to shame. Edoran had never been taught the art of negotiation, so how could he resist?
He was more concerned about his diminishing supply of candy than anything else, and when Moll shook him awake one day before dawn, Edoran’s first thought was that he’d left some chore undone.
“What?” he asked blearily. “Did I—Is it Sandeman? Has he come for me?” His heart leaped at the thought, and then, strangely, sank. And that was ridiculous, because he wanted to see Weasel again more than anything else. But why would Sandeman come for him in the middle of the night?
“It’s not Sandy.” Moll turned to wake Mouse as well. “It’s the tide.”
“The what?” Edoran knew what the tide was, he just couldn’t think why it would necessitate rousing him at—he reached out with his sensing and found the position of the sun—more than two hours before dawn.
Mouse rubbed his face, yawning. “It’s the tide, loon. We’re launching the boats when it goes out, so if you want a hot meal on a table that holds still, you’d better get dressed—this will be your last for quite a while.”
CHAPTER 8
The One of Stones: abundance. A rich harvest. Wealth. A good life.
They launched the boats as the first glimmer of dawn touched the water. The tide was near its height, so they didn’t have to drag the hulls far over the sand.
Every man in the village grasped the ropes they strung around the first boat, their feet digging into the sand until the hull shifted and began to slide. They pulled the boat right into the cold surf, soaking boots, britches, and sweaters in the chest-deep water.
Edoran, shorter than the others, found himself floating in the deeper waves and had to swim back to shore. But he made himself useful there, running ropes around the next boat. If Togger was willing to take him to sea, he would be useful. He would make sure the fisherman never regretted it, not once.
After pulling each boat into the cove, the fishermen anchored it and swam back to shore, so all could help with the other boats. Edoran had thought it would take a long time to launch the whole fleet, almost two dozen of them, but the tide had only started to go out when they dragged the last boat out past the surf, and it began to rise off the sand with the pull of each wave, then to float in the surging water.
When the next wave picked Edoran up, Togger grabbed a double handful of his sweater and thrust him up the side of the hull till he could grab the railing. Edoran was still scrabbling his way aboard when Togger and several others climbed over the rail, but he managed to get himself onto the deck of Togger’s boat before one of the others had to help him.
Most of the men were now swimming out to their own boats. Mouse was sailing with Togger, Edoran knew, and five other men, two of whom had lost their boat to a reef several years ago. The other three were boys not much older than Mouse who were hoping to earn enough to buy their own boats someday. Edoran had learned that from listening to their talk on the beach.
As they lowered the sails and the boat leaped through the waves, with the sun streaming down to dry his clothes, and the wind fresh off the sea, Edoran could think of no reason any man would desire anything else in life.
An hour later, he couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to go near the sea. Ever. Miles away would be too close.
Mouse paused in doing something mysterious with a rope to clap him on the back. “Don’t worry, runt. It takes a lot of folk that way at first. You want to die now, but come morning you’ll be fine.”
Edoran wondered if “runt” was better than “Your Highness.” And he didn’t want to die; he just wanted this accursed tub to stop bouncing so his head could stop spinning…. His stomach heaved once more.
“I hate you,” he muttered when the paroxysm eased.
Mouse’s grin held just enough sympathy to keep Edoran from trying to punch him. That, and the fact that Mouse was twice his size, and the deck was swaying up and down, and his stomach… Edoran returned hastily to the rail.
When his stomach finally realized there was nothing more to come up, and hadn’t been for some time, it was Mouse who dragged him away from the rail and laid him down on a bedroll in the bow of the ship, where Edoran could lie in the fresh air and still keep out of the others’ way. It was one of the other men who brought him a cup of hot mint tea and insisted he try, at least, to drink it. To Edoran’s astonishment, after the first precarious sips it settled his stomach, and the mint cleared the foul taste from his mouth. He barely woke when they carried him below and tucked him into his berth.
In the morning he discovered that Mouse had been right—the boat still bobbed like a cork in a millrace, but the air was clear, the sea sparkled, and Edoran was actually hungry! He threw out his arms and spun in sheer delight at being there, out on a boat with the men, and not even sick anymore.
“That’s better now, isn’t it?” Togger asked, coming up behind him.
Edoran grinned. “What should I do?”
In those first days there was little he could do, for the boats were only casting around the straits in search of their quarry. Edoran tried to master the complicated web of rope that controlled the sails, but his knots still had a tendency to come undone, and no one trusted him to do more than pull on one rope or gradually release another.
On their fourth day at sea, the man who perched on the mast of a neighboring ship began shouting and waving his arms. Edoran, down on the deck, was too busy obeying the sudden spate of snapped commands to look for what the scouts were seeing. The big booms that held the nets were loosed from their rests, and the nets were rigged to fall.
Then Togger shouted and the men swung the booms out over the waves, the nets sinking slowly out of sight.
Peering over the railing, Edoran couldn’t see anything, but as the sails pulled the boat forward he could feel the drag of the nets growing stronger and stronger. He didn’t know how Togger knew they were full, but finally the fisherman called, “Enough! We’ve a load, lads, so pull ’em in.”
The nets had been relatively light when they were lowered. Pulling them up took every man in the crew hauling on the draw lines. When the first net cleared the water, Edoran gasped. He’d expected a moderate load of smaller fish, but this net bulged with sleek, struggling, blue-green shapes. The smallest was as long as his forearm. The largest, he later learned, was longer than his whole arm, from shoulder to fingertips, but all he saw then was a mass of writhin
g fish and the flash of scales.
They swung the boom in and dropped their catch on the deck. The second net, whose sunken weight was now pulling the boat in a lazy circle, was dragged up to its boom and swung aboard by men who had to kick the flopping fish out of their way. They coshed the bluefish on the head to kill them as soon as they had time to do so, for Togger said the Lady frowned on hunters who let their prey suffer unnecessarily.
Mindful of his stomach, which was still sometimes queasy, Edoran left the gutting to the rest of the crew. But he was able to pack the cleaned fish in salt, and after the full barrels had been stowed in the hold, he helped wash down the deck with fresh seawater.
Edoran thought nothing of it when they cast the fish guts over the side, and he was startled when a fish almost as big as he was leaped out of the water right next to the railing.
“He’s thanking us for the meal,” Mouse said.
“They… they eat fish guts?” It sounded cannibalistic to Edoran.
“They eat fish,” Mouse replied. “Guts and all. They’re not fish themselves, though they live in the sea. They’re warm-blooded, like we are, and sometimes they save men who’ve been knocked overboard and carry them to land. It’s good luck to feed them.”
“That’s just a tale,” one of the other men scoffed.
“No, it’s not,” another proclaimed. “They’re cousins to man, and that’s why they save us.”
“Have you ever met anyone a dolphin saved?”
The debate went on, but Edoran, hanging over the side to watch, paid it no heed. Mouse came to stand beside him. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
“They’re incredible,” Edoran said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Look, another one’s jumping!”
“They’ll do that on and off for hours,” Mouse informed him. “Crazy Cozzen can say what he likes, but I still think they’re thanking us. You did a good job today, runt.”
Runt again. Edoran turned to confront the older boy, but Mouse’s eyes were on the waves, looking for dolphins. He hadn’t even thought about calling Edoran runt, the prince realized. He called almost everyone by some nickname. It meant nothing…. It was doing a good job that mattered.
“Thanks,” said Edoran calmly.
The small fleet sailed on in search of another school, and Edoran finally began to produce knots that would hold reliably. Now if he only understood the rigging…
The straits weren’t as empty as Edoran would have thought. In addition to dolphins, who checked in with the boats from time to time, they encountered fleets from other villages bent on the same hunt. When that happened, one fleet or the other would alter their course and sail alongside as news was shouted back and forth.
The first thing to be discovered was the location of the last bluefish school they’d found, but there was also news of some kinsman or kinswoman who’d married into the other village and birthed a daughter, or sold a bit of carving for a good price, or built another room onto their house.
They passed islands, too small for people to live there, but with beaches where ships could put in to get fresh water and scrape their hulls. They passed other ships as well, merchant freighters or naval vessels, and dozens of others. Edoran couldn’t tell, from a single glance at the sails and hull, what a ship’s purpose was, but most of the men around him could. He also slowly realized that when they saw any ship that wasn’t part of a fishing fleet, Togger wrote it down and noted the date and location.
One day a naval ship hailed them. After learning they were from Caerfalas, they sent a small boat to pick up Togger, who took his list of ships along with him.
He returned without it, several hours later, looking thoughtful and somber.
“What was that about?” Edoran asked.
Togger frowned at him, then sighed. “Sandeman brought you to us himself, so there’s no harm in it,” he said obscurely. “But I wouldn’t tell this to just anyone, lad, and you’ll keep it to yourself. Sandeman’s trying to organize the fishing fleets to report all the boats they see to some friends of his in the navy, hoping they can finally lay hands on those accursed pirates.”
“The pirates? But you don’t know anything…” Edoran thought about it. “You do see their ships sometimes, don’t you?”
“Aye, we do,” Togger said grimly. “They leave us alone, for we’ve nothing worth stealing and pose no threat to them. A lot of the villages want to keep it that way. They say that if we start reporting pirate ships to the navy, they’ll start sinking us. That our only defense is to not be worth the cost of powder and ball to send us to the bottom. But Sandeman says we’ve a duty to stop the murdering scum, and I agree. I don’t think he’s gotten any of the other villages to go along, but if the pirates keep raiding the coastal towns… We’ve not much worth stealing, but sooner or later they’ll want something we have—clean water and fresh food, if nothing else. And then…”
Edoran remembered how that first raid had felt to his sensing. He shuddered.
“Are you sure it’s safe to talk to the navy?” he asked. “I heard… In the city, I heard a rumor that someone in the navy was telling the pirates about naval ship movements. That’s why the navy can’t locate them, and why several naval ships have vanished. They say the pirates would have to know where they were searching to avoid them so consistently. Or to set up such an overwhelming ambush.”
A frown creased Togger’s brow. “The only captains who know to signal us are working with Sandeman. But if there’s a traitor… Ron, how sure of this are you?”
Edoran remembered an argument he’d overheard between Holis and the Falcon—Holis claiming that the pirates had to be getting inside information, and the Falcon saying she couldn’t believe any naval officer would ever work with the pirates.
The Falcon, who had then turned traitor and tried to kidnap the prince.
“Pretty sure. Sort of sure.”
Togger sighed. “People who live by the sea, we know life’s a chancy thing. What first seems good can be bad, and what seems bad can come to good in the end. That’s the nature of water, and of life. But I must say, lad, I wish you were sure.”
Edoran spent the rest of the day thinking about the Falcon taking Weasel away by sea. Arisa had been certain of that, and the Falcon had allies in the navy. If her daughter was right, if she had escaped by sea, was there a reason for it? Could her base, could Weasel himself, be hidden somewhere in the islands?
It was pure speculation, but it would explain why no one had found her on land, and it felt… right, in that part of his instincts he’d learned to trust.
Edoran resolved to examine any island they passed, and to ask the fleets they traded news with if they’d seen anything odd.
Edoran might not have been able to rig sails, but his days became busier as he learned to help the cook and perform dozens of other tasks essential to the smooth running of the ship. They found another school of bluefish, and while Edoran took care not to look at the fish guts, he could pitch them over the side after the crates were stowed, and watch the dolphins streak through the water to snatch them.
His arms and shoulders ached with the strain of hauling up the heavy nets and lowering full barrels into the hold, but it was a good ache, the ache of work well done. He was happy.
Ron the fisherboy was happy all the time, even when he was cold and wet and tired. Happy in a way that pampered Prince Edoran had never been in his life.
And the realm was running just fine without him.
Regent Pettibone had told him straight out that he didn’t really need Edoran to rule Deorthas. As long as you’re more use to me alive, you’ll stay alive, he’d said after the prince had tried to run away. Had run away, and managed to elude the guard for more than two weeks before they found him and brought him back. But if you become more trouble than you’re worth… He hadn’t had to finish the threat. He hadn’t been lying, either. The man who’d killed a king with no one the wiser could easily dispose of an inconvenient prince.
/> Edoran had never dared to run away again, never dared to defy his regent over any major matter, lest he make so much trouble that he’d no longer be “useful.”
But he had to admit that Pettibone had run the realm as well as most of the kings of Deorthas—better than some of them. And if Pettibone hadn’t been a bad ruler, surely Holis, or even the Falcon, could manage as well. He could give her the sword and shield and his promise to vanish forever if she’d let Weasel go. He’d be just another fisherman, caring more about the next catch than the conflicts among shareholders, townsmen, and country folk, caring nothing for the disputes between the university men and the One God’s church.
The Falcon might even believe him. It would be true.
Of course, if Holis and the Falcon went to war over the throne, Weasel and Arisa would be horribly torn. Edoran sighed. He’d have to stop that, if he could. But Holis and the Falcon were really at war right now, and he couldn’t see any way to stop them, prince or not. So maybe…
The prospect of changing his life permanently haunted him throughout the next few days.
Edoran kept a close watch on the islands they sailed among, and as they worked their way farther down the coast, there were a lot of them. The fisherfolk had described the islands in the eastern strait as a maze, and Edoran was beginning to understand why.
But he kept his eyes open, and it was in the middle of dealing with another bluefish catch that he glimpsed a flash of red. Not on an island, for there were no islands in sight, but on a ragged jut of rock, too small for fresh water or for the sturdiest scrub to grow. Edoran wasn’t sure the top would be above the level of the waves in the higher tides, but the moon was half full now and the tides were low.
Low enough that something had washed onto the rocks and not blown off again?
The rocky outcrop was too small to hold a rebel camp or a prisoner, but the bit of color troubled Edoran enough that when the catch had been stowed below, he mentioned it to Togger.