Teeth pressed tight together, I braced my elbows on the table and rested my chin in my palms, pressing my thumbs into the ache burgeoning behind my temples. I had been looking forward to seeing the women again. I wanted to make sure Laffa was getting decent food to eat, and that she had a comfortable place to sleep. Now they were finally coming over, and I wouldn't be able to see her anyway. Still. At least she'd be on the same ship.
"Fine," I muttered. "I'll stay on the quarterdeck. If that's alright with the captain."
Arramy nodded. Once.
"Apparently I am over-ruled." NaVarre got to his feet. He picked up his hunting jacket and pulled it on, careful of the blades in his gauntlets. "But while we're on the subject of what to do with the civilians, how are we on supplies?"
The captain's lips thinned to a grim line. "Kyro was supposed to restock in Porte D'Exalle. That didn't happen. As it stands, we're low on potable water and vittles. But... If we go to light rations and set up the filters, we can stretch what we've got to four weeks. We should make Nimkoruguithu." The tension in his shoulders said what he wasn't voicing aloud: we would only make land if we didn't run into any trouble between here and there. At all.
NaVarre absorbed that piece of information, regarding the captain through a thoughtful squint. "Right. Well. I'll check with my Bossun to see what we can spare. Now, if we really are bringing everyone over, there are things I need to do. Good day, Miss Westerby," he added, giving me a courteous bow. With that, he was gone, taking all the sound and energy out of the room with him.
Silence fell, thick and heavy as the damp wool of Arramy's Navy coat.
I shuffled my father's papers, a blush rising in my ears.
Arramy took a step toward the door.
"Thank you," I blurted.
He went still, his hand on the door pull.
"For allowing me to have an opinion." I looked up at him. "That was... unexpected. And appreciated."
The captain frowned slightly. He didn't say anything. He just stood there, a muscle ticking in his jaw. Then he inclined his head, opened the door, and strode through the map room, making for his own cabin.
No bow, no 'you're welcome.' I blinked, then let out my breath on a short, unsurprised laugh, picked up the magnifying lens again and went back to work.
~~~
The Glorious Arrival of the Civilians was even worse than I imagined. I thought maybe there would be some raised eyebrows, perhaps a question as to why I wasn't coming down to greet them. Maybe a bit of bristle from some over my 'elevated' station. I wasn't exactly everyone's favorite on the Ang, but at least the women had been civil.
It was clear they didn't feel the need anymore.
When the Angpixen came alongside and the transfer of civilians began, even Lorren, who had joked with me while we did laundry only a few days ago, stepped down onto the main deck from the cargo swing and refused to acknowledge that I was right there, standing in plain view, waving at her from the top of the quarterdeck stairs.
I knew she could see me. Her eyes barely flicked over me before she ducked her chin to her chest and made a beeline for the main hatch, as if she couldn't get away fast enough.
She wasn't alone. One by one, all of the women who survived the Galvania made it plain what they thought.
The message was loud for all its determined silence. Whatever I was, I was not one of them. After the fifth or sixth snubbed attempt at being friendly, I closed my mouth and stopped waving as the butcher's wife, and Lorren's sister, and Pellina, and all the rest of them paraded past, some giving me scathing looks askance, some ignoring me completely, some offering an apologetic little nod but avoiding eye contact and crossing the main deck as quickly as they could.
I couldn't blame them. I had kept them all at arm's length when I was on the Ang, partly out of fear of losing another person, partly out of fear of hurting them even more by association, but mostly out of guilt. It had turned out to be quite difficult to strike up a friendship with someone who lost their mother or their child or their husband because I happened to be on the same ship.
That didn't make it hurt less when the butcher's wife spat a thick glob of saliva in my direction, or when Laffa cringed at the sight of me, yelling the word uinskyrra (soiled street woman) while making a crude sign with her fingers.
I flinched when she did it, and considered running away to find a hole to cry in. It seemed I hadn't been too far off in my predictions. A wall had gone up the minute Arramy brought me over to the Stryka alone.
In the same way someone can't help but watch a steam-engine wreck till the last cargo bin stops rolling, I didn't leave my spot by the railing. Not even when Arramy descended from the aft deck, coming to a halt beside me in time to see the last woman reach the main hatch.
If her parting glare had been a dagger, I would have died with it buried in my forehead.
"Enjoying the show, Captain?"
Arramy studied me until I gave in and looked up at him.
He wasn't gloating. He wasn't even smirking. He was regarding me calmly in that stern, steady way of his. Chastened, I offered a wan smile. "Sorry. That was unfair."
He held my gaze for a heartbeat. Then he squinted out at the chop of the broken-slate sea. "The wind is picking up." He continued past me down the stairs to the main deck. "Get inside."
How was it possible to make something that simple sound so much like a rebuke? He was right, though, blast him. Already, the waves were white-topped with spray, and the snow was whipping past at a severe angle. The survivors had been brought over not a moment too soon.
With a sigh, I went back into the warmth of the Bridge.
31. More than one Kind of Storm
32nd of Uirra
With a sickening lurch, the cabin began tilting again, rising to the prow as the Stryka climbed yet another monstrous swell. I planted both feet on the wall, grabbed at the edges of Penweather's berth box with white-knuckled fingers, and held on like a burr, waiting for the even more sickening plunge into the trough.
One. Two. And there it was. The wave crested, there was a single, breathless second of inertia, then the Stryka's ends seesawed with a groan, and down we went, the hull crashing into the water again.
Bile surged up my throat, and the need to scrabble out of that tiny, suffocating space was nearly overwhelming. The sound of loose items clattering about in the Bridge kept me from opening the door. It was only maps, probably, sextants and marking wax dumped out of their containers, but there was also the ominous tinkle and crunch of broken glass.
There wasn't any way of knowing what, exactly, was flying around out there. The only thing I had to worry about in my cabin was Penweather's ink pot, which I had forgotten to stow in his writing desk before the worst of the storm hit. Right on cue, it made another swift appearance, sliding out from under the berth box and skittering wildly over the floor as the Stryka began climbing again.
The warship's engines screamed like a savage animal below decks, pushed to the limit. Boots thumped repeatedly overhead as the captain fought to keep the bow true to the top of the oncoming peak. Again, we hung suspended in time and space, and then the world tilted, and the ink pot raced straight back beneath the berth box.
That one wasn't quite so terrifying as the last, actually. Neither was the one that came after.
When the inkpot finally began coming to a stop only halfway to the other wall of the cabin, I uncurled my fingers from the bed frame, slightly convinced that the worst was over.
I had just pushed myself up to sit on the edge of the bunk when my door swung open.
Arramy stood there in the doorway like a great, hulking sea spirit, soaking wet and dripping water all over the floor. His jaw tightened as he took in the ink splatters on the walls and the fact that I was alive and sitting up, then he turned around and stumped back out into the Bridge, where he began straightening things with military precision.
The mess wasn't nearly as bad as I had imagined. All of the heavier furniture was
bolted down and only a few smaller items had been jostled free of their places or spilled onto the floor.
I stood up on shaky legs and joined him, bending to gather a few map tubes that had fallen out of their cubicles. Then I righted the map table stools. The shattered glass was trickier. It was everywhere and seemed to have been some sort of jar or beaker, the shards curved and thin. I was sweeping it up with the hand broom when Commander Kyro came in, just as soggy and disheveled as Arramy, his woolen hat clinging to his head, his beard clotted with bits of snow and ice.
"We've got a problem, sir," he grated out, voice rough from shouting against the wind. His expression was grim, and he didn't so much as hesitate when he saw me, his attention locked on the captain. "There was damage below. One of the fuel drums came loose and broke. Ruined a bin of dry goods..."
Arramy was already out the door, Kyro hard on his heels, both of them striding swiftly across the quarterdeck. Snatches of Kyro's continuing report came back to me on the winter wind: "... gotten into the water tanks somehow. Three of the filtration devices are broken. Bilge pump was shot all to blazes... One spark is all it'll take..."
Wide-eyed, I moved to close the door after them, pausing to peer out into a storm-scudded dawn. The gale out there might have died down, but a storm of another sort was already upon us. There hadn't been any water, fuel, or food to spare.
~~~
As if to mock us, the clouds rolled away as the sun rose, leaving the sky a crisp, pure azure and the sea at a gentle roll.
Meanwhile, the ship had turned itself inside out. Tarpaulins had been spread on the deck, and all of the contents of the hold were dragged topside to be rinsed free of fuel, if possible. If not, it was tossed overboard as a fire hazard. The bilge had been flushed, also, and the sharp scent of chemical sealant drifted through the ship as the carpenters went through the unwholesome, grimy task of trying to keep any fuel residue from leaching back out of the hull.
The Bridge was quiet for quite a while. Not even any of the midshipmen came in. All able hands were needed elsewhere.
I finished cleaning up the map room, the council room, and the ink stains in my cabin, then, for lack of anything better to do, I checked the mending basket. There was a torn mitten that the cabin boys hadn't gotten to yet, so I found my mending box and went to sit in the Bridge where the late-morning light was streaming in through the porthole.
The captain and the commander came in a few minutes later, shedding their damp longcoats, hats, and gloves.
Kyro shook the water off his boots. "All I'm saying is that fuel drums don't just jump out of their bins, sir."
"I'll speak to Pierce again," Arramy said wearily. He saw me sitting there and paused, but then walked past me to the bell panel to ring the galley for a tray. Then he lit the lamps beneath the map table and set about scribbling measurements and figures on a piece of paper.
I kept working, hating the thought of cooping myself up in Penweather's coffin of a cabin unless I absolutely had to.
Arramy stopped scribbling. At the sound of a low, frustrated growl, I looked up to find him standing there with his head bowed and his eyes closed. Then he sighed and did the calculations again, rechecking numbers and angles. He stared at them, then swore out loud, grabbed a wax stick, and made a mark on the glass covering the map he was using.
Kyro regarded the map table, arms crossed over his chest, brows low. "How are we that far off course?"
The captain gripped the edge of the table and glared off into nothing, lost in thought, eyes a gleam of liquid silver beneath a fierce frown. After a moment he went perfectly still, his gaze homing in on my face. Suddenly, he straightened and crossed the Bridge to the ladder that led up to the aft deck, scaling it fast.
With a stymied glance at me, Kyro followed, but then stepped back when Arramy came sliding back down the ladder. He grabbed his still-sodden longcoat, yanked it on, and slammed out onto the quarterdeck, bellowing for the signal lantern as he made a beeline for the main deck.
Kyro rolled his eyes. "Trot after him like a dog, these days," he muttered, donning his own coat and hat. He gave me a bow and a gruff, "Miss Westerby," as he left, closing the door behind him.
I had barely taken another stitch when the door opened again, and Des'Cready came in with a tray of hot tea, dark bread and cheese.
He cast a befuddled look around, but then put the tray on the map table. "There's enough for you, too, Miss. Last bit of bread we'll have for a while, I'm afraid. When the captain comes back in, do try to get him to eat, will you? If you can."
And then he was gone, too.
I frowned and put down the mitten. What in all blazes was going on?
~~~
Less than an hour later I found out.
The captain came back up to the Bridge, but this time it was NaVarre, not Kyro, who followed him in, and they were both spoiling for a fight.
Latching the map room door behind them, Arramy started in, voice low and intense. "We are two quadrants off course. That didn't happen in one night. How didn't you know?"
I had only just gone into my cabin to have a cup of tea, and I turned, watching through the half-open door to my cabin as Arramy began removing his gloves and scarf. Again.
NaVarre took his broad-brimmed hat off, revealing a riot of damp, inky ringlets. He shoved his hands through his hair, trying to slick it away from his face as he snapped, "Until just now, I didn't have any more reason to doubt my compass than you did, Captain. I wouldn't be surprised if yours was off-true, but both ships? That's something else. I have to ask, how well do you really know your men?"
Arramy paused in undoing the togs on his longcoat to glare a hole through NaVarre's skull. "You tend your shop, I'll tend mine. I didn't bring you over to talk politics. The Stryka lost a tun of water and nearly a quarter of our dry goods in the storm, not to mention the fuel we burned in the worst of it. We won't make the colonial coastline, even at half rations on a kind wind."
"What is this, then?" NaVarre asked slowly, gone still as stone. "You're making sure I don't cut line and leave you to your fate? Is that it?"
For a second, Arramy regarded him before giving a reluctant nod and a terse, "The thought entered my mind, aye, but I gave my word. You're free to leave. I brought you over because there is one landfall we could make a run for."
With a heavy sigh, NaVarre followed Arramy's unspoken implication. "The Rimrocks. You want me to take you to the Rimrocks."
"I don't like it any more than you do, but it's the only land mass we have a hope of reaching." Arramy lifted a sardonic brow. "And I'm fairly sure you know those shoals."
NaVarre frowned in thought for a moment, lips pursed as he considered the situation laid out on the map table. Then he came to a decision and nodded. "I'll do you one better. I'll take you to Aethscaul. We can leave the civilians and your crew there, where my people can keep an eye on them. Then we can take the Coralynne right into my plantation port south of the city and save having to anchor up-coast."
Hanging their coats on the pegs by the door and tossing their gloves on the heating grate, the two of them went through into the council room and shut the door. Their conversation was muted after that, but I had heard enough.
I stood there, staring through the gap between the cabin door and the jamb. Then I sat down on the edge of the berth box, my tea forgotten.
The Rimrocks.
Islands of infamy, shrouded in mist and bathed in... more infamy.
Aunt Sapphine would have been prancing around, grinning ear to ear like a little girl picked for Snowflower Queen. She had tried for years to scrape together a crew brave enough for an exploratory expedition to the islands.
Now I was going whether I wanted to or not.
I could admit to feeling a quiet buzz of anticipation. Perhaps a little dread. To my knowledge, no one who had gone into the Rimrocks had come back out to tell about it. There were only a handful of places you could get a large ship safely through them, and those were all to
ward the northern end where the islands were little more than rocks jutting up from a shallow sea shelf.
The interior islands were usually noted on an atlas as a vague, foggy area occupied by sunken ships and crossbones. Whole freighters went missing if they blundered too close to that blurred-out area on the map. Now I could hazard a guess as to why: the Rimrocks were NaVarre's hub of operations.
Perhaps Aethscaul was his base, then? That would make sense, really, given what Father had said about it in his letter. Islands could have beaches.
Which brought up another problem: we weren't going straight to Nimkoruguithu and this Lion's Perch pub.
I had the niggling feeling that this new development was going to turn out badly in some unforeseen way. Father wouldn't have told us where to go if that wasn't the next step. There was no way to tell what the outcome was going to be if we did something else, and the uncertainty sat sour in my stomach.
32. Speaking of Calm
32nd of Uirra, Continued
I had just finished tidying up my hair before heading to the Loftman's Gallery for dinner when someone tapped at my cabin door. I opened it to find Evers standing there like a half-sized officer, hands clasped neatly behind his back.
"Pardon, Miss, but Cap'n wants everyone out on the deck sharpish. He's ta make a ship-wide 'nouncement."
I raised a brow.
Evers blinked, and blushed a little beneath his freckles. Then, to my surprise, he held out his arm and gave me a courtly little bow. "M'lady."
I fought off a grin and sank into a full curtsy as I took his offered elbow. "Lead on, kind sir," I said. Very serious.
Evers straightened, then about-faced and escorted me through the Bridge and out onto the quarterdeck, his movements stiff and formal as a little windup soldier.
The 'nouncement' had apparently already started.
Arramy was standing in the outward curve of the quarterdeck balconette overlooking the main deck, where what seemed to be every crewman and civilian on the ship had gathered around the masts.
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