“I was beginning to think you’d changed your mind,” he adds, his tone light. “Welcome to the Swanflight.” He gestures wide toward the rest of the main deck.
“Swanflight?” I fight against the image of stone swans spewing out water, of my father coming toward me.
“It’s the name of the ship,” he clarifies. “But don’t worry. I’ve made sure there aren’t any one-legged swans onboard.” He winks, and just like that, my anxiety is gone. My stomach still feels jittery, just not for the reason it had been before.
“Don’t let Phipps and Thipps bother you.” He waves his hand dismissively at each twin as he names them. “They’re harmless.” He leans down and whispers, “The only way to tell them apart is by looking at their teeth. One’s got a gold tooth and one doesn’t. The problem is, I can never remember which one has the tooth.”
“I heard that,” one of the twins shouts. “You can tell us apart because I tie ropes better than Phipps. And I raise a sail faster too.”
“That’s not true,” Phipps cuts in.
Aris laughs and shakes his head. He bends close to me. “Just never enter into any bets with those two. They’ll win every time. I can’t count how much I’ve lost to them over the years.” He says it like he doesn’t care. I guess when you have as much money as he does, it really doesn’t matter. “One time I had to climb up to the crow’s nest naked and sing an ode to Poseidon after losing at a game of Drown the Cup.”
I blush at his words.
He holds his hands up defensively. “I’ve always been a man of my word, so I had to go through with it. It’s a good thing I’ve got a good voice, though,” he adds. “Otherwise, I’m sure Poseidon would’ve sunk us right there.”
I can’t help but laugh as he draws me aboard, and I don’t look back as my feet leave the dock.
Ropes coil around tall poles and pegs along the deck while gathered sails hang like curtains from the masts. Various sized crates are strapped down along the outer edge of the deck. I run my gloved fingers over the ropes holding them in place. I can’t believe I’m actually on a real ship.
Farther down the deck, stairs lead up to another deck, which contains the helm. Below it is a door leading deeper into the ship. The whole place smells of fish.
I want to run along naming every part of the ship I know, explore the lower decks, and stand at the helm and pretend I’m leading the ship out of the harbor.
Aris clasps sailors on their shoulders and cheerily greets them as we pass.
“This is our fine captain, Royce Denes.” Aris gestures to an approaching man.
“You’re not the captain?” I ask Aris.
“No, I leave all the navigating to him. I’m just the financier.”
When the captain reaches us, I realize he’s the man in the blue coat I saw watching me. I should’ve realized that most captains wear blue as a sign of their rank. Even the captains in the Armada do.
He’s as tall as Aris, but not as muscular. Up close, his hair is even wilder. Loose strands hang over his forehead, falling just short of covering his eyebrows. It’s the haircut of a man who’d been a long time at sea.
Royce’s name sounds vaguely familiar, and I wonder if he is the son of a lesser nobleman. There are far too many families to know them all by name. Or more precisely, if I’d been a proper princess, I would’ve been trained to recite them. But I am not a proper princess. Not by a long stretch.
“Royce, this is Kora.” Aris keeps his voice low, so none of the other sailors will hear. But he doesn’t tell the captain I’m a princess, for which I’m relieved.
I worry my name will be a dead giveaway, but Royce doesn’t react. I guess there must’ve been enough parents who named their daughters after me before I was cursed for it not to raise his suspicions.
But I worry I won’t be able to keep my secret for long, that if the captain knew who I was before we left port, he would leave me and my curse behind.
“A pleasure to meet you, my lady.” Royce bows, but the motion is forced, and I can immediately tell he has none of Aris’s charm. His gaze is directed at me, but it’s like he’s looking through me to monitor his crew on the docks below. Unlike most of the men we passed, he doesn’t squint to see what’s concealed beneath my hood. I notice his eyes are a deep blue, so deep that I might be looking through them to the ocean beyond.
But it’s not his eyes I fixate on. It’s his blue captain’s jacket. Gold buttons run in two lines down the front. Golden threads weave a wide web of loops over his shoulders. Even his cufflinks are gold.
The sight of it overwhelms me, and I take a few jagged steps backward toward the gangplank before my legs go rigid. I never realized until now how much Pheus has done to protect me from gold by keeping it out of the castle.
Aris might understand my having some sort of mental connection to the cursed gold, but how would he react if he found out what I could do?
I glance down the gangplank, wondering if it isn’t too late to flee, but Phipps or Thipps is rolling a barrel up and complaining under his breath how this one is so much heavier than all the rest.
I’m trapped. It’s like I can feel a golden noose tightening around my throat, cutting off my air supply. I shift my gaze toward the sea. I’ve always loved looking at the ocean from my balcony. It reminds me of my mother.
Tension drains from my body as I watch the even waves. Thoughts of the gold recede slightly, at least enough for me to remember why I can’t turn back.
“Aren’t you awfully young to be a captain?” I ask Royce, hoping he doesn’t take offense.
Royce clears his throat, but Aris answers, “He might be young, but he’s better than any older captain who lived through the Orfland Wars.”
“Not many captains did live through the Wars,” Royce says quietly.
“I see,” I say, not knowing what else I can add. I eye Royce, careful to keep my eyes from drifting to the gold. He must be very lucky if he survived. “When do we set sail, Captain?” I ask.
“We’re loading the last of the supplies now,” Royce says, and this time, he doesn’t add a my lady. He’s nothing like the dashing, romantic captains I’ve read about. I bet that even if he found out I was royalty, he’d still treat me with the same curtness. It’s a sobering reminder that I have no authority at sea.
“The captain has been good enough to give up his quarters for you to use,” Aris says to make conversation, since Royce certainly isn’t going to. “I wanted you to have the best cabin. It won’t be like anything you’re used to, but I’ve already taken all the necessary actions to ensure that it is as comfortable as possible.”
“Thank you,” I say. As I do, there’s a great scraping noise as the gangplank is pulled onto the ship.
“Excuse me,” Royce says. He moves toward where Phipps and Thipps are dragging up the gangplank and begins shouting that if they scrape the deck, they’ll be made cabin boys for the voyage.
“Perhaps you’d like to watch us cast off with me?” Aris offers me his arm.
We head toward the rear of the ship and lean against the wood railing. When the ship pulls slowly away from the dock, several ropes slither off the dock and into the water. Sailors pull them up, winding them around various pegs.