“Ey,” she said. And all the while they spoke Dinyl stared at him and Joron had to fight the urge to fidget under his judgement. In all things of the fleet he knew Dinyl was his better – the man had been favoured by Indyl Karrad and gone to the grand bothies of the fleet to study, while Joron was simply a fisher’s son. And yet Meas had, for her own reasons, chosen him over Dinyl and two years had passed since that day. One year since he had cut Dinyl’s hand from his body to save Meas, and destroyed the budding relationship he had with the man. And every day Joron had to work hard to ensure none saw that Dinyl was a better officer, one more suited to command than he was. Every day he had to work and live under the cold, judgemental gaze of a man who had once been his shipfriend, his comfort and his warmth.
“They will be glad to see us at Safeharbour,” said Joron, “and glad of more hands to put to building. How large is the colony now?”
“A thousand, last I heard,” said Meas. “And it grows. Those with a desire for peace hear of it, and they find us, or we find them.”
“Your mother will find us one day, Meas, you know that,” said Dinyl, his words blowing a cold wind into the cabin. Meas stared at the chart, nodded.
“I do not doubt she knows already.”
“And yet she has not moved against us?” said Joron.
“Karrad is her spymaster, he controls what information comes to her. She may know of our movement but not the size of it. She probably does not think us worth moving against.”
Dinyl nodded. “Let us hope so,” he said.
They flew across the sea for a week and a day, the wind kind and the services of the gullaime unneeded. Every time Joron passed the gullaime’s nest room the windshorn was still there. He never saw it eat, never saw it drink, never heard it talk nor saw it move, and though it was Joron’s nature to want to help all those he saw suffer, he dared not for fear of upsetting the friendship he had with the windtalker.
Still, it seemed that their passage would be an easy one, and no deckchilder ever complained when their way was eased, and the weather, if not becoming warm, at least lost some of its bite.
“Ship rising!”
The shout came on Joron’s watch, in that morran moment where Skearith’s Eye was not yet fully open and gilded the early clouds with silver and the lapping sea with gold. At the call he was up the mainspine. Not with the ease of Meas or the deckchilder, and Joron would never have that – he still had dark moments haunted by the frailty of his body and memories of his father’s death – but with more ease than he had once been capable of. The topboy pointed out the sighting, four points of the landward shadow, and Joron took Meas’s nearglass from within his stinker coat and found the ship. Two spines, black sails.
“A ship of the dead,” he said. “I think it is our allies in the Snarltooth, but being overly prepared never hurt a ship.” He leaned over the side of the topboy’s perch and shouted down. “Farys! Call the shipwife, clear the decks for action!” And then he heard Farys call out and a moment later the bell rang out and the drums beat and he knew the deck below would be like the ground around an insect nest disturbed by a foraging kivelly, the crew boiling out of the hatches to strip Tide Child down and prepare for combat.
By the time he was back on the slate Tide Child was arrayed for war: bowcrews stood by their bows, ropes were arrayed across the deck and he knew that below the smaller cabins of the D’older and the deckmother and hatkeep, walls would be down, hammocks stowed against the sides of the hull, bows ready to be untrussed. Meas stood on the rump of the ship.
“Ship rising, Shipwife.” He was always surprised by how calm he could make those words, as if they were not harbingers of death, pain and havoc. “Four points off the landward shadow.” He held out the nearglass and she took it from him, climbing a few steps up the rumpspine and hanging, one arm wrapped around a rope, her feet against the bottom of the bone as she stared out across the dancing, gilded water.
“It is the Snarltooth. He flies message flags and makes for us.” She put the nearglass away and turned to Barlay on the steering oar. “Three points to landward of the shadow,” she said. “Ready to meet with Snarltooth and receive Shipwife Brekir.” She turned, looking for her steward, Mevans, who was, as usual, already there before he was requested.
“I will arrange food and drink, Shipwife,” he said with a grin, bobbing his head. Then she turned to find the deckmother, Solemn Muffaz.
“Coughlin and his seaguard will be ready to receive Shipwife Brekir, Shipwife Meas,” said Solemn Muffaz. He received a nod of acceptance from Meas, not thanks, as this was what the shipwife expected. Tide Child ran as a fleet ship now, her ship. No slackers, no slatelayers, none who did not know their place; and if she could not trust them all? Well, that may be true, but she trusted enough to know the ship was hers. It ran her way, and her way was to run it well.
So, when Shipwife Brekir left her ship to climb Tide Child she was met with a ladder and was whistled aboard. The seaguard, in blue uniforms Meas had supplied herself, stood with curnows raised to greet her and she could have been any great shipwife from any great fleet boneship, not what she was: the disgraced shipwife of a supposed enemy vessel.
Brekir stood tall on the slate of Tide Child. She was from the south, like Joron’s family had been and her skin was even darker than his. Unlike Joron, she rarely smiled and carried the feel of a sea drizzle along with her, though Joron knew that beneath the dour exterior a wicked wit lurked. With her she brought two of her deckchilder and her deckkeeper, who was as big as almost any three others with a beard covering almost half his face, dangling down to his belly. He looked around suspiciously, for he, like Brekir, was a Gaunt Islander and the Tide Child was a Hundred Isles ship – nominally his enemy, if not for the dream of peace which united them.
“So it is true then,” the deckkeeper said quietly to Brekir, “we are traitors.”
“You have a problem with that, Vulse?”
“Oh no, Shipwife.” Something sparkled in his eye. “In fact it brings me great pleasure.”
Behind them stood a woman, small and bent and shivering, who glanced about herself as though frightened Skearith the Stormbird herself was about to descend and pluck her from the deck of the ship. Joron wished to reach out to her as he recognised the woman as a fisher from her clothes, a position in life fate had decreed for him. Though his body was sound and whole his mother had died in childbirth and he would never be chosen as Kept, his bloodline judged as weak in a land that only valued the strong. One of the fisher’s arms was bent out of true and she stared miserably at the deck, uncomfortable around the officers, but Joron knew he could offer her no comfort.
“How goes it, Shipwife Brekir?” said Meas. “Well, I hope?”
Brekir shook her head. “I see you have been busy,” she said, nodding toward the hulk they towed.
“Ey, I thought that Safeharbour could use another ship.”
“Well, I bring ill and iller news for you, Meas,” said Brekir.
“We shall go to my great cabin,” said Meas. “If I must sup bitter news let us at least do it over sweet drinks, ey?” Brekir nodded and Meas led them down through the ship to her great cabin where a table waited, laid with the best plates, and what food they had left that passed as half decent.