“Clean this deck,” she said, “coil the ropes, stack the shot and tie down the gallowbows. Get Tide Child ready to fly and fight, for that is what we will be doing, make no mistake about it. And I know you are a rough lot, so when the time comes” – her eyes roved around, settled on Kanvey, settled on Cwel, settled on Barlay – “that you feel the need to test me. Then do it like deckchilder, do it to my face.” She rested her hand on the hilt of her sword. “Because the Bern sought to give me to the ships as a light when I was a babe, even after the sea returned me. And in the ceremony the Mother came upon them, and she said I would not die then as sacrifice and I would not die in treachery, you hear? She said I’d die fighting. So unless you question the will of the Maiden or the Mother or the Hag, you’ll pull your blade to my face, ey?” Again her roving eye, her fierce, bird-of-prey features waiting for a reply that never came. Only silence faced her. “Well, to it then! Move!” And they did, and inside Joron something twisted, and he learned – in a moment of shock and revelation – how much he desired what she had, that easy command, the way she barely seemed to feel the weight of the two-tailed hat on her head. “Twiner” – she spat on the deck – “come with me to the great cabin.”
“No.” This from Barlay. The woman stepped forward, flakes of skin had caught in the blue dye of her short hair. Her cheeks pale as ice and her eyes almost hidden within the round of her face. From a pocket in her deck trews she took out a crumpled black object and held it up. “Order us to clean the ship . . . well, you wear the two tails and few are more worthy, so it is your right. But you’ll not take that” – she pointed at Joron – “to the great cabin like he is your second.” She unfolded a black rag, the onetail, the hat of the deckkeeper, second in command on the deck of a boneship, and she placed it on her head. It barely fitted, just perched on the crown looking ridiculous, and only waiting for a stiff wind to snatch it away. “He wants my place, he must take it.”
A shiver of fear down him, like cold sea making its way inside a heavy stinker coat, freezing him all the way to his bones.
“I want your place,” said Meas, stepping down from the rump, “and I want it for him for my own reasons and I do not need to share them.” A circle began to grow about the two women. “So I will take the hat from you, for my own reasons and I do not need to share them either.” Barlay’s hand went to the curnow at her side and Meas shook her head. “No no, my lass. A strong girl like yourself has no need of a sword. I am a slip of a thing and sure you could squeeze the life from me without too much trouble, ey?”
Barlay eyed her, suspicious but unable to disagree, and she nodded.
“But think this, lass. You won that hat through strength, ey? But your accent says you are from Glenhulme, where they breed for strength and naught else. So, lass, how are your numbers, ey?” Meas crouched by the rumpspine, dipped her hand for luck into the pot of red paint at the bottom, finding it almost dry. Then she spattered what paint she found on the deck to join the lines and dots already there and stood, touching her fingers to her face, leaving red dots on her cheeks and stepping forward. “How is your hand for holding a quill and taking my notes, ey?” Meas stepped forward again and what Joron saw seemed impossible: Barlay – huge, frightening Barlay – took a step back. It was as if each of Meas’s words was a lash of the whip.
“Strength is what is needed for a ship, naught else,” said Barlay. Now she stepped forward, pulled herself up so she towered over Meas.
The shipwife did not waver.
“How do you calculate the quickest course between islands, ey lass? How do you understand the courser’s notes? How do you steer when you cannot see Skearith’s Eye? How do you read the map and know the reefs? How close can you travel to Skearith’s Spine without losing the wind?” Each word a fist that battered Barlay back once more, but Joron could feel the woman’s building anger the same way he felt a storm on his skin, could see it in the red of her face, usually as pale as his was dark. “How do you—”
Barlay moved, running forward with a scream of rage, great meaty fists swinging. Meas ducked, sidestepped and kicked out, sending the bigger woman sprawling on the deck. From there she was on her, straddling her back, using her slight weight to twist a massive arm back and push it against the joint until Barlay was silenced, her anger reduced to grunts of agony. Meas leaned over, her hiss loud enough for all to hear. “I see in you, Barlay, a strength I will sore need at the steering oar, you hear? I see a place by me on the rump, you hear? But I do not see you wearing that hat, ey?”
“Hag take you!” screeched Barlay. “Hag take you, Meas Gilbryn! You take the storm-cursed hat then.”
And Meas did. Picking it from where it had fallen on the deck and standing, walking away without looking back as if she were not worried that the bigger woman might attack again.
As she passed him she threw him the hat.
“The great cabin, Joron, and be quick, or” – Meas pointed at the hat, limp in his hand – “she may want that back.”
He followed Lucky Meas down the steep stairs, through the hatch and steadying himself on the rail – one hand for the ship one hand for himself. As the deck blocked the sun he descended to darkness. The bowpeeks on the side of Tide Child were tied open, but they let in little light and did little to cool the ship. The heat down here was of a different set: more oppressive, more solid. It had substance. Where the heat above was dry and stark, this was moist and enveloping; it sucked you in, stole your breath.
The smell of confined humans was almost unbearable.
They were forced to walk bent over, heads bowed to avoid the overbones, staring at the deck below, stripes of light from the bowpeeks showing the scuffed and variegated floor – black to grey to white to grey to black – where the crew had run and scratched and pulled objects over it. These were the stripes of his shame as much as any scars left on a deckchilder’s back by the cord, showing how he had neglected Tide Child, and every step he took, past poorly stowed hammocks and through the stink of rubbish, made him feel smaller. Somewhere, water had got in and been left to pool – when had he last worked the pumps? – and started the arakeesian bones of the ship rotting. That smell was always there, always somewhere on a ship, but now, too late, he realised it was too strong; the not-quite-unbearable stink of rotting bone filled the underdeck, a greasy grey stink to rotting flesh’s purple stench.
In the great cabin sat his chest.
He wondered, once again, if the lock would still be in place.
Meas opened the door. It creaked. One of the panes of glass in the door was broken, a serrated crack running across it, prints from greasy hands around it. Meas paused for a moment, running a long slender finger along the crack. When she took her hand away there was a smear of blood left on the glass, like a promise of violence.
The great cabin was Tide Child in negative, the only place on the ship that had been left bone-white. The boneboards of the floor, cut from the wide bones of what must have been an enormous arakeesian, were scuffed and smudged with dirt. Still, the whiteness of the place was shocking – the intent of course, meant to dazzle any crew entering the domain of the shipwife. Meas strode across it, manifestly undazzled. The desk of cured varisk and gion and the chair that married it had been pushed to the side, away from the windows at the rear which let light stream in. She grabbed the desk, pulled it so it sat in front of the windows, gave it small shoves and pushes until it found its place – a rut that it had worn into the bone over the many years of its existence until it had become comfortable there. An imperceptible place on the deck where it had always sat and a place she knew would be there, had not even had to think about being there. This was her world, it was what she knew, what she was.