When she sat behind the desk she took a moment, looked around. Stopped. Became still. A breeze from somewhere pushed a strand of coloured hair across her face, set a feather a-twisting and charms a-tinkling on her tight deep-blue uniform jacket.
The silence oppressed him, forced him to speak because she clearly had no need to, not yet. As he opened his mouth he realised he stood at attention, not at ease, not slouching. The tautening of his muscles had crept upon him as quietly as a sea fret creeps up on the land.
“Why?” he said.
“Why?” She let it hang. It was not a question she asked of him, maybe it was a question she asked of herself because she did not yet fully understand her reasons. “Why?” she said again. Above, the stamp of feet, the growl and hiss of brushes pushing water across the deck, the thump of objects being stowed and the shouts of women and men up and down the rigging of Tide Child’s spines and wings.
“Why give me this?” He held out the crumpled one-tailed hat. “Why fight to give it to me?”
“A shipwife needs to show a crew she is strong, and it gave me the opportunity to do that. It will cow them, for a while, ey?” She nodded to herself, ran her hands across the desk, stretching her arms out to either side. “And I did not lie, either. I need my second to understand numbers, so tell me I have not chosen badly, Joron Twiner. You know numbers, right? And you read?”
He nodded.
“How did you know?”
“Joron Twiner is a fisher’s name, so I presume you are a fisher’s son?”
He nodded.
“I have never met a fisher who did not plan for their child to be more, though the Sea Hag knows our world may be a better one with more fishers and less fighters.” She mumbled that last, running her hands over the desk, along the cured leaves which had been bound to it to create a flat writing surface, and back in front of her. She looked up. “Where are your charts?”
A shock upon him, a paralysis that made him long to take a pull at the flask on his hip, for the charts lay in the hands of the pilot who had guided his ship here, into Keyshanblood Bay. He had traded them for knowledge and coin, spending the money on drink and food to take to the tumbledown bothy that had let him hide from his fate.
Hide. A joke of course. The Hag sees all and never forgets.
“Charts? I . . .” He had no answer, no honourable way to finish the sentence.
“Sold ’em for drink, ey?” He started to make an excuse, expecting condemnation as she stood. “Listen to me, Joron Twiner.” She stepped around the desk and towards him, keeping her voice low. “A ship is a world, you understand? And this ship is mine now, my world, my rules. My word here is law to all who fly with us. What happened before Tide Child felt the weight of my heels on the deck? Well, that is between you and the Hag and I care nothing for it. We will deal with it as we have to.” She stared up at the overbones, listening to the rasp of brushes on the slate deck. “Hear that? We make the decks clean so we may begin our work, and I have much work for us to do. So truth is what I need at this moment, for I have a purpose and little time to get about it.” He waited a moment, expecting some trick from this sudden gentleness, but she said nothing, leaving only space in the air for his words.
“There are no charts.”
“Very well. We will pick some up when we return to Bernshulme, together with supplies and wages for the crew to send to their families, if they have them. For now, go to the hold, make sure we have at least four days’ food and water in, and send me the courser and tell them to bring charcoal. We shall write our charts upon the deck in here, and you shall check the numbers for me.”
“But the courser is—”
“Very likely better at that than both of us, ey, but I do not know that, not yet. Until I do you and I shall also check what they say. You understand?” He nodded. “Be gone now, Joron Twiner.” He turned but as he reached the door she spoke again. “I forget, one other thing.” His fingers twitched for want of the door handle in them, to be out of this place, to be out of her presence.
“Yes?”
“You address me as Shipwife, Deckkeeper.” The hardness back.
“Yes, Shipwife.”
“Before they condemned you, Joron Twiner, how long did you say had you been in the Hundred Isles fleet?”
“I had not, Shipwife.”
“Not even for a day?”
“No. Shipwife, not even for a day.”
He could almost hear her confusion, her wondering what strange circumstance had led to him being here, shipwife of a black ship at nineteen years old, and not lain in the sea with his veins open, hoping he bled out before the creatures of the deep found him. But she did not ask, and when she said no more he took his leave, out of the light of the great cabin and into the darkness of the underdeck. All along the deck glowed wanelights, the skulls of kivelly birds filled with skyfish oil, which let out a dim light, glowing through bone.
Shipwife, deckkeeper, deckholder, courser and windtalker, all had their own cabins next to each other in the rear of the ship, though he had only ever seen the inside of the great cabin. The courser and the windtalker made him uneasy in different ways and he found it best to avoid them, and the deckkeeper’s cabin had belonged to Barlay, who frightened him with her size and potential for violence. He knocked on the courser’s door, then silently cursed himself to the Northstorm for it. A deckkeeper had no need to knock; he was the shipwife’s hand and could go where he wanted.
“Enter.” Their voice soft. He entered, finding the courser sitting on their bed, dirty white robes pooled around them and the cabin filled with a sweet-smelling incense that failed to keep the general stink of the ship at bay.
“The shipwife wishes to see you in her cabin,” he said. Joron could not see their face under the hood of their robe. He wondered at the sudden curiosity that filled him, the desire to pull the hood back and find out whether they appeared male or female. Would he even be able to tell? But he did nothing, only stood, staring ahead like a new recruit desperate to avoid the eyes of an officer.
“Me?” said the courser. “But I have no charts.” Was there an edge there? Blame? There should be, but he found the courser’s soft voice as impossible to read as the strange whirling sigils and signs drawn on the walls of their cabin that talked of the great storms that ringed the world.
“The shipwife says bring charcoal and draw on the floor.”
“Well,” said the courser, “if the shipwife wants, I shall obey.” The courser levered themselves off the bed and carefully put out the incense burner – fire was always a worry. Bone may not burn easily but the glue used to fuse boneships together was flammable. The slight figure brushed past Joron, and he wondered what someone so unassuming could possibly have done to have found themselves among the condemned. He touched the birdfoot he kept strung around his neck, taking a little solace from the rough scales and sharp talons while whispering a few syllables to the Sea Hag, in hope of redemption when he stood in front of the bonepyre deep below the water.
He left the cabin and closed the door. On the way down into the belly of the ship he passed Cwell, as small as the courser but far more dangerous. She watched him with bright eyes from under her mop of stringy grey hair.