There aren’t really any good deaths if you try to board my ship.
I think about all the systems working together. The mining gear, the propellers that the ship uses for motion, the armor—the dredge is like a person, with each system combining to make a whole. There are ways to disengage the systems from the main motor, but we rarely have occasion to do that. And everything takes their energy from the solar conduits. It’s efficient. My ship runs smooth.
This is not your river.
It’s time to look into the matter of the note written on the map. I have another hour before I need to be up at the helm.
First, the logistics room. Maybe I’ll find a map there with a piece cut out. Although it seems unlikely I’ll be that lucky. And I want to talk to the ship’s cartographer, Eira Clyde. The young woman with dark hair.
In the hallway, I run into Brig. Since I’m the captain, most people step aside or flatten themselves against the wall. Not Brig.
“I’d like to talk with you,” he says.
“Good,” I say. “I need to speak with you as well. Go ahead.”
I’m tall, but he’s taller, and we both have to duck our heads under the dredge’s low ceiling. It makes for awkward eye contact, which I like, because when we’re sitting down or fully standing Brig can draw himself up to his full height and look down on me.
“That man who wanted to desert,” Brig says. “Would you really have put him off the ship? He thinks so. The crew thinks so.”
As is the case every time I’ve spoken with Brig, I can feel his charisma, his pull. He’s handsome, but it’s more than that. The timbre of his voice, maybe, and the way he looks you full in the eyes. Most people don’t. They end up glancing away. There’s a subtle force to Brig that makes me try to take up more space so he can have less.
“Of course,” I say.
He nods, as if that’s the answer he expected. I get the sense that there’s something more he wants to say, but after a beat of our quiet and the ship’s noise, I speak instead.
“When Jonah Miller tried to desert,” I say, “why did you bring him to the cafeteria, when you knew I was holding a meeting? Why didn’t you lock him down in his room and keep him there until later?”
“I brought him in because I thought you’d want to make an example out of him,” Brig says.
“I don’t care about examples,” I say. “If something bad happens, I want the least amount of people to know about it. I want everyone to keep quiet and do their work. It’s loud enough on this ship as it is.”
“Captain.” It’s not quite an acknowledgment. There’s a hint of objection in Brig’s voice.
“And I want you,” I say, “to follow my orders. This ship needs me to run. It does not need you.”
Call used to laugh when I’d threaten someone, another worker on the scrap yard, another child on the playground when we were small. “You couldn’t hurt anything,” he’d say.
“They don’t know that,” I told him.
“But I do,” Call said.
Now, though, I think even Call would believe me when I say it.
“We must have similar concerns about this voyage,” Brig says. “It would be helpful if we could discuss them.”
“All I need from you,” I say, “is to follow my orders.”
Brig looks like he might speak again but I turn away, brushing his chest with my shoulder in the tight hallway as I pass by.
There is not nearly enough room on this ship.
* * *
• • •
When the time came for Call and me to move out of the orphanage and into the quarters out at the scrap yard, we walked there together, our packs slung over our shoulders. We stopped in our tracks at the same time in front of the huge mural painted on the cinder-block exterior of the dormitory.
The Outpost is full of murals. In some ways I liked them because they lent color to the buildings. But the lack of proportion in the people bothered me. They were all depicted in the same style—the men had impossibly large muscles and broad shoulders, the women had nipped-in waists and enormous eyes. The painted people stared at us as we went inside the dormitory.
“They’re watching us,” he said.
“They’re jealous,” I said. “We can move and they can’t,” and I stuck out my tongue at them, which made Call laugh.
We were still only friends, then, Call and I. It was over the course of the next year, when we walked past each other in the scrap yard all day long and sat together at dinner at night, that things changed. We’d always been close, but our new lives brought us closer. We had the same marks on our hands, same cuts from the metal. We told each other stories of our days, of the frustration we both felt at the work we were doing, how all we ever did was fix things, how we never got to build anything. We both felt like time was running out. We felt the urgency of our lives in a new way, that we should at least do something with them.
And we fell in love. I remember thinking how strange and right it was, that I could know that I wanted a different life and yet also know I wanted this person, same and new, with me.
CHAPTER 7
AS THE CAPTAIN, I’m entitled to go anywhere on the ship at any time, so I open the door of the logistics room without knocking. Eira turns, a pencil tucked behind her ear, another in her hand.
“Captain Blythe,” she says. “How can I help you?”
“I need a map.” I don’t want to tell her about the note. After all, she’s just as likely as anyone else to have left it. More so, in fact; she has the easiest access to all the maps.
“Of course,” she says. The logistics room is tiny, lined with metal cabinets with long thin drawers. In the middle of the room there’s a small, bolted-down table with a chair. “Which one?”
“I want the most detailed map you have for this part of the river.”
“I think that map was placed in your quarters at the beginning of the voyage,” she says.
“I’d like for you to look again,” I say. “I’ll help. I promise I’ll keep things in order. I don’t want to hamper your work.”
Eira nods and moves over to one of the cabinets. I go to the cabinet next to her and slide open a drawer, leafing through the maps while keeping an eye on her as well.
The maps feel different depending on their age—soft, brittle, stiff, smooth, all different textures, like the land they depict. My favorites are the topographical maps, with bumps for mountains and slick blue plastic for water. The Union didn’t skimp on the maps they sent with the first settlers, and the Outpost has taken great care with them ever since. The Admiral must trust Eira a great deal if he appointed her as the cartographer for this voyage.