Inda (43 page)

Jeje came by the same degrees to regret her laughter. Everyone ganging up on one victim was not fair. She comforted herself with the thought that Inda was too stupid to notice.

The fourth morning her comfort ripped away when her watch and his worked together to load new stores. Inda paused, and she heard his sharp intake of breath at the sight of a barrel of red sponges freshly dug up. She could not imagine what in the sight of a sponge bucket could cause such a reaction, but the look of pain in his compressed mouth and tight-closed eyes dealt a slap to her own psyche. His stolid face was not stupidity, but endurance. Solitary endurance.

She, like Dasta, knew better than to speak up to Norsh and the other mids, not when she was at the bottom of all the ranks. It wouldn’t fix anything, and would only make her an added target. Instead, on the fifth evening Inda found a little gift of food in his hammock after he was too late to mess, and his hopeless tangle of a mended net—an assignment by Norsh that Jeje knew was to entertain his particular friends—neatly finished when he woke up on the sixth day.

Restday morning Inda woke up just before the others, after a heavy sleep and wild, disturbing dreams. For a few moments, hearing the breathing of others, smelling the familiar dusty-dog smell of many children in a small space, he thought he was in the scrub pit at the academy.

It was the movement of his hammock that broke the grip of dream and doused him with a cold, indifferent splash of reality. There was no callover, no Sponge. No fresh, crispy crusted rye-buns baking for early mess. Sponge and Tdor were gone. Gone. And Dogpiss was dead.

Inda slid his hands over his face, dug the heels of his palms into his eyes, and held his breath. He thought he’d stopped crying on that long ride with Captain Sindan across the western plains of Hesea, where no one could see. Damnation. He must be the one damned. Norsunder could never be worse than this life.

The ship’s bells rang,
ting-ting, ting-ting
. Dawn watch. Restday, and then another week in this place, and another. He could never go home again.

No. Don’t think like that. Tanrid had believed him. And what was it Evred said about justice—

Thump!
A hard hand whirled him out of his hammock.

And he landed, rolled, launched himself up, used the power of his own momentum to strike twice and fling his tormentor onto the deck, and for a moment he crouched there, knees immobilizing the enemy’s arms, knuckles pressed against his neck, until his mind caught up and he realized this was no academy scrap. He had Fassun pinned down. Fassun, a mid. On a ship. Who could have him beaten with the rope’s end for insubordination.

Fassun stared up in shock at brown eyes narrowed with murderous intent, but before he could form the simplest thought, that killing stare widened into realization, and the boy’s face bloomed from pale to scarlet.

Inda lifted his hands and got to his feet, his mouth now set, his eyes averted. Fassun’s anger cooled into questions. He too got to his feet and stood for a breath or two, trying to control his aching gut as he gazed down at the smaller boy. “Where did you come from?”

Another scarlet flush, and a low mumble. “Elgaer.”

Silence from the others as they contemplated Choraed Elgaer, which to them just meant a stretch of extremely rocky coast that had no decent harbors. Faura grimaced, astonished that that stupid rat could deck cousin Fass. Maybe she would drop the rock-brain comments. Taumad rubbed his knuckles, watching.

“No,” Fassun said. “What’s your family, what do they do?”

“Where did you learn that fighting?” Testhy asked.

Inda shook his head.

“What’s all the thumping up here?”

Everyone turned. First Mate Kodl stood at the canvas flap that served as their door. Then they looked Fassun’s way. It was within his rights to report what had happened.

“I knocked over a gear bag,” Fassun said.

Kodl pursed his lips. “Shall I tell the captain that the larboard mids are too busy yapping with the rats to hold inspection?”

They all got moving, the atmosphere thoughtful, the looks sent Inda’s way covert.

The lower ranks rolled and stowed their hammocks on deck between the shields hung along the railings as they would if they were attacked, scrubbed their cabins and then themselves, dressing in the plain, sturdy shirts and canvas trousers of sailors, and then lined up on deck for the captain and first mate to come by for ship inspection.

For a time the ship was the only speaker, the timbers creaking with musical (to the trained ears of those whose lives were lived on water) contentment, the ropes humming to the percussion of the sails as the ship plunged through a gray sea under a low, gray sky.

Inda and the captain saw one another for the first time. The new rat, to the captain, was unprepossessing but clean. To Inda, Captain Peadal Beagar looked alert and commanding in his green captain’s coat with its round brass buttons, and he exuded a benign sense of authority, settling to a boy whose world had been blown into scattered leaves by the winds of ambition.

The captain studied the sails, the neatly coiled-down ropes, the swept deck, and then inspected cabins, galley, hold. All were clean, orderly. And so he gestured, and the bosun sent his mate to ring the bell for Restday mess. The upper ranks scrambled down tween decks: first served.

Taumad, standing next to Inda, studied the shorter boy. Inda glanced up briefly, and then away. Tau liked that. This boy didn’t stare or leer like so many others did, didn’t grab, touch, caress. Tau remembered the first day, when Inda looked like someone had given him sixty with a rope-end before the entire ship’s company.

“You’re going to have to sved the others,” Taumad said.

“No.” It wasn’t a snappish response. Just unyielding.

Inda was stubborn, but so far he had never been sullen or mean. He was interesting. Tau had grown up hearing his mother expose, in a mocking voice, far too many secrets of human weakness. Most of them were predictable. The other rats were very predictable. Inda was impossible to figure out.

Nothing more was said between them as the rats were dismissed to stampede tween decks to fetch dishes and stand in line for grub. But there were those who observed the troublesome Taumad sitting by choice next to the new landrat and later offering to help him learn to use a needle and thread.

One of those who noticed was Captain Beagar. Later on in his cabin, while the Restday singing floated down through the skylight, he said to his first mate, “Did you note your hot-blooded Prince Dawnsinger seems to have found manners, at least with that young landrat?”

Kodl nodded, grinning. “Being as we’re landmates, I collared Testhy and got the sved. If he isn’t farting down the wind, the rat decked Fassun in about a heartbeat, at dawn bells. Small as he is.”

“Fassun?” the captain repeated. “Decked by that small boy? Hm.”

The two dined alone. The second mate had the watch, the third was asleep, and the skylight was closed. That meant they could talk, if their voices were low enough, with what semblance of privacy existed aboard a cramped wooden world.

Kodl passed the Restday wine back, adding, “I hoped Taumad would find himself a mate. If he stops fighting everyone who looks his way, we might not have to put him off at the next port, promising as he is.”

The captain dismissed Tau and his problems. What concerned him was the cruise, more specifically the return spring season after next, when they might be kept by weather from meeting the yearly convoy, and when they would emerge from the Narrows dividing the land bridge into waters that were dangerous, and becoming more so, for the last leg of their journey home.

“Give the landrat a month to learn his ropes and sails, and then put him with the forecastlemen,” the captain said.

Kodl hesitated; the captain, seeing his hesitation, indicated he had permission to speak his mind. “The forecastlemen will take assignment of a small boy, and a landrat at that, as an insult.”

“I don’t care what they think,” Captain Beagar stated, and Kodl knew he would have to repeat the captain’s words. “Not when it comes to defending my ship.” He sat back. “If the boy is as good as you say, he will adapt.” He smiled a little. “In fact, if he is as good as you say, and he survives the forecastle’s welcome, Scalis will probably make him a pet. If so, whatever he knows had better show up in the repel-boarder drills. And if that comes to pass, he’ll move up to mid by next cruise.”

Kodl opened his hand. That was an order, and they were captain and first mate again; it was not for Kodl to say that he had doubts a boy would be permitted to teach that irascible old Scalis anything.

Chapter Three

N
EARLY two years passed before the Pim ships again reached the coast of Iasca Leror.

The convoy that emerged from the Narrows that second spring was a magnificent display, stretching to the horizon, the complicated geometries of fore-and-aft-rigged ships with square topsails interstitched by the long, elegant triangles of single-masted cutters racing up and down the line, signal flags snapping in the strong, cold spring winds.

The trade convoys always gathered in masses just south of Sartor as self-protection against the pirates infesting the unpatrolled southern waters. This year’s convoy, held a full extra month beyond the usual time due to contrary winds, had benefited from the strengthening of another forty vessels, discounting the odd little smacks that stuck close lest they be snapped up by the pirates lurking to the west in the inlets of the land bridge.

Next cruise’s worry about getting safely through the Narrows was a year or two off. They’d made it safely through the Narrows in a long string, framed by cloud-touching cliffs, and now the Pim ships were sailing to the north, almost home, after nearly two years’ trading. Those who had family, friends, or lovers along the Iascan coast watched every plunge of the bow, how each sail drew.

Inda watched as well, standing with ease on the foretopsail yard with Tau and Jeje. The rise and fall of the ship had become a part of life, as unthinking as breathing. The wind, a stiff breeze sweeping up from the southwest, stayed steady. No one had had to touch brace or sheet since morning, so the three were watching the other ships, how they handled their sails, and half-listening to the sailors on the mainsail masthead behind them, their words carried forward on the wind.

“Well, I wonder if m’ wife’ll still be there. Night before I left she chucked a cook-pot at m’ head.”

“My boy oughta be talkin’ by now.”

“My ma’ll be surprised I made it a whole year and a half without being hanged,” Tau observed.

Jeje snickered. They knew her home was up in Lindeth, the next harbor north, but she had relatives in the Parayid Harbor, and she’d heard of Tau’s mother’s pleasure house.

What Inda thought about was the land east of the harbor—his Fera-Vayir cousins’ land. Part of Choraed Elgaer, just a few days’ ride south of Tenthen. His homeland.

He had tried to forget. But oh, sometimes at night, especially during the long winter they spent tacking grimly through the dangerous waters south of Sartor, he had shivered on deck picturing Tdor there on the dock as the
Pim Ryala
spilled wind and glided in on the tide. She would be waving and shouting, “Come home, Inda! Come home! It’s all made right.” His imagination never quite decided what “it” was. Sometimes the false accusations were denied by the Sirandael himself before the entire academy, and then he was surrounded by Sponge and his bunkmates, ready for him to join the games again. In other daydreams Tanrid spoke up on the parade ground denouncing Kepa and Smartlip. The worst dream was his father coming to explain why he had sent him away without seeing him, but Inda could never hear the words, because no reason he could think of made any sense.

No, it didn’t make sense. It was just inescapably real.

He turned away, a sudden physical movement. Tau and Jeje exchanged looks. They’d gotten used to that strange face of Inda’s, the way he’d go blind and deaf to whatever was around him, and then he’d shrug, or jerk, or move restlessly from one location to another, his mouth white and thin.

Tau said, “Now, where’re you staying, Jeje?”

She opened her mouth to say “With my cousins, of course,” but his tone, the meaningful glance Inda’s way, caused her to amend with an unconvincing, “Not sure I rightly know.”

False as it was, Inda didn’t seem to hear it, or at least to react, so after a pause too long to be natural, Tau said, “Well, then, you can always swing a bunk at my ma’s. I’m sure she won’t charge—not much, anyway,” he added, thinking of the lightning and thunder at home before she’d sent him off to sea. “If business has been slow. But room, there always is.” He turned Inda’s way, adding in a casual voice, “You too, Elgar, if you’ve a mind.”

To their relief, he said, “Oh, thanks. If there’s room.”

“And I’m going with you,” came a loud, determined voice.

They turned to see Faura hanging in the shrouds, listening, her dark gaze steady on Tau. For a time no one spoke, the only sounds the wind singing in the rigging and drumming the sails. Tau just stood, his face blank.

Faura finally tried for politeness. “If there is room.”

“There usually is, in a pleasure house,” Tau said evenly. “But doesn’t Fassun have digs for your family?”

Faura tossed her head. “I can do what I want.”

Jeje rolled her eyes. No one spoke as they all slid down to the deck.

 

 

 

The landing of the
Pim Ryala
involved the entire crew. The Pim captains took pride in anchoring creditably. Inda, as the smallest forecastle hand, was in charge of foremast signal flags, which meant readying and hauling up the white flag on Kodl’s gesture of command.

Then, when the lookout up high had bawled out that the harbor master had dipped their white, it was time to put the helm down, and bring in the topsails, jib, and last the mainsails while the ship rounded into the wind.