Scimitar Sun (15 page)

“Those two hatches lead to the main hold. If weather’s rough and the deck’s awash, you can walk through the hold to the crew’s quarters forward.” Tim beckoned and turned down the right-hand hallway.

Edan bounced off one wall, then the other, as he followed. “This weather isn’t rough?”

“Oh, no! This is
good
weather! The whole deck’s awash up to your hips in a real blow, and everyone’s tethered on with harnesses and lifelines. I’ve only seen weather like that once, but the captain wouldn’t let me out on deck.” He opened a door to the right and stepped over the low lintel into a large room set with a table and benches. “This is the main mess.”

“Looks pretty tidy to me,” Edan said, stumbling onto one of the benches as the ship lurched.

“Ha! Good one!” Tim slapped him on the shoulder and laughed.

Before Edan could ask him why that was funny, Tim pointed toward a shuttered counter with another door beside it.

“That’s the galley. Mealtimes, the cook serves up food through there, and we all eat together. Deck watches take their meals in the cuddy, but I said that, didn’t I? Come on, let’s see if we can nip a bit.”

Tim beckoned and Edan rose to follow, but the ship lurched again and he barked his shins on one of the benches. He gritted his teeth against the pain and forced himself to ignore it. Pain was nothing: it was transient, only a distraction.

“Hi, Cookie,” Tim called cheerfully as they stepped through the door into the galley, which Edan quickly discovered meant the kitchen. And
what
a kitchen!

Around three of the walls were built-in cupboards, their hip-height tops made of end-grain butcher block set with a railing to prevent whatever was being chopped from rolling onto the floor. Above the cupboards, pots and kettles hung from hooks, clattering as they swayed. A center work table, also topped with butcher block, was set with a cold box, and an impressive rack of knives was snugged down into a custom holder to prevent them from flying about with the ship’s movement. But the most impressive sight was the huge iron stove that dominated the right hand wall, and actually
swayed
with the roll of the ship so that the stove top was always level. Huge pans and pots and an immense blackbrew kettle were secured to the top of the stove with a lattice of little bars that clamped onto a metal rim. Heat emanated from it in waves, warming the room pleasantly. For the first time since boarding the ship, Edan felt a bit of comfort, relaxing into the accustomed heat. Flicker lounged on his shoulder, her eyes closed, a look of bliss on her little face.

“Ho, Tim! Who’s yer frien’?” A rotund, dark-skinned woman in an incongruously flowered apron and not much else, stepped around the central table. One hand hefted a knife as long as Edan’s forearm, and the other held a joint of smoked mutton. She set the latter on the table’s surface and applied the former, cutting slices of meat from the joint so quickly that Edan wondered how she could do it without losing a finger, given the pitching deck.

“This is Edan, the lightkeeper’s apprentice. Do you have any — ”

“Oh, so you de boy who wanna be a firemage! Ah! We all be hearin’ much ‘bout you.” Her grin stretched from ear to ear, crinkling her dark eyes into wrinkled pits of mirth. She looked him up and down, and the smile faded. “You too skinny. Here!”

Moving almost too fast for Edan to follow, the woman cut two finger-thick slabs off the joint, fetched two small loaves from a cooling rack beside the stove, split them with a long serrated knife and applied an impressive slab of creamy white cheese to each before laying on the cut mutton. A slather of mustard completed her preparations, and she handed over the two sandwiches.

“Dere now! Outta my galley a’fore I chop you two up fer stew!” She laughed so loudly that Flicker yelped in alarm.

“Thanks, Cookie!” Tim called, giving Edan a nudge toward the door.

“Nice, um…meeting you, Cookie,” he said. He didn’t want to appear rude or ungrateful, though he wasn’t really hungry.

“Ha! If ya weren’t so skinny, I’d have you in de pot! On wi’cha!” She snatched up a sharpening steel and gave the knife in her hand four quick strops before reapplying it to the dwindling joint of mutton.

Edan followed Tim through the door, pulling on Flicker’s chain to urge her to leave the sweltering confines of the galley.

“Cookie’s a soft touch,” Tim said around a mouthful of sandwich. “Just don’t touch anything in her galley. You could lose a finger, and I ain’t lyin’.”

“I don’ t doubt it,” Edan answered, and sampled the sandwich. It was delicious, the creamy cheese blending nicely with the strongly flavored mutton, the mustard biting his tongue and accenting both perfectly. “How does she do all that with everything moving so much?”

“Oh, Cookie’s an old hand. She never misses with one of her knives.” He took another bite of his sandwich and tugged at Edan’s sleeve. “Come on, I’ll show you yer quarters.”

He followed Tim out a door on the opposite wall from where they had entered the mess, and they turned toward the back of the ship. Here there were four cabins, all appropriately labeled with bronze plates on the doors.

“That’s the captain’s cabin aft, and the mate’s next to it,” Tim explained, pointing to each door in turn. “And this is the bosun’s, and that one forward is guest quarters. Ghelfan’s in that cabin, but the bosun’s is empty, since Paska bunks with Chula, so that one’s yours!”

“I see,” Edan said. He had no idea who some of those people were, but he figured he would learn. He turned the bronze handle and stepped into the tidy little cabin. His trunk was here, and his bag as well. He’d been worried when the sailors had taken his belongings, and was relieved to see them intact and seemingly unopened. The trunk was still locked.

“And here you are!” Tim looked enviously around at the cabin. “I hope to have my own cabin one day,” he said. Edan looked over at the boy whose voice, for the first time, sounded not happy and brash, but almost…lost. Before Edan could say anything, Tim snapped out of his lapse and clapped the taller boy on the shoulder. “I’ll be around if you need anything. There’s a chamber pot under the bunk and a water pitcher in the stand. We’ll be a bit more’n two days to Plume Isle, so make yerself at home.”

“Thank you, Tim,” Edan said, sitting down on his trunk more for stability than to rest. He waved as the younger boy closed the door, then looked around. The tiny porthole let in a meager amount of light, but there was a lamp. The ship lurched as it topped another wave, and he thought that this little cabin was a bit more like being in a coach, an incredibly big coach on a very bumpy road.

“Well,” he said, chucking Flicker on the chin as she lighted on the tiny folding table. “We’re on our way, Flick. What do you think?”

She wrinkled her nose at the surroundings, fluttered her gossamer-smoke wings and sat down to sulk.

“Well, just don’t catch anything on fire, okay? This whole boat is nothing but wood. It’ll go up like a tinderbox if you get it started, then there’s nothing between us and the sea.”

She fluttered up to peer through the port at the towering waves that swept past at an alarming rate, then sank back down to the table, her eyes wide. She nodded to Edan and crossed her heart with one coppery finger. He laughed, knowing her promises were short-lived.

“Good. Now let me get a dry pair of pants on, and we’ll see what Master packed for us, eh?”

Chapter Ten

While You Were Away

Docking a ship against a stone pier, even a ship as agile as
Peggy’s Dream
, was a carefully orchestrated and often nerve-wracking affair. In the hands of an unskilled pilot, an errant wind or current could cause serious damage to a ship, smashing it against the unforgiving stone.

Cynthia made it easy.

“Give me about half a boat-length, Chula. I’ll do the rest.”

“Aye, Captain Shambata Daroo! Paska! Close haul de sheets. Helmsman, bring her into irons half a length from de pier, if you be pleased. Paska, you may furl all sails as she luffs.”

The ship’s bowsprit came up into the wind and
Peggy’s Dream
slowed as she came parallel to the pier. The light breeze was contrary to docking, and strong eddies of an ebbing tide pushed at the ship. Cynthia closed her eyes and let her mind meld with the essence of the sea. The ship drifted forward under its own momentum, sails flapping in the subdued breezes of the bay until, quite suddenly, the wind died, the swirling currents stilled, and the ship stopped dead in the water. The sails hung utterly limp for an instant before Paska gave the order to furl. Sailors caught the canvas as it fell from the heavens, furling the huge sails easily in the calm air. The ship stood rock steady until the last bit of canvas was bound neatly, then water roiled and the entire vessel moved sideways into place as if a great hand had pushed it gently.

“Dockin’ lines, if you be pleased, Paska,” Chula said, and lines were cast and caught by the dock crew. Fenders had already been placed, but the ship stopped its sideways motion less than a foot before they touched, the sea churning between the hull and the unforgiving stone to hold her steady as lines were tightened.

“All secure, Captain Shambata Daroo!” Chula called, saluting with his usual pearly white grin. “Deck crew, prepare de cargo nets. Topmen, set de fores’l haul. Paska, if you would be pleased to be directin’ de cargo offload while I see to our passenga’.”

“Of course, Chula! Wh’da’ya t’ink I’ll be doin’, sittin’ on my backside?”

Cynthia eased her control over the wind and water, smiling at the spirited interchange. “Tim, if you could help Chula with Edan’s things? The crew can bring my trunks up later.”

“Aye, Captain!” The boy saluted and scampered off. Mouse, who had been lounging on Cynthia’s shoulder, perked up his pointed ears and darted after the boy. Cynthia had been pleased with Tim on this trip, and reminded herself to thank Chula for putting him in charge of Edan; the responsibility had done the boy good.

She looked around the ship and sighed.
Peggy’s Dream
sailed beautifully, but it would be a couple of weeks at the very least before she would sail her again. Dealing with the mer and orchestrating the trip to Fire Isle would take up all her time until the young man’s trials. She had thought about altering their course enough for Edan to see the volcano on the way, but he had barely ventured from his cabin. He wasn’t seasick, as far as she knew, but Tim had said that he seemed anxious or frightened on deck.

No wonder
, she thought, looking around at the crystal-clear turquoise water.
He probably feels the same way about the sea that I feel about fire.
Her gaze rose to the ever-present plume of smoke issuing forth from the heart of Plume Isle. A call broke her reverie.

“Gangplank secure, Captain!” Paska announced. “We’ll be offloadin’ de provisions for yer home. Den, with yer permission, we’ll be movin’ de ship over to de yard docks.”

“Of course, Paska.” She smiled her thanks. Half of the hold was packed with stores for the keep, but the rest of the cargo space had been filled with supplies for the shipyard and her new project. “I should have given the order, but I’ve got so much on my mind that I’m not thinking straight. Tell Chula for me, would you?”

“Of course, Captain.”

“I must thank you, Mistress Flaxal, for taking me along on this jaunt!” Ghelfan exited the cuddy with his duffel over his shoulder and a grin on his slim features. “We purchased some good spar timber for your new vessel, and the fittings I ordered were excellent! Southaven’s farrier truly knows his business.”

“It was my pleasure.” She accepted his steadying hand as they approached the gangplank. “I’m just sorry we couldn’t stay longer. Marta was disappointed, and I hardly got to spend any time at all with the Keelsons.”

“Rest assured, Mistress; they know their business. Ah, but I see there is business awaiting us, as well.”

As they crossed the gangplank, Cynthia noticed for the first time that Camilla and Dura were waiting for them on the pier. The former was not unusual, but Dura rarely left the confines of the shipyard. The dour looks on their faces were not encouraging.

“Glad to have you back early, Cynthia,” Camilla said, stepping forward to offer her hand for the last step onto the pier. “Though two days ago would have been even better.”

“Why? What happened two days ago?” she asked, troubled by Camilla’s serious tone.

“The bleedin’ thief got away with the bleedin’ goods two days ago, that’s what bleedin’ happened!” Dura interrupted, her ruddy features flushing even darker. “And Miss Cammy wouldn’t let me teach the bugger a proper lesson in manners!”

“Thief? What thief?” She turned to Camilla. “What happened?”

“Two days ago, an emissary from his majesty, Emperor Tynean Tsing the Third, sailed back to Tsing, after a five day visit.”

“Aye, and he bloody took — ”

“And we discovered,” Camilla interrupted, casting a warning glance at Dura, “upon his departure, that a set of plans for your partially completed ship were missing.”

“Which plans?” Ghelfan asked, his tone flat and harder than Cynthia had ever heard it.

“The forty-to-one-scale overall draft plans and the riggin’ schematics,” Dura answered.

“What?” Cynthia asked, her own temper rising. “Who in the Nine Hells was this emissary, and why would he steal plans for
that
ship? This is ridiculous! I’m only gone a week, and some
spy
from Tsing wanders in here and leaves with a set of
my
plans tucked under his arm?”

“Please, Cynthia, we’re not sure it was the emissary who stole the plans, and I don’t think he was here to spy.” Camilla stood her ground, her voice even. “He came here to see
you
, but he had to leave to report to the emperor. He had an assistant, a fellow named Huffington, who seemed to say little but see a lot. It’s my bet that he was the one who took the plans, either under the emissary’s orders or on his own. We don’t know. Dura wanted to take the plans back, but I told her that attacking an imperial warship was — ”

“Warship? They came in a
warship
?” A warship was a show of force, intended or not. “I want to know everything that happened and every word that was said, from the moment that emissary set foot on this pier to the time he left, and I want to know them now! If that ship makes it back to Tsing without being dragged to the bottom by a school of angry mer, they’ll be luckier than they deserve.”