Tempest (10 page)

Chapter Eight

Colm and Megg left the Cove before the morning mist had lifted. She'd packed food and drink for him, and handed it over with an admonishment not to share it with Lew Gullfoot. “He's a grown man. He can take care of himself,” she told Colm as they walked. “Don't let him bully you, love, and don't let him make you do all the work. He may be getting on in years, but Lew's still more than a decade younger than me, and I put in plenty of time in my kitchen. He'll grouse and groan at you, but he's really—”

“I'm sure I'll be fine, Megg.”

“I suppose,” she fretted. “Just don't let me catch you doing something ridiculous like falling into the water and drowning, because if you do, I will certainly never forgive you!”

“I'll keep that in mind,” Colm said with a serious face, but she saw the jest behind it and punched him lightly in the shoulder.

“Och, mocking an old woman. You've spent too much time with Nichol, you have.”

“I enjoy his company.”

“Make the most of it while you've got it, love. Nichol tends to become scarce when his mate Jaime is in town. There!” she said, pointing ahead and changing the subject from what Colm really wanted to hear about. “There's the
Serpent's Tail.
She's not a looker,” Megg added, obviously sensing Colm's doubt when he saw it, “I grant you that, but she's a solid little sloop, and easy enough for two men to handle.”

Not a looker was correct. The hull of the
Serpent's Tail
was so covered with barnacles, they looked almost like armor, and the sails attached to the single mast were tatty and patched. The ropes seemed solid enough, but then using a frayed rope out on the water was just asking for trouble. A bundle of nets, obviously not well cared for if their current tangled state was any indication, took up most of the bow. Lew was there, squinting at them like he was surprised they'd actually shown up. Maybe he thought he'd imagined the conversation.

“Good morn, Master Gullfoot,” Megg said pleasantly. “Ready to cast off, then?”

“Aye, ready. Been ready and waiting,” he groused. “Not very prompt, this lad of yours.”

“Oh?” Megg's eyebrows went up. “Did I somehow miss the dawn? Has it come and gone already?”

“No…”

“Then quit your complaining, you old oaf!” she scolded him. “And take good care of my lad here, or I'll ban you from the bar.”

“If your lad follows my orders right quick, he'll do just fine,” Lew retorted. “Into the boat with ye, boy.”

“Be careful,” Megg murmured before she let him go. “I'll see you later, love.”

“You certainly will,” Colm agreed. He stepped up easily into the boat, set his pack on the ground and got to work untying the knots that kept the sails furled. Megg watched for a moment, then left, vanishing into the mist.

If Colm had held out any hope that spending time with Lew would be anything like spending time with Fergus, he was proven wrong that morning. Lew communicated in grunts, only speaking to chide Colm when he did something wrong or moved too slow. They sailed slowly out beyond the bay with only the headsail raised, but once they got to open water, Colm raised the mainsail and Lew turned them so that the breeze sent them cutting forward with a swiftness that surprised Colm.

This, this was what he loved about sailing. The freedom of gliding over the water, smooth and untroubled and leaving no trace… There was nothing like it. On the loch back home, he could only head in one direction for ten minutes if the day was blustery before having to tack, or risk running aground on the far shore. Here Colm felt like they could go on forever and never run out of new seas to explore.

They sailed for about half an hour before Lew instructed Colm to lower the sails. Colm frowned. “Here? Are you sure?”

Lew sighed the sigh of a man much put-upon. “I've been sailing these waters for longer than you've been alive, boy, I know where to find the fish.”

Colm reached down and placed his hand in the water, jerking back a little when he realized it felt…warm. Oddly warm, the way the water of the loch never had. He put his hand back in and focused on the sensations, ignoring Lew's huff about Colm being a half-wit. The rocking of the boat, the few waves brought about by the morning breeze…no fish. He frowned, wondering if his ability didn't work here.

No, wait…there were fish, but they were deep. Far too deep for the short little gillnets that Lew had onboard. “The fish are too low,” he said, pulling his hand free of the water and shaking it off. The remaining droplets felt like tiny rays of sunshine, focused tightly on the bits of skin to which they clung.

“And how do ye figure that, boy?”

“I can tell,” Colm said, watching Lew's face carefully as he revealed his ability. “I can feel the movement of fish in the water, and there aren't any here that we could reach.”

“Open water's the best place to get the big 'uns,” Lew said slowly, looking like he didn't want to believe Colm but doubtless feeling the pinch of small catches of late.

“Not with what you have here. The nets won't go deep enough. Let me move us somewhere more appropriate.”

Lew snorted. “More appropriate. Water's water, boy, and the fish are fickle. They go where they please and might as well turn up here as anywhere. They have many times before.”

“That was before the bigger ships started fishing these same waters, wasn't it?” Colm asked and felt vindicated when Lew looked away. “The fish have learned caution. They're deeper and harder to reach here. They may rise as the day wears on, true, but in the meantime we'll waste time that could be spent filling our nets.”

“Opinionated young bugger, aren't you?” Lew accused, then pulled his cap over his face. “Do what you want. Just don't expect any help from me.”

“I would never,” Colm murmured as he went about raising the sails again. He sailed the boat carefully, alternating between tweaking the rigging and letting his hand trail through the water as he steered them closer in to shore. Lew glanced at him from under the brim of his cap every now and then, checking and trying not to let on that he was.

Eventually Colm found a bit of water with a decent population of fish—not a type he recognized, but there was much he had to learn about the sea. He pulled down the sails and tied them up, then got to work on the drift nets. The tangles weren't so bad, although clearly it had been an age since the things had been tended to: great rents split them in places, and gobbets of flesh and scale stuck clean through the rope here and there. Half the glass floats were compromised, either completely broken or cracked and flooded, but the lower line's lead-cored rope was still solid. Hopefully the damn thing wouldn't sink the moment it hit the water.

Colm laid the nets out himself, having to do some tricky maneuvering of the boat to get them all placed right. “Why not just strip and swim them out?” Lew asked grumpily after a particularly tight turn that had forced him to shift himself from his repose.

“I don't know how,” Colm replied, checking his lines. None of the nets had sunk out of sight yet, so that was good. He left his hand in the water and felt the water's vibration as it moved past the nets, felt the fish, which had been a bit frightened by the movement, begin to reclaim their space.

Lew laughed. “What? A strapping boy like you can't swim? What kind of place did you come from, where that sort of foolishness is encouraged?”

“A high mountain village where the water is just a step above ice,” Colm said.

“Oh…aye, there's that, then.” Lew resettled and pulled his cap down again. “Let me know when you're ready to head back to more populated waters, and if we come up empty for the day, it's on your head. Nothing shared is still nothing.”

“I'll let you know when our nets are full,” Colm replied. Lew huffed and rolled onto his side, and Colm shut his eyes and lost himself in the rhythm of the sea and all the creatures that moved within it.

The fish were easy to identify, flitting about the algae blooms, whole schools moving in perfect synchronicity. Farther out, Colm could feel the movement of other boats, even some ships—they had to be, the waves were so large. And deep, deep down in the water where the light vanished completely, a creature moved sluggishly against the bottom, stirring silt and sending smaller beasts fleeing with every slow twitch. Colm didn't know what it was, but it intrigued and frightened him at the same time.

Despite his care, their nets were quiet for most of the morning. Colm began to worry, quietly and to himself, that perhaps Lew was right, and despite his ability he didn't have the proper knowledge of the sea to predict how its creatures would move. Then, fortuitously, a larger boat moved into distant view, one that dragged its nets along behind it, churning up the water and sending the warier fish fleeing. Many of them fled straight toward their little boat, and Colm smiled as a gratifying number of them were caught in their nets. When the floats began to bob in earnest, Colm began to reel them in.

Lew jumped and flailed as the first full net was hauled aboard, filled with flopping, shimmering silver-and-violet fish, each between a foot and a foot and a half. Much smaller and they slipped through the nets, any larger and they couldn't fit their heads through in the first place. “Bloody Two,” he swore, looking wide-eyed at the squirming bottom of the boat. “Dancers! These are diving dancers! What—” He looked at Colm with a mixture of surprise and suspicion. “How did you know where to find dancers?”

“I didn't know what kind they were,” Colm said, straining to haul the next net in. “I just knew
where
they were.”

“Diving dancers. These sell for a pretty penny, let me tell you—although, not that pretty,” Lew backtracked, perhaps realizing for the first time since Colm had boarded his boat that he was going to be making money off this. “'Tis their season, after all…the market'll be fair flooded with them. Still, I'll do the best I can…” His voice trailed off as Colm dropped the second net's catch into the boat, a squirming silver mirror at their feet. “Beautiful,” Lew murmured, and in that Colm could certainly agree.

“They are.” The third net wasn't so full, but there were a few stragglers in it, and overall the numbers were quite gratifying, especially since the sun hadn't even passed the midpoint in the sky yet. One of them slipped free at the end, and Colm grabbed for it, then jerked back as a sharp little mouth snatched it out of the air, ripping into the fish. Bright eyes stared defiantly at him, and Colm realized it was the selkie. He'd been so preoccupied with bringing in the catch that Colm hadn't even noticed him. The seal finished his stolen meal and barked once, then dove out of sight. Fortunately, Lew was still too preoccupied with their catch to pay any attention to the strange exchange.

“We should get them back before they begin to spoil. Do you want to sail, or free them from the nets?”

“What?” Lew's head snapped up, breaking through his reverie. “This is my boat, boy!” he exclaimed, trying for angry but too pleased to pull it off. “I'll sail 'er, you worry about the fish.”

“Fine,” Colm said mildly. As long as the man did
something
, Colm didn't care what it was. He left the running of the
Serpent's Tail
to Lew and spent the hour's journey back emptying the nets, rolling them up to keep them untangled and mentally tracking what he'd need to do to put them right again. The fish were cool and sleek, with fat silver bodies and a violet line of color expanding down their sides until it blossomed like a flower to encompass their whole tails.

They returned to the berth and settled in smoothly, Lew's enthusiasm making for much defter handling than he'd shown that morning. “Right, then,” he said, tying up the boat. “I'll take care of the catch. Meet me here tomorrow morn and I'll see you get your cut, and we'll head out again.”

“I think it's better if I help you with the catch now,” Colm told him.

Lew frowned fiercely. “Are you doubtin' my word now, boy? Are you accusing me of being a cheat?”

“Not at all.” Of course he was, but Colm knew how to play this. He was naïve in many ways, but not when it came to his trade. “I'm new to this city, and I've much to learn. The proper price for fish is one of those things. Aunt Megg has given me a good idea of what we should get for a fresh catch,” and Lew blanched gratifyingly, “but I'd appreciate the opportunity to learn from you as well.”

“…Fine.”

In the end, it was good that Colm was there to help as well. It took two full wheelbarrows to get their catch to market. Lew knew exactly where he was going. He rolled his barrow straight up to a large, elaborate market stall where a man holding a cleaver was chopping the heads off three fresh eels and handing them to a customer. He looked over at Lew and grinned as they set down the barrows.

“Did you decide to pack it in early today, Gullfoot?”

“Not at all.” Lew motioned to the barrow. The man looked over the edge of his stall and his eyes went wide.

“Dancers! It's early yet for them to be coming through. Where in the god's name did you find so many of 'em?”

“Och, there's a trick to it,” Lew boasted. “I can't be sharing it with the likes of you, though. D'ye want the catch, then?”

“I may…” The fishmonger came around and hefted a few of the fish, examining their clean eyes and the suppleness of their bodies. “Aye, I think I could take all of these. How many do you have?”

“Eighty-seven,” Colm offered when Lew hesitated.

“Who're you, then?” the man asked.

“He's my apprentice,” Lew cut in. “A green mountain lad who don't know wet from dry. I'm showin' him the ways of the sea.”

“Well, green or not, this lad may be your good luck charm,” the fishmonger told Lew, then reached out to shake Colm's hand. “I'm Carroll Lightsail.”