It’s not about respect, boy; it’s about loyalty.
His father’s voice.
Whatever happened, he would see an arakeesian.
What he would have given to share such a sight with his father.
He tossed and turned in the damp bed in the high room of the Fishmarket half-bothy, impatient for the moment when Skearith’s Eye would peer in and Meas would start the day. So when it came – a shaft of blinding light, golden dust suspended within – he was not rested but he was filled with adrenalin. As Meas washed herself in a bowl of dirty water he paced backwards and forwards, the gion boards beneath his feet creaking in complaint.
“If you must walk, go to our door and find what is left outside it.”
He stopped, screwed up his brow.
“What?”
“Just do as I say.”
He opened the door. To one side he found a pair of boots – he had no idea how they had got there; maybe they had been there all night. How had he not heard them be delivered?
“My boots?”
“Did I not say a deckkeeper needed boots?”
“Yes, but I regret to say—”
“Payment is dealt with.” She waved a hand at him then lifted it, washing under her arm with her cloth. “Put them on then. They will hurt at first as you are not used to them. Your feet will blister, you must work through that. No need for you to wash today,” she added, “as your clothes will still stink no matter how clean the skin beneath, but more fitting clothes will arrive before we leave. Then you will stay clean, even if I have to throw you in the sea each day to ensure it. You are an officer now, you understand?”
He nodded, bewildered once more by this woman.
“Put them on then,” she said again, “then find us food. There should be a coin hidden beneath the turn-up of the boot, for that was what I agreed.”
Bernshulme was busy and it was not hard to find food. Though Skearith’s Eye had barely woken, vendors were already out, and the stink of rotten fish from the market mingled with baking bread and cooking flesh. If the food did not smell appetising, then at least it did not smell as bad as Fishmarket at night. Joron bought two helpings of fish in pastry from the cleanest-looking stallholder, a woman with a malformed jaw, and made his way back to the half-bothy. Meas emerged as he approached the door with his mouth full of pasty which, if mostly bone, was at least hot.
“Thank you, Deckkeeper,” she said, taking her pasty from him, and he nodded. “We’ll go straight to the fleet dock, see how they treat Tide Child and make sure he is well cared for. From there we go to the hulks in the harbour to find out who our new crew are to be.” She paused in the act of lifting the pasty to her mouth. “Although perhaps we shall run some other errands first.” She turned, walking away and chewing.
A busy day ahead, he said to himself and followed, quickly finding himself limping as the boots, just as promised, were pinching his toes and rubbing at his heels.
“I think we must find ourselves charts,” said Meas.
“I have no coin.”
“You do not need to keep reminding me of your penury,” she said without looking at him. “I have plenty of money and little use for it.”
“They did not confiscate your goods when you were condemned?”
“Only what they could find,” she said. “Charts we will get from the Grand Bothy, whether they want us to or not.”
“Are you welcome at the . . .” His voice petered out as he realised what he had been about to say would have been unwelcome, but it was too late. Meas’s tone, almost conversational up to this point, became storm dark as she turned to him.
“You saw how welcome I was when we brought in Tide Child. I imagine it will be similar at the Grand Bothy. Thirteenbern Gilbryn may call us to her if I am seen; you will have to prepare yourself for that possibility.” Before he could reply she was off and he followed, his feet complaining at every step they took over the cobbles.
The fleet dock was the biggest harbour facility in Bernshulme, taking up a whole side of the island’s inner crescent. Joron counted thirty ships at their staystones and four in dry docks, held up on scaffolds of rock and bone. Only one ship was the black of shame. Tide Child, shunned like a dead chick in a thriving colony, space around him as if he made the other ships uncomfortable. Even those who worked on Tide Child seemed to do so at a slower pace, and with less enthusiasm, than those clustered around the white ships. Where the white ships glistened in the sun and rang with working songs, Tide Child absorbed the light, squatting in silence in his cradle.
“I thought Karrad said he would make sure they did a good job? They barely seem to be working,” said Joron.
A roar came from Tide Child.
“Get on, you slatelayers! Lazy grabarses! So the ship’s cursed? It does not mean you are. You’ll work these bones as well as any other or I’ll have you skinned.” From behind a lean-to of gion leaves came a man almost as wide as he was tall. Dressed in a leather apron and little else, he strode about the base of Tide Child giving orders as Skearith’s Eye rose and the heat of the day began to beat down upon the bones of the ship. Around his shoulders, arms and thighs were wrapped dirty bandages, stained with blood from the sores of keyshan’s rot, a disease that came to all in the boneyards eventually.
“Bonemaster?” said Meas as they approached. The man turned and Joron saw the black band of the condemned on his arm.
“You must be the shipwife who treated this poor beast” – he pointed at Tide Child – “with such contempt he has ended up in my loving care.”
“And by the band on your arm that makes me your shipwife, so some respect is in order, is it not?” The man did not answer, nor did he bring his forearm to his chest in salute nor show any of the respect that was her due. “How did you earn the band?” asked Meas.
“A bonemaster takes a little for himself, here and there.” He puffed himself up like a bird in a fighting pit the moment before its handlers let it go. “It is normal.” His voice rose and fell, as if to head off any thought she may have that he had done anything wrong in stealing from the shipyard.
“So says every bonemaster sent to a black ship, ey?” said Meas.
The man squinted at her.
“There are many here take far more than me.”
“Then why do they not wear the band?”
“Because, Shipwife” – there was a lusty lack of respect in the way he said her title – “they have better friends than poor Bonemaster Coxward, and so they may carry on stealing the Hundred Isles’ wealth, where I will go bleed for it.”
“Well, it was promised the bonemaster would do a good job on my ship,” said Meas, “and now I see why it was said with such confidence, since you are to fly him with me.”
“It will be a month before we do,” said Coxward. “Ey, at least a month.”
“We have a week, and we must also load supplies. So you have four days to get him ready for sea.”
“Four?” The bonemaster’s teeth almost leaped from his mouth in horror. “Sooner break a keyshan’s heart than let him out in four.”
“It is what the fleet calls for.”
He stared at her then shrugged.