“To your bows, my crew,” she shouted. “Keep the underdeck hatches shut for now and the bows may sleep. I do not think we will need to loose them, but it does us no favours to be unprepared. Coughlin!” she shouted. Cahanny’s man, his face still tinged with the green of the Hag’s curse, stumbled over from his place on the rail. “Arm your men just in case.” Coughlin glowered at her, but the Hag’s curse had broken his will for the moment, and he turned away and had his men gather their weapons.
So it was that Meas started giving orders for the final sails to be furled and Joron began to wonder if the black ship was almost up to the standard of a fleet vessel. Oh, the drills were not as quick, not as accurate and not as fierce, not yet. Joron did not really doubt it for a second. But still he felt a thrill of pride that he had been part of this change that had come across the slate of the deck, this transformation from slovenly to shipshape, and he pulled his one-tailed hat a little tighter on his head.
The ship slowly coasted to a stop on a sea now glassy and still, as if tired now it had brought Tide Child to meet his new consorts. The two-ribbers stopped fifty shiplengths across from them, calm water lapping at their ebon sides. Meas oversaw Tide Child’s final tying-down and the dropping of the seastay. This dragged in the water and stopped the ship drifting.
She surveyed her crew and then nodded to herself.
“Mevans, put together a crew to row the flukeboat over to the larger of the two ships.”
“Ey, Shipwife.”
“Joron, you will accompany me. Dinyl, you remain in charge of Tide Child. I ask nothing more than you keep him still.” Then she stepped nearer the man and whispered something, pointing down the deck at Cahanny’s men, and Joron guessed she told Dinyl to make use of them if he must to keep command, for she still did not truly know this crew.
It had not escaped her any more than it had escaped Joron’s notice that Cwell – pinch-faced, resentful, mean-spirited, Cwell – had become close friends with Hasrin, who had once been a deckkeeper herself, and Sprackin, who still bridled at being replaced as purseholder by Mevans. It often felt to Joron that, wherever he went on the ship, one of those three watched him, waiting for something, although he did not know what.
Dinyl nodded and Joron thought it strange that the man who had seemed so sure of himself on the docks, who had far more experience than Joron, should look so uneasy on the rump of the ship despite his fine clothes and experience.
When the flukeboat came round, Meas dropped down the side of the ship like there were no obstacles; no hooks or spines or spikes. Joron followed, slowly and carefully, every foot placed with care, every hand also.
“Look lively, Joron, Tide Child won’t bite those who serve him.” Of course this was a lie; with his many serrations and barbs he most assuredly would. But then Joron was in the boat, thanks to a helping hand from Mevans, who then went to join his picked deckchilder at the oars. “Row for the first of the two-ribbers, the one called Cruel Water,” said Meas quietly.
“You know these black ships?” said Joron.
“I know one of them. The first is Cruel Water under Shipwife Arrin, a good man. The other I do not know, but they have seen our intent and also lower a boat. We made good time to this place, Joron, better than I expected, but I would have this meeting over as quickly as possible and be on our way. The less time the three ships spend close enough for deckchilder to shout to one another, the happier I will be.”
“I was surprised you brought both me and Mevans if I am honest, Shipwife. Cwell holds no love for you.” She turned to him, and for a moment her eyes were full of fury and he did not understand why, but it faded as she saw the sense in his words.
“You think my crew may mutiny while we are away? It is possible, but not yet, I think. And Cahanny wants his cargo delivered, so for now we can rely on those he sent. Besides, the deckchilder have enjoyed working the bows each day. That will buy us a fair amount of goodwill no matter how Cwell and her cronies may whisper. So for today I do not worry unduly.”
“Very well, Shipwife.”
“There is one thing I ask of you, Deckkeeper. Mevans, I enrol you in this also.”
“Trouble is it, Shipwife?” said Mevans, leaning in towards them. “You have the sound of trouble in your voice.”
“Maybe. I do not know yet. I want to know what that cargo is that Cahanny brought aboard my ship.”
“They guard it day and night,” said Joron as the oars of the flukeboat beat the sea.
“They do,” said Mevans. “They even have a man who sleeps on the damn things, down in the hold amid the stink. It does no one any good to sleep in the hold. He’ll catch greenleg or blacklung, you mark my words.”
“I did not ask for your words,” said Meas, her voice stark. “I do not care what they do and don’t do. I asked you to do a thing and I expect you to do it. Do you understand?”
“Ey, Shipwife.” The two men said the words together.
“And how goes it with the gullaime, Joron?”
“I have had trouble gathering all the things it—” he began.
Meas stopped him with a glare.
“Do not think I have not noticed you about the windtalker, Joron Twiner, and how it makes you nervous as a laying-night virgin. You think you are the only one who finds the beasts unnatural?” She did not let him reply. “You will never gather all it asked for, so take the windtalker what you have, first chance when we return to the ship, and find a way to make it like you.”
“Like me? But—”
“I say the same to you as I said to Mevans. I do not ask what you think of a thing, I only ask that you do it.”
The conversation ended as Mevans and his small crew, in perfect unison, lifted their oars so all four stuck straight up into the air, and the flukeboat coasted to a gentle stop against the side of Cruel Water. A rope was thrown down, and a ladder followed it to help them up the tumblehome. “Mevans, wait here. Twiner, come with me.” Meas grabbed the ladder and pulled herself up. Joron followed, trying not to think about the spikes and spears of bone erupting from the side of Cruel Water, and though none could say he did a creditable job of scaling the ship’s side he did not embarrass Tide Child either.
Joron did not know what he had expected of a Gaunt Islands ship – skulls and bones and rotting flesh, perhaps – but what awaited him was as far from his imagination as possible.
The shipwife, Arrin, was a tall thin man whose uniform of fishskin and birdleather was dyed a deep, deep blue. Joron had expected them to not have uniforms, to wear rags maybe, but though the cut of his coat was different and the patterns embroidered into his trousers and his two-tailed hat were silver, it would have been easy for him to mistake the shipwife for a Hundred Islander.
Apart from one thing. The man was missing half his right leg and walked upon a limb carved from varisk. Such a thing would never be allowed in the Hundred Isles – a one-legged man commanding a ship – and it was all Joron could do not to stare.
Meas stopped before him and touched her hat. Even a week ago Joron had still thought of that hat as his, but she had opened his eyes to what he should be and how much he lacked, and now he found it difficult to imagine that hat sitting comfortably on his head. Arrin’s deckkeeper stood behind him – a small, squat woman wearing the same shade of blue and a one-tail hat, her hair sticking out from beneath the hat and the colours of command shining in it, freshly dyed. The crew that awaited Meas and Joron were also dressed in blue. They were not tidy – their clothes were mixed and matched and poorly dyed – but despite this they presented a strangely uniform appearance, and if they did indeed eat children, Joron thought this crew the smartest group of child eaters he had ever seen.