Joron left her cabin and went next door to his. He had been back on board Tide Child two days and had not seen the gullaime since it hopped off the flukeboat and vanished into its cabin. It was not that he avoided it, simply that he had been too tired from the fighting on the island and then too busy working the ship. But he was not scared of the windtalker now; in fact, he wanted to talk to it, to find out about the sound he kept hearing, the constant song. So he would call on the gullaime now. He opened his door to find Dinyl waiting for him in the gloom of the underdeck.
“Joron.”
“You should address me as Deckkeeper, Deckholder.”
“Of course.” He took a step back. “My apologies, Deckkeeper.” He looked at the floor. Dinyl was a smaller man than Joron, though better built, stronger. “What I said in the great cabin, about the duel. I . . .”
“As Meas said, such things are the past.” Joron did not look him in the eye, only made to go around him, but Dinyl put a hand on his arm, stopped him.
“Yes, they are. But what I said was not in the past, it was said today. It will be like a cold breeze between us if it is not addressed.”
“Well, it is best to have some distance between ranks in the fleet,” said Joron, as fleetlike as he could. “I am told this is how it is.” Again he tried to step around Dinyl.
“Deckkeeper,” Dinyl said, his words soft, “I am trying my utmost to apologise.”
Joron stopped. Let out a breath.
“I did not drug Rion Karrad,” he said. “I went to that duel fully expecting it to be my last day under Skearith’s Eye and to spend that night at the Hag’s fire.”
“I should never have said what I did in the Shipwife’s cabin, Deckkeeper,” said Dinyl. “They were Indyl Karrad’s words coming from my mouth, not mine.”
“I did not see him in the cabin, Deckholder. Now, if you will let me past I have work to do.”
“I was Karrad’s man for so long that it became second nature to me, to voice his opinion. I should have thought before I let the wind from my mouth.” Dinyl took off his no-tail hat and scratched at his hair; he wore it short, unlike most men of the Hundred Isles. “I knew Rion,” he said. “Karrad said you had drugged his son, and I heard it so often as he convinced others of it that I even came to believe it myself.”
“You speak like you knew he was not drugged.” Dinyl looked away. Something dark rose within Joron and he stepped nearer to the deckholder. “You did know,” said Joron, incredulous. “How?”
“I was his second that day, hanging back in the shadows behind the rest. We were all drunk.”
“You were there? You were his friend?” There had been a glimmer between them, a ship friendship growing, even. And now?
“Not his friend,” said Dinyl, he looked miserable. “Never that. His father appointed me his son’s minder though I was not that to Rion. I was the butt of his jokes, his punchbag on occasion, servant on others. That morning he drank. I tried to convince him not to but he would not listen. He did not fear a fisher’s boy. ‘I could kill him drunk and blindfolded, Dinyl.’” He looked away again. “I felt like cheering when you killed him.”
“But you never told the truth of the matter? You could have saved me from the black ship.” Joron wanted to spit. “You could have told them it was a fair fight.”
“I was frightened. I thought Karrad would never forgive me for not stopping his son drinking, so I pretended I was not with him that morning, and when the story got about that he had been drugged, it seemed like I was off the hook.”
“Why tell me this, Dinyl? Why now?”
Dinyl took a breath. Let it out. Shrugged and stared at the overbones.
“I am alone on this ship, Deckkeeper. Trusted by none. You are the nearest I have had to a friend and yet even that small friendship I do not deserve.”
An inkling awoke within Joron.
“Is that why Karrad sent you on here, to join the condemned?”
“Of course. He is the Thirteenbern’s spymaster. He knew all along that I had let his son drink the day of the duel. He only waited for a time when his vengeance could also be useful to him. But now you know that, you know I am no more favoured than you and am just as committed to our cause as any other. Meas need not send me away, and I will do my duty. I can only regain Karrad’s favour by doing my duty. And I am fleet through and through – duty is my all. Karrad told me it was my duty to support him, he served the fleet. He paid for my education.” Joron did not think he had ever seen a man look as miserable, or as trapped. “What could I do?”
For a moment Joron thought of striking Dinyl. Of how good it would feel for his fist to meet this man’s flesh. Here, in front of him, was someone he could blame for his fate, for the fact he was one of the condemned. He clenched his fists. Felt his muscles tense, and then a stray thought passed through his mind. Of the cabin boy, Gavith. Of how Meas had said that if the boy did not come with them the Kept would kill him simply because he was inconvenient to them. Could Joron doubt for one moment that, even if he had walked away from the death of Rion Karrad, if the Bern had said it was a just death, that he would have lived for long?
Of course not.
One night someone would have found him, started an argument in a tavern or slipped a knife between his ribs on the docks.
He let his muscles relax a little. Unclenched his fists.
“It is brave of you to tell me all this, Dinyl,” he said.
“I had offended you anyway, Deckkeeper. And you, all I had for a friend.”
Joron let out a sigh.
Had he not thought to himself only days ago how he was a better man for meeting Meas – how he was born anew? Could he really hate Dinyl for his part in putting him on this path?
“Call me Joron. At least when no one is in hearing so Meas cannot pull us up on it. What is it she says? That we leave all we were behind when we join the black ship?” He put out his hand. “Let us leave what we were behind.”
Dinyl looked at the hand as if it were something completely alien to him. Then a wide smile crossed his face and he took it.
“We can be friends again?”
“Ey, friends. We may not live long, so let us not be lonely while we still draw breath.”
“No,” said Dinyl, and his hand was warm in Joron’s.
“Well, now I must see to the gullaime, and you must see to cold-weather clothes, unless you want Meas to order you corded.”
“Yes, Deckkeeper,” he said, and grinned at Joron as he let go of his hand.
Joron watched him walk away and felt a little lighter of step himself.
He crossed the underdeck and knocked on the gullaime’s door.
“Come, Joron Twiner,” it squawked, and he passed into its sanctum.
The room had changed much since the first time he had been here. It was still messy to Joron’s eye, but he felt like there was some sense of order to it now. And the smell – that smell of heated sand and parched desert land, the lifelessness he associated with the heartgrounds: where in days past the huge and glowing hearts of the keyshan were dragged, and all around them sickened and died, where still nothing grew today – it was not gone from the gullaime’s quarters, but transmuted. The cabin still smelled of heat, but not a dead heat, a clean heat. Heat like a summer morning, when the sea lapped against the sand and the wind was kind and you knew the nets you cast that day would come back full. A heat full of promise.