Chapter 10
The next day, by the time the sun reaches its noon apex, not just Kirkrell but the entire north shore, the whole continent, is out of sight even with a spyglass—nothing but open ocean on all sides.
Twice over the course of the last day has another vessel passed us in the other direction—the first a merchant ship with Hibernic flags, the second a returning whaler whose crew lined up at the railing and cheered us as we passed by, their shouts tinny and faint over the some two hundred yards between us.
I wish I were with them, homebound instead of outbound.
The roll of the ship beneath my feet has me queasy, and the expanse of the sea, the horizon unbroken by anything save for the dipping specks of seagulls, is unnerving.
It’s like we’re alone in the world. It’s been only a day since we left Kirkrell, but already the idea of home almost feels like a dream.
Like if we turned around and sailed in the direction from which we came, we might find nothing at all, the city dissolving like a mirage.
When the galley bell rings for the midday meal, I make my way belowdecks to the galley kitchen with the rest of the crew, most of whom ignore me or acknowledge my presence with a bare nod, even as they chatter familiarly with one another.
I look for my sister, but Lydia is nowhere to be seen as I get in a slow-moving line that threads half the length of the ship.
Worry prickles the back of my neck and I try to push it down.
Even Lydia can’t have managed to fall over the railing two days into the voyage.
But where in Maker’s name has she gotten to on this ship that’s the largest of our fleet yet somehow feels so small?
The creaky stairs from the upper deck let out into a narrow hallway, off which are the closed doors to the officers’ cabins.
Then there’s the blubber room, a long, wide space that takes up most of the space of the mid-level; a few long tables without chairs stand throughout.
If we catch a whale, this is where we’ll set about the work of cutting it up and storing the oil, blood, meat, and bone.
All of it is sparely lit with skylights of thick frosted glass, set into the deck above.
Beyond that is the bunkroom, where the crew sleeps—dozens of too-small bunk beds crammed into every possible space.
One corner is generously walled off for the women, with bunks for Lydia, Josephine, Teuila, and Willa, the Heralder cook.
With bunks set apart just for them, they’re lucky. The men have to sleep in shifts or wrapped in blankets up on deck.
The galley kitchen sits in between the blubber room and the bunkroom. Willa, an older woman with a lined, long-suffering face, doles out tin plates with bowls of stew and a brown rye roll and a mug of ale each.
After I get my food, I search the blubber room, where everyone is settling in to eat.
The Heralder men group up easily at the long tables, but there’s not a familiar face among them, not my sister or the Whistler crew.
It’s an enormous relief when Lydia materializes at my elbow.
“Where have you been all day?” I ask her.
She shrugs. “Helping out in the kitchen. I’m eating above deck with the Whistler crew,” she says, offhanded. “Join us if you want.”
Just like that, the worry is back. It doesn’t seem like Silas’s crew, the Cursed Crew, is particularly well-liked. The Heralder men tend to ignore them around the ship unless forced to work together on some chore. If Lydia and I are seen as befriending them, how will that reflect on us?
But I also don’t want to eat with strangers or, Maker forbid, Mance. And I don’t see August anywhere. So I sigh and follow my sister upstairs.
Above, a few of the Heralder men have the same idea, scattered around the deck in twos and threes, but it’s much less claustrophobic than the press belowdecks, maybe because of the stiff evening breeze that has kicked up.
Lydia leads me to a spot by the port railing where Josephine is sitting along with the gathered Whistler crew—Ezra, Teuila, and Zimri sit on the ground with plates in their laps. Silas isn’t there.
My sister looks right at home among the others, catching my eye and grinning.
Maybe her sailor clothes are a little more crisp, the whites brighter, but aside from that she could have been on the Whistler crew for years with how her hair is braided tightly back from her face, how she’s adopted the slouching devil-may-care posture of a sailor, how she plops down and tucks in to her stew and stale roll with no indication that they’re anything different from what she’s used to.
“Why do sailors always call ships ‘she’?” she asks the group, with an air of picking up a conversation recently left off, and I hope she hasn’t been bothering the others with a flood of questions.
But the crew laughs heartily. “They’re beautiful, for one thing,” Josephine pipes up, swinging her legs.
“And complicated,” Zimri adds. He has a patchy attempt at a beard and a warm Midlands accent. “They require a keen eye and a steady hand to navigate. Just like some ladies I know.” This causes Teuila to playfully swat his arm before turning to Ezra, eyebrows raised.
Ezra swallows a mouthful of stew and shrugs. “No comment,” he says, just as Josephine flashes a bright smile that seems especially for Lydia.
“We’re being rude,” Teuila says chidingly, and turns to me. “Lady Fairfax, welcome. How have you found your first day at sea?”
“Please, call me Annie.” It feels strange to be Lady Fairfax here—yet another layer of separation between me and everyone else.
“It’s been fine. At least I haven’t lost my breakfast over the railing yet.
” My words are coming out too fast. I don’t know why I said that, when I should be projecting an image of competence and confidence.
“Where’s Silas?” I say to change the subject.
“In his cabin.” Teuila frowns sympathetically. “Headache.”
I feel a strange mix of relief and disappointment not to see him, but before I can think too much about it, Lydia is off again. “I think I saw a dolphin jumping earlier,” she says. “Off to the south. Could that be?”
“Sure,” Ezra says with the barest hint of a smile. “That’s a sign of good luck, you know, especially at the start of a voyage.”
“What about whales?” Lydia asks eagerly. “When will we start seeing them?”
“Maybe in a week or two,” he says. “Maybe longer, maybe shorter, though that’s less likely these days. It’s hard to say for sure.”
“When can I go in the crow’s nest to look out?” Lydia asks.
I choke on a noodle, so I can’t intervene right away when Teuila says, “Whenever you like. It’s not a coveted shift; the other sailors’ll be glad to be shot of it. As long as you have good eyes and a loud voice—”
“Not whenever you like,” I cut in once I’ve managed to swallow. “Practice climbing the lower riggings first before you worry about the crow’s nest.” I see the corner of Josephine’s lips quirk; she meets my eyes and shrugs slightly as if in apology.
“There are hoops attached to the mast,” Lydia argues, like I wouldn’t know, like we haven’t spent years side by side studying the ship diagrams with our tutors. “You stand inside them so you can’t fall.”
“And you still have to climb up there,” I say with finality. “Give it a few days.”
Zimri puts in, “It’s perfect if you want to freeze your ass off and get the worst sunburn of your life at the same time.”
Soon a debate is raging about the pros and cons of a shift in the crow’s nest. “That’s why they invented sweaters and hats,” Teuila retorts, while Ezra says, “It’s the only way to get some peace and quiet.”
“Enough, all of you!” Josephine’s voice is sharp, but there’s a laugh in it too.
“I didn’t corral you all here to bicker.
I need your support with something.” She checks over her shoulder like she’s making sure no one’s watching, then lifts something from around her neck and holds it in cupped palms. My heart jumps in recognition.
It’s a bone pendant, like the one I’m wearing now.
Around Josephine, Ezra, Teuila, and Zimri grow somber, looking on with understanding.
Zimri touches his own shirt collar. They must all have the pendants.
Silas is taking them to Drekja to hopefully have their curses lifted—if they do enough favors for the finfolk, and if these favors are deemed sufficient.
Josephine speaks in hushed tones. “Back in Kirkrell, I stole a pouch of finfolk silver from a sailor in the Spout. It never should have left the sea. I went out that night and dropped it into the harbor. But I wanted to wait for you all to be here before I did this.”
She opens her hands and reveals the pendant. There are five or six small red spots scattered across its pale surface, whereas mine is pure ivory. She pulls a dress pin out of her pocket and uses it to carefully, delicately prick her finger.
Lydia tenses as a small drop of blood wells up, but Josephine is calm. “If the blood rolls off the bone, the favor wasn’t good enough,” she explains softly. “But if it sticks…”
Everyone looks on with an air of tense hope as Josephine holds her finger above the pendant, allowing one drop of blood to fall onto its polished surface.
When the droplet doesn’t roll off but sinks into the bone and makes another perfect red dot, the four Cursed Crew let out a breath all at once.
Teuila swears appreciatively, Ezra leans over and gives Josephine a one-armed hug, and Zimri claps her back. As Josephine looks up at me, her face glowing, I realize with a jolt she is one step closer to being healed.
I realize, too, that this was likely for my benefit, her waiting until she was on the Heralder to test if the favor would be accepted. She’s trying to show me how it’s done.
“Do you really believe Silas about Drekja?” I ask, slightly choked up, to my chagrin. “Do you believe you can be healed?”