Chapter 23 A Place in the World
Riley
“Riley! Over here.”
It was Gadrielle. She was standing by the mainmast, arms crossed, her expression impenetrable.
Riley frowned, confused.
When Gadrielle was like that, it usually meant she’d fucked something up. But she’d just resumed her deckhand duties yesterday–as soon as she’d made sure her mind was indeed her own once more, just like Mirellen had promised. She hadn’t exactly had the time to fuck something up.
Not this fast.
Probably.
She still stood in front of Gadrielle silently, and waited to be told what she’d done wrong, and how to fix it, and she nearly leaned into that feeling.
Because Gadrielle was always straightforward and never sought to punish.
It had taken a while for Riley to see it under the brash exterior, but once she’d had, she’d found it grounding.
The boatswain didn’t do punishments, or tearing down for the sake of it.
Just clean, hard facts, and once the mess was done?
All was as well as before. A lesson learned.
This time, though, the silence stretched too long. Gadrielle’s eyes raked over her, assessing, and suddenly Riley’s nerves prickled. Something new was happening here.
“You’re going to climb today,” Gadrielle said eventually, and Riley blinked at her.
Gadrielle was telling her to climb?
It had been months since she’d first set foot on the Moonshadow.
Months of Riley asking to climb and being ignored.
The one time she’d been instructed to, it had been by Calla during the Stingers’ attack, but Gadrielle?
She’d never considered Riley ready for the responsibility.
And now, the way she was looking at her?
It felt like a test. A thrill went up her spine and spread to the tips of her fingers.
It was pure energy, zapping through her veins.
“You’re making me a rig monkey?” Riley asked, just to make sure she’d heard right.
Gadrielle’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “I told you you’re going to climb, not that I’m making you a rig monkey.” Riley didn’t miss the glint in her eyes, though, there and gone before her expression went serious again. “See that tangle of knots up there?”
Riley followed her gaze, zeroing in on a snarl of tangled lines.
They’d nearly caught up to the storm again–unlike Calla had hoped, the storm had grown too big for them to circumvent it–and the ropes slashed in the air with the sharp bursts of wind.
If left unchecked, that snarl would cause a block to snap or a sail to tear under pressure.
Teams of two usually undid knots like that together.
“Yeah,” she said. “You want me to untangle it.” Gadrielle nodded. Riley looked around, frowning. “Who am I taking with me?”
“No one.”
Riley’s eyes snapped to Gadrielle’s. Her sharp gray eyes were full of challenge, a faint smile curling her lips, and this was definitely a test.
“Alright,” she said, nearly unable to stand still anymore. “I can do it.”
Gadrielle smirked. “See that you do.”
Under Gadrielle’s watchful gaze, Riley climbed.
She’d always loved climbing and seeing the world from above.
Under Neera, she used to climb trees and rooftops and keep guard, and after, she’d sneak through spider-ridden cellars when she needed a place to sleep and had no coin to spare for a room.
But that climbing wasn’t like this one. The ship was moving, the mainmast was swaying with the waves, and the angry wind caught her shirt like tearing claws, set on making her slip.
But Riley was used to all of that from sleeping in the crow’s nest, and she kept the wood of the mast between herself and the worst of the wind.
Once she was eye level with the tangle of ropes, she paused, felt it under her fingers and pressed her lips together.
The knot was a nasty one. The ropes were old and rough and stiff with salt.
She would need both hands for this, and the wind was merciless, but she used her feet to brace her back against the mainmast and hold herself steady.
Her heart drummed in her ears as she felt eyes on her, and her hands were itching to do this, and do it fast. Riley forced herself to breathe instead and think.
She remembered what Gadrielle had told her once.
“Knots are like people, recruit. Yank too hard, and they dig in. Feed them slack, and they loosen on their own.”
Riley studied the knot, tracked which of the lower lines fed into it and gripped it in her fist. Then slowly, patiently, she started feeding into it.
The wind worked against her. The tension in the lines did, too, and her arms grew sore with the effort to keep them steady, her bare fingers scratched raw with the grip needed to keep everything from moving.
The sails creaked above and below, the sound like moaning whales, alive, full of weight and threat.
This was a two-person job. But that didn’t matter.
Gadrielle thought she could do it, and Gadrielle wouldn’t set her up for failure.
Just as her teeth gritted in frustration, the knot in her hands breathed.
The whole snarl shifted–releasing tension across the lines above.
The tangle was easy to undo after that.
Riley was bracing for the climb down when she spotted something else, just by her hand.
A frayed section in a different rope. It took nothing to tie it off, and she did so offhandedly before carefully feeling her way back down.
As her feet hit the Moonshadow’s deck, a self-satisfied smile pulled at her lips.
The smile faded as Gadrielle looked at her, and it was a hard look, impossible to parse, the lines in her face harsh as rock.
Riley shifted on her feet, the rush of the climb shifting to sudden anxiety.
Never taking her eyes off her, Gadrielle reached inside her pocket and pulled out a blue sash–the color the rig monkeys wore. She tossed it to Riley.
“Nice work, captain. Now you can look upon all of us lowly dogs from up above.” Gadrielle winked, and Riley flushed bright red as she watched the boatswain go.
This was the first time anyone had brought up the Neera incident, and she felt a laugh bubble in her throat as she tied the sash around her waist.
***
Gadrielle’s joke offset the rest of the crew, and Riley realized they’d been holding back.
Nearly most of them now were captain this and captain that every time they bumped into her, and they all looked so damn pleased with themselves that Riley still kept laughing at the jokes even after they’d stopped being funny.
Or maybe she was just lying to herself.
Her lips were still curled in a faint smile by the time she made her way to the captain’s cabin at the end of the day. It faded when she closed the door at her back and saw Calla at her desk, who barely shot her a tired, fleeting smile before she went back to poring over her maps.
Calla had taken Venn’s quitting yesterday harder than expected, and as soon as she’d made sure Riley was indeed rid of her visions, she did as she always seemed to do when she was upset.
She dove headfirst into the next problem to solve.
Tracking Sable. Even though staying nailed in her captain’s chair and skipping meals wouldn’t get them to the Desolate Sea any faster than they were already going.
This felt like more than just Venn, though, or the frustration of not knowing how to breach the storm once it came to it.
Calla had withdrawn her physical affection, too.
At first, Riley had thought it was about her, that she wasn’t welcome here anymore now that she was well.
Then she’d seen Calla reach for her, and flinch at the sight of her own hand before withdrawing and making for her desk instead.
That moment seared in Riley’s mind, replaying over and over during the day, and it was worse than any of her visions.
She’d thought Calla was beginning to accept herself as she was, but clearly something about Venn chasing the life she’d scorned had triggered something.
The knot of worry in Riley’s stomach twisted and tightened as she leaned against the closed door at her back.
Even though Calla had forgiven her, she was still the one who’d done this to her, and she racked her brains for some way to help, to bring Calla out of her own head.
Not because she felt guilty–or not just because–but because she cared about Calla, and it hurt her to see her in pain.
Her eyes flitted to the porthole, and an idea slithered to the front of her mind. Hopefully a good one.
Riley smirked. “It’s a nice night out,” she said.
Calla didn’t look up from her maps. She acknowledged Riley with a soft, distracted hum.
Riley tried again. “It’s a good night for swimming.”
That got Calla to finally look at her, and Riley’s smirk grew.
“You want to swim?” Calla asked, both her tone and expression unreadable.
Riley shrugged. “Last time you said…” How had Calla put it? Oh, yes. “That even Patch would be more elegant in the water than me.” She shot Calla a teasing grin. “I don’t think you’re done teaching me.”
Sure, Riley could swim now. Barely. They only got two more lessons in after the first one, then her visions had grown too out of control and they’d had to stop.
Calla leaned back in her chair, her nail tapping against the wood of the desk as she appraised Riley with a tilt of her head. Riley held in a shiver at that look and waited.
“Alright,” Calla said eventually. “I could use a break.”