13. Three whistles
13
THREE WHISTLES
“—I hope you have a good explanation for making a mess of my kitchen…” Captain Bederigha’s voice trailed off as he walked into the galley. He stood there, blinking at her.
Anahrod set the pan down on the counter. “Consider it an apology?” Then what he said sank in. “Wait. You’re the cook?”
“Always have been. I was the cook before I was the captain.” He edged his way around an oven and frowned at the pan. “What is it?”
“A vegetable casserole.” She carved a slice, laying it sideways on a plate so all the thin layers showed. She’d enjoyed cooking with something other than an earthen oven and a campfire. She took a bite out of the casserole (as was only polite), then handed the rest to him.
Bederigha threw the casserole a suspicious glare before taking a bite. He then stared down at the plate like it had bitten him back. “What.”
“You don’t like it?” She thought it was passable, but opinions varied.
“Don’t ask foolish questions,” he snapped. “Of course I liked it. Why didn’t you volunteer you can cook like this?”
She started cutting the casserole into serving portions. “You’re a cook, too. You know how it is. People aren’t always willing to just let you walk away after.” She glanced sideways at him. “How’d a cutter’s cook end up as captain?”
“Oh, I wasn’t the cutter’s cook,” he said. “I was the assistant cook. Then the old captain came down with food poisoning—never did figure out what caused it—and got so mad that he tossed my boss over the side.”
Anahrod shuddered. “And then?”
“I led a mutiny,” Bederigha said cheerfully. “Captains come and go, but good cooks are hard to find.” He took one more bite and then threw down his plate. “Well, that’s obnoxiously delicious. Can you follow someone else’s recipes? Because if you don’t want to stay here indefinitely, maybe don’t tempt the crew with dishes only you know how to make.”
“I can do that, yes.” Anahrod didn’t have a choice.
She thought he’d leave then. Or start making dinner—or ordering others around to do it for him.
He didn’t.
Bederigha perched a hip against the main table. “You told me you wouldn’t cause trouble.”
“I said I don’t start fights.”
“My mistake. That’s not the same thing at all, is it?”
She bit back on the urge to sigh. He wasn’t finished.
“Grexam says you claimed you didn’t know. Thinks you were telling the truth. Must have been a hard slap, realizing you’re never going to look down again.”
Anahrod didn’t answer.
“Folks aren’t born that scared of heights,” he continued. “They get that way because something happened.”
Anahrod started washing up. Water was more plentiful on the cutter than she’d expected, but that made sense when a refill was as close as the nearest cloud.
“Don’t make me ask a third time.”
“A third time? Were any of those statements questions?” Anahrod sighed at herself. Perhaps not the best way to go about convincing the captain to let her stay. “It’s just what you’re thinking. I fell.”
“You fell, or you were pushed?”
Anahrod dropped the bowl with a clang of metal. She hung on to the washtub with both hands until her knuckles turned white against her skin.
“Pushed, then,” Bederigha said. “That makes it worse. If you were just clumsy or a rope snapped, well. You’d tell yourself not to be clumsy. Check your ropes better next time. But pushed? Pushed is rough. That might happen again. Might happen anytime. You can’t feel safe, even if you’re roped off and wearing a harness. What if someone doesn’t like you?”
Anahrod suddenly felt cold, the air in the galley making her hairs stand up. Or maybe it was the topic of conversation.
“Finish cleaning up,” the captain instructed. “Then set up the tables for the crew. I’ll bring out the evening meal.”
“Right away, Captain,” she said.
“We’re not done talking about this. I don’t care how good a cook you are. I won’t stand for someone on my vessel who’ll go to pieces the first time she wanders too close to a window.”
Wonderful.
She spent the first week helping in the kitchen: cleaning dishes, hauling water, and preparing ingredients. In the evening, she sat by herself and picked out the knots in her hair. In return, she never stepped near the pinion slots.
Still, too many people had witnessed her breakdown. She could see how it must have looked. She came out of nowhere, the lowest of the hierarchy by cutter rules, and then lost her nerve. The captain had rewarded her for that cowardice with a kitchen assignment, lining her up for one of the highest-paying jobs on the cutter. All the gain and none of the risk.
It wasn’t fair.
The inevitable result: pranks, whispered rude names, and attempts to provoke fights the crew would swear Anahrod started.
The only reason the rumors weren’t worse was because Bederigha’s and Grexam’s rings were all leaves, and they only had eyes for each other. Still, every other motivation made the gossip rounds at least once, including a story in which she was the captain’s long-lost daughter.
Grexam didn’t care. He still called her Stupid.
She had nothing to prove to these people. Or rather, she had a lot more to lose by getting in trouble than she’d gain by causing it. So, no matter how much she wanted to throw fists, she didn’t.
The only person besides the captain and first mate not offended by her presence was Bederigha’s actual assistant cook, Kira. She was delighted—mostly because she dumped all the unpleasant tasks to Anahrod.
Kira didn’t even mind it when Anahrod slept on the grain sacks instead of in her hammock. Which was good, because Anahrod was doing the entire crew a favor.
She’d started having nightmares.
They’d set in that first night. The crew’s reaction had been to throw shoes at her until she woke, and then banish her from crew quarters. It only took two nights of that before sleeping in the kitchen pantry became preferable. It wasn’t necessarily comfortable, but at least it was uninterrupted by anyone except herself.
On the sixth day, Anahrod woke to find the captain staring down at her.
He hadn’t forgotten his promise.
“I can’t stand gray vermin,” the captain said.
Anahrod blinked at him. “What did you say?”
“Gray vermin. Scrabbers. Little scaly bastards. The way they sneak into a house, bold as sunlight, and nibble anything not locked up? Used to be I’d scream and be up on the furniture before anyone had a chance to so much as draw a knife. I’ve stared down dragons and once got pulled into a hurricane by a leviathan. But I was scared of rats.”
Anahrod rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she stood up. “What did you do?”
“Found myself a nest of baby grays. Just a few days old. Raised ’em myself, by hand. Turns out even little scaled rat babies are cute. And by the time they weren’t that cute, I was too fond of them to care. No more problems with gray vermin.”
“Is there a point to this, Captain?”
He gave her a stern, paternal look. “You don’t have to let your fears control you.”
“No offense, but I think my situation is a little different from being frightened of scrabbers.”
“You’re wrong. It’s exactly the same.” He all but pushed her out of the pantry. “Starting small is the key. Little things. Fun things. Work your way up to the big stuff. Look fear straight in the eye and tell it to go fuck itself. You don’t strike me as a person who’d let fear squeeze all the air from your throat.”
Anahrod barked out a laugh. She thought of the Deep and Overbite and how for years she’d made what could only ironically be called a living. How she’d survived. “No, I’m not.”
The captain nodded, satisfied. “That’s what I thought. Come with me.”
She did, but it was only when they reached the wingsuit lockers that she realized where they were going. Grexam was already there, already preparing ropes, harnesses, and leads.
“We’re doing this now?” Anahrod protested.
“What? You’re scared?” Grexam said.
“Yes. Or we wouldn’t be here.”
He just shrugged. “You’re just lucky the captain’s a soft touch. The old captain would’ve thrown you off the cutter five days ago.”
Captain Bederigha’s bright smile dimmed as the man glanced at his missing hand. “Not necessarily. He enjoyed fixing problems with an axe, too.”
With that, the captain grabbed a rope line and clipped it to his belt. “I’ll meet you topside.” He gave them both a sharp nod and climbed the ladder, exiting the hatch at the end.
Grexam cursed under his breath.
“That what happened to his hand?” she asked. “The old captain?”
“Yeah,” Grexam said. “Went after him with a hatchet.” The scowl turned into something dark, malicious, and gleeful. “Course, the old captain found out the hard way a hook will do just as well as a knife for gutting a person.” He threw down a wide leather belt. “Put that on.”
The belt boasted an array of rings. One end of a rope hung from it by spring hook, while the rope’s other end fastened to an iron ring fixed to the floor.
He opened the hatch.
The wind outside howled, while ropes slapped against the metal hull of the cutter.
“You’re going to step outside,” he told her. “I’ll be here. I have your rope.” He tugged on it for emphasis. “You can’t fall.”
Anahrod clenched and unclenched her fists. She could do this.
She stepped out into the bright sunlight on the top of the cutter. Land came into view on the left side of the cloud cutter, a soft gray-green fading away into mountain ranges. Clouds scuttled below the vessel.
“Nope.” Anahrod turned around.
Grexam shoved her back outside.
She slid across the top of the cutter, coming to a halt far, far too close to where the slick metal surface slid away into nothing. She scrambled backward, overcome with the irrational fear that the cutter would tilt. She’d slide. The rope would snap…
Captain Bederigha chuckled. “Nice of you to join us. Put this on.” He tossed a bundle of cloth to Anahrod, different from Grexam’s belt.
Anahrod glanced around herself. A thirty-foot section of the cutter roof had been sectioned off and framed with railings. Assuming the cutter stayed reasonably level, it was as safe as any balcony—as long as she didn’t look over the side.
Anahrod stood up with as much dignity as she could muster and inspected the bundle. If the fabric fastened the way she thought, it would leave large swaths of cloth connecting her arms and legs like sails…
She looked up at the captain with a stare she very much hoped conveyed the proper amount of “you must be joking.”
Captain Bederigha was still not joking.
“You ever flown a paper kite before?” The captain waved a hand. “What am I saying? You’re a Seven Crests girl. Of course you have. This is just like that. Except you’re the kite.”
A full-body shudder swept over Anahrod. Perhaps if she gave them all her remaining scales, they’d allow her to lock herself in a room and gibber until they reached a city again.
She clenched her teeth. That a woman who’d grown up in Seven Crests—who’d once wanted to be a dragonrider more than anything else—would now be afraid of heights was absurd.
No, it was worse than that. It was humiliating .
She refused.
“Is this how you learned?” she asked the captain.
“Me? Don’t be ridiculous.” The captain gestured at his generous waist. “I’d look like a damn balloon, wouldn’t I? No, I don’t harvest. That’s your job. I just sit here, make soup, and look pretty.”
Anahrod chuffed out a laugh.
“Fine. Let’s get this over with.” Before Anahrod changed her mind, came to her senses, or curled into a tight little ball and began screaming. That last one looked more appealing every second.
Anahrod reminded herself that she’d faced down titan drakes and killed vine creepers with her bare hands. She once swam through a tidefisher’s stingers to pull a full-grown razorfin from the ocean—on a dare .
Air would not get the better of her.
“Stand over there.” The captain pointed to the railing.
Anahrod swallowed, clenched her fists, and did so.
“Now hold out your arms and jump,” the man said. “Doesn’t need to be too high. Just enough for the wind to catch you. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but there’s a lot of that up here.”
Anahrod couldn’t move. She felt her breath quickening.
“Ready?” the captain asked.
“No,” Anahrod admitted.
“Jump now!”
Eannis help her, she did.
She would’ve assumed a simple jump would be insufficient, but the driving wind flung her skyward and pulled her rope taut.
Anahrod screamed. She screamed a lot.
“Keep your arms and legs spread!” the captain yelled helpfully.
Anahrod would have yelled back all manner of foul curses regarding the man’s nature and genealogy, but he could still have her thrown overboard. Also, she didn’t think he could hear her.
She kept her arms and legs spread.
Thankfully, she couldn’t see over the cutter’s sides. She closed her eyes and focused on the most basic sensations. The wind lashing her face, the fabric pulled taut against her limbs, the chill temperature, the thin air. She spread her awareness out, concentrating on the world around herself to keep sane. Animals flew in the distance, too far up to be anything but different breeds of sky racers—small, large, and everything in between. Then she felt something so enormous she thought the height and her situation were playing tricks on her brain.
Her eyes snapped open. Only one animal could be that colossal: a leviathan.
Before she could consider what to do with that information, three sharp whistles sounded, loud enough to pierce the howling veil of wind.
Grexam pulled her back down.
Anahrod fell in an untidy heap the moment the wind proved too weak to keep her aloft. She had enough presence of mind to roll, but she wasn’t used to doing so while tied to ropes, and nearly garroted herself.
She lay flat against the cutter, looking up at the blue sky, thinking: Isn’t it funny that in the Deep they think I’m dangerous…?
Grexam’s giant shoulders eclipsed her field of vision. He held out a hand.
From somewhere to the side, Captain Bederigha said, “Lessons will have to wait. Three whistles mean the watch just spotted a leviathan. Now we earn our shares.”
Anahrod took Grexam’s hand and pulled herself up.
At least there was one mercy: she didn’t have to debate whether she should tell them about the leviathan.
Make that two mercies: she could also go back inside.