Chapter 28 Keelhaul and Ketch
I confess I had never seen it, as the Touchstone’s hands drew ropes and weights around the hull, from starboard to port by way of the keel.
Keelhauling was a horrific punishment, and the very thought of it made even the hardest of hearts faint.
I’d never heard of a captain who’d ordered it, nor a crew who’d followed through.
All that was about to change.
They brought Worley to the main, hands bound and a second line ’round his ankles.
He was pale, his thinning hair slicked along his skull.
He was also stripped to the waist, and I could see red welts on his back from the cat.
My heart broke at the thought that this old graymage, this lover of birds, would not live to see another sunsset.
I couldn’t believe that he was the soul, and I had wept all night in my berth, for him, for us, for all those he had cost us.
What did it mean to serve the Ship of Spells?
The entire crew was assembled to watch. Buck’s men drew Worley up by the rope at his wrists, and he cried out at the first haul.
I could see his shoulders twist and pop their sockets as they slowly, relentlessly, drew him up.
In the rigging, Kit and Neale grabbed him and set him on the starboard side of the mainsail’s yard.
Even so high up, he looked half dead, and a part of me wanted to look away, to beg for mercy or head back down to Echo’s pit until the deed was done.
But I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, and I swallowed back the bile rising in my throat.
The captain and the mate stood on the main, along with the rest of us. They wore uniforms as fine as any in the Navy, and Thanavar’s face was set like stone.
“This is not the first man I have ordered to his death,” he said over the creak of the ship.
“But it is the most cutting. Worley has held a position of trust among us, and there’s no single thing worse in the life of a seamage than betrayal.
Our lives depend on one another. We do not buy our faith; we do not sell our trust. We serve our king, we serve our helm, and we serve the magik that flows through our very blood. ”
He looked around at those gathered there.
“And because of that, we serve the Touchstone. She is our hearth and home, our shining light, and our safe harbor. Mr. Worley’s treason cost us many lives, and more than that, it nearly cost us our ship. And that is something that we cannot afford to lose.”
He looked up.
“I condemn you, Mr. Worley, but our Mother the Sea is your judge. If you survive the keel once, you may not survive her twice. But if you do…”
He took a long, deep breath.
“If you do, it will be the sea’s judgment. You will be set adrift with rations for a week, given over to the mercies of the ocean. Mercies which you did not afford my ship or my crew.”
I bit my lip. There was no cannonball tied around his feet, no chains to send him deep to avoid the razor barnacles along the ship’s bottom. This would be bad, and my heart broke for this miserable old man. His loss was no less than ours. And yet…
The captain nodded sharply, and, in a swift motion, Neale shoved the older man from the yardarm. He dropped like a stone into the water.
“Haul line!” shouted Buck, and the hands to port pulled the cables that bound Worley’s wrists.
He’d gone over the starboard, and they hoisted hard and fast to pull him port by way of the keel.
I remembered the barnacles on the Terrebith Fae’s hull, their dagger plates and lethal shells, and I prayed he came through with all his limbs.
Heave, haul, heave, haul.
I swore I could hear the man bumping along the bottom of the ship.
Heave, haul, heave, haul.
But then a shout and they doubled down, hauling the bloody form above the rail. He hung, swinging by his ankles now, half his face gone, lacerations across every exposed measure of flesh. I could see the yellow bone of his ribs and flashes of white in his thigh and shoulder, and I wanted to retch.
Keelhauling. The worst fate a seamage could meet.
Thanavar crossed the deck to stare at what was left.
“Still alive, Mr. Worley?”
The man struggled, made a gurgling sound in his throat.
“Do you have the spine to confess?” he asked. “Confess and I offer a quick death.”
He opened, closed his mouth, more sounds, and Thanavar stepped closer.
Worley shuddered a deep breath and spat.
Thanavar stepped back.
“Over you go, then, Mr. Worley. If the sea gods spare you, you will see the sunsrise.”
He nodded at Buck.
“Haul line!” shouted the bosun, and Worley was yanked back down.
Heave, haul, heave, haul.
Under the ship a second time, from port to starboard, through the crushing waters and across the barnacle gauntlet. No one could possibly survive a second run.
Suddenly, the sails thundered, and Thanavar held up his hand. I could feel her fury, her growls almost drowning out the howl of the wind.
Hold line, said the Touchstone.
“Hold line,” said Thanavar.
“Hold line,” cried Buck, and the men ceased their draw.
“What?” I whispered. “No.”
Thanavar said nothing, did not move as the Touchstone rose and fell in the choppy sea. I glanced around. Worley would be a-drowning right now. A man could only hold his breath so long.
I looked at Echo, horrified. He did not meet my eyes.
With blood I condemn him, my roots in the erthe.
“Touchstone, no…”
My heart is the ocean. Let fly the lines.
Thanavar turned to his crew.
“Let fly the lines, Mr. Buck.”
“Cap’n?”
“You heard me. The Touchstone says let fly the lines. For you see, while the sea may be his judge, the Touchstone is his jury, and I am his Jak Ketch.”
Jak Ketch. Sea slang for hangman.
Buck nodded.
“Let fly the lines!”
And they did, releasing the ropes that had bound Mr. Worley and quitting him to the sea.
My boots could barely hold me. My legs could barely stand.
Thanavar clasped his hands behind his back, his sea-dark hair rising and falling with the wind.
“We now turn our sails to the Cloudgate,” he said.
“For we will repair the Dreadwall once and for all, and we will end the war. But no more dangerous journey has been undertaken by any crew. If you live, you will live with riches and glory and accomplishment and renown. If you die, die with courage, and you will be honored in story and legend and song. But if you break oath, if you turn your back on a mate in need, you will discover that there are worse fates than that which befell Mr. Worley. On that, you have my solemn word.”
His gold-shot eyes swept over us all.
“Mr. Oakum,” he said. “Set a course due south.”
“South?” Smoke blinked slowly. “I thought we were searching for the safe way to get to the Island InBetween.”
“Was my order unclear, Mr. Oakum?”
“No, no,” said Smoke. “Not at all. Just clarifying. Clarifying that you wanted to go straight through the Sheets, then the Silence, rather than finding the Channel for a clear, much safer path to the Cloudgate, avoiding near or certain death in the crush of the Dreadwall. Just that clarification. Captain.”
Only the wind and the whipping sails. Only the creak of timber as we rose and fell with the sea.
“Consider it clarified,” said Thanavar.
“To stations!” Smoke shouted to the crew. “To stations, ye tar-smacked, crab-stained sluggards!”
“Stations!” shouted Buck. “Back to stations!”
The captain turned.
“Ensign Renn, are you committed to your post as loblolly?”
My throat burned as I tried to keep the bile in. My fists ached as I kept the chimeric contained.
“I am not committed,” I whispered.
“Surgeon’s mate? Master’s mate?”
Suns. Did this man even have a heart at all?
“No. None of those.”
It didn’t matter. I could not, would not ever let him see mine.
“Good,” he said. “You will replace Mr. Worley as my steward. I will have a list prepared of my schedule and your duties.”
Steward?
He whirled and left the deck for the hatch.
Steward?
I glanced up to the pup, where my mother stood, smiling.
I tore my eyes away and stepped down to the dark.
Captain’s steward. What the bloody hels? Two years in Berryburn, Wan to Blue in eight months, chimeric chaser sought after by all nations, chosen by the infamous Ship of Spells herself, and I was tidying a room as captain’s foggin’ steward.
I had no idea what he was thinking. There were seamages and junior midshipmen in line for the post, and I was sure they were my enemies now, just like Neale, Bergy, and Dik and who knew who else.
I was Navy, with no clear place in the order of duty on board a privateer.
Why my name tumbled from his lips was beyond my understanding, but I’d be damned before I would ask.
Maybe I already was.
I gathered the glasses and plates, laid them carefully in the basket.
Forge forbid one should chip, Nan had said.
The captain wouldn’t stand no chips. There was a ring of wine on the desktop, so I grabbed the cloth that was tucked into my sash.
My naval sash, which currently sported two threads of green woven into its bolt, along with the single thread of gold.
Nothing for all the shots I’d stopped before they hit.
Nothing for the keel I’d fried on the Terrebith Fae.
Oh, but a gold for making a spell that pleased the captain and almost killed me.
The only true threads I’d been awarded were from a grateful faun, who was likely sighing at my very thoughts.
If I still served the Navy, I’d have a bloody rainbow around my waist by now.
I was so tired.
I’d wept all night for Worley and for his birds, rudderless now without a master.
I wept for his son, Claudian, dead at the hands of a furious, grieving, vengeful man.
But I also I wept for the swabs we’d lost and for the petty way we’d lost them.
And I wept for the war that had raged for years, all due to the quest for more power and the timbering of a tree.