I hear, and have all the more to spend on slaves in Jamaillia. We’ll take on a nice haul of them, boy.’ He licked his lips. ‘Now, that’s what I look forward to, especially as he’ll be listening to my advice once we reach Jamaillia. That’s a market I know. Yeah. I know prime slave-flesh when I see it, and I’ll be holding out for the best. Maybe I’ll even get some skinny little girls for you to fancy. What do you think of that, laddie?’
Questions had to be answered, if one didn’t want a boot in the small of one’s back. ‘I think that slavery is immoral and illegal. And that it isn’t appropriate for us to be discussing the captain’s plans.’ He kept his eyes on his work. It was a pile of old line. His task was to untangle it, salvage what was good, and render the rest down into fibres that could either be re-cycled into line or used as chinking as needed. His hands had become as rough as the hemp he handled. When he looked at them, it was hard to recall they had once been the hands of an artist with a fine touch for glass. Across from him on the foredeck, Mild was working on his side of the pile. He envied the young sailor the agility of his calloused hands. When Mild took up a piece of rope and gave it a shake, it seemed to untangle itself magically. No matter how Wintrow tried to coil a piece of line, it still always wanted to twist in the other direction.
‘Oh, ho. Getting a bit snippy, are we?’ Torg’s heavy boot nudged him painfully. He was still bruised from an earlier kick.
‘No, sir,’ Wintrow answered reflexively. It was getting easier, sometimes, simply to be subservient. When his father had first given him over to this brute, he had tried to speak to the man as if he had a mind. He had rapidly learned that any words Torg didn’t understand he interpreted as mockery, and that explanations were only seen as feeble excuses. The less said, the fewer bruises. Even if it meant agreeing with statements he normally disagreed with. He tried not to see it as an eroding of his dignity and ethics. Survival, he told himself. It was simple survival until he could get away.
He dared to venture a question. ‘What ports shall we be stopping in?’
If there were any on the peninsula of Marrow, he’d be off the ship, somehow. He didn’t care how far he had to walk, or if he had to beg his way across the entire peninsula, he’d get back to his monastery. When he told his tale there, they’d listen to him. They’d change his name and place him elsewhere, where his father could never find him again.
‘Nowhere near Marrow,’ Torg told him with vicious delight. ‘If you want to get back to your priesting, boy, you’re going to have to swim.’ The second mate laughed aloud, and Wintrow saw how he had been set-up to ask that question. It disturbed him that even Torg’s slow wit could know so clearly where his heart was. Did he dream on it too much, did it show in his every action? He had begun to think it was the only way for him to stay sane. He constantly planned ways to slip away from the ship. Every time they latched him into the chain locker for the night, he would wait until the footsteps had died away and then try the door. He wished he had not been so impatient when he first was dragged aboard the ship. His clumsy attempts to leave had alerted both captain and crew to his intent, and Kyle had made it well known that any man who let him leave the ship would pay heavily for it. He was never left alone, and those who worked alongside him resented that they could not trust him, but must guard him as well as work.
Now Torg made a great show of stretching his muscles. He lifted a booted foot to tap Wintrow’s spine again. ‘Got to go, boys. Work to do. Mild, you’re the nanny. See pretty boy here keeps busy.’ With a final painful nudge, Torg lumbered away down the deck. Neither boy looked up to watch him go. But when he was out of earshot, Mild observed calmly, ‘Someone will kill him some day and tip him over the side and no one will be the wiser.’ The young sailor’s hands never paused in their work as he imparted this information to Wintrow. ‘Maybe it will be me,’ he added pleasantly.
The youth’s calm avocation of murder chilled Wintrow. Much as he disliked Torg, as difficult as it was for him not to hate the man, he had never considered killing him. That Mild had was disconcerting. ‘Don’t let someone like Torg distort your life and focus,’ he suggested quietly. ‘Even to think of killing for the sake of vengeance bends the spirit. We cannot know why Sa permits such men as Torg to have power over others, but we can deny him the power to distort our spirits. Yield him obedience where we must, but do not…’
‘I didn’t ask for a sermon,’ Mild protested irritably. He flung down the piece of line he’d been working on in disgust. ‘Who do you think you are? Why should you be telling me how to think or live? Don’t you ever just talk? Try it sometime. Just say out loud, “I’d really love to kill that dog-pronging bastard.” You’d be surprised what a relief it is.’ He turned his face away from Wintrow and spoke aloud in an apparent aside to a mast. ‘Dung. You try to talk to him like he’s a person and he acts like you’re on your knees begging his advice.’
Wintrow felt a moment of outrage, followed by a rush of embarrassment. ‘I didn’t mean it like that…’ He started to say he didn’t think he was any better than Mild, but the lie died on his lips. He forced himself to speak truth. ‘No. I never talk without thinking first. I’ve been schooled to avoid careless words. And in the monastery, if we see or hear someone putting himself on a destructive path, then we speak out to each other. But to help each other, not to…’
‘Well, you’re not in a monastery any more. You’re here. When are you going to get that through your thick head and start acting like a sailor? You know, it’s painful to watch how you let them all push you around. Get some gumption and stand up to them instead of preaching Sa all the time. Take a swing at Torg. Sure, you’ll get a beating for it. But Torg is a bigger coward than you are. If he thinks there’s even a chance you’re going to lay for him with a marlin spike, he’ll back off you. Don’t you see that?’
Wintrow tried for dignity. ‘If he makes me behave like he does, then he’s truly won. Don’t you see that?’
‘No. All I see is that you’re so afraid of a beating you won’t even admit you’re afraid of it. It’s just like your shirt the other day, when Torg put it up the mast to taunt you. You should have known you’d have to go get it yourself, so you should have just done it, instead of waiting until you were forced to do it. That made you lose to him twice, don’t you see?’
‘I don’t see how I lost at all. It was a cruel joke, not worthy of men,’ Wintrow replied quietly.
Mild lost his temper for an instant. ‘There. That’s what you do that I hate. You know what I mean, but you try to talk about it a whole different way. It isn’t about what is “worthy of men”. Here and now, it’s about you and Torg. The only way you could have won that round was pretending that you didn’t give a damn, that climbing the mast to get your shirt back wasn’t anything. Instead, you got sunburned sitting around acting too holy to go get your shirt…’ Mild sputtered off into silence, obviously frustrated by Wintrow’s lack of response. He took a breath, tried again. ‘Don’t you get it at all? The worst was him forcing you to climb the mast ahead of him. That was when you really lost. The whole crew thinks you’ve got no spine now. That you’re a coward.’ Mild shook his head in disgust. ‘It’s bad enough you look like a little kid. Do you have to act like one all the time?’
The sailor rose in disgust and stalked away. Wintrow sat staring down at the heap of rope. The other boy’s words had rattled him more than he liked to admit. He had pointed out, too clearly, that Wintrow now lived and moved in a different world. He and Mild were probably of an age, but Mild had taken up this trade, of his own inclination, three years ago. He was a sailor to the bone now, and no longer the ship’s boy since Wintrow had come aboard. No longer a boy at all in appearance. He was hard-muscled and agile. He was a full head taller than Wintrow as well, and the hair on his cheeks was starting to darken into proper whiskers. Wintrow knew that his slight build and boyish appearance were not a fault, were not something he
