not see nor find breath to shout for help. An eternal instant later, she was slammed into the ship’s railing. She took a glancing blow to the side of her head that rang darkness before her eyes and near tore her ear off. For a brief moment, she knew nothing but to hold tight to the railing with both hands as she lay belly down on the swamped deck. Water rushed past her in its hurry to be overboard. She clung to the ship, feeling the seawater cascade past her, but unable to lift her head high enough to get a clear breath. She knew, too, that if she waited until the water was completely gone before she got to her feet, the next wave would catch her as well. If she didn’t manage to get up now, she wasn’t ever going to get up. She tried to move but her legs were jelly.
A hand grabbed the back of her shirt, hauled her choking to her knees. ‘You’re plugging the scuppers!’ someone exclaimed in disgust. She hung from his grip like a drowned kitten. There was air against her face, mixed with driving rain, but before she could take it in, she had to gag out the water in her mouth and nose. ‘Hang on!’ she heard him shout and she wrapped her legs and arms about his legs. She managed one gargly breath of air before the water hit them both.
She felt his body swing with the impact of the water and thought surely they would both be torn loose from the ship. But an instant later, as the water retreated, he struck her a cuff to the side of the head that loosened her grip on him. Suddenly he was moving across the deck, dragging her behind him, her pigtail and shirt caught together in his grip. He hauled her up a mast; as soon as her feet and hands felt the familiar rope, they clung to them and propelled her up of their own accord. The next wave that rushed over the deck went by beneath her. She gagged and then spat a quantity of seawater into it. She blew her nose into her hand and shook it clean. With her first lungful of air, she said, ‘Thank you.’
‘You stupid little deck rat! You damn near got us both killed.’ Anger and fear vied in the man’s voice.
‘I know. I’m sorry.’ She spoke no louder than she had to in order to be heard through the storm.
‘Sorry? I’ll make you a sight more than just sorry. I’ll kick your arse till your nose bleeds.’
He lifted his fist and Althea braced herself to take the blow. She knew that by ship’s custom she had it coming. When after a moment it did not land, she opened her eyes.
Brashen peered at her through the darkness. He looked more shaken than he had when he’d first dragged her up from the water. ‘Damn you. I didn’t even recognize you.’
She made a small gesture that could have been a shrug. Her eyes did not meet his.
Another wave made its passage across the ship. Again the ship began its wallowing climb.
‘So. How have you been doing?’ Brashen’s voice was pitched low, as if he feared to be overheard talking to her. A mate was not expected to have chummy little chats with the ship’s boy. Since discovering her, he had avoided all contact with her.
‘As you see,’ Althea said quietly. She hated this. She abruptly hated Brashen, not for anything he had done, but because he was seeing her this way. Ground down to someone less than dirt under his feet. ‘I get by. I’m surviving.’
‘I’d help you if I could.’ He sounded angry with her. ‘But you know I can’t. If I take any interest in you at all, someone will suspect. I’ve already made it plain to several of the crew that I’ve no interest in… other men.’ He suddenly sounded awkward. A part of Althea found the irony in this. Clinging to rigging on this scummy ship in the middle of a storm after he’d just offered to kick her arse, and he could not bring himself to speak of sex with her. For fear of offending her dignity. ‘On a ship like this, any kindness I showed you would be construed only one way. Then someone else would decide he fancied you, too. Once they found out you were a woman…’
‘You needn’t explain. I’m not stupid,’ Althea interrupted to stop his litany. Didn’t he know she lived aboard the scum-infested tub?
‘You’re not? Then what are you doing aboard?’ He threw the last bitter words over his shoulder before he dropped from the rigging to the deck. Agile as a cat, quick as a monkey, he made his way swiftly to the bow of the ship, leaving her clinging in the rigging and staring after him.
‘The same thing you are,’ she replied snidely to his last words. It didn’t matter that he could not hear them. The next time the water cleared the deck, she followed Brashen’s example, but with considerably less grace and skill. Moments later, she was below decks, listening to the rush of water all around her. The Reaper moved through the water like a barrel. She sighed heavily, and once more dashed the water from her face and bare arms. She wrung out her queue and shook her wet feet like a cat before padding back to her corner. Her clothing was sodden against her skin, chilling her. She changed hastily into clothing that was merely damp, then wrung out what she had had on. She shook it out, hung her shirt and trousers on a peg to drip and tugged her blanket out from its hiding-place. It was damp and smelled musty, but it was wool. Damp or not, it would hold the heat of her body. And that was the only warmth she had. She rolled herself into it and then curled up small in the darkness. So much for Reller’s kindness. It had got her half-drowned and cost her half an hour of her sleep. She closed her eyes and let go of consciousness.
But sleep betrayed her. As weary as she was, oblivion would not come to her. She tried to relax, but could not remember how to loosen the muscles in her lined brow. It was the words with Brashen, she decided. Somehow they brought the situation back to her as a whole. Often she went for days without catching so much as a glimpse of him. She wasn’t on his watch; their lives and duties seldom intersected. And when she had no reminders of what her life once had been, she could simply go from hour to hour, doing what she had to do to survive. She could give all her attention to being the ship’s boy and think no further than the next watch.
Brashen’s face, Brashen’s eyes, were crueller than any mirror. He pitied her. He could not look at her without betraying to her all that she had become, and worse, all that she had never been. Bitterest of all, perhaps, was seeing him recognize as surely as Althea herself had, that Kyle had been right. She had been her Papa’s spoiled little darling, doing no more than playing at being a sailor. She recalled with shame the pride she had taken in how swiftly she could run the rigging of the Vivacia. But her time aloft had mostly been during warm summer days, and whenever she was wearied or bored with the tasks of it, she could simply come down and find something else to amuse herself. Spending an hour or two splicing and sewing was not the same as six hours of frantically hasty sailwork after a piece of canvas had split and needed to be immediately replaced. Her mother had fretted over her callouses and rough hands; now her palms were as hardened and thick-skinned as the soles of her feet had been; and the soles of her feet were cracked and black.
That, she decided, was the worst aspect of her life. Finding out that she was no more than adequate as a sailor. No matter how tough she got, she was simply not as strong as the larger men on the ship. She had passed herself off as a fourteen-year-old boy to get this position aboard the Reaper. Even if she had wished to stay with this slaughter-tub, in a year or so they were bound to notice she wasn’t growing any larger or stronger. They wouldn’t keep her on. She’d wind up in some foreign port with no prospects at all.
She stared up into the darkness. At the end of this voyage, she had planned to ask for a ship’s ticket. She still would, and she’d probably get it. But she wondered now if it would be enough. Oh, it would be the endorsement of a captain, and perhaps she could use it to make Kyle live up to his thoughtless oath. But she feared it would be a hollow triumph. Having a stamped bit of leather to show she had survived this voyage was not what she had wanted. She had wanted to vindicate herself, to prove to all, not just Kyle, that she was good at her chosen life, a worthy captain to say nothing of being a competent sailor. Now, in
