to herself. What had seemed daring and bold when she’d begun it back in Bingtown now seemed merely childish and stupid. She’d run away to sea, dressed as a boy, taking the first position that was offered to her.
Why, she asked herself now. Why? Why hadn’t she gone to one of the other liveships and asked to be taken on as a hand? Would they have refused as Brashen had said they would? Or could she, even now, be sleeping aboard a merchant vessel cruising down the Inside Passage, sure of both wages and recommendation at the end of the voyage? Why had it seemed so important to her that she be hired anonymously, that she prove herself worthy without either her name or her father’s reputation to fall back on? It had seemed such a spirited thing to do, on those summer evenings in Bingtown when she had sat cross-legged in the back room of Amber’s store and sewed her ship’s trousers. Now it merely seemed childish.
Amber had helped her. But for her help, with both needlework and readily shared meals, Althea would never have been able to do it. Amber’s sudden befriending of her had always puzzled Althea. Now it seemed to her that perhaps Amber had actually been intent on propelling her into danger. Her fingers crept up to touch the serpent’s egg bead that she wore on a single strand of leather about her neck. The touch of it almost warmed her fingers and she shook her head at the darkness. No. Amber had been her friend, one of the few rare women-friends she’d ever had. She’d taken her in for the days of high summer, helped her cut and sew her boy’s clothing. More, Amber had donned man’s clothing herself, and schooled Althea in how to move and walk and sit as if she were male. She had, she told Althea, once been an actress in a small company. Hence she’d played many roles, as both sexes.
‘Bring your voice from here,’ she’d instructed her, prodding Althea below her ribs. ‘If you have to talk. But speak as little as you can. You’ll be less likely to betray yourself, and you’ll be better accepted. A good listener of any sex is rare. Be one, and it will make up for anything else perceived as a fault.’ Amber had also shown her how to wrap her breasts flat to her chest in such a way that the binding cloth appeared to be no more than another shirt worn under her outer shirt. Amber had shown her how to fold dark-coloured stockings to use as blood rags. ‘Dirty socks you can always explain,’ Amber had told her. ‘Cultivate a fastidious personality. Wash your clothing twice as much as anyone else does, and no one will question it after a time. And learn to need less sleep. For you will either have to rise before any others or stay up later in order to keep the privacy of your body. And this I caution you most of all. Trust no one with your secret. It is not a secret a man can keep. If one man aboard the ship knows you are a woman, then they all will.’
This was the only area in which Amber had, perhaps, been mistaken. For Brashen knew she was a woman, and he had not betrayed her. At least, he hadn’t so far. A sudden irony came to Althea. She grinned bitterly to herself. In my own way I took your advice, Brashen. I arranged to be reborn as a boy, and not one called Vestrit.
Brashen lay on his bunk and studied the wall opposite him. It was not far from his face. Was a time, he thought ruefully, when I would have scorned this cabin as a clothes-closet. Now he knew what a luxury even a tiny space to himself could be. True, there was scarce room to turn around once a man was inside, but he did have his own berth, and no one slept in it but him. There were pegs for his clothing, and a corner just large enough to hold his sea-chest. In the bunk, he could brace himself against the ledge that confined his body and almost sleep secure when he was off watch. The captain’s and the mate’s cabins were substantially larger and better appointed, even on a tub like this. But then on many ships the second mate had no better quarters than the crew. He was grateful for this tiny corner of quiet, even if it had come to him by the deaths of three men.
He had shipped as an ordinary seaman, and spent the first part of his trip growling and elbowing in the forecastle with the rest of his watch. Early on, he had realized he had not only more experience but a stronger drive to do his job well than the rest of his fellows. The Reaper was a slaughter-ship out of Candletown far to the south, on the northern border of Jamaillia. When the ship had left the town many months ago in spring, it had left with a mostly conscripted crew. A handful of professional sailors were the backbone of the crew, charged with battering the newcomers into shape as sailors. Some were debtors, their work sold by their creditors as a means of forcing them to pay back what they owed. Others were simple criminals purchased from the Satrap’s jails. Those who had been pickpockets and thieves had soon learned better or perished; the close quarters aboard a slaughter-ship did not encourage a man to be tolerant of such vice in his fellows. It was not a crew that worked with a will, nor one whose members were likely to survive the rigours of the trip. By the time the Reaper reached Bingtown, she’d lost a third of her crew to sickness, accidents and violence aboard. The two thirds that remained were survivors; they’d learned to sail, they’d learned to pursue the slow-moving turtles and the so-called brack-whales of the southern coast inlets and lagoons. Their services were not, of course, to be confused with the skills of the professional hunters and skinners who rode the ship in the comparative comfort of a dry chamber and idleness. The dozen or so men of that ilk never set a hand to a line or stood a watch; they idled until their time of slaughter and blood. Then they worked with a fury, sometimes going without sleep for days at a time while the reaping was good. But they were not sailors and they were not crew. They would not lose their lives save that the whole ship went down or one of their prey turned on them successfully.
The ship had beat her way north on the outside of the pirate islands, hunting, slaughtering and rendering all the way. At Bingtown, the Reaper had put in to take on clean water and supplies and to make such repairs as they had the coin to pay for. The mate had also actively recruited more crew, for the journey out to the Barren Islands. It had been nearly the only ship in the harbour that was hiring.
The storms between Bingtown and the Barrens were as notorious as the multitude of sea mammals that swarmed there just prior to the winter migration. They’d be fat with the summer feedings, the sleek coats of the young ones large enough to be worth the skinning and unscarred from battles for mates or food. It was worth braving the storms of autumn to take such prizes — soft furs, the thick layer of fat, and beneath it all the lean, dark-red flesh that tasted both of sea and land. The casks of salt that had filled the hold when they left Candletown would soon be packed instead with salted slabs of the prized meat, with hogsheads of the fine rendered oil, while the scraped hides would be packed with salt and rolled thick to await tanning. It would be a cargo rich enough to make the Reaper’s owners dance with glee, while those debtors who survived to reach Candletown again would emerge from their ordeal as free men. The hunters and skinners would claim a percentage of the total take and begin to take bids on their services for the next season based on how well they had done this time. As for the true sailors who had taken the ship all that way and brought her back safely, they would have a pocketful of coins to jingle, enough to keep them in drink and women until it was time to sail again for the Barrens.
A good life, Brashen thought wryly. Such a fine berth as he had won for himself. It had not taken much. All he had had to do was scramble swiftly enough to catch the mate’s eye and then the captain’s. That, and the vicious storm that had carried off two men and crippled the third who was a likely candidate for this berth.
Yet it was not any peculiar guilt at having stepped over dead men to claim this place and the responsibilities that went with it that bothered him tonight. No. It was the thought of Althea Vestrit, his benefactor’s daughter, curled in wet misery in the hold in the close company of such men as festered there. ‘There’s nothing I can do about it.’ He spoke the words aloud, as if by giving them to air he could make them ease his conscience. He hadn’t seen her come aboard in Bingtown; even if he had, he wouldn’t have recognized her easily. She was a convincing mimic as a sailor lad; he had to give her that.
His first hint that she was aboard had not been the sight of her. He’d glimpsed her any number of times as ‘a ship’s boy’ and given no thought to it. Her flat cap pulled low on her brow and her boy’s clothes had been more than sufficient disguise. The first time he’d seen
