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BATTLE

A LTHEA GLANCED ABOUT the deck; all was running smoothly.

The wind was steady, and Haff was on the wheel.

The sky overhead was a clear deep blue. Amidships, six sailors were methodically moving through a rote series of attacks and parries with sticks.

Although they weren’t putting much spirit into it, Brashen seemed satisfied with the form and accuracy they achieved.

Lavoy moved among them, chastising and correcting loudly.

She shook her head to herself. She did not claim to know anything of fighting, but this set routine baffled her.

No battle could be as orderly as the give and take of blows the sailors practised, nor as calm and unhurried as the archery practice that had preceded it.

How could it be useful? Nevertheless, she kept her mouth shut, and when it was her turn, she drilled with the rest of them, and tried to put her heart into it.

She was becoming a fair shot with the light bow allotted to her.

Still, it was hard to believe that any of it would be useful in a real fight.

She hadn’t taken her doubts to Brashen. Lately her feelings for him had been running warmer.

She would not tempt herself with private conferences with him.

If he could control himself, then so could she.

It was merely a matter of respect. She listened to the rhythmic clacking of the mock swords as Clef paced them with a chantey.

If nothing else, she told herself, it kept the crew out of mischief.

The Paragon carried more than a working crew, for Brashen had hired enough men to fight as well as run the ship, and extras to allow for losses.

The stow-away slaves had swelled their population even more.

The cramped quarters bred idle quarrelling when the men were not kept busy.

Satisfied that nothing required her immediate attention, she sprang to the mast. She pushed herself for speed going up it; sometimes her muscles ached due to the confines of the ship. A brisk trip to the lookout’s platform eased some of the kinks in her legs.

Amber heard her coming. She always seemed preternaturally aware of folk around her. Althea saw the carpenter’s resigned smile of welcome as she hauled herself over the lip of the platform and sat down beside her, legs dangling. ‘How do you feel?’ she greeted Amber.

Amber smiled ruefully. ‘Fine. Will you stop worrying? I’m over it. I’ve told you, this ailment comes and it goes. It’s not serious.’

‘Mm.’ Althea was not sure she believed her.

She still wondered what had happened that night when she had found Amber unconscious on the deck.

The carpenter claimed that she simply passed out, and that the bruises on her face came from striking the deck.

Althea could think of no reason that she would lie.

Surely if Lavoy had struck her down, either Amber or Paragon would have complained of it by now.

She studied Amber’s face. Lately the carpenter had begged for lookout duty, and Althea had reluctantly given it to her.

If she passed out up here and fell to the deck, it would do more than bruise her face.

Yet, the lofty, lonely duty seemed to agree with her, for though the wind had burned her face until it peeled, the skin beneath was tanned and glowing with health, which made her eyes seem darker and her hair more tawny.

Althea had never seen her looking more vital.

‘There’s nothing to see,’ Amber muttered uncomfortably, and Althea realized she was staring. Deliberately she pretended to misunderstand. She scanned the full horizon as if checking for sails.

‘Amongst all these islands, you never know. That’s one reason the pirates love these waters. A ship can lie low and wait for her prey to come into sight. With all the little coves and inlets, a pirate might be lurking anywhere.’

‘Over there, for instance.’ Amber lifted an arm and pointed. Althea followed the gesture. She stared for a time critically, then asked, ‘You saw something?’

‘I thought I did, for an instant. The tip of a mast moving behind the trees on that point.’

Althea stared, squinting. ‘There’s nothing there,’ she decided, and relaxed her posture. ‘Maybe you saw a bird moving from tree to tree. The eye is drawn to motion, you know.’

The waterscape before them was a dazzling vista of greens and blues.

Rocky steep-sided islands broke from the water, but above their sheer cliffs, they were lush with vegetation.

Streams and waterfalls spilled down their steep sides.

The bright flowing water glittered in the sunlight as it fell to shatter into the moving waves.

So much anyone could see from the deck. Here, atop the mast, one could see the true contours of both land and water.

The colour of the water varied not only by depth, but also with how much sweet water was floating atop the salt.

The varying blues told Althea that the channel ahead was deep enough for Paragon, but rather narrow.

Amber was supposed to watch these shades and give cry back to Haff on the wheel if shallows impeded their passage.

Shifting sandbars were the second most legendary danger of the Pirate Isles.

To the west, a multitude of jutting islets could be seen as islands, or as easily visualized as the mountaintops of a submerged coast. Fresh water flowed endlessly from that direction, carrying with it sand and debris that formed new sandbars and shallows.

The storms that regularly battered the area swept through and rearranged these obstacles to shipping.

Charting the Pirate Isles was a fruitless task.

Waterways silted in and became impassable, only to be swept clean in the next storm.

The hazards of navigation that slowed heavily-laden merchant vessels were the pirates’ ally.

Often pirate craft were shallow draught, powered by sweeps as well as sail, and manned by men who knew the waters as well as they could be known.

In all Althea’s days of sailing the Cursed Shores, she had never ventured this deeply into the Pirate Isles.

Her father had always avoided them, as he avoided any kind of trouble.

‘The profit from danger only pays you interest in trouble,’ he’d said more than once. Althea smiled to herself.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Amber asked her quietly.

‘My father.’

Amber nodded. ‘It’s good that you can think of him and smile now.’

Althea murmured an assent, but said no more.

For a time, they rode the mast in silence.

The high platform amplified the gentle rolling of the ship below them.

Althea could not remember a time when she had not found the movement intoxicating.

But peace did not last. The question itched at her.

Without looking at Amber, she asked yet again, ‘Are you sure Lavoy did nothing to you?’

Amber sighed. ‘Why would I lie to you?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. Why would you answer my question with another question?’

Amber faced her squarely. ‘Why can’t you accept that I was feeling sick and collapsed? If it had been anything other than that, do you think Paragon would have kept silent about it all this time?’

Althea did not reply immediately. Then she said, ‘I don’t know.

Paragon seems to be changing lately. It used to annoy me when he was sulky or melodramatic.

He seemed like a neglected boy to me then.

Yet there were times when he was eager to please.

He spoke of proving himself to me and Brashen.

But lately, when he talks with me at all, he says shocking things.

He brings up pirates, and all he talks of is blood and violence and killing.

Torture he has seen. He says it all in such a way that it is like dealing with a braggart child who deliberately lies to shock me.

I cannot even decide how much of it to believe.

Does he think I will be impressed with how much cruelty he has witnessed?

When I challenge him, he agrees such things are horrendous.

But he relates those stories with such salacious glee, it is as if there is a violent and cruel man hiding within him, relishing what he is capable of doing.

I don’t know where all the viciousness is coming from.

’ She glanced away from Amber and added quietly, ‘But I don’t like how much time he spends with Lavoy. ’

‘You could more correctly say how much time Lavoy spends with him. Paragon can scarcely seek out the mate. The man comes to him, Althea. And truly, Lavoy brings out the worst in Paragon. He encourages him in violent fantasies. They vie in the telling of such stories, as if witnessing cruelty were a measure of manhood.’ Amber’s voice was deceptively soft. ‘For his own ends, I fear.’

Althea felt uncomfortable. She had the sudden feeling that she was going to regret leading the conversation in this direction. ‘There is little that can be done about that.’

‘Isn’t there?’ Amber gave her a sideways glance. ‘Brashen could forbid it.’

Althea shook her head regretfully. ‘Not without undermining Lavoy’s command of the ship. The men would see it as a rebuke to him and –’