Page 8 of Virelai’s Hoard (The Dagger & Tide Trilogy #1)

Pip nodded. “Well, you’ve been working hard, and we gotta follow the rules. The galley it is!” His arms gesticulated animatedly as they walked. “You’ll probably be asked to come help me there one of these days. Prepping food and cleaning after a whole ship is a lot of work for just the two of us.”

That might’ve been the only promising news of the day. Food duty? Surely no one would notice if a few scraps would mysteriously go missing.

The boy stopped in his tracks, turning to look at her intensely. Or, more accurately, to the bag slung over her shoulders. Riley’s fist tightened around the strap.

“Is it true you have a pet rat with you?” he asked, then pouted dramatically. “I overslept this morning and missed the whole thing. And I’m not sure if the others made it up for laughs or not. They do that sometimes.”

Riley cocked her head to the side. If he pouted about that, then the pirates were sure going easy on him.

“Yeah, it’s true,” she said, smiling. She slid her hand inside the bag, rousing Patch from his sleep with a gentle caress before prodding him to climb up her arm and on her shoulder. “Pip, meet Patch.”

The kid stared at the rat with a mix of wonder and disgust. He dropped his voice in a loud whisper, “Did he really…”

Riley grinned.

“Whoa.” He resumed walking, sneaking frequent glances at Patch, who raised on two legs and started sniffing at the unusual scents in the air.

“I didn’t know they could be trained like that.

We usually kill-” Riley cringed, and Pip slapped his hands over his mouth, letting out a, “ Sorry ,” between his fingers.

Then he spotted something and darted off. “Eryx!”

Someone .

Pip ran up to another young deckhand busying themselves with a coil of rope.

They seemed maybe a couple years older than Pip, slender and slight with dark salt-damp hair cut short and oddly pale skin.

They looked up from the knot they were trying to detangle, the movement rattling the seashell hung at their neck.

“Look!” The boy pointed at her rat, still perched on her shoulder. “His name is Patch!”

“Nice to meet you, Patch,” Eryx said, their voice calm and melodious, their relaxed posture in complete contrast with their friend’s. “And…” a questioning lilt as they looked at her.

“Riley.”

“Riley.” They nodded. “Watch him around Boarley. He can make stew out of anything.” With that mild warning, they returned to their work.

“Over here!” Pip said, pulling her to the railing. “Did you look at the water yet?”

Riley shook her head. She’d been a little busy since departure. “No. Why?”

A wide grin spread across the young pirate’s face. “Go on then, look!”

Riley squinted at Pip suspiciously. He seemed much too eager, bouncing on his heels excitedly as he spurred her on.

A few of the other pirates glanced in their direction, though they looked away as soon as they caught Riley’s gaze.

He was up to something. She just didn’t know what.

Riley kept her guard up as she gingerly stepped up to the railing and peered over, taking care to keep both feet solidly on deck.

Surely he wouldn’t try to push her over, but she didn’t know what else to expect.

Below, the hull cut through the gentle ripples in the water, leaving trails behind like fingers dragging through sand. The brother suns’ light glinted off its surface, making the color flicker between gold and silver. It was beautiful. Nothing like Saltmere’s murky, shallow waters.

“Well?” Pip prompted.

Riley leaned back from the railing. “Well, what?”

He looked at her really intensely for a moment, then his face fell. “ Oh . No matter. We should get moving,” he said. It only took a beat for him to perk right up again. “Wait, no! One more thing! You have to spit.”

“What?”

“Into the water. You have to spit.”

Riley blinked at him. “Uh… why?”

He gave her an exasperated look. “Because!” Then, thinking hard. “You give the sea something of yourself, that way she won’t take the whole of you.” He nodded to himself, satisfied at the explanation.

Frankly, it sounded made up. “Wouldn’t that piss it off?” Riley asked, dubious.

Pip laughed like she was the one saying silly things. “That’s a human thing. And it’s she .”

“Huh.” At Pip’s expectant look, Riley leaned over the railing again and spit.

The young pirate nodded, satisfied, and then they moved on.

But Riley couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Why did you look so disappointed before?”

“Er…”

Riley raised her eyebrows at the guilty expression on his face.

His cheeks flushed. Then he spilled it so fast Riley had to take a moment for the words to register.

“New hires usually barf when looking past the railing for the first time and I might’ve bet on that happening just now and I was disappointed because I hoped you would but you didn’t so now I lost my wager.

” He took in a deep breath after that and quickened his pace.

Riley, her mood slowly lifting, took pity on him and didn’t press the matter.

Her two free bells passed by with Pip sneaking her some cold, slimy algae–“It’s my favorite food!

”–and dragging her all over the ship. He talked incessantly as he showed her every room he could think of, including the way to the officers’ cabins, and, nearly to the opposite side of the ship, the crew’s quarters.

Despite having seen it before already, Riley shuddered again at the sight of the hammocks, so close to each other you only had to reach out a hand to touch the next.

There was no way she was going to sleep here.

The thought of letting her guard down around so many people was incomprehensible.

She needed to figure out a different arrangement for herself by tonight.

Ignorant of her private dread, Pip moved them along.

His tour of the ship was so thorough they’d even found Maren hidden in the cargo room and dozing off, to Pip’s consternation.

The kid also made it a point to introduce Patch–now warmed up to him after Pip snuck him a piece of bread from the galley–to everyone who didn’t seem too busy, only mentioning Riley herself as an afterthought.

“I’m not gonna show you the bilge,” Pip said in the end. “It’s dark and wet and grimy and the air there stinks.” But he showed her the way there, should she want to check it herself for whatever inconceivable reason.

With that, he scampered off without as much as a goodbye.

***

It felt like forever until Riley was allowed to go for dinner in the crew’s mess, along with most of the other pirates.

Starving and exhausted, she picked one of the built-in wooden tables near one corner, away from everyone else, and sat down with her food.

She was happy to just be getting fed at this point, and she hadn’t even paid any mind to the contents of the bowl until after she’d shoveled the first mouthful.

A faint, surprised moan resounded deep in her throat.

Dragged out of her numb tiredness, Riley looked down at her bowl proper.

It was a thick stew, made with beans, fish–smoked, judging by the aftertaste–and spices .

When was the last time she’d eaten something with spices?

Suddenly greedy for more, she dug into the hot, rich meal, nearly closing her eyes in delight with every bite.

She was so taken with the unexpectedly good food that she failed to notice the two pirates settling in opposite her.

“You lost us a bet,” one of them said.

Riley startled, her awareness snapping back into place. It was a man and a woman, sitting close together, ugly smirks twisting their faces. Only now did Riley realize that picking a table away from everyone else had made her a target.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, meeting their gazes head on and hoping they wouldn’t notice her hand inching toward the dagger at her hip.

“You weren’t supposed to make it on the ship,” the woman said, looking at her in disgust. “Just look at you. You’re like, half-starved.”

The man’s teeth glinted in the lantern light as he said, “The way I see it, you owe us.”

Riley’s fingers gripped the hilt of her dagger. Slowly, she slid it out–or meant to. A hand settled on her shoulder.

She froze.

This was what happened when she let her guard down. Someone snuck up on her, and now she wouldn’t be able to defend herself. She had nothing to pay them with.

Stupid . How could she be so careless?

“I think bullying is against the rules,” a vaguely familiar voice at her back said. “But I’m not sure. I could go ask the captain what she thinks about it and get back to you, if you give me a moment.”

The pirates opposite her paled. “N-no, that’s not–I think we just got confused. We don’t need to disturb the cap for something so small. It’s nothing.”

The two were gone in the blink of an eye.

Riley turned to her savior, heart still hammering in her throat. It was the pirate she’d briefly met before. Pip’s friend. Eryx.

They smiled mildly at her, dropping their hand from her shoulder.

“Sorry. I’m sure you had that handled, but drawing a blade unprovoked is also against the rules.

” Before Riley could say anything, Eryx reached out and set a small wooden jar on the table.

“I just meant to give you this. For your hands. It should help. And you don’t need to worry about those two.

They try that scheme with everyone, but really, they’re harmless. ”

With that, Eryx left.

Riley followed them with her gaze, bemused. Then, she pocketed the jar and went in search of somewhere safe to sleep.

***

“When can I get to climbing?” Riley asked Kittredge the next morning.

“Once you learn the knots.” Kit patted her on the shoulder and took the pitiful knot from her lap, untangled it, and showed her again the proper way to do it. “You know, it might be easier without the glove.”

Riley’s jaw set in a hard line. “I’m good. I’ll figure it out.”

“I’m sure you will.” Another pat and a soft smile.

The next few days passed by in a blur of exhaustion and sore limbs.

She might as well have been the only newcomer on the ship, with Gadrielle hell-bent on giving her a crash-course in what it meant to be a good deckhand.

She couldn’t even take Maren’s example and bribe the more hardworking sailors to do her tasks for her, because every eye was on her after the stunt she’d pulled to get on the Moonshadow in the first place.

There was no working around it. She had to prove herself.

Scrubbing and swabbing the deck, learning knots, hauling and coiling rope, peeling potatoes, cleaning pots, and on and on it went.

Riley did climb, though. At night, after everyone was knocked out and snoring, she snuck out of her assigned hammock, bundled it up, and climbed the ratlines of the smallest mast–the mizzenmast, they called it–all the way up until she reached the lowest crow’s nest. Only the mainmast had a look-out at night, and they hadn’t noticed her yet.

Using her hammock, she draped it around the low railing of the nest as a shield against the wind, and claimed the cramped, chilly platform as her own.

It wasn’t ideal, but it was private, and it was hers, and no one knew she was here.

It was the only thing that allowed her to relax and fall asleep, every danger on the ship far below her.

Her sleep was fitful and disjointed, despite the exhaustion from long days at work, and she frequently woke up in a sweat after dreams of falling.

She’d tried to trade the nest for the warmth of the galley, hide among the cargo in the hold, even gave the powder room a try, but none of those had felt safe enough for sleep.

She was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Every day that passed by, more sailors greeted her by name.

The mocking jokes of that first morning became friendly jabs, and even Gadrielle lost some of her sharpness while teaching her.

Bad things always happened when she let her guard down, though, so she didn’t.

It had taken her two days to even use Eryx’s present–a cream, thick and white and soothing–worried about the demands the pirate could make of her in exchange.

But Eryx hadn’t spared her a glance in days.

And her hands were rope-burnt and blistered. The cream gave her instant relief.

As more days went on, an uncomfortable feeling built up in her chest, and Riley didn’t trust it at all.