Krondor’s Lady was old and small and tubby; about a hundred feet long and thirty wide amidships. The smell filtering up from the bilges made her more than a little homelike, to one who’d spent a lot of time in the sewers.
It had proven surprisingly easy to get aboard. While most of the guards on the docks were Bas-Tyra men, Krondor’s Lady was under the watch of some of the Sheriff’s Crushers, as the constables were known. A quick story about visiting grandpa, with Flora looking genuinely distressed—not entirely an act after her stint in the gaol—and they were allowed aboard. Jimmy was thankful for the change of clothing both had elected earlier that day. One glance at the sword at his hip and the constable had judged him a young man from a family of means.
Flora had gone below to see where they were being permitted to sleep, while Jimmy remained on deck to watch the departure.
‘You make this run often?’ Jimmy asked a sailor, dodging a group of others who went running by with a roll of canvas, obviously ready to kick the annoying deck passenger out of the way.
‘Two, three times a year,’ the sailor said, doing something nautical involving two pieces of rope and a knife, his fingers running on with an automatic nimbleness. ‘Usually not so early. Storms, y’know.’
‘Oh,’ Jimmy said hollowly.
A last net of cargo—bales, boxes and sacks—swung off from the dock and down into the hold. Sailors hammered home the wedges that held a grating over the hatchway and did various mysterious things with the ropes and sails, mostly involving hauling or running up the ratlines while other sailors screamed at them. The captain was a short grizzled wiry man, with a gold hoop in his left ear and a missing little finger on his right hand.
‘Loose sail!’ he shouted from the rear of the ship. Canvas thundered down and bellied out into brown patched curves. ‘Cast away fore, cast away aft, loose all, fend off! Fend off, don’t tickle the dock, you bitches’ brood!’
Sailors loosed ropes and pushed at the dock with long two-man oars. Jimmy swallowed and watched as the roofs of Krondor began to slip away, and the deck took on a slight rocking motion under his feet. A cold clammy feeling settled in his stomach.
Up on the sterncastle the harbour pilot directed the helmsman, while the captain kept shouting orders to his crew.
I’m leaving Krondor, he thought. It didn’t seem quite real; it was as if he’d just said to himself I’m going to the moon. ‘Leaving Krondor’ was always something other people did.
Like the Prince and the Princess, he thought then, which cheered him a little. Getting onto a bigger stage, that’s what I’m doing!
The pilot had the ship moving gracefully through other ships at anchor or coming in to the docks. They dodged freighters and long, sleek warships and fishing-boats and wherries and barges. At some point that was not significant to Jimmy, the pilot hurried down to the main deck, and with agility surprising in a man of middle years he swung a leg over the side and scampered down to a waiting rowboat.
The ship moved surprisingly slowly as it edged out of the harbour. Jimmy glanced back to the sterncastle and saw the captain keeping his own hand on the tiller as he barked orders.
‘Ah, comin’ on a bit fresher,’ the sailor said.
The sky was growing clouds, cold and grey-looking. The water turned from blue to green-grey too, and began to crumple itself up into tall hills that moved toward him, topped with white foam. The ship’s blunt bow rose to meet it, dug in and rose again with white foam coming across the forward railings and swirling ankle-deep across the deck. In what seemed to Jimmy to be unreasonable haste, the land fell off to nothing but a dark line to their left, and the rocking-horse motion of the ship acquired other twists, a curling roll, left forward to right back.
A sailor, some sort of officer, saw Jimmy the Hand’s face turn pasty-white and how he clapped a hand to his mouth. ‘The lee rail, you infernal lubber!’ he snarled, then grabbed the boy by collar and belt and ran him over to it, getting his head over the side just as the first heave struck. ‘Feed the fish, and don’t foul our deck, damn your eyes!’
‘I hate you,’ Jimmy mumbled feebly, not sure whether he meant himself, Flora who’d got him into this, the ship, the crew, or all of them together.
His sides hurt, his head ached, his eyes felt as if they’d been rolled in hot sand. Now I know what the word misery was invented for, he thought, as he crawled hand-over-hand toward the rail and another spell of dry retching heaves until there was nothing left inside to come up.
And I stink.