“Of course you can. But Bear can handle yourself, too, and himself, and your two prisoners, and carry a sword, and hold a light – all at the same time. And keep our captain safe.”
Jem might have been about to protest, but at the mention of the captain he nodded. He took the lead as Katsa and Bitterblue climbed up the gangplank. Bear fell in behind them, his sword swinging in one hand and a lantern raised in the other. He was one of the largest men Katsa had ever seen. As they stepped onto the deck of the ship, sailors moved aside, partly to stare at the two small and bedraggled strangers and partly to get out of Bear’s way. “What’s this, Jem?”
voices asked. “We go to the captain,” Jem responded, over and over, and the men fell away and went back to their duties.
The deck was long, and it was crowded with jostling men and with unfamiliar shapes that loomed to all sides of them and cast strange shadows against the light of Bear’s lantern. A sail billowed down suddenly, released from its confinement in the riggings. It flapped over Katsa’s head, glowing a luminous gray, looking very much like an enormous bird trying to break its leash and take off into the sky; and then it rose again just as suddenly, folded and strapped back into place. Katsa had no idea what it all meant, all this activity, but felt a kind of excitement at the strangeness and the rush, the voices shouting commands she didn’t recognize, the gusting wind, the pitching floor.
It took her about two steps to adjust to the tilt and roll of the deck. Bitterblue was not so comfortable, and her balance wasn’t helped by her constant alarm at the happenings around her. Katsa finally took hold of the girl and held her close against her side. Bitterblue leaned into her, relieved, and relinquished to Katsa the job of keeping her upright.
Jem stopped at an opening in the deck floor. “Follow me,” he said. He clamped his knife between his teeth, stepped into the blackness of the opening, and disappeared. Katsa followed, trusting the ladder she couldn’t see to materialize beneath her hands and feet, pausing to help the child onto the rungs just above her. Bear climbed down last, his light casting their shadows against the walls of the narrow corridor in which they finally stood.
They followed Jem’s dark form down a hallway. Bitterblue leaned against Katsa and turned her face against Katsa’s breast. Yes, the air was stuffy down here, and stale and unpleasant. Katsa had heard that people got used to ships. Until Bitterblue got used to it, Katsa would keep her standing and breathing.
Jem led them past black doorways, toward a rectangle of orange light that Katsa guessed opened to the quarters of the Graced captain. The woman captain. Voices emanated from the lighted opening, and one of them was strong, commanding, and female.
When they reached the doorway the conversation stopped. From her place in the shadows behind the boy, Katsa heard the woman’s voice.
“What is it, Jem?”
“Begging your pardon, Captain,” Jem said. “These two Sunderan boys wish to buy passage west, but I don’t trust their gold.”
“And what’s wrong with their gold?” the voice asked.
“It’s Lienid gold, Captain, and more of it than it seems to me they should have.”
“Bring them in,” the voice said, “and let me see this gold.” They followed Jem into a well-lit room that reminded Katsa of one of Raffin’s workrooms, always cluttered with open books, bottles of oddly colored liquids, herbs drying from hooks, and strange experiments Katsa didn’t understand. Except here, the books were replaced by maps and charts, the bottles by instruments of copper and gold Katsa didn’t recognize, the herbs by ropes, cords, hooks, nets –
items Katsa knew belonged on ships but didn’t know the purpose of any more than she knew the purpose of Raffin’s experiments. A narrow bed stood in one corner, a chest at its foot. This, too, was like Raffin’s workrooms, for sometimes he slept there, in a bed he’d installed for those nights when his mind was more on his work than his comfort.
The captain stood before a table, a sailor almost as big as Bear at her side, a map spread out before them. She was a woman past childbearing years, her hair steel gray and pulled tightly into a knot at the nape of her neck. Her clothing like that of the other sailors: brown trousers, brown coat, heavy boots, and a knife at her belt. Her left eye pale gray, and her right a blue as brilliant as Katsa’s blue eye. Her face stern, and her gaze, as she turned to the two strangers, quick and piercing. Katsa felt for the first time, in this bright room with this woman’s bright eyes flashing over them, that their disguises had come to the end of their usefulness.
Jem dropped Katsa’s coins into the captain’s outstretched hand. “There’s plenty more of it, too, Captain, in this purse.”
The captain considered the gold in her hand. She raised narrowed eyes to Katsa and Bitterblue. “Where did you get this?”
“We’re friends of Prince Greening of Lienid,” Katsa said. “It’s his gold.”
The big sailor beside the captain snorted. “Friends of Prince Po,” he said. “Of course they are.”
“If you’ve stolen from our prince – ” Jem began, but Captain Faun held up a hand. She looked at Katsa so hard that Katsa felt as if the woman’s gaze were scraping at the back of her skull. She looked at Katsa’s coat, at her belt, at her trousers, her boots, and Katsa felt naked before the intelligence of those uneven eyes.
“You expect me to believe that Prince Po gave a purse of gold to two raggedy Sunderan boys?” the captain finally asked.
“I think you know we’re not Sunderan boys,” Katsa said, reaching into the neck of her coat. “He gave me his ring so you may know to trust us.” She pulled the cord over her head. She held the ring out for the captain to see. She registered the woman’s shocked expression, and then the outraged cries of Jem and Bear alerted her to the room’s sudden descent into bedlam. They were lunging toward her, both of them, Jem brandishing his knife, Bear swinging his sword; and the sailor beside the captain had also pulled a blade.
Po could have mentioned that at the sight of his ring his people devolved into madness; but she would act now and contemplate her annoyance later. She swirled Bitterblue into the corner so that her own body was between the child and everyone else in the room. She turned back and blocked Jem’s knife arm so hard that he cried out and dropped the blade to the floor. She knocked his feet out from under him, dodged the swing of Bear’s sword, and swung her boot up to clock Bear on the head. By the time Bear’s body had crumpled to the ground, Katsa held Jem’s own knife to Jem’s throat. Hooking her foot under Bear’s sword and kicking it up into the air, she caught it with her free hand and held it out toward the remaining sailor, who stood just out of her range, knife drawn, ready to spring. The ring still dangled from its cord, gripped in the same hand that gripped the sword, and it was the ring that held the gaze of the captain.
“Stop,” Katsa said to the remaining sailor. “I don’t wish to harm you, and we’re not thieves.”
“Prince Po would never give that ring to a Sunderan urchin,” Jem gasped.
“And you do your prince little honor,” Katsa said, digging her knee into his back, “if you think a Sunderan urchin could’ve robbed him.”
“All right,” the captain said. “That’s more than enough. Drop those blades, Lady, and release my man.”
“If this other fellow comes toward me,” Katsa said, pointing the sword at the remaining sailor, “he’ll end up sleeping beside Bear.”
“Come back, Patch,” the captain said to her man, “and lower that knife. Do it,” she said sharply, when Patch hesitated. The expression he shot at Katsa was ugly, but he obeyed.
Katsa dropped her blades to the floor. Jem stood, rubbed his neck, and focused a scowl in her direction. Katsa thought of a few choice words she would like to say to Po. She looped his ring back around her neck.
“What exactly have you done to Bear?” the captain asked. “He’ll wake soon enough.”
“He’d better.”