“Ashby!” came a shout from the quarterdeck. It took Arabella a moment to register the name as her own, and when she finally did she saw it was Kerrigan who had called. He was waving pointedly at her and looking very cross in the harsh and shifting light.
Arabella checked that her safety line was well attached at both ends before working her way hand by hand along the rail to the aft end of the waist. All around her, more experienced airmen leapt from deck to mast to yard with hardly a care; many of them did not even wear safety lines like hers. Some day, she vowed, she’d be as brave as they.
“Yes, sir?” she called from the foot of the ladder when she reached it.
“The captain requests you bring him his tea!”
Tea? In this weather? But “Aye, aye, sir,” was what she said.
She made her way down to the galley, where two of the other waisters were working the bellows that kept the stove alight. For some reason, the lack of weight made the fire go out. “The captain wants his tea,” she told the cook, expecting a snide remark or possibly even a thrashing, but without a word of complaint the cook set to work, squeezing water from a huge skin—apparently made from a whole cowhide—into a stout iron kettle, which he twisted firmly into a fitting atop the stove to keep it from floating away. In minutes the kettle was boiling, the rumbling sound incongruously homely against the rush of wind and moan of timbers.
“Watch out, boys,” the cook said to Arabella and the other two waisters. “This’s hot.” He twisted off the kettle’s lid, then used a pair of wooden paddles to shepherd a seething, roiling glob of boiling water out of the kettle and into a plain white china teapot.
Arabella gaped in astonishment at the floating blob of water. For the cook to manage this dangerous, unpredictable fluid in a state of free descent, in the middle of a turbulent storm, was an amazing performance, and Arabella’s respect for the one-legged old man suddenly grew tenfold.
The lid of the teapot also fastened with a twist, and the spout was plugged with a cork. “Get this up to the old man straight away,” the cook said, thrusting the pot at Arabella. “He don’t like it if’n it’s too strong.”
She drew in a sharp breath at the pot’s heat, and juggled it from hand to hand. Were the cook’s palms made of leather?
As she came up on deck with the teapot, Arabella held it to her chest with one arm—bunching up her shirt to keep the pot from burning her arm and side—so as to keep the other hand free. And she was most glad of that free hand as the wind assailed her, threatening to whip her away immediately; she clung to the guide ropes and shuffled along, not letting either foot leave the deck, for fear of being swept overboard.
Though there was no rain as such, the rapidly moving air was filled with stinging tiny drops of water, which half-blinded her eyes and made the footing treacherous. At least it was fresh, not salt.
At last she reached the quarterdeck, requested and received permission to ascend, and approached the captain with her steaming burden. But just as the captain was turning to face her, she felt a jerk on her ankle and fell forward.
The teapot flew from her hands, bounced once upon the deck, and sailed away into the roiling heavens. In moments it was lost to sight.
Furious and ashamed, Arabella looked behind herself to see what had tripped her. The young officer who’d led the crew that rowed her and the captain across from the dock to Diana—Binion, that was his name—stood nonchalantly by the rail, with his foot several inches from where her safety line snaked across the deck. But the line, she noted, extended dead straight from her to Binion, then curved away from his position, as though it had a moment ago been drawn taut by some force in his vicinity.
“Ashby,” the captain said, and she snapped her attention back to him.
“Sir?”
“I requested you bring my tea to me,” he remarked mildly, “not fling it over the side.” But his face was very serious.
Arabella took a breath to explain herself, but the captain interrupted her before she could speak.
“On this ship, Ashby, we do not lay blame or make excuses. Each man must perform his duty. Upon occasion, circumstances intervene; in such a situation, we are judged by our ability to do what is required despite any obstacles. Do you understand, Ashby?”
Arabella swallowed her excuse and her pride. “Yes, sir.”
“I am still waiting for my tea, Ashby.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” She turned, with as much dignity as she could muster in a state of free descent buffeted by winds from every direction, and hurried back to the galley.
As she passed Binion, he gave her a nasty, knowing smirk. “Captain’s boy, eh?” he muttered, so low that no one else could have heard it. “Captain’s bum-boy, more like it. It’s clear you’re no airman.”
She glared hard at him, but though he was her junior by several years, he did outrank her and she dared not raise her voice to him.