Dwalia crouched to pick up her coin. She stood and as Vindeliar started to rise, she kicked him down again. ‘Don’t think this pays for all,’ she warned him. She jerked my chain viciously and against my will I cried out. And then, to my shame, tears flowed from my eyes. I shuffled and sobbed after her as Vindeliar lumbered to his feet and followed us like a kicked dog.
Dwalia did stop to buy food. Cheap dry bread for Vindeliar and me, a savoury flaky roll stuffed with meat and vegetables for her. She watched the vendor count her coins back to her with an eagle’s keen stare, and stuffed them into a fold of her clothing. She ate as she walked, and so did we. I longed for water to wash down the dry bread, but she did not pause near the public well we passed. She took us down to the waterfront. The harbour was a great circle of calm water, with fingers of docks that reached out. The biggest ships were anchored in the placid bay, and little boats skated back and forth over the water like many-legged water insects, bearing people and supplies to them. Closer to us, smaller ships tied to the docks and piers, created a wall of hulls and a forest of masts between us and the open water. We three beggars entered the jostling world of carts and longshoremen and prosperous merchants inviting one another to tea or wine or discussing their latest purchases and sales.
We limped and shuffled among them, either invisible and unnoticed or cursed and reviled for making the traffic pause or standing where someone wished to walk. Dwalia sounded to me like a breadmonger as she called out, ‘The Sea Rose? Where does she dock? The Sea Rose? I’m looking for the Sea Rose!’
No one answered her. The best she got was a shake of the head to say they didn’t know the vessel. At last Vindeliar tugged at her sleeve and pointed wordlessly between two ships. We had a narrow view of the bay, and a fine vessel with no figurehead, but a glorious bouquet of flowers at her bow, with a large red rose in the centre of it. It was fat and long, the largest ship in the harbour. ‘Might it be that one?’ he asked her timidly. Dwalia halted despite the push and press of folk around us and stared at the vessel. The ship’s bare masts pointed at the sky and she rode high in the water. Her crew moved briskly on her decks, busy with sailorish chores I didn’t understand. As we watched, a small boat with six men at her oars pulled alongside. A large crate of something was lowered to the waiting boat, and then a man descended to it.
Someone bumped me hard, and said something vicious in a language I didn’t know. I cringed closer to Vindeliar and he in turn huddled behind Dwalia. She neither moved nor appeared to notice that we were blocking traffic. ‘We need to see where they go,’ she announced in a low voice. As the boat moved away from the ship, she suddenly set out at a trot, and I was forced to keep pace with her. It was hard to see where the rowing boat was going for our view was often blocked by tethered ships or large stacks of crates and bales. On we went, and on, with my bare feet protesting both the uneven cobbles and the splintery docks. I tore a nail on my foot and it bled. She darted in front of a team and wagon, dragging me behind her so that I felt the hot breath of the horses when they jerked their heads up and protested, and the angry shout as the teamster called me vile names.
Finally, we stood on a well-built dock. The sky overhead was wide and blue, sprinkled with screaming gulls. The wind blew past me, stirring my clothes and hair. I reached up and touched it, astonished at how it had grown. Had it been so long since my father and I had sheared our heads for grief at my mother’s death? It seemed but days and it seemed like years.
Vindeliar and I stood side by side while Dwalia paced up and down, every step a small tug at my chain. As soon as the boat drew near she began shouting, ‘Are you from the Sea Rose? Are you her captain?’
A finely-dressed man who did not pull an oar but rode grandly beside the wooden crate looked up at her in distaste. His lips curled back as if he could already smell us. The captain stood in his boat, ignoring how it rocked as his men climbed up and made the lines fast. A davit was swung out over the water. After supervising the transfer of the wooden crate to the dock, he climbed the ladder up to the docks, ignoring Dwalia’s frantic queries as if she were but another squawking gull. As if we were of no consequence, he brushed his hands on his black trousers and straightened his dark green jacket. It had two rows of silver buttons down the front, and his cuffs were likewise secured with silver. The shirt he wore beneath his fine jacket was a paler green, and the collar sparkled with jewel studs. He was a handsome fellow, handsome as a jaybird. He took something from his pocket, opened a little pot. He rubbed his finger in something and then smeared it over his lips. All the while, he stared over our heads toward the busy shore as if we did not exist.
His crewmembers were not so reserved. Their shouts of appalled merriment at the sight of us were impossible to misunderstand in any language. One woman moved behind Dwalia and mocked her stance and face, contorting her features and behaving like a halfwit. An older sailor gave her a rebuking shove, and then dug in his pocket to offer Vindeliar a handful of coppers. Vindeliar looked to Dwalia, and when she simply continued to shout her queries at them, he received the coppers into his cupped hands. With that, the crew was finished with us. They strode away with the rolling gait of experienced hands, laughing among themselves, all save one who sat forlornly in the rowing boat below, evidently consigned to that duty.
Dwalia screeched curses after them and then spun on Vindeliar, slapping him so hard that some of the coppers jumped out of his hand, bounced on the planks and fell through the cracks into the water below. Heedless of my chain, I managed to secure two of them and clutched them tightly. Somehow, I would find a way to turn them into food. Somehow.