I put my hand on my knife hilt. “What do you know about—” I stopped. Surely it wasn’t wise to say his name. “I mean, what do you know about my fate?”
“Salt pork today? Got a fine batch of salted smoked pork for the buying.” He winked. “I be thinking your fate is far away from here, Captain Oresteia.”
I wished he would stop being mysterious. “I’m not a captain,” I said, passing him a handful of coins. “Cormorant is my father’s boat. You know that as well as I do.”
“You can’t fight it.” He grinned, showing all his white teeth. “Why is it every soul be always thinking he can fight it? Does a fish swim upstream against the tide?”
I wasn’t a man or a fish, and I was beginning to weary of his knowing leer.
“It damn well tries,” I told him. “Salt pork, please.” I hesitated. “Is it true, what they say? That you’re a god? Can you speak to the god in the river?”
He only laughed, bending to measure out the salt pork from his barrel.
I stifled an irritated sigh and glanced over my shoulder at Cormorant, uncomfortably aware of how vulnerable and shabby she looked. She was no match for the Black Dogs. But we couldn’t just hide here forever. Somehow I had to get to Valonikos, or Pa would be stuck in the lockup and—gods forbid—I’d be stuck with Tarquin.
I stared into the murky reeds at the edge of the water. If there really was a god at the bottom, I could use his help right about now.
The pig man watched me with keen black eyes. I had the uncanny feeling he knew exactly what I was thinking.
“She a bigger, deeper god. The one who steers you.” He spat over the side of the boat. “He don’t be fighting her.”
“I steer myself.” The idea of the gods poking and prodding me about, like a piece on a game board, didn’t sit well with me.
He flipped the bacon in his frying pan and cackled. “They all say that too.”
I tried to look dignified as I climbed into the dinghy. “Good day, sir.”
“Current carry you, Captain,” he called after me, sounding just like any old river man again. It was as if our eerie conversation had never happened.
As I rowed back to Cormorant, I tried not to think about the pig man’s unsettling words. I was an Oresteia. We belonged to the river. I didn’t want another god messing around in my business.
Tarquin gave me a hand up from the dinghy. As I clambered onto the stern, I realized I’d been wrong about his hands. They were pale, all right, the hands of a man who had never worked long hours in the sun. But he had rough calluses across the tops of his palms, and he was strong.
Perhaps he wouldn’t be completely useless after all.
As I raised the sail, I noticed him watching me. “What are you staring at?” I demanded, freezing with the halyard in my hand.
He flinched, peeling his gaze off my legs. “In Akhaia the women wear skirts.”
“Well, bully for them.” My cheeks and ears went suddenly warm.
“I wasn’t saying it was a bad thing.” He tapped his own knees in a way that made me think he was embarrassed.
“That’s because you’re staring at my legs.” I bent to tie off the rope, resisting the urge to tug down the hem of my cutoff trousers, which had ridden up. He acted like he’d never seen a girl’s kneecap before. It was nothing exciting. Nothing to stare at.
We got under way, water bubbling under Cormorant’s bow. I steered her down the dike and out to the river, the dinghy trailing behind us like a duckling paddling after its mother. Long after the smoke from the pig man’s boat had disappeared astern, I sat chewing on my lip.
“Traveling by wherry is so slow,” Tarquin complained from the seat opposite me. He rubbed his finger along the strip of wooden trim that edged the deck. I wished he wouldn’t—flecks of paint were coming off. “I’m bored. Let me take a turn steering the boat.”
He’d barely been traveling by wherry for half an hour. Too bad I’d thrown the box overboard, or I might’ve stuffed him back in.
“What direction is the wind coming from?” I asked.
“That way.” He waved a hand, incorrectly, off the starboard bow.
“No, you can’t steer the boat.”
“What did I say wrong?”
“The wind is coming from dead aft.” He stared at me blankly. “Aft is behind us,” I said. A five-year-old child knew more than he did. “Why do you think the boom’s so far out? The boom being that big piece of wood attached to the sail.”
“Which one?” He must have seen the rude face I made, because he added, “I need to know these things, don’t I? To blend in.”
“The bottom one. The other is the gaff. The point is, a ship can’t sail into the wind. The wind has to push the boat. Turn around.”
The breeze ruffled his curls as he shaded his eyes to examine the sail.
“You see? That’s where the wind is coming from.”
Tarquin seemed to absorb this with a thoughtful look. To my relief, he didn’t ask to sail again. Instead he turned to Fee, who sat with her knobbly frog legs dangling over the side, and studied her. “Is it true that frogmen can breathe underwater?” He directed the question at me.
I bit back my annoyance. “You know, you can ask her. She understands you just fine.”
“Oh.” He straightened, addressing Fee this time. “I apologize if I offended you, Miss …?” He paused formally.
“Just Fee,” she croaked, eyes scrunching up at the edges. Her long tongue snapped out to grab a fly.
Tarquin jumped back, startled, while I choked down a laugh.
The river was narrow here, with round hillocks of marsh grass crowding us on both sides. The only sounds were the wind whistling low and mournful through the weeds and the buzzing of insects. Downriver from us, the sails of other wherries floated like black triangles above the fields. The cutter was nowhere in sight.
Off the port side a fish jumped, sunlight flashing on silver scales. Wavelets lapped the shore, and somewhere a bee hummed.
Small things. I yearned to know what secret messages Pa heard in them. No matter how hard I listened, I could not decipher anything.
“What are you thinking about?” Tarquin asked.
“The pig man,” I lied. “They say he’s a god.”
He sighed. “Ask yourself what’s more likely. That an old man who sells meat off a houseboat is a god or that he’s an old man who sells meat off a houseboat.”
I wasn’t convinced the pig man was a god either, but I certainly wasn’t going to sit here and let Tarquin poke fun at him.
“Well, but he knew about—” I hesitated. “Look, it’s just something people whisper, is all. The thing about gods is …”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh yes. A girl who lives on a wherry is going to tell me the thing about gods. I’m full of anticipation.”
“The thing about gods is,” I said, pointedly ignoring him, “they like to be a bit secretive about their business. And for your information, wherrymen are plenty acquainted with gods. There’s one at the bottom of the river. Everyone knows that. All the captains in my family are favored by the river god.”