The rain hit, then, sudden and painful, a great roar of noise as it struck the deck and the canvas of the sail. The sea seemed to boil under the force of it.
‘I think we should get under cover,’ the rich man said. The ship juddered violently. Huge waves, their surface pitted from the raindrops, churning up the ship; the sky now dark as coal fires, dull lights flickering across the clouds. Lightning and storm spirits shrieking and riding the winds. Green-white fingers traced through the rigging, whipping and probing at rope and canvas and men’s hands. Frantic blowing of a whistle. A man screamed and fell. Blood on his mouth like fine long claws. The snap of a rope, more screams as the released tension caused it to rebound and strike like a snake. More men falling. Men rushing across the deck, calling out orders, the whistle blowing.
‘We should go below,’ said the woman Raeta. ‘Shelter in the hold.’
I’m not going down there, thought Tobias. I’m not dying in the bloody dark in a bloody box. I’m not breathing in whale rot and bilge water as my last breath of air before my lungs give out.
‘Below,’ Raeta said, pulling his hand. ‘Come on, you fool.’ He could almost see the figures in the air, circling and dancing, tearing with teeth and nails. Beautiful, they were said to be.
‘Get out of the fucking way!’ a sailor shouted at them. Possibly Yartek. The deck tipped suddenly, sending Tobias staggering. Salt water hit him in the face hard as a punch, tasting like blood, like a shock going through him. Raeta lurched into his arms, their heads bashing together. He grabbed at her as the ship tilted again in the other direction, riding up on a wave, spinning in the wind. The sail screamed as they ripped around. Another rope broke, lashing across the deck. Green-white hands snapping it like a whip. A wave crashed onto the deck and suddenly Tobias was half-floating in hissing foam. Gods it was so fucking cold. Things like long, long fingers pulled at his legs, tangled him, wrapped themselves in knots around him, sank into his skin through his clothes.
‘Just get below!’ Tobias found himself crashing through the hatch into the hold. Raeta fell on top of him. They slithered down the ladder and ended up in a soaked heap on the floor. It was very dark, water running in rivulets around them. Rats running around them too.
‘Close the hatch!’ someone yelled. Tobias, half-stunned, dragged himself back up the ladder. Another surge of water hit him in the face as he struggled and finally pulled it shut. He fell down again gasping. Never felt so bloody useless. Like some knock-kneed recruit dropping his sword and bearing his neck for a kill stroke when he bent to pick it up.
‘Thank you,’ he grunted at Raeta. In the dark she was nothing more than a shape. He remembered yellow hair around a clear face.
‘We’ll probably still drown,’ she said brightly.
‘No.’ Soaking wet and humiliated, he felt more confident. Couldn’t hear the wind screaming, see the things in the sky. Just a storm. Just weather. Ships sailed through wind and rain all the time. ‘Blow out soon enough.’
The ship tipped and jerked. Thrashing on the water. It reminded Tobias of a body shuddering as it died. He crawled a little way and found a large barrel to lean against. The woman crawled next to him.
‘You think?’ She was speaking Immish, but her accent and her dress were from the Whites. So might be able to tell him something useful about Morr Town and Seneth. Unusual, a woman travelling alone. And as a passenger on a merchant ship. Interested him as a result, despite himself.
‘Going to Morr Town?’ he asked her.
‘Just sit in the dark and chat until we die, shall we?’ Raeta laughed. ‘I’m going to Turn, on Fealene Isle. But fewer boats go there.’
An awkward pause, the ship lurching. Crash of water dripping in through the cracks in the deck.
‘This is the worst place to encounter a storm,’ Raeta said. ‘Our bad luck. Even half a day further on, we could have put in at Lanth or Immerlas. Polle Island, even. But here … If we’re driven onto the cliffs, we’ll be smashed apart.’
‘Know the journey well, then?’
‘Done it once or twice. Been through storms once or twice.’
‘Had the crew try to slit your throat once or twice?’
‘Hah. No.’ Tobias could hear her grin in the dark. ‘I’m the captain’s sister.’
That was … interesting. ‘Know if they’re going to try to slit mine again, then?’
‘If we survive this, good chance of it.’ She sucked in a breath, knocked against Tobias as the ship rolled. ‘You did maybe help me a bit when we were slipping all over the place up there. And gave Leg a good walloping. Tell you what, you give me one of those nice big gold coins you’ve got there, I’ll tell my brother to leave you alone.’
‘You don’t think if you let me live I might start telling people all over Morr Town what it is you get up to on this ship of an evening?’
Tobias heard her grin again, wider. Somehow saw her mouth with gleaming smiling teeth. ‘And who’s going to believe you? My brother sells cheap, buys expensive. Makes a bit extra in creative ways. Good for everyone. You know all that anyway. Wouldn’t bother trying to tell. And it’s nothing to do with me, either. I’m just hitching a lift to visit our old mother back home on Fealene.’
‘How about you tell your brother to have our fellow passenger knifed instead, I tell him to rest easy tonight and then forget I ever met him, then we all enjoy the rest of the voyage in peace?’
‘I’ll think about it.’ Raeta stretched in the dark. ‘You’ve got the smell of money about you, Tobias. Look of hate about you, too. Blood on your hands. What you going to Seneth for, then, with no baggage but a sword and a bag of gold round your neck?’
‘Witch woman, now, are you?’
‘Ha.’ She snorted through her nose like a horse. ‘I can smell blood and gold on a man. See it in his face. Your future’s a nasty thing, Tobias. Don’t need to be a witch to see that.’
‘My past’s been a nasty thing. My present’s not looking particularly great right now either. And blood and gold smells a hell of a lot better than whale shit and salt.’
‘Indeed and so.’ She kissed his cheek. Not sexual: like a mother kissing a clever child. Her lips were hot and dry on Tobias’s skin. He shivered. ‘I will tell my brother to let you live, I think.’
They lapsed into silence, the storm rising to such a pitch their voices would have been lost had they tried to talk. The ship creaked and shifted, rose and fell. Thank all the gods the cargo seemed securely tied down. Occasional sounds like something scraping against the hull. Hours, it seemed, there in the dark. No longer any idea whether it was day or night, how much time had passed. We could be dead and drowned and in an afterlife, Tobias thought. Ghosts or something, floating on a ghost sea.