“Aye. I’ll tell Edral.”
Rowan smiles and runs ahead of him to the first mate at the oar. The cannon, Tuse knows, is something Rowan envies him.
He should have the boy trained on it. He’s been giving him a taste of every job, something he never got coming through the rowers’ deck. If the crew thinks he’s playing favorites, let them wonder instead why they aren’t his favorite. Besides, the boy’s done the job of the two most galleys carry. He wouldn’t have thought it of a soldier’s son.
The only thing Rowan doesn’t like is powdering the rowers. Too many are former soldiers who fell on hard times, then fell into the wrong sort of business. That’s a softness Tuse will have to wean him of. He should train the boy with the whip too.
Amidships Tuse flops a hatch and looks down at Edral, his blinking second mate and oarmaster. Around him the rowers are chained to their benches, straining so hard their neck muscles threaten to snap. Sweat courses through their scars and shines on their tattoos. They breathe like a great bellows, mouths wide to mitigate the stench of rotten eggs lingering from their previous cargo. Every trip to Chorem and back is a race against their last. That’s why he gets to keep his ship.
“What about our schedule?” Edral says.
“We’ll take them in passing,” Tuse says. “Besides, the boy could always fix a double ration to make up any time lost.”
“Aye, aye!” a rower says. Tuse doesn’t have to look to know whom. Bearclaw’s trunk is broader than it was on the Comber from the years of rowing, but his face is pocked and wasted, and his teeth are gone. The changes in his face are the result of too much powder, the changes in his teeth, too much mouth. “Your boy’s good with the spoon,” he says, “but I preferred that lady. She had a heavier hand.”
Tuse’s face reddens. “That one’s had enough. If he flags, fix him an old-fashioned ration.”
The oarmaster uncoils his whip.
Tuse closes the hatch. Since the Comber, he’s preferred a covered deck. The rowers get hot, but they need so much water as it is, what’s a little more? Let them burn. There’s more where they came from.
He tries to close the hatch on his memory of the poth too, but it won’t stay battened.
When Rowan reaches the stern deck, the first mate, a man as dour as he is sallow, is already clenching his whistle in his teeth.
“The captain will exercise his privilege?” Press says.
“Yes,” Rowan says.
Press’s lips curdle. He blows the call for whaling.
Many in the crew leave off their duties to prepare the galley for rendering. The second harpooner, a lank-limbed man with lankier hair named Igen, runs to the foredeck to load the cannons. While the captain is looking into the hatch, Igen holds two fingers downward, then six fingers upward.
The crew looks at Press. Press peers at the whales, considers the distance and roll of the sea, and raises his arm with three fingers down. Igen nods. Other crewmen out of the captain’s sight show one or two fingers held downward as well. Igen marks these with a nod, then a disappointed shake of his head. He holds eight fingers up. No one raises an arm. He holds up ten fingers. Still no takers.
Press chuckles. “He’s going to take a bath.”
“You shouldn’t bet on the captain to miss,” Rowan says.
“You shouldn’t still be standing here.” The boy leaves. Who is he to talk to a mate? The captain favors him too much, perhaps because only the boy favors the captain. Some of the old-fashioned ration would bring him down a peg.
Press watches Tuse go forward and bend over a cannon. Press should be the one to shoot, not man the oar. He’s far more accurate. So’s Edral, probably so’s the boy, and neither’s ever shot before. Captain Boots says he doesn’t need a third mate because two can do the work of three, something the company appreciates, but Press has heard the rumors that something curious happened on the Comber. Maybe he thinks he can only control two mates. The joke on the galley is that Boots is in fact the third mate impersonating a captain.
When he gets his galley, he won’t run it like Boots. He’ll have the proper three mates and two fearful boys, not one little bootlicker. He’ll dress the way a captain should. And he won’t allow gambling.
Tuse swivels the cannon. The motion relaxes him, like picturing a punch before you throw it. Others are better shots, especially Press, but he has to take any opportunity to prove himself worthy of his shirt. He knows they call him Boots. Maybe a little whale meat for dinner will placate them. And if he can show the other captains that sea foraging will lessen the ration expense, maybe they’ll stop calling him “the oarmaster” for skipping first and second mate.
“Do you want me on the other?” Igen says.
“We won’t need it,” Tuse says.
“Aye.” Igen smiles, cautiously optimistic.
On the foredeck stairs, Rowan holds ten fingers upward against his chest.