Chasing the Lantern(22)

Lina ate another meal by herself in the mess, this one not so extravagant as the last, then made her way up to the deck. Pursing her lips, she approached the rails and looked past them down onto the world below.

The setting sun sent shafts of umber light across thick tropical jungle stretching out along the Copper Isles beneath them. The Dawnhawk rode a few hundred feet above the canopy, cliffs and rivers separating the land into islets. The Isles spread out in a crescent across the horizon, the blue water of the Atalian Sea surrounding them.

It was glorious. Lina laughed at her earlier trepidation. She rested her arms on the railing and enjoyed the view. I'm home. Lina blinked in surprise at the realization. Maybe she'd expected a bit much. Maybe the captain had taken pity on her. It didn't matter. She suddenly knew that this was the life for her. I'm going to make it work. To the Realms Below with everyone else.

The last of the sun sank beneath the horizon and a shrill whistle rang out across the deck. Lina looked back to see Henry Smalls standing amid the deck with a boson's whistle, Sarah Lome standing behind him, cracking her knuckles. The evening crew was assembling, hurrying from up the hatches or wherever they'd been loitering about the deck. Lina moved to join them.

Henry passed his whistle to the gigantic woman. "Gunnery mistress," he said, "you have the watch."

"I have the watch," she repeated formally. Then both of them relaxed.

"All's straight and clear," said Henry. "This is a good ship."

"When are we picking up Lucian?"

"Around dawn. Captain say's it's going to be the usual spot, along Breakneck Bay."

Lome nodded and he went below. She turned to face the assembled crew. "You all know your normal places," she said loudly. "Dawnhawk isn't much different from Flittergrasp in that. But, I don't know this ship, and you don't really either. So we're going to go over every inch, and all the work that dayshift has already done."

The next two hours were brutal. By the light of the rising moon Lina found herself holystoning the deck until her back ached. Unused to the work, she fell behind the others, earning a lashing from Sarah Lome's surprisingly vicious tongue. Then they checked the cabling and the rigging along the deck, making sure it was all in good repair and undamaged.

With the moon at its zenith, they greased the linkage mechanisms and exhaust-pipes. Though her fingers were singed by the steam pipes and her back ached from the work, Lina was still fascinated by the devices. They seemed to control the odd half-sails folded along the outer hull, linking them back to the gearbox at the ship's wheel.

The Mechanist made an appearance shortly after this task was completed. He conferred with Sarah Lome, then moved to inspect the mechanism where the crew had worked on it. At each, he found fault. He addressed the pirate responsible for each flaw with withering scorn before moving on. As he moved up the line, Lina's nervousness grew.

Finally, he reached her. But if the Brother of the Cog recognized her, he didn't say so. Instead he bent over the linkage chain she had been scrubbing rust from and then re-greasing. "Satisfactory," he said once, before turning back to Sarah and beginning a withering complaint of the crew and their handling of his machines. Lina let out a sigh of relief.

Afterwards they attended to other, less important tasks. They rubbed oil on the lockers of weapons and equipment, and took inventory. Lina tried to pay dutiful attention to the directions. Unfortunately, the distractions were myriad. She was unused to the hours and the hard work. And if that weren't enough, Oscar Pleasant was in her shift as well. Whether from the incident with her hair or her abrupt attitude in the engine room, it seemed that she had slighted the man. Now he joked and whispered with his mates about her, just enough of which she heard over the groans of their labor and the creaking of the ship.

Sarah let up on them in the small hours of the morning. Seemingly satisfied for the moment, she assigned them off to menial, make-work jobs. She took Lina to a haphazard mound of ropes piled against the starboard railing.

"Get these coiled neatly," she said. "When you're done I'll have someone store them in the lockers."

With only an inward sigh, Lina bent to the task, undoing the knotty tangle and recoiling it a piece at a time. To her surprise the huge piratess didn't leave, but instead rested against the rail.

"You're small and weak," she said. "But quick. You don't complain. Mechanist likes how you respect his machines. Keep this up and there's a place for you here, so long as you don't shy from a fight."

The rope abraded Lina's fingers. Blisters were already forming, and within a weeks time there would be calluses. Once her hands had been smooth and butter-soft. I don't care. Her hands could go the way of her hair. "I can fight," she said, hating herself for the squeak in her weary voice.