1SAINT
My father told me once that the only fools who sailed the Narrows were the dead and the dying. Sometimes, I think I’m both.
I leaned into the railing of the Riven with both hands, watching the lanterns in the harbor flicker to life one by one in the distance. Water dripped from the sails overhead and the meager crew on the deck was still white-faced from the swells we’d carved down only an hour before we spotted land.
Behind them, Clove stood at the helm, the spokes light in his fingers as it spun. His stained shirt was rolled up to his elbows, and most of his blond hair was now unraveled from its knot, blowing across his face as we turned into the wind.
We’d chosen Dern for two reasons. The first was because there was little cause for anyone to come here, other than the traders from the Unnamed Sea who bought grain from the crofters for less than it cost to grow it. The second was because Rosamund was the only shipwright willing to risk taking the coin off two fishermen’s sons from Cragsmouth who had no legitimate way to explain where they got it.
There was an explanation, of course. Just not one I was willing to give.
The fading daylight painted the sails over our heads a brilliant amber and the intricately stitched canvas glistened with droplets of rain. They were more patchwork than anything these days, having been repaired by the sailmaker so many times that he’d flat-out refused to take a needle to them again.
He wasn’t the only one who thought I was mad, tempting the sea demons by sailing the rickety old ship into deep waters. But I’d come out the other side of enough black, tangled clouds to stop asking whether a storm would kill me. The sea had had her chance enough times. She’d never taken it.
I unfolded my hand, eyeing the fresh cut across my palm beside a stack of healed scars. It was still raw and red from the last port we’d left, stinging as the skin stretched.
“Take us in,” I murmured to Clove, ducking into the narrow passage behind him.
His voice called out the orders to our sorry excuse for a crew as I pushed into the sorry excuse for a helmsman’s quarters. The cramped room smelled like mold and years-old mullein smoke seeping from the damp wood, but it had been my home for the last two and a half years and it had stayed afloat, which was more than most bastards got.
I hadn’t had oil for the lantern in weeks—another luxury we couldn’t afford—so when the sun went down it was damn near impossible to see anything. I felt my way along the bulkhead to the chest against the wall and lifted the lid. The stiff hinges creaked as the trunk opened and I reached inside. I didn’t bother hiding copper on this ship because there wasn’t anyone stupid enough to steal from me. That was where the stories they told about us had served us well.
My reflection appeared on the round, cracked mirror beside the window as I stood. Blue eyes stared back at me, set beneath thick, dark brows. The angles of my face were deeper than usual, and my jaw was shadowed with scruff. But there wasn’t a single coin in our coffers that hadn’t already been spent. The lowest on the list was a full belly or a clean shave or lanterns we could actually light. I wouldn’t have any of those things until well after Rosamund was paid.
I took the long, cylindrical map case from the wall and pulled the strap over my head so that the case rested against my back. Then I raked one hand through my almost-black hair, tucking it behind one ear and pulling up the collar of my jacket. The purse was heavy in my palm as I stowed it in my pocket, and the ship creaked perilously around me as it began to slow. I wasn’t sure how many more voyages across the Narrows the Riven could take, but I wouldn’t have to find out either.
I caught my own gaze in the mirror for a moment more, brushing off the shoulders of my jacket. I didn’t look anything like the Saltbloods who sailed their fancy ships from the Unnamed Sea and plucked what little the Narrows had from our starving hands. Even so, in a month’s time, we’d be hocking the Riven to whoever wanted the scrap iron and salvageable wood. Then we’d be sailing from Dern under a real trader’s crest.
Clove was already waiting beside the ladder when I came back out onto the deck. He leaned into the railing, eyeing Julian as he tied off the lines of the foremast with a hard set to his mouth. The young deckhand’s fingers faltered under Clove’s gaze, and he pulled at its length, starting again. There was no impressing the Riven’s navigator, and with a helmsman who steered them into storms that were the stuff of nightmares, the crew we picked up at each port never lasted long. A few times, they’d disappeared without even waiting to collect the coin they were owed.
It was just as well. There was no shortage of bastards in the Narrows who thought they were willing to die for copper. I usually got at least a few crossings out of them before they realized they weren’t.
“Ready?” Clove pulled on his cap as the deckhand finished, swinging one leg over the railing.
“Ready.”
I followed him down to the dock, where the harbor master was already waiting. Gerik studied the ship with a scrutinizing gaze, his lip curled under his pointed nose. The Riven was nothing much to look at, but I’d stopped being ashamed of her a long time ago.
“You know, every time you leave, I’m sure it’s the last time I’ll see this ship,” Gerik muttered, scratching at a page in his log with a feathered quill. His gaze lifted to the crate of rye being lowered from the railing behind us.
“Messages?” I asked, eyeing the opening of his jacket, where a stack of folded parchment was tucked against his chest.
“No,” he answered.
I clenched my teeth, the weight on my chest pressing just a little heavier. Every time we made port, I was sure the summons to the Trade Council would be waiting.
“I guess that means you still don’t have that license you keep promising?”
“I don’t.”
Gerik’s eyes squinted. “Then why are you unloading rye on my dock?”
I reached into my vest for the smaller purse of coin I’d known I would need. Now that the Narrows had its own legitimate Trade Council, every helmsman who sailed its waters was vying for a license to compete with the Saltbloods. Us included. But it took copper to get a license—a lot of it—and the only way to get that much coin was to trade without a license first and hope that everyone kept their mouths shut.
Gerik could be paid to look the other way, but he could also be paid to snitch. So far, we’d been lucky.
“It’s coming,” I grunted, handing the purse over.
“Says you and every other fool with a ship.” He took it, immediately turning on his heel. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
“Bastard,” Clove muttered.
He hated Gerik even more than I did. He hated most people, in fact. We’d grown up on the wide-bellied fishing boats in Cragsmouth and we’d each pulled the other from churning waters more times than I could count, but that wasn’t the reason he was the only soul in the Narrows I trusted. Anyone could throw a drowning man a line. Finding someone who would catch hold of you before you fell overboard in the first place was harder, if not impossible.
I pulled the watch from my pocket, tilting it toward the lantern light. “Need to make this quick.”
Clove scanned the docks around us as I started toward the stairs, and a moment later, his footsteps sounded behind me. Dern was no more than a cluster of stone buildings along the rocky shore. It was an outpost of sorts that had slowly become a port when the ships from the Unnamed Sea started showing up here for grain, but the village hadn’t caught much attention from the new Trade Council in Ceros. Not yet anyway.
I climbed the steps and took the winding path that led up the hill, away from the busy main thoroughfare. Rosamund didn’t like being in the mix of things, but the longer our arrangement dragged on, the more likely it was that someone would get wind of what I was up to. It would come out eventually. But controlling when was the key.
The shore grew steep as we reached the little cove, where a few piers reached out over the water. One of them had never been repaired after the storm that took its roof a few years ago, but the other two were still standing, and Rosamund’s seal adorned both.
I rapped on the door with my fist twice, and the lock turned a moment later. Ros’s apprentice, Nash, didn’t look happy to see us. He never did.
His eyes dragged over me from head to toe. “Back already?”
I leaned into the doorframe. “She here?”
Nash’s lips pursed as he inspected my shirt, and I ignored him. Not all of us had the steady place of an apprenticeship to keep our clothes mended and our hair trimmed. Not all of us wanted one either. I’d sooner find my death in the deep than live under a guild’s crooked thumb.
Nash pushed the door open, letting us in, and he locked it behind us. Inside, lantern light washed over the warm, golden-hued hull of a ship.
The Aster.
She was a schooner with two masts and a hull that would hold more than enough cargo for us to get our trade off the ground. Most important, she was ours. Or she would be once I handed this purse of coin over.
The last time we’d seen her, the masts hadn’t been standing. Now they reached up into the rafters that arched over our heads, where a few silver-feathered pigeons were perched in crumbling straw nests. The ship was set onto braces that stretched out over the open black water below. In a few weeks, she would be lowered into the sea for the first time and we’d be raising the sails.
I met Clove’s eyes. There was the faint shadow of a smirk on his lips. He was thinking the same thing. Somehow, we’d pulled this thing off. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure how.
“Thought I heard coin jingling,” Rosamund’s rasping voice called out from the deck above. She peered down at us over the railing of the starboard side before climbing down to the platform.
Nash crossed his arms over his chest, still sneering. “You sure you can handle a ship like this one? I’d hate to see it sail away just to hear it’s sunk a week later.”
“We do the building, not the sailing, Nash,” Rosamund said, jumping down from the ladder with a grunt. “What do you care, as long as you get paid?”
She pulled the straps of her heavy tool belt from her shoulders and loosened the buckle at her waist. When she was free of it, she reached up, kneading the tight muscles at the back of her neck. Rosamund wasn’t a slight woman, but the bulky shipwright’s gear made her look it.
“All right. Get on with it.” She wasn’t a gentle woman either.
I reached into my jacket and pulled the purse free, setting it into her open hand. She felt its weight before she passed it to Nash, and he found a seat at the small table against the wall to begin counting right away.
“How many days?” I asked, watching him carefully as he opened the purse.
Rosamund turned the merchant’s ring on her finger, thinking. The silver was dinged and bent up from the work she did, but the stone at its center marked her as an approved merchant by the Shipwrights Guild. If Nash was lucky, one day he’d wear one too.
“I’d say we’ll have her sea ready by the next full moon, give or take a few days.”
Clove took a step toward the edge of the platform and reached up, running a hand over the smooth wood planks that stretched to the bow. There was a rare tenderness in the touch. He’d waited a long time for this. We both had.
“But I gotta say,” Ros sighed, “those fools up at the tavern are gettin’ more curious by the day.”
Clove’s gaze slid to meet mine. That was a problem. We weren’t the only ones trying to establish a Narrows-born trading operation, and there was no shortage of helmsmen who’d see this ship burn before they let us get ahead of them in that line. We’d managed to keep the Aster a secret while it was being built, but if people in Dern found out Rosamund was building a ship for us, that would catch attention. And not just from the helmsmen of the Narrows who stopped here. The Saltbloods didn’t want to lose their hold on trade, and one more ship sailing wouldn’t do them any favors. We didn’t need anyone sniffing around and finding out just how close we were.
Rosamund set her hands on her hips impatiently. “How’re we lookin’, Nash?”
“So far so good,” he grunted, taking his time with each stack of coin.
When I realized he was only halfway through the purse, I pulled the watch from my pocket to check the time again. It was nearly half past the hour, and I knew what happened when I was late. My next appointment wouldn’t wait for me, no matter how long we’d been doing business.
“Go.” Clove jerked a chin toward the door. “I’ll finish up here and meet you at the tavern for the count.”
I nodded, snapping the watch closed and dropping it back into my jacket. I pulled my cap on and started toward the door, but I looked back once more before I pushed out into the rain.
The Aster glowed in the lantern light, the gleaming wood as smooth as the morning sea. She wasn’t just a ship. She was an idea. She was the thing I’d risked my neck for a hundred times over the last two years and my chance at a trade license, along with a crest of my own. But the Aster wasn’t just going to change things for me and Clove. She was going to change things for the Narrows.
Copyright © 2022 by Adrienne Young
