I woke because I was rolling, because the whole boat was rolling, because the sea had grown furious while I’d slept.The clouds were the colour of charcoal.The air thick with the promise of storm.
Storms were important for goldkeepers—they infused the vaults with more sting in a single day than we could make in months using sting stones.I was attuned to the rumble.
The rain came, stealing the little warmth I’d managed to hold in my body.
And then the waves swelled.
I gripped the mast with arms so tense they hurt as the ship reared like a wild stallion, and the sea dogs around me transformed.They were no longer men and maybe women rowing a boat; they pulled all their oars in apart from two and tied the unused ones to the vessel before becoming feral creatures howling at the storm in ecstatic revelry.Hooting.Cheering.Encouraging.Standing dangerously close to the edge of the boat, letting the spray drench them.
Foamy water surged onboard, burning all the raw skin beneath my clothes—the prolonged wearing of my gown had worn sores into my flesh, especially around my shoulders and hips.I grimaced and held firm to the mast, as the rain came down with the force of a whip.I retched, and it was washed away by the sea.I retched again, and it was washed away again.I dry heaved and heaved.Even the sea dogs began to scramble, tucking things, pulling things, releasing two more oars, and using them to veer the boat toward the oncoming waves.
The water struck again, and I lost my hold, sliding toward the tail of the boat as its nose rose into the sky.
I screamed, certain a plunge into the sea was moments away, my arms reaching, my fingers grasping for something.Anything.
I caught an arm, and hands grasped me.I can only imagine how much I weighed in a waterlogged goldkeeper’s dress.I saw gritted teeth as Pinkbeard hoisted me back to the centre of the boat, pressing me against the mast, his chest against mine, his stance wide and sturdy.He released his hold on me with his arms, his body’s weight keeping me in place as he removed a leather belt from his own body and reached around the mast.I think he intended to use the belt to fasten me in place.All my knowledge of pickpocketing and decent behaviour was forgotten.I wove my arms around him and clenched his tunic tightly in my fists.I chose life over drowning.He felt like the only steady thing in the world.
And then everything was swallowed in white.
The wild shake of the vault’s sting coursed through me.I screamed, knowing that the lemure bark in my slippers could only protect me from so much before it wore out.I felt Pinkbeard’s body harden as the lightning pulled his muscles tight.Lightning struck us twice more, and, miraculously, once it was done, I was still breathing.
I opened my eyes to find Pinkbeard’s face close to mine.He was still holding me to the mast, but his gaze was much changed.He was no longer a man concentrating on doing the next task.He wore an expression I recognized because I’d worn it myself a little earlier when he’d returned my lyre.He was now the struck one.The flung one.The falling, stung, awakened one.I wanted him to look away because his gaze was so intense it was uncomfortable, but I also couldn’t bear the idea of him looking away.He whispered words I couldn’t hear over the wind and rain, and we spent the remainder of the storm like that, looking at each other as he held the mast and I held him.
Now is maybe a good time to tell you that my captors worshipped a god of sea and storms.This god was responsible for one of their most desirable afterlife possibilities; he was also a god responsible for lightning.You can imagine they thought me a special thing, for not only had I seemingly absorbed the strikes, but a man I held had felt the full power of lightning rush through him and survived to tell the tale.
Nine
After the storm, I was treated with even more reverence by the sea dog rowers.It did me little good for I’d caught a chill that no amount of shivering could free me from.Each breath hurt more than the last, leaving me wondering if my ribs would simply collapse from the weight of gold bearing upon them.My lips chapped from the salt in the air, and my eyes grew as heavy as my gown.
The sea dogs gave me what seemed like all the furs on board, three of them going bare-chested in the effort, revealing Maybewoman to be full-breasted.Blue tattooed serpents wove around her breasts, with their open mouths and curved tongues flicked right where her nipples were.I was too tired and achy to think of a new name for her or to react fully to the nakedness.
I grew colder, and my mind fluttered into the Dream World.Each time I woke with the hint of a dream in my memory, I nearly cried.From the shame of dreaming, yes, but also from opening my eyes to find yet more grey clouds above and black sea below, from the sameha,hwaah,ha, hwaahhalf-song, half-groan the sea dogs made as they rowed.
“Soten,” Twobraid said on what felt like our fourth day as he set a skin before me.There was wine in it.I knew because he’d offered it to me three times.
I didn’t even shake my head.I was too cold for that.I was too cold to exist.
He pulled the cork out.“Soten,” he said firmly, pushing the skin closer.
I wouldn’t have it.I had no appetite, and the idea of anything not scalding felt unworthy of the effort it would take to reach for it, unworthy of the cold that would seep into me if I lifted an arm outside the furs.
I drifted and dreamed.Dreamed and drifted.
Once, sometime later, when the sail was plump with wind, and the rowers weren’t heaving the boat forward, they gathered around me, sitting on the boat’s floor with their legs crossed apart from Farwatcher who sat at the tail, guiding the ship with two oars.
Everyone surely knew I was ill.Even a child would know.They began humming, and Maybewoman lifted her hands and made gestures in the air with her eyes closed as if she were weaving the wind.
“Stop!”I croaked.“Now!Stop!”My voice was hoarse with sickness, but still I whined.I suspected them of attempting sorcery, which could only lead to peril for all.I was suffering enough without curses to deal with, and terrifying though the sea dogs were, I needed them.I couldn’t row the boat by myself should they be devoured by demons for attempting magic.
“Soten,” Maybewoman said, her voice soft and… pleading.
“No!”I shouted.
Fever came, and with it wretched fever dreams.I confused sleep and waking, growing deeply paranoid about the sea dogs, suspecting them of making me ill on purpose.Interestingly, in my altered state, I found it easier to understand them.Soten.
Soten was me.
I was Soten.
