A Watery Grave by Joan Druett

Author:Joan Druett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Fifteen

The brig’s messroom was square, its scant space mostly taken up with a table built aft of the mainmast. When Wiki walked in, closing his stateroom door behind him with a small but loud click, the two men who were already at the table turned their heads to stare challengingly. Lieutenant Forsythe sat in the chair at the sternward end of the table where Wiki had been accustomed to seeing George Rochester presiding, and Passed Midshipman Zachary Kingman sat on one of the benches that were screwed to the floor on either side.

They said nothing. Wiki had the impression that they had been talking and had abruptly fallen silent when he opened his door. Then he wondered who had been left in charge of the deck—the boatswain? The cooper? Perhaps Forsythe had brought another midshipman on board with him; Captain Wilkes’s predilection for shifting men about the fleet certainly made that possible.

There was a small bench built between the bulk of the mainmast and the foot of the table. Wiki swung a leg over this and sat down. The lamplight from above fell fully on Forsythe, while Wiki himself was in shadow. Forsythe’s face was flushed and sweaty, Wiki thought—but that could have been the effect of the lantern. His mouth, however, was definitely loose and damp. There was a half-full bottle between the two men; evidently they had been celebrating. Again, Wiki wondered about the officer on watch. Despite Rochester’s instructions to him to look after the brig, it was obvious that if he checked he would be begging for trouble, and so he kept his mouth shut.

Both Forsythe and Kingman had got out of uniform and were wearing loose shirts with the sleeves rolled up. Kingman was so cadaverous that Wiki could see the double bones that made up his forearms, barely covered with thin, weathered skin, so that the limbs looked ancient and mummified. Forsythe’s forearms, by contrast, were meaty and muscular. They were heavily tattooed, too, each with a coiled snake writhing from wrist to elbow. On the table, between Forsythe’s hands, a flat, dark-colored object rested. Wiki looked at it and heard his own intake of breath. It was hard for him to look away.

Forsythe had been watching him intently. Now he picked the object up so that the light caught on it and said, in his southern drawl, “D’you know what this is?”

“Of course. It’s a mere.” The leaf-shaped war club was very old, and had been carried in battle many times. It was stained dark at the edges, and the simple spiral carving at the handle end was rubbed and blurred.

“A stone ax, I’d call it. What’s it made of?”

“Pounamu—greenstone.”

“Is greenstone valuable?”

“Very.” A greenstone mere was the supreme hand weapon, the mark of a chief, a potent signifier of his mana and his rank.

“You want to know how I got it?”

Not particularly, Wiki thought. He said nothing but simply waited.

“A New Zealand chief gave it to me, on account of he didn’t have no use for it no more.

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