Along the Saltwise Sea by A. Deborah Baker

Author:A. Deborah Baker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

SEVEN

ON STORMY SEAS

There were as many dishes to be washed as there were sailors on the ship, which is to say, more dishes than Zib had ever seen outside of the holidays, when it seemed as if every distant cousin she could name had made it their personal goal in life to drown her in chipped plates and bowls with smears of gravy still clinging to the rim. The washing of one dish is much like the washing of another, and so we leave Zib to her unwanted, unenvied task, washrag in one hand and flatware in the other. She’ll be fine.

Instead, we rise up through the body of the ship to the deck, where Niamh patiently swabs, the mop in her hand well taller than she is, saying nothing to the pirates who tromp by, their bootsoles staining the freshly swabbed wood, forcing her to do it over and over and over again. If this frustrates her, she gives no sign. She only continues in her work. There is a smile on her face, and she has the sea air combing through her hair like the patient fingers of a loving mother; like Zib, she’ll be fine.

Higher still, the rigging, and we find the Crow Girl, still in her borrowed iron shoes, clinging to the rope in terrified determination. She has only checked three of the knots she was sent to the heights to check. Every time she reaches for the fourth, the same wind that strokes Niamh’s hair blows through the rigging and sets it to shaking, and she cries out and clings harder, clearly terrified of falling. Jibson is there with her, trying to coax her into working faster, growing increasingly frustrated with his inability to get through her fear. She’ll be up there for hours if the captain insists the job be finished before her descent.

In the small building behind the wheel, however, there is a room we have not yet seen: the captain’s quarters, which are easily three times the size of the room our four children have been assigned to share, and opulent in a way that even a rich man’s room on land might envy, with walls papered in rich brocade and the floor softened by piles upon piles of rugs. The bed is draped in heavy velvet curtains, and as Avery stepped into the room, he resolutely does not look at it. If he looked at the bed, he might remember his exhaustion, and if he remembered his exhaustion, he wouldn’t finish the work he’d been assigned to do.

One entire wall of the cabin was dedicated to tall oak bookshelves, crammed with more books than he had ever seen outside of a library. True to the captain’s word, more than half of them were out of order, and it seemed like every time he put a book back where it belonged, he found two more that needed to be moved. There was a clever ladder attached to the book wall, with wheels

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