The House of the Four Winds: Book One of One Dozen Daughters

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Do you—” She broke off at the sound of a bell being rung in a complicated rhythm.

  “Five bells. Mr. Emerson may take pity on us and give us a stale crust to gnaw upon until breakfast time. You will do well to ingratiate yourself with him, for you will become tired of salt beef and salt pork, no matter how well they are disguised, and you will long for fresh bread even more than fresh fruit. It is his skill that stands between you and utter weariness of life.”

  “Mr. Emerson is the ship’s cook,” Clarice guessed.

  “He is indeed, and we shall hope he is a good one. We will know by whether he gives us bread or biscuit. A ship’s cook bakes bread when he has the ingredients, and ship’s biscuit when he does not—if he has the skill.”

  “I see this is to be a dire warning of our future. Was he very drunk when Captain Sprunt arrived to collect him?”

  “As drunk as a sea cook might be,” Dominick said cheerfully. “But that is less important than that he and Mr. Foster do not like one another at all. I suspect he reported Mr. Emerson to the watch so as to get him out of the way while our supplies were being loaded.”

  “Mr. Foster is…?”

  “The quartermaster. He is one of our officers, so you will meet him at breakfast. He is responsible for purchasing every item used on a voyage.”

  “I believe I made his acquaintance last night. It was he who sent Ned Hatcliff to bring my trunk aboard.”

  “Which brings me to my next question. I meant to ask you if you found your accommodations satisfactory.”

  “Quite as small as you promised me, but entirely satisfactory.” Clarice followed Dominick down to the deck. “It does seem to move about a great deal, though.”

  “I will hope you don’t find yourself afflicted with seasickness. But if you do, I believe our surgeon has an excellent cure for the ailment.”

  “I will hope I don’t need it.” The alchemist’s shop in which Clarice had purchased her spellmatch had also sold talismans against seasickness, and she had thought of buying one. But they were dauntingly expensive, and the proprietor had told her honestly that no one ever died of seasickness, and its effects, though dire, passed within a few days. She hoped she would not regret her decision.

  Dominick led her the length of the ship. As they approached the bow, she realized she smelled smoke. “Dominick—the ship is on fire!” she said urgently.

  “What—? Oh. No, Clarence, that is merely the galley chimney. Mr. Emerson can hardly be expected to cook without a stove, now, can he?”

  Clarice had never considered the matter before. But a kitchen—and a stove—aboard a wooden ship seemed like a recipe for disaster rather than dinner.

  “It is entirely safe,” Dominick said. “But the moment there is even a chance of bad weather, the galley goes cold, and there is no hot food at all to be had. It is something I hope we avoid.”

  The ship’s galley was beneath the bow. They went down a set of steps—Dominick called it a “ladder.” and Clarice made a mental note; everything on a ship seemed to have a different name than it did on the land.

  The first thing she noticed was the heat. It was quite as hot as if she stood within the bake ovens she knew must be here, and so dark she could not imagine how anyone could see to do anything.

  “Mr. Emerson!” Dominick called out. “I have brought our passenger to see your domain! We are both of us, I assure you, perishing of hunger.”

  “Perishing, is it? I’ll give you perishing, my lads. And put you to honest work, too, see if I don’t.”

  The figure to go with the voice appeared out of the gloom. It was certainly not what Clarice expected. For all that he spoke as if he had never been east of Lochrin, Emmet Emerson had the ink-black skin of a subject of the Wagadu Empire in distant Ifrane. He was short, and as round as he was short, with a fringe of curly, white hair bordering his gleaming scalp. He wore a cloth apron over his shirt and breeches, on which he now wiped his hands. His left leg ended at the knee, and below the joint was a long peg of wood, like a chair leg, held in place with straps. For all his grumbling, he was smiling.

  “Admiring my furniture, are you, lad?” he asked Clarice. “Went afoul of a line these ten years gone. Took it right off, clean as any surgeon. Bam!” He clapped his hands together in illustration, and Clarice startled.

  “This will be Mr. Swann’s first time at sea,” Dominick said.

  “Then we’d better get some belly-timber into him before we’re off the river,” Mr. Emerson said firmly. “Here now, Jerrold!” he called behind him. “Bring out one of the fresh loaves and a couple of tankards!”

  A moment later a young man appeared. Beneath the sun-bronzing of his skin he would probably be as pale as Mr. Emerson was dark; his eyes were gray and he had a shock of copper-red hair. One hand held a round baker’s loaf, while the other held two wooden tankards. “Here, Mr. Emerson. What should I put in the tankards?”

  “Why, the finest coffee with cream and sugar,” Mr. Emerson said. “What do you think, my fine young cloudwit? It’s hot ale I’ve got a brimful cauldron of.”

  Taking the loaf from Jerrold’s hands, Dominick broke it in half, handed half to Clarice, and explained, “The morning watch is being fed. After that is done, Mr. Emerson will get our breakfasts.”

  “I see,” Clarice said, although she wasn’t sure she did.

  “Enjoy it while you can,” Dominick said, flourishing the bread before taking a hearty bite. “It’s the first thing to go.”

  “There’ll be biscuits and pancakes right along,” Mr. Emerson said. “Fresh milk, if the nanny cooperates. If she doesn’t, it’s into the stew with her!” He chuckled at his own wit.

  Jerrold returned, carrying the steaming tankards carefully. Clarice was used to the notion of beer served hot, for it had been common enough in the inns at which she had stayed, but any landlord who’d served beer as weak as this would have been soundly thrashed by his customers.

  “It is watered, of course,” Dominick said, seeing her expression. “You can’t ask a man to go up into the rigging drunk.”

  Mr. Emerson made a rude noise. “Take more than a tankard of beer to get any of those layabouts drunk. It’s for the water, same as the rum.”

  “I see I have much to learn about shipboard life,” Clarice said, though she understood this. The water they carried, while drinkable, would be far from fresh in two weeks—or six. The charms to keep it fresh were beyond the budget of any vessels save rich merchantmen—or the Imperial Navy. “I hope you will be willing to instruct me.”

  “Put you to work, if you aren’t careful!” Dominick said, laughing.

  They returned their empty tankards to Jerrold and went back up on deck. The Temese, broad even where it flowed through Lochrin, had broadened farther still. The city was long behind them now; all there was to see on either side was rolling green meadows, flocks of sheep, and the occasional distant spire of a village temple. For the first time, Clarice could smell the sea.

  “I had thought a ship was like, well, a sort of seagoing inn. Or a company of wagoneers. I mean to say, such an organization as … as…” She faltered, not quite certain of what she meant to say.

  Dominick came instantly to her rescue, though her comparison of the Asesino with a tavern or a wagon train made him smile. He had a dimple in his cheek, Clarice noted absently. “As is not put together from random dock sweepings at the beginning of each voyage!” he said irrepressibly. “But I assure you, dear Clarence, it is often the way of things—we are not the Imperial Navy, and our sailors only sign on for a single voyage at a time, being discharged when the ship reaches her home port. Though I grant you a captain is often the owner of his ship, with his officers taking a share in the profits from a voyage, such ships cannot easily compete with the companies which may own a dozen ships or more.”

  “So none of you have sailed together before?” It seemed to Clarice a haphazard way to arrange matters, especially if people were to be living in such close quarters for so
long, with no way of going elsewhere if one found one disliked one’s companions.

  “Captain Sprunt has brought with him companions from other voyages, I believe,” Dominick said. “Mr. Foster, whom you have met, and our ship’s chaplain, Reverend Dobbs. And he has brought his own first mate, Freeman Lee, so you may be sure of a smooth and easy voyage. It is not the custom for a ship’s captain to have a great deal to do with the crew directly, for the sake of discipline. It is the first mate who is their ruler when we are at sea. As for the rest of us, the ship’s officers, we have come to our berths in the usual fashion: Mr. Greenwell, his apprentice, and I from our respective guildhouses, and Dr. Chapman from the Surgeon’s College, I expect.”

  “Have you no apprentice, Dominick?”

  “Captain Sprunt does not choose to sail with a navigator’s apprentice, and that is his privilege. He has said there will be little for me to do, for he was once a navigator himself and prefers to take his own sightings, but the assurancemen require every ship to carry a guild navigator, and so here I am.”

  “And will you someday become a captain as well?”

  It was an innocent question, but Dominick’s expression darkened and he turned away. “I could not hope for such great fortune,” he said briefly. “Come. I will conduct you to the captain’s mess.”

  * * *

  The captain’s mess, when not being used for meals, served as the common room for the ship’s officers, and, so Clarice was told, for paying passengers. She was welcome to spend as much of the day here as she chose, but could expect little company until evening, for everyone else had duties to occupy them.

  It seemed to her to be a pleasant enough chamber for one in which she was to spend so much of the next six weeks. It ran the full width of the deck, with portholes on each side. The ceiling above her head, and the upper half of the bulkheads, had been given a good coat of limewash, so the whole effect was bright and airy. In addition to a large, round dining table beneath a wheel chandelier that held six oil lamps, the room held a smaller, round table that might seat four, a writing desk, and a sideboard, which flanked a second door—or hatch, as she had learned to call it. The sideboard looked much like the one she had seen in the Swansgaarde kitchens, meant to provide an additional working surface as well as to display fine serving pieces. It did not seem to perform either function here aboard Asesino.

  Two members of the ship’s company were already present when Clarice and Dominick entered.

  “Ho, Dickon, are we to go upon the rocks while you stuff yourself like a glutton?” Dominick said. His momentary dark mood, she was relieved to see, had vanished as quickly as it came.

  “In the Temese?” Dickon Greenwell answered in mock outrage. He was perhaps a year or two older than Dominick. His black hair was pulled back into a braided pigtail, but not tarred. He wore a coat of green worsted over a loose shirt, but neither weskit, lace, or bands. The Asesino seemed to be a somewhat informal ship. “If young Miles can put us aground here, he is a fellow of unsuspected talents! But who is this?”

  “This is our passenger, Mr. Clarence Swann.” Dominick’s tone of voice indicated a passenger was an exotic rarity indeed.

  “You will lose that fine hat overside the moment we’re at sea,” the second man present said. “And then your fine white skin will burn red as a boiled ham. Come see me then.”

  “Dr. Chapman, our ship’s surgeon,” Dominic said, seating himself, and added, by way of introduction, “He has come to us from the navy.”

  Dr. Chapman was a spare, sun-bronzed man of an age somewhere between forty and sixty. A life spent at sea made it difficult to tell his age, but his hair (worn sensibly cropped, but somehow still disheveled) was more silver than brown. He was dressed with more formality than either Dominick or Mr. Greenwell; his blue coat had clearly once been a part of a uniform, and the falling bands at his neck were crisply starched, as were the ruffles at his wrists. His weskit was curious, being made of leather rather than cloth, and an ivory-handled walking stick was by his side. Despite his gruff words, his blue eyes held both kindness and humor.

  “I am no stranger to wind and weather,” Clarice said, a bit tartly. She had been no stranger to the outdoors as a princess of Swansgaarde, and her skin had tanned a good deal since. She sat down between Dominick and Dr. Chapman; no one had said anything about assigned seating.

  “To such wind and weather as you will encounter in the Hispalides, you are,” Dr. Chapman replied with gloomy relish. “But suit yourself. It would be a great shame to lose such a fine hat, however.”

  “I shall take care that I do not. It has been my companion on many adventures, and I hope to have its company on many more.”

  “An adventurer, are you, Mr. Swann?” Dr. Chapman asked. “You will surely find adventures enough in the Hispalides. Why, once, when I was serving aboard the Megara—”

  He broke off as the hatch opened once more, and the rest of their breakfast companions arrived.

  Captain Sprunt she had already met, and she recognized Simon Foster from the previous evening. The other two must be Freeman Lee, and the ship’s chaplain, Reverend Dobbs.

  It was not hard to tell who was which. The reverend was garbed as if he were on his way to a funeral rather than a breakfast. Coat, breeches, weskit, were all of sober black cloth, as was his flat, wide-brimmed hat. He was of middle years, his complexion sallow with either ill health or dissipation, and his long, narrow face bore an expression of what seemed to be perpetual dissatisfaction. His eyes were dark, and he regarded those already seated with disapproval.

  “On your feet for the captain!” his companion boomed out.

  Everyone at the table rose quickly. Clarice did as well, removing her hat, though in her case it was merely a matter of courtesy. Freeman Lee’s shoulders strained the seams of his faded blue coat. His thin, gray hair was scraped back into the same sort of tarred pigtail as the captain wore, and his nose had been broken several times. His hands were enormous, their knuckles, too, marked with the scars of a number of brawls.

  This man is dangerous, she thought, looking at Mr. Lee. She’d learned to rely on her judgment to keep her out of trouble during her travels; she wondered, if she had seen Samuel Sprunt in the company of this group of his officers, if she would have been quite so quick to book her passage.

  I suspect Reverend Dobbs of liking his whiskey far too much, and Mr. Lee is a bully. It is too soon to form an opinion of Mr. Foster, but he does not look as if he smiles overmuch.

  Still, she told herself consolingly, Dominick is nice, and I think I shall come to like Dr. Chapman and Mr. Greenwell quite well. And there is Mr. Emerson.…

  Everyone seated themselves again, and a moment later the inner door opened. A boy—he could not be more than eight or ten—entered, pushing a small wheeled cart. He began to lay the table for the meal, beginning with Captain Sprunt, and moving clockwise: next Reverend Dobbs, then Dr. Chapman, then Clarice. He wore only a shirt, and trousers instead of breeches, the first she had seen anyone wearing aboard ship. His skin had the paleness of a city-dweller, and his brown hair had escaped its queue, falling in locks about his face.

  It did not conceal the large purple bruise upon his cheek.

  “How do you fare, David?” Dominick asked quietly when the boy reached him.

  “Quite well, thank you, Mr. Moryet,” the boy answered softly.

  “I thought I’d taught you to stop your chatter,” Sprunt barked from across the table, and Clarice saw David flinch.

  “Your pardon, Captain, but I asked the boy a question,” Dominick answered as David moved on.

  “How do you find shipboard life so far, Mr. Swann?” Dr. Chapman asked loudly.

  “It is quite interesting,” Clarice answered, just as boldly. If being a princess had taught her one thing, it was how to make small talk at a moment’s notice—and to take control of a conversation when it suited her. “Far more convenient than traveling by land, for one need not leave one’s lodgings to reach o
ne’s destination.”

  “And what is that destination, if I might ask? Permit me to introduce myself: I am the Reverend Philip Dobbs, of the One True Church, and all the souls who sail aboard Asesino are in my care.”

  “It must be a great deal of work for you,” Clarice said mildly.

  “A congregation of heathens, atheists, and Old Church heretics,” Dobbs said darkly. “If sin and evil had worldly weight, this ship would sink before she left the dock.”

  “How dreadful,” Clarice said, though she was one of the Old Church adherents he seemed to dislike. The Old Church and the New Church (the so-called One True Church) had broken more than three hundred years ago over the question of thaumaturgy: the Old Church had once held that only priests could practice what was then called theurgy. The New Church held that thaumaturgy was a mere science, and so priests must not practice it at all. The Old Church now recognized thaumaturgy as a secular science distinct from ecclesiastical theurgy; the New Church did not recognize either theurgy or the Old Church. It had been a long and bitter quarrel, and during the Protectorate, Albion had outlawed all magery entirely.

  “But you have not answered my question,” Reverend Dobbs repeated—rather rudely, Clarice thought.

  “I go to seek my fortune in the New World. I am a swordsmaster by profession.”

  “A man of blood and violence,” Reverend Dobbs said with gloomy satisfaction. “But you are young—there is still time to turn from your sinful path.”

  “I shall take that under advisement, to be sure.”

  While Reverend Dobbs had been lecturing her, David had finished laying the table and departed. Now he returned, his cart this time laden with serving dishes. Jerrold, the cook’s mate, was with him. This menu was still much what she would have expected at any inn or tavern, but a month from now even the captain’s table would lack fresh fruits and vegetables.

  Once the dishes were set on the table, Reverend Dobbs embarked upon a lengthy prayer. It was cut short, to Clarice’s secret glee, by Captain Sprunt’s reaching across the table to help himself to the plate of sausages.