by Robin Hobb
‘Crimpers?’ Jord asked in a sort of horror. ‘Working here in Nook?’
‘Where better?’ Reller asked in a low voice. ‘Man don’t come back to his ship on time, no one’s going to stay tied up here to look for him. Easy to lay in an alley, pick off a few tars from a homebound vessel, the poor sots wake up back on the hunting waters. I tell you, this isn’t a town where a sailor should walk about alone.’
Jord abruptly hauled himself to his feet. ‘I’ve had a gut full of these northern waters. No way I’ll even take a chance on that. Come on, fellows. Let’s to the ship.’
Reller glanced about. ‘Hey, where’d Brash go? Wasn’t he sitting over there?’
‘He went with a girl, I think.’ Althea spoke up for the first time. She heard the disapproval in her voice and saw the faces turn toward her in surprise. ‘One I thought was looking at me,’ she added sourly. She picked up her mug, took a sip, and set it down. ‘Let’s go. The beer here tastes like piss, anyway.’
‘Oh, you know what piss tastes like, do you?’ Jord mocked her.
‘Don’t need to. All I need to know is that this stuff smells just like your bunk, Jord.’
‘Aw, a bunk sniffer, eh?’ Jord guffawed drunkenly. The others joined in the laughter and Althea just shook her head. Afloat or ashore, the humour and witticisms were the same. She actually found herself eager to return to the ship. The sooner they sailed from this armpit, the sooner they’d get to Candletown. She pushed back from the table. Jord leaned over to look in her mug. ‘You going to drink that?’ he demanded.
‘Be my guest,’ she told him and turned to follow the others out of the tavern into the storm. From the corner of her eye she saw Jord toss it off and then make a face.
‘Ew. Guess you got the bottom of the cask or something.’ He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and followed.
Outside the storm was still blowing. Althea wondered wearily if it ever did not storm in the forsaken hole. She squinted her eyes into the rain-laden wind that tore at her clothes and hair. In two steps she forgot that she had ever been warm and dry. Back to life as the ship’s boy.
She almost didn’t hear the innkeeper calling from behind her. Reller turned, and when she glanced back to see what he was staring at, she saw the man leaning out the door of his tavern. ‘You Athel?’ he yelled into the storm.
Reller pointed silently at her.
‘Brashen wants you. He’s had a bit much to drink. Come and haul him out of here!’
‘Wonderful,’ she snarled to herself, wondering why he had picked on her. Reller motioned her to go back.
‘Meet us back at the ship!’ he roared into the wind and she nodded. She turned back to the inn wearily. She didn’t look forward to staggering through the storm with Brash leaning on her. Well, this was the sort of task that fell to ship’s boys. If he puked, she’d get to clean that up, too.
Muttering to herself, she climbed the steps and then stepped into the tavern. The keeper motioned towards a door in the back. ‘He’s in there,’ he said disgustedly. ‘Nearly passed out on one of the girls.’
‘I’ll get him out of here,’ Althea promised and dripped her way past the tables and benches of drinkers to the door. She opened it on a dimly-lit chamber. There was a bed, and the tavern maid with her blouse unlaced. The girl was bent over Brashen as Althea came in. She looked up at Althea and smiled helplessly. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said, still smiling. ‘Won’t you help me?’
Perhaps if Althea had truly been a ship’s boy, she would have been distracted by the girl’s bared breasts and would simply have stepped into the room. She probably would not have stared at Brashen as she did, thinking that he did not look like a man passed out in a bed but rather like a man who had been struck down and then arranged on a bed. In that momentary pause, she caught a flicker of motion to her left. She dodged back, catching the blow on the side rather than on the top of her head. The club crashed into the top of her shoulder as well, numbing her right arm down to her fingertips. She staggered forward with a cry as the man who had clubbed her slammed the door shut behind her.
The girl was in on it. Althea grasped that instantly, and spurred by her pain, she struck the tavern maid in the face as hard as she could with her left hand. It was not her best punch, but the girl seemed shocked as much as hurt. Clutching at her face, she staggered back with a scream as Althea spun to face the man beside the door. ‘You heartless little bastard!’ the man spat, and swung at her. Althea ducked it and sprang for the door behind him. She managed to pull it partway open. ‘Crimpers!’ she shouted with every bit of breath in her body. A white flash of light knocked her to the floor.
Voices came back first. ‘One from the Tern, the one they’ve been looking for. He was tied up in the beer cellar. One from the Carlyle and these two from the Reaper. Plus it looks like there’s a couple more out the back with some earth scraped over them. Probably hit them too hard. Tough way for a sailor to go.’
There was a shrug in the second voice that replied, ‘Well, tough is true, but we never seem to run out of them.’
She opened her eyes to overturned tables and benches. Her cheek was in a puddle of something; she hoped it was beer. Men’s legs and boots were in front of her face, close enough to step on her. She tipped her head to look up at them. Townsmen wearing heavy leathers against the storm’s chill. She pushed against the floor. On her second try she managed to sit up. The movement set the room to rocking before her.
‘Hey, the boy’s coming round,’ a voice observed. ‘What did you hit Pag’s girl for, you sot?’
‘She was the bait. She’s in on it,’ Althea said slowly. Men. Couldn’t they even see what was right in front of their faces?
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ the man replied judiciously. ‘Can you stand?’
‘I think so.’ She clutched at an overturned chair and managed to get to her feet. She was dizzy and felt like throwing up. She touched the back of her head cautiously, then looked at her red fingers. ‘I’m bleeding,’ she said aloud. No one seemed greatly interested.
‘Your mate’s still in there,’ the man in boots told her. ‘Better get him out of there and back to your ship. Pag’s pretty mad at you for punching his daughter. Didn’t no one ever teach you any manners about women?’
‘Pag’s in on it, too, if it’s going on in his back room and beer cellar,’ Althea pointed out dully.
‘Pag? Pag’s run this tavern for ten years I know about. I wouldn’t be saying such wild things if I were you. It’s your fault all his chairs and tables are busted up, too. You aren’t exactly welcome here any more.’
Althea squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them. The floor seemed to have steadied. ‘I see,’ she told the man. ‘I’ll get Brashen out of here.’ Obviously Nook was their town, and they’d run it as they saw fit. She was lucky the tavern had been full of other sailors who weren’t fond of crimpers. These two townsmen didn’t seem overly upset about how Pag made his extra money. She wondered. If there weren’t a knot of angry sailors still hovering near the fire, would they be letting her and Brashen go even now? She’d better leave while the going was good.
She staggered to the door of the back room and looked in. Brashen was sitting up on the bed, his head bowed into his hands. ‘Brash?’ she croaked.
‘Althea?’ he replied dazedly. He turned toward her voice.
‘It’s Athel!’ she asserted grumpily. ‘And I’m getting damned tired of being teased about my name.’ She reached his side and tugged uselessly at his arm. ‘Come on. We’ve got to get back to the ship.’
‘I’m sick. Something in the beer,’ he groaned. He lifted a hand to the back of his head. ‘And I think I was sapped, too.’
‘Me, too.’ Althea leaned closer to him and lowered her voice. ‘But we’ve got to get out of here while we can. The men outside the door don’t seem too upset about Pag’s crimping. The sooner we’re out of here, the better.’
He caught the idea quickly, for one as bleary as he looked. �
��Give me your shoulder,’ he ordered her, and staggered upright. She took his arm across her shoulders. Either he was too tall or she was too short for it to work properly. It almost felt as if he was deliberately trying to push her down as they staggered out of the back room and then through the tavern to the door. One of the men at the fireside nodded to them gravely, but the two townsmen merely watched them go. Brashen missed a step as they went down the stairs and they both nearly fell into the frozen muck of the street.
Brashen lifted his head to stare into the wind and rain. ‘It’s getting colder.’
‘The rain will turn to sleet tonight,’ Althea predicted sourly.
‘Damn. And the night started out so well.’
She trudged down the street with him leaning heavily on her shoulder. At the corner of a shuttered mercantile store she stopped to get her bearings. The whole town was black as pitch and the cold rain running down her face didn’t help any.
‘Stop a minute, Althea. I’ve got to piss.’
‘Athel,’ she reminded him wearily. His modesty consisted of stumbling two steps away as he fumbled at his pants.
‘Sorry,’ he said gruffly a few moments later.
‘It’s all right,’ she told him tolerantly. ‘You’re still drunk.’
‘Not drunk,’ he insisted. He put a hand on her shoulder again. ‘There was something in the beer, I think. No, I’m sure of it. I’d have probably tasted it, but for the cindin.’
‘You chew cindin?’ Althea asked incredulously. ‘You?’
‘Sometimes,’ Brashen said defensively. ‘Not often. And I haven’t in a long time.’
‘My father always said it’s killed more sailors than bad weather,’ Althea told him sourly. Her head was pounding.
‘Probably,’ Brashen agreed. As they passed beyond the buildings and came to the docks he offered, ‘You should try it sometime, though. Nothing like it for setting a man’s problems aside.’
‘Right.’ He seemed to be getting wobblier. She put her arm around his waist. ‘Not far to go now.’
‘I know. Hey. What happened back there? In the tavern?’
She wanted so badly to be angry then but found she didn’t have the energy. It was almost funny. ‘You nearly got crimped. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.’
‘Oh.’ A long silence followed. The wind died down for a few breaths. ‘Hey. I was thinking about you earlier. About what you should do. You should go north.’
She shook her head in the darkness. ‘No more slaughter-boats for me after this. Not unless I have to.’
‘No, no. That’s not what I mean. Way north, and west. Up past Chalced, to the Duchies. Up there, the ships are smaller. And they don’t care if you’re a man or a woman, so long as you work hard. That’s what I’ve heard anyway. Up there, women captain ships, and sometimes the whole damned crew are women.’
‘Barbarian women,’ Althea pointed out. ‘They’re more related to the Out Islanders than they are to us, and from what I’ve heard, they spend most of their time trying to kill each other off. Brashen, most of them can’t even read. They get married in front of rocks, Sa help us all.’
‘Witness stones,’ he corrected her.
‘My father used to trade up there, before they had their war,’ she went on doggedly. They were out on the docks now, and the wind suddenly gusted up with an energy that nearly pushed her down. ‘He said,’ she grunted as she kept Brashen to his feet, ‘that they were more barbaric than the Chalcedeans. That half their buildings didn’t even have glass windows.’
‘That’s on the coast,’ he corrected her doggedly. ‘I’ve heard that inland, some of the cities are truly magnificent.’
‘I’d be on the coast,’ she reminded him crankily. ‘Here’s the Reaper. Mind your step.’
The Reaper was tied to the dock, shifting restlessly against her hemp camels as both wind and waves nudged at her. Althea had expected to have a difficult time getting him up the gangplank, but Brashen went up it surprisingly well. Once aboard, he stood clear of her. ‘Well. Get some sleep, boy. We sail early.’
‘Yessir,’ she replied gratefully. She still felt sick and woozy. Now that she was back aboard and so close to her bed, she was even more tired. She turned and trudged away to the hatch. Once below she found some few of the crew still awake and sitting around a dim lantern.
‘What happened to you?’ Reller greeted her.
‘Crimpers,’ she said succinctly. ‘They made a try for Brashen and me. But we got clear of them. They found the hunter off the Tern, too. And a couple of others, I guess.’
‘Sa’s balls!’ the man swore. ‘Was the skipper from the Jolly Gal in on it?’
‘Don’t know,’ she said wearily. ‘But Pag was for sure, and his girl. The beer was drugged. I’ll never go in his tavern again.’
‘Damn. No wonder Jord’s sleeping so sound, he got the dose that was meant for you. Well, I’m heading over to the Tern, hear what that hunter has to say,’ Reller declared.
‘Me, too.’
Like magic, the men who were even partially awake rose and flocked off to hear the gossip. Althea hoped the tale would be well embroidered for them. For herself, she wanted only her hammock and to be under sail again.
It took him four tries to light the lantern. When the wick finally burned, he lowered the glass carefully and sat down on his bunk. After a moment he rose, to go to the small looking-glass fastened to the wall. He pulled down his lower lip and looked at it. Damn. He’d be lucky if the burns didn’t ulcerate. He’d all but forgotten that aspect of cindin. He sat down heavily on his bunk again and began to peel his coat off. It was then he realized the left cuff of his coat was soaked with blood as well as rain. He stared at it for a time, then gingerly felt the back of his head. No. A lump, but no blood. The blood wasn’t his. He patted his fingers against the patch of it. Still wet, still red. Althea? he wondered groggily. Whatever they had put in the beer was still fogging his brain. Althea, yes. Hadn’t she told him she’d been hit on the head? Damn her, why hadn’t she said she was bleeding? With the sigh of a deeply wronged man, he pulled his coat on again and went back out into the storm.
The forecastle was as dark and smelly as he remembered it. He shook two men awake before he found one coherent enough to point out her bunking spot. It was up in a corner a rat wouldn’t have room to turn around in. He groped his way there by the stub of a candle and then shook her awake despite curses and protests. ‘Come to my cabin, boy, and get your head stitched and stop your snivelling,’ he ordered her. ‘I won’t have you lying abed and useless for a week with a fever. Lively, now. I haven’t all night.’
He tried to look irritable and not anxious as she followed him out of the hold and up onto the deck and then into his cabin. Even in the candle’s dimness, he could see how pale she was, and how her hair was crusted with blood. As she followed him into his tiny chamber, he barked at her, ‘Shut the door! I don’t care to have the whole night’s storm blow through here.’ She complied with a sort of leaden obedience. The moment it was closed he sprang past her to latch it. He turned, seized her by the shoulders, and resisted the urge to shake her. Instead he sat her firmly on his bunk. ‘What is the matter with you?’ he hissed as he hung his coat on the peg. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?’
She had, he knew, and half-expected that to be her reply. Instead she just raised a hand to her head and said vaguely, ‘I was just so tired…’
He cursed the small confines of his room as he stepped over her feet to reach the medicine chest. He opened it and picked through it, and then tossed his selections on the bunk beside her. He moved the lantern a bit closer; it was still too dim to see clearly. She winced as his fingers walked over her scalp, trying to part her thick dark hair and find the source of all the blood. His fingers were wet with it; it was still bleeding sluggishly. Well, scalp wounds always bled a lot. He knew that, it should not worry him. But it did, as did the unfocused look to her eyes.
‘I’m going to have to cut
some of your hair away,’ he warned her, expecting a protest.
‘If you must.’
He looked at her more closely. ‘How many times did you get hit?’
‘Twice. I think.’
‘Tell me about it. Tell me everything you can remember about what happened tonight.’
And so she spoke, in drifting sentences, while he used scissors to cut her hair close to the scalp near the wound. Her story did not make him proud of his quick wits. Put together with what he knew of the evening, it was clear that both he and Althea had been targeted to fill out the Jolly Gal’s crew. It was only the sheerest luck that he was not chained up in her hold even now.
The split he bared in her scalp was as long as his little finger and gaping open from the pull of her queue. Even after he cut the hair around it to short stubble and cleared the clotted strands away, it still oozed blood. He blotted it away with a rag. ‘I’ll need to sew this shut,’ he told her. He tried to push away both the wooziness from whatever had been in his beer and his queasiness at the thought of pushing a needle through her scalp. Luckily Althea seemed even more beclouded than he was. Whatever the crimpers had put in the beer worked well.
By the lantern’s shifting yellow light, he threaded a fine strand of gut through a curved needle. It felt tiny in his calloused fingers, and slippery. Well, it couldn’t be that much different from patching clothes and sewing canvas, could it? He’d done that for years. ‘Sit still,’ he told her needlessly. Gingerly he set the point of the needle to her scalp. He’d have to push it in shallowly to make it come up again. He put gentle pressure on the needle. Instead of piercing her skin, her scalp slid on her skull. He couldn’t get the needle to slide through.
