Crown of Renewal

by Elizabeth Moon

  Royan spent most of his time on that deck, keeping watch on the sea, the ship, the sailors, and any other ships they met. Ships came to Bannerlíth from the far Eastern Continent as well as from Aarenis, so on most days they saw at least one. Royan explained what cargo they likely carried, from where, and for what market.

  The first days, she later realized, were easy. They had left in fair weather, and it continued for a hand of days. By then, Dorrin could keep her balance on the open deck as she walked to and fro. On the sixth day, when she came out on deck, Royan shouted down to her from the upper one.

  “Look at the sky: we’ve weather ahead.”

  Dorrin looked up into a sky with a pattern of clouds like fish bones, pale against the blue. They looked harmless to her, nothing like the thunderheads of summer storms inland or an approaching blizzard in winter. The wind continued to blow as it had; the sea was no rougher. But all the morning, a faint haze dimmed the blue between the fish bone clouds, and they thickened until they looked more like the curds in buttermilk than fish bones.

  Royan came down for lunch and said, “We’ll be fine as long as we’re this side of the Eastbight, but tomorrow we’ll be past it. There’s storm coming—not unusual this time of year. Can’t tell how bad yet.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Stay in your cabin as soon as you can’t keep your feet, or if I say so. Don’t eat much; you’ll heave it up, and the smell will make you sicker. Dry bread and water is best. Always have a hand for the ship—a hand on something fastened down. If it’s a bad storm we’ll go around it—out to the middle of the ocean if need be.”

  In the afternoon, the wind freshened a little, with occasional stronger gusts. Dorrin could just see where the dark ridge of the Eastbight dropped sharply to the sea and disappeared. Far ahead, the water looked different, with short lines of white drawn on it. The ship had developed a stronger movement, so the lamp hanging from the ceiling—overhead, she reminded herself—at dinner swung noticeably, but she did not feel sick. She sat down with a good appetite and ate as she normally would.

  “Best get in your bunk,” Royan said when they had finished. “Latch everything in; hook the netting up. Best leave the jug in its niche until you need it, but don’t wait too long. Try to heave into that and not on the bunk or the floor.”

  “I don’t feel sick,” Dorrin said. The fresher wind had cleared her head, and she felt more excited than scared.

  “You will,” he said. “Everyone does, first storm. Especially in the dark. Do what you need to now and then stay in.”

  “Yes, Captain,” she said.

  This time he smiled. “That’s the way. You’ll be a sailor by the end of this trip.”

  She finished in the ship’s peculiar arrangement for personal needs, latched the chamber pot into its compartment under the bunk, then lifted and replaced the slat that secured the jug into its niche at the head of the bunk so she could be sure of finding it in the dark. She was sure she would not need it. She was ready for whatever might come, she decided, and lay down, leaving the window open for the fresh air and light. The light dimmed quickly; the ship moved and creaked a little more. She might as well sleep, she thought, and—unconvinced it was necessary—hooked the netting onto the bulkhead.

  She was dozing off when the ship suddenly heeled. She rolled into the netting and then back onto her bunk as it righted. A blast of wind came in, smelling of fish, then a spatter of either spray or rain. She could hear the wind whining through the rigging and the loud crack of sails. She struggled to find the bar by which she could pull the window shut, but while she was half-sitting, the ship tipped down and heeled again. She lost her grip on the window as she rolled into the netting again, then banged her arm into the bulkhead when she rolled back; the ship tipped up next, so she slid backward, her head bumping the end of the bunk.

  When she finally got the window closed, she had an uneasy feeling she did not want to admit was seasickness, but as the ship continued to pitch and roll, she soon had no doubt. She had thought the jug unnecessary, far larger than anyone would ever need, but she was soon grateful for it and its large cork. Finally, her stomach was empty and she wedged the jug between one of the provisions boxes and the bunk.

  Though she had nothing left to throw up, she still felt every lurch and sway of the ship. If only it would stop, even for a moment … but it did not stop. Instead, the movement intensified with the howling wind. She thought her body would come apart, but all she could do was lie there, hands fisted in the netting to keep from being flung from side to side as violently.

  The night seemed to last forever. When at last a little gray light seeped into her cabin, the ship still lurched in what felt like all directions at once. Her window was only a gray blur, water streaming down it. She heard footsteps, but no one came until the ship’s movement eased a little. Then someone knocked on her door, and the cook appeared.

  “Here for your jug,” he said, and walked—unsteadily but moving upright, which Dorrin could scarce believe—to take the jug from where she’d wedged it. “I’ll be back shortly,” he said, and went out.

  Dorrin tried to convince her stomach that the lurching wasn’t nearly as bad. Very soon the cook returned with the jug, now empty, and put it back in its niche.

  “You have anything for the sickness?” he asked.

  She had forgotten about the Sea-Prince’s wife’s gift. “Someone gave me …” she said, and then her stomach turned. She clenched her teeth and managed not to heave. Instead she pointed to the cubby where she had put her kit. “Round box,” she said.

  He took the box, bracing one leg against the base of the bunk, and opened it and sniffed. “Good,” he said. “I’ll fix this.”

  Dorrin closed her eyes. She had never felt this sick in her life. She had heaved before, yes, from bad food in Aarenis, but always once or twice had been enough, and then the empty feeling and then it was over. This went on and on.

  Eventually the cook came back with a mug that smelled of sib and the herb in the box. Her stomach roiled. “You drink this, tiny sips,” he said. He unhooked one corner of the netting, put an arm behind her shoulders, and lifted her a little. “Tiny sip,” he said, putting the mug to her lips.

  She didn’t want anything, but she sipped. Once … twice … a third sip.

  “Two more,” he said. “Then rest, then I come again.”

  Two more sips. He took the mug from her lips, let her back down slowly, rehooked the netting, and went away with the mug. Dorrin closed her eyes again. The nausea lessened, though the ship continued its uneven motion.

  When next someone tapped at her door, Dorrin woke from a doze. Captain Royan looked in.

  “You’ll do,” he said. “The herb helps, doesn’t it? Nice couple of squalls we had. You might get up and use the pot now, while you can.”

  “Squalls?” Dorrin said. Surely that had been a huge storm and they were lucky to be still afloat.

  “Yes. Not the main storm. As I said, we’re going farther out, around it. We should have a half-glass, maybe, before the next squall. Can you stand?”

  She was sure she could not, but he unhooked the netting and helped her sit up. “Put your pot in the niche just outside the door when you’re done. I don’t want you out in the passage or on the ladders; someone will take it for you. Don’t forget the lid.” He left.

  Sitting up was worse than lying down, but Dorrin managed to retrieve the chamber pot, use it, and push it along the deck with her foot, then get it latched into place in the niche beside the door. It occurred to her that a ship carrying passengers on a regular basis must be familiar with seasick passengers and their needs.

  She had made it back to her bunk and rehooked half the netting when the cook reappeared with the mug of sib and a piece of dry bread. At his direction, she drank more this time—ten sips—and ate half the bread. Then he said, “Squall coming,” and she lay down while he hooked up the rest of the netting and left her.

  This time was
not quite as bad. Though she threw up the bread, she had no dry heaves after. The movement of the ship, the noises of the ship itself, the wind, and the water were still distressing, but she no longer felt she was at the edge of endurance. As soon as the ship’s motion eased again, she fell asleep and slept (she later heard) through another squall. This time when she woke, she was actually thirsty and hungry when the cook appeared. She was able to sit up and drink a half mug of sib and eat a whole piece of dry bread.

  The next dawn brought brighter light. Dorrin looked out the window—coated with what looked like frost-fur—and opened it a little and breathed in the fresh air. She put a hand through the opening and felt the outside of the window, then tasted her finger. Salt. She pushed the window wider. The ship moved up and down over deep green water with white at the top of every wave. She could not see ahead or behind, but in the direction she could see, no land showed, only a vast expanse of water, all of it shaped into the hills and hollows of waves.

  “Past the worst of it,” the cook said when he appeared with a mug of sib and another piece of bread. “How sick?”

  “No more in the jug,” Dorrin said.

  “Good,” he said.

  She drank the sib in small swallows and ate the bread in careful bites. The ship’s motion, as it slid down into the hollows between waves and tipped up to climb over the crests, no longer bothered her while she was sitting in her bunk, mug in hand. After one slop of sib over the top, she learned to let her hand stay in place while she and the ship moved. Much like drinking from a flask while riding, she realized.

  By midday she was able to eat more than dry bread, and though they passed through another squall in the afternoon, she felt no sickness. The captain explained that they had turned south while the storm moved north.

  “We go behind it,” he said. “Come on deck—you should see.”

  She wasn’t at all sure she could walk, with the ship falling out from under her and then shoving upward, but the captain helped her down the passage. “Loosen your knees,” he said. “Go with the ship.” She tried and at once felt steadier. It was like riding a horse, where stiff joints made balance more difficult.

  Once outside, on deck, she held on to the rail of the ladder to the upper deck and looked around. The wider view showed no land at all. Dorrin had no idea how far away land might be or in which direction. Clouds obscured the sky, but here and there a ray of sunlight stabbed through.

  The next day they sailed under a blue sky spotted with puffy white clouds over smaller waves.

  “We’ve got to bear west again,” the captain said. “The way the wind is, we’ll miss the Immerhoft if we don’t.”

  Dorrin listened without commenting. Her stomach had settled in the better weather, and she was able to exercise on the deck, not just in her cabin.

  “Not all the way to the Eastbight—” the first mate said.

  “Yes, unless the wind changes. We’ll need the backflow off the mountains there.”

  “I’ll start drilling the men, then,” the mate said.

  Dorrin looked up at that. “Drilling?”

  “Come in too close and Slavers’ Bay pirates will come out and look us over. Best to be ready to fight. We may need you, too.” That last in a tone that was almost a question.

  “Certainly,” Dorrin said. She watched as the mate used the captain’s keys to open a storage locker in the passage just outside his cabin—javelins, crossbows, heavy wide-bladed swords she remembered seeing in Aarenis. Every day the crew practiced maneuvers she had not imagined, running up the rigging with a quiver of javelins, tossing rings of rope two handspans across to land over a man’s head, grappling with one another on the deck … nothing like the drills her own troops had used, yet—on a ship moving in the water—it made sense. She herself practiced her footwork, her point control, all the movements that could be performed on the ship. The captain even supervised her first attempt to climb the rigging, and the next day she made it up to the basket lookout on the mainmast.

  Two hands of days later, a smudge on the horizon caught the morning light.

  “The Eastbight’s prow,” the captain said. “A little north of where I hoped we’d find it.”

  “How close do we come?” Dorrin asked.

  “No closer than this, I hope,” he said, looking aloft to the streamer she now knew showed wind direction whichever way the ship turned. “And the wind’s fair for us.” He turned away from her and began giving orders she now half understood. Sailors hurried to obey, and the ship swung to heartward—port, as he called it.

  By midday they were closer to the Eastbight but not much, and the peak she had first seen now lay off the sword—starboard—side, a little aft of the ship. She could not see where the mountains met the sea, only the loom of their tops.

  To her surprise, the captain ordered some sails furled; the ship slowed. She looked; he looked off to the southwest, then ordered more sails brought in. “If we sail past the Elbow in the afternoon light, they’ll pick us up from the lookout they keep on the summer side of the Eastbight and maybe attack by night. Don’t want to clear the Elbow in afternoon light. We’ll bide here until sundown, then raise all sail and try to get past the worst of ’em by night … They’ll spot us in the morning, but it’ll be a stern chase and they probably won’t bother.”

  The ship lurched about in the seas with so little way on, but Dorrin felt no nausea. Instead, as the afternoon wore on, she leaned against a coil of rope, watching the sailors on the deck. Some hauled heavy, odd-shaped metal pots from the hold, setting a row of them down the centerline of the ship. One flaring side rose above the rest of the rim to the height of a man’s chest. Dorrin had no idea what they were for. A few slept—those on watch the previous night, she supposed. Two were mending—one a sail and the other a pair of the short trousers they wore. The one who had joined the ship in Bannerlíth to work his passage, recognizable by the long strip of red cloth he wore wrapped around his waist so often, climbed the mainmast. She had wondered whether the red meant he was Falkian, but the captain had told her so firmly not to waste his crew’s time that she had said nothing.

  Now she wondered what he was doing up there. He had his knife out—she could see the flash of it moving in the light. Repairing something? The captain had explained that lines needed constant repair.

  A bellow from the deck above interrupted her musing, immediately joined by a bellow from the main deck, the man the captain had introduced as his mate. The man on the mast came down quickly, the knife tucked into his sash; she could see the bone handle sticking out. Now they talked, low-voiced. She couldn’t hear the words and thought she probably wouldn’t understand anyway if it was all about the ship. But from the postures and expressions, the man had done something he shouldn’t have and was getting an earful. Dorrin looked away. No one liked to be stared at while that was going on.

  She was surprised, therefore, when a little later the man came aft and sat on another coil of rope nearby. The glance he gave her was so calculating, so intent, that she frowned before she caught herself. He smiled then, a sly twist of the lips, got up, and walked back ’midships.

  As the afternoon waned into evening, a haze spread over the water—not as thick as fog but chilly nonetheless. The captain came down for supper before dark, shaking his head. “Wind change,” he said. “It may help us, but we’ll have to look sharp to our steering.” He did not explain more. Dorrin addressed herself to her meal and asked no questions.

  With the last of the light, the captain ordered sails spread, and the ship headed south once more, all lights onboard shuttered. Because Dorrin’s cabin was on the seaward side, the captain had told her she could have a candle if she wanted but to close the window and curtain. She preferred fresh air and came out on deck, looking up at the stars. She had learned enough to know they were sailing south. Over the side, the ship seemed to move through thin veils of mist, though it did not rise to the level of the deck.

  Far off toward the land
, she saw a light, lower than a star and yellower. She squinted. It must be somewhere on the Eastbight, but … the captain had said the sunrising face was cliffs dropping sheer into the sea, uninhabited. She looked around the deck in the dim starlight; sailors moved about, hardly visible. Then, high overhead, a light sputtered and flared at the top of the mainmast, a peculiar greenish yellow Dorrin associated with wizards’ tricks.

  The captain roared from the quarterdeck. Instantly, the thud of bare feet running on the deck—Dorrin could not tell how many. The mate snapped out orders; Dorrin backed into the cabin passage to be out of the way. The light above cast shadows and dim flickers of light onto the deck, making it impossible to see all that was going on. In that stuttering light, Dorrin saw one sailor leap for the foot of the mainmast and start up while two more raced up the rigging, each with a bucket hanging from his belt.

  “One missin’, Captain,” called the mate from ’midship.

  “Our working passenger?” the captain asked.

  “Aye, sir. Not on deck; might be below or overboard.”

  “Arm the known crew. Send a detail below to guard the rudder cables.” A pause, then: “Passenger: arm yourself. You will be needed.”

  Dorrin had changed as soon as supper was over, arming shirt, mail, and doublet, and had laid out gorget, bracers, and the rest of her gear on her bunk. Dagger drawn, she moved warily down the passage and into her cabin. She heard nothing, smelled nothing, but the usual. She closed the cabin door by feel, then covered the window and lit a candle to make finishing her preparations easier. On with padded cap that went under the simple helmet, on with the gorget, the bracers, the boots. She looked again at her sword—but the captain had given her a cutlass, better for fighting aboard. She grinned; she felt happier than she had since she’d boarded. This was her world, the world of blades. Ahorse, afoot—and now on board a ship. She blew out the candle, pinched the hot wick to be sure it was safe, and eased back out onto the deck. Now the light at the masthead was gone, but off to the west, where land loomed, another light showed.