It had taken a mere hour for me and everyone aboard ship to realize I had no idea what I was doing. Now I hummed to the winds by luck alone, and every time the sails luffed my hunger gnawed deeper.
A blond-haired sailor strode by, cracking a cake of hardtack between his teeth. I stared at the food, eyelids flickering with want. I knew I shouldn’t look at him, shouldn’t do anything to attract attention, but I was so hungry.
He noticed my interest. Circling back, he scratched crumbs out of his scraggly beard and squinted down at me. He still held half the cake in his hand. It was plain, a little charred, and desperately enticing.
“Hungry, love?” he asked.
My humming died, and with it, the wind I’d been currying. The sails began to sag, changing the pattern of shadows on the deck from full to rippling. Woodsmoke from the ship’s stovepipes wafted past us.
I forced myself to look away from him. “No,” I said, and began to hum again.
He crouched, forcing his face into my line of sight. There was frost on the brim of his hat and the whiskers around his mouth. “I could make sure you were fed right well,” he said contemplatively, biting off another chunk of the hardtack. Crumbs rained down into his beard and onto the deck, and I could have cried at the waste. The sailor cocked a grin, looking at my lips as he added, “Take care of you, I would. Keep that mouth of yours full.”
Above us, the sails luffed again with a thunder of canvas.
“Witch!” the helmsman shouted.
Before I could respond, another shout went up from a lookout at the fore of the ship. “Sails! Sails on the horizon!”
The man before me shot upright, looking to the helmsman in sudden attention. Across the deck his companions did the same and foreboding slithered through me.
“What colors?” the helmsman called to the lookout. “Who is she?”
“No colors, sir,” was the response.
I stared in the direction of the mysterious vessel, the cold of the wind biting to my bones.
“What does that mean?” I asked the sailor with the hardtack.
He still stood over me, gazing in the same direction as the lookout. All his crudeness and smirking had fled. “She’s flying no flag, so she’s hiding who she is. If we’re lucky? She’ll be a merchant trying to nip the last run of the season and stealin’ your witch wind. If we’re not… Mereish? Cape? Navy? Pirates? Everyone out here’s our enemy.”
His gaze flicked, not leering this time, but noting the darkness under my eyes and the paleness of my face. Then he held out the hardtack and reached into his pocket, producing another. Making sure no one was watching us, he shoved them both into my hands.
“Keep us alive, witch,” he said, then jogged away across the deck.
Another ship. Rescue. The word whispered through the back of my mind as I hid the food into my pockets for later. I couldn’t be seen eating, not with Randalf’s current orders to starve me, and ‘rescue’ had little meaning here. Even if that sail belonged to a Navy ship, I’d just end up serving them instead of Randalf. Just because a ship sailed on the right side of the law didn’t mean I’d be better treated. My mother had spoken of serving pirates and the Navy with the same empty eyes.
There are fates worse than death, Mary.
*
Randalf called me to his cabin that night. I’d covertly consumed the hardtack earlier, but it had done me little good. When my eyes fell on the food-laden table before Randalf, desperate hunger consumed me.
There was a loaf of bread, a bowl of fish that smelled of dill and butter, and a hearty topping of pickled beans. Not the most appetizing combination in my opinion, but by that point I’d have eaten a salted shoe.
“Go on,” the smuggler said, waving a hand and sitting back in his chair. “You need your strength.”
That was the same reason the sailor had given for feeding me earlier, and it did not bode well. Still, I wasn’t about to question him. I sat down and dug in, tearing a piece of bread with my teeth and shoveling fish into my mouth in the same breath.
Randalf watched me a moment, grimaced in distaste, and turned back to his plate. Beyond him, out the window, a distant bow lantern hung like a glistening star between the night sea and clouded sky.
“Who is she? Mereish? Cape?” I cited our nation’s enemies around a mouthful. “The crew said she’s big enough to be a warship.”
Randalf shook his head and reached for a mug on the table. Tea, but darker, with a smell of rum. “Nay. If they’d a mind to board us, they’d have closed by now. They’re just stealing a wind on the way west. It’s common enough, especially this late in the season.”
He and his crew seemed to be preparing me for a challenge, though. I kept eating, not risking another question until my belly began to cramp. I sat back, taking a cup of water and sipping it with one hand on my stays.
“What about that pirate?” I asked. “James Demery?”
Randalf sucked his teeth thoughtfully and frowned. “James Demery is not the kind of man to waste time on us. Stormsingers like you aren’t common, but there are enough Mereish and Cape skulking in these seas to make unnecessary journeys inadvisable.”
I eyed him. “Pineapples are necessary?”
Randalf leveled a glare at me. “Profit is necessary, and the war and the winter make my venture very profitable. Most free merchants like myself, and pirates like Demery, stay around the coast at this time of year. Hiding. Keeping their heads down in their villages. But me? The Winter Sea is mine.”
His claim was grandiose, but he was right about pirates lying low during the winter. In a world of constant warfare and the chaos it brought, small fishing villages would strike deals with lesser pirates for protection, hiding them and providing places to stow families and loved ones. After all, my father had told me, most pirates were little more than common sailors, down on their luck or hiding from the Navy’s press gangs.
Only the most enterprising pirates caused a proper stir, ravaging coastal settlements and threatening lives. I suspected Demery was one of these. He was on the Queen’s List and had enough coin to weigh in at Kaspin’s. I found it hard to imagine him sitting the winter out in a seaside village, mending nets with a cheery wife and half a dozen children.
“Girl. Girl!” Randalf leaned across the table to snap his fingers in front of my face.
I recoiled. Indignation bloomed so fast I almost insulted him, but I caught myself.
“Listen to me,” my captain growled. “I’m not afraid of those sails. Whoever they are, they’ve no Stormsinger of their own, or else they wouldn’t need our wind. So long as you do your job, we’ll breeze into Tithe in three days.”
I took another sip instead of replying. From my limited tutoring on the wider world and snatches of overheard conversations, I knew that Tithe was a free port not far west of Aeadine. There was a small Ghistwold there, and Tithe was a shortening of the poetical name, The Tithe to the Sea.
Randalf continued, “We pick up as much wool, fur and tobacco as this ship will take, then head to warmer waters as planned, down the south channel.”
“Where you’ll claim your pineapples and begin the journey back north?” I clarified, vastly uneasy about the whole affair. My food sat heavy in my stomach.