Chapter 2

“Bring her about to port, nice and gentle, but keep tightening the turn until she starts t’ list. Then pull back,” Captain Vex said.

“Aye, Captain,” Colin Strong said with much less enthusiasm than usual. The big man looked like hell. The whole right side of his face and parts of the left were swollen and bruised in an angry clash of colors. Purples, yellows, even some blues and greens. The impact points were the fierce dark red of abraded skin and broken blood vessels. His upper lip was swollen and his eyebrow was split, a large scab caked on it from being hit with the tankard. Or maybe from the boot heel. Or from having his face bounced off the floor. He wasn’t really sure. His right eye was now swollen shut, which was fine by him. Using both eyes quickly made his headache worse. His left arm was in a makeshift sling made from a triangle of old sailcloth.

He was slowly steering the ship with one arm. The crew had paused their work and put away their various tools, and were either down in the hold or holding onto something, ready in case anything went wrong. First Mate Danica North was mid ship in the role of Bosun, her pipe in one hand, holding onto a mast line with the other.

The Kestrel gracefully shifted her heading, turning slowly to the left. They weren’t tacking the sails at all. The captain wanted to see how she turned with nothing but the sea’s help.

“Thirty degrees,” Colin said, marking the previous point the Captain had ordered as the maximum turn. The Kestrel seemed like she was doing fine. Colin tightened the turn. “Thirty five.”

The Kestrel was riding low in the water. The nine smallboats added a lot of weight, and they’d countered the high balance with barrels of seawater down in the lower holds. Thirty five degrees of turn was a hard turn for any bigger ship. Normally it was easy for the Kestrel, but now the added weight and sub-optimal distribution brought on a lot of back pressure very quickly. The rudder strained. Colin braced himself and held the wheel firm. They were at full sail, but the wind was light, so they were only traveling at about half their top speed. Captain Vex scowled. The ship wasn’t listing yet, but she was close. Colin kept turning the wheel.

“Forty degrees,” he said. The deck was leaning. The timbers had begun to creak slightly. They were feeling the bounce of every wave now instead of cutting them. This was the Kestrel’s usual “safe” turning radius. For other ships it would have been considered quite tight, possibly dangerous, but she was built for this. The extra weight was doing a number on her, but she was holding. At a higher speed she might not be able to take it, but for now, she was holding on the edge of steady.

“Forty two ... Forty four...” A wave hit the starboard side of the prow and the Kestrel lurched under the push. Colin yanked the wheel the other way. Crew on the deck held tight as their weight was suddenly tossed. One man on the deck crew lost his footing and hit the deck but held tight to the mooring line in his grip. The ship creaked. Then, as quickly as it started it was over. The ship began to straighten out, the feeling and sounds of strain releasing. Colin released the wheel and let the water beneath them push the rudder back to straight. He was trying not to show it, but the strain of fighting the wheel and then the abrupt jarring as the ship listed had Colin feeling nauseated. His blood was thudding in his head.

“Set the knot at forty,” the Captain said.

The ship’s helm worked by pulling on tiller lines, thick ropes that ran from the wheel, down below the deck through a pulley system to the rudder below. Captain Vex had painted markings on her tiller lines, so the degrees of a turn were counted on the rope itself.

Colin took a knee, his breathing slow and measured as he fought back the throbbing between his eyes. He used his good hand to grab the tiller line above the forty degrees port mark. His mate grabbed below. They turned the thick rope in opposite directions. Colin’s mate had to strain and use both hands. Untwisting a tiller line while it was under tension was not easy.

The three strands that made up the rope uncoiled slightly. Colin’s new helmsman’s mate threaded a smaller length of red-dyed rope through the strands of the tiller line. Colin released it, letting it go back to it’s usual tension. The short length of red rope was now trapped at the 40 degree mark. The helm’s mate wrapped the red rope around the line a few times, then tied it in a simple knot. Now, if the wheel tried to turn past forty degrees, the knot would catch and stop the wheel dead.

“So we’ve lost about ten degrees,” Captain Vex said, half to herself. “We’re still doing better than most ships our size. I guess we’ll have tae hope we don’t need to do anything fancy.” She was not happy with the loss of maneuverability. She noticed that all the color had gone out of Colin leaving him looking sickly in the midday sun. “Have a seat, Mister Strong. Ye’re relieved. Let’s ‘ave your mate get some practice on the wheel.”

“Aye, Captain,” Colin mumbled. He was thankful. Just that much exertion and he was worried he might vomit. He’d been in fights before, but nothing had ever felt this bad. He sat down on the long bench that ran the length of the rear of the quarter deck.

“What’s your name, sailor?” the Captain asked the new Helmsman. “I don’t recognize ye, so ye must be one of the hires we picked up in Prince’s Cove.

“Aye, ma’am. Name’s Alejandro Mesa,” the young man said excitedly.

“Glad to have you, Mister Mesa. It’s rare for a sailor to be anythin’ but a rigger on their first day. I’m guessing ye have some experience on a the helm?”

“Aye, Captain. Some. Not on a ship this size thought.” Mesa said excitedly. He was stocky and a few inches shorter than Belita. She guessed he was still a teenager from the sparseness of the hair on his face, but he had the brawny build of someone who’d been doing manual labor for years. “I grew up on a fishing boat. I had the wheel a few times.”

“Well, this should feel similarly. The Kestrel’s bigger, but she moves like a ship half her size. Did your family do ocean fishing, or stick tae safe waters?” Belita asked.

“Ocean, Ma’am,” the stocky kid said.

“Ma’am an’ Sir are for military folks, sailor. Just Captain will do fine on the Kestrel,” Belita was smiling, but her tone was firm.

“Yes, Ma- uh, Captain,” Helmsman Mesa said, a bit flustered.

“What’s our course?” Belita asked.

“Uh...” the young man looked at the compass mounted to the top of the helm.

“The compass isn’t going to tell ye our course, sailor,” Belita said. She was deliberately giving him some pressure to see what he’d do.

“East? Nine ... ah, ninety degrees,” he said, trying to think, remembering what he overheard the First Mate telling Helmsman Strong earlier.

“And what’s our heading?” The Captain asked.

The new helmsman looked at the compass again. “Northeast.”

“So if our course is east, and our heading is northeast, that means our turn test took us pretty far off course. How about ye get us back on track?” Belita asked.

“Aye, Captain,” Mesa said with a smile. He began to slowly turn the wheel, bringing them back to their intended course. The ship gently and gracefully swung back toward the east.

“Now we’re running parallel tae our intended course,” Belita said once the ship was headed east again. “We aren’t far off, but if we were tae correct our heading after a storm, or after being pushed off our track by a current, if all we did was get back on our original heading we might miss our destination. After goin’ off course, th’ heading has tae be reassessed.”

“How do I do that?” the Mesa asked. He looked like he was realizing he was in over his head, but was handling it well.

“Ye don’t,” Belita shook her head. She pointed to Will, who had just come out of the cabin directly below them and was squinting into the glare of the noonday sun. “That’s the Navigator’s job, or the First Mate if the Navigator is off duty or indisposed. If the both of ‘em are unavailable, then it falls tae me.”

“Alright. So what do I do until I get a reassessment?” he asked.

“Stay th’ course you’ve been given.” Belita said. “As ye gain more experience, ye’ll learn to be able tae feel it when ye go off your course. The ship’ll tell ye. When tha’ happens, ye ask whoever has command of th’ deck for a course check. Ne’er be afraid to speak up about that. Keeping us on course is your second most important duty.”

“What’s the first?” the Mesa asked.

“Don’t crash.” Colin rumbled from behind them.

Belita laughed, “Aye. Don’t crash.”

“So I should ask for a course check now?” the young helmsman asked.

“Not quite yet. We still have another steering check tae do. Just keep her steady a moment while the deck crew makes sure nothing came loose when we listed.” the Captain said.

“Aye, Captain,” Helmsman Mesa said, setting his eyes dead ahead and feeling the waters beneath trying to gently pull on the wheel. He wasn’t doing much, but steering the ship was important. His young heart swelled.

“Missus North, we all secure?” Captain Vex called down from the rail.

Danica blew a retort on her whistle and glanced around the deck and the rigging. No one signalled a problem.

“All secure, Captain!” Danica called out.

“Stand by for another steering check!” Captain Vex called back.

“Standing by, Captain!” came the reply.

“Alright Mister Mesa, it’s your turn.” Vex said to Alejandro. “Turn the wheel slow, just like Mister Strong did. The waters will fight ye after a while, but keep up the pressure. We want tae see how far we c’n go before the Kestrel tells us she’s had enough.”

Mesa was nervous. Day one on a new ship and he was being asked to deliberately endanger the crew. The Helmsman’s job was to try to stop the ship from listing whenever possible. This went against everything his father had ever taught him. He started turning the wheel.

What he didn’t realize was that Captain Vex was testing him again. She needed to know what the ship could do right now, but she also needed to know that whoever was at the helm would do exactly what she told them to do, even when it seemed dangerous. Perhaps especially when it seemed dangerous. She was waiting to see if he would balk when the ocean started pushing back.

Mesa took the turn slower than Strong had. It was almost agonizingly slow. Captain Vex just waited. The markings on the tiller line climbed. Fifteen degrees. Twenty. Twenty five. The ocean played along. Mesa could feel the tension growing as more and more water was displaced by the rudder. It felt a bit like half-hearted arm wrestling.

When the turn reached thirty degrees the waves started hitting the prow strangely, shoving and jolting a bit rather than being cut by the keel. Mesa was straining against the wheel. He was stocky and had been hauling fishing nets his whole life. He was strong and used to hard work, but the Kestrel was winning the wrestling match. He felt like he couldn’t push the wheel any further. Now they were arm wrestling for real, and Mesa was starting to lose. Captain Vex held tightly to the railing and waited. Mesa braced, got low and shifted his grip so that he was lifting, able to engage the strength of his legs as well. The tiller line began to move again.

Just past thirty five degrees a sizable wave hit from just the wrong angle and the ship lurched. The sound of a rope snapping rang out high on the port side. The mainsail pivoted awkwardly. Mesa lost his footing and went to a knee. The wheel shoved down, torquing his wrist and wrenching free of his hands, spinning freely. The sound of another rope snapping on the port side echoed across the deck. The edge of the rigging ladder flapped. The smallboat beneath it shifted oddly, coming partially unsecured, then swung out with the momentum of the Kestrel’s listing. It came back to thump hard against the ship’s hull. Captain Vex winced at the sound of the impact. She hadn’t heard any wood splintering, so hopefully it was just a bump. Still, her rigging master was going to be in a fury. She hated the smallboats anyway, and this would just be more fuel for her fire.

Mesa was grabbing at the wheel and trying to stop it’s spin. He managed to get ahold of the handles, and by then the rudder was straight enough that the wheel wasn’t threatening to break his arm. The Kestrel steadied and he carefully brought the wheel back to zero degrees, dead ahead.

“Resecure that boat!” Danica called out from the deck, pointing to the still swaying smallboat. The crew got their feet under them as the Kestrel righted herself and scrambled into action.

“You alright, Mister Mesa?” Captain Vex asked.

“Aye, Captain. I got my wrist bent a little funny. Might be sore, but doesn’t feel too bad.” Mesa said, shaking out his hand.

“It’s a bad idea to get underneath the wheel. Your legs are stronger than your arms, but if the ocean decides to really fight back, it’s a lot harder to just let go in that position,” Vex explained.

“Lesson learned, Captain. What should I have done differently?” Mesa asked.

“Get on top of her. She’ll get unruly sometimes, and if ye get under her she’ll have her way with ye. Move your hand lower on the side you’re turning tae, and sink your weight. Like you’re trying tae sit on her and hold her down. It’ll be a rare for her to be able to lift and throw your whole weight off. Also, don’t be afraid tae ask for help. Your big mistake was trying tae do it alone. If she’s fighting ye, call in an extra set of hands,” Captain Vex explained. Mesa’s face got redder and redder as she spoke. She managed not to laugh at his discomfort.

“A-aye captain,” Mesa said hesitantly.

“You alright, Mister Strong?” Belita said over her shoulder. Colin gave her a nod, which was how she knew he wasn’t really doing well at all. Colin wasn’t one to not sound off. She knew he’d balk if she completely relieved him of duty. He was stubborn.

“Get a knot set at 35 degrees port. Ye have the wheel, Mister Mesa. If ye have questions, ask Mister Strong, but don’t let him take over. You need the practice so he’s relieved until I say otherwise,” Belita said wryly with a glance at her primary Helmsman. Colin sighed.

Captain Vex strode down the stairs to the main deck, her boot heels clicking on the wood.

Will stepped in to help haul a line that was lifting and steadying the smallboat that had come unsecured. Someone had tossed a boarding grapple down and hooked it beneath one of the seats, so now a handful of sailors were holding the smallboat up while the riggers figured out a solution. Most smallboats were designed to be easily carried by four men, so the job of hoisting them wasn’t too difficult. The issue was that it was being stowed off the side of the ship, so it was suspended over the water. They’d rigged it while the Kestrel was docked and steady. Trying to rig a smallboat off the edge of the ship while the ocean rolled was a whole different thing. Even in calm waters, the ocean was never steady. The swabs were mostly trying to keep the smallboat steady so that the rolling of the ocean didn’t smash it against the Kestrel’s hull.

The rigging master’s solution to the smallboat problem was to rig the Kestrel in a square mainsail configuration, then run a rigging ladder from near the top of the mainmast down to each of the Kestrel’s side railings. Rigging ladders were triangular, running from all across the midship rails the up to a central point high on the mast. The smallboats were secured to the rigging ladders. It was a clever solution. Each smallboat had a main support rope and two stabilizing ropes that ran to different points along the rigging ladder. The whole thing looked a bit like a spiderweb, or a Nivalese Dreamcatcher. Will had never seen anything like it. Of course, he also hadn’t ever seen any ship this size carry this many smallboats. It was an elegant solution as long as none of the ropes snapped. So, of course, that is what had happened. It definitely shouldn’t have. Those ropes were sturdy and smallboats were not terribly heavy. It was a strange fluke. Will didn’t know if it was his fault, but he had a pretty guilty conscience when it came to unlucky coincidences.

Jack crossed the deck, followed by Quinn, weaving around the swabs and riggers. Will tracked her with his gaze, trying to ignore the mixture of feelings that welled up when he saw her. He was glad he was holding a line and had something else to do or he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to stop himself from going to talk to her. She looked back at him, their eyes meeting for a moment. A flicker of bitterness passed over her face before settling into a defiant glare. She looked away and walked to the prow with enough swing in her hips that Will knew she knew he was still watching. She stopped and stood there, grabbing onto the railing and watching the waves. After a few moments she pulled Quinn’s arms around her. Will raised an eyebrow. It figured. Will wasn’t usually the jealous type, but something about that got to him. He turned away and focused on the job to distract himself.

A human stormcloud came up from below decks, shielding her eyes from the glare and starting to yell before she was even able to get a good look at the situation. “Mac, did you put those brace pins on the sailbeam like I told you to?”

“Aye!” A woman working up on the mainmast called out.

“Then what the hell happened?” The angry woman was stalking over to the mast and looking up. She didn’t seem to be wearing much. A red strip of cloth was all that kept her from being topless.

“The pin busted!” Mac the rigger called out.

“Well shit,” the angry woman muttered. She grabbed three more belaying pins from the barrel roped to the base of the mast, tucked them into her belt behind her back, and went up the mast like nothing Will had ever seen. She could have given Jack the Monkey a good race. Moments later she was sitting astride the mainsail beam with the other rigger, the two of them looking at something Will couldn’t make out. It took them a few minutes to do whatever they were doing.

“Tie it off, take a break,” Danica North said to the swabs. The grapple line was looped and pulled into a couple half-hitch knots around the railing. The swabs relaxed. A few of them looked Will up and down. It was the first time many of them had seen him.

“You the new navigator?” a wiry, heavily tanned man with a few flecks of silver in his black hair asked. He looked like he’d gone to a barber and gotten his hair cut and his face shaved when they’d come ashore, but it had been a few days. Stubble was growing in. He was a handsome man, and had the glint in his eye of someone who knew it.

“Guilty as charged,” Will tried to sound self-effacing. He knew word would have gotten out about whose fault it was that they were hauling so many lifeboats. “Will Stirling.”

“Harker,” the sailor said. “What the hell do we need nine smallboats for?” There it was. Will knew if he gave an inch they’d hound him about it forever.

“A magic trick,” Will said with a wry grin.

“I hope it involves you turning invisible. Lace wants to hang ya,” Harker chuckled.

“Usually people have to meet me first before they want me dead. Who’s Lace?” Will asked.

Harker gestured with his head toward the mast. “Take a guess.”

“She’s your rigging master?” Will asked. “I hear there’s a betting pool.”

“I have five crowns down on you dangling by the ankles from the boom, so if you could try to steer her in that direction, I’d appreciate it,” Harker smirked.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Will half-chuckled, half-sighed.

Up in the rigging, Lace started climbing out on the mainsail beam, a large length of coiled rope looped diagonally across her chest. Will’s brows rose.

The Kestrel was a Caravel. A small, nimble vessel designed to be easily configured for different sails. As such she didn’t have a large, sturdy sailbeam permanently affixed to the mast. Her mainsail beam was lightweight and tied in place so it could more easily be hoisted around. Will’s guess was that it wasn’t any larger across than three inches, and Lace was climbing out on it.

The higher up on a ship you got, the more the motion of the ocean translated into movement. If you were in the crows nest, you were constantly moving back and forth. The further out on a beam you got, the more a ship’s natural swaying caused changes in elevation. Out on the end of a beam, instead of moving back and forth, you would be moving up and down. High up, out on a beam was the most unstable place a person could be. Usually riggers worked slow and had dual safety lines that they were constantly re-tying as they worked. Lace did not.

The sail beam was raising and lowering, and also swinging laterally. It shouldn’t have been doing that. Will suddenly realized what line had broken.

In a square sail configuration, the four outer corners had stabilization lines that ran to the rear of the ship to keep the sail from pivoting freely. They could be given slack or hauled on to change their angle and help steer the ship, or to move forward in spite of a headwind. That kind of steering was called ‘tacking.’” It always reminded Will of the dual-string kites he used to build as a child. It was one of those tack lines that had snapped first. With nothing to hold it steady the sail beam was able to swing forwards on that side.

Lace was laying across the beam moving forward something like a lizard, riding out the constant dips and the back and forth swinging of the beam. She was hauling what Will guessed was a forty pound coil of rope slung diagonally across her chest. She reached the end, sat up straddling the narrow beam, hooking her feet into the sail itself, and pulled off her coil of rope. She looped it over the end of the beam and let it hang, then started to untie the dangling, broken line.

“She’s impressive,” Will said.

“Aye. She’s Akula. We joke that she’s half spider,” Harker said. He leaned against the rail, hooked his arms into the rigging ladder and watched Lace work.

“Haven’t met many Akula,” Will said. Up above on the other side of the ship, Lace called out then dropped the broken length of rope.

“Me neither, but the ones I’ve run into are all born sailors with a mean streak a fathom deep. Superstitious as anything too,” Harker said while watching Lace work. “With her, it’s like she’s trying to outdo the rest.”

“Wonderful,” Will sighed.

Lace knotted the coil to the end of the sail beam and then tossed it out across the rigging ladder toward the aft of the ship. Will was surprised at how far the toss got the coil of rope. It was a heavy length of line, but her clean underhand lob had it uncoiling through the air perfectly. It cleared the ladder and landed on the deck on the far side with a thud.

Another rigger picked it up and ran it back toward the sterncastle where they’d already cleared away the other half of the broken line. With a few quick heaves and a tie-off, the sail was once again secure.

Lace waited until the line was done being tied off, then pushed herself up into a crouch on the end of the narrow beam and jumped.

The rigging ladder was only about five feet away from the sail beam, but still, a leap like that was impressive and dangerous. If the ship had rolled or shifted at the wrong moment she could have tossed herself sixty feet down into the ocean, or worse, to the deck. She caught herself on the rigging ladder and made her way down to the deck. She actually had to squeeze underneath the tack line because it was so close to the ladder. Will’s brows furrowed. That didn’t seem right to him. Lace dropped the last few feet to the deck.

“She does stuff like that often?” Will asked.

“All the time,” Harker said.

“She’s breaking every rigger’s rule I’ve ever heard of,” Will could only shake his head.

“Try telling her that.” Harker wandered away to join another group of swabs. Lace was crossing the deck and apparently he had decided to be elsewhere.

Her gait was like a dancer crossed with a cat. Most sailors were graceful in a relaxed, loose-boned way, but she walked like the ship was moving right where her feet wanted it to be. There was a sharp edged confidence to her. She wore loose grey trousers that had dozens of tight, neat stitches holding together places where the fabric had torn. They’d once been black, but the color had long since faded. Her shoes were little more than slightly padded leather slippers laced across the ankle and top of her foot. A wide belt hugged her waist, dotted with closed leather holsters with small tools in them. At the small of her back was a wide, squarish knife, the sort Will had seen used in sugar cane fields. It was like a short machete with a sharp hook on the back. She wasn’t wearing a shirt. Instead, she simply bound a wide strip of red cloth around her smallish breasts and tied a knot in front. At nearly any port it would have been scandalous attire. Even onboard a ship it was surprising to see a woman wearing so little. Her skin was dusky, like dark caramel. Will could see thin, darker tattoos across her shoulders that looked like spiderwebs. The sides of her head were shaved. The rest of her wavy black hair was pulled back in a short fishtail braid.

“Stare a little harder, swab,” Lace said, barely looking at Will as she passed. Will’s eyes still followed her. He was just too curious not to watch. Across her back was a large web tattoo, with a hand sized tribal-patterned spider sitting high between her shoulder blades.

She scanned the rope ladder and where the rope holding up the smallboat had snapped. She looked back over her shoulder at the sail beam where she’d repaired the tack line, considering. “I knew this was going to happen,” she muttered to herself.

Jack walked back across the deck, distracting Will again. He mentally called himself an idiot. Losing his focus every time Jack entered his field of vision was not a good habit to get into. She didn’t look at him this time. She seemed lost in thought. She stopped in front of the door to the Captain’s cabin, looked like she was about to knock, but then simply opened the door and went in. Unexpected feelings of anger welled up. That was his room, and Bella was still inside. He stopped himself. No, that was the Captain’s room. He was a guest there. It was where the navigation equipment was. It was more like his office than anything else. Bella could take care of herself. She and Jack had a lot to work out. He let go of his sudden negativity and found himself hoping that the two of them would make some progress in making up. Then for the second time in as many moments he wondered where the hell that thought had come from. Did she deserve his good wishes? No. Not at all. Then why did he have them? Shouldn’t he be angrier? He found he just couldn’t muster it, and that confused him even more. Jack’s presence was really getting to him.

Danica North crossed over from where she’d been speaking with a group of swabs. “Any idea what happened?”

“Aye,” Lace said, clearly exasperated. She gestured up to the rigging ladders. “They’re too big. They’re too close to the beams and the tack lines.”

“Weren’t they your idea?” Danica asked.

“Yes, and I still stand by it, but we didn’t have time to make them. We had to buy them, and they’re made for a ship three times this size. There’s a reason Caravels don’t have these. I had to cut off the bottom third off, and they’re still too big!” She pointed to where the tack line was nearly touching the ladder. “It’s too close. Even with the tack lines as tight as we can make them, there’s still some sway to the sail beam. There has to be. That’s why we put the bracing pins up at the hinge point.” She pointed to where the mainsail beam was attached to the mast. “I was hoping that the pins would keep the mast from pivoting at all, but when the Captain decided to throw her into a list, the force of the jolt just crushed a pin to splinters. So then the mast could pivot, so it did.” She pointed to the tack line that had snapped. “It pulled so hard it broke the line there.” Then she pointed straight up to where the rigging ladder was near the sail beam, where she had jumped. “So with no tack line there, the beam was able to swing back here. It hit the ladder, which was already holding up the weight of all these damned boats. It’s a wonder we didn’t snap more than just one.”

Danica nodded in thought. “Do you have a solution?”

“I put more pins in to brace the hinge point. There’s not much more we can do there. We don’t want to put gouges in our mainsail beam.

“No,” Danica agreed.

“I’ll get started on making rigging ladders with a narrower profile.” Lace continued. “They won’t be a triangle, so they won’t come as close to the beam and the tack lines. The sides will slope, like a...” she made a gesture with her hands, starting at a top point and then arcing downward, struggling to find the right words.

“Like a flat-bottomed tear drop?” Will suggested.

“Aye, like that,” Lace said, not bothering to look at Will before continuing. “We have plenty of rope, but it will take a few days. Until then, we have to be careful.”