Chapter 27 - All Aboard!
--Docks--
We smelled the docks before we reached them.
Salt, fish, tar, rope, all of it arriving in waves as we descended the last few streets from the market district toward the harbor. The smell of the ocean was different at water level than it had been from a distance. Closer. More insistent. The kind of smell that got into your clothes and stayed there.
The quay itself opened up all at once as the last row of buildings fell away, and I stopped walking for a moment without meaning to.
Vast was the word, and it was correct, but it didn't quite capture the particular quality of it — the way the space felt actively large, rather than just large. Ships lined the moorings in both directions as far as I could clearly see. To the right, a fishing vessel had just come in, its crew moving with the organized chaos of people who had work to do before the weight of the catch had time to become a problem. A line of men passed baskets between them in a chain, each basket heavy enough that the men holding them leaned slightly into the load, their feet spread wide on the wet planking. The smell coming off those baskets was very specific and very present.
To the left, a long row of trading vessels sat idle, their hulls riding high, waiting for the next cargo. Dockworkers moved between them, some pushing carts loaded with crates and sacks, some consulting ledgers that immediately got wet from the sea spray, some doing nothing in particular with the focused commitment of people who had mastered the art of looking occupied.
Beyond all of it, the water. And beyond the water, the dark hills of the Demon Continent.
"So, we're here," Lyra said. "What now?"
"Follow my lead," Grann said, already walking.
And so we followed.
He moved through the docks the way he moved through everything, with the unhurried certainty of someone who knew where they were going and expected the path to accommodate them, which it did. Dockworkers stepped aside without being asked. A man pushing an overladen cart veered slightly to give him room without quite looking up. Whatever Grann's presence broadcast, it was received.
I watched this and filed it under things I was still learning to understand.
The ship was toward the far end of the quay. Larger than most of its neighbors, with dark sails that had been partially unfurled for maintenance, flapping lazily in the sea wind. The hull was broad and deep and had the worn-in look of something that had been in contact with the ocean for a long time and had made peace with this. Dockworkers moved across the deck in organized patterns, checking rigging and shifting cargo.
"When do we board?" Lyra asked.
"Now," Grann grinned.
One of the crew noticed us as we reached the gangplank.
He'd been on deck moving a coil of rope with the efficient ease of someone for whom rope was a primary relationship, and he looked down over the rail, and his face did something specific and immediate when it landed on Grann. He gave a look with a specific expression of a man who has encountered something he finds both welcome and exhausting in equal measure.
He came down the gangplank to meet us.
He was shorter than Grann but not by as much as most people were shorter than Grann. Somewhere in his forties, weathered in the way that people were weathered by years of direct exposure to conditions that didn't ask permission first. White sleeveless shirt with horizontal blue stripes, worn soft from too many washes. Arms like rope that had been braided very tight for a very long time. His right hand, when I looked at it, was missing the pinky finger at the knuckle, an old wound that had healed neatly enough to suggest it had happened far enough in the past.
He stopped in front of Grann.
They looked at each other for a moment.
Then Grann reached out and grabbed the man's hand, and they shook, and the handshake was the kind where both parties put in enough force that the surrounding air was briefly made aware of it.
"You look old," the man said.
"You look exactly as ugly as I remember," Grann said warmly.
"BWAHAHAHA!" The laugh burst out of Grann immediately, enormous and unguarded, and he clapped the man on the shoulder with a force that would have staggered someone who wasn't prepared for it. This man was prepared for it. He absorbed it and clapped back with comparable enthusiasm, and for a moment the two of them sounded like two large things hitting each other with great mutual approval.
"Scrotus Mandate," Grann announced, to the general dockside atmosphere, with the air of a man presenting something worth presenting. "Finest sailor in the fleet and the only man I know who survived being hit by his own anchor. Twice."
"Once deliberately," Scrotus added, without elaborating.
"Once deliberately," Grann confirmed, nodding as if this explained something rather than creating a significant new question.
"And who," Scrotus said, his gaze dropping from Grann to us, "are these?"
Grann put a hand on each of our shoulders. His hand covered most of mine. "My grandchildren. Reyna's cubs." He gave us each a brief shake, the way someone might rattle a box to demonstrate its contents. "This one—" he indicated Lyra, "—is Lyra. Already an Advanced Swordsman. Eleven years old."
Scrotus's eyes went to Lyra and changed quality immediately. The casual appraisal of a man encountering strangers became something more focused and professional.
"Advanced," he repeated, with the weight of someone who knew what that ranking meant for a person of that size and age. "Already."
"She cracked a practice sword with her bare hand last week," Grann added, with the particular satisfaction of a man who had witnessed something worth reporting and found the opportunity to do so. "And before you ask, yes, intentionally."
Scrotus looked at Lyra for a moment longer. Then he nodded, once, the small nod of someone making a record of something.
"And this one," Grann said, jostling my shoulder, "is Kyro. The mage."
"A mage," Scrotus said. He looked at me with a different kind of attention, less assessment and more curiosity. "Nice."
"He's been practicing since he was four," Grann said. "Self-taught, mostly. Figured out wordless casting before he turned five."
I would normally have felt slightly embarrassed about being introduced like a list of achievements. I did not, currently, because I was distracted by the observation that Grann was saying all of this with genuine pride, in the specific tone of a man who had paid attention and remembered what he'd seen.
I hadn't fully noticed him paying attention.
"Reyna's kids," Scrotus said, something in his voice shifting into a warmer register. He stepped forward and extended the hand with the missing finger, looking between us. "Scrotus Mandate. Your mother and I go back quite a way. Say hello to the woman who used to throw rocks at me for stealing her reading corner."
Lyra shook his hand with enthusiasm. "Hi! Are you strong?"
Scrotus blinked. Glanced at Grann, then back at Lyra. "I've been told so."
Lyra's eyes lit up in a way I recognized and had learned to treat as a warning. "Then do you want to spar? I've been walking for a week and I've gotten so bored without anyone to fight!"
"Lyra," I said.
"What? He looks like he can handle it."
"He's working, though.. Let him be."
"That's fine," she said, looking at Scrotus. "We can work around the schedule."
Scrotus made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a cough. He looked at Grann again, with the expression of a man seeking guidance from someone who should have anticipated this situation.
Grann offered no guidance. He was grinning.
"Listen, little Mandate," Scrotus said, returning to Lyra with the careful tone of a man negotiating with something unpredictable, "I'm on duty right now. Captain's got us on a pre-storm checklist the length of my arm, and I am not cleared to be hit by an eleven-year-old until the rigging is secured."
"I'm not that hard of a hit," Lyra shrugged.
"She absolutely is," I sighed.
"When we're off the boat," Scrotus replied, with the measured reasonableness of a man offering terms of a treaty, "I'll spar you. Properly. You have my word as a Mandate."
Lyra assessed him. Her eyes moved across his arms, his stance, the way he was distributing his weight. The evaluation was visible and thorough and apparently satisfactory.
"Fine," she said, and the word had the quality of a contract being signed. "But I'm holding you to that."
"Barbarian honor," Scrotus said. "It's binding."
"It's binding," she agreed.
"How's Reyna?" Scrotus asked, as we started up the gangplank.
"Pregnant," Grann said.
Scrotus stopped walking for a moment. "Again?"
"Yup." Grann nodded.
"Hah." He resumed walking. "She's going to need a bigger farm."
"Bah, she's going to need a bigger everything," Grann said. "Although—" he gestured at me and Lyra, "—these two haven't been terrible practice for the chaos."
"I'm not chaotic," I raised a brow.
"You boil river water every time we camp," Grann said.
"That's precaution, not chaos." I squinted my left eye.
"That girl..." Scrotus sighed. "The last time I saw her, she was seventeen, choking the living hell out of his pops. She was the quietest, and she had the patience of a saint."
I processed this. "That's... very unlike her." I remembered the times I got spank, especially Lyra. She and I shivered at the same time for a brief moment, those hits actually, like, seriously hurt.
"Ahh, well, I'm proud of her." Grann added.
"I used to change that girl's merls back in the day too, ah, children grows up so fast."
"Merls?" I tilted my head. "What's that?"
Lyra turned to me, a bit taken a back but it wasn't anything dramatic. "It's a piece of hide that covers a baby's butt to prevent their poop from spreading around, duh. That's a merl. I remembered trying to change yours once back when you were a baby!"
"Oh.. Basically a diaper."
"What the hell's a diaper?" Lyra raised a brow.
"Uh, a merl." I replied so casually.
"That sounds stupid." She crossed her arms.
Scrotus laughed, that got our attention. "She still love reading?" Scrotus asked.
"She has a study room," I replied. "Four books. All of them annotated."
He laughed. "Only four?"
"We live on a farm," I said. "I guess books are harder to come by."
"Mm." Something in his expression went briefly thoughtful. "I guess that makes sense."
The gangplank leveled off onto the main deck and Scrotus led us through the organized movement of the crew, who parted around Grann the same way people on the docks had, not anything dramatic, just natural, the way water moved around something solid.
The ship was larger from the inside than it had looked from the quay. The deck was wide and well-maintained, the wood worn smooth by years of foot traffic. Ahead, a short staircase led up to a raised platform where the steering wheel stood, and below that, set into the upper body of the hull was a door.
"We're here at the Captain's quarters," Scrotus said, nodding toward it. "Captain Brohm will want to know you're aboard before we get any further."
"Good," Grann said. It was spoken in the tone of a genuine, hearty endorsement rather than just a polite statement. "Brohm. Sailed with the fella three times. Complains constantly and never makes a single mistake, which is exactly what you want in a captain."
"Complains about what?" I asked, curious.
"Weather, mostly," Scrotus claimed, checking the sky. "Also passengers, cargo weight distribution, the quality of rope available in various ports, the general direction of history, and soup."
"Soup specifically?" Lyra tilted her head, her interest piqued.
"Heh, yup." Scrotus knocked firmly on the captain's door. "Don't ask about the soup unless you've got a few hours to spare."
Lyra leaned in close to me, her eyes bright. "I like this boat," she whispered, under her breath. She had the absolute sincerity of someone who had just stepped into an environment that perfectly suited her chaotic nature.
"It's a ship," I corrected her automatically.
"See, no wonder you have no friends." She blurted as she watched forward.
Ouch... That felt personal..
"Ship, boat, floating wood, whatever." She dismissed me with a wave of her hand and looked up at the intricate rigging overhead, watching the massive dark sails shifting against the wind. "There's got to be a killer view from up there."
I followed her gaze to the top of the main mast. It was terrifyingly high up, currently occupied only by a stray rope and a very bored-looking seagull.
"Please don't climb the mast," I sighed, a familiar wave of dread washing over me. "You'll get us kicked off before we even leave the harbor, you know?"
"I'm not going to climb the mast..." Lyra droned.
"Lyra." I made my voice slightly louder, giving her my best stern-brother look.
"I'm not going to climb the mast right now, Nitwit," she clarified, flashing a mischievous grin. "There's a distinct difference."
Knock. Knock. Knock. Scrotus tried again.
From inside the quarters, a voice boomed out. It was rough, gravelly, and carried the undeniable weight of someone accustomed to screaming over a roaring hurricane.
"Enter!"
Scrotus pushed the heavy door open, looked back at us, and gestured inside.
"Welcome aboard the Wavecutter," he said with a wry smile. "Try not to break anything until we're actually at sea. After that, it's Grann's problem."
Grann clapped him on the back again as he walked past, nearly knocking the wind out of him. Scrotus absorbed the blow with practiced, tight-lipped dignity.I stepped through the threshold along with the others.
Scrotus clicked the door shut behind us, leaving us trapped in the cozy, map-lined room with the captain, who was sitting in a high-backed chair, staring intently out a wide window at the far end of the cabin.
"Brohm! HAHA!" Grann bellowed.
[End]