Carrie Vaughn: Steel

Frowning, Cooper held it up to the flickering light, turning it, front and back. With a handkerchief she pulled from the front of her vest, she scrubbed at it for a moment. Rust flaked away in a fine red powder.

The captain’s face grew drawn, lips pressing into a tight frown. If Jill didn’t think it was impossible, she would have thought the woman sounded nervous. “Tell me true now—were you on the Newark when Blane sank it, or were you on the Heart’s Revenge ?”

“Neither,” she said. “I was on a tour boat, I fell over by accident—”

“And where did you get this?”

“I found it on the beach. I was just walking and saw it in the sand.”

“Found it—just lying there, you say? Then how did you end up in the water? We shouldn’t have found anyone, picking through Blane’s trash. Blane doesn’t give quarter.”

“I don’t know,” she said weakly. “I don’t know how I ended up there. I don’t know who Blane is.”

“Then you don’t know where this came from? Who it came from?”

“No.” Jill pursed her lips and grit her teeth to keep from crying. Tried to stand straight until she realized her legs really were about to give out—they felt like rubber. She sat on the bench. “It probably washed ashore—how could I know where it came from? It’s old, hundreds of years old.”

“Hundreds of years—” The captain sounded startled. “And where do you come from?”

“The Bahamas. I’m on vacation. We were in a boat, I fell off—”

“You must be addled.” The woman was pacing now, just a few steps back and forth across the cabin, and she wouldn’t look at Jill.

“I don’t know where it came from, and I don’t know how I got here,” Jill said.

Cooper held up the blade—just a broken scrap of metal. “You’re connected to him somehow. Through this.”

“How do you even know what it is, how can you recognize it?”

“I’m the one who broke it. It should have been lost forever, and now it’s back. Because of you.” She pointed the rusted scrap at Jill, who leaned away from it, her heart pounding. Which of them was crazy here?

“But how—”

Cooper shook her head. “No. No more. You aren’t making sense. Maybe you will after you’ve had some rest.”

“But my family, the tour boat couldn’t have gone too far, I wasn’t in the water that long—”

“Lass, there’s no other boat around for leagues. You lost your family, and you’re lucky to be alive.”

“Then take me back to the island, they’re probably waiting for me—”

Captain Cooper turned on her. “There’s naught but cutthroats and bloody pirates on that island. An’t no one’s family there, and if yours is then they’re fools and’ll soon be dead, like as not. You’ll stay here, where I can keep an eye on you.”

That shut Jill up. It also made her mind stumble. The Bahamas, an island of pirates? All those stories come to life? Maybe she’d fallen a long ways off her family’s tour boat.

So what did she do now?

Captain Cooper kept the piece of rapier. Not that the thing had been much of a good luck charm for Jill. But the captain wouldn’t explain why it was important, why it wasn’t just a scrap of metal.

She slept in the captain’s own bed—“Just for now, don’t be getting any pretty ideas”—a mattress in a wooden frame, with rough sheets and a heavy wool blanket. Jill thought she should have slept heavily for hours. But the ship’s movements kept her awake. Slow, arrhythmic swaying, rocking her one way and another on the hard mattress that might have been stuffed with straw. She started to feel nauseated and wasn’t sure it was all from the boat’s rocking. Shutting her eyes tight, she tried not to think of it.

Jill slept lightly and with dreams of falling, of being underwater and not being able to swim. She was a good swimmer; nothing should have been able to keep her from the surface. But something was holding her down, anchoring her. And she thrashed awake; the dreaming sense of vertigo didn’t go away. She was still on a ship surrounded by strangers, uncertain of the place and time. She’d never felt so helpless.

Well, she’d wanted to get away from everyone, hadn’t she?

The motion of the ship had increased, rolling so much that the lantern hanging from the roof beam swung back and forth, and she would have slammed against the bed’s frame if she hadn’t braced herself. Nothing was loose in the cabin—everything was shut up in cupboards, and the table and floor were clear. Anything loose would be falling all around her. The ship seemed to be riding over hills, making animal-like groans around her.

She was going to throw up. Her stomach seemed to be lurching in the opposite direction from the ship, and though she covered her mouth with her hands, she couldn’t stop it. Bile surged up.

A bucket—solid wood, heavy and stable—stood against the wall. As if it had been set there in expectation. She stumbled out of bed and bent over it without looking inside, just in time. She heaved over and over, losing everything she’d eaten that day, and then some. She wouldn’t have thought her stomach could hold so much.

Then the acrid stench of it hit her and made her heave again.

Finally, she turned away, sitting heavily, her back to the wall, catching her breath. She wiped her mouth on the tail of her shirt because it was all she had. Her cup of water was gone—of course, it would have emptied all over the cabin by now. Dizzy, her choices were to keel over, go to sleep and never wake up again, or go outside and get some fresh air. Assuming she could look ahead without her vision swaying in front of her.

Using the frame of the bed, she pulled herself to her feet. Her first step made her stumble—the floor wasn’t where it should have been. To go the straight line from the bed to the door, she made a zigzagging path across the floor, following the ship’s rocking. But she reached the door and leaned there, shutting her eyes and catching her breath, determined not to be sick again. Doggedly, she gripped the latch on the door and opened it.

Captain Marjory Cooper, her smile crooked and her gaze hard, stood blocking her way. “I heard you were up. Feeling better then?”

Jill swallowed, hoping to keep her stomach steady. But she didn’t dare open her mouth, just in case. The captain pushed her back into the cabin.

“You’ve not spent much time at sea, have you?”

Jill shook her head and tried to guess if Cooper’s smile was meant to be comforting or mocking.

She had in hand a few pieces of clothing: a loose, long-sleeved shirt, cotton pants, and a soft cap. The clothing Jill arrived in wasn’t so out of place here—her clamdiggers were like the trousers that many of the sailors on board wore, and her tank top was just a shirt. But the captain handed her the new items.

“You’ll burn like a lobster in the sun in those things. You need to cover up until you get a good tan on you. It’ll keep the men from looking too hard at you as well. These should fit you. They’re cabin-boy sized.”

Reluctantly, Jill took the clothing. Changing clothes made her situation—lost at sea on a boat full of strangers—seem permanent. She felt like a prisoner. She ought to get out of here—and go where? “What’s going to happen to me?”

“We’ll have to discuss that, won’t we? When you’re dressed, come up on deck.”

Jill was actually happy to get out of the scratchy, salt-laden clothes she’d nearly drowned in. But she thought she looked like a bum in the loose clothes. No—she looked like a pirate. She kept her bra on—it made her feel a little more like herself. Like it could shield her. She also brought out the rapier, which she’d kept with her on the bunk. Since no one said anything, she was going to carry the weapon.