Ammonite

“See this”—Vine pointed to the tiller, fixed to an enormous paddlelike rudder—“not many ships have these. They’re much better than those side-rigged thing’s you’ll see a lot of around here. You can only dock on one side of the boat if the rudder isn’t in the stern. The Nemoracan dock anywhere. Steers better, too. Mind you, that’s partly because we’ve got the artemon. Foresail,” she explained, for Marghe’s benefit. They went over to the mainmast, picking their way past what seemed to Marghe a jumble of ropes, strung in no particular order. “See these side stays and shrouds?” She was talking about the thick ropes running from the top of the mast to the decking. “Lots of ships don’t have these. Only backstays. But these shrouds mean we can take sideways pressure on the mast, too. We can tack. We don’t always have to have the wind right behind us.”

Marghe nodded. If Vine said so.

“And when the wind gets too much,” Vine was saying, “we can furl the sail. No boom, you see.”

The Nemorastill looked like something from the Bayeux tapestry, but maybe they would survive the Mouth of the Grave after all.

Marghe and Vine stood in companionable silence for a while.

“You found each other, then.” Thenike’s eyes were soft with sleep, and there were creases on her face. She was wearing a pair of short breeches and her hair was up inside a cap. “Hot out here.” She slid one arm around Marghe’s waist, the other around Vine’s.

“It’ll get worse before it gets better.” Vine was scanning the horizon again, but Marghe noticed the sailor was leaning into Thenike’s arm. They were very comfortable with each other. Old, old friends. Here was a part of Thenike’s past; she wanted to know all of it.

“How long have you two known each other?”

“Long enough,” Vine said, without turning, but she smiled out at the horizon. “Hasn’t she told you how she got that scar on her thumb, yet?”

“No.”

“Well, then, story for story, viajera. I’ll tell you how I met Thenike, here, if you tell me how she found you.”

“Let’s find some shade if we’re going to talk all afternoon,” Thenike suggested.

“I like the heat,” Marghe said.

“Good, but sun and water can burn you faster than you think. We need shade.”

Marghe wondered if the scars on Vine’s back burned more easily than the rest.

“And something to occupy our hands,” added Vine. “We can work while we talk.”

Soon they were seated in the shadow of the wicker wall, splicing rope. Marghe watched the other two; she did not have their skill and speed born of long practice, but after a while she was able to do a passable job.

“It was fourteen summers ago,” Vine said, “and I came into South Meet after my first voyage to Eye of Ocean. The trading had gone well, and the island was a beautiful place, but the voyage was long and we’d hit some bad weather on the way back. We’d been on short rations for a while, and had had to work hard to get home, which made me bad-tempered. I climbed up out of the ship’s boat and onto the wharf, and nearly tripped over a young woman with the thickest, blackest hair I’ve ever seen.”

“Thenike,” Marghe guessed.

“Thenike,” Vine agreed. “She was lying down in the sunshine on the grass that grows by the wharf, half asleep. Drums getting tight in the heat. Leading the life of leisure, I thought. I was young—”

“And foolish,” Thenike said with a smile. “The two generally go together.”

“I was young,” Vine said, ignoring the interruption, “and not as knowledgeable as I am now, and it seemed to me all of a sudden that viajeras never had to do much for themselves. Always eating other people’s food and getting free rides. Just for telling stories. And here was me, having almost starved to bring back things that this young woman would use but not appreciate.”

“You made those feelings quite plain, as I recall.”

“I made some loud comments about lazy good-for-nothings and how some people had never done a useful day’s work in their lives. And this woman, who I thought might have been quite pretty if she hadn’t looked so lazy, opened one eye and said, “Well, sailor, what is it that you think you can do that I can’t?”

“I was angry,” Thenike said. “I’d been up all night helping a local healer with a difficult birth, and here was this… this lout disturbing my rest. She was good to look at, too, which somehow made it worse.”

“So I challenged her to a contest. And she—”

“I was really cross by this time, and wanted to beat her at something she probably thought she was superior at.”

“So she challenged me to a fish-gutting contest. She was good, too,” Vine said, admiration in her voice for that young woman of long ago, “but I’d spent most of my life gutting fish. There could only be one winner.”

“I couldn’t accept that, though, and just went faster and faster.”

“Until the slick fish guts proved her undoing. The knife slipped, and suddenly there was red everywhere. Blood all over the fish, all over the docks, all over my barrel of fillets. And there was Thenike, hand gaping wide and bleeding like a stuck taar, looking furious.”