The Farthest Shore (Eden Series Book 3) (4 page)

“What exactly are you doing on my ship?” he said.

Miri regretted drinking the rum. Oh, she felt warm for the first time since last evening, and the liquid heat spread through her limbs, taking away the last of the pain and dissolving some of her exhaustion as well. Except her head was starting to swim, and she could tell it would take all of her wits to give Captain Juell the safest answers.

“I didn’t come aboard your ship deliberately, Captain.” She kept her voice calm. “I was trying to escape and I hid in the crate.”

“Escape?” He looked skeptical. “What were you doing in a guarded area, anyway? The shipyards are off-limits to gawkers at night.”

Miri’s thoughts raced. If she said Wilian had stabbed her, the next question would be why she’d run to the shipyards rather than calling for help. She bit her lip. If only she had played ignorant, claimed someone had knocked her on the head and must have stuffed her into the crate after robbing her. What now?

Dark brows drew together. “The man who tried to kill you,” he said, and his voice was quieter, “did he…”

Oh
. Miri saw a way out. He’d drawn a logical conclusion from her ruined clothes and her silence, and she wanted to say yes. It was likely he’d be at least a little sympathetic if he thought she had been nearly raped. There wasn’t much soft about him, but he didn’t strike her as cruel either, and of course she wouldn’t want to talk about such an assault.

Only one thing stopped her—the fact that she had never known, and probably never would know, if that was what had happened to her mother.

“No,” she said dully. “I—I went to a checkpoint gate to see if the guards would tell me anything more, and a dockworker offered to talk to me alone. But then he demanded gold, and he stabbed me when I told him I didn’t have any.”

It wasn’t the most convincing story she’d ever come up with, and she knew that at once from the way he leaned back, arms folded. His face was unreadable. The silence between them stretched out, but she was well aware most people would grow uncomfortable in silence—it was a trick she’d used herself, to elicit information—so she said nothing.

“What do you plan to do now that you’re here?” he said finally.

“You’re sailing to Triton Harbor, aren’t you?” Miri didn’t know anyone who lived there and she couldn’t afford a carriage back to Endworld, but at least she’d be on the mainland. She would walk every step of the way home if she had to. “I can disembark there.”

“So you’d like to remain on board until then?”

“Since my options are either that or drowning, it’s not such a difficult choice.”

His voice took on a cold edge. “Not for you, maybe, but this isn’t a pleasure barge. It’s a ship of the Guardian Fleet, with no room aboard for anyone who isn’t worth their water ration.”

Miri’s stomach lurched, but working for the
Beacon
had taught her to never react emotionally to whatever she found out. If he had her thrown overboard, it would be murder, but she remembered what Wilian had done when she’d tried to use that defense, and Captain Juell had far more power on his side. Besides, with her luck his crew was fanatically loyal and wouldn’t breathe a word about her death when they were ashore.

All right, stop imagining and think
. How could she be worth her water ration?

She bent over and took off her shoe. His hand went to the hilt of his saber at once, but he let go as she straightened up and the sunlight glinted off the silver coins in her hand.

“You should have given those to the dockworker,” he said. “Even if I wanted a civilian on board, passage would cost a lot more than that.”

Miri closed her fist around the coins, fighting down an urge to throw them in his face. He was so intractable and indifferent—but then again, Denalay hadn’t gained its independence and defeated the pirates by allowing laxness in its navy. She had to remember she was here on his forbearance, and she had to show how she could be useful.

“I can work,” she said.

He raised a brow. “In what capacity? I don’t need you asking the engineers about the internal workings of this ship.”

She had felt light-headed with weariness and rum, but not any longer. Fear had jolted her wits back into working order, and anger was rapidly doing the same thing. “I won’t do that, Captain, but if you’re afraid I will, you can lock me in the hold until we reach Triton Harbor.”

“Not in the hold. We keep our food supplies there.”

“You think I’ll eat them all?” Miri said, but when there was no reply she realized what he was really concerned about. “Poison them?”

“Let’s just say I have no reason to trust you, much less keep you on board this ship.”

“I can work for my keep.”
As what?
She was a good cook, and felt sure she could make a scrapmeat soup out of anything in the ship’s kitchen. But there’d be a cook on board already, and if Captain Juell wouldn’t allow her near the supplies, he certainly wasn’t going to taste anything she prepared. And from his silence, he was waiting to hear exactly what she would do to earn the right to stay.

“I can clean,” she said, feeling desperate. What the hell did he want her to do—offer to service the crew? “I can scrub decks and wash clothes. Whatever you need done. Captain, it’ll take us a week at the most to reach Triton Harbor. Will your supplies really be stretched so thin over such a short period of time by the addition of one person?”

He had been as quiet and detached as though he was watching a none-too-interesting play, but when she asked that question, the mask of neutrality dropped so fast that she was startled. He leaned forward, his hands on his knees.

“Let me explain something to you.” His voice was low and intent. “Engineers build ships with a margin of safety, which is how much the ship can carry beyond its expected load. Likewise, we calculate how much water and food the vessel should stock for its crew to reach their destination alive, and then increase that by a little. Any addition to the crew beyond what is intended shrinks the margin of safety. Do I make myself clear?”

Miri forced herself to nod.

“So if your presence had stretched our resources past that margin, what would you do?”

Only the word
if
helped, only that tiny indication he was speaking hypothetically. But if he wasn’t? Well, if there really were limited resources on board now, then it meant she could die alone or she could take others with her, people who hadn’t asked for that alternative.

“I’d go overboard,” she heard herself say, as if from a short distance away.

“Would you.”

That skepticism would never fail to be galling. “Yes,” she said, looking straight into his eyes. “But I’d ask you to leave me something to float on—the lid off that damn crate would do—just to give me enough time to regret ever going to the Horseshoe.” And in the following pause, she thought,
Who knows?
Under those circumstances, her Turean blood might allow her to drink seawater, though she didn’t know if she could survive on nothing else for a week.
Only half-salt, after all
. But they were in the Sheltered Ocean, in the middle of shipping routes, and maybe someone would find her.

Maybe.

For a moment there was only a watchful silence between them, an endless space, and then he smiled. It wasn’t a particularly welcoming smile, but it was a relaxation of what she realized was iron control, and she knew she would live. Her cheeks felt warm and tingling, but that was probably due to the rum.

“Good enough.” He leaned back again, though she didn’t dare move. His eyes were an odd color, an amber that made her feel she was being watched by a tiger. “You’re very fortunate we’re docking at Triton Harbor before the race, because under maritime law I can jettison a stowaway, and that wouldn’t be actionable anywhere short of Skybeyond.”

“I understand.” Miri thought she would fall to her knees and thank the Unity the moment she set foot on the mainland again. She’d had no idea how different things were on a ship. “Believe me, Captain, if I’d known which ship that crate was intended for, I would never have climbed into it.”

“Yes, at the very least you owe us some limes.” But there was more humor than sarcasm in his eyes, if not his tone. “I thought you’d sneaked aboard to find something to report to the
Endworld Beacon
. I doubt that’s the case now, but nevertheless, choices have consequences and on the frontier there isn’t a lot of forgiveness for mistakes.”

She still felt unsettled, as though he had caught her before she could step off a precipice, but was then insisting she look over the edge to see exactly how far the drop was. And frontier? They were in the heart of Denalait waters.

“This is the Sheltered Ocean,” she said.

“Every sea is a frontier.”

All the more reason for her to be far away. Now that she wasn’t in immediate danger of walking the plank or whatever naval disciplinary measures mandated, she felt tired again, not to mention acutely aware of her state of dress, or lack thereof. The sunlight was starting to dry her clothes, but they were little better than rags.

“Captain,” she began tentatively, “where may I sleep?”

He frowned. Obviously there was nothing in naval regulations about that. “In here, I suppose,” he said. “There are hooks you can hang a hammock from, but you’ll have to wait until we’re done eating or conferring. And I’ll ask Reveka to lend you some clothes.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Miri said, relieved.

“Don’t thank me yet. You’ll have to earn your keep. My steward will be joining us at Triton Harbor, so until he’s here you can keep my quarters clean and do the laundry.”

“I will.” That wasn’t hard at all, and it would leave her with enough time to rest and recover before they reached the harbor. All she had to do was get through the next week without missing any of her duties—and without anyone finding out what she was—and she would be all right.

He got up and went out. Miri longed to relax into the chair, but she didn’t want him to think she was getting too comfortable too soon.

“I’ve sent for food,” he said when he came back in, “and once you’ve eaten, you can see Reveka.”

“Thank you.”

He sat down again, selected a map from the small stack of papers on the table and unfolded it. Miri felt slightly disconcerted. Until that moment she hadn’t realized what it felt like to be released from his attention when it was so focused on her, tight as a vise. Still, that gave her a chance to look around the cabin, trying to be discreet as she did so.

A candlebranch stood on a sideboard, and there was a shelf of books beneath a painting of a ship. The sea beneath the ship was an odd shade of gold, and she realized it wasn’t a sea at all, but a desert with dunes for waves. Only one thing stood out more oddly than the painting, and that was some kind of lute resting on a padded seat beneath the window.

Without moving her head, she glanced at his hands. Long fingered, with prominent knuckles, the bluish tracery of veins visible through tanned skin. Yes, he probably played the instrument, and sheet music stuck out from beneath a leather-bound book on the table. It was a pity she no longer worked for the
Beacon
, because that was just the kind of detail which made the captains in the race more than distant military figures or names on paper.

Not that he could ever have been only a name on paper to her. His cold inflexible manner was as off-putting as it had been the day before, but now that she had a chance to study him more closely, she noticed things she could never have written about. Where the sunlight touched his bent head, individual strands of black hair gleamed like copper filaments, and his skin was only slightly lighter. The strong angles of his face stood out even more because he was clean-shaven, and she thought he might have been handsome if he hadn’t been so aloof. Thankfully she would never have to see him again after he put her off the ship.

A crewman knocked and came in, setting a tray on the table. Miri wanted to help herself, but since she wasn’t sure what naval etiquette demanded, she kept her hands in her lap. A good thing too, she realized when Captain Juell served the food. He handed her a plate with a hunk of bread, half a boiled egg and a strip of bacon.

“I didn’t realize supplies were this limited,” she couldn’t stop herself saying. The meal he was serving himself seemed much more substantial.

“Until you’re sure you can keep it down, best not to gorge.”

That made sense. Her stomach felt unsettled, but she’d put that down to hunger and fear and the strain of everything that had happened. She was ravenous, but she ate cautiously, making certain each mouthful would stay seated before she took another. Captain Juell’s food was there one moment and gone the next.

“How many times have you been on a ship before?” he said as he poured tea.

“Once,” Miri replied, and his expression told her what he thought of that.
So what?
He had probably never seen a printing press. Though that depressed her, because when would she get the chance to see one again?

She drank her tea so fast it burned her tongue, then stacked the plates. “I’ll take these back to the kitchen as soon as I’ve dressed.”

“Galley,” he said. She looked at him, confused. “A ship’s kitchen is called a galley.”

“And a ship’s, um, privy?”

“A head.”

Well, as long as she was dependent on his hospitality, it would be proper to use his words, and she memorized both those and the directions he gave her to them. It was like being in another land, one which had its own customs and language.

One which moved constantly beneath her, too. “How long does it take to get used to this?” she asked Reveka once she reached the surgery.

The doctor handed her folded clothes that looked well worn but clean, and gave a little shake of her head, eyes crinkling up as if to say it was really nothing, a minimum of discomfort. Miri felt insatiably curious about what had happened to her—nothing on the smooth throat indicated any kind of injury to her voice box—but Reveka had been so kind that she couldn’t pry. So she smiled awkwardly, made a mental note to only ask questions which could be answered with a yes or no, and went back to Captain Juell’s quarters to get dressed.