Ammonite

“Vine’s ship?”

“It’s been along the coast to Luast. It’s due back here to pick up some pelt and wool”—Marghe thought of the goth—“and continue on to High Beaches.”

“Will they take us on board?”

Thenike grinned. “Ships are pleased to have a viajera. Two is twice as good. Being at sea can be boring. We’ll tell them stories and sing them songs and they’ll take us wherever we want to go out of sheer gratitude.”

Marghe smiled. Being a viajera was not all fun and free rides. “We’ll have to send messages to Danner, and Cassil.”

“And High Beaches. We’ll need a guide across the countryside. If the rainfall’s been low, the Glass might not support Nid-Nod’sdraft and we’ll need the use of one of their punts to get up the river.”

The first day at sea, they kept in sight of land. Thenike was taking a nap—too hot out of the shade, she said—but Marghe stood on Nemora’sdeck, aft of the livestock pen, taking advantage of the cool sea breeze on her neck. The sun streamed down from a dark blue sky and shivered back from the surface of the water, bright enough to hurt her eyes. Thenike’s skiff bobbed behind them, secured firmly by two cables.

All the sailors worked bare-chested. Some wore breast straps; some, the younger ones whose hands were not yet callused enough to deal with coarse wet rope without damage, wore leather palm straps. Some wore caps to protect their hair from salt spray; some did not bother. Marghe watched them work to swing the mainsail and the small bowsail into the breeze, and wondered how it was to spend a life on the water.

The shore was a greenish-blue line of forest. That night, or the next day, they would swing out due east to find the safe channel through the Mouth of the Grave. Open sea for a while. Marghe did not look forward to the prospect. She was used to large vessels of alloy and plastic, equipped with satellite navigation, and Nemoraseemed too small, too frail.

The ship was about seventy feet long; the rudder was fixed, in the stern, and the ship steered by means of a tiller, not a wheel. The top of the mainmast still had twigs attached to the wood; the yard was made of two small lengths of wood lashed together with rope. The deck was not solid, just planks resting on thwarts, easily removed for larger cargo. Some of them looked new, and smelled of raw, fresh lumber. The only cabin was a wicker-walled enclosure in the bows, used mainly as a shade when the sun was fierce. At night, the crew slept on deck. One enormous rope ran from one end of the ship to the other over forked posts and disappeared around the stern and bows. Marghe touched it thoughtfully.

“Big, isn’t it?” The accent was not one Marghe had heard before. Southern, perhaps. She turned to find a tall, broad-shouldered woman standing beside her. “I’ve seen you with Thenike. You must be Marghe Amun. I’m Vine.”

She did look a little like Roth: same height and cap, and clinking with clay disks. But her face was more leathery, and her eyes were hazel with white lines in the tan fanning out from the corners. She was not wearing a shirt. Marghe found it hard to keep her eyes off the terrible scars on her bare back: a web of ugly white and pink welts, like worms. “It is big, yes. I’ve been trying to figure out what it’s for.”

“Stops the ship hogging.” Those eyes scanned the horizon, the deck, the sails, then back again. Marghe found it disconcerting. But the eyes came back to Marghe’s face long enough for Vine to see that Marghe did not understand. “Drooping at the ends,” she explained.

“Drooping?” They used a rope to tie the ship together?

The white lines around Vine’s eyes disappeared as her face wrinkled up in a smile. “Don’t worry. It’s something all ships do. Or would do if it wasn’t for the rope. That’s what it’s for. Keeps the bows pointing up nicely.”

“That doesn’t sound too good.”

“It’s the safest ship in the world,” Vine said with confidence. “Look, here.” She pointed over the side at the overlapping planks; Marghe looked, too. “Clinker-built. I helped to choose the wood myself.” She straightened, scanned the ship again. Marghe was beginning to get used to it. “What do you know about wood? Not much? Well, the first thing about building a ship is getting the right timber. Depending what grain you use, how the wood is sawn, you can just about eliminate the effects of hogging. So for these lengths I chose wood that was quarter-sawn, so it warps against the hogging.”

Marghe nodded, understanding the principle if not the details.