The only crew still active on deck would be two or three of the more senior men above her current position, maintaining course and speed, lookouts in the bow and atop the mast, and two or three ordinary crewmen padding around on watch where the oar benches lay empty overnight. The only light kept aflame was at the rear where the officers worked.
Asima peered out into the corridor from her door at the end. The rear of the ship supported what was, in essence, an extra partial deck. Most of the ship consisted of a hold in the bottom of the hull, with a deck of oar seats and ports above, and then the main deck, with two more rows of oar seats. The centre of the ship, however, boasted a raised timber castle-like structure housing the war machines, while the rear held an enclosed section of cabins with the rudder and command section atop it.
There were only seven rooms in the covered area, five occupied by the most senior officers, one for medical use, and one for dining. Asima had been given the captain’s cabin and everyone had shuffled down a room for the duration of the voyage. She frowned at the corridor as she held her breath and listened.
No sound came from the two nearest rooms, while the second door on the left hummed with the sound of gentle snoring. The last cabin and the sick room were silent, but the noise of laughter and activity issued from the dining hall. The door there was slightly ajar, yellow light illuminating the medical bay door opposite. There appeared to be a dice game going on within, along with a lot of drinking.
Taking a deep breath, Asima crept as quietly and quickly as she could down the corridor. Silently, she slipped past the beam of yellow light, catching a momentary glimpse of men at the table within who were paying no attention to the corridor.
Heaving a sigh of relief, she continued on to the end of the corridor. Pausing, she peered out through the doorway. The door itself had been jammed open with a wooden peg, allowing the warm and fresh night time air to circulate in the interior. The sounds of several dozen sleeping sailors rose noisily from the deck below, adding to the creaking and groaning of the ship. If anything, the vessel was actually noisier at night than during the day.
For a brief moment, as she grasped the door frame and prepared to put her plan into action, Asima experienced doubt, a thing that happened so rarely it gave her pause. Was she being foolish? It was possible she could make a comfortable life in Velutio; certainly she would be a great deal more welcome there than in Pelasia or M’Dahz. Could it be that she was choosing the difficult course when she could make a life in the north?
She shook her head, angry at her own weakness. She had no intention of living out her days in exile in a place where the wind chilled the bones and rain was a regular occurrence. And the weather was only a small part of her reasons. The Imperial capital would already be full of people who knew the local game so much better than her. She would stand precious little chance of getting close to the Emperor or his companions and she would likely end her days as some strange, foreign refugee existing on the periphery of court life.
Ashar’s ban or not, Pelasia was the place for her. It was in her blood and in what was left of her soul. And the realisation of that in her first few hours aboard had prompted her new scheme. If three satraps; a vicious one, a greedy one and a virtual nomad, could pull off a coup that almost changed Pelasia forever, imagine what she could do. Given a malleable satrap with good connections and a sizeable estate and military, she could put him on the throne within a year; two at the most, and on his own, not as part of some triumvirate.
And Ashar really did have to die. He’d set himself against her and, despite her earlier deluded schemes to ingratiate herself with him, it was clear when she thought about it objectively that he would have to go in order to pave the way to power. Whatever changes to her plans might be caused by unforeseeable events, one thing was certain: she had no desire of a future in the Empire. Pelasia was for her.
Nodding to herself over the rightness of her decision, Asima ducked out of the door and turned a sharp right, around the outer lip of the deck around the cabin section toward the stern. She held her breath once more. The ledge was only a foot wide and a slip here would end in disaster.
Slowly and carefully she edged along the ledge, watching the turbulent waters below with care. Fortunately, the cabins she had passed on this side of the ship had all been silent and apparently empty, so she had no concerns over being seen through a window. It was above her that was the problem. There would be several men on the upper deck busy keeping the ship on course.
Very slowly, she shuffled along the ledge, occasionally feeling her foot slip and grasping the thin rail that ran around the wooden cabin housing as though her life depended upon it, which, of course, it very well could. Every tiny slip sent her thumping heart into her throat and made her want to cry out, though she clenched her teeth and continued on in silence.
A murmur of conversation made her halt and pull herself tightly against the wooden wall. Above her two men approached the railing and stood for a moment discussing something technical that completely bypassed Asima’s attention. She stood perfectly still for long moments, willing the two men away, until they appeared to reach some sort of conclusion and then wandered back to the centre of the deck.
Asima allowed her breath to escape slowly and continued to edge round the ship, reaching the stern rapidly now. She took a peek around the corner and found that what she had seen through the window in her rear cabin was, indeed, the case. The huge rudder that was easily handled by a single man on the top deck was one enormous beam, flattened out at water level to give the strength to guide the vessel. It was attached to the stern by a hinged wooden contraption and safety rope that allowed it to pivot and move freely while remaining firmly under control.
She had studied it for some hours through the window but had been unable to actually reach it from there, hence this night time journey around the dangerous edge of the ship. The Wind of God had been on active service for quite some time since her last sojourn in dock for maintenance, and nowhere was it showing the strain more than here.
“I expect you have to carry a lot of spare parts?” she had asked her escort this afternoon, probing lightly, but he had informed her that they only carried bulk spares of rope, timber and sail cloth. Certainly not anything as complex as the hinged mechanism she now found herself closely examining as she closed on the rudder.
Course had been set as soon as the eagle rock had come into view and the rudder locked into position at the top. That needn’t matter and, in fact, would prove beneficial, meaning that no sailor would be close enough to the rear rail to notice her work.
Her assessment from her cabin had been correct. The two wooden struts that held the rudder into the hinged mechanism were long past due for replacement. One was white with age and had been seriously attacked by salt and weather. The other had already snapped, though the damage had gone unnoticed as the safety rope continued to hold it together.
However, if the other wooden spar went…
Reaching the mechanism, Asima grasped the shipward end and drew her knife. Inserting it into a natural stress crack in the wood, she began to slowly and carefully work the solid, heavy blade back and forth. She smiled as she felt the wood beginning to give easily under her assault, and small flakes and fragments of ruined timber twanged off and floated down into the water.