It all rested on how well I spoke. Certainly there had been stories aplenty in Mistress Danae’s books about stowaways and travelers working their passage. Somehow none of them were dark-skinned girls.
My color hadn’t mattered within the bluestone walls of the Pomegranate Court. Out here, it might hold the balance of my life. Along with my words. As I’d always known, these people lived and died by their words.
I continued to walk briskly, bound on an errand to nowhere. If I were to stand and gawk, I would mark myself as a potential victim. Instead I looked as closely as I could at each ship I passed, each wharf.
Some had signboards out to advertise their destination. Most of these were cities of the Stone Coast-Houghharrow, Dun Cranmoor, Lost Port. These I recognized from the stories and maps I’d studied. One was marked for the Saffron Tower. Much too far the wrong way for me.
A signboard loomed ahead. In shaky handwriting, it read, “South to sun countries. Calling in Kalim., Chitta and Spice Pt.s.”
I trotted up to that gangplank. The ship had three tall masts, and no sign of a boiler below, unlike the smokestack I recalled from Fortune’s Flight. A man stood there with skin as dark as mine, though he was fitted out in the duck and cotton of a sailor. He held a long board to which papers had been bound with sisal twine. He glanced at me once, then back at his board.
“Please, sir, I would have passage,” I said. He didn’t even glance up at me. Then, in Seliu: “I want to return home.”
That got his attention. “Go back to your mother,” he replied, then some words I didn’t know.
“She is there,” I told him. “I was stolen.”
“You are a slave.” He looked at me with suspicion. “Trouble rides your back.” That last was in Petraean.
“Trouble rides this entire city,” I answered him, also in Petraean. “If I do not go with you, I may never go at all.”
“What is being your fare for passage, should I recommend to the captain that we take you?”
I took a deep breath. Here was where my plan would founder. “I have no fare, sir. Just the goodwill of my countrymen. I can cook to please the table of a lordly house, and my skills with needle and thread are worthy as well.”
He snorted, and my heart fell. “Next you’ll tell me you play the music of angels and can dance the Seven Steps of Sisthra.”
“I sing, sir, but only in the fashion of the Stone Coast.”
Something stirred in his face. “You do not know the songs of Selistan.”
Switching back to our words, I said, “It has been a very long time.”
Close by, a bell began ringing. Everyone on the dock looked around with frantic haste. Many ran off. An alarm, then. Riot approached the docks.
“Come.” He started up the gangplank. “If we cast off with you aboard, much of this discussion will be lacking in point. Captain Shields is not likely to toss you overboard as a stowaway. Especially if you can grace his table in style.”
Someone on the masts called out. Sailors pounded the deck. The ship lurched slightly, then began to drift. I realized they had a line off the stern. A boat full of men pulled hard to tow this vessel away from shore.
I tugged at the man’s sleeve. “Please, sir, what is the name of this ship?”
He looked down at me and began to laugh. “Do not think me to be mocking you, little one, but this vessel is called Southern Escape.”
“Ah.” I looked quietly into his eyes. “But I am free.”
“Of course you are,” he answered. “At the moment.” He bent close. “I am Srini, the purser. I must go see to the captain. To be sitting with those bales over there, and for the love of all that is holy, get yourself in no one’s path.”
The deck clanged and rattled. Canvas boomed as sails were raised. I crouched upon the deck and told myself old stories in the language of my birth. I was on my way to a port from which with luck I could hear the sound of Endurance’s wooden bell. I was on my way to freedom.
I was on my way home.
Going Back
Srini put me to work in the galley with an elderly Hanchu cook who had only one leg. Lao Jia wore a wooden peg to move about on deck, but he hung that at the galley hatch and spent his time within braced against the inbuilt counters. The peg was carved with flowing dragons chasing a series of black pearls set into the wood. The galley was strung with a clever series of canvas straps to secure him against heavy seas or rising storms. I believe he tolerated me at first only because I was small and lithe enough to duck around him.
I was just as glad to be down there. The deck frightened me. I remembered horizons, first from home, then aboard Fortune’s Flight. Actually seeing them again was profoundly disorienting. Even the streets of Copper Downs had been enclosed by buildings, trees, people. The ocean was nothing but horizon, rippling uncomfortably in all directions.
The old man spoke almost no Petraean, other than shouting the names of some foodstuffs at me. I certainly spoke no Hanchu then. I had never heard the language in my life before being forced to share the narrow kitchen with him. However, he did have a bit of Seliu, a language he shared with Srini and the memories of my earliest childhood.
The steam of pots clamped to the swinging stoves was the smell of freedom to me. Lao Jia made me chop cabbage and carrots under his watchful eye. He soon determined that I would not lose a finger into the food or stab him as Southern Escape rolled with the swells. “You will do,” he said in Seliu.
Those words from a busy old man were perhaps the first genuine praise I’d received in my life.
“My thanks,” I told him.
When I proved to know my way around his spice bottles by sight and smell, he seemed almost pleased. On our second day at sea, I made a very serviceable turnover stuffed with ground pork, cumin, and mashed cress. Lao Jia pronounced me good. “I talk to Srini, you stay here and cook.” His gap-toothed smile beamed.
“I go to Selistan,” I told him.
He pretended to wail, drawing off his blue cloth cap and folding it to his breast while muttering prayers to his Hanchu gods. Then he smiled, patted me on the head, and put me back to work.
Cooking with him was pleasant. It was even more pleasant to work without ready judgment standing at my back. I did not mind the small kitchen, the limited tools, and the odd ingredients. Best of all, after several more days, Lao Jia began to show me the basics of Hanchu cuisine. The primary techniques revolved around shredding the food, marinating it, frying the results quickly in a hot, shallow pan, then serving everything mixed together in sauce. What was not simple was balancing the humors of the food-Srini had to help me sort that word out in Petraean, when Lao Jia first began using it-as well the complex spices and sauces.
I realized that Mistress Tirelle had left me with a true love of learning.
Bunking me correctly was a more difficult task. “You have not paid for a cabin,” Srini told me sternly after my first two nights sleeping on deck. We were still speaking mostly Petraean then. I’d had to kick several sailors away, and wound up awake both nights in fear for my safety.
“I am not a harlot for their use.” Mindful of Mistress Cherlise’s many lessons, I swept my hand over my mostly flat chest. “I am not even yet grown to womanhood.”
He pulled at his broad dark chin, reminding me for a moment of Federo. “I cannot simply give you a privilege. You are quite young to be trading your comforts for the passage, this is true.” Srini frowned. “I am sorry to say, but the wounds upon your cheeks will draw the eye away. If you are to be cutting off that great mane of woman’s hair and dressing in canvas trousers, they will take less notice of you.”
My hair had never been cut in my life, so far as I knew, except for the ends being trimmed to suit the style of my beauty. The Factor’s beauty, which I had already sliced away. “I will do it,” I told him in Seliu.
“And I will be having a word with the bosun about the night watch on the deck.” He smiled. “You walk a long road for such a young woman.”