“You will remain aboard ship for the duration of our stay in Adrahan, and I trust you will make yourself useful,” Captain Tancrède bellowed, inches from my face. “No more fighting, no more drinking, and by Kyrche, no more riling up the locals!”
“Yes, sir.” I kept my eyes focused on the harbor view afforded by the broad stern windows over the captain’s shoulder. I’d been fortunate enough to have been returned to the ship while Captain Tancrède was still on shore, so at least I was bandaged, cleaned, and freshly dressed as I stood before him, even if my hangover was crippling and my stomach far from settled.
“Report to the master’s mate, Sentinel,” Tancrède said, disgusted. “And try to set a good example for the crew from now on.”
I saluted and ducked out of his cabin, not daring to look at the marine who stood guard at the door and had heard every word. I ascended the ladder to the deck, my bruised arms and legs aching.
Bright tropical sunlight drilled into my aching eyes. I rubbed my pounding temples and winced as my fingers passed over bruises. Around me, the hands were busy washing the boats and coiling ropes. Was it my imagination, or were they all casting me sidelong smirks? Had they heard about the brawl? About my beating? Of course they had — the Chaser was a small ship, and I’d already learned that sailors were relentless gossips. With my face burning and my stomach churning, I limped across the busy deck to report for duty.
“So, Sentinel, is this the life of glory you was promised when you signed up?” inquired the master’s mate, Disa Wates, as she led me and three other hands down into the depths of the ship. We had to crouch as we walked through the hold, picking our way over and between the Chaser’s massive stacks of supply barrels.
I pulled down the handkerchief I’d clapped over my nose and gave the other woman a pained smile. Disa was in her early forties, one of the few hands to be advanced from able sailor to junior warrant officer. Her approval, I was certain, would go a long way in easing my relationship with the Chaser’s crew.
“It’s everything I dreamed of,” I replied dryly. “Do I want to know why it smells like a latrine down here?”
“Probably not,” she said with a sly grin. I waited. “That marine at the ladder’s supposed to keep the crew from using the hold as a piss-pot, but I won’t say it never happens.”
“But … this is our food!” I looked around with dismay, wondering what on earth I’d been eating since I’d come on board. I’d heard plenty of wardroom jokes about the mystery meat in our stews, but this was a step beyond.
“Don’t worry. The piss soaks through the ballast and into the bilge.” She kicked the loose stones and shards we were walking over. “It don’t get into the barrels none. Thing is, hold’s the safest place to piss in a storm, especially for those of us can’t stand when we pee. Hell of a way to die, swept overboard with your trousers around your ankles.”
The three male sailors behind us chuckled.
“I seen you stand when you pee, Missus Wates,” one of them joked.
“And I’ve seen you sit while you pee, Jym,” Disa shot back. “Howling like a baby from the clap, as I recall.”
Struggling to ignore the resulting exchange of insults — the two seemed to know each other well enough to set aside proprieties of rank, at least down here in the dark belly of the ship — I elevated my balelight to better illuminate the stacks of water barrels around us. Sudden movement made me look up in time to spot a dark, slimy shape scuttling along a beam into the darkness.
“Rat!” I yelped. All four hands burst into laughter, and Disa clapped me on the shoulder.
“Don’t kill it, Sentinel. That’s our rations if we run out of food mid-ocean.”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“You’ll be hankering for some fresh rat meat after a few months of salt pork.”
“Will the rat also be marinated in urine?”
“Nah, rest easy, there ain’t so much of that as you might think.” Jym scrambled nimbly over the barrels with his bare feet. “Joking aside, ’tis a foul habit and a floggin’ offense. Rats is filthier than piss, anyway.”
“Aye, and they’ve got some big fucking rats in these islands,” another sailor complained as Disa leaned over a stack of barrels, counting. “I been hearin’ ’em nights, scuttling around the ship like they bloody well own it.”
“How the hell you hear any—” Jym’s voice broke off in a yelp of surprise as, with a terrifying rumble, the giant barrels shifted beneath our feet.
I was thrown to my knees and felt myself slide backward as my companions shouted in alarm. For a moment I had a vivid image of myself being crushed beneath the barrels’ weight. Choking on my panic, I dropped the balelight and called four balewalls across the Line, slamming them downward and outward in all directions. Somebody screamed. I hoped to Kyrchye I hadn’t just sliced someone in half with a wall, but at least the barrels stopped moving, and that was all I could focus on for the moment.
The balewalls shed a pale, sickly glow, but it did little to alleviate the stygian darkness around us. I held my breath, straining to detect any further shifts. Every one of the Chaser’s creaks and groans sounded ominous. Something scraped against the loose ballast and I whipped my head around. Was that a glimmer of light, deeper in the hold?
“Hello? Missus Wates? Everything all right back there?” the marine was shouting from the hatch. I glanced toward the shout, then back at the light. It was gone, if it had even been there at all.
“Are we all right?” Jym asked shakily. “Meze? Toban? Missus Wates?”
“Ankle’s trapped,” Toban replied, his voice taut with pain.
“What the hell just happened?” Meze demanded.
“Sentinel?” Disa’s voice was unsteady. “More light?”
“I can’t. I’m using all my calls to hold the barrels steady.” I could hear the tremble in my own voice. “I don’t know which ones are keeping us safe.”
“Hey! We need some light back here!” Disa bellowed. “But walk careful, we’ve lost a chock!”
I forced myself to take deep, steadying breaths as I waited. One small blessing was that my hangover had faded in the rush of adrenaline, although now all my muscles hurt. It took forever before a brighter light appeared, carried by a marine.
“Stop there,” Disa cautioned. He came to a halt and the master’s mate carefully slid over the barrels and stood, padding her way toward him. A minute later she returned with the lantern, holding it over Toban, whose ankle was trapped between two barrels.
“Jym, Meze, go get some wedges and crowbars,” she directed. “Sentinel, I need you to hold the barrels still a while longer.”
“I can do that.” Now that I could see better, I pulled my legs beneath myself and stood. As a precaution, I discerned, searching for any disturbance in the Line that might suggest another sentinel’s presence. A glimmer caught my attention, off to one side, and then vanished. I frowned. A candle? Or a glint of bale?
More crew members joined us, some going to free Toban and others moving to inspect the barrels. The few who dared touch the pale, slowly churning walls of bale that I’d summoned recoiled and wiped their fingers against their slops.
“Never will get used to that,” one of them muttered, shuddering.
“Hey!” A crewmember shouted from one of the narrow corridors between the stacks of barrels. “Someone’s hurt back here!”
I took a moment to make sure my mental grip on the walls was secure, then carefully walked across the barrels to see. The hands were gathering around a young crewman who lay sprawled by the hull.
“Dead,” one of them proclaimed, lifting her hand from his chest.
“Fetch Mister Clyve,” Disa ordered, and the sailor ran off. “Who is it?”
“Cuedro,” someone replied.
“Find out what he was doing down here.” Disa turned toward me. “Sentinel, I think you can remove the balewall to larboard there.”
“Very wel—” I stopped as Disa reached up to grab my ankle.
“Repeat it,” she ordered. “What I said. So’s I know you heard it right.”
“I can remove the balewall to larboard?” I repeated, uncertainly. I’d heard sailors repeating their orders before, but I had never thought to wonder why.
“Which way is larboard, Sentinel?” Disa pressed.
“Left. No — wait, left if I’m facing the bow.” I oriented myself and pointed. “There.”
“Good.” Her smile was thin. “We don’t need a second accident today.”
“Yes … I mean, ‘aye.’” I released my hold on the indicated wall and its component bale slipped back across the Line, leaving me free to call a balelight, instead. The space around us brightened, though the pale, wan light made everyone look washed out. Toban was released and carried sling-style up to the orlop deck. At Disa’s orders, the rest of the barrels were restacked, wedges thrust between them to keep them balanced. I held them steady with balewalls until we were sure they wouldn’t shift again.
By the time Mister Clyve and Captain Tancrède climbed back aboard, the hold was in order and the hands had scattered to their regular duties. An hour after he arrived, Disa and I were called down to the surgery. Toban lay in a hammock, his ankle splinted, fast asleep.
“Tell me again what happened,” Captain Tancrède demanded, standing next to the table that held the dead sailor’s naked body. Disa crisply ran through the events up to the collapse, pausing only to let me explain how I’d stopped the barrel collapse.
“You had no idea that Cuedro was in the hold?” Tancrède pressed.
“No, sir,” Disa said.
“He wasn’t on watch,” I added, because I’d overheard the crew talking about it. “The marine said he hadn’t seen him enter, either.”
Tancrède shot me a look.
“Thank you, Sentinel,” he said, his voice dry. “I wouldn’t have thought to ask.”
I flushed but rallied.
“I would like to know how he died, Captain,” I pressed on. “If I was negligent in saving him, or if my balewalls caused his death, then I’ll take full responsibility for my error.”
Mister Clyve glanced at the captain, who gave a slight nod.
“You need not trouble yourself, Sentinel; he died of strangulation,” the surgeon said. He gestured to the corpse’s neck. Disa and I both leaned forward and I spotted the narrow, livid marks on the man’s neck. “It was done by cloth or cord, not hands, from the shape of the marks. I don’t think your balewall could have left marks like that.”
“Kyrchye.” Disa straightened up again. “I thought he might have been the one caused the collapse, but….”
“You will not speak of this to anybody else,” Tancrède ordered. “Neither of you. It is a matter of ship’s security.”
“Yes, sir,” we both said at once.
“Wates, thank you for your time. Sentinel, please remain a moment.”
“Sir.” Disa touched her forehead and left. Once the door to the surgery closed, Tancrède met my gaze.
“Cuedro’s from Chevachèche. Several hands reported hearing him speak against you when you first came aboard,” the captain said without preamble. “He called you a threat to the ship. He was warned to hold his tongue, but since he had no reason to be in the hold, I’m inclined to believe that he did cause the collapse … with the intention to kill you.”
“Along with four of his shipmates?” I grimaced. I’d been in danger in Cislunar from conservatives protesting the New Theology, but their attacks had been targeted at sentinels as a group, never me in particular. I was not at all happy with my new status as the local villain.
“I imagine he saw an opportunity and seized it with little regard for the consequences. You’ve had no prior encounters with the man?”
“No, Captain. Most of my interactions have been with officers and the ship’s children I’m teaching. I don’t remember him at all.”
“When the barrels began to move, did you see him nearby?”
“No. All of my attention was on stopping the movement before I — before anybody was crushed. I do remember thinking that I saw a glimmer of light in the back of the old, but I couldn’t swear to it.”
Tancrède and Clyve exchanged looks.
“The hold was dark because you dropped your balelight,” the captain observed in a bland tone.
“Yes. The balewalls glowed, of course, but only dimly.” I frowned as I guessed where the captain was heading. “Captain, if you think I strangled this man while we were in the dark, I urge you to check again with Missus Wates and the three men who were with us. They saw four balewalls when the lantern was brought, and my Vigilance license will confirm my ranking.”
“That does not necessarily exonerate you. You could have set up a fourth wall after the marine was called, but….” Tancrède moved away from the table with a look of resignation, “I do not, in fact, believe you killed him. However, the alternative — that we have not one but two killers aboard the Chaser — pleases me no better.”
“It’s possible Cuedro was below for an innocent reason, and the person who strangled him also tried to kill us,” I said. Tancrède tilted his head slightly, as if in acknowledgement, but he didn’t look convinced.
“What do you want to do with the body?” Clyve inquired. “If we take it to the Adrahan morgue, someone might notice the ligatures and talk.”
“See to it that they do not, Mister Clyve,” Tancrède ordered. “And, Sentinel, say nothing of this to others.”
“I understand,” I replied. “Sir.”
“I would like you and Wates and a marine or two to go back below and search the hold for anything that might shed light on this matter.” Tancrède’s eyes narrowed. “But remember, Saint-Cloud, you are not to call balefire aboard my ship under any circumstances.”
“Sir.” I inclined my head and left, walking through the ship feeling as though my warrant officer’s jacket had a target stitched on its back.