Bone Jack

For another few seconds, Itzal watched Ben over the sword. There’s an amount of time that feels socially appropriate to wait between exchanges in conversation. Itzal waited the few seconds more than that. The sailors who pretended not to watch began dropping the pretense and watched obviously.

Itzal took a deep breath.

He threw the sword. It sung through the air, spinning but with a wobble. It caught the sun and flashed like running water. Before it could hit him, Ben ducked to the side. He whacked the flying sword out of the air with his own sword, sending it clattering to the deck.

Ben looked back toward Itzal. But Itzal had removed himself from view.

Although Itzal had discovered that the Riot had basically no comfortable places to settle down out of the way and quiet-like, he’d discovered on the same searches that the Riot had hiding places. It had hiding places in abundance for those willing to sacrifice comfort. It would be difficult to evade capture for long periods of time, but for a game of Hide the Corpse, in which Itzal played the part of the corpse, might go on forever, with a clever corpse. Which Itzal could be, on a good day.

So he did that. At first, Ben pursued Itzal, and did so alone and with confidence. He had a good head for ships, after all. Not as a sailor, true, so he didn’t know all the nooks and crannies. As a trader and frequent traveler, and having a quick mind for spaces and shapes, he’d more than a layman’s understanding of a ship’s layout. He knew about the extra space in front of the chocks where sailors often smuggled extra booze. There was often a nook or two at the back of the vestigial bilge, which would have likely been half-flooded on an ocean-going ship but which was used as extra storage on a prairie ship. No Itzal there either. It was about when Ben checked among the spare sails, finding a rat but no Itzal, that he asked some sailors nearby if they’d seen Itzal. They said they hadn’t, but they looked around too. At first they joined half-heartedly, and as a bit of a lark. Better than skylarking about waiting for their turn on watch.

They took to it with a jovial and over-serious attitude. At first, anyway, until they exhausted the first several hiding places they knew that Ben wouldn’t know. No Itzal in the gap between the bosun’s closet and the crew hammocks. No Itzal hanging from the foremast in that place that, no matter how little sail they hung, you could never see from the deck unless you stood just so and on the larboard tack. No Itzal, even, in the bottom of the crossbow cabinet.

It began to befuddle them to such an extent that they started calling their mates around to look as well. It came about soon that the only people on the ship who weren’t looking for Itzal were sailors otherwise engaged with pressing tasks, and Captain Younes.

“Mr. Tyro,” Captain Younes said. He’d come on deck after his afternoon meal. For several minutes he’d been pondering on the unusual commotion on deck and in the corridor outside. It almost sounded as if someone had beaten to quarters. As they had not beaten to quarters, he finished his meal before investigating. He went slowly to avoid the urgent traffic running here and there. Ben paced back and forth just forward of the raised poop deck. His rage could easily have been described as towering, although Captain Younes might have preferred the word “billowing,” as it seemed to rise in steamy columns from his red face.

“Aye, skipper,” Tyro said from the poop deck and from behind his gleaming grin.

“Something seems to have unsettled the discipline of my boat,” Captain Younes said.

“Aye, skipper,” Tyro said. “This squirrel has led the lads right around the merry chase.”

It took Captain Younes a moment to interpret that. It surprised him. When he’d first met Tyro, and first heard his way of talking, there’d been a bit of a warming period when Captain Younes had needed to learn the ins and outs of Tyro’s accents. That period had long passed, and it had been a long time since Captain Younes had wondered what Tyro meant. It took him sideways to feel confused now.

It was the reference to a squirrel that got him, Captain Younes realized. He didn’t know what squirrel Tyro meant.

Captain Younes maintained a view that, unless the urgency was clearly immediate, he could explain anything to himself, if given enough time to think and watch. Instead of asking for any more information, Captain Younes went to his customary place at the railing that overlooked the rest of the ship. From there he watched.

He made note of every familiar sailor, moving here and there among the masts and whirring central wheel. Ben blustered in his grumbling and gravelly way. There wasn’t a sail on the horizon to be an easy excuse. None of the Riot’s sailors seemed to be causing a commotion. Quite contrarily, they behaved with unity, as he would expect of them in an action situation, although not with the tidiness he would have hoped to see. They were w well-trained lot, and he felt rather proud of how they’d organize in a crisis.

If only he could see what crisis they organized themselves to face, he’d be all the more proud.

So he kept watching.

The running about looked pell-mell. Though it did have a few points of focus. One of them was Ben. And another was Mr. Teknik, the ship’s carpenter, and a skilled sailor with many years of experience. He held a good standing among the men. They respected his good sense and broad experience and his cool head in situations that required quick thought. He’d stationed himself atop a crate, and other sailors would come to him two or three at a time. It looked every bit as if he had organized them into a search. This is how it would look when they’d put into port and Mr. Teknik would need a particular clip and have the lads back and forth from him like a network of feelers.

Mr. Teknik once ordered a search of the kind on the Riot. That time it had been in pursuit of a stowaway.

Which could explain the squirrel… Now Captain Younes thought of it, there were some squirrel-like qualities to the boy. Making another scanning look-over of the deck and taking note of the one absence, Captain Younes nodded.

He got out his cigarette case. Taking one out, he tapped it a few times, to settle the tobacco and to think. The cigarette case was a silver one, and he’d polished it that morning as a lark. He wasn’t sure he liked the effect, preferring tarnished silver, but he found it fortunate at the moment. Going to the aft rail, Captain Younes struck a match and lit his cigarette. He emptied the rest of the cigarettes into his pocket and, under the pretense of pouring old dust out of the case, he held it at arms-length aft of the ship. Then he clipped it shut. He could only see the reflection in its top for an instant, but an instant was enough.

He’d found the one hiding place that would never occur to anyone who knew the hazards of sailing, but just might occur to a lubberly person, if they were bold and quick.

How he’d gotten down there, Captain Younes could only guess.

“Shall I call off the hunts, skipper?” Tyro asked.

Captain Younes went to where he could watch Ben for a while. Smoking his silky cigarette and thinking about bullies he’d known, Captain Younes kept quiet for a while. He happened to glance at the searches on the deck. They were getting loose and chaotic. He saw a few sailors check the same place more than once.

Taking a long drag at his cigarette, Captain Younes went to the railing overlooking the ship. Venting the smoke as he called out, he delivered an order. “Mr. Teknik, tighten up that raffle, if you will. A bit of charcoal, if you please, for Mr. Teknik. Establish a proper grid, there, and a list of where you’ve searched, and set up watches. I want to see no more wasted effort. Step lively.”

Mr. Teknik, looking somewhat startled, began shouting his own orders to the crew. The searching took a far more militant shape within seconds. Searchers moved in groups of three, leaving one man behind anywhere they searched, and reporting back to Teknik. He’d make a note, and send them out again with an extra man. No more wasted effort on anyone’s part.

Except Ben, Captain Younes noted. Ben sat on a barrel, his whole head red, and his frown deep as heartache.

Captain Younes, satisfied now by the effort, took another long draw off his cigarette.

“In for a sound lashing when he emerges, our squirrel,” Tyro said, his teeth flashing in the sun.

“When the search has ended, you will ensure the ship resumes the business of the day.”

“Aye, skipper,” Tyro said.

This time, the search did not take much time. With the crew well organized, they covered the Riot swiftly and thoroughly. By the end, the Riot had gone through a wash- and brush-up that it’d needed for a while. Captain Younes felt pleased, striding around looking at the tidily shorn up ropes and sails and all the bits that’d been growing slowly slovenly.

On the crew, the search had the effect of making them wonder if they’d imagined Itzal.

And on Ben, it had the effect of calming him down. Captain Younes passed him on the spot where he’d sat now for several hours. He looked far from angry. He looked grim, but he looked grim like someone who’d broken something that a friend had trusted them to keep for a while.

Captain Younes went up to his deck. He relieved the man at the helm, and he did what he sometimes did simply for the pleasure of it: he steered his own ship away from sunset and plunged head-on into the arch of oncoming night.

Before the dusk had entirely disappeared, the crew quieted down and the night watches began their whispering patrols. Before it got dark enough to light the lamps, Captain Younes gazed ahead at the troublous dusk gloam that hardly earned the word “light,” and earned it worse than starlight did. Starlight, at least, made things silvery. Gloaming just made everything grey and fuzzed at the edges. One’s eyes hardly knew what to do with gloaming.

He loved it. The keenest deceptions could be conducted in the gloaming. No one could see anything properly, and that was an advantage to anyone who relied less on sight and more on thoughts. It was the perfect time for sneaking things to move from spot to spot.

A sound far quieter than Captain Younes expected brushed the deck behind him. He almost missed it. Probably would have if he hadn’t been listening for it.

“Finally hungry, are we?” Captain Younes said.

The feather-light brushing that passed for Itzal’s footsteps stopped like a breath of wind.

“Keen ears,” Itzal said. “Yes. Hungry.”

“You may find your reception below decks rather…mixed,” Captain Younes said. “I am conducting a disciplinary training exercise. You might find yourself best received if you avoid telling the crew the truth about your hiding places this afternoon. They may have already concocted various stories—farfetched would be a fair word for them. If you could find your way to embracing them, without confirming them, I would be very much obliged. Vague responses that commit to nothing would, I think, serve.”

“If…if that’s what you think best,” Itzal said.

“There’s far too little discipline on this ship if the crew can be so easily distracted.”

“Well, if you’re the one saying it…I didn’t want to point it out,” Itzal said.

“Carry on,” Captain Younes said. “The cook’s prepared mutton tonight, I believe.”

“Right,” Itzal said.

Captain Younes waited for Itzal to hurry past. And he kept waiting. No movement happened. No sounds, no matter how light, of footfalls padded in the night. The skipper turned around to look for Itzal.

No one else stood on the deck with him. He’d never looked away. He didn’t know how Itzal had got past, unless the boy climbed over the side again. Captain Younes felt like he would have heard that happen.

If he was perfectly honest, it rattled him somewhat. Captain Younes turned back to steering the Riot, counting the stars, and musing on the novelty of the sensation.

He intended to never feel it again.

For some while no one interrupted Ben. He quietly un-steamed, growing every moment less angry, and evermore wondering about his own motivation in goading Itzal. He didn’t find self-reflection comforting. The practice always dredged up intolerable revelations, like perhaps that he wasn’t always in the right.

If he allowed himself to be honest, he had not wished to test Itzal’s mettle. He had gotten a good sense of that already. Itzal was, for all intents and purposes, still a boy, and he was a boy who’d seen little of the world and been forced from a comfortable home into an adventure that hadn’t treated him too well so far. After those several uncomfortable days, Itzal had borne himself rather well. At Itzal’s age (whatever age it was—eighteen? Ben couldn’t tell), Ben couldn’t imagine he’d have been so calm about it. And Ben had known Lilywhite for years. If Itzal and Lilywhite had the same training, Ben knew that if the situation got grueling Itzal would be up for it. Itzal didn’t seem convinced of that, but people aren’t always their own best judge of their character.

If he allowed himself to be honest, Ben knew he had been less interested in picking a fight with Itzal and more interested in picking a fight with the constabulary of the Great Basin Trading Confederation, and with Lilywhite, and with Volta Gabbana—that blighted man who’d been so unkind as to get himself killed. And, in general, with the wretched unfairness that’d plagued him for several years and seemed to have built to a thunder head. And that thunder head took the unlikely shape of this small Blue Jay.

A beam of orange light cut into Ben’s musing. It alerted him to the fact night had fallen. He hadn’t noticed it. Now he did. He looked up at the stars, always so dense out on a ship. Then he looked back down at the beam of light.

It came from the trapdoor that led down to the crewmen’s mess. With the beam of light, a low grumbling of talking sailors came unmuffled for a moment—with it too a smell of greasy, roasted mutton and salty hard tack toasted in olive oil. The smell woke Ben to his appetite. He’d been hungry for a while now and hadn’t noticed it.

A person—just a black silhouette to Ben from here—came out of the trapdoor then closed it behind himself. The smells and sounds muffled again, and the night turned once again to silvery darkness.

The person came toward Ben. He carried a plate. Ben could smell the mutton and hard tack. He came close enough that Ben’s somewhat age-dimmed eyes could make him out.

“Ever heard the term ‘merry chase’?” Ben asked.

“Yes,” said Itzal.

“You won’t be hearing it from me,” Ben said.

“No,” Itzal said.

“Nothing merry about the chase,” Ben said.

“Depends what end of it you’re on,” Itzal said.

Ben grunted. He took the toasted hard tack from the tin plate where Itzal set it nearby on the crate. Itzal leaned himself on the other side of the plate from Ben. He looked up toward the stars.

“I have never seen them so bright,” Itzal said.

“More to them when they’re all the light there is,” Ben said.

“I’ve read a lot of poetry about stars,” Itzal said.

Ben grunted.

“It all falls somewhat short,”

“Wait for a night with no moon,” Ben said. “We’ve only part of a moon tonight. Still glows a bit bright. Blots out plenty.”

Itzal nodded. Ben wouldn’t have noticed if Itzal didn’t have all those little things tied in his long hair. They clattered somewhat when he nodded.

For a bit neither of them talked. Ben ate. He finished the hard tack, took a drink of the weak ale that Itzal had also brought, and started on the mutton. He kept at the irritating self-reflection while he did.

“I’ve got a son,” Ben said. “Back in Alwatan. Much younger than you. And I had a bad month once. At the end of the bad month, he happened to break something. A little knife I’d made for him. I was about ready to take it out of his hide. Wife stopped me, told me to take a walk.”

“Was everything better when you got back?”

“Somewhat better,” Ben said. “I repaired the knife. She made me apologize for getting angry with him.”

“Forgive me if I come across as insensitive—I’ve met few Alwatan women. Isn’t it a bit out of character for them to correct their husbands?”

Ben smiled. “She is a singular woman, Blue Jay.”

“I hope to meet her someday.”

“She’ll be coming here, if we can ever get the damn trade routes tidy enough for the travelling to be safe.” Sensing that the conversation was swiftly turning personal, Ben shoved the last of the mutton into his mouth. “Are you tired? Been a long day for you.”

“I took a nap much of the afternoon,” Itzal said.

“I’m damned tired,” Ben said. “I’ll be off to my hammock. Will you be doing something poetic in the meantime? Staring at the stars or some rot like that?”

“I think so,” Itzal said.

“Suit yourself,” Ben said. Then, heartened that they didn’t need to talk any more, he left to go find a free hammock below and sleep.