Steel

Still laughing, but softly, they put her in a bed that rocked her to sleep like she was a baby in a cradle. Or it might have been that she just passed out.

FLÈCHE

Jill woke up cramped, uncomfortable, with a headache that grew worse, throbbing at her temples, when she tried to sit up, which she couldn’t do very well because she was rolled into a hammock. The ship was still rocking, and the hammock, suspended from the beam above, swung with the motion. Like the rest of the ship, the room she was in smelled of damp wood, salt, and slime, and it was dark. The only light came in through the hatch at one end. Bright sunlight. Even though she was twenty feet away from it, she squinted and turned away. Some dream this was. She ought to be able to skip over this part.

Her head hurt every time she moved.

She was below the main deck. Hammocks hung from every beam, maybe two dozen of them, in a space that didn’t seem very large. Most of those were empty, swaying with the creaking ship. The few bodies that lay sleeping here didn’t seem much better off than she was; they were either snoring in deep sleep or groaning in hungover pain.

“There you are, awake at last!” Henry climbed down the steep stairs and blocked the sunlight from the hatch. Jill wondered how she’d made it down those narrow steps last night.

A couple of the others moaned louder and grumbled insults at Henry, who grinned at them.

Henry came over to her and loomed. She rolled out of the hammock just to keep him from staring down at her. Her balance still wasn’t working right, though; she landed on her kne

es and had to hold on to the hammock’s ropes to keep from falling further. She glared at him.

“Bright eyed and ready to start the day, I see.”

“I want to go home. This is a mistake.” Slowly, moving her head as little as possible, she pulled herself to her feet.

“Nonsense. You signed on, you’re crew now. Time to get to work.”

She wondered if this was punishment—she’d wanted to get away from her life, and here she’d gotten her wish. Maybe she should just go along for the ride, until she woke up for real.

She wasn’t sure she could let go of the hammock yet. She didn’t seem to be able to stand up straight and kept swaying with the motion of the boat. “What if I say no?”

Henry shrugged. “Then you don’t eat. Or maybe we’ll pitch you over the side.”

Someone laughed. Someone always seemed to be laughing, mocking.

She followed Henry to the steps and up to the deck.

“Is there any water?” she said, thinking a gallon of water would make her feel a tiny bit better.

There was, stored in a barrel on deck at the front of the ship. Henry had recovered her tin cup, which still smelled of rum and sent Jill’s head spinning again. But she drank two cupfuls of water and felt much better.

For another day, she scrubbed decks.

She forgot about being seasick, and forgot about being scared of the pirates. Mostly, it was strange, because they didn’t act like terrifying criminals or happy-go-lucky cartoon pirates. They worked—the chores on board seemed never ending: cleaning, repairing, working on the sails and rigging, working on weapons, sharpening knives and checking pistols. Amidst all that they seemed laid-back, easygoing, enjoying drinking and singing, and they seemed to respect the captain, who stayed on deck most of the day, watching the crew or the sea. Jill supposed that they all had to get along well, or they wouldn’t survive very long cooped up on the tiny ship for weeks at a time.

She kept expecting to wake up from a dream. Being here, among the constant ripple of sails, the forest of mast and rigging, seeing nothing but ocean around them, was so surreal, it couldn’t be happening. When she fell overboard, maybe she’d been knocked on her head and was lying on a hospital bed in a coma. That seemed more likely. But she could smell salt on the air, and she tasted the sea on her lips.

She wondered if her parents were looking for her. Or sitting next to her hospital bed, holding her hand, begging her to wake up. Jill thought she should have known what was happening, if that was the case. She ought to hear her mother yelling at Mandy and Tom in the background.

A third day passed, then a fourth. Jill’s skin dried out and browned, and she could now walk across the deck in a straight line no matter how much the ship swayed.

Henry stopped supervising her on every little chore, but they continued talking. He showed her the ropes, literally, teaching her how the rigging worked, how the sails worked, what they all needed to do when the commands were given, working as a team to keep the ship moving. He seemed to be the youngest one on board, close to her own age even, though it was hard to judge ages here. They all might have been young, but worn out from hard work and living in the elements. Like that grizzled, wiry tour guide.

Jill had the impression that the captain was always watching her—like she still thought Jill was a spy for this Blane guy, and that she’d give herself away eventually. Marjory Cooper was intimidating; Jill felt herself grow smaller under the woman’s gaze. But Cooper was better than some of the others who seemed to study her when they thought no one was looking. Jenks, the bald first mate, for one.

According to the articles the pirates had a law against rape—the punishment was being marooned, set alone on a beach with a bottle of water and a pistol with one shot loaded. Jill would rather not find out how well the ship enforced its own rules, and stuck close to Henry, Abe, some of the crew who’d been friendly to her, and even the captain.

Jill was scrubbing the deck near the wheel—the helm, Henry called it—when Abe called the captain over and handed her a telescope—no, a spyglass. A brass cylinder on a lanyard. The captain brought the instrument to her own eye.

Looking out to what they studied, Jill couldn’t see anything. She squinted into the bright sunlight reflecting off the water, all the way to the haze on the horizon, and saw only ocean. But Cooper and Abe saw something.

“On its way to the market at Havana, I’ll wager. It’s off our course,” Captain Cooper said finally, handing the telescope back. She took the broken piece of rapier from her pocket and suspended it on its string. The length of steel swung for just a moment before pointing solidly in one direction—leaning, almost, in defiance of gravity. West, Jill thought, while the object of their attention was southeast.