by Siri Paulson
Read previous installments: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
For Marius, deciding to make himself a place aboard ship was rather easier than the doing of it.
Gloriana was friendly enough, but Marius dared not rely on her alone to be an ally among the crew; her comments about himself and Niko had been sufficiently ambivalent to give him pause, and moreover, being ship’s quartermaster kept her far too busy to nursemaid a land-rat.
The other crew members tended to either give Marius a wide berth or rib him mercilessly. At least they confined their ribbing to his haplessness aboard ship; Gloriana seemed the only one brave enough to give commentary on Niko.
He could have ingratiated himself with mending, but he was still working on the justacorps coat until his fingers cramped. It had been worn long enough that the lining needed mending in more spots than just the one, and the cuffs needed turning. The attempted theft at the docks had not improved matters, for it had been both torn – again – and dirtied. After all that, he was determined to return it to Niko in better condition than it had come to him.
So he found himself with no spare skills to offer, nor any but the most basic knowledge of the workings of the airship. The best he could do was keep out of the way during maneuvers and drills – except those Gloriana required him to join – and try not to look over the railing during gusty weather, which seemed to be all the time. They were now sailing over ocean rather than countryside, but he doubted the landing would be any softer.
Edging closer to the railing one afternoon, Marius squinted over it and had a glimpse of white schooner sails glinting on the water. The tiny wrinkles must be waves, though they looked like crushed silk. If only he could find a fabric of that hue to work with… Then his thoughts slid to how far down it must be, and he reeled away with a gasp.
“Master tailor?” The cabin boy tugged on his sleeve.
Marius winced. Even the boy did better on deck than he. “Yes, Isidro?”
“You’d do better looking out to the horizon at first. Don’t look straight down until you’ve got used to that, see?”
The horizon was even farther away… He mustered his courage and lifted his gaze. Sunlight sparkled on blue like jewels on a gown. It looked no worse than the view from cliffs at the seaside, where he’d once been as a young lad. His breathing evened out as his dizziness faded.
He turned, but the boy was gone from his elbow – climbing the rigging towards the air sacs, already above Marius’s head.
“Thank you!” Marius called.
Isidro gave him a cheeky grin and a wave, and headed on upwards. Marius didn’t even want to think about that, let alone watch.
After that, Isidro made a point of stopping by, now and then, the corner where Marius laboured over the remaking of the coat. He would ask questions about the work, and answer Marius’s questions in turn, clearly pleased to have someone to lecture for once. Marius listened, and did his best to learn, and to teach.
The new tear could not be so easily disguised as the initial slash across the chest. The latter had been a straight, neat cut, as if made with his own tailor’s scissors – or something equally sharp that he would rather not dwell on. The former was a jagged rip, its only saving grace being that it was on one shoulder rather than right across the front like the other. That took some thought, but finally he settled on adding a decorative flourish in gold on both shoulders to disguise the rougher seam that remained after the mending.
By this time, Isidro had taken to sitting by Marius’s side when not needed elsewhere, working away diligently at adding longer cuffs on his own spare shirt.
The front of the shirt was straining across the chest too, as the boy filled out. Measuring him through his other shirt, Marius felt something not-skin under the fabric and realized that the boy was wearing a chest binder to disguise budding breasts.
Isidro looked quickly over his shoulder, eyes wide.
Marius gave him a small nod. The boy grinned, and turned back around to let Marius finish measuring.
Marius resolved that once the coat was finished, he would sew Isidro a shirt roomy enough to disguise his shape as he grew, but cut carefully to fall just as it should. The opposite problem from Gloriana’s, really. He would enjoy solving both…
Then he realized he was thinking in terms of weeks or months on board, and cursed his own traitorous mind. Even if he had had no shop to get back to, he was making some awfully big assumptions about Niko’s plans and desires.
#
When he needed a break, he distracted himself by wandering down to the galley, where help was always needed, thanks to the appetites of the several dozen crew. The cook, Hamida, happily put him to work washing dishes, until she realized that the nimbleness of his fingers was wasted on this task. Then he found himself most often chopping vegetables, some familiar, others very much not.
The galley was also a good place for watching the interactions of the crew at ease. A few seemed more kindly disposed toward him after they saw him working away at shelling a huge bowl of peas or the like; others the reverse, as if such tasks ought to have been beneath him. He knew not whether that was because of his perceived – supposed? – status with Niko or his skill with a needle, or perhaps both.
Deep in the bowels of the airship, Marius was lugging a vat of vegetable peelings to feed the ship’s three goats when he heard soft footsteps behind him. A moment of anxiety passed almost at once; he knew that gait.
He stopped, but did not turn around. Smiling in the darkness, he said, “Has your patience run out waiting for me to come to you, pirate captain?”
“Not in the least,” said Niko’s voice, a soft rumble moving closer. “I will practise forbearance, though it tries my patience sorely.”
“Then why, pray tell, do you stalk me in the privacy of darkness?” He kept his voice light.
“Because, master tailor, you have chosen to spend your time in places of high visibility, where gossip is the most guaranteed. If a man wishes a moment alone, he must choose it carefully.”
His heart thudded wildly; he reminded himself that he had asked for the forbearance. “And why, if you are being patient, do you wish a moment alone?”
“Only to speak, nothing more. As I have promised.”
“Speak, then, pirate captain.”
He had turned his head to one side, the better to catch Niko’s quiet words, and his long hair in its queue fell to one side. Now he felt warm breath on the exposed skin of his neck, raising goosebumps and making his own breath hitch. He had not realized Niko was so close; he wondered if he ought to set down the vat he carried.
Yet Niko did not touch him. “You told of wanting to find your place aboard ship. I wish to know why you have started with the lowliest of the crew.”
“Where else?”
“Another might have aimed to see how quickly he could rise.”
Niko’s every breath on his skin sent tingles down his spine and straight to his privates. Marius stifled a laugh. When you are near…? His voice when he replied was less than steady, for several reasons. “I am content to stay out of your crew’s politics. In the first place, I am at a severe disadvantage with shipboard custom and knowledge. If I am to learn to make myself useful, I must perforce begin at the bottom, with those who are willing to teach me.”
“And the second?”
“I, too, began at the bottom of my trade,” Marius said quietly. It had been a long and difficult journey to the position he had attained, and he shied away from thinking of it.
“Most do, master tailor. Even I was a powder boy once.”
Marius tried to imagine Niko as a gangly, unsure boy carrying gunpowder to the cannon, and could not. “Not for long, I imagine.”
Niko was silent for a few moments. When he spoke again, his tone carried the weight of a decision. “No. But not for the reason you suppose. I was no leader then.”
“May I ask…?”
His voice grew rougher and more halting than Marius had ever heard it. “I started aboard a privateer, long gone now. There was an aerial battle, and my older brother – a quarter-gunner – was hit. He fell from the ship, and was still falling when the gunner motioned me over to take his place at the 24-pounder gun. There was no sympathy then; it was battle. But neither the gunner nor anyone else took much notice of my mourning, later. The only thing that eased it was showing the new powder girl the ways of the airship and talking her through her uncertainties. I never forgot that lesson.”
Marius was absurdly glad for the solidness of the vat he still clutched, and the darkness that prevented him from seeing Niko’s face. “Thank you,” he said. “For telling me.”
“I did so because I thought I saw the same old wound – and the same spirit – in you. Was I wrong?”
“No,” Marius whispered. His throat locked.
After a moment, Niko said softly, “One day, perhaps, you will share your tale. Or tales. Now that I have your…measure, master tailor, I am content to wait.”
Then the bulk of his presence was gone. Only then did Marius realize that the story had shed no light on the origins of the scarlet coat.
He turned and called into the shadows, “Pirate captain?”
A moving shadow stilled. “Speak.”
“I did not know what kinship lay between your spirit and mine. But had I sensed none, I would not have come.”
He could hear a smile in Niko’s voice. “So I hoped.”
To be continued…
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