Ship Breaker

21

THEY CAUGHT THE LUCKY EYE on their eighth day of sailing. The Ray, out in the deeps, was skating for the Florida cut and the open Atlantic beyond. The news ran through the ship like an electric wire. Soon everyone was up on deck. Captain Candless allowed himself a smile at their good fortune.

“The Ray,” he said. “Not Pole Star at all.”

Nailer could tell he was relieved. Nailer strained to see the speck on the horizon where Lucky Girl was running, but it was impossible. The captain saw him straining, grinned, and took him up to the con where a scope and photograph system shot distance pictures of the horizon and then magnified them. Blurs on the horizon became ships, became bow and stern and the smears of faces. All from fifteen miles away. Nailer stared at the images, awed.

“We’ll close on them and get some more shots,” the captain said. “We’ll want to know who’s on deck.” He nodded to his own decks. “And we’ll want to keep our own clear now as well.” He paused. “You’ll be staying below until we’re ready to engage. If Miss Nita gives you away or if your father catches sight of you, they’ll be ready for us. We don’t want that.” The captain looked out at the horizon again, thoughtful. “No. We certainly don’t want that.”

“Can you catch them?” Nailer asked. They seemed impossibly far away.

Reynolds, who was at the ship’s wheel, grinned. “We’re a fast ship and they’re a luxury wallower.”

“So we can?”

“Oh yes. We’ll catch them and we’ll board them. And we’ll take ourselves a right prize.” She and the captain exchanged confident smiles.

“I won’t be sorry to see Mr. Marn reap a bitter harvest,” the captain said. He waved at Nailer. “Come. It will be a while before we close the gap. As long as you’re belowdecks, you might as well make use of the time. Back to your letters, then.”

Nailer forced himself not to sigh.

Knot had taken on the project of teaching Nailer to read, and it hadn’t taken long for Nailer to begin resenting the tedium of book learning. But Knot didn’t care. The massive creature simply pressed and tested and forced Nailer to memorize and then to write.

In reality, the work wasn’t as hard as Nailer had always believed, especially with the yellow-eyed glare of a half-man looking over his shoulder, but it wasn’t exactly interesting in itself. Mostly it was just a question of work and time, and with the ship pitching around and the hydrofoil gears all cleaned and lubricated, all Knot would let him do was study. For the last couple nights, Nailer had lain in his bunk, his head filled with words and letters, dreaming of spellings that Knot had tricked him with.

The half-man liked trickery. Letters were fine, but words were hard. Lots of words didn’t spell like they sounded. But still, in the end, it was a memorization trick, like counting turnings in the ducts and keeping the quota count. And Knot wasn’t half as mean as old Bapi if you screwed up the counts.

Nailer let himself be ushered belowdecks, and Knot was found and soon they were working their way through a book of Knot’s, all about an old guy fishing on a boat. But it was hard for Nailer to concentrate, knowing that Lucky Girl and a fight loomed on the horizon.

At last he closed the book and looked up at the half-man. “Have you always had a master?” he asked.

Knot looked at him steadily. “I work for Captain Candless.”

“Yeah, but if you wanted, could you work for someone else?”

Knot shrugged. “I do not wish it.”

“Could you?” Nailer pressed.

Knot’s eyes hardened. His nostrils flared and his teeth showed slightly behind curling lips. “I do not wish it,” the half-man growled.

Nailer flinched. Knot suddenly looked like a mastiff backed into a corner, ready to bite. All of that muscle, previously so calm and steady, was suddenly bunched and bristle-backed. Nailer wanted to press again, but the half-man had become too frightening. He shut up.

The half-man stared at Nailer a moment longer. “I do not wish it,” he said again, and then looked away.

Nailer suddenly felt weirdly ashamed that he had prodded the huge creature. “We were reading,” he said hesitantly. The half-man nodded slowly.

“Yes. Please continue.”

For a while, Nailer read, with Knot correcting him. At last the half-man said, “I think you have done enough for now. I have other preparations I must attend to.”

“Are you ready to fight?”

Knot smiled and his sharp teeth showed. “It is my nature to fight.” He paused. “But this time it is also a pleasure.”

“Because of Lucky Girl?” He corrected himself. “Because of Miss Nita?”

“Yes.”

“Is she your mistress?” he asked, hesitantly. “The one you swore loyalty to?”

Knot regarded him. “Not exactly. Captain Candless serves her. I serve the captain. But we swear dual oaths to the clan.”

“But her clan is split now. Pyce has half-men working for him, too.”

“Yes. It is a difficult time.”

Nailer wanted to ask more about the nature of Knot’s loyalty, but he was afraid of irritating the creature. The last time it had felt as though he were on the verge of goading a tiger to attack. There were sensitivities that he didn’t understand. “You wouldn’t ever work for Pyce?”

Sharp teeth showed. A low growl issued. “He is nothing. He turned against us.”

“But Captain Candless was working for him, too. Up until just a couple days ago-”

Knot stood abruptly. “As long as Miss Nita survives, we do not serve Pyce. We thought she was dead. Now we know better. That is all. We will serve her until she dies or her clan grants true control to Pyce and his inheritors. Her father will do anything for her. We cannot do less.”

“He cares that much?”

“She is his daughter. Family.”

“Right. Family.” Nailer forced down a stab of jealousy. “The only thing family ever got me was a slap upside the head.”

“Some families are different.”

Nailer didn’t have much to say to that. Knot went to see to his duties, leaving Nailer to lie back in his bunk, waiting as Dauntless closed on its prey.

Family. It was just a word. Nailer could spell it now. Could see its letters all strung together. But it was a symbol, too. And people thought they knew what it meant. People used it everywhere. Ship breakers. His father, Dauntless’s crew. Tool. It was one of those things everyone had an opinion about-that it was what you had when you didn’t have anything else, that family was always there, that blood was thicker than water, whatever.

But when Nailer thought about it, most of those words and ideas just seemed like good excuses for people to behave badly and think they could get away with it. Family wasn’t any more reliable than marriages or friendships or blood-sworn crew, and maybe less. His own father really would gut him if he ever got hold of him again; it didn’t matter if they shared blood or not. Nita had an uncle hunting for her.

But Nailer was pretty sure that Sadna would fight for him tooth and nail, and maybe even give up her life to save him. Sadna cared. Pima cared.

The blood bond was nothing. It was the people that mattered. If they covered your back, and you covered theirs, then maybe that was worth calling family. Everything else was just so much smoke and lies.