Chương 178: 20. Daily Life at Sea 1

The moment my foot hit the gangplank, the wood produced a soft creak beneath me. Not a loud sound. But it felt, inexplicably, like a boundary. On one side: Blackbeard Bay, still reeking of alcohol, blood, fish, gambling debts, and the particular atmosphere of things that become criminal incidents after dark. On the other: this two-masted fast brigantine called Tidesever—a ship that didn't look particularly large, but was visibly more dangerous than most of the people I had encountered over the past few days.

This wasn't my first time on a ship. As a child, I had taken official vessels and merchant ships along the Kingdom's inland rivers and coastal harbors. But those ships and this one weren't even the same species. The former was like walking on water. The latter was more like a blade that had been deliberately ground narrow and vicious—usually kept sheathed, but absolutely not designed for anyone's peace of mind once drawn.

"Stop standing there like you've never seen the ocean before." The short-haired woman on deck was cleaning her flintlock and didn't look up as she said it.

"You're blocking traffic, Kingdom boy." Before I could respond, the tall, lean man coiling rope nearby laughed first.

"Easy, Lov. He's technically our honored guest right now. Just still smells a bit too much like shore."

"You could wash the alcohol out of your own mouth before commenting on anyone else's scent," I shot back. The tall man blinked, then his grin widened.

"Oh, this one bites back."

"Biting back beats having a face that screams 'I'll die first' at a glance," said the boy sitting at the base of the mast, eating an apple without bothering to look up.

"Captain, this batch of cargo has better personality than last month's contraband spirits."

"Call me cargo one more time," I said, looking at him, "and I guarantee that apple is going to exit from a completely different direction." The boy whistled, as though he had just heard something genuinely entertaining. Marro simply glanced back at me over his shoulder.

"Threatening crew members within thirty seconds of boarding," he said, walking toward the stern with his usual conversational tone.

"Impressive adaptation speed."

"Is that a compliment?"

"No." He didn't look back.

"It's documentation. So I have a reason ready when I eventually throw you overboard." The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. Does this man possess even a single sentence that could reasonably be mistaken for comfort? I cursed silently and followed anyway. Ignicia, by contrast, stepped onto the deck with the composure of someone who had never experienced the concept of being out of place.

She didn't spare a glance for the assessing, suspicious looks from the crew—simply swept her eyes once across the ship's structure: main mast position, backup rigging, the weapons mounted along the rails, and finally up at the two half-furled dark sails. The look of someone calculating exactly how fast this thing could run. Not how a passenger examines a ship. More like how an apex predator assesses escape routes in case the platform capsizes.... That might be slightly uncharitable.

Based on my knowledge of her, probably not by much. Tidesever's deck was compact—the efficient tightness of a mid-sized working vessel. Every plank showed years of use. Every rope had been handled to a shine. Nothing existed for decoration.

From the pulleys beside the main mast, to the spare hooks and oilcloth bundles at the gunwale, to the narrow wooden crates near the stern that looked unremarkable and almost certainly contained items for when everything goes wrong—everything communicated one clear message: Not a merchant vessel. Not a naval ship. A ship built specifically to navigate the gap between rules and danger. Marro led us to a small cabin below the stern and stopped.

"You're in here." I looked at the door, then at him.

"You're. As in both of us."

"What," Marro raised an eyebrow, "would you prefer to sleep with me?"

"I'd prefer you to go directly to hell."

"Then stop complaining." He pushed the door open. The space inside was: one narrow bunk fixed to the cabin wall, one folding hammock, one small oil lamp, one wooden chest that could hold things if you weren't particular about which things, and one porthole sized precisely to make passengers feel personally insulted. The widest point allowed two people to pass each other without shoulder contact, provided both made a sincere effort. I was quiet for two seconds.

"This is smaller than my room in Blackbeard Bay."

"But no strangers will climb through the window at midnight to cut your throat," Marro said, with admirable practicality.

"At sea, accommodation prioritizes survivable, not spacious."

"You don't have another cabin available?"

"I do." My eyes lit up for exactly one moment.

"I simply don't want to give it to you."... I knew it. Ignicia had no opinion about the square footage. She stepped inside, looked around once, removed her cloak, and hung it on the wall peg.

"Which one is mine?" she asked. Marro pointed to the fixed bunk.

"That one. He gets the hammock." I turned to look at the hammock. Honestly, it didn't look like a bed. It looked like a suspended piece of fabric specifically engineered to test the outer limits of human dignity and seasickness simultaneously.

"I'm suddenly feeling nostalgic for that drafty room in Blackbeard Bay."

"Congratulations," Ignicia said without expression.

"You've finally learned to appreciate what you had." I gave her a look of profound betrayal. She ignored it, unbuckled the short blade from her hip, and set it beside the bunk. Marro knocked the doorframe in the manner of a man who considered his responsibilities discharged.

"Food in a quarter hour. Once we clear harbor, if you haven't secured yourselves and end up in a barrel or with a broken nose, that's not my problem."

"Isn't this the moment you're supposed to say welcome aboard?" I asked.

"Didn't I just let you on?"

"... That barely qualifies as a welcome."

"It's the Marro variety," he said, and left. I stared at the closed door for a long moment.

"I genuinely want to know how that man has survived this long."

"Because he knows exactly when to let someone board and when to throw them off," Ignicia said from the bunk, her voice carrying the serenity of someone reporting weather conditions.

"That type tends to live longer."

"You sound almost like you admire him."

"No." She looked up at me.

"I understand him." For reasons I couldn't explain, that made things more complicated. Because she was right. And the more time passed, the more I understood that the most fundamentally inconvenient thing about Ignicia was precisely this—she was usually right.