Chương 179: 20. Daily Life at Sea 2

We were eating dinner when Tidesever slipped out of port. Dinner being a bowl of fish soup thick enough to stand a spoon in, two pieces of hard bread, and smoked meat so salty it seemed to have been cured directly in seawater. Not what anyone would call refined—it fell below even moderately decent capital taverns—but on this ship, it somehow registered as reassuring. At minimum, I hadn't yet bitten into bone, sand, dice, or anyone's finger.

"What's that expression for?" Lov, the short-haired woman across from me, was disassembling her flintlock without looking up.

"If you don't like it, give it back."

"I don't dislike it." I lifted a spoonful of fish soup and considered my phrasing.

"I'm just trying to determine what this fish did wrong in its previous life to deserve being cooked like this." Several crew members laughed simultaneously. Even the apple-eating boy looked up at me.

"You're funnier than I expected," he said.

"Thank you. You look more punchable than I expected."

"His name's Nico," Lov said, not looking up.

"Youngest on the ship, worst mouth on the ship. If you want to hit him, get in line."

"Hey," Nico protested with genuine offense. The tall man—whose name I learned was Blake—clapped me on the shoulder with zero sympathy.

"Don't worry, kid. Give it a few days and you'll get used to it. And if you don't, it's probably because you've been too busy vomiting to notice."

"The morale support on this ship has a very distinctive house style," I said.

"That's called corporate culture," Marro said, appearing behind us with an iron cup in hand. I nearly choked on my fish soup.

"This ship has corporate culture?"

"Sure does," Blake said naturally.

"Stay alive, don't waste words, move fast. Can't manage that, go over the side."

"Remarkably comprehensive," I said.

"Stick around a few more days, you'll learn the rest." That sentence had the distinct acoustic quality of a curse. While we talked, Tidesever had quietly slipped out of the dock district. Under the night sky, Blackbeard Bay's lights fell away one by one behind us. The port's particular blend of alcohol, fish, mud, cheap perfume, and gambling—that dense, hot smell—gradually dissolved into the cleaner pressure of open sea wind.

I held my iron bowl and watched the receding docks, and for a moment felt something genuinely strange. A few days ago I had been on an island with a fire dragon princess who had nearly incinerated me on first meeting, diving through living springs, crawling through ruins, detonating a submarine, commandeering a speedboat. Now we were sitting on a smuggling vessel, making for a Dragon Kingdom port.

If I told any of the knights at Black Dragon Pass this sequence of events, they would first check whether I'd taken a wave to the head.

"What are you thinking about?" Ignicia asked. I came back to myself and noticed her bowl was nearly untouched.

"Thinking about how this journey managed to deteriorate so thoroughly," I said.

"Simple enough," she replied.

"Because you kept surviving." Was that comfort? No. That was a fact. The kind I had no grounds to argue with. The real problem came at night. I had assumed that after surviving a speedboat, weathering rough water, and blasting out of an underground shipyard, I had developed some psychological preparation for life at sea. I had overestimated myself considerably. A speedboat and a two-masted fast brigantine were not the same category of experience.

The speedboat was like being grabbed by the collar and flung across the water's surface. Tidesever was more polite—she would first allow you to believe you had your footing, then slowly, methodically dismantle your sense of balance, spatial orientation, and stomach simultaneously. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. I had been in the hammock for less than fifteen minutes before I began to understand why human beings had invented land.

Tidesever ran fast. Fast enough that the hull didn't simply pitch up and down—it moved with a sliding, cutting rhythm, skimming along wave crests in sequence. Every time the ship angled slightly, the hammock would send me in the opposite direction with cheerful dedication, making me increasingly convinced it had coordinated with Marro to break me without technically drawing blood.

"... Are you asleep?" I asked into the dark. A pause from the direction of the bunk. Then Ignicia answered with complete composure: "No."

"You're not getting seasick?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I can fly." That answer was so airtight it was infuriating. I held out for a moment, then didn't.

"Right now I very much want to put you in this hammock and see how that works out."

"If you actually tried, you'd be found hanging from the mast by morning."

"At least I'd get fresh air." She made a low sound in the dark—brief, impossible to determine whether it qualified as a laugh. I turned over. The hammock immediately sent me back the other way. I stared up at the wooden beam overhead, shifting with the ship's movement, and after a long pause spoke again.

"Ignicia."

"Mm."

"Is Iskaaupbra Port close to your father's capital?" She was quiet for a moment before answering.

"Reasonably close. If everything goes smoothly, from the port through inland rivers and mountain roads, it shouldn't take too long."

"What kind of place is it?"

"Wet. Hot. Loud," she said.

"... That sounds somewhat like Blackbeard Bay."

"It isn't." Her voice was level.

"Blackbeard Bay is rotten. Iskaaupbra is alive." I paused. In the dark, I couldn't see her expression. But somehow I could picture it—probably very still, and very genuine. Not the tone of a traveler describing a destination. Something more like an instinct. So for once I didn't follow with a quip. After a long moment, I said quietly: "... I hope we actually make it." This time she was silent for longer. Long enough that I had decided she wasn't going to answer—and then heard her voice in the darkness.

"We will." I didn't know whether she was saying it for me or for herself. But strangely, hearing it from her—those two words in that particular register of calm—loosened something in my chest that the sea and the unknown had been pressing down together. Even if only slightly. I fell asleep sometime in the second half of the night. Not because the hammock became comfortable. Because human beings have limits.

When a person has been consecutively processed through escape, ancient ruins, Ravens, an auction house, a corpse, a smuggling vessel, and fish soup, the brain engages self-preservation shutdown as policy. Half-conscious, I heard watch changes on deck, rope against rope, water against hull. Strange sounds at first. But as they layered over each other, they carried an odd kind of order.

As though this ship, this sea, and these dangerous people had long since learned to be alive in exactly this kind of night—and I was simply a newcomer who hadn't found the rhythm yet. I fell completely asleep inside the rocking. The last thought before unconsciousness: If I survive this voyage, I will feel genuine gratitude toward every bed that doesn't move for the rest of my life.

When I woke the next morning, my first coherent thought was: so a person genuinely can be half-killed by a ship while technically sleeping. The hammock had wrapped around me like a salted fish being prepared for drying. Inside my skull, a blacksmith of notably bad temperament had apparently been working both temples since midnight. The cabin was narrow and stuffy, the air a combination of timber, sea salt, oil, and something damp I declined to investigate. The bunk across the room was empty. Ignicia was gone.

I pressed a hand to my forehead and sat up. The hammock, ever dutiful, gave me one final swing. Three deliberate breaths to convince my stomach that now was not the time—at least wait until I reached the deck. When I pushed open the cabin door and stepped into open air, I understood immediately that I had overestimated the morning. Sea wind hit me full in the face.

The view opened without warning—the entire ocean spreading out in dawn light, blue sharp enough to hurt, waves driving against the hull in continuous succession, as if to say: welcome to the actual sea, inland boy.

"Oh, you made it out alive?" Blake was at the main mast sorting rope and looked up with cheerful offense.

"Nico and I had a bet going on whether you'd throw up in the bunk or at the door."

"Is this how everyone on this ship says good morning?" I held the cabin door, focusing on not looking like someone about to kneel on deck.

"No," said Nico, crouched at the gunwale trimming a wooden wedge.

"This is the considerate passenger version." I was about to respond when my stomach registered a prior claim. I turned, gripped the railing, and dry-heaved twice. Blake's laughter was immediate and entirely without mercy.

"Deck! He made it to the deck!"

"Shut up..."

"Relax, kid." He clapped my back with helpful enthusiasm and the force of someone trying to capsize me.

"First day doesn't count. Second day still doesn't count. Third day, that's when we start discussing nicknames."

"Such as?""'Freshwater Stomach,'" Nico offered.

"I prefer 'One-Wave Kingdom Boy,'" said Lov, walking past with a disassembled powder case, her voice carrying the warmth of something retrieved from the ocean floor. I glared at her. She didn't bother returning the look—just tossed a piece of hard bread at me with administrative efficiency.

"Eat."

"Looking at food right now makes me want to die."

"Then want to die while eating," she said.

"This ship doesn't maintain things that only get seasick and don't contribute." Is there a single normal person on this vessel? I caught the bread while thinking it, because she was unfortunately correct. This wasn't the capital or Black Dragon Pass. You could feel terrible, you could look terrible, but you couldn't stop. Stopping wasn't just personal failure—it was liability to the whole ship.

What made it worse was that Ignicia was currently standing at the bow, looking like someone who had slept in her own garden rather than a rocking ship cabin. She had already changed into practical clothes, hair bound up, cloak folded over one arm, one hand resting on rigging near the foremast—looking more native to this vessel than I did. I walked over, chewing the hard bread, and found her looking up at the wind.

"You're fine?" I asked, unable to stop myself. She turned and let her eyes rest on my face for half a second—taking in whatever I was currently presenting.

"You look nearly dead," she said.

"... Thank you, I was already aware."

"So I answered your question." I was quiet for two seconds.

"I was asking why you're fine."

"I told you last night," she said with perfect serenity.

"I can fly."

"This world is genuinely unkind to people who can't." She tilted her head slightly, looking at the half-eaten bread in my hand.

"At least you can eat."

"Is that encouragement?"

"Observation." Consistent. Reliably, dependably consistent.