Free Wren Journeymage by Sherwood Smith Page B

pounded and kneaded the biscuit dough.
    Presently Cook was done with the pepper-rolls, and got out his clashing keys to unlock the tiny supply room next to the galley, where the captain’s food was kept. Wren and Patka exchanged glances, both knowing that the Cook would soon be making pastry for the captain. Ordinarily the smell of cinnamon and honey and other good spices that they wouldn’t get the tiniest taste of made their stomachs growl. Cook often chased them out, giving them vegetables to peel or beans to snap while squatting on the deck outside the galley so they wouldn’t pinch anything.
    When Cook ordered them out, Wren scarcely waited for the door to slam before she sat on a flour bag, beans in a bowl on her lap. She whispered, “How does he know it’s stolen? Are the guild seals missing?”
    “He said the seals are on the trunks. Danal thinks they’re fake.”
    “How’s he know?”
    Wood creaked nearby. Patka and Wren both looked around quickly, then realized it was the ship. The sound of the masts, the wind in the rigging, even the water on the hull had changed.
    “Danal always said he could ‘feel’ magic on things like cleaning buckets. Bridges. Fire Sticks.” Patka snorted as she expertly sent a long, spiraling peel flicking into the discard bowl, and picked up another yam. “Typical mage sort o’ snobbery. We never figured where Danal got such notions. Our big brother used to thump him good for making that up and bragging. But now, well, I dunno. Maybe there is something to it.”
    Wren said carefully, “Well, some people do claim there is a kind of tingly sense to magic.”
    Patka grinned. “That’s why they said I should tell you. You did those play-acting tricks when we sang, that day, before we got boomed. They figure someone who can do play-acting tricks might know a little. About. You know. Magic.” Her voice roughened, as if she were afraid of accusing Wren of something nasty. “Enough to see if Danal’s right.”
    Wren sat back, relieved. “Oh, well, I might try,” she said as carelessly as she could.
    Patka whispered, “Danal or Thad will take you down into the hold. But if we get caught—” Her peeler gestured backward.
    Over the side . Wren grimaced. “What can we do?”
    Patka hunched over her vegetables, looked around furtively again, then whispered even lower, “Find out. If the seals are fake, the silk has to be stolen. The Silk Guild always puts magic on their seals. That means the Sandskeet is practically a pirate ship—”
    Wren did not want to be working for pirates. “I think we should check. Then figure out what to do.”
    Patka ducked her head in a quick nod. “Us, too.”
    The door behind them opened. Cook thumped them both on the head with his ladle and snarled, “Are you going to sit out here dreaming all day?”
o0o
    A series of squalls prevented them from exploring. Three days they fought their way southward against crashing green waves and cloudbursts that veered between warm deluges and sharp, short hail-storms in winds so strong that it took the entire crew to keep a single sail under control lest it rip free of its bolt-holes and even endanger its mast.
    But on the fourth night the last of the squalls passed eastward in an angry purple band across the sky, leaving a cold, clean wind—what the captain, with great satisfaction, called a topsail breeze—driving them southward at so fast a pace the seawater raced down the sides of the Sandskeet in two white-foamed arches.
    Lambin took his tiranthe up onto the deck and began singing the ballads that the crew liked best. Soon others joined in; almost all the day crew was on deck, mending ropes and nets and sails, or just enjoying not being cooped up below for the first time in half a week.
    Wren climbed slowly to the deck, her hands wrinkly from being plunged in water for far too long before Cook finally dismissed her. She sniffed the warm twilight air and looked about the deck for a nice place to sit