Free Steel by Carrie Vaughn Page B

would never be made right. But she would sound crazy. Like she was apologizing for a stretch of history she had no control over. But she felt like she ought to apologize.

REMISE
     
    H enry was right, and the captain announced that they’d be sailing for Jamaica next. There had been some debate, back and forth, between Captain Cooper and Abe. “We could go east,” Abe had said. “Take them home.”
    Cooper had refused. “We don’t have provisions for such a voyage, and we can’t be sailing ’cross the Atlantic. Tell them that.”
    So Abe did, explaining in the language they shared that they couldn’t go back home, that they’d be sailing west instead of east. The interpreter seemed to plead with Abe, who relayed the words to Captain Cooper.
    “Abe, you know as well as I do we can’t take them home,” Cooper said. “And we’re still going after Blane.”
    Captain Cooper put it to a vote among the crew—Africa or Jamaica? Only Abe voted for Africa, so they sailed to Jamaica.
    Again, Jill watched Captain Cooper holding up the shard of rapier blade, watching it turn on its string, following its length with her gaze to stare out at a different part of the horizon than where they sailed to.
    Jill still wondered what the broken rapier meant—how Cooper knew the shard would behave like this, and what the captain hoped to accomplish by following it. And how did Jill fit into that? Or had she been brought here by accident? It was all too strange.
    After spending the night on deck, the former slaves went below to continue resting in semidarkness. They were still sick, and the surgeon, Emory, continued to move among them, checking for fevers, dispensing liquid concoctions. Jill hadn’t learned anything new about him. He glared at everyone and didn’t invite conversation.
    The next day, the captain set her to scrubbing the decks again. The whole thing, all over again. When Jill came to the middle of the deck, where the Africans had first been when they came on board, where their irons had been cut off, she found blood. Drops, smears, and stains of it marring the planks. She scraped with the stone, pressing as hard as she could, ’til the muscles in her arms cramped, but she couldn’t get the wood clean. Choking up, her throat tightening with tears, she kept scrubbing. She’d clean it, make it shine, if she worked hard enough, scrubbed fast enough.
    Startled, she nearly fell over when a hand touched her shoulder. Gasping, Jill saw Captain Cooper standing over her. The pirate’s hand rested on her shoulder, then pulled away.
    “It’s all right, lass. Leave it,” she said, and walked away.
    Slouching, Jill dropped the stone and watched her go.
     
     
    Another two days passed.
    Jill learned to sail. She learned that the Diana was a schooner, and while it might have seemed impressive, it was a speck next to a Spanish treasure galleon or an English ship of the line, or so the sailors told her. She learned about foremasts and mainmasts, yardarms and rigging, the bowsprit, larboard and starboard, fore and aft. She learned to tie knots and trim sails. At sea, ropes were called lines. She learned the commands that Cooper and Jenks shouted that made the crew scramble like they were a colony of ants, swarming to this sail or that rope—line—and making the changes that caused the ship to speed up, slow down, heave one way or another, plowing the waves in a different direction. Depending on whether the sails were furled or unfurled, and how, the ship behaved one way and not another. Even if Jill stayed on the ship for years, watching, she wouldn’t understand all the details. Many of the crew had, in fact, worked on ships since they were children.
    She divided the crew into two camps: the ones who hassled her and the ones who didn’t. In the former camp were some of the men from that first day, the ones who harassed her as soon as she came on board—Jenks, John, Martin, and a hulking man the others called Mule, who did