Chapter III
Swells Over Still Waters, Part 1: Stealing (+Audiobook)
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11th Day in the 4th of Ründ’s Months, Dry Season, in the 29th Year of King Bornidin the Young’s Reign, 126th Reckoned Year
There was a man who sought to know all secrets laid bare…
…and the man looked to the West in search of Truth, but saw only what lies there.
And so he sailed on.
There was a man who sought to know why evil does prevail…
…and the man looked to the North in search of Truth, but saw only what lies there.
And so he sailed on.
There was a man who sought to know why life is unfair…
…and the man looked to the East in search of Truth, but saw only what lies there.
And so he sailed on.
There was a man who sought to know why all things die…
…and the man looked to the South in search of Truth, but did not see what there lie.
And so he sailed on.
From ‘Sayings of Saint Wōde’, Order of Loss, Written by Saint Wōde in the Unreckoned Years
The ship resembles one of the fruit trees you would find in a floating forest like Gar Hedron. The main mast is fashioned like a tree trunk sprouting two thick branches out to the port and starboard side. These first branches are holding the bottom of the sails, and other branches spout off further up the trunk, two of which hold the tops of the sails. The smaller mizzenmast also resembles a tree, just smaller in size. Then there are the roots that stem from the decking in wide arcs, out and down to the water. Petsune can tell they barely dip under the surface because when a slight wave rolls by you can see the bottoms of them. The ship, if it can be called that, resembles a tree that has grown out of a small merchant ship’s hull. It would be somewhat alarming if it wasn’t so overwhelmingly beautiful. Every other ship in the port is a fairly standard vessel, though some of them have embellishments and accouterments; a copper plated bottom, supposedly for speed but more as a sign of wealth and status; elaborate designs in the railings and molding; or an immense figurehead that stretches halfway down the sides of the ship.
The strange tree-ship is unlike any of these and is far more beautiful. It has green sails, but Petsune finds himself wondering how such a beautiful and undoubtedly expensive ship could be used for shipping goods: it almost seems like a crime. It appears too otherly in this port full of standard ships, and despite it being smaller, it seems more luxurious - more important. If King Bornidin the Younger were to walk up onto the decks and sail away on it, Petsune would not be surprised: it has the look of a Royal pleasure craft. But no royalty show up. The more he studies the ship, the more enthralled he becomes, until without realizing it, he is walking up the gangway to board the gorgeous vessel, as though drawn to it. There is no one aboard the ship, or any of the nearby ones either. He walks up and down the decking, gazing up at the branches and sails, then he begins running his hands along the railing where the strange roots sprout from, leading down to the surface of the water. He feels a connection with this marvelous ship, almost a kinship. As he is admiring the incredible craftsmanship, he realizes it must have been created using Saintstone implements, which means that it is indeed a very expensive ship. It must have some type of ostentatious purpose: to be seen and admired.
Saintstone can only be found in the iceberg fields above Coldor, and deep in the mountains of Broadfell. When the Coldor Cleave betrayed the Alliance, Broadfell became the only of the three Allied nations with naturally occurring deposits. There isn’t as much in the mountains of the Keep, which is why it has become so expensive. Despite this, the only persons who are skilled enough to craft something as exquisite as this ship are from Dintish Mass. Dintish Mass, more commonly called The Royal Mass, is known for its craftsmen of all kinds, most working exclusively with Saintstone as both tool and material to create seamless and divine works. Petsune gazes around at the gorgeous handiwork. Everything from the railings, made to look grown into place, to the beautiful pattern of roots seamlessly inlaid into the decking. Petsune follows the incredible root patter of woodwork and finds it leading out to the root-like appendages that sprout off of the ship and down to the water. He stares at the strange roots, fascinated by them, then turns to stare up at the masts made to look like trees. He is in awe of the beauty, contemplating its creation, when he hears voices on the dock. Suddenly brought out of his amazed stupor, he realizes the voices are headed his way. With feelings of panic and shame, he sneaks back toward the quarter deck in hopes of dismounting the boat, only to find no gangway. The only way on or off the boat now has two of the ship's crew members on it, and Petsune realizes with a pit in his stomach and a flash of fear that he must fess up to poking around the place, or hide. He hides.
Trying the door under the quarterdeck, Petsune finds it open and hastily but quietly enters. It takes a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dark cabin area, and he quickly spots a place he can hide. He has no idea how to get out of this situation without bringing down the wrath of Father Haltur, and thus potentially being excommunicated from the Church. He is plotting when he can escape the vessel unnoticed, crouching behind a somewhat ambiguous shape that is either two barrels or a strange chest. Outside on the main deck, more than half a dozen voices are conversing and jesting. There’s even someone singing sea shanties rather loudly. Petsune is crouching behind the lumpy shape and listening, praying to all four Saints that the rather boisterous crew doesn’t find him. He listens intently and is able to catch snatches of what they are saying.
“…can’t wait till we make Ginders.”
“…best lardfee stew this side of the Straits, but don’t tell Bor.”
“Well, now we’ve got the merchandise offloaded, we can make way for Ginders. Should only take a few days...”
It doesn’t take long for Petsune to realize the ship is not making port here really, just restocking on some essentials and selling off some of their more cumbersome cargo.
As if in sardonic reply to Petsune’s thoughts, the ship lurches slightly as the anchor is drawn in and ropes are untied from the dock. His mind scrambles to think of a way out of this ridiculous situation when he hears a voice just behind him that makes him almost yelp in surprise. The voice comes from behind and slightly above Petsune and disinterestedly asks, “…what’re you doing?” Petsune whirls around looking for the source of the voice, praying it’s only a prattle beak repeating something it heard. He squints his eyes and scans the area but doesn’t see anything. That is until the blob on the wooden beam near the ceiling talks, “Pretty sure you’re not supposed to be in here. Last I checked, we didn’t have any priests on board. And I checked pretty recently.” The blob turns out to be a man laying face-up on a ceiling truss, one leg hanging down, lackadaisical. The blob in the rafter speaks again, “Listen: I dunno why you’re in here, but I won’t say anything if you don’t.” Petsune can’t see in the dark cabin, but he’s reasonably sure the blob just winked at him.
Petsune is thoroughly confused and still panicky, so he hesitantly asks the shape on the truss, “…you won’t tell on me? I just need off this boat, then you’ll never see me again.”
To which the shadow replies with a snort, “Hah, tell on you? You make it sound like you’re a school boy! Ahh… no, no I won’t tell on you.”
Petsune is quickly becoming more confused than panicky as the interaction lengthens. In his confusion, Petsune asks, “but… why? I’m trespassing… aren’t I?”
The shape in the rafters again laughs a reply, “Saints only know what you're up to, schoolboy, but I’m hiding too. So, if I tell on you, I’d be telling on me too, and that simply wouldn’t do.”
“So… you’re trespassing too?” Petsune asks, but the figure replies rather hastily.
“In a way. Now, if you’re staying in here, be quiet and pick a better spot: I suggest inside that chest there, they’ve never found me in there before. And if you’re going to tell on yourself, kindly leave me out of it.”
Petsune blinks several times, trying to figure out what in the depths is going on. The ship begins to move discernibly, and his nonplussed look is supplanted with a not unpleasant thought: he is leaving Thune Mass.
Petsune begins to ask the shadow on the truss a question but cuts it off when he hears soft snoring coming from that area. Realizing there is nothing to be done now, Petsune figures the best course of action is to reveal himself rather than be discovered, and to plead for mercy at the feet of the Captain. With great trepidation, he rises from behind the barrel and begins making his way to the cabin door. The voice in the rafter speaks again, “if you’re going to tell, best do it to Mavis - only guy with a serious beard - and be sure to call him captain.”
“Thanks…” Petsune says, without turning around.
The figure in the rafter whispers a final addendum as Petsune leaves, “-and remember, I’m not here.” Petsune pauses briefly, then continues walking out the door, onto the main deck. The sudden shift from dark cabin to searing daylight physically hurts his eyes, and he finds himself reflexively covering his entire face.
Unable to see, Petsune trips over a coil of thick rope almost as soon as he’s out on the main deck. He lurches forward into something solid and is knocked down flat on his back. Still shielding his eyes and attempting to adjust, Petsune peeks from behind his robed arm and sees what he assumes is the main mast, until the shadow of the main mast sprouts two arms that are subsequently placed on the mast’s hips in disapproval. “Got a stowaway, Mavis! It’s a drowning priest.”
The hulking shadow roars in a voice as deep as the sea. Petsune’s eyes mostly adjust while he contemplates the enormous man he ran smack into. He can’t see well enough, but he’s pretty sure any person this large must be a Fellbin of Broadfell Keep. Then, from a distance, he hears more yelling in response, “Ah, drown it all! A stowaway? Delód ’s breath… What exactly were you doing back here, Cheese?”
“What? Not me! - wasn’t my turn to babysit the Lady!” A female voice replies defensively. Petsune hadn’t stopped to consider that the shadow in the rafters might not be the strangest person onboard. Looking away from the enormous silhouetted Broadfell man, Petsune’s squinted eyes land on the person he presumes is called Cheese, and then he sees a large, bearded man who must be Captain Mavis. He looks far more like a pirate than a merchant, and Petsune is really wishing he would've thought this through more.
Petsune is still sort of lying on the deck, so he gets a foot under himself and rises to one knee while the bearded Captain Mavis approaches. “Ca…Captain Mavis, I presume?”
Petsune inquires in what he hopes isn’t a trembling voice. Behind the Captain, Petsune notices several of the crew begin snickering. Captain Mavis replies, “What, who told you that?”
Petsune assumes the Captain is referring to who revealed his name, but before he can reply, Mavis is speaking again, “How many times do I have to say this: it’s First Mate Mavis, not Captain! That stunt on Folders Fill was a one time thing.”
Behind Mavis, the woman called Cheese and the massive man that Petsune ran into have begun outright laughing. First Mate Mavis shoots a rather scalding look toward the hulking man and Cheese, and they both shut up, minus a final stifled snort. The First Mate eyes Petsune warily, speaking with a slight venomous edge, “What’s a Salt-blood doin’ on our ship?”
Petsune manages to get up on his feet and stutter out a reply, “I… I was just, um, admiring your-or-uh the ship and then the crew came back on and they, um, they startled me. So I… I hid…”
Mavis listens and Petsune can’t seem to read his expression at all, so he hastily adds, “I wasn’t planning on staying! On… stowing away… I was going to get off but before I knew it the boat was moving and… and…” Petsune trails off, staring at the indecipherable bearded face of First Mate Mavis.
Petsune can feel the cold stares of the First Mate, when he suddenly realizes that the ship is nowhere near Thune Mass. Staring around him in search of some sign of the mass, Petsune feels something brush his robes and exclaims in surprise when he looks down to see a child with his hem in it’s grimy little hands. “Oh, depths! You startled me… Where did you come from?”
The child ignores Petsune’s exclamation, and studies his robes intently. Upon satisfying whatever curious urge he had, the child looks up at Petsune with a strangely ambiguous look - was that jealousy, or perhaps distrust?
“Sprig, get off the priest! He doesn’t have pockets, so quit checkin’.” Yells Mavis.
The boy screws up his face in disgust and scampers off to places unseen, muttering something like “drowned priests… never have any pockets…”.
Petsune is perturbed now that he realizes the boy was fingering his robes in hopes of nabbing some scales, and also mortified at the language the child used. The First Mate begins shouting, but not at Petsune, “Somebody find the General an’ get ‘em out here - I want this priest taken to the captain’s quarters till we figure out what to do with ‘em.”
Petsune notices a few wary glances exchanged behind Mavis’s back.
A rather lanky man speaks up in his foreign accent, “Uh, Mr. Mavis, sir?”
Mavis whorls around and finally notices the concern that Petsune has been reading on every crew member's face. “What is it, Shush?”
“Well, sir, this thing you ask - maybe is not such a good idea, at this moment? The General found them - the rum stores, sir. Is not a good moment for him, I’m thinking.”
Petsune watches Mavis’s expression shift from anger to disappointment to something like pity, and then he speaks, “I’ll deal with the General later. Right now, you - Shushilah - take the priest to the Captain's quarters. Bor! - Bor?! Has anyone seen the drowned cook? Cheese, go find the cook an’ tell ‘em to whip up something that’ll coaxe our beloved Captain out of whatever hole he’s in. An’ tell ‘em to start up a fickwill tincture for the General: I want that man sober before I get to ‘em. And as for you, priest - what’s your name?”
Petsune cowers slightly and just manages to get his name out, “uh…Petsune… sir…”
“Right, Petsune, your walkin’ on a very fine rope here an’ if you’re as wise as your type claims, you’ll know not to push it.”
Mavis turns and walks away and Petsune feels a hand on his shoulder that is not unkind, guiding him toward the door he stumbled out of a few minutes ago.
Petsune turns and sees that the man with the foreign accent, Shushilah, is the one whose hand is guiding him. He must be Filkish, with that strange lilting accent. He speaks warmly to Petsune, “Don’t be afraid of the First Mate, is a nice guy, yeah? He is the hard hand, an the Captain - he is… well he is the Captain. An the crew, they need the hard hand at this moment.”
Petsune gives Shushilah a poor attempt at a smile and enters the captain's quarters to await his judgement from the master of the vessel. What did Shushilah intend to say of the Captain? Is he a harder man than the First Mate? Is he crazy? Is he… a Royal? That would at least explain the beautiful boat. These questions consume Petsune’s mind as he waits. Outside, the sounds of a ship at full sail can be heard, alongside calls from the First Mate. The woman called Cheese is below the room Petsune is in, and she sounds like she is rolling barrels or perhaps disemboweling a bench.
The strange sounds from below are interrupted by a nonchalant voice, “Oh you’re back - you didn’t tell them, did you?” Petsune looks to the rafters but the figure is no longer there. “Down here.” comes a voice from the chest Petsune hid behind earlier, though now it’s slightly opened.
“…uhh, no… I didn’t.”
“Good, good…”
Petsune becomes slightly impetulant, realizing how this figure had set him up. “Why did you tell me to call him Captain; you knew he’d get upset, didn’t you!”
“What, Mavis? Upset? He’s always like that, don’t worry. You probably had little to do with it.”
“Well now I’m stuck in here, waiting for the Captain, who will probably shoot me or drown me or… or… hang me!”
“What? Why would I do that? I kinda like you. You didn’t tell on me.”
Petsune freezes and there’s an almost audible clink as all the pieces fit together in his mind, “You’re the captain?!”
“Yeah.”
“Then why the depths are you hiding in here?!” Petsune yells.
“Because it’s the last place they’d look: the captain's quarters.”
“By the Saints! I wish I never set foot on this cursed boat! Every one of you is… is… is… crazy or something!”
“You know, I’ve never heard a priest swear so much.”
“Shut up!”
“Whoa now, let’s just calm dow-“
“Don’t tell me to be calm! You tricked me, you lied.”
“I didn’t lie, exactly, I just didn’t tell you who I was.”
“And why not? And why are you hiding!”
There was a slight awkward pause where Petsune’s shouting seemed to hang in the air, then the Captain answered. “I like it in here.”
“Oh, for Saints sake… what could possibly be so great about a cramped chest?”
“Well, there’s usually no one yelling at me in here, for starters.” Petsune’s timid demeanor with the First Mate has almost entirely evaporated and he is quickly becoming his usual self.
Petsune lets out an exaggerated sigh, “So… what do I do now? Are you going to throw me overboard or something?”
The lid to the chest slowly opens, but not the whole way. The top of a head and a set of aged eyes become visible over the lip of the chest. Strange, Petsune thought he sounded younger. The mysterious Captain says, “I’m not opposed to a good toss overboard… but…” The Captain rises out of his chest and Petsune sees that he in fact is young, very young for a captain; but those eyes? They seem so old, but he couldn’t be more than 30 years. As he stands up in his chest the Captain continues his train of thought, “but… we really shouldn’t give a Deepblood over to the sea, even if Delód is your Saint of choice.”
Petsune mutters softly, “…well that’s comforting…”
The Captain continues as if he didn’t hear him. “Unfortunately for you, we can’t go back to Thune - bad luck to backtrack - and our next Mass is Ginders: a three-day sail.”
Petsune finds he isn’t upset by this information at all, in fact he thinks he may be slightly… pleased. Without really intending to, he speaks aloud, mostly to himself, “There really isn’t anything left for me on Thune Mass, so perhaps a fresh start would do me good… ” Petsune realizes he’s speaking aloud, and stops, looking up to the Captain to see his reaction. The Captain seems to be oblivious to anything Petsune has said, and perhaps anything at all, since he’s looking down at his feet inside the chest and shuffling around slightly, inching this way and that: is he measuring it? Petsune asks something he realizes he hasn’t had the chance to yet, “I never got your name? You’re Captain… what?”
He looks up at Petsune with a somewhat dumb expression and says, “Captain Chapel, at your service!” with a slight flourish and bow and then he asks, “how tall are you?”
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