That evening they dined with the captain in his stately cabin beneath the quarterdeck, a low slab of a room that spanned the entire breadth of the ship. Windows lined the wall space, thick watery panes of glass divided into diamonds by crisscrossings of lead, some panes coloured in translucent green or yellow. Beyond them, the horizon merged with clouds lit by a falling ball of sun.
The meal was a wholesome affair of rice soup, roasted potatoes, green vegetables, smoked game of some kind, and wine. The courses were served on bone-white crockery ceramics, fine and expensive-looking stuff. Each piece was decorated with the central motif of a falcon in flight. A gift to the captain, Nico assumed.
There was little talk as they each fell upon the steaming food. Ash and the captain both ate with the concentration of men intent on savouring what they still could in life while the going was fair. Dalas, the captain's second-in-command – a big, dreadlocked Corician wearing an open leather jerkin with a curved hunting-horn slung from his neck – was a mute apparently from birth. Even the captain's pet kerido, excitable at first around the two guests present for dinner, now sat quietly on the table before his master's plate, softly clacking its beak and drooling in an attentive way as the man ate. The animal reminded Nico of Boon, back home in the cottage, when Nico had sat eating whatever half-heartedly prepared meal his mother had cooked for them, and surreptitiously passing morsels beneath the table. He had never seen a kerido before though had heard of them, from street performances of The Tales of the Fish recounting stories of merchants venturing to the forest-oasis in the shallow desert, and meeting with madness and death. The Tales always portrayed the kerido as a vicious creature despite its small size. With one of the creatures sitting before him now, Nico could imagine why. The colours of its tough hide invoked images of lush vegetation draped in shadow, and furtive movement, and the sudden pounces of a predator. He had not realized it was possible to make a pet of one.
Red wine had been produced from a locked cabinet fixed to the floor, and Ash and Dalas and the captain were now well into their second bottle, while Nico still sipped from his first glass. He suspected the pair of them were already a little drunk.
'It's good to see you on your feet at last,' Captain Trench observed quietly, as he used his handkerchief as a napkin to dab at his pale lips, and favoured Nico with a glance from his blind white eye, as though he could see more clearly with it. Even in the soft sunset hues that filled the cabin, his skin had a pallied complexion, like the slick greyness of rain.
Ash grunted at the remark, and Nico glanced towards the old man, but the farlander refused to return his gaze.
'A tricky business, adjusting to big sky,' Trench continued in his soft, clipped accent suggestive of a wealthy education. 'Worse than being at sea, most will inform you. Well, it's no shame on you, the reaction. Believe me, I am hardly any better myself when I make it back to land. It takes me – what – a full day in bed with a galloping whore before I feel steady again.' And he flashed Nico a good-natured smile, with a cock of an eyebrow, before looking quickly away again as though shy at having said too much.
Nico forced a smile in return, for it was hard not to like this man. Indeed, this evening he was gaining a sense that it was important to Trench to be liked by those sharing his company; which was surprising, remembering him earlier that day, as he screamed at one of his crew for fouling the rigging, his words flying incoherently with so much spittle that Nico had wondered if he wasn't in some way unhinged. Dalas had eventually stepped in to pull Trench into his cabin, out of sight of the crew, though not out of earshot.
Now, at dinner, the captain seemed calm. His smiles came easily and his sound red-rimmed eye held something of an apology in it: clearly whatever demons plagued him, they were restrained just now by this softer nature, which also seemed his truer nature, so that Nico felt reassured in his presence, despite his earlier loss of control.
From across the table, Dalas observed Nico coolly while he shovelled food into his mouth with a fork. The big Corician lifted his free hand and made a gesture in sign language, almost too fast to follow: a balled fist tilting from side to side, a waving motion, a flat chop, a palm soaring.
'Pay no heed to him,' advised Trench, dismissing the other man with a wave.
But Nico continued to stare at the Corician's hand, which now rested on the tablecloth, the forefinger rubbing restlessly against the end of its thumb. 'Why?' he inquired. 'What did he say?'
Trench raised his bunched handkerchief to his mouth, and murmured from behind it. 'He says, my young friend, that he doubts you have ever even sailed before, let alone flown.'
The Corician had stopped eating, his right cheek stuffed with food, as he awaited Nico's response.
'He would be right, then,' Nico admitted.
'Yes, but you may not have noticed how he said it. That gesture just now, with a loose wrist, it meant he intended it to be insulting.' Trench shook his head at Dalas reproachfully, and Dalas frowned back. 'Dalas was born on a ship. All his life, he has lived on one type of deck or another. He is often this dismissive with people who have never been to sea. He reckons, somehow, that their priorities are all wrong.'
Nico offered an awkward smile to them both. 'Once, when I was ten, and swimming in the sea, I found a log and used it for a boat.'
Trench withdrew the handkerchief from his mouth by a fraction.
'A log, you say?'
'A big one.'
Trench choked back a laugh, which in turn became a cough that he stifled with his handkerchief. Even Dalas's expression softened, enough at least to swallow his food.
'You are hardly drinking,' the captain observed, as he caught his breath. 'Berl, fill him up, if you please.'
Berl, standing by the table in attendance, dutifully stepped forward. He added more wine to Nico's glass, though it hardly needed topping up.
Nico studied the glass before him.
'I see you haven't acquired a true thirst for it yet,' Trench observed over the rim of his own goblet. 'You will, believe me. In lives such as ours it happens all too easily. Look at your master, there. When last he was aboard this ship, I had to keep all the stores under lock and key, his thirst was so limitless.'
'Nonsense,' said Ash, and downed the rest of his wine before holding out the empty glass for a refill.
Nico sat back in his chair, hoping to let their conversation drift by him. He picked up the glass, if only to have something to do with his hands. Everywhere around him, wood creaked to its own disjointed rhythms. It reminded him of the forested foothills back home, of standing alone deep amongst the pines as they swayed and groaned in the midday breeze. He tried another sip of the wine. Its aftertaste was a sweet one, not like the cheap, bitter stuff his mother sometimes drank. He could take to this, he thought, if ever he had the money to afford it.
An image of his father came to mind. His father raging drunk, breath hissing through his nostrils, tongue trying to push its way out through the obstruction of his lower lip. Nico found himself setting down the glass once more.
Trench leaned back in his chair, tilting it on to its two rear legs. His sigh only deepened the impression of weariness that hung about him.
'I have taken you from your land-leave,' Ash said by way of an apology.
'And the rest of the crew, too,' Trench muttered, then straightened his chair again, smiling with thin lips as his hooded eye surveyed the table without focus. 'They are somewhat displeased with their captain just now, and I can hardly blame them. We only just made it back from our last run. You saw the poor condition we were in, and that was after a full week of repairs. Now, they have to run the blockade again, with hardly more than a week on land for respite. It's hard on them – hard on us all.' And he dabbed his face again with his handkerchief.
Ash wiped his lips of wine. 'It is a short journey this time, at least.'
'Yes,' admitted the captain. 'Though with little profit in it, save for some cloth we might shift in return for grain, which will keep my investors happy at least. And of course in wiping my debt to you. I take it we are even?'
'You owed me nothing to begin with.'
'You hear that?' snapped Trench suddenly to the kerido, who aborted its reaching towards the scraps on his plate with a scaly claw, and instead looked up. 'He mocks his hold over me, even now.' Absently, the captain picked up a half-eaten sweetroot, and the creature opened its beak as he offered the morsel towards it.
'Just promise me one thing,' Trench said to Ash, and then he paused as Nico shifted back from the table in alarm. Trench looked down at the creature perched between them. From its open beak it was brandishing its tongue at him, a long and stiff and hollow thing like a child's rattle, making a noise clearly intended to sound threatening. Trench tossed the morsel into the creature's mouth to shut it up, then continued.
