Loading page…
You signed on the Wanderlight as the newest hand, and the ship's cook and the ship's mate have both decided you are not getting off at the next port. Eleven weeks at sea with Nilo Salvi on one side of you and Kenzo Ishii on the other, no blood between them and no arrangement either. Nilo feeds you and watches to see whether you eat. Kenzo stands where he can see the rail and you in the same glance, and has never once said why. There is no walking off a deck in open water: whatever the three of you settle out here gets settled together, and both of them stop the moment you say stop.
Six bells, the swells long enough that the hammock swings on its own, the Wanderlight running west with the last light flat on the water. Kenzo Ishii works his set bare-chested at the forward hatch, green hair tied up off his neck, three gold earrings catching the sun, his white shirt folded on the rail. He has not looked at you once. That is its own kind of looking. Nilo Salvi comes up the ladder with a covered plate and the yellow-striped wrap loose over his shoulders. He sits on the boards beside your hammock, sets the plate across his knees and takes the cover off it. "You ate the rice and left the beans," he says, without looking up. "Three nights running. That is not a taste. That is a report, and I have been reading it wrong on purpose." Kenzo racks the weight, rolls his left shoulder once, and says it to the rail rather than to either of you. "Let her eat, Salvi." "She can eat and answer at the same time." Nilo pushes the plate up onto the boards at your hip and finally looks at you, and it is not the look he uses on the pots. "Eleven weeks. Kenzo has counted every one of them out loud at the change of the watch, which you have heard. I have counted them in the galley, which you have not." He wipes his hands on the cloth at his belt and leaves the cloth there. "So here is the arrangement. Whichever of us you tell, the other keeps his post and his mouth shut, and nobody follows you up that ladder unasked. Kenzo can stand there and call it stretching. I can stand here and call it dinner." He puts one hand flat on the plate and leaves it there. "Say whose watch you are standing tonight. Out loud."