Adarna

Chapter 4

Robin woke up on a bed. It was soft, and fluffy, and really fucking weird. He had spent the last few weeks curled up on a pile of ropes, sleeping fitfully atop the crow's nest, or—in the rare occasion—lying on a scratchy hammock among the rest of the crew. For a long moment he wondered if he was dead, but he had never heard of death having beds, either.

Everything hurt. His head began throbbing as he shifted it on his pillow, and every muscle he had screamed from a combination of the night's exertions and the tension they had caused. His body flushed with heat and he kicked off the blankets fretfully. Then he felt cold, but couldn't muster the strength to pull them up again, so he lay there shivering. He must have drifted back to sleep at some point, because he was jostled awake by the sound of a door clicking shut.

The sight of two people looming over him met him as one eye cracked open. The first mate stared down her nose at him, with her hand on her hip and her lips pressed into a thin line. The other person was someone who Robin had not seen before. It was a man in his late thirties or early forties, tall and well built, with eyes that crinkled in friendly lines at the corners. He was holding a bowl of soup.

"Look at that Mar, the boy is up," he said, noticing Robin's eyes flickering between them under the cover of his lashes. "Let me get some food in him before you bombard him with questions."

She grunted, but waved a hand for him to go ahead. Robin was prodded and pulled into a sitting position despite his best protests. He shivered and grabbed weakly for his blankets. Someone had changed him out of his stiff uniform into more comfortable sleepwear. A long-sleeved cotton top and some pants. He grasped hastily at his neck, then heaved a sigh of relief. His pendant was still there.

The man pulled up a stool next to the bed and sat down. "Well then," he said, "do you know where you are?"

Robin paused, and took a look around the room. Vials lined the shelves. Several knives glinted from where they lay scattered across the tables. The smell of disinfectant finally registered in the back of his mind, and he bit back a gag. "Surgeon's quarters," he replied.

"Good! You didn't hit your head too hard then."

"I don't recognise you," Robin said, and the man flashed him a grin.

"I try to stay out of sight," he explained, running a hand through his deep brown curls and shaking his head ruefully. "It's bad luck to see a doctor on board when things are going well. Makes people jittery. Which in turn makes them more likely to pull the kind of stupid stunt that gets them sent over to me in the first place. And that just wastes my equipment."

Robin nodded slowly.

"Soup?" the man offered, then cut in before Robin could reply. "Rhetorical question. Eat the soup, you have no choice." He then lifted a spoon to Robin's mouth as if playing 'here comes the ship!' with a stubborn baby.

Robin scowled and snatched the bowl from the doctor's hand. "I can feed myself, thank you."

"I'm sure. You've been doing it for weeks now, haven't you?"

Robin startled, glancing at the first mate to defend him.

"Boy claims it's not him that's been doing the stealing. Looking at how scrawny he is, I'm inclined to believe him."

The doctor hummed. "He'll need more than one bowl of soup to fix that. Would you be a darling and ask Mason to cook up something more for him?"

The first mate glanced between Robin and the doctor, then nodded and took her queue to leave. Robin shoved the first mouthful of soup into his mouth, then immediately coughed and spluttered. He spat the food back into the bowl and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Then, for good measure, he grabbed a fistful of blanket and scrubbed it over his tongue to get rid of any lingering traces.