Venture to Uncertainty (#1)

04 | The Welcome of Uncertainty

The last thing Archer ate was Shark's watery eggs and a slice of sourdough bread that morning, now mixing with the choppy waves. He curled his hands around the rail, tears pooling in his eyes. From the effort of retching, he'd explain if anyone asked.

There was a firm hand on Archer's back as the sounds of the deck registered to him once more. Laughing, the exchanging gold coins from their bets, the shouting of some phrase in a language he didn't know, over and over. Halleveire monere. Halleveire monere.

"None of us knows what it means." The hand on his back lifted. Looking up, Archer found the newcomer to be a white-haired boy even younger than him. The boy shrugged. "Silta came up with it, I think, so it's probably some weird seaweed-Siren language or something like that." He nodded to the rail Archer was still hunched over and said, "I did the exact same thing."

Wiping his mouth, Archer caught his breath as he looked the boy over. "What are you, sixteen?"

The boy just grinned, leaning back against the rail to watch the crew, still tossing each other around over their new edition. "Nineteen," he said. "What are you, thirty?"

Archer squinted, but the boy still looked much younger, no smile lines or bags under his pale blue eyes. "Funny," he said. He was twenty, and unlike this weird-smiling-vomit-bonding boy, he actually looked his age.

The boy shifted his eyes to something across the deck, but when Archer turned to look, that hand was back on his shoulder. "Don't," the boy said. "They're tossing her over the side. Best not to watch."

The image of her slumped body, of those men picking her up and rolling her over the rail and into that water...Archer leaned forward to throw up again.

The boy patted his back once more. "Easy does it."

"Eh, Tolva!" someone called. "You givin' barf boy a tour?"

The white-haired boy flashed a thumbs-up, leaning closer to Archer to say, "You've got a solid two minutes before you get told to toughen up and get moving, so use 'em well."

Archer shook his head, watery eggs and sourdough bread all gone. Life really just went on here. Tours and small talk followed murder, and no one had any qualms about it. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Jeanne lift her chin in defiance. He hoped to the angels that the image would never go away, that it would never be replaced by anything else.

Archer steadied himself on the rail and looked at the blonde boy. "Can I have some water or something?"

"Oh, yeah, sure." He reached for his canteen, hung from his shoulder by a strap and handed it over.

Archer eyed it as he took a sip, washing the taste of bile from his mouth. He gave it back. "What are you? Cabin boy?"

The boy grinned, shaking his head. "Denver Tolva," he introduced. A sliver of pride was evident in his voice as he said, "Deckhand."

"Is there some sort of difference?" As someone who'd never sailed anything bigger than a two-person boat, Archer wasn't all that well-versed in pirate ranks, and Farley didn't tend to dwell on anyone so deep in the cogs of the Avourienne.

A feign expression of offense passed over Denver's face. He pointed to the two men scrubbing at the wood where Jeanne had been, where the red still stained. "Cabin boys," he explained. "Servants, essentially." He pointed to himself. "Deckhand," he said. "We're trained, so we get to touch the sails without some big shot screaming at us."

Archer scrunched up his nose. "I have to start as a servant?" Farley had not mentioned cleaning bloody decks as one of his tasks. He was trained for rigging and trimming, for combat.