The Long Road Back: A Jarthen-centric Interquel (pt. 6)

Being crew is an altogether different sort of thing than being cargo. My days of blending into the background and keeping to myself were over. I ate with them, fought fer a spot of my own in the overcrowded berth, and had a whole mess of duties I didn’t know how to perform foisted on me. And with it came a lot of name-calling and some other less savory punishments when I mucked up those duties, which was more often than I would’ve liked at first, but given the way the situation stood, I started picking up how to hoist the lines and wipe down the deck proper real quick-like. I tried to keep to myself, but as I said before, they were a chatty bunch. I didn’t see much of Muladah and Salir, being captain and first mate as they were, but Nossi’s new position as second mate apparently wasn’t that grand a step up and I found myself stuck on shift with him more often than chance would dictate.

Nossi and I got on pretty well. We were the two youngest on the ship (though he still had a good ten years on me) and we both played chess. Now, Nossi was odd as all hell from my point of view being a pirate and half-gold and all, but I’m a sucker fer a decent game of chess and soon enough the pair of us were spending most of our shifts together paying attention to little else but his mangled, mismatched chess set. He had a thousand questions about the red elves fer me. Not about the war or anything, but about the elves themselves. “Are they as pretty as they always say they are?”

I shrugged and captured his rook. If letting him pester me about the reds meant I won the game, I was fine with that. “Some are, some aren’t. Matter of personal taste, you know?”

“Way I heard it, whatever it is they have overrides personal taste.”

“Well,” said I, inching ever closer to a checkmate, “what they got don’t do all that much fer me.”

“Sure, sure.”

“I mean, I’m not saying they wouldn’t do a number on you, just telling you what it was like fer me. And as far as I can tell, they stick with each other. Half of them didn’t look my way and the ones that did got bored pretty quick when the charms left me the same as when they started,” said I.

Nossi glanced up and cocked an eyebrow. “You really expect me to believe that you were with them for months and months and nothing happened?”

“Plenty happened. Told you, I got captured by blues, I got attacked by those beasts out in the Dark Lands -- ”

He laughed and took my bishop, just like I was hoping he would. “No, no. I mean you really want me to believe that all you did was share tents with them, nothing else?”

“Well, fer most of it, there were only a couple of lasses around and one of them tended to share my taste if you catch my drift. And I shared a tent with a fella.”

“Way I heard it that don’t matter much,” said he.

I confess I wasn’t all that sure how to take that. It struck me as the sort of thing that said more about Nossi than it did about me, but in either case it mostly seemed like pursuing it wouldn’t have been in the best of taste. So, instead, I focused on the chess board and found a way to get at his queen. Course, Nossi just took the quiet as a reason to keep on talking.

He frowned at me when he caught me laying my trap and plucked at his wild main of hair – hair just like Tawiri’s, but black instead of yellow. “You’re a sneaky bastard, you know that?”

“So goes the game.”

“Game goes that way ‘cause that’s the way you’re taking it. Say, you know much about us tarks?” I told him I didn’t. “Well the ones straight out of the Empire have the same rules as you do. Gold elves, though, they’re a whole different story. I don’t know much about it, but from what I can gather they don’t really settle down and get married like everyone else. But, you know, I grew up down in the isles so I can’t say I really ascribe to either. I’m a tether brat, so you know, the isles are as close as I’ve ever really come to dry land.”

“You’re a what, now?”

“A tether brat.” It took him a moment longer to catch that I weren’t following. “Oh, right. I keep forgetting how new you are to the life. My ma was a captain’s girl. A Felin captain’s girl, she was the gold half. Ever heard of the Panther? No, guess you wouldn’t. Anyway, he was my pa. Had himself a right nice fleet ‘til some T’Langans took him and his out. Means I grew up on the ships, never known anything but this.”

A’right, now I know I grew up on the edge of the Fethil in the middle of a war and all, but I have to say that it was pretty quiet up until I got thrust into the middle of it. ‘Til two, three years ago all I really had to complain about was the way my pa’s sheep were forever getting past the fences and the fact that my friend Bert was always getting sent somewhere else fer more schooling he didn’t seem to need. So the idea of getting raised up on a pirate ship struck me as the sort of thing that would warp a child. It struck me that perhaps I ought not to hang around Nossi as much as I had been. “Real sorry to hear about your pa.”

“Eh, it happens. And it’s not really fresh news, you know? And it was my luck to look more like him than her, things would’ve gone easier for me if I’d been pretty enough to take up as a tether myself. But I’m not, I’m stuck as crew for better or worse. Anyway, you grow up on the ships you get a different view of things than the ones that grew up in the desert. Check.”

I dodged the check and made things a bit worse for him in the process. I still wasn’t sure what he was going on about with all the tether business, or why he was telling me about it, but my instinct was to keep those questions to myself, so that’s what I did.

After a second or so I noticed he hadn’t made his move, and he was one of those sorts that moves fast, you know? The kind that goes on instinct and is snatching up pieces as soon as you pull your hand away from the board. I looked up and caught him staring at me, his head cocked to the side, looking a bit amused and a little too intent the way the reds get when they’re trying to sweet talk me into summat and getting nowhere with it. “What?”

“Could ask you the same thing, you’re all nervous,” he said.

I went back to the chessboard. “Nah. No more than usual.”

“You are, too. You’re all…I don’t know, you’re sort of holding back or something. And, uh, and edgy.”

I reasoned that I’d never had the best poker face. Still, just ‘cause it weren’t the best didn’t mean there weren’t plenty of reason to use it. I shrugged and toyed with that rook of his I’d taken. “I mean, I am on a damn pirate ship.”

“Yeah, and now you’re a damn pirate. And you were on this ship and not all like this half an hour ago. I just can’t…” Nossi sighed and poked my arm until I looked up at him. He studied me for a second or so and shook his head. “Oh, that’s going to drive me mad.”

“What is?”

“You.”

“What?”

He frowned at me and made a move. “You’re blocking me and you’re doing a fine job of it, that’s what. I mean, don’t get me wrong, that’s a nice talent to have in a place like this but it’s annoying the hell out of me.”

“Nossi, I’m still not following you.”

“The hell you aren’t, you tricky human git.”

Fact is, I wish I was half as tricky as he was giving me credit fer, but I’m not. I sighed and made my move. “Fine, keep it to yourself.”

“I’m not the one playing the stoic.”

I tried to catch his eye, but he was busy staring at the chessboard and plucking at his hair again. I leaned forward and poked him in the shoulder until he looked up. “Look, is this a magick thing?”

He held up his hands and let out a nervous laugh. “Hey, Shakhar, you made your point. But, you know, it just comes out, I don’t mean to. Not most of the time, anyway. You mundayne fellas, gah, it’s like all you think we do is try and get at you. Truth is I doubt whatever it is you’re keeping all close to your vest is even worth knowing.”

It was definitely a magick thing. Magickal folks, they get a might testy when things don’t go the way they’re used to in my experience. “It’s not you, it’s me.”

“I can tell. You’re going to need to loosen up if you want the life to be anything but torture, take my word for it. You’re not getting anywhere pretending your back on dry land.”

“What? I – a’right. If you say so. Look, I just mean that magick don’t always work on me right, so if whatever’s got you all knotted up is ‘cause you were trying summat on me and you didn’t get nowhere it’s ‘cause I’m odd, not ‘cause you’re rusty or anything.”

He looked up, and just like all the others, he looked skeptical and a bit fascinated. “Really?” I nodded and took his queen, but he wasn’t really paying attention to the game anymore. He leaned forward, staring at me with this odd sort of half-smile. And then he leapt forward. The chessboard went skittering away and I landed hard on my back and he landed heavily on top of me and held a knife to my throat. All in the space of a second. He smiled wider and leaned in closer. “Holy fucking hell.”

“I – Nossi, look I don’t…and, see, thing is I – what?”

“Tell me how you feel.”

I blinked at him. I was pretty sure that I misheard him. I mean, what kind of sense would that make, given the circumstances? “Nossi, let’s, uh…let’s just take this easy, right?”

“Tell me how you feel, Shakhar!”

“How do you think I feel? You got a knife on me! What did I – shit, damn it, please just think before you do anything, yeah?”

He laughed and sat up. He stared at me for a second and shook his head, then pulled me up and dusted me off. Course, I just sort of stood there, paralyzed, and let him as I was half-convinced he was bound to pull that knife back out and go to work on me. “That’s something else. You hungry?”

“What? I’m…I’ll just stay here. If you don’t mind terribly,” said I, keeping a real close eye on his hands.

“Suit yourself. You should’ve told Mul about that, though. Gah, one like you has as many uses as one like me. I mean, I picked up my ma’s talents, I’m a pretty decent empath, but I couldn’t get anything from you just then. You sure you’re not hungry?”

“Wait, you’re not…so, you just…oh.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. And I mean, I guess you got your own reasons keeping that to yourself, so tell Mul or don’t, your secret’s safe with me. No harm?”

“No harm,” I said, finally starting to relax again. I caught my breath and let out a nervous little laugh while he picked up the scattered chess pieces. After a second or two, I helped him, and after that, I followed him down below and let him pester me with his apparently endless supply of questions while I picked at what passes fer food on a ship and tried to decide whether to fill Muladah in or whether to keep this apparently useful bit of information to myself.