* * *
The midday turned to evening, and evening to night. The captains and their crews were all in Whaley’s Pub, celebrating the end of another successful trip into the Inland Sea. There were no fatalities this time around, and that was reason enough for most of them to get drunk. Leef’s catch had added to their good fortune, and so as the night went on, any captain who didn’t have the fortune—or misfortune—to have a wife or children who would come and walk them home to a warm bed, found themselves asleep by the hearth at Whaley’s. Jim Whaley was used to it, and knew who his regular customers were. His accommodations were comfortable, and he didn’t charge much for a sailor to sleep on a table—or underneath one.
All of this time, Leef was nowhere to be seen. His father and brother didn’t look for him. His father knew that his son would need time to absorb the news of the sale of his business. And so he left him alone to stew in his own juices.
But Leef wasn’t wasting time in anger. Instead, he had taken the night hours to slip onto the deck of the Islander, one of several boats owned by one Hakk Smeatson, the richest and most successful fisher and exporter in Salonika. Leef knew for a fact that Hakk would be spending the night in Whaley’s. He also knew that his best mate had a girlfriend that he hadn’t seen in a month, so he wasn’t around either. That meant the Islander was empty, and easy pickings for someone who knew what he wanted, and needed it badly.
Leef didn’t consider stealing the Islander. It was too well known, and Leef had no desire to be pursued by ships he knew were faster than the trawler. Instead, he slipped into the hold for a fresh set of canvas sails, a hundred cubits of rope and a can of pitch.
An hour later, he had the sails, rope and pitch loaded into the Dionysus. If he had his druthers, he would have given the boat a fresh coat of paint, made sure it was waterproof with an extra coat of pitch in the hold, and properly named and launched her. But desperate times called for…well, he would properly launch his love at another time. Right now, his priority was to slip out of the harbor with the tide, early enough that no one in the harbor saw them leave.
The boat house had been locked, but Leef had been in it so many times that he knew every loose board and rafter. He slipped in through an upper window and loaded his supplies. When he had the mast stepped and the sails mounted, he hopped out of the boat, checked through a lower window to make sure no one was out on the wharf, then used a mallet to knock the chock out from under the rollers beneath the ship. A second later, he heard the boat begin to roll like a sled on a track. By the time the stern of the Dionysus met the wooden doors, it was rolling fast enough to knock the doors open with a crash.
“Well,” he said to himself. “If that doesn’t wake them, I don’t know what will.”
He stood on the shore, watching the Dionysus float on the water outside the boathouse. He hesitated, then as if remembering what he was there for, dove into the water and swam out to the stern of the boat and hauled himself aboard.
Five minutes later, he was sailing quietly out of the harbor, a stiff morning breeze and the outgoing tide allying with him in his escape. He looked back at Salonika as it grew smaller in his vision behind the boat. He had no idea where he was headed; he only knew that he would never be welcomed in his home town again.
“They hang horse thieves,” he thought. “What do they do with people who steal ships?”
“I think they hang them too,” he heard a voice say. As he looked at the door leading down to the hold, a dark head appeared. It was the girl who had confronted him hours before. Mara, she had called herself.
“Maybe they keelhaul them,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Whatever keelhauling is.”
“What are you doing on this boat?” he said, an edge in his voice. “How did you get on her?”
“Same way you did,” she said. “I snuck on in the dead of night. Face it, we are both criminals.”
He stared at the young girl, hardly a teenager, and realized she was right.
“You know, I could just throw you over the side,” he said.
“You could, but then you would be a murderer AND a thief,” she said. “And I don’t think you will. I’m a pretty good judge of character.”
“You are, are you?” he said. He stared at her for a long while, and realized that once again she was right. He had stolen the boat in a rash act, had no plan and no provisions. He had never been to a port beyond Salonika, and yet stolen a boat that was promised to the King of Sparta, the richest and most powerful land on Brindlestar.
“So where do we go now?” he said finally.
“Where else?” she said, matter-of-factly. “We head for Sparta.” (back to ToC)