Rising Tide by Mel Odom Read Free Book Online Page B

trying to show out for Merchant Lelayn.”
    “Aye, captain.”
    “Have you had anything to eat, lad?”
    “Not since morningfeast.”
    “The mid-day meal was an hour ago, lad.”
    “I didn’t want to come down.”
    Finaren nodded. “I know. You stand steady up here. I know you like the solitude anyway. I’ll have Cook put together a kit and have it sent up.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Faugh. It’s nothing, lad. Not many men would have let that girl slap them and walk off the way you did. Nor would they have kept a civil tongue in their heads.”
    Jherek also knew of no other sailors who carried the dark secret he did. If that secret were to get out, it would see him clear of sailing-if it didn’t get him killed outright. Captain Finaren had hired him on in spite of knowing the truth.
    Yeill was wrong, Jherek knew, love did exist. He knew that because he loved the old sea captain for the way he accepted him in spite of the birthright that marked him. He watched Finaren nimbly descend to the lower decks, bellowing out orders to the ship’s crew at once.
    Some of the tense knot gripping Jherek’s stomach released. He took a moment to himself and said a small prayer to Ilmater, the Crying God, asking for the strength to go on, then he returned to his work on the rigging.
     

     
    By late afternoon, only an hour or so short of eveningfeast, the winds deserted Finaran’s Butterfly. She slowed to the point of becalming, which was bad enough, but then the Amnians started drinking and partying again, deciding they were bored.
    Jherek sat in the crow’s nest, curled up with a novel of chivalric romance Malorrie had suggested. He’d also brought a treatise on civil disobedience that he fully intended to discuss with Malorrie when he reached Velen. The whole thought of civil disobedience, for the right reasons and under auspicious circumstances, was confusing. Jherek had read it twice during the voyage, and it still didn’t set any easier on his mind. Right was right, and to suggest that it might not be right at times was too much for him to think on.
    Taking a pause in the book, holding his place with a finger, he leaned over the edge of the crow’s nest and looked down at the cheering and screaming Amnians thronging the ship’s stern. His reading was getting increasingly harder as the roil of dark clouds coming in from the west took away his light. He wondered if they were in for another storm.
    “Umberlee take the lot of them,” Hagagne grumbled, climbing up the rigging to reach Jherek.
    Hagagne was in his late thirties, a sallow man with loose skin that never seemed to quite brown enough and left him constantly reddened and peeling. He was bald on top and had an unruly fringe of hair around his head.
    “What’s going on?” Jherek asked the sailor.
    “They’ve decided to fish,” Hagagne answered, perching on the edge of the crow’s nest as Jherek made room.
    Jherek watched as deckhands brought the two fishing chairs out and set them up. Yeill and one of the Amnian young men sat in the chairs and belted themselves in with the leather restraint straps.
    “They saw Marcle and Dawdre fishing earlier,” Hagagne said, “and decided it would be great sport.”
    Jherek knew Marcle and Dawdre had done all right for themselves, bringing in ulauf and whitefish on the long poles as well as the swordfish. A lot of meat had been salted and put back in the ship’s larder.
    “They’ve even got a wager going on,” Hagagne said with a harsh laugh.
    Jherek looked the question at him.
    “If the young bitch-“
    “Please don’t call her that,” Jherek said, but his voice carried sheathed steel.
    Hagagne shrugged, taking no offense. “If the young lady,” the older sailor amended, “wins, she gets one of the dandy’s breeding stallions, something he seems to be particularly proud of. If he wins, he gets to spend the night in her silks.”
    A cold depression settled over Jherek’s shoulders.
    “You liked her,