Chenda and the Airship Brofman (19 page)

“I just realized that every shirt I own, including the two I bought tonight, are soaked in seawater. I just can't win with my clothes these days.”

They entered the crew quarters, and Fenimore whispered, “I'll lend you one of mine.” He rummaged in his cupboard for a moment and tossed her a clean shirt. “I guess it will be more of a dress than a shirt for you, but at least we can rinse out the rest of your clothes and hopefully they will be dry by morning. Give me your boots, I'll clean yours while I do mine.”

“Thank you,” she whispered as she sat on the floor pulling her boots off. “You're a nice guy.” A small puddle of seawater trickled onto the floor.” Fenimore took the sodden boots and walked to the door. “I'll give you that privacy, then. Take your time,” he said and walked out.

Chenda looked over at the wall of bunks, and realized she was hardly alone. Lincoln and Stanley were already hard asleep in their small bunks, and Kingston was muttering in his sleep as well, one beefy arm draped over his eyes and the other dangling out over the side. The idea of stripping off her clothes with these men in the room, asleep or otherwise, grated against her upbringing. The nuns would faint! Chenda bit her lip. She reasoned that the two younger men had just visited the ladies at McNees's Opera House, and likely had seen all manner of girl parts there. Kingston was a doctor, also in the know about female anatomy. She decided that she was being pretty foolish.

It is what it is, and here I am. Let's get on with this...

She stripped to her bare essentials and draped Fenimore's shirt over her shoulders. It hung almost to the backs of her knees. She walked over to the small sink, making wet footprints as she went, and looked at herself in the mirror. Chenda examined her abused eye, and it looked well healed. However, the bruises all around it on her face were still a dark greenish-purple. Most of the blood trapped in her battered skin had risen to just under the surface, to the point where bruises always look their worst. It would get better tomorrow, she decided. She twisted herself to check the new scrapes from the reef on her back, letting the top of Fenimore's shirt slide down to her elbows.
Minor
, she thought to herself. She felt the bandage over the place Daniel had stabbed her. It, like the bandages on her hands, were soaked with brackish water. Chenda tore off all the soiled bandages. Her side had scabbed over and was healing. As for her palms, Kingston's ointment had worked wonders. Her hands seemed mostly mended, but still slightly swollen. The repaired skin looked in the dim light to have a slightly silver tint. She flexed her hands, feeling the tightness in the skin. Her nerves seemed exceptionally sensitive, like they were very close to the surface now.

She turned on the tap and, tying Fenimore's shirt around her waist, she leaned her head over the small basin. Scooping handfuls of water over her head, she rubbed a bit of coarse soap into her hair, scrubbing gently. As she rinsed, she watched the bubbles and bits of seaweed and sand swirl down the drain. She worked her way down her neck and arms using a corner of her soiled shirt as a washcloth. With each cleansing rub, she scoured away a part of herself that she no longer felt: her small doubts, her fear of what lay ahead, the sensation that perhaps she wasn't strong enough to lead her own life. As she finished washing her feet and ankles, she straightened up and looked into the mirror. For the first, time she accepted what she saw.

This is what I have to work with today: me
.

She shrugged the shirt back up onto her shoulders and rolled the sleeves up. She worked her way back to her bunk, using the soiled shirt like a mop, cleaning up the mess from her wet pants and aeronaut boots. She glanced up at the bunks behind her and noticed Lincoln quickly closing an eye. She stretched up on her tip toes and looked at his closed eyes, squeezed a little too tightly to be truly lodged in slumber.

“Enjoying me bathing?” she asked.

Lincoln winced but didn't give up his charade. “Very much,” he whispered.

She flicked his ear. “Shame on you!” she hissed. He blushed.

“I'll thank you to be a better gentleman in the future,” she chided.

“Yes, ma'am,” he said, still holding his eyes closed. “I'm sorry.”

Chenda turned with her armload of wet clothes and left. She found Fenimore in the passageway beyond, hanging their aeronaut boots upside down on the hooks there. They dripped quietly into narrow pans below.

Fenimore smiled at her. “You look fresh as a daisy. Still feeling okay?”

“As good as can be expected,” she replied. “Got my soggy clothes here. Where should I wash them?”

“Ah, I have a bucket set out in the galley. You go ahead in and I am going to get cleaned up myself.”  He stalked into the crew quarters.

She stepped into the galley, and she found Verdu there, singing quietly to himself. He smiled at her and kept on singing. Chenda looked into the sudsy bucket on the table, then tipped in her clothes. She swished them around and listened to Verdu's song.

The language was a mystery to her, but the meaning of the song was clear enough. The melody spoke of tenderness, devotion and loss. After several minutes, Verdu's song drifted to an end, and he sat silently, motionless, a dark shadow in the corner.

“That was really lovely,” Chenda said, wringing out her shirts. “You sing very well. What was the song?”

Verdu breathed in slowly. “It's a forbidden Tugrulian lullaby, loosely translated it's called 'I love you more'.”

“Forbidden?”

“Yes. The song is sung by a mother, sitting at her window late one evening. She cradles her young son in the moonlight and tells him that she loves him, the child of her lover, more than the children she has borne her husband.” He made a sour grin. “The song is deemed
culturally perverse
by the Dia Orella Heirarchy. The Tugrulian leadership fears that it will lead women astray. It's not sung in the Empire under pain of death.”

“Not a forgiving place,” Chenda said as she finished wringing out her clothes. She piled the wet lumps on the table and crossed the galley to pour the dirty water into the sink. “You and I have something in common,” she noted as she refilled the bucket.

“Oh, what's that?”

“We were both essentially orphans, but not exactly. My father left me with nuns while he went away to the war, but he was alive yet absent for most of my youth. From what you said before, I'm guessing that your parents were alive during your childhood as well but they were nowhere near you.”

“True enough,” he said. “Growing up among the Mae-Lyn, I found that some of the best people I know are orphans. The gods seem to be close to them. Do you mind if I ask what happened to your mother?”

“I wish I knew,” Chenda said. “My father never told the nuns, and he died before I could ask him. There was never any other family to ask either. I imagine that she died in childbirth or something like that.”

“Not knowing is the hardest part. I doubt that my mother is still living,” Verdu said. “Tugrulian women don't live much past their fertility. The men don't much care to have unproductive mouths to feed.”

Chenda was shocked. “How barbaric!”

“How Tugrulian,” he replied flatly. “Can you tell me about your father?”

Chenda shrugged. “Sort of. The last time I saw him, I was two-years old, when he left me at the convent in Wadpole-on-the-River. I mostly know him from his letters and gifts.  For ten years, Daddy sent wonderful gifts for my birthday. There would always be something special for me, from some far-off place, but he also sent gifts for me to share with the other children living with the Sisters of St. Elgin, the real orphans.  For my sixth birthday, he sent a beautiful, hand drawn map showing delicate illustrations of the four continents and the locations of all the great cities of the world.”

Chenda giggled as she swished her clothes in the rinse bucket. “It's a little silly, but I would mark the map with little X's each time my father sent a letter or gift. I imagined that I was there too, in some exotic place.  After just a few years, I had marked the map into a dark mishmash of ink.  All except for the continent labeled
The Tugrulian Empire
.”

Sheepishly, she looked up at Verdu.  “All children in the Republic, even the ones cloistered deep in the countryside, knew stories about of the savage Tugrulians, and how they murdered foreigners on sight. The Tugrulians shaped the fate of many of the children living with the Sisters.  Several of the orphans had lost both parents in one of the many Tugrulian attacks on the Republic's eastern coast.  A few of my playmates had barely survived the attacks themselves, and their disfigured bodies spoke for them about the brutality of the foreign invaders...”

Verdu frowned and said, “I know. I wish I could apologize for my people, but I can't. Go on with your story. What happened to your father?”

Chenda swallowed hard and went on. “When I was 12-years old, the Mother Superior called me to her office and offered me this limp hug and some sticky toffee. Like candy was going to make what she was going to tell me any less devastating. Anyway, I hadn't received any letters in the previous weeks, so I already knew the old sister would tell me my father was dead. It seemed ironic that, after ten years, I finally was an equal to my peers, alone in the world, an orphan. The nun shared all she knew; my father's ship, the
Valiant Eagle
, had been lost over the Kohlian Sea. There were no known survivors.

“You know, Verdu, for a little while, my life went on just as it had before. Aside from not getting any letters, everything was just the same. I went to class and to worship. I made my bed and ate my meals. When my birthday came, the truth sank in. No more letters. No packages. No father. The pattern of my life broke that day, and I finally understood then that my father really wasn't going to come back.”

Chenda stood in silence for a minute and said, “The next day, Edison appeared at the convent and claimed me as his ward. I never doubted that I should leave with him. It just seemed like there was nothing left to wait for in Wadpole-on-the-River.”

Verdu looked at Chenda with sympathetic eyes. “There is a lot of gravity in your life, I think. You get pulled along by some very strong fates.”

Chenda smiled again. “That sounds about right. The less I fight it, the better off I am.  Kind of like that unique connection between you and Fenimore”

“Ah, Fenimore,” Verdu said. “He says you're going to Kotal, and you've asked him to go.”

“That's right.”

“He told me about your vision, and said you are going to ask me, too.”

“True again.”

“Show me the stones,” he suggested.

Chenda sat down beside Verdu and pulled the bag of stones out. She poured them into Verdu's waiting palm. He closed his fingers around them and kissed his hands.

“Oh,” he said quietly. “Oh, Chenda. I... Yes. I'll go with you.” He looked up into her eyes, looking deeply as if he were searching for something important within her.

Chenda smiled and put her hand on top of his. “I'm happy that you will come, but I would be lying if I said I understood why.”

“I'll be lying if I try to explain. Let's just say that, for now, I'll follow you anywhere.”

Chenda put her arms around Verdu as he clutched the stones to his chest. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for saying you will come with me. Thank you for pulling me out of the sea. Thank you for wringing me out. You saved my life, and I won't forget it.”

“Anytime,” he said.

Chapter 12

FINDING THE
TJALK

Chenda sat in the galley amongst her drip drying clothes and listened to Verdu's beautiful voice. His songs were lilting and joyful. Chenda settled behind the small table and stretched her bare legs across the next chair. For the first time in recent memory, she felt relaxed and safe.

As she lounged, enjoying her own private concert, Captain Endicott and Candice entered the galley. Candice slid into the seat opposite Chenda as Verdu finished his song. The ladies clapped joyfully, and Captain Endicott slapped his young officer on the back.

“If you are quite done with your show biz auditions,” the captain remarked, “we've got work to do. I'd like to shove off in just over an hour, so let's do the pre-flight inspection. Start by counting noses and make sure we have a full complement. If everyone is accounted for, you tell Germer to pull up the plank and put him off duty.”

“Yes, sir,” Verdu said. He looked at Chenda with searching eyes as he left the galley.

Captain Endicott turned his attention to Candice. “My dear, I hate to leave you to finish sobering up alone, but duty calls. We've got appointments to keep!” He stepped to the doorway. “Get some rest if you can, ladies,” he said as he stalked out the door.

Candice and Chenda, alone once again, looked across the table at each other.

“So, what happened after Max and I left?” Candice asked. “Looks like you fell in the sea.”

“Indeed I did, and it's Max now is it?” Chenda said with a smile. “That seems a little personal.”

“I'm starting to
feel
a little personal about him. But that's not important. What happened amongst the three of you?  Verdu is looking at you like a landed fish looks at water.”

“Ah, well, I nearly drowned, he and Fenimore saved me, I had a vision, I talked with Edison - who gave me more instructions - and I've convinced Verdu to come along with us into the heart of the Tugrulian Empire. What's new with you?”