The Steward

~THE DREADFUL~

The stink of whale blubber being rendered was almost helping, strangely. The more consistently disagreeable stench of the port city - rotting vegetation, too many people of variable hygiene, the brine pools near the coast, the sewage lagoon that formed around the deep-water vessels - was at least partially masked by the acrid smell of the whaling ships.

Anglet wasn’t much of a city, more like a large town with an especially surly populace. Located where the most northern navigable river on the continent ended in the sea, it had been named Angle Inlet by a long past explorer who probably thought they’d be able to think of a better name later. It did not have a local people anywhere close to give the area a more poetic or memorable name (and really, the total lack of humans on these northern plains for a thousand years should have made more people wonder) which meant it had sprung up mostly as a stopover. Ships could get fresh water from the large river, which led to some trade between the Ice Islanders in their fishing boats. That same convenience attracted whaling vessels looking for a place to refit, which led to building warehouses and docks in order to trade with the landlocked nations of the plateau down the river to the south, which led a hundred years later to… this.

Noah stood on a small hill that gave a view down to the harbour. The bars and inns looked crowded, and he needed passage up-river. That meant dealing with the sailors, which meant going to the largest dockside pub in view. With one quick stop at a hostel to drop off his bags - he was more than willing to spend silver to get a private room - he asked a few questions of the innkeeper and then worked his way down to the north-west corner of the town where the river met the ocean and the sailor bars pressed up against each other.

A handful of women eyed him up as he approached the largest bar on the street. A man who appeared to be in his early 20’s was rare but not that unusual; but one with all of his limbs, no visible scars, willingly entering a sailor’s bar alone? That clearly was.

A fight was just wrapping and Noah tried not to wince too openly. An older woman, beaten bloody by a second woman with brightly dyed shorter hair holding a short wooden baton, was laying on her back, her eyes murderous as she shouted “Bitch! Bitch!” through a mouth of broken teeth. She could barely move, with at least one forearm shattered, so the victor grabbed her by her long white hair and started dragging her towards the door, pulling a skinning knife as she did.

“No killing!” Shouted a large woman at the bar, holding a naked sword. That meant she was likely the owner or a worker, but the woman doing the pulling knew enough to not open a throat inside. She whispered down at the still furious woman on her back, and Noah didn’t think it was going to end well once the woman with the knife got her opponent into the alley behind the building.

Seeing that no one was going to be killed actually inside the place, the large woman placed her sword down and went back to ignoring the fight, which was what everyone else seemed to have been doing. Noah briefly considered trying to help the injured woman, but how? Even as she was leaving a smear of blood on the dusty wooden floor she was trying to claw at the other’s eyes, and Noah had no doubt that she would be wielding the knife if she could.

“Ay, man!” A voice calling him let Noah finally break free from the awful sight. “Ye seem like yer gonna heave! Dis place not a joke, you should try ‘nother bar!”

With a polite nod at the woman who called out, Noah hurried in. He was getting the occasional look, which he was getting used to in this land. It was rare to see a man between the ages of 15 and 60, so other than a few teenaged serving boys avoiding pinches and wandering hands there were maybe twenty adult men against a couple of hundred women. Some of the remote maritime nations hadn’t been as impacted by the First and Second Wars, so you would still see a vessel with a mostly male crew. But on the continent… well that was why Noah had to get inland. Now to figure out how.

The sailor’s proclaimed their rank and status with charms or icons set into their clothing, sometimes affixed to their hats, sometimes as necklaces. Noah learned to recognize the symbol of a whale’s skull, which meant that the wearer was certainly on a deep-water vessel. The wavy lines symbol seemed to indicate the ships that plied the wide and deep Radisson River, confusing called the Nelson River by the Easterners and the Siqiniq or Sun River by the Northern Islanders. Noah asked a few of those river craft types about their plans, but got mostly got rude comments or sullen silence in return.

“Hello, you are the captain, correct? The crest on your jacket means captain? Of a river ship?”

The woman was dark, with straight midnight black hair tied into the long braids common to folk from the nations of the Ice Islands. She seemed to be in her 30’s, and she placed her mug of frothy beer on the table while eyeing Noah up.

“I am.” She was at a large table, in a corner spot, so clearly she was a regular and likely well regarded. A taller woman with reddish blonde hair, pale and freckled, sat next to her. She wore a matching set of smaller icons on her shirt, like a soldier’s medals.

The captain could see Noah staring at the icons, clearly thinking, so she decided to help him out. “This is Hannah the Red, my first mate. The two lines on her button show her rank, and the size and colour show she has been an officer of several vessels, and is currently a watchstander. I am called Amaruq, of the Kuniq peoples of the Ice Sea, and the three lines indicate that I am the captain of the river ship Nawyet. Why are you in Dreadful?”

“Dreadful?” Noah asked.

The first mate snorted, “You have a strange accent, man. But that makes sense considering you don’t know the most infamous bar in Anglet is called The Dreadful. The floorboards and walls were salvaged from a beached whaling ship called - you guessed it - The Dreadful. And we sailors love a bar named after a ship.”

“Ahh, thank you, I didn’t know that.” Noah paused; these women certainly seemed agreeable enough. Less drunkenly belligerent than many of the women he had tried to talk to, at least. “Do you mind if I sit? I can buy you both a drink if you’ll listen to my offer. Once I figure out how the coins in this town work, I think I drastically overpaid for my hostel room.”

Amaruq gave a small smile and nodded to a free chair, saying, “Certainly. But we have fresh mugs, so ask away if you like.”

“I am hoping to travel south, on the river. My name is Noah and I am… a student of a sort. I understand there are old stone ruins a few hundred miles away. Well, there are stone ruins all over, apparently, but this is a large abandoned city on both banks of the river.”

“The Empty City? Yes, we pass it on our journey to the markets at Currielle.”

The man brightened, his handsome face showing some dazzling white teeth. “That’s brilliant, I was not completely sure this Empty City was on the big river or if the river boats passed it. I desperately want to visit it for a couple of days. I have been told that river boats go by fairly regularly, so if I could book passage on a ship to get there, I can do my research and then find a ship coming back?”

Hannah, with a ‘is this man for real?’ glance of disbelief at her captain, cleared her throat and said, “Not daily by any means, not even weekly, but yes the Empty City is a common stop. There are stone jetties and a large quay, so all the river traders use it as berth. I am not sure I would want to camp there alone and just assume a friendly crew would come by, you may instead find yourself in chains. Or killed.”

The man gave the sort of quiet “Mmhmm,” sound people give when they receive valuable advice they intend to ignore. “So, do you take passengers? What would it cost to drop me off on your way? I don’t take up much space, and I can sleep on the deck if need be.”

“No,” Amaruq said simply. “In answer to your first question, we do not take passengers.”

Hannah went still and very deliberately did not look at her captain, so the Kuniq woman suppressed a sigh and elaborated, “We do not take unattached men as passengers, at least. Not that any have ever asked, but a boat doing the Nelson route is no pleasure yacht. Space is tight, and the journey upriver is very difficult, so we can not have someone getting in the way. Causing friction. Perhaps if we were doing the easy trip back down the river… but no I am sorry. Workers only on my boat.”

The man looked crestfallen, but Amaruq remained impassive in the sight of his honestly fetching sad face. After a moment his eyebrows arched and he said, “If not as a passenger, how about as crew? I can work for my space!”

Hannah almost spit out her warm beer at his words but Amaruq ignored her. “Well, that would be different, surely. If you truly are willing to work, and are looking for a bunk, we are sailing upriver in two days. We could use a steward. If you can work a crew of 14, we can talk about salary.”

“I could work as a steward on your ship to the Empty City? How long would it take to get there?” The man seemed quite excited, at least.

Sitting up straight, Amaruq said, “To fight the current it takes 11 days to get to the empty city. We are set to leave in two days. Are you, er, serious?”

“Absolutely,” he said with a casual grin, “if you and your crew would have me, several days of work to get there would be no problem at all.”

The captain was clearly shocked at his reply, but treated his words as sincere and said, “You would be welcomed. My crew is as professional and respectful as any on the waters. We have not had a steward in several seasons, and you would make good coin to go along with the bunk and board. Now… I am proud of my boat and my crew, but surely you could make a lot more money working a whaling ship.”

Snorting, Hannah couldn’t help herself, “Deep hells, you could work here in the port and make enough in a month to hire a pleasure barge of perfumed harem girls in silks to paddle you up the river!”

The man laughed, and the captain grinned too, relaxed. He said, “I am impatient, and would like to get there quickly if I could. I have spoken to a few captains tonight and frankly some of them seemed… well a bit rougher than I would like. I don’t mind working hard on a ship to earn my keep, but I don’t trust their words. Or their looks, if you get my meaning. Captain Amaruq and First Mate Hannah, you two seem much more of a fit to me. But I am from very far away, and I'm still ignorant of some of the customs of this land, so I need to be able to trust the people I work for.”

Amaruq nodded solemnly. “I appreciate your honesty, Noah from very far away. You would be a tremendous boon, not only would the crew be thrilled, but your presence would give the boat itself some prestige even if you were only on for a fortnight. It would be no small thing, for a crew of a river boat to be able to say they had a real steward.”

Now the man gave a slightly confused nod. “I have never stewarded before, but I have been on a ship with young sailors called stewards. What exactly is the work like, on a river boat? It seemed to be a job with long hours, at least on the cruise ship I sailed on, but not terribly complicated or difficult.”

“Well, things have changed greatly the past decade or two, since the Widow’s War,” Amaruq said after a heavy pause.

The captain was relieved to see the man nodding. At least he did not seem completely ignorant of recent history, whatever foreign backwoods he hailed from.

“Without having a good cry about all the disasters of the past 40 years, let me just say that when the biters and leaches were defeated, things changed. Now most every bunk on the ships that ply the rivers and seas holds a woman. I’m not sure how the stewards worked on the ship you were on, but on my boat, there is a crew of 14, including the officers. One of the crew is a man, but he is off limits and his sister keeps the others away like a rabid she-wolf. I would not tolerate any or intimidation regardless.”

Taking another long drink, Amaruq tried to gauge the reaction of this strange man. “So, to steward my craft you would have to service the crew as they desired. The simple urges of a woman’s body, but also their desire for a man’s companionship. You would have set hours, and you could within reason make your own rules about conduct and what you will and won’t do. You would get a full share of any profit at the end of a full trade journey, should you stay on that long, and the crew would certainly spoil you besides.”

Hannah loved to talk and joke, and she couldn't contain herself any longer. She laughed, saying, “A nice hard prick and some sweet words at the end of a shift? They would try to tip you for extra visits and be scratching at your door all day if they could!”

With a quiet sigh, the captain shook her head. “There is some truth to that, but I would ask you to not let any woman shirk her duties, even if she hasn’t had a man in her bunk for years and goes mad with the sudden availability. Some of the crew, the young ones, do not make enough to pay for even a cheap boywhore in port so they only know a woman’s tongue or their own fingers.”

By now, Noah’s eyes were wide as dinner plates. Surely, he knew enough to understand what a steward did? But he seemed surprised, somehow.

Now staring holes into the man with an openly covetous gaze, Hannah leaned forward. “You are the hottest man I have seen outside the duchess’s court! You could be the courtesan for a rich woman in the capitol back home, why the hell are you trying to get to the Empty City? But gull shit to why, if you agree to the job I’ll pay you 5 shaved silver merms - a half months wage! - for a tumble with you tonight. Uh, unless Cap’n wants a go first?” Hannah broke off and looks at Amaruq, clearly worried now that this handsome, fit man two decades her junior would be drained empty by the captain. Who could resist?

But Amaruq was studying Noah’s face, seeing the emotions play out over him as he worked through the job offer. Having him on the Nawyet would indeed be a great coup, not just to the crew but especially to her as a captain. If Amaruq could get such an attractive man in the steward's bunk next to her cabin, while even larger ships were lucky to make do with a skinny woman in a fake beard sporting a strap on wooden phallus, it would speak very well of her. But somehow, this man seemed truly unaware of what the job he was applying for entailed. But how?

Just how ‘very far away’ was he from?