Twenty: Into the Rigging

The day after Nail discovered Josef Buddenbrooks sitting in his cell, she planned to begin her own investigation -- to find out who he was and how much of his story was true.

She didn't believe that he was an assassin. That was exactly the kind of stupid lie that boys told all the time, especially when they were trying to show off.

He was just a kid, as frightened and lost as the rest of them. But she had to admit that there was something funny about him. His confidence. The easy way he threw off his handcuffs.

Just as she was lacing up her shoes, Marcus Barkle and Ballko turned up in the brig with a canvas bag.

"Look here, Nail," said Ballko. He pointed at the other kids with his thumb. "You've been living with this new lot. We want you to pick a couple of good ones to help us in the rigging."

"It's time you started learning the ropes," Barkle said.

"You won't need them shoes. We go barefoot up in the rigging. Pick a couple of mates, no runners now, and meet us outside."

Nail made a circuit of the room. The children watched her with wide eyes. "What does it mean?" said a little girl with patchy brown hair. "

"They mean to start training us," Nail told them. "We're to learn our new trade. You, Aramis. You'll go with me. And you, Silda."

Under Dr. Soonoo's care, Aramis has recovered with remarkable speed from his head wound. He had shown in a hundred ways that he was quick-fingered and had a fine sense of balance.

Silda had been a seamstress's girl. She had big, knowing hands and she knew here way around knots and rope.

"Think you can manage the height?" Nail said to Silda, speaking softly so as not to shame her. "We'll be swinging around way up top."

"What choice do I have?" Silda said. She had black, short-cut hair and a fast, thin smile. "I think I'll be okay."

They went out to the base of the docking stand that held the Blue Oriole.

She loomed above them, her hull curving away and blocking the gray light that came in through the warehouse windows.

A hoist went up and down at regular intervals -- a kind of make-shift elevator -- powered by a thudding, coal-fired engine.

"Hold on," said Barkle. "That's the rule today. Hold on tight and don't fall. If you learn that much, then you get a second day to learn something else."

They clambered onto the platform and were swept up past the keel, up past the ventral masts, then swept out toward the crow's platform on the mizzen.

Nail's stomach lurched and lurched again. Her bare feet felt slippery and clumsy on the lift floor. She gripped the rope hard, but her hands were slick with sweat.

She noticed that Aramis didn't look frightened at all. He was looking around with eager curiosity, only holding on with one hand.

Her own heart raced. When Ballko gestured for her to step out onto the rounded spar, she hesitated.

They were high aloft now, three or four stories above the Oriole's deck and the same again above the floor of the warehouse.

She could see the rafters not far above and the great hinges and mechanical works that would slide the roof back when the ship was ready to launch.

For a moment, she felt that she might freeze -- that she might be incapable of walking the shrouds -- but then she heard Josef Buddenbrooks' voice in her head:

"You're not really looking," he said.

She took a deep breath and tried to focus on what she was seeing. In fact, the cross-spar on the mizzen was quite large: as big around as a small tree.

There was a flattened patch on the upper surface, wide enough to stand on quite easily. She stepped onto it and gripped an iron ring set into the mast.

"Move along," Ballko said. "Make room for the others. You can perch on the platform there."

Built around the crow's nest was a largish stage made of oaken beams, which radiated out from the mast, covered with rough-hewn boards.

Nail felt the grain of the wood on her feet, as comforting as anything in her life.

The other two -- Aramis and Silda -- crowded in next to her. Both were panting a little, out of excitement and fear.

"Isn't it fantastic?" Aramis said, under his breath. "Imagine if the whole thing was pitching back and forth!"

Marcus Barkle overheard and said, "You learn to use that -- the pitch and roll of the ship -- when we're underway. A skilled shroudwalker can leap forty feet and more if he times it right."

"Only there's never second chances," Ballko said. Nail could see that he relished trying to scare them. "One wrong move and --" He pounded a fist into the mast.

The next couple of hours were a whirl of excitement, terror, and careful discovery. They met one by one the other shroudwalkers, the veterans -- though Nail was far too nervous to remember their names.

She watched them skip over the ropes, swinging from place to place like monkeys in a jungle.

It was intimidating and overwhelming: I'll never be able to do that, she thought.

To make matter's worse, they spoke in a jargon that amounted almost to a second language, as they pitched lines back and forth, threading the heavy hemp ropes through block-and-tackle.

The new children were given baby-tasks. Someone would direct them to stand in a certain place (miles, it seemed, above the earth below) and hold the end of a canvas sheet.

"Let go when I say let go, not before," Ballko would say. Or, "We'll all haul away when I give the word, so stay sharp."

Silda was the best of the three newcomers. She knew a hundred knots and could do most of them with one hand.

Aramis, too, showed that he had a kind of knack for the work.

Once, one of the older boys tried to trip him up and Aramis let himself fall to the next line of rope, where he spun about and landed on a mast-ring.

"I did a show with a family of fliers," he said to Nail. "They could swing from bar to bar like nothing -- they showed me a few tricks."

Nail felt nearly helpless through most of the long day. At times, a kind of dizzy vertigo took her and she could hardly move or see what was going on about her.

Marcus Barkle dropped down from one of the higher sails, crouching next to her and speaking softly: "You'll be fine, girl. Don't let yourself freeze up. If the others see you choke, you're done for."

She could see that he was right. The older shroud walkers were a hard bunch. They sneered and cat-called, whenever one of the new kids made a mistake.

The trick that the one boy tried to play on Aramis was only the beginning of their hazing. In part it was Ballko's fault: He was a rigid, dull boy who led by bullying.

But the others had caught his spirit. They had spent months or years in their dangerous trade. They had seen their friends die. It had made them callous.

So Nail drove herself. Sweating so that her eyes stung, she struggled to keep up, working knots, clambering from place to place.

Her hands were raw. Her arms quivered with exhaustion. Any number of times, she thought she would slip and fall.

"If I were running things," she thought, "it would be different. We would train the kids without treating them cruelly."

Before she realized it, her first day in the rigging was at an end and they were descending on the hoist elevator.

The ship passed her like a great, living thing -- a thing which she served now. She caught a glimpse of Captain Marsh patrolling the deck, chin on his chest, arms clasped behind his back.

"You did passably well," Marcus Barkle said, to the three of them. "Tomorrow you'll do better."

"They had better," grumbled Ballko, who stalked away.

Aramis glanced at Nail and grinned. "Bet he didn't do half as well on his first day," he whispered.

Nail smiled back but she was too weary to feel much of anything except hunger and a desire for her cot.

An hour later, she was drifting off to sleep, her muscles singing and groaning. It was then, just before she tumbled down into dream, that a pecular thing happened.

In her mind, she suddenly saw the Blue Oriole's masts and lines and sails as a pure geometric pattern. She saw planes and lines and points, each etched with marks to indicate length and angle.

What had seemed like an insoluble muddle through the day -- "Go there, stand here, climb up there!" -- suddenly resolved into a perfectly clear pattern.

To her surprise, she saw that Barkle and Ballko had gotten it wrong. A dozen of the rope-and-tackle systems were placed at angles that were good but imperfect.

If hauled tight, the sails would shed wind; or fail to come properly taut.

What's more, if they did it her way -- the way she could see in her mind -- it would take fewer hands to haul and the job would be done quicker.

The discovery was so marvelous somehow that all the fear and weariness vanished. As she fell asleep, she felt that the wierd, complicated world of the Shroud Walkers had become her own, personal domain.

Next: Cat and Mouse