The apollo, p.4
The Apollo, page 4
A softness filled Avira's chest as she thought of her mother, who was bearing the brunt of her daughter’s absence. She thought she was about to cry. It felt so foreign to her. The gentle tingle morphed into a twist in her stomach, and she realized the ship had begun to move! The relief was twofold. She wasn’t crying, and The Apollo had finally started its voyage.
Avira had been taking a break from the pungent odors of the kitchen. She was trying to catch her breath and distinguish what onion stench was dinner and what was her own body odor. The instant she noticed the motion, Avira caught a glimpse of Captain Cascella. He stood at the ship’s wheel, eyes fixed on the Southern horizon.
“Prepare for open-air,” he shouted.
Avira wondered if she was supposed to know what to do. It appeared that the men with jobs to do knew what they were supposed to be doing. The rest of the crew members made themselves scarce.
Avira attempted a casual stride across the deck back towards the kitchen but found it was much harder to walk while the ship was moving in the opposite direction. Elation bubbled inside her with every wobbling step. She’d made it. Now she could breathe!
She was aboard The Apollo and moving farther from her father every second.
She’d been gone for eight days. Eight days was no short amount of time. She was certain few other girls running from arranged marriages had made it as far as she had. Much less successfully disguised themselves and obtained employment in the most famous skyship in the world. As she opened the door to the kitchen, she didn’t even notice the smell. She let the stench wash over her and said a silent thank you prayer to the sky goddess, Aurora, for getting her this far.
This is precisely when she ran face-first into a wall of sticky, hot flesh.
“What are you thinking?” she said before even having the chance to take in her surroundings. She surprised herself with how low her voice sounded, especially spontaneously.
Her quips were met with an outstretched hand as though this bothersome stranger was taking pains to make a friendly introduction. Finally looking up, Avira’s eyes met with a set of massive, unblinking brown eyes.
No, not quite brown. Darker than brown, like the sky on a moonless night.
The man’s pupils were barely distinguishable from the dark color of his irises. Avira had never seen eyes like this. She was absolutely lost in them.
“My apologies,” said the owner of the eyes, hand still outstretched. “I was looking for whoever left this pot on.” The man gestured to a massive stock pot Avira had left unattended when she stepped out for her breath of fresh air. The pot didn’t look anything like how Avira had left it. The broth had bubbled over, streams of greenish foam dribbling down the sides every which way. It looked like human refuse had been bottled up, shaken, and exploded like champagne.
“It’s boiled over,” the stranger said rather unhelpfully.
“Well, aren’t you a perceptive one,” Avira said instinctively. She ran to the stove and doused the flame with a cloth, careful to snuff it out. Avira gagged on the steam and its putrid smell. She tried to swallow down her disgust, hoping that the strange boy hadn’t noticed.
Avira swung around on her heels, ready to direct all her anger toward this nuisance of a boy. Screw his enrapturing eyes. He hadn’t even had the sense to douse the flame when the soup boiled over, and now a pot of soup that could have fed at least fifty men was ruined.
But before Avira could begin scolding him, she recognized him. He was the Shaheeni boy she’d seen the Malvolio holding over the ship’s edge. That was only a few hours ago. What on earth was he doing in the kitchen now?
“I’m Matteo,” the boy said earnestly, his hand still extended. His dark eyes made more sense now, given his Shaheeni appearance. He had those same dark curls her lady’s maid, Yasmina, had had. His ringlets were far less well-kempt than Yasmina’s though, she noticed. It looked like he’d never bothered to style them at all. Perhaps he didn’t know how.
“Cesario,” Avira said, shaking the boy's hand. He’d had it outstretched for at least a minute now. It felt like the polite thing to do.
“I’m sorry about your… er… what is that exactly?”
Avira turned to look at the soup. “It was supposed to be dinner for the night crew.”
The boy looked puzzled.
“The night crew?” Avira pressed. “The ropesmen and furnace crew and-”
“Cesario is a nice name,” the boy said, interrupting her. He’d located an apron on the far side of the kitchen and was tying it on over his suspiciously well-pressed pants. Avira noticed something when he spoke this time. He didn’t have the pang in his voice that Nicolo did so that he couldn’t be lower class. But his words didn’t italicize in the same brisk way she knew those of Alvanii did.
He must be Veronan, Avira thought, a wealthy Veronan at that.
Veronans were far less inclined to take to the skies, and high-born young men generally didn’t need to. Besides that, Avira’s father hated Veronans and rarely hired them.
Even more strange, the boy looked more Shaheeni than he did Veronan. He didn’t have the pasty complexion or ginger hair that set most people from Vernonii apart from their Alvanian counterparts.
Avira realized she’d spent more time contemplating the boy than conversing with him. She formed a response, “It was my brother’s name.” She immediately kicked herself. Now she’d have to elaborate more.
“You were named after your brother?” Matteo asked.
“He died before I was born.” Avira felt like a fish pulled from the water, slapping around on the docks and gasping for air. “I’m the youngest of twelve, you see.”
“I like the name,” the boy said. She noticed him give her a look with only his eyes so quickly she could have missed it. His eyes said, I don’t believe you.
He already had her on her back foot, and she’d only met him a moment ago.
What if he saw right through her disguise? He could report her to Captain Cascella, and she would be tried on Sailor’s Law. Even her fortune couldn’t save her then. She’d be thrown overboard.
“How can I help?” the boy asked. He had a pressure in his voice that made Avira worry he’d already asked her this while she’d been busy inside her head.
Best not to get friendly, she decided.
“Throw that pot overboard.”
“The whole pot?”
“Not the whole pot, you idiot, just the soup. Then get back in here, clean the stove, mop the floors, and start on the bread. I’m assuming you can make a half-decent bread.”
Nothing about this boy told Avira that he could make bread. She couldn’t even do it herself. But if he was to be her shift mate for the next few hours, maybe she could at least use him.
“Hop to it. We’ve got mouths to feed!” She put on her best ‘hardened sailor’ voice and hoped it might work. To her surprise, it did. Matteo gathered the entire charred pot in his arms and took it out of the kitchen, dumping the burnt stew overboard. “Look out below” He shouted. Then he came back and, without saying a word, plunged the pot into the wash basin and began to scrub vigorously. He didn’t even complain. Maybe she was getting better at this whole Cesario act.
Avira went back to cutting vegetables, the same thing she had done earlier. Dropping them into a fresh pot of water and waiting for them to boil. She thought she would have been more annoyed to have to start over completely, but she found the chopping cathartic, relaxing even. After her shift, maybe she’d track down the Kitchen Lead, a gruff man named Diego. She could ask who on earth assigned her the new guy. Even though she’d only been there a few days, she felt she deserved better than this. Feeding the night ropesman was an important job. They kept the ship aloft while everyone else slept.
As he mopped, Avira let herself glance up at the strange boy. Something about him felt familiar. That couldn’t be good. Her mind wandered to all the ways this could be a trap of her father's or Gavriel’s. He could be a spy. Anyone on board the ship could be a spy. Her father did own the ship, after all. But Avira remembered the boy in her cabin, Nicolo, who had been kind to her even when she was cold and suspicious with him. If she was going to make it through this journey, she’d need friends. And she couldn’t make friends if she walked around suspicious of everyone all the time. Besides, this boy appeared to be far too daft to succeed in the world of espionage. He couldn’t even keep a pot from boiling over. As she cut, she relaxed into the mundane chopping motion. She let her mind wander away from the boy, away from her worries for only a moment.
She imagined the map she’d drawn on her bedroom floor, so many miles away now. And She let her mind drift to all the trade routes she’d imagined but never dared put on the map in case her father found it and stole her idea. If she was to be his most significant competitor, she had to beat him at his own game. Her mind had always wrapped well around facts and figures. She was better with numbers than any other girl in her classes. Her friends had taken to copying her answers on math tests. Avira felt she could change the whole world using only numbers, a pen, and a blank sheet of parchment. She could map the entire future of Alvanii, if only they’d let her. If only she’d been born a boy.
She remembered the small bag she kept locked safely in the chest of her cabin. Inside it was a handful of things, but she only truly cared about a roll of weathered parchment. It was a complete map of the Bianco Trade Network, every port from Shaheen to Veronii, across the Southern Coast to places Avira hadn’t even heard of, every route from Polislav to Irajmi. It was the most comprehensive map she could get her hands on, it even included her father’s secret military forts.
Avira smiled. Someday she’d make a map of her own and share it with the world. After all, few people had access to maps in Alvanii, and she assumed it was the same in Veronii. Trade barons like Grigori had kept their secrets so close to their chest that the everyday man didn’t even know what the world looked like.
Someday, Avira would change all that. But first, she had to get through this kitchen shift.
Chapter six
Matteo knew who she was the minute he saw her. Well, the minute he ran headfirst into her.
The sun was setting, and it had only taken him a minute to settle into the small room that would be his home for the next month and a half. He’d locked up his journal, change of clothes, and book of Shaheeni myths in the chest provided to him and changed his shirt to look a little more casual. Then, he decided to make his way to the kitchen and check in for his shift early. In Veronii, the kitchen was strictly a place for wives and mothers. He’d spend barely any time cooking in his life. He’d never even learned how his adoptive mother made the thin, doughy bread they ate with almost every meal. He suspected it was just walnut flour and water but he had no way to be sure.
When he’d made it to the kitchen, Diego, a plump man with gigantic hoop earrings, was in a drunken stupor, complaining about how lazy his crew was. Matteo had introduced himself politely, and Diego had made a sweeping gesture to a rack of aprons in one corner and a pile of onions before stumbling out the door. Matteo was alone in the kitchen with at least five gigantic pots boiling on every open flame. The room was scalding hot and so muggy he could barely breathe.
One pot had only onions and cabbage in it, set to a simmer. The aroma of salt and spices filled the air but it was hard to pinpoint exactly where it was coming from. None of the food looked to have much in terms of flavoring. It looked like a gray sludge. Matteo wasn’t one to complain, but he had always assumed The Apollo offered slightly better dining options, considering its fame. The least they could do is serve some kind of meat, he thought.
Another pot was at a rolling boil so intense Matteo feared it would spill over and ruin whatever bile was cooking. Matteo decided it would be wise to find the kitchen lead, Diego, and ask for advice on what to do next. He’d turned on his heels and dashed out the door. That’s when he’d run into the girl.
She was dressed as a boy, sure. One could even say the costume was passable, but having seen her portrait on the wall at the Bianco Villa, Matteo recognized her immediately. From the daintiness of her features to the smattering of freckles across her nose — notably more intense in person than in the painting — to her pale, glass-like skin. Matteo had tried to quickly cover up his recognition by holding his hand out in a shake, but the girl had locked eyes with him so intently he worried she knew he knew. Matteo could feel himself blushing. Her gaze was so intense. It overwhelmed him.
It was probably a good thing she wasn’t particularly friendly. Distracting her with the pot boiling over had seemed to work well and pretty soon, she was ordering him around like some old haggard sailor who hadn’t touched earth for a decade.
Matteo had felt confident he’d find the girl. He’d once negotiated the safe return of a Veronan senator’s infant child who couldn’t even speak, much less leave a trail of clues as to where she had gone, as Avira had done. But it was always much harder to find people who didn’t want to be found. He’d expected Avira to at least evade him for more than a single day.
As he watched her work in the kitchen, cutting onions masterfully though he could only assume she’d never stepped in a kitchen a day in her life, he noticed how graceful she was. Even with the ship rushing underneath their feet and pitching back and forth from time to time when it caught a gust of wind, Avira danced between the counters and the flaming stoves. It was like she’d been born to be in the sky.
Avira asked Matteo to make a loaf of bread, and he’d failed miserably, garnering many under-the-breath insults from her. However, he couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t appear to know what to do with the yeast or flour either. They were one motley pair, two people pretending to know how to work in a kitchen. The night ropesman would have to go without bread tonight.
Matteo figured the best way to secure the girl’s safe return was to gain her trust without revealing his intentions. If she’d recognized him instantly as Matteo De Luca, the Veronan detective, Matteo doubted she’d have been so calm around him. In hindsight, he could have given her a fake name, but he’d told all the other crew members his name was Matteo. Way to go, Matteo. He cursed himself for being so clumsy with his true identity. The girl had distracted him.
The kitchen shift went slowly. From 10 PM, when the sun set to 4 AM, when the night ropesman had a shift change and came to the kitchen for food, they worked away in the steam and the dim light of the kitchen. A single lantern swayed with the rocking of the ship and lit their way. They were nearly wordless for most of the night.
At one point, Matteo asked the girl, Cesario, as she had introduced herself, what time her shift had started. She shrugged and said she didn’t mind working a double since her bunkmate was far too spritely for her to get any sleep in her bed anyway.
“He wants to become friends. I didn’t come here to make friends.”
By the time their shift ended, the stars were out. Matteo had never seen anything quite so brilliant as the stars. They were closer than he’d ever seen before. Instead of tiny fireflies or candle flames, they looked like torches lighting the night. He wanted to reach out and touch them. Matteo had stopped and called out, “Cesario, look at the stars.” But she’d already disappeared below the deck of the ship.
So Matteo returned to his bunk, where his cabin mate was already out on a shift. He couldn’t remember, but he thought he remembered his cabin mate’s position was something he’d never imagined could be a job on a skyship – like sail stitcher or mast painter.
Matteo drifted into a deep sleep, promising himself that one of these nights, he’d stay awake long enough to watch the sunrise from the deck. He couldn’t exactly picture it in his head, but it had to be brilliant -- probably even more intelligent than the ones that made Alvanii so famous.
He fell into a dreamless sleep and awoke to an unearthly sound. Some kind of copper bell rang from every corner. Or maybe it was ringing from inside his skull.
Matteo sat up so fast he nearly whacked his head on the ceiling. He wasn’t accustomed to sleeping on a top bunk. When he’d learned of the bunking system, he’d been quite appalled. What would happen if the ship took a hard pitch to one side in the middle of the night? Would he fall right out of bed? Some night of sleep that would be.
Matteo slid on his pants and shoes, throwing on a muslin tunic he’d forgotten he packed. His bunkmate, it seemed, had already made it out of the room. The copper bell droned on. Matteo poked his head out of his room and found every man on the ship moving down the hallway in the same direction. He figured he’d better follow and join the crowd as they climbed up to the ship’s deck. Artemis stood waiting for them. From what Matteo could tell, the men lined up in order of what position they worked and how long they’d been on the ship. Newbies like him were pushed, rather aggressively, to the front.
It only took a moment for Matteo to find the girl in the crowd. She was the only one who looked half as confused as he was.
“Good morning, my little sunshine!” Artemis called. He wasn’t standing regally like a military general. Instead, he was hanging from a rope ladder a few dozen feet above his men. One leg was hooked into the ladder so he could gesture wildly with his arms as he spoke.
“For those new here, welcome to your first morning aboard the greatest sky ship in all of Alvanii, Veronii, and the world.”
There was a great cheer, primarily instigated by the more seasoned crewmen. Matteo wondered if this speech happened after every launch.
“I wanted to gather you all here,” Artemis continued, “so I can look at every one of your faces at least once before we are miles from land, and I’m stuck relying on you to keep me afloat. Each of you was hand chosen by me, no easy task, so know that there can be no secrets between us. If you think you are hiding something from me, think again.” Matteo fought the urge to look at Avira. He wondered if she was nervous at all. He couldn’t imagine anyone was keeping a bigger secret than her, especially with how men on this ship appeared to feel about the Bianco family.
