The Last Voyage of Poe Blythe Read online

  “And red,” I said.

  “Yes.” He pointed to my hair. I pulled the ends around to look at them. He was right. In the sun, somehow, there were filaments of gold glinting along my braid.

  “You’re not supposed to look at the sun,” I said.

  “Sometimes you don’t mean to,” he said. “But you do.”

  I was jealous of Call—that he could remember his mother so well. Later he told me other things about her: that she had a quick temper, but laughed often. It was hard to reconcile that with Call, who was endlessly patient and whose laughter was rare and deep.

  Call and I were both good at making things with our hands. And so, when the time came to leave the orphanage at fifteen, we got sent out to the scrap yard to work our way up, to haul and carry and do piecework for the machinists and learn from them.

  The first time I slept after his death, I had the dream about the armor for the dredge. I was watching someone build it. It wasn’t long before I realized it was Call. I kept trying to talk to him, but he wouldn’t answer. He couldn’t hear me. He looked right through me every time. Finally, I stopped trying to talk to him and paid attention to what he was making.

  I always knew it wasn’t real. I knew that Call didn’t come to me in a dream to tell me to build the armor. I knew because it wasn’t something Call would have ever wanted me to build in real life.

  But I still finished it for him.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Line up in front of me,” I tell the crew assembled on the bank. “Don’t worry about order or ranking.”

  Off to the side, the Admiral stands, watching.

  The crew wears dusky-green uniforms like the ones we wore before; the hats are the same, too. Mine has a captain’s insignia on it. I’ve worn my hair in braids to keep it out of my face, but now I wonder if they make the hat seem ill-fitting, make me look ridiculous.

  The crew stands at attention, but their bearing as a group isn’t perfect because most aren’t true militia. It’s a jumble of machinists, miners, and others pressed into the Admiral’s service for this excursion. Most of the people in the Outpost don’t pay much attention to the dredge voyages. People have so much work to do in their day-to-day lives that they don’t spare a thought for the tasks of others. They trust the Admiral, and keeping the Outpost viable is a full-time job for everyone who lives here.

  Generations ago, when people came to build the Outpost in this wild land where we now live, the Territory, they had support and supplies and contact with the Union that had sent them. The settlers had been asked to establish the Outpost as a jumping-off point for more explorations and because the Union had heard there might be gold to mine in the Territory. But after a few years, the Union sent word they were no longer going to keep up the Outpost. We were too much work, they said. Too far away from the rest of their provinces and cities. Too hard to protect. Too wild. We hadn’t found enough gold to make us worth their time, and they no longer seemed to care about exploring. The Union ran the dredges ashore and stopped visiting or sending supplies. We were on our own. The first Admiral gathered in those who’d settled outside of the Outpost, for their own protection. The raiders are the descendants of those who refused to come.

  “Name?” I say to the man in front of me.

  “Owen Fales,” he says.

  “You’re one of the miners.” I’ve been over and over the names on the manifest. I know them all.

  He nods. “Captain Blythe.”

  He’s older than I am—thirties or forties—but seems soft-spoken. Perhaps he won’t mind being led by someone as young as I am.

  Down the rows I go. When I get to a young man with dark hair and blue eyes, my heart rises into my throat the way it always does at an unexpected reminder of Call. This man has Call’s exact coloring and is handsome, too, but other than that they look nothing alike.

  “Brig Tanner,” he says.

  “First mate,” I say back, and he nods.

  “Eira Clyde,” says the girl next to him. She’s very beautiful, with high cheekbones, dark hair. “Cartographer.”

  I raise my eyebrows at her. She’s spoken before I can. She flushes, realizing the mistake, but doesn’t break our gaze.

  Is she insolent? Or merely inexperienced? I resist the urge to look over at the Admiral.

  I’m sure that he’ll have someone on board to watch me. To watch all of us. I wonder who it is.

  I go through the names and positions. Officer Ophelia Hill, navigator. Officer Laura Seng, medic. Officer Cecil Clair, chaplain. Officer Corwin Revis, chief machinist.

  Then a face so young it makes me stop. He must be my age, or perhaps even younger.

  “Tam Wallace,” he says.

  “Ship’s cook,” I answer.

  The excitement on his face reminds me of myself two years ago. He’ll have heard about the myriad of miseries waiting for him on board the dredge—the grating noise and hard work, the boredom, the claustrophobia. He hasn’t felt them yet. But if he’s like Call and I were, he’ll love the voyage anyway because it’s an adventure. I feel a pang in my heart for who I used to be, for what I’ve lost.

  “How old are you?” I ask.

  “Sixteen.”

  A year younger than me.

  “How did you become a ship’s cook so young?”

  Tam runs a hand through his hair, breaking the protocol of standing at attention when the Captain is reviewing the crew. He catches himself halfway through and drops his hand to the side. “I work at the meal hall where the Admiral dines. He gave me this assignment himself.”

  “If he likes your food, why would he waste you on the dredge?” I ask.

  “He wants this voyage to succeed,” Tam says. “People work better when they’re well fed.”

  Young, malleable, talented but not in a way that’s threatening to the Admiral, someone conveniently located in the kitchen, where he’ll hear all the gossip. . . .

  Maybe I’ve found the Admiral’s watchdog.

  Near the end, I see the one name on the manifest that I recognized, the one person I’ve wanted to see. My former boss, now my second mate.

  “Naomi Moran,” she says. Her hair, dark streaked with gray, is longer than I remembered.

  “Second mate,” I say.

  “Captain Blythe,” says a guard at my elbow. “The Admiral is ready to address the crew.”

  A subtle undercut. I was going to give my own message first; anything I say after his speech will be a letdown. I nod and the guard calls out, “The Admiral will speak to you now.” They all turn in his direction like flowers to the sun.

  The Admiral’s wearing a suit coat and vest today. Even in the heat. I know the crew will love this. They’ll see it as a sign of esteem. Perhaps it is. The Admiral looks as pleased as I’ve ever seen him.

  “Come here, Captain Blythe,” the Admiral says.

  I take my place at his left.

  “Captain Blythe designed the armor that protects our ship, our cargo, and our crew so well,” the Admiral says. “I want this crew to accord her all respect in honor of the lives she’s saved. Captain Blythe.”

  I stand stiff and awkward while the others salute. Will the Admiral’s blessing help or hurt me on the river? It used to be that the crews were people like Call and me, who wanted to get out of the Outpost for a while. And the Admiral needed people to do the work and who didn’t mind going. It worked out as well as anything could. But now things have changed. I can tell. I smell it in the cool-burned morning air, in the shift of the wind. In the way some of the crew makes sense and some don’t quite seem to fit. The Admiral chose us all.

  “This is the last river,” the Admiral says. “The last voyage. Your mission is important to the Outpost, to all of us. I wish you well, and I know you will succeed.”

  He lifts his broad-brimmed hat into the
air and the crew cheers, all twenty-three of us. I raise my voice with the rest so I don’t draw the Admiral’s ire.

  I’ve never liked being around people, but ever since Call, it’s been worse.

  The Admiral’s eyes meet mine and he smiles.

  * * *

  • • •

  We don’t embrace or shake hands but she falls into step right next to me, our shoulders almost touching, as we board the boat.

  “We’re traveling on a ship of children and fools,” Naomi says, low.

  “You’re right,” I say. “What does the Admiral think he’s playing at?”

  “I don’t think he’s playing.” Naomi’s voice sounds rough like everyone’s does when they get to her age. Like mine will sound eventually. “I think he has exactly who he wants on this voyage. I just don’t know why.”

  CHAPTER 4

  THIS IS THE MOMENT the voyage starts. Not when the Admiral gave a speech and people cheered. This. When the motor first turns, the ship moves, the armor whirs into gear.

  I have a wave of memory—Call and I standing together on the deck of the other dredge, watching the trees and rivers pass by. It takes time and work to tear up a river the way the dredge does, so you can see almost everything. The ship is not fast.

  Naomi and I are on the bridge, the small room at the front of the dredge. Here, we can steer the ship and watch the mining buckets coming up outside, a long loop of them rotating through on a bucket elevator. They’re huge, weighing over a thousand pounds each, made of metal strong and durable enough to withstand scraping along the bottom of the river floor and hauling up rocks.

  The windows of the bridge gave me trouble when I was designing the armor because they’re a spot for a potential breach. One morning I woke up and the world went from dark to light with the opening of my eyes and I knew: The ship needs eyelids. The window armor can be retracted for viewing or extended over the windows for security.

  Right now, they’re open, and Naomi and I watch the river sliding slowly past beneath us. She gives me a thumbs-up. Everything sounds as it should, loud and sweet and terrible. I smile back. I think about what the Admiral said to me before we left. Don’t underestimate how much the raiders hate your ship. But what I think is that the raiders shouldn’t underestimate how much I love my ship. Or, to be precise, how much I love what it does.

  It’s a pale, twisted little thing compared to what I felt for Call. Maybe it’s not even love, what I feel. I don’t know.

  But it’s better than nothing.

  * * *

  • • •

  I breathe a sigh of relief as I open the door to the captain’s quarters. Alone. At last.

  I can work with others when I have to, when I’m designing or refining the ship. I’ve been doing that for the past two years.

  But this is different. I’m living with other people again. We’re all stuck on board the dredge until the end of the voyage. Back when there were ocean journeys, they couldn’t leave their ships because they were surrounded by water. Here, we’re feet away from a shore, from land. It’s enough to make you crazy, thinking about escape or climbing off and walking away. That’s the strange thing about the dredge. In theory, you could leave. But in practice, it’s not allowed.

  None of us can leave. Not even the captain.

  My quarters aren’t much nicer than the rest of the crew’s accommodations, except in one critical way—they’re private. My space has a bunk, a desk and chair next to it, a tiny dresser. Everything is made of metal and bolted to the wall and floor.

  There is a map of the Serpentine River Valley tacked to the wall. After I heave my bag onto my bed, I walk over to examine the map—the greens and blues and browns, the names of the tributaries and their valleys.

  A knock at the door. I open it to find my first mate.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” Brig says. “But is there anything you’d like me to do? Naomi’s at the helm and she says she doesn’t need me to relieve her yet. I’ve been down to the mining deck and everything seems to be going smoothly.”

  Right. Orders. I need to remember to give them.

  “Call a meeting for me,” I tell Brig. “During both meal times.” We eat in two shifts so that there are always personnel to keep the ship going, and the cafeteria is the only area large enough to hold everyone. Except for the mining deck, I suppose, but it’s hard to hear down there.

  “Will do, Captain Blythe.”

  Brig salutes without irony. He’s had militia training, I’m sure of it, though he’s wearing the same uniform as everyone else. There’s something sad and set about his eyes, an almost-gentle, resigned quality, though everything else is sharply defined—his hair combed with military precision, his broad shoulders straight and his posture upright.

  He’d also make an excellent informant for the Admiral.

  I close the door.

  I go back to my bag and pull out my comb, set it on the desk. I take out some shirts. When I reach back inside the bag, my body goes still as my fingers brush against something unfamiliar. I know the feel of everything I packed and this isn’t mine. Paper, soft and worn, folded into a large square.

  I pull it out and open it up.

  It’s a map, a little like the one on my wall. Except this isn’t a full map, just a piece of one. At the corners where it’s folded, there are small holes. It’s old.

  But the message written on it is new. Scrawled in dark black ink that has bled into the fog-soft paper.

  This is not your river.

  Is it a threat? I run my thumb across the words.

  Of course it is.

  So. There may be someone on board who sympathizes with the raiders.

  I fold the map back up and zip it into my bag.

  You want to play cat and mouse with me? I think. Good. Let’s play.

  CHAPTER 5

  “SO HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE to get used to the sound?” Tam asks me as I come through the dinner line in the cafeteria. The noise from the mining below is enough to rattle your teeth and shake your brain against your skull.

  But Tam seems to be handling it well. He looks cheerful and calm, and he’s not sweating, though the kitchen must be hellish hot.

  “Soon,” I say. “Never.”

  “Be careful.” Tam puts a dish with a metal cover on my tray. “Don’t burn yourself.”

  I take my meal to the table at the front of the room because that’s where the captain on my other voyage always sat. He was an older man with a weary manner, but he was efficient and fair. I’ve never blamed him for what happened. He didn’t kill Call.

  That ship was the twin of this one, the layout is the same, but Call was never here. I make sure to remind myself of this every time I catch myself thinking of him, hoping against hope to see him come around a corner, through a door.

  Someone—Tam? his kitchen assistant?—has set the tables with real napkins and flowers in heavy metal cups. The delicate blossoms shake with the constant vibration of the dredge. A petal falls as I set down my tray. I don’t sit.

  All eyes on me. I was the last to enter the room.

  It’s time for the first meeting.

  “I’ll make this short so you can eat,” I say. “I know that for those of you who haven’t been on board, the dredge can take getting used to, but that will come with time. There are some things you must remember. You cannot leave the ship. You may not go outside or up on the deck. If you do anything to compromise our mission, the consequences will be swift and severe.”

  A few heads nod, but most people remain still. According to the manifest, eleven of the crew have been on a dredge voyage before and the others have not. To work on the ship, they’re required to have mining or machinery experience, or to be an expert in another area for which we have need. They also have to be able to swim and shoot. In my opinion, those last two aren’t necessary an
ymore. Not now that we have my armor.

  I make eye contact with a couple of men at the back who look greener than the rest. The ship’s getting to them. The motion, maybe, making them sick. Or the noise. Or the heat of many bodies in close quarters.

  I fold my arms. I’m sweating, but so is everyone else.

  “Our job is straightforward. We gather gold and kill any raiders who try to harm us or interfere with our mission.”

  Someone raises a hand. “I heard that when we have to turn the ship around you might let us out to have a look.”

  “The instructions we were all given say explicitly otherwise,” I say.

  Disappointment crosses more than one person’s face. Why did they think there was a chance? They all know the Admiral forbids it.

  Maybe they think I’m some kind of rogue. Or that I’m weak, and they’ll be able to push me around.

  “I’ll call meetings as needed,” I continue. “For now, enjoy your dinner. It will be the one time that your seatmates smell as fresh as they do.”

  It’s a poor attempt at humor, but they laugh. I sit down. I’ve done what’s necessary. Stated the rules, demonstrated that I plan to adhere to them, shown that I am not completely cold and without camaraderie. You can’t command a ship that way. I don’t know much but I know that. I think I’m relatively safe from mutiny because no one wants to harm the person who designed the ship’s armor and who can best keep it running.

  Except maybe the person who left me that note.

  I lift the cover off my dish and the smell instantly makes my mouth water. Around me, others are murmuring in surprise.

  It’s not stew or any of its incarnations, the usual mishmash of food put together and seasoned to disguise its age or toughness. It’s separate, distinct, beautiful food—meat with wine-colored sauce, crisp salad greens, crusty-outside-and-steaming-hot-inside bread.

  Heads swivel to the serving area but Tam has disappeared.