The bad ship moved heavily. After every stroke of the oars, the old hull shuddered and creaked.
The grey funeral sail flapped overhead. The wind barely filled the thick, coarse cloth, its seams darkened with salt. When Borri had hauled it taut before they sailed, the old sail had not rung like a new one, but creaked and rustled as though it might tear at any moment.
The Old North lay astern, but the people still lived by its rules. The rowers looked to Steinar and waited for an order. Farin held his oar a little lower than the others, as though afraid to take up more room than he was allowed. Saiva sat silent in the bow and did not touch the side with her bare fingers, as though she did not yet count herself part of the crew.
When the shore sank lower and Hroald's hall became a dark smudge beneath the smoke, the first argument began. And they argued not about their course or the wind, but about who was master here.
Skardi, a broad-shouldered landless rower with a frostbitten ear, stopped rowing and asked:
"If we have left Hroald's protection, who is responsible for us now?"
Borri swore, because the idle oar had broken their rhythm.
"The sea is. Row."
Skardi did not move.
"I asked the jarl's son, not the sea."
Steinar sat by the mast beside the empty cup. It held neither mead nor salt. The wind had already dried its rim, and the notches inside looked paler.
"You want to know who owns the ship?"
"Yes."
"I bought it."
Skardi nodded as though he had received the worst possible answer.
Farin did not look up, but his fingers tightened around the oar.
The old order was simple. The man who bought the hull spoke. The man who ate another's bread listened. A kinless man was treated more like cargo than a person, even if the ship would never leave its place without his hands.
In that other world people were also reduced to lines in lists, but at least the entry could prove that a man had existed. Here there was no need to cross out the landless: their names were never entered where decisions were made.
Steinar could have left things as they were.
It would have been easier and clearer. If they returned, he would find it simpler to justify himself to Hroald. And if Ragned called their departure the theft of men, Steinar could answer that he had taken only those who belonged to him.
Someone else's memory offered the useful answer: call the kinless your own, and the old order will let you bargain on their behalf and defend them as your property. Hroald and Ragned would understand such a master better than a man who gave everyone a voice.
Saiva turned her head.
She did not say a word. But Steinar remembered her song: the man who left the ranks had not abandoned his yard.
Those he wanted to save could not be turned back into cargo.
Steinar rose, took Borri's knife and went to the inside of the hull.
"If there is only one master, everyone will bring his complaints to him," he said. "I did not hire myself out to listen to you every night."
Borri snorted.
"So that's it. He can't be bothered."
Steinar cut the first mark into the plank. The knife bit reluctantly into the damp wood.
"My share, for the hull and the disgrace I endured."
Beside it he cut a second mark.
"Borri's share, for the keel, which has not yet fallen apart even though its own maker has long spoken to it as if it were dead."
Borri went still.
The people laughed softly and cautiously, but without malice.
The third mark.
"Nera's share, for the salt, the grain and the right to rap the knuckles of anyone who eats more than his reckoning allows."
Nera sat by the sacks, checking the ties. She did not even look at him.
"It won't only be their knuckles," she said.
The fourth mark.
"Modra's share, for the herbs, the old notches and a tongue that cuts cleaner than my knife."
"Best leave my share alone," Modra called from beneath her cloak. "Anyone who takes it without asking will not live long."
The fifth mark.
"Saiva's share, for the song we cannot sing yet."
Saiva lowered her eyes and bit her lip. For the first time that morning, she was caught off guard and failed to hide it in time.
The sixth mark.
"Eska's share, for crawling into places no adult can reach."
A voice came from the hold:
"I'm not little."
"Then climb out and answer for your own share."
The people laughed again.
Farin was still silent.
Steinar went to him last.
He hesitated before Farin: this share could not be turned into a joke.
"Farin's share," Steinar said.
The rowers stopped smiling.
The wind cracked the funeral sail.
Farin looked up.
"Don't."
"I must."
"They'll say you ruined the old order."
"They've already said I ruined myself. One more accusation will make no difference."
"I have no kin."
"On this ship, what matters is not your blood but whether you can row."
Steinar pressed harder on the knife: he knew that back home this would be the first share declared invalid.
Farin stared at the mark, unable to believe it truly stood for him.
"If I have a share, does that mean I have a voice?"
"If you row through the storm and freeze in the same water, you have a voice."
Skardi of the frostbitten ear spat over the side.
"And if someone's voice leads us to our deaths?"
Steinar returned the knife to Borri.
"Then the others will have time to stop him. When one man decides, there is no one to tell him he is wrong."
Steinar spoke with deliberate carelessness. He wanted the people to take this for the Empty Cup's laziness and not see what he was risking.
But Borri was not laughing.
The old shipwright ran his thumb over the marks, stopped at Farin's name and said quietly:
"Now this is more than a ship."
"What is it, then?"
"A plank of names that could get us killed."
Steinar nodded.
"Then we won't let them burn it."
A thread snapped along the lower edge of the funeral sail.
Eska, who had been told not to touch anything useful, was pulling a red thread from the lower seam. Saiva was the first to see the pattern along the hem. She rose and went to the cloth.
"Don't tear it," she told the girl.
Eska froze.
Saiva took the edge of the sail in both hands and spread it out in the light. The red thread formed a row of short, jagged signs across the cloth.
"This is more than a funeral mark," Saiva said.
Borri raised his head.
"What else is it?"
She traced the thread with her finger.
"The people who sailed beneath this sail knew they might not return. They asked not to be sung of as lost. It says: if the cloth returns, name us by the water."
The sea struck the hull.
No one knew who those people had been, and there was no one left to ask. The Old North had long ago given them a single convenient name, the lost, so that no one need remember each separate face.
Steinar looked at the empty cup by the mast, then at the marks for the shares.
The bad ship was carrying them away from the shore, but in its sail they already bore the plea of people that shore had forgotten.
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