Entry 003 - The Wren Runs Wrong
Previously: Thaddius spent three unplanned days in Tideworn Quay.
He met Grelda, port master, who told him the truth without being asked.
He met an orange cat named Niko who arrived on a crewless ghost ship eleven years ago.
He did not pet her. She did not bite him. This was an agreement.
He boarded his ship at noon, on time, with his coat too big and his pocket empty.
He thought he knew where it was going.
The ship was called the Wren.
Thaddius had not known this until he was already aboard and they were already moving, because the name was painted on the stern in letters that were confident enough in their own authority that they hadn't bothered to be legible from the dock. He'd had to lean over the railing at an inadvisable angle to read it. A sailor had grabbed the back of his coat before he went into the harbor. This had been good. The coat was too big for him but he preferred to keep wearing it.
The Wren. It was a small ship — a single-masted trader with an attitude that suggested it had opinions about being called small. The crew was eight, plus the captain, plus Thaddius, who was technically a passenger and who was already sensing this was going to become a complicated distinction.
He found a spot at the bow and watched Tideworn Quay recede. The harbor district grew smaller. The obsidian cliffs shrank. Somewhere on those docks, an orange cat was sitting at the end of the Anchorage bar watching the harbor in the way she always did — the way that had been going on for eleven years and would go on after he was gone, because some things are larger than any particular departure.
He put his hand in his coat pocket.
The sea opened up ahead of them, green-black and enormous, and the Wren leaned into it like something that had been waiting.
Part Two: The Wrong Direction
He noticed it on the second day. Not immediately — it arrived the way wrong notes arrive in music, not on first hearing but on the third, when something in you finally admits that the song is not going where you thought it was going.
The sun was on the wrong side of the ship.
Thaddius stood at the bow and looked at it for a while with the careful attention of someone who has made navigation errors before and has learned to take the possibility seriously before committing to the conclusion. He checked the time. He checked the position of the sun. He looked at the coastline — the thin dark line of it on the horizon, the shape of the headlands.
The Wren was sailing northeast. He had paid for passage southwest. These were not the same direction, in the same way that north and south are not the same direction, a distinction that felt increasingly important.
He found the first mate, a tall woman named Dectra who had the bearing of someone who had answered questions she didn't want to answer before and had become very efficient at it.
"We've changed course," said Thaddius.
"Captain's orders," said Dectra.
"I paid for passage to—"
"Captain's orders," said Dectra, and walked away in the manner of someone for whom this conversation was over.
Thaddius looked at the wrong sun for another moment. Then he went to find the captain.
Part Three: Captain Orvell Pruche
Captain Orvell Pruche was a man constructed entirely of bad decisions that had somehow accumulated into a career. He was not malicious, which made him more dangerous than malicious would have been, because malicious at least has a consistent internal logic you can work with. Orvell Pruche operated on a rotating basis of whatever seemed like a good idea at the time, and what seemed like a good idea at the time was currently: a faster passage contract from a merchant in the Veilmar Dominion who had offered triple the rate if Pruche could deliver a cargo nobody on the ship had seen.
"You're the mouse," said Pruche, when Thaddius arrived at his cabin. He was studying charts with the concentration of a man who did not entirely understand what he was looking at.
"I am a mouse," said Thaddius. "I'm also a paying passenger going to a destination that is no longer our heading. I'd like to understand why."
"Business opportunity," said Pruche. "You'll be compensated for the delay. Two extra days, maybe three."
Pruche waved a hand. "Merchant goods. Nothing unusual."
"The merchant assured me—"
"Have you seen it," said Thaddius.
A pause. Pruche looked at his charts. "It's in the hold," he said. "Sealed. Merchant's orders."
Thaddius looked at him for a long moment. He thought about a crewless ship arriving in a harbor with one name on one piece of paper. He thought about sealed things. He thought about the feeling that had been growing in his chest since yesterday, not quite sound and not quite direction — more like pressure. Like a compass needle moving without his permission.
"Captain," he said carefully, "I think you should turn the ship around."
"I think," said Pruche, "that I am the captain."
"Yes," said Thaddius. "For now."
He said it without meaning to. The words arrived fully formed, from somewhere he didn't entirely recognize. Pruche looked up from his charts. Thaddius looked back at him with the calm expression of a small pirate who has surprised himself and is choosing, in the absence of any better plan, to commit to it.
He found Dectra on the main deck.
"Something's wrong with the cargo," he said.
"No," said Thaddius. "But you do."
A long pause. The Wren moved through a swell. Dectra looked at the horizon for a moment — the northeast horizon, the wrong one — and then looked at Thaddius with the expression of someone who has been waiting for someone else to say the thing first.
"The hold has been warm since we loaded," she said quietly. "Two degrees above what cargo storage should be. I've checked the seal three times. It's bolted from the inside."
Thaddius absorbed this. "Bolted from the inside."
"Captain said it was the mechanism. I've been on this ship for seven years. There is no mechanism."
The pressure in his chest was a direction now. He couldn't have pointed at it on a map but he could feel it — steady, patient, old, like something that had been waiting for him to catch up.
"How many of the crew do you trust?" he asked.
Dectra studied him. "You're a very small pirate to be asking that question."
"I'm aware," said Thaddius. "How many?"
"Five," said Dectra. "Including me."
"Good," said Thaddius. He straightened his collar. The coat was too big. It had always been too big. He had sailed in it and slept in it and carried things in it that were no longer there, and on one previous occasion he had almost gone into a harbor in it and a stranger had grabbed it to save him. It was, he thought, a coat with a history of keeping him afloat. "That's enough," he said. "Give me ten minutes."
Part Five: The Taking of the Wren
It was not, in the end, a dramatic mutiny. Thaddius had been in situations that required dramatic and situations that required precise, and he had learned — slowly, and at some cost — that precise was almost always better.
He went back to the captain's cabin. He knocked. Pruche opened the door. Thaddius handed him a very clearly written note.
"What is this," said Pruche.
"An inventory of my concerns," said Thaddius. "A proposed new heading. And the terms under which your log will reflect that you made this decision yourself, voluntarily, in the interest of crew safety."
"Dectra," said Thaddius, without raising his voice.
Dectra appeared at his shoulder. Behind her, in a loose and not entirely coincidental arrangement, were five sailors who had apparently been passing by.
Pruche looked at the note. He looked at Thaddius. He looked at Dectra. He looked at the five sailors.
"Two degrees above standard in the hold," Thaddius said quietly. "Bolted from the inside. A cargo you haven't seen, from a merchant you met twice. There are people on this ship, Captain, who have families in port. I'd like to return them."
Pruche sat down heavily in his chair. He was not, Thaddius thought, a bad man. He was a man who had made a decision quickly without asking enough questions, which was a different thing, and one that could sometimes still be corrected.
"What's in the hold?" said Pruche, quietly now.
"I don't know," said Thaddius honestly. "That's the problem."
Pruche stared at the note for a long moment. Then he signed it.
The Wren turned south. Dectra took the wheel herself. The crew moved efficiently, quietly, with the particular energy of people who have been waiting for someone to make a decision and are relieved the decision has finally been made.
Thaddius stood at the stern and watched the northeast horizon recede. The pressure in his chest eased — not gone, never entirely gone, but settled. The compass needle that had been turning without his permission had found its bearing and gone still.
He had not planned any of this. He had boarded a ship with a ticket to somewhere, and the ship had gone wrong, and something in him had known it before he could have articulated how. He had learned, over the years, to trust that knowing — the sensation that arrived before the reasoning did, the direction that came from somewhere he couldn't name. He did not understand it. He had stopped needing to understand it. You felt the bearing. You followed it. You dealt with the consequences, which were sometimes significant and sometimes involved politely removing a captain from temporary authority over his own vessel.
He put his hand in his coat pocket.
A pause. Something different this time — not absence, but a kind of warmth where the emptiness usually was. Like the pocket had held something recently. Like the air inside was different from the air outside. He stood with his hand in the pocket for a long moment and did not examine it too closely, because some things are better felt than analyzed.
Somewhere below them, deep in the hold, the temperature was normal. Whatever had been in the sealed cargo — Dectra's crew had opened the hatch at last, carefully, and found it empty, as if whatever had needed passage had simply disembarked into the open water while no one was watching — was gone.
The Wren ran south, small and fast, exactly the size the ocean needed it to be.
Thaddius J. Mouse will return in two weeks.
He is going to arrive at his original destination.
It will not be what he was told it was.
He is beginning to notice this is a pattern.
Navigator's Note: The hold opened empty. The pocket was warm.
The Drifting God does not appear. He does not need to.
Some things travel without being seen.
