Alessio’s nostrils burned with the scents of the sea. Salt, sweat, and pitch all held their own place in the air, vying for room in his nose as the sun high above slowly roasted the cog’s planks beneath his feet. Salt stung the eyes as winds from the Sea of Silt blasted over them. Deckhands bustled about him, their sweaty, unwashed bodies scrubbing planks with porous rock from the southern isles. Below him, the ship’s carpenter could be heard grumbling as the thud of tools resounded from beneath the deck. Hot pitch and frayed bits of old sailcloth and hempen fibers melted into place and sealed away small cracks and holes in the boards.

  Years ago, the offensive odors had caused him no shortage of days retching over the side into the swelling tides. But that had been a long time ago. Just under seven years, to be precise. Now the endless assaults of the sea had become something of a comfort to him. Trading cogs were cramped and unpleasant, but over the years he had learned to find the little comforts where he could. And so he sat with his back to the ship’s mast, a long line of rigging in his lap as he mended its cords with what little shade he could avail himself of.

  Up above him, Alessio could hear the gruff barks of the ship’s captain. Sailors moved back and forth across the decks, and up and down the rigging with their daily tasks. Most ignored Alessio. The only exception was the cabin boy who came by every hour or so with new coils of rigging to bring him for repair.

  With deft hands, Alessio threaded and spliced the cords laid in his lap. With practiced movement he guided a curved and pointed bit of polished bone - a ship’s pick - through the fibres, unwinding threads to make way for fresh wrappings. The rough edges of hemp strands still stung his fingers sometimes, but for the most part his years at sea had calloused all threat of harm away.

  Lost in the repetitive motion of his chore and the strong rocking of the ship amongst the waves, Alessio leaned back against the mast with closed eyes. Only his moving hands minimally winding through rope betrayed his activity. Otherwise, he seemed laxly napping in the shade. Hemp was heavier than he liked. It’s strands were coarse. No amount of linseed oil, pitch, lard, or beeswax ever truly masked the rough broken edges. It was on days like these as the strands pricked his fingers that Alessio found himself daydreaming of a now nearly forgotten past.

  The great silk workshops of D’Oro had not smelled of salt and sweat. No sharp, burning stench of tar had offended the senses there. Instead they had been filled with a warm and earthy aroma of herbal dyes. Sweet gums and resins coated the warps of the masters’ looms, and the boiling vats had simmered with steam as delicate threads of soft silk were reeled and wound. The vision in his mind had faded with the years, but even so he often found himself back in the shadows of his youth where tapestries and velvets replaced cord and sailcloth.

  “How do you do that?” came the soft question. A figure cast shade across Alessio's closed eyes. The voice was that of the cabin boy who’s name escaped him.

  M something…hmm. Mar..no, not Mario. What was it? Oh yes, Matteo. That’s the one.

  “How do I do what, Matteo?” Alessio’s eyes opened slowly, squinting against the afternoon sun.

  “That,” said the cabin boy. Pointing to the sharp tool in Alessio’s hands, and his fingers ducking, poking, and sifting through strands of hempen fibers. “You’re not even looking. I’d have poked myself full of holes if I tried that.”

  In truth Alessio didn’t know how he did it. It was just a skill like any other. One picked up over years of practice. Ropes were easy. They repeated in the same pattern of winding strands over and over again. Once trained fingers knew how to inspect for damage, frays, or breakages, it was simple enough.

  “You just haven’t tried enough times. That’s all,” Alessio responded. “Even a blind man could do it with enough time and effort. Say, are you done with your chores?”

  Matteo shrugged.

  A cabin boy was never really done with chores. Alessio knew that. They were always at the beck and call of every other sailor. But he was the clerk of the ship. Short of the captain himself, no one was going to interrupt if he commandeered some of the child’s time.

  “Shall I show you then?” he asked.

  Matteo was a young lad of no more than twelve. A half-d’Oran bastard of even less than unnoticeable birth. If he had parents, they had likely indentured him to the captain so as to be one less mouth to feed. Even so, the child wasn’t stupid. Alessio was offering to teach him a skill. Something that would prove valuable if he ever wanted to advance beyond a ship’s boy.

  Matteo nodded eagerly, and Alessio handed him the pick. About five inches long, the slightly curved length of bone was smooth and polished, and its tapered tip slid easily between strands as Alessio showed the child how to unlay twisted strands.

  “This one needs a loop. So once we’ve finished unraveling, we do this,” Alessio demonstrated how a new length of rope could be wound to form an eye, and then woven into the freshly unlaid length. “There. Now you try with the next one.”

  The boy was not a quick learner. But he managed to form a basic (if extremely ugly) splice after many tries. He wouldn’t be a master sailor overnight. But skills were everything when it came to surviving, and now he had one more.

  Alessio contemplated why he had taken the time to do that. Surely he had better uses of his day. There was work to be done with the ledgers back in his meager cabin. And no shortage of sails to patch and ropes to mend. Even as a clerk, every able body pitched in when it came to keeping the cog afloat. The boy too could have been more productive carrying on with his usual duties. Nobody really much bothered teaching things to cabin boys. They either got the hang of things or they didn’t. That was the way of things.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Matteo’s nervous face brought Alessio out of his thoughts. “Hmm, yes that will work,” he said as the lad timidly displayed his brutish handiwork.

  Alessio ruffled the cabin boy’s salt crusted hair and stood up. “I’m heading to my cabin. Finish up that last length. Then return the pick to the quartermaster. Don’t loose it,” he admonished. “Or Stefano will tan your hide.”

  Ship’s quartermasters as a rule were seldom pleasant people. The burly and scarred Stefano was no exception. Dropping so much as a single nail overboard was cause for lashes.

  With that, Alessio departed for his cabin. There were ledgers to balance and daylight was a scarce commodity.

  * * * * *

  Alessio’s cabin barely qualified to the term. A glorified closet, the space had a small cot with a single rough woolen blanket, an oil lamp hanging from a chain, and a board nailed into the wall masquerading as a desk. An iron banded oaken trunk was his only addition to the space. Unceremoniously shoved against the foot of the cot, it held his clothes, the master’s ledgers, a coinbox, and a sparse few personal objects.

  Alessio turned his attention to the ledgers. Seated on his cot, he removed one from the chest and placed it upon his board. He prepared a fresh quill pen and opened the books to begin accounts. Emblazoned on the front of the book’s green cloth cover was a single word. A name. Lonaro. Each letter was beautifully emblazoned in fine gilded stamping. There was no mistaking the mark of ownership.

  Everything on the ship, the ledgers, the cargo, even Alessio himself, belonged to the Lonaro family. Somewhere far across the sea in a ledger much like the one he held, his own name was undoubtedly recorded in a familiar manner of double entried accounting next to the sum of his earthly value. Two hundred and seventy-five gold Sequins. The burned into his mind for so many years. 275. Seven years of contracted labour, boiled down to a single lump sum payment for an indebted family desperate for relief.

  A more than fair price, all things considered. The Lonari might have been ruthless businessmen, but they weren't entirely ungenerous. Common laborer terms might have fetched fifty. Most indentures were lucky to fetch one hundred. Alessio had skilled trades, knowledge of craft, and literacy in his favor. Basic mathematics, accounting, and family bookeeping had driven his price even higher. A Lonaro knew a good deal, and Alessio had certainly been that. He was nearing the end of his seventh year indentured. His accumulated voyages in those years had returned the worth of his contract ten times over and more. Alessio had been a particularly good investment.

  As pen scratched against parchment in the fading evening light, ink flowed into its proper place within columns of perfectly demarked cells. Row upon row of transactions were faithfully checked, rechecked, and double verified. Cargo exchanges of timber, salt, earthenwares, glass, waxes, cottons, and even paper. Then of course, silk.

  Not five paces beneath his feet, the humble cog’s cargo hold was filled to the bursting with casks and crates packed tight with precious bolts of the sleek fabric. “Woven Gold”, as it was called. Threads reeled and spun from humble worms and fashioned into cloth soft and supple. Silk had been Alessio’s entire life, in more ways than one. The young D’Oran had been raised in the great silk houses of his homeland. His father had been a weaver, his mother a master spinner. His siblings had dyed, brocaded patterns, cut threads, wound looms, and performed all manner of tasks in the great arsenals of industry. His knowledge of the silk craft coupled with his book learning had been the family’s sole salvation when the time came to pay debts and put food in far too many mouths. To a silk merchant like Lonaro, Alessio had been the perfect bargain.

  Most merchants of the Serene Republic of D’Oro made their fortunes trading in spices. precious stones and other valuable goods from across the seas. They journeyed far, traversing the three Seas of Stones, Scales, and Storms to bring treasures back to their island nation and the known Realms. Carpets, cedar wood, and costly indigo dyes from Mithran. Gold, fine leathers, incenses and vast quantities of grains from Notus. Cinnamon, cloves, cotton, alum, and those strange dark bitter beans used to brew the hot black wines of Ba’alasa’ar.

  These long voyages were profitable, lucrative even. A single vessel bearing cargoes of those fine treasures from the other side of the world could set a freeman of D’Oro for life and elevate his station forever. But one voyage gone wrong could ruin an entire family just as quickly. A single keel run aground, a bad squall off the coast of Notus, a stray sea serpent, or a band of pirates were just a few of the many hazards that could ruin a ship’s run. High rewards came with high risks.

  The Lonaro family and some of the other powerful clans in D’Oro had a lesser taste for risk. Not when profits could be achieved without long and dangerous excursions. Pirates were one thing. But a sea serpent was another hazard entirely. Even the best cantore songstresses had little hope of keeping the great serpents at bay during mating season. Blood sorcery was even less effective. The feared D’Oran magics were great powers over men, but the beasts of the wild were unconquerable. Many a ship, its crew, and fortune had been lost to the tides.

  The Silk Houses of D’Oro had been a grand solution. It had taken decades of sacrifice. Countless investments, losses, cultivation expenses, trials and errors all. But in the end, the Silk Guild of D’Oro had triumphed. With production of the valuable textile firmly housed on friendly soil, merchants like the Lonari could avoid entirely the treacheries waiting in the Sea of Scales, and instead deftly navigate friendlier neighboring waters like the Sea of Silt they voyaged on today.

  And so they sailed, even though Alessio could feel the gentle rocking beneath his feet quicken into a sterner swell as the evening descended upon them. The Sea of Silt was safer, but still not a guarantee. A storm would likely be brewing that night. The oil in his lamp burned low. With the last of his light, he closed the ledgers for the night and dried his pen. With practiced routine the ledgers were deposited once more into chest next to an iron lockbox containing rows of gold and silver coins. A supplementary fund, known only to himself and his master back on D’Oro. The principal accounts for the voyage lay secured up above in the captain’s quarters.

  A stronger swell shook the ship. Alessio rarely went to bed undressed. He certainly wouldn’t do so tonight. Carefully he extinguished his lamp and climbed into his cot, leather shoes laced firm. Wrapped tight in his blanket to keep the chill of the evening at bay, he fell into slumber as the ship rocked its way over the waves.