Sect Year 4 · twelfth month · day 8, to dawn of day 9 · the Eastern Sea, aboard the Grey Heron
The mate’s voice had cracked years before and never mended. That way, each order he gave came out in two pieces, the first low and the last thin and high, like a line running through a block. He was a spare man with a grey beard cut close to the jaw. On the eleventh day out he stood over the sail sheet with Lin at his elbow and tied a bowline with his bare hands. Meanwhile, the wind worried the canvas above them and the deck lifted under the grey water.
“You’ll do it at night when the wind’s wrong,” he said, and held out the end.
Lin took it. The line was wet and stiff with salt. His left hand came up to hold the standing part and closed about halfway on it and shook, and he let it stay where it was. He used the right hand to make the loop. It went round and under and back through, the way his hands seemed to know without asking him, and he drew it snug and tested it with a short hard tug against the mate’s grip. It didn’t slip.
