The naval gig stayed off the port quarter. Dunley called down through the companionway that an officer in a blue naval cloak was studying the frigate through an ivory spyglass. The tide was running hard toward the harbor shoals, and until the water slackened at the turn of the sixth bell, no heavy boarding party could easily lash itself alongside a thirty-gun hull without risking its boat sides being crushed against the strakes. They had forty minutes before the current died.
Tomas climbed the companionway ladder out of the deep hold. His cart driver boots tracked damp flint gravel across the lower gun deck. Behind him came Nessa and Olla, their coats gray with stone dust and black bilge grease. Tomas’s left arm burned with the dull, grinding fatigue that always followed heavy shoveling. The thick calfskin brace felt soaked with cold river moisture, stiffening against the swollen tendon sheath at his wrist.
He didn’t pause to unlace it. Instead, he pulled a small horn pot of lard and bitter wintergreen from his coat pouch, uncorked it with his teeth. Then he worked a greasy dab into the skin above the cuff where the scarred gristle gathered into a tight knot. He pressed his right thumb into the center of the scar. That forced the fibers to lengthen while he counted seven slow breaths. The pain was sharp, sickening, and familiar, but it kept the fingers from locking into a claw.
