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Chapter 20 - The Angel of the Docks
🕑 Added 2025-02-20 18:00:04 +0000 UTC“Ship coming in!”
“Ship coming in!”
The call echoed through the harbor, accompanied by the ringtingting of a little bell. Nori pushed off Sauter’s boat and swam over to the wooden ladder. She tossed a palm-sized barnacle up to the dock.
“What’s it look like?” she yelled, her voice drowning in the crashing waves.
“It’s a pretty good one,” Shiso called out from above. “A balinger. I’m not seeing any big catches, but it looks like they have a couple nets full on deck. Wanna head over?”
“Yeah. Sauter, we good?”
Sauter leaned over the edge of the dock, his red hair clashing against the bright blue sky. “Yeah, we’re done here. But you should take a break, little lady! You’ve been at it all afternoon.”
Nori waited for the waves to die down before trying the ladder, her feet sliding off the slick submerged wood. She had to pull herself halfway up the ladder before she could find her footing.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. Truth be told, she could use a nap. Their morning training with Picea had been intense, and while the rest of the students worked in the kitchen for the afternoon, Nori had already put in a solid shift in at the docks sealing fish and scraping off barnacles.
Two weeks had passed, but Nori had taken no breaks. Each day, she got a little more tired, but each day, she got a little more used to being tired. She wore her fatigue like a badge. It wasn’t until her daily crash a couple hours after noon that she felt like she had really contributed anything. And then she went several hours more.
Out of habit, she tried to brush her hair off her shoulders, but her hand found none. She had cut a foot off of her hair, leaving it just short of her shoulders and letting her bangs fall over her forehead. The humidity of the docks put chaotic curls into the ends of her hair.
When she got back to the Monastery late at night, she didn’t have the time or energy to care for long hair, so the haircut served her well. Plus, she didn’t mind how well it suited her. Her mother had never let her cut her hair so short—she was surprised at how much she liked it. And she wasn’t the only one. Hawthorn had all but professed his love when he first saw her new look.
Nori and Shiso walked to the other side of the docks. When Nori had first arrived, she had taken care to avoid the treadwheel cranes and drunk sailors and sketchy beggars. Now, she walked through them without a thought, leaving a trail of water from her soaked undershirt as she lugged along a bucket of barnacles, her knife stuck in all the shells.
“Need a hand?” she asked who she assumed was the ship captain.
He turned and scowled. “Don’t need no urchins. Already paid my Monastery dues this week.” He pointed at Shiso. “Can use Chefs, though. What’s your price?”
Shiso used her hand to iron out the wrinkles of her ornate Urokan jacket. “An acknowledgement of service for the Institute.”
“Easy enough.” He turned his back and walked toward his ship. “Come on then.”
“I’m a Chef too,” Nori said. The man turned around and looked her up and down with skepticism.
“She is,” Shiso confirmed.
“Don’t look like a Chef. Where’s your jacket?”
Nori sighed and conjured a lemon, tossing it at him. “Left it at home.”
The man growled as he turned the lemon over in his hand. “Alright, a letter for you too, then.”
He started to turn again, but Nori’s voice arrested him. “I’m from the Academy, actually.”
“Alright, what’s your price, then?”
“Fish heads. A bucket’s worth. As big as I can carry with one hand.” A bucket of fish heads could go a long way in the orphanages. Nori had promised a couple of them that she would get them some food today.
The man grumbled to himself. “You better be good.”
Shiso stepped forward, offended on Nori’s behalf. “She’s a Har—”
“—I’m good,” Nori interrupted. Even if she wanted to bear her family’s name, it wouldn’t do her much good around here. The closer she got to the water, the more people disdained their oppressors.
Nori fished her good knife—her non-barnacle knife—out of her bucket and got to work. Shiso worked across from her, using the knife that Nori had given her. Shiso had scratched off most of the black splotch of paint from the handle, revealing the Harper crest.
“Now that I think of it, I haven’t seen you at the Monastery,” Nori said as they set up next to each other, spiking and cutting up the fish. “Where are you staying?”
“The embassy. I wanted to stay at the Monastery, but they wouldn’t let me.”
Nori chopped off a fish head and slid it into a bucket. “Wait, the Monastery said you couldn’t stay there?”
“No, not the Monastery. The Institute.” Shiso spiked a fish a little harder than usual. They didn’t need to be as physical with this batch—many of them had died in the net. But still, Shiso took her frustrations out on them. “Which is weird, because I know last year they had students stay at the Monastery. But they told me I had to stay at the embassy. And that I couldn’t leave Khaldeer!”
“That’s weird.” Nori listened as she rubbed her palm gently across a fresh cut, sealing the essence within.
“That’s just the start of the weirdness. I wanted to do my service credit in Ambrosia City. My boyfriend got to do that his first year. Worked at Hyoro. You ever been to Hyoro?”
Nori shook her head.
“Oh. Well, you should go. And he’s not my boyfriend anymore, he’s my ex. He just wasn’t a good vibe, you know?”
Nori squeezed her lips together to keep herself from giggling. She’d have to introduce Shiso to Hawthorn—and then run away before the chattiest pair in existence talked her ears off.
“Anyway, when I asked to go to Ambrosia City, they said no. They barely even let me come to Khala, and even then, I had to agree to a bunch of rules! Ugh!” Shiso swiped excess guts off the table.
“I think it’s my mother. She’s always been like that, ever since I was a kid. Keeping me stranded out on Kodoloun. She didn’t want me to go to the Institute. She didn’t want me to become a Chef. She probably told them not to let me go. Which is ironic, because she goes to the City every year for the Summit!”
“Is your mom important or something?” Nori asked.
Shiso rolled her eyes. “That’s a matter of opinion, isn’t it? To me, yeah, of course. To the world at large? Not that I can tell. She’s a good Chef, sure. A Purple Jacket. But, aside from that…Well, I mean, she’s cooked for Grand King Flambé a bunch of times, so I guess that counts for something.”
“Wait, what?” Nori stopped cutting and looked at Shiso with disbelief.
“Yeah, like every year. When he does his annual tour of Uroko, he spends like…sometimes a whole month in Kodoloun. I think maybe because it was the last island to get essence or something? I don’t know, he always has a bunch of researchers and stuff with him. But anyway, he always stops by my mom’s restaurant. Like, once a week while he’s there. At least.”
“Wow. She must be a good cook, then.”
“Yeah, people seem to think so.”
“And you don’t?”
Shiso squeezed her tongue between her lips. “Welllll…She’s famous for this dish that I think is disgusting. Honey bee larva. Cooked over rice.”
“Ew.”
“Exactly! I mean, I tried it once, and it tasted great, but I couldn’t get over the…Ugh!” Shiso shuddered. “So lots of people come there for that. Grand King Flambé loves it.”
Shiso cleaned her Harper knife before plunging it into a new fish. “Anyway, I love Mother, but she’s always been a control freak.”
Nori offered a conciliatory frown. She knew what that was like, but also felt bad for the single mother that had to deal with someone as energetic as Shiso.
Nori wondered if she had caused similar trouble to her own mother. She hoped so.
“Well, if you can sneak away, you should join us for dinner at the Monastery sometime,” she said.
“Yeah, maybe. I mean, I’d like to. We’ll see.”
In a rare moment, they worked in silence, Shiso’s mind preoccupied as she reflected on their conversation. They worked fast, fileting and sealing the fish and categorizing them by fish and quantity of essence. For every two fish that Nori cut, she put one fish head in a bucket until she wasn’t sure that she’d be able to carry it back up deeper into the harbor. She gave the bucket a test pull, requiring two hands to get it off the ground.
“‘Ey, you said as heavy as you could take it with one arm!” the captain complained as he stomped over.
“Oh, come on, it’s going to orphans!” Nori whined. She tried to pick the bucket up and spin away, but the captain took the handle with one hand and heaved it up on top of the cutting table. Nori cursed her mother for what must have been the millionth occasion—this time for giving her such scrawny arms.
“Dump some of ‘em, or I’ll make you dump all of ‘em,” the captain commanded.
“Fine. Fine.” Nori grumbled as she plunged her hand into the bucket, fish eyes and guts and little bits of cartilage squishing around her hand. She plopped two handfuls out onto the table. She showed that she could lift what remained in the bucket with one hand—but just barely. “Happy?”
The captain grunted and went back to directing his sailors.
She threw her knife in with the barnacles—much more sanitary than the fish heads—and then took a few steps down the ladder to wash her hand in the ocean. The water swelled, and she plunged her hand in and shook it. The swell went out all at once, revealing the underside of the boat. Barnacles had grown on it like a shag carpet, little prongs that looked like turtle feet poking out.
“Hey!” she called out to the captain. “Your ship is covered in goosenecks! I gotta take these buckets up to the orphanage. Can I come back and get some?”
The captain scowled. It was clear how much he preferred Shiso—she worked for a word and worked without saying one to him. “We got this spot for another hour. You wanna get down there and clean off that junk, be my guest.”
“Okay, okay.” Nori hurried up the ladder and grabbed her bucket of barnacles and bucket of fish heads, teetering to the heavy side as she scrambled away. “Bye Shiso!”
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Shiso called out hopefully.
Nori yelled without turning around, her bare feet thudding on the wood. “Or tonight! Come to the Monastery for dinner!”
Nori managed to get five steps onto the stony earth before she was swarmed by children. They ran to her with smiling facings, waving their spindly arms around.
“Nori, Nori, Nori!” they called out. They reached for the barnacles in her bucket like they had done so many days before.
Nori tried to fend them off and keep walking, but the crowd impeded her. “Alright, alright! Hold on.” She plopped the buckets down and swatted someone’s hand away from the fish heads. “Those are for the orphanage behind the dyer. You wanna eat them, go there. Get a bed too, they had a few extra last week.”
She scooped up a handful of barnacles, picking through them to find the easiest ones to harvest—acorn barnacles could be hard work for a Chef, let alone a kid with cut up fingers. “Alright, here’s one for you…one for you…”
“No goosenecks?” a little boy asked.
“Not in this batch, no.” Nori let the children take the barnacles out of her hands. “But there’s a ship with a lot of them. I’m gonna go get them as soon as I deliver these fish heads, so get out of my way!”
“I’ll go get them!” another boy said. “Goosenecks are easy! You can just pull them right off!”
“No,” Nori scolded. “They’re really low on the ship. You’d have to dive. It’s too dangerous.”
A couple of kids groaned with disappointment. Nori groaned with impatience.
“Okay, you know what, I gotta get moving. Here.” She kicked the barnacle bucket over, letting them spill out onto the street. She fixed the empty bucket onto the bottom of the fish head bucket. “Take all of them. But share!”
She kicked at the hand of a boy that tried to take too many.
With only one bucket full, Nori moved much easier through the harbor. She followed her memory of the road for a while, then followed her nose, picking up the odor of the dyer. They had just gotten a shipment of sea snails and were extracting their mucus to make a surprisingly beautiful purple, but the stench was nearly unbearable. In a weird way, some of the local orphans liked the smell. Even if it smelled worse than anything else, at least it was different from the usual daily stench. The awfulness of it brought the community together as they pinched their noses and made jokes.
Nori was hounded again by children as soon as she entered the orphanage, but she knew these children better than the others, so she had no qualms about getting physical with them. She shoved them off with a grin and handed one of the older girls the bucket.
“Take those to the kitchen, don’t touch them until I get back.”
“Cook for us, Nori!” one of the children pleaded.
“Yeah, cook for us!”
“I will, I will! I’mma make you something good. Goosenecks. But I gotta go get them first.”
The kids clapped and hopped around. Nori laughed as she made her escape and jogged through the crowded docks.
“I’m back, I’m back!” Nori yelled as she shuffled past a group of sailors.
Shiso had already gone, leaving Nori to deal with the captain alone. He scoffed at her. “I got a guy coming back in a few minutes with some new line. You got until he gets back.”
Nori didn’t need to be told twice. With practiced expertise, she knotted a string around the handle of her bucket, tying the other end around one of the dock’s posts. She threw the bucket in to float on top of the water and then got to tying a rope around her waist and securing it to the post.
“If I’m down there too long, pull me up,” she told the captain. He scoffed at her again.
“I’ll watch,” one of the sailors grunted. “Can’t have a pretty thing like you going to waste.”
Nori didn’t have time to get creeped out. She jumped in the water, wading over to the boat with her bucket.
She waited for a wave to lift the boat, eyed a bundle of barnacles that stuck out from the rest, and dove beneath the boat. The turbulent water was too murky, so she loaded her hands with essence and moved them along the sharp surface of shells. Barnacles, like most things found in the sea, were drawn to essence. They reached and stretched toward her, and she ripped out a bundle of stony meat. She swam back to her bucket, depositing the barnacles and taking a deep breath in preparation for a second dive.
“He’s walking back!” the captain shouted down at Nori.
“No, watch her, boss,” the sailor said as he slapped the back of his hand on the captain’s chest. “She’s like a damn fish.”
Nori couldn’t help but laugh, ruining her preparation and deflating her lungs. Her family had always joked that she was a fish, knowing how to swim before she knew how to run. After a few weeks back near the ocean, she was a better swimmer than ever.
She took another deep breath and went under. The boat rose on a wave as she reached for it. She snatched a bundle of barnacles and kicked off the rest with her feet, little pricks of shell stinging her feet with little cuts.
“Well damn she’s good,” the captain muttered as Nori resurfaced. He called out to Nori again, this time without his usual aggression. “Go ahead and get a few more handfuls. Just don’t kill yourself rushing.”
“Thanks!” Nori said as she caught her breath.
“Hey Plank, come watch this girl,” the sailor yelled to another one.
Nori spotted another bunch and went under. While underwater, she heard a muffled call. Someone echoed it, yelling loud enough for the whole dock to hear. Nori swam back up empty-handed, fearing that one of the sailors was trying to warn her of something.
“Ship coming in!”
“Ship coming in!”
“Ship coming in!”
The dockworkers called out every ship, but never with this much fervor. Everyone seemed to join in on the call all the way down the dock. Nori waded with her bucket over to the ladder, one of the sailors tugging on her rope to help her along.
“What kind of boat is it?” Nori asked, wondering if she could get some more fish heads before going back to the orphanage to help make soup.
The sailor looked off to the horizon. “Ah, shit,” he growled. “It’s the ship that’s gonna make us lose our jobs.”
A couple of sailors spat on the ground. Another reached out to help Nori with the last steps of the ladder.
“What do you mean?” she asked as she looked for the incoming ship.
And then she spotted it. Sliding past the Harper ship that blockaded and regulated what came into the harbor. A large ship—much too large to pull all the way up to the docks—accompanied by a trio of triremes. It was built with majestic scale and did not boast a flag, but instead had painted its two sails, each with their own emblem. Nori tried to make them out as they rippled in the wind, even if she already knew what it was. A black sword plunging into a sinking sea dragon.
“It’s the damn Harpers,” a sailor growled.
Nori dropped her bucket.
“Ship coming in!”
“Ship coming in!”
