Chapter Text
Life on the Siren’s Call turned out to be not so different from life as it had been in the Circle. I saw the same people every day, and spent a lot of my time trying to stay out of sight, doing what I was told and avoiding anything that might be linked to magic. In the six weeks I’d been in the crew, I’d only just begun to work out who was who in a complex organisation of rules, skills, and another strict hierarchy, followed by all the rules as they worked only on the Siren’s Call.
Most pirate ship’s captains were voted in and out by the crew, but this ship was Captain Isabela’s, and her word was the final word, always. Her second in command was the quartermaster, Pewter. The navigator was Baron, and his apprentice was Loverboy. The boatswain was Sunny, but don’t be fooled by the nickname. Sunny was over six and a half feet tall, from Starkhaven, and he was the scariest of them all. He told most of the crew what to do, and they did it, because he had one missing finger and it made him angry all the time, or so Captain Isabela told me.
Luckily for me, I wasn’t certain Sunny even knew I existed. I only ever saw him speaking with Embrium the carpenter, or Cook. There were two other cabin boys apart from myself; Square and Freckles, two older boys that were almost grown, but not quite. I’d cut my hair a bit shorter with one of Isabela’s daggers to fit in a bit better with them after hearing their tales of adventures while on shore leave, and it sort of helped, I think. They were a bit nicer afterwards, at least. When we weren’t undertaking other duties, we answered to Cook, a large Orlesian man who always wore a yellow mask to cover the top half of his face at all times. Throughout the whole crew, there was always someone who reported to someone else. I learned whose face belonged to who by carrying messages between them all, but I still hadn’t picked up all the names yet.
For the first week, I didn’t see anyone apart from Captain Isabela. The ship lurched to and fro like a horse, and it made my stomach turn. I could barely move without being sick, so I found myself trapped on my cot in the captain’s quarters. Eventually, after eating nothing by hard salted biscuits for days, my stomach finally calmed, or perhaps gave up. From then on, every day began the same way, and ended the same way.
At dawn, I would meet Square and Freckles in the galley, and we’d help Cook prepare breakfast for the crew. He was not a patient man, and he seemed to have some kind of vendetta against Freckles. Freckles never did anything right according to Cook, so he was always in trouble for something. Cook’s ire being constantly directed at Freckles meant he usually wasn’t focused on me, so the most he usually ever said to me was “Move, rabbit.”
Breakfast usually consisted of bread and salted butter, dried fruits, cheese, and oatmeal, and dinner was salted or dried beef, pork or cod, dried peas, and whatever was left over from breakfast. Everyone had a fresh apple with every meal to stay well, and every meal came with drinks, too. It was beer, ale, or rum, but Captain Isabela only let me drink from her water cask.
After preparing breakfast, we’d serve it, and then we’d eat in the galley with Cook before washing all the dishes. When that was done, Square, Freckles and I would clean whatever needed cleaning that day, and run messages when required. The dinner service was much the same as breakfast, and then Cook would have us prepare ingredients for the next day’s meals.
The familiarity of the routine helped in getting used to everyone, but I was another exception, one that most of the crew didn’t know what to do with. With Isabela being the reigning queen of her ship, as opposed to an elected leader, the choice was straightforward. Either you accepted that, or you found another ship and crew in the Felicisima Armada, the network of ships operating illegally in the Waking Sea that we were a part of.
With me, it was easier to ignore my presence altogether. Cabin boys were usually boys, not girls, and elves weren’t seen so much either. The only other elves in the crew were the lookouts, Whiskey and Ribbon. Everyone else was human. I also slept in the captain’s quarters instead of the crew’s quarters, and Captain Isabela talked to me directly instead of giving me orders through Sunny or Cook.
Everyone in the crew had a nickname of some kind, except for Captain Isabela, and they called me Shadow, because I tended to stray close to the captain when I could. I couldn’t help it. Square and Freckles were nice enough as we spent most of our time working together, but in their eyes, I wasn’t really a cabin boy as much as I was Captain Isabela’s favourite for reasons that remained unclear. Technically I was one of them. I did my share of work, but I sensed there was also some kind of unspoken acknowledgement that the captain would tear their limbs off if they looked at me wrong. It wouldn’t be unlike her to actually say something like that when I wasn’t there. As scary as Sunny was, everyone was at least a little scared of Captain Isabela, too.
With all those things combined, I didn’t make sense. The captain only told the rest of the crew that I was the daughter of an old friend that she owed a favour to. An elven cabin girl is one thing, but an apostate is another. I’d promised Captain Isabela that I wouldn’t do any magic, or talk about anything to do with magic. The subject only came up once in the galley, when Freckles told me about the evil mages of Tevinter that Captain Isabela had saved him from a couple of years ago. He was on their ship, and managed to jump off when they weren’t looking. He’d miraculously survived the fall, and the Siren’s Call had picked him up before he drowned.
Nevertheless, Isabela had only been warily satisfied with my promise, and had informed me that if I were to become an abomination, or lose control of my magic in any other way, she would simply fling me into the Waking Sea and that would be that. She said it so casually I would have missed it completely if I hadn’t been paying attention. Otherwise, she’d been kind to me, kinder than anyone would expect a pirate to be after having an elven apostate dropped off at the doorstep, or gangplank, on their second meeting.
As for the purpose of the Siren’s Call, we weren’t just a pirate ship, stealing and raiding wherever we went. We were privateers. We did jobs for money, both legal and illegal. There was another ship that had been following behind us for the last two weeks. That was our current job, escorting two hundred Ferelden refugees to Antiva. The Blight may have been declared ended, thanks to Neria, but many towns and villages had been ravaged, burnt down and completely destroyed by darkspawn in the last year.
Rebuilding was usually not an option. Whatever lands they relied on for crops and livestock had been corrupted by Blightsickness. It was possible that those lands would never recover, and if they did, it would take many years. In the meantime, all those people that lived there now needed new homes. Ferelden’s treasury was already cracking under the pressure, so many had decided to risk the journey and try their luck elsewhere.
We’d been on the sea for about two weeks, and our navigator, Baron, said we were making good time. Antiva was still weeks away, but once we were out of the rough Waking Sea and into the comparatively easier to navigate Amaranthine Sea, we’d be able to travel further, faster. We would dock, send the refugees on their way and wish them the best, and then wait for the captain to find us a new job. I had my hopes up that I’d be allowed shore leave with the others to see the magnificent city Zevran had told me about.
I’d just brought up my bucket and mop for the daily deck cleaning when I heard Captain Isabela calling up to our lookout. “Whiskey! Come down here a minute!”
“On my way, Cap!”
Captain Isabela gave orders to set down a gangplank so she and a few other men could board the refugees’ ship. It wasn’t long before those of us up on deck could faintly hear raised voices. Captain Isabela had disappeared below deck on the refugees’ ship, then stomped back up a minute later, shouting obscenities at the men on the deck. The men shouted back at her and drew blades, and so did she, Sunny and Kraken. A few more of our crew hopped up onto the gangplank to run across and join them.
“Is it a mutiny?” I asked Square, who was also watching the spectacle taking place on the ship beside us.
“Nah, them’s Castillon’s men, our employer. My guess is it’s something to do with the cargo. Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s tried to sneak something into the cargo without the captain’s knowing.”
“But the captain said it’s a passenger ship, not cargo? Refugees from the Blight.”
“Eh? Maybe it’s something to do with one of the passengers, then.”
The mystery was cleared up as soon as the captain returned to the Siren’s call, blood dripping off her twin daggers. “I am going to wring that scrawny bastard’s bastarding neck!” she snapped, marching up to Pewter.
“What’s Castillon gone and done now, Cap?” Pewter asked, somewhat amused by the captain’s outburst. Pewter was the only member of the crew who could find Captain Isabela’s fury entertaining. He’d known her since before she was Captain Isabela, when she was Doña Isabela, the wife of the late Captain Luis. Everyone else wisely averted their gazes, suddenly struck by their profound sense of duty in whatever job they were doing at the time.
“Slaves, Pewter! He knows I won’t abide slavery, and I should have known better than to fall for it! I’ve got a nice job for you, Isabela!” she clasped her hands together, mimicking Castillon’s voice. “Pick up a couple hundred Fereldan refugees and deliver them to their waiting relatives in Antiva! That’ll make you feel good about yourself! I can’t believe it took this long for me to notice that in two weeks not one of our passengers decided to get some fresh sea air! Because they’re all downstairs in fucking chains, Pewter! Fuck!” the captain raged, slamming her palms down on the railing to make her point.
“So what’s the plan, then?” Pewter asked, unperturbed.
Captain Isabela took a deep breath. “Now,” she began, smoothly. “We go to the Free Marches,” she put up a hand, silencing what I assume was going to be Pewter’s protest. “Ostwick, not Antiva City.”
“And, what? Let them scurry off into untold danger?”
“Better than letting them scurry off into a slavers’ market.”
“True enough. Can’t imagine Castillon will appreciate us letting twenty thousand sovereigns’ worth of cargo run off on our watch, though.”
“I can’t imagine he will, no. I’m sure we’ll sort something out,” she shrugged, spinning a dagger with her fingers pointedly.
“I suppose this means we won’t be staying long enough to resupply, then?”
“No, we’ll be needing to take off as soon as we see off our refugees. Do we have enough supplies to make it back as far as… I don’t know, Highever?”
“I think so, I’ll have to check with Sunny. I’m more concerned about how the men will react to finding out they’ll have to wait another fortnight for shore leave, and it won’t be in Antiva City. You know how they feel about the girls in Antiva City.”
“And they know how I feel about slavery.”
“I’ll do my best to belabour that point. Shadow!”
I jumped, not realising that my presence had been noticed. “Yes, ser?”
“Go tell Sunny I need him to meet me in my office.”
“Yes ser!”
It was another week before we arrived at the port in Ostwick. We didn’t stay long, just a few hours for a few members of the crew to restock on the bare essentials for repairs, while the captain saw to it personally that the refugees were sent on their way with at least some notion of where they could go from there. I wasn’t even allowed off the ship. There was a Circle of Magi in Ostwick, so the captain had me stuck peeling vegetables in the galley. I didn’t miss much of the view of the city, as Ostwick famously didn’t have one. The docks look like those of any other coastal city, but the rest of it was hidden behind two enormous stone walls, built hundreds of years ago after a Qunari invasion.
Then we were off to Highever, another dock I wasn’t allowed on because Isabela promised Neria she wouldn’t ever bring me back to Ferelden. Technically she hadn’t, because I was still on the Waking Sea. This time, most of the men left with the captain to go on shore leave for the week. It was just me and Freckles stuck below deck, as he’d fallen victim to bread that had gone bad. I’d practised healing magic with Wynne on our travels, and I wished I could use it again to make Freckles feel better, but it was out of the question. Instead, I brought him a wormwood potion from the medicine chest. He started calling me Fae after that, but he still wouldn’t tell me his real name.
Captain Isabela and the rest of the crew returned a couple of days earlier than expected. She’d received a message from Castillon; he knew we’d freed his would-be slaves, and we owed him way more than we could afford to pay with the income from the usual kind of jobs we do. Fortunately, he’d also given Captain Isabela a chance to repay him with a new job for him. He wanted us to steal a priceless relic from Orlais, and she accepted of course. Orlais is a wealthy empire, with many things that pirates might like to take, but they’d guard their treasures well. I had no idea how she was going to manage, but it wasn’t like we had much of a choice, and this was the kind of exciting job that Captain Isabela lived for.
A month later, we docked at Val Royeaux, the heart of Orlais. This time, at least, I was finally allowed off the ship with everyone else, just for a day. We stayed at an inn right near the docks, and that day I wandered up and down the fish markets. The inn we stayed in smelled like fish, the beds smelled like fish, our clothes smelled like fish. Even the food that wasn’t fish, smelled like fish. It was easy to tell where the domain of fish and ships ended and the city proper began, too. The tall white marble walls of the city contrasted glaringly with the greyish-brown wood of the docks and its haphazard warehouses. It was a shame I couldn’t stay longer, but Captain Isabela noticed a templar on the docks the next morning, and sent me back to the Siren’s Call with a sack of apples. With most of the crew away, I climbed partway up the rigging, and watched the docks from above instead.