All Chapters of A Crown Cut with Salt: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

By the second sunrise, I knew the shape of every ache in my body. Sword drills and palace chores had taught me sweat, yes, but not this. It's not the kind that makes your bones feel like wet rope, and your knee refuses to lock when you need it most. Court work is ceremony even when it’s hard, it’s rehearsed. The Wraith’s work was a demand that changed its mind every heartbeat.“Faster, Sprat,” Harp grunted, shoving a coil into my arms until my ribs creaked against their bindings. “Lines don’t care about your feelings.”Neither did the men. They treated me like a bilge-water who had learned to stand. Elbows found my shoulders when we passed on narrow decks. Boots arrived where my fingers were almost out of the way. “Watch it, boy,” someone would grunt after using me to steady himself. Laughter followed like gulls.“Hands,” Jas barked at me when I misjudged the give of a wet line and burned my palms. “You want them or not?”“I’m still deciding,” I said, and he smirked without warmth.Ea

The cannon woke me before the pain did.A boom split the Wraith and glued her back together wrong. She heeled hard hammocks spat bodies like seeds. I hit the planks hip-first, then head; white flashed behind my eyes, and my breath bolted like a spooked horse.“Up! Up! Up!” Harp roared. “Hands to quarters!”I clawed air back into my lungs and lurched for the ladder. Fog poured down the hatch like wool. The crisp morning had gone to ground; this dawn was muffled and hungry.On deck, the world was grey and close. The bell clanged the alarm; another cannon replied from too near. Grapnels sang, their hooks bit our rails with cheerful cruelty. A black-beaked hull loomed and vanished in swallows of fog; its oars whispered like conspirators.“Boarders!” Jas bellowed. “Make her ugly!”“Chain to windward,” Kade’s voice cut through, low and exact, the kind of sound men obey without thinking. “Gunners, knees. Harp, repel. Keep our decks ours.”I ran for my station, the cut opening on my brow turn

Salt found every scrape I owned as I scrubbed the deck on my hands and knees. Sand hissed under my rag. The Wraith breathed, planks swelling, tar sighing, while above me laughter skated like gulls over a wake.Two men slouched against the rail with faces that looked like fruit left too long in a sunless pantry. Split lips. Eyes puffed into coins. Their posture said they wanted to sleep more than they wanted to stand; the swelling said they'd already tried."That's what you get," Freckles crowed, a little too delighted, "when you make love to your eyelids on night watch.""Captain's lullaby," another chimed, wiggling fingers as if playing a ghostly harp. "One chorus of his knuckles, and you'll remember the words."The bruised pair didn't answer. Pride was swollen, too.I kept my head down and scoured the stain no one else would see. But when the hatch banged, my eyes disobeyed. Kade came up from below with a bloody hand. He didn't cradle it; he didn't flex it. Blood webbed across his k

Dawn smelled like wet rope and old promises. I took my place on the line with the first watch, the deck cool through my soles, the horizon a thin bruise thinking about light. My shoulders remembered every fall from last night. My wrists hummed with dull ache where the blade had rattled my bones. My knee sulked, then did its job when asked; small mercies count. “Wind steady,” Old Noll muttered, thumb to the air. “We’ll make her by midday if the sea doesn’t get petty.” “The sea is always petty,” Jas said, shouldering past me to check a cleat. “That’s why I love her.” Harp grunted for silence and set us to work. Coil, belay, check the stitching on the foretops’l, re-run the vang that had burned last fight. The ship wore yesterday’s violence like a shawl, scars neat where they could be, ragged where we hadn’t had time yet. I checked the boom’s new preventer twice. Harp checked it thrice. His mouth did something that might have been approval if his beard hadn’t hidden it. Kade crossed

By afternoon, the wind settled into a mood that made the Wraith purr. We ran south-southeast, canvas full and easy, the lighthouse a prim memory. Work kept its rhythm, lines checked, pitch inspected, the new preventer eyed like a reformed thief. My ribs ached under new cloth. I breathed in the narrow, controlled way I'd learned, enough to work, not enough to be foolish."Post!" Freckles shouted from midships, triumph in his voice. He ran up the ladder waving a crumpled broadsheet like he'd caught a fish with good gossip inside."Saints spare us," Jas muttered. "He's learned his letters.""Can't help it if words love me," Freckles crowed, slapping the paper against the mainmast where other notices, bounties, warnings, tavern debts, clustered like ugly birds. "Look who's gone missin'!"Men drifted in, casual as cats around a bowl. I did not drift. I coiled a line near enough to hear, and far enough, no one would ask why my hands had gone still.The paper rasped as Jas smoothed it. "Miss