“Never been becalmed like this before,” she murmured.
On the deck below, Hunkapa Aub was chatting with Priget, the helmswoman, and trying to learn something about the basics of open-ocean navigation. She had plenty of time to talk to him since the ship’s wheel, left unattended, was not moving. Ahlitah lay on the main deck, sleeping in the shade. The utter absence of a breeze was making the morning too hot even for him. Simna ibn Sind had tied a strip of colorful cloth around his forehead to soak up some of the perspiration. Though as unhappy with the unnatural stillness as anyone else aboard, the sight of Stanager Rose clinging to rigging helped to mitigate his unease.
Etjole Ehomba stood just below and to one side of the troubled Captain. Though no mariner, he knew well the moods of the sea, and right now the Semordria was not behaving in a proper maritime fashion. He had experienced still air before, while standing on different beaches in the vicinity of his village, but never anything like this. Heavy, hot, and stagnant, it tempted a man to take a whip to it, as if the very components of the atmosphere themselves had gone to sleep.
Stanager climbed down from the rigging. “The longer we sit here, the more of our supplies we waste. Too much of this and we’ll be forced to return to the delta to reprovision.”
“We could eat less,” Ehomba proposed, “and catch rainwater to supplement the ship’s stores.”
“If it rains,” she replied. “I don’t gamble with the lives of my crew. Or my passengers.”