Shipwright and Swordsman

Garp stood at the workshop door and raised a hand to knock twice on the wooden panel.

The sound of sawing stopped.

With the sudden silence, Garp felt a little unaccustomed to it.

He lowered his hand and stepped back half a pace. The workshop door opened a crack, then was pulled all the way open.

Marcus stood inside, still holding a plane. A curl of freshly shaved wood hung from its blade, and the clean scent of ash wood wafted out from the workshop.

"Boss, do you take Navy jobs?"

Marcus fell silent for a moment. His gaze shifted from Garp to Bogart, then back to Garp as he turned the plane in his hand.

"I do."

He turned around, set the plane on a wooden stool, took a canvas tool bag from the wall, stuffed several items into it, then slung it over his shoulder. He walked out of the workshop and pulled the door shut behind him.

"Let's go."

The three of them headed down the dirt road toward the dock.

Inside the house.

Mila stood by the window and pushed it open a crack.

The sea breeze squeezed inside, lifting the loose strands of hair before her forehead. She watched the three figures on the dirt road. Marcus walked in front with his tool bag over his shoulder, while Garp and Bogart followed behind him.

Their backs grew smaller and smaller. They rounded the edge of the ash grove and were swallowed by the shadows of the trees.

Beside the dock.

Damian sat atop a pile of sacks filled with dried coconut meat, the most common cargo in the dock warehouses. He had just finished unloading a ship. Sweat ran from his temple to his chin and dripped onto his knee. He wiped it away with the back of his hand and looked up.

Barlow sat beside him with an account book spread across his lap, his fingers moving slowly over the entries. The pages curled slightly at the edges, gleaming faintly silver in the sunlight.

Damian had no idea what he was looking at. Ever since he had sat down, Barlow had kept staring at the account book, turning a page now and then, sometimes not turning one at all.

Sometimes, Damian felt that Barlow was not doing accounts at all, but talking to the numbers.

Then he saw that familiar figure.

At the end of the dirt road, three people were walking toward the dock. Marcus led the way, his tool bag over his shoulder.

Damian leaned forward, his thigh muscles tightening as his heels lifted off the ground.

A hand pressed down on his knee.

It was Barlow's hand. It did not press hard, but it landed right above Damian's knee, keeping him from standing.

"It's just someone with a damaged ship looking for a shipwright." Barlow did not look up, his finger still resting on a page in the account book. "What are you panicking for?"

Damian turned to look at him. Barlow flipped a page, and the paper rustled in the wind.

"Shouldn't you be happy to make money off the Navy?" He finally raised his eyes, glanced toward the dock, then looked away. "Get back to work."

Damian looked at Barlow's face. There was nothing on it. The hand on his knee had already withdrawn and returned to the pages of the account book.

Damian stood, brushed the sack fibers from his trousers, and bent down to lift another sack of dried coconut meat.

By the dock.

The gray-blue hull of the warship filled the entire view. Up close, it was even larger than it had seemed from the sea yesterday. The hull number on the bow had been worn mottled by seawater, the gunports were closed, and the Marines on deck were furling the sails.

An officer stood below the gangplank. He was the same officer who had questioned them yesterday. With his hands clasped behind his back, he watched the men on deck at work.

Garp walked over to him and jerked his chin toward Marcus.

"Major Hermann, I found you a shipwright."

Hermann turned around. His face was narrower than Garp's, with high cheekbones, deep-set eyes, and lips pressed into a straight line. His gaze swept from Marcus's face to the tool bag, then back from the tool bag to Marcus's face.

"Weren't you out on patrol?" he asked Garp.

Garp did not answer. Bogart stepped up from behind and placed a burlap sack at Hermann's feet.

The sack was small, made of coarse linen, with its opening tied shut by a hemp rope.

Bogart crouched down, untied the knot, and held the sack open.

The One-Eyed Dragon's head.

Hermann glanced down at it.

"Only one?"

"Only this one charged us," Garp said. "The rest probably went to feed the fish."

Hermann looked at the head in silence for a moment, then moved his gaze away from the sack.

"Pack it up. It's enough to report in."

Bogart tied the sack shut again, picked it up, and stepped aside.

Hermann turned to face Marcus. His gaze lingered on the shipwright longer than it had on the severed head.

"The bow joint has loosened, and one section of the bottom planking needs replacing." He did not waste words. "When can you finish it?"

Marcus took the tool bag off his shoulder. "Let me see it first."

He carried the bag toward the gangplank. He did not stop when he passed Garp, nor when he passed Hermann.

His pace was unhurried. The tool bag swayed gently at his side as he climbed the gangplank step by step, crouched at the bow, and spread out his tools.

"By the end of today."

Hermann looked at him. "Your price?"

Marcus rolled up the tool bag. "We'll talk after it's fixed."

He crouched down again and began working.

The sunlight moved from overhead toward the west, stretching the warship's shadow across the stone paving of the dock.

Marcus knelt on the deck for the entire afternoon. The joint had rotted more deeply than he had estimated. On the surface, it had only seemed to have loosened along a single seam, but after sawing it open, he discovered that a palm-sized section of wood inside had already decayed from seawater seeping in and soaking it.

He chiseled out the entire rotten section, then dug out a block of ash wood from his tool bag and shaved it into shape little by little against the opening.

Ash had a fine, dense grain and was harder to carve than ordinary pine, but once shaped, it fit tightly against the original keel without the slightest gap.

He set the wood into place, soaked hemp twine in tung oil, and wound it tightly around the seam several times.

The tung oil came from a small ceramic jar at the very bottom of his tool bag. It was dark brown and smelled sharp.

Once the hemp twine had soaked through with tung oil, it became sticky. Wrapped around the seam, it would shrink tight after drying in the sun, stronger than iron nails.

The break in the bottom planking was near the waterline on the port side, about the size of a palm. It was an old wound from cannon fire, patched once before and then broken open again against a reef. He chiseled away the rotten wood around it, replaced it with a new board, and drove wedges in from the inside.

The sound of sawing continued from afternoon until evening.

When Bogart came over from the deck, Marcus was putting away his tools.

He wiped the wood shavings from his chisel and returned it to the tool bag, followed by the saw blade and then the whetstone. There was not much tung oil left in the ceramic jar, so he tightened the lid and tucked it back into the bottom of the bag.

When he stood, his knees were covered in wood shavings. He brushed them off with his hands, and the sea breeze scattered them away.

Bogart stood two steps behind him.

"You're skilled, sir."

Bogart handed Marcus a stack of Beli, all in 1,000 denominations. The stack was likely close to ten thousand.

Marcus tightened the strap on his tool bag and accepted the Beli. "It's how I make a living."

"How long have you been doing it?"

"Most of my life."

Bogart rested a hand on his sword hilt. "Do you only repair fishing boats?"

Marcus slung the tool bag over his shoulder. "Fishing boats, merchant ships. If it's a ship, I repair it."

He headed toward the gangplank.

He did not stop as he passed Bogart. His pace was neither fast nor slow, the same as when he had arrived.

Bogart stepped aside to let him through. Marcus walked down the gangplank and along the dock toward the dirt road. The setting sun stretched his shadow long across the stone paving.

Garp stood by the warship's rail, his elbow resting on it as he watched that figure walk farther and farther down the dirt road.

Bogart came to stand beside him.

"His habits don't resemble a swordsman's. There are no sword-calluses on his hands either, only the ones from working."

Garp pulled his arm from the railing and let out a long breath.

"I thought we'd run into some reclusive master swordsman."

Bogart leaned against the railing. "Turns out they're just an ordinary Lineage of shipwrights."

"Anyway, with the head, Hermann can report back to the colonel. Let's leave it at that this time. We probably won't ever come to this island again."

Bogart continued.

Garp looked toward the ash grove. The last light of the setting sun fell over the treetops, dyeing the silvery leaves pale gold.

"Maybe."

Garp said it blandly, though it was impossible to tell which of Bogart's remarks he was answering.