The next few days passed in a blur together. Piper managed her duties well enough that her muscles stopped screaming each night as her body got used to the routine labor. As she settled into the jobs, she required less time under Azariah's watchful eye, and received more flexibility in the areas of the ship she was allowed access to. She had long since resigned herself to working hard in order to prove she was capable of much more than had been assigned to her, the mind-numbing labor taking her from hour to endless hour.
On the third evening since she had begun her duties as a swab, she was heading below decks with traps for the rats and other vermin that slinked around for scraps of food when Azariah called on her for a word.
"Something the matter, Sir?" She attempted to ask, but he ignored the inquiry as if deaf, leaving her no choice but to follow his hobbling form to his office on the third deck. At least, an office was what he called it. In reality, the room was little more than a spare storage closet that the old sailor had fitted with a rusted desk and a crate or two to squat on to take the load off. He motioned for Piper to take a seat while he lit an oil lamp with his knobby fingers.
Piper sat as awkwardly in the damp office as she had stood. Azariah, on the other hand, intently studied her with eyes just as observant as they were friendly.
"Sir..?" Piper questioned once more as she shifted uncomfortably in the silence. Azariah raised a hand.
"None o' that formality necessary 'round me, Miss Raddendale - I ain't the cap'n, nor even a true officer, really," he said with a chuckle that created a whistle through his teeth. "Jus' wanted to talk to ya. Ours ain't always an easy job, no, an I try ta make sure the green swabs can feel some kind o' security - an you 'ave been stiffer than driftwood since you stepped aboard, missy."
Piper smiled sheepishly as she allowed her shoulders to sag and release some of the tension she had been carrying around with her. "I just…wasn't really sure what I was expecting, I suppose." She explained lamely.
"Wasn't sure what ta expect as a swab?" Azariah frowned with a cocked eyebrow. She shook her head.
"Expecting to get out of becoming a trainee aboard a naval ship - I'd been in the Land division for roats before my transfer, and was hoping for something at the very least a little better than…"
"...this?" Her new mentor finished for her with a wiry smile.
Piper blushed deeply, as she was all too aware of how her words could once again be perceived as an insult to a superior. Before she could formulate an apology, however, the old man raised a calloused palm to show there was no need. For the first time since her sense of confidence had been shattered by Captain Tartan did she raise her eyes from the floor - and with them met the gaze of one so full of understanding that when Azariah sat down across from her, she felt the need to listen to what he had to say.
"Many mates came aboard o' their own free will it's true, but a good many o'em came to us same as you an' feelin' just as much a fish outta water. But bein' a swab is more than a mop and a bucket a oil-slicked water, girlie." He wagged a gnarled finger at her in mock scorn. "Bein a swab is the most important job aboard any vessel."
Piper blinked once, then twice, waiting for Azariah to laugh at this obvious jape. When it did not come she knit her eyebrows. "Miss Grestley told me the same thing."
Azariah waggled his head up and down. "O' yes, Olivian is quite the experienced seawoman. Her family were traders 'tween here an' Dvargkall - learned to sail aboard the northern longships."
"But how can I learn anything about being a sailor by mopping floors and unclogging latrines?" Piper shook her head in frustration, "it doesn't make the least bit of sense."
Azariah sighed. "You go on n' take a stroll up top deck tomorrow morn' and take a look at each face in the crew while you munch your salted fish, and tell me how many ya believe capable of navigatin' every corridor in the Lockjawe in the black of night."
Piper contemplated the idea. "I think that to be an impossible task for most."
"But not all" Azariah stated pointedly. "A swab must learn the layout of a ship the way a mechanic knows an engine, a soldier their rifle, or a mortician a stiff! If you were to blindfold me now an' set me about the ship, I could find you the nest of every pesky rat, step gingerly o'er every loose n' squeaky plank, and oil every moving piece aboard same as I do otherwise."
Piper, though she found what the old sailor had told her to be borderline absurd to be capable for any man - much less a man the age of Azariah Crabb - was only thrown out of doubt by the determined truth in his face. Yet still she saw the need to voice her uncertainty further.
"It's just that, if we were to come into any kind of danger, I'm not certain how one with those skills could be of any use."
Azariah shook his head with a tender expression.
"Ya just don't get it," he said, raising the lantern in his hand to illuminate the rest of the humble office. Piper's eyes glimmered in the lamplight, widening as she bore witness to the documents that blanketed every square inch of wallspace one's view could reach.
"These are…"
"Floorplans, aye." Azariah finished. "Every deck a tha' ship, the division of chambers and the halls that separate em. Measurements a each storage space in the hold an' what they contain. Figures of all mechanisms aboard from boiler to privy paired with every spare part an piece, what they do, and how to fix em should they fail." He moved his hand from one illustration to the next as Piper's eyes drank in all that she was seeing.
"Where did they all come from?" She wondered aloud.
"Some came with the ship 'erself," Azariah explained, rapping a yellowed page tacked up on the wall, "others I made m'self after some changes to the internal structure."
He handed her a dusty notebook, its contents revealing dozens of carefully scrawled illustrations of the various deck layouts, down to who was assigned to each room. On the inner cover, Azariah Crabb was almost illegibly penned to mark its owner.
"Aside from Capn Tartan himself, there are precious few aboard with anything close to the knowledge a swab can learn, if they be willing." Azariah laid a firm hand on his trainee's shoulder as the final dawn of understanding finally reached her. "This 'ere's what we do, Piper. Every cloud has a silver lining."
She reached to return the notebook to its owner, but Azariah turned down the offer.
"Why don'cha hold onto it for awhile? Might make all the navigation' an' operatin' a little less confusin'."
Azariah set the lantern on his desk, and with a pat on her back, left Piper to ponder his words alongside the mosaic of diagrams and stacks of manuals. She gingerly opened the faded notebook to its first page.