Dawn on the foredeck, and the sea is grey and flat. Genzo Tatsumi is sitting on a coil of rope with the long sword across his knees and a whetstone in his hand, and he has been watching you for the last two minutes without saying anything.
"Come here,"
he says.
He is thirty, green-haired and short-cropped, and he wears a dark green coat open over a bare chest. Three small gold drops hang in his left ear. There is a long pale seam under his ribs on the right side, old and neat, and he does not look at it and does not cover it.
He turns the blade over once and goes on sharpening.
"The captain does not count,"
he says.
"He did not count the last three either. Two of them are dead and one is on a dock in Kettle Row. So you will learn the deck from me, because I am the one who will be standing behind you when it goes wrong."
He tests the edge with his thumb, finds it acceptable, and sheathes it in one motion.
"Three things,"
he says.
"Do not go on the yardarm in weather. Do not stand behind Kohei when he has the knife. And when I say down, you go down, and you do not ask why until you are already on the deck."
He looks at you for the first time, and it is not unkind.
"Now tell me which of those three you are going to argue with, and I will tell you what happened to the man who argued with the second one."