Masks

  Chapter Nine

  Teeth bit into him and Mark woke with a gasp in a soft bed in a dark, unfamiliar room. The feeling of teeth faded. A bad dream, brought on by countless aches and pains. He didn’t remember undressing or getting into bed, but an untidy trail of clothing suggested that he hadn’t been helped by a servant. He eased out of bed and padded to the window. The street lights in the fog made it seem light outside, but he assumed it wasn’t yet dawn.

  In the bathroom he found the brandy, now cold, and a full plate of dinner. He ate and drank his fill, gorging like a starving dog.

  He had to leave, and quickly, before guards—or worse, a priest—came to ask more questions about his dead companions and how he got here.

  For all he knew, riders from Seven Churches would be here any moment, or had already arrived. He wasn’t sure when or how Lord Argenwain and Gutter would begin their search, but by that first morning light they would have done something extreme. If they didn’t enlist the Church for aid, then they’d hire an army of people skilled in finding runaways. They might even harness both and more to get him back.

  He wasn’t sure how much a room like this would cost for the night. He guessed perhaps a pair of ar. He remembered that Obsidian had a great deal of coin in his purse and Lake had some too, though when he’d dumped them out he hadn’t cared enough to notice how much. All the coin in the world wouldn’t have bought him a stick of kindling back there.

  He didn’t want to waste time counting it, but he had to know how much he had available to buy his way to the islands. His bruised and cut fingers spread the coins on a small table near the bed.

  It amounted to a fortune. Combined with his advance, he could buy just about anything he could imagine. In addition to the twenty two ar and a good handful of cupru, he had two golden sol, and that was in addition to the thirty ar Gutter had given him for his advance. None of it was money that Lord Argenwain would notice—he’d lost more in a night of casual card play—but it could buy a great deal among commoners.

  It had been a long time since he’d worked in his mother’s wine shop, but not so long that he’d forgotten that two cupru would buy a nice pastry and an ar could purchase a round of the finest brandy for a dozen men. Flashing a sol would buy a fancy carriage with four decent carriage horses, and the other could buy a pretty cottage to park it by.

  Maybe he could buy a cottage in Perida, pay his landlord rent for a share of land to—

  What? Grow his own food? What would he do for a living? Sing? Suck dick? The reality of what he’d done set his heart pounding. He saw Mairi burning in the bay, and Obsidian’s blood pouring from between his fingers.

  Gutter was coming for him.

  His fleeing to the islands might stop the Church. It might even daunt Lord Argenwain.

  It wouldn’t stop Gutter.

  I’m panicking I have to stop panicking.

  He had to stop panicking but he also had to leave. He didn’t dare ring a servant and ask how much he owed. He left two ar on a stand by the door, washed in a hurry, and dressed in the least fine of his clothing so he hopefully wouldn’t call as much attention to himself. One last check for the ring’s security before he tucked away his purse. He stuffed the other purses in his bag. Anyone who searched his bag might assume he was a thief, of course, but at that point he’d have worse troubles than worrying about what he appeared to be. He wore one cloak. The other he rolled up with his damp clothes and blooded coat wadded inside.

  The snowy, foggy streets rambled at odd angles in every direction, leaving some blocks with only enough room for one or two buildings. He listened for the ocean, but it was hard to say from the echoes which direction the sounds came from. He limped down a slight slope until he found Fisher Street. It would make sense for Fisher Street to connect to the water, but he wasn’t sure. He turned onto it and continued downhill.

  A guard dozed on his feet a few blocks later. Mark walked by trying not to look nervous. Just then his face started to itch. He hadn’t made time to shave in days and the unaccustomed growth had started to annoy him even more than his bruised and aching body. He rubbed it, too aware that it looked like a nervous gesture.

  The guard didn’t wake.

  After what seemed like an hour he saw a mast, and hurried to the docks. To his relief, the fishermen appeared to only just now be leaving. Maybe others would leave with the tide as well, ships that might travel all the way to the islands.

  Daylight began to glow in the fog. The port didn’t have as many large ships as Seven Churches by the Sea, and he didn’t notice more than two naval vessels, but there were enough ships to hope that at least one would be leaving in short order.

  The first few ships had only idle men on board, and when he asked if they sailed today they all said no. The next was bound for Seven Churches. Another was heading south in the evening—perhaps he could take it to a larger port nearer to the open ocean. He hurried back toward shore and down toward the end of another pier when he noticed a group of five guards, faint but distinct with their helmeted heads, through the fog. He laughed.

  The laugh surprised him, and scared him. Maybe a secret part of him felt relief, to be caught before he’d committed himself to sailing to Perida. Maybe desperation, exhaustion, and fear had twisted his mind.

  They hadn’t noticed him yet. There was enough activity around the docks that Mark didn’t particularly stand out.

  He skipped the next ship because the one after was pulling up the gangplanks. Mark dashed up the last gangplank onto the deck.

  The sailors all drew away like he might hurt them. One sprinted away.

  “You there.” A tall, very dark man with straight hair flying wild, perhaps an Osian, wearing what might be considered a sort of uniform—broad feathered hat, blue greatcoat with gold embroidery near the sleeve ends and a proper buff waistcoat with breeches—approached. He stood in stark contrast to the pale-skinned, fair and brown-haired Cathretan sailors in their oilskin trousers, knit hats and awkward wool coats. “You can’t be aboard this ship. We’re not accepting passengers.”

  “Please—”

  “Get off before I throw you off.” Judging by his fierce expression, he meant to literally toss Mark over the side. It was a long fall to the dock.

  Another tall, dark man joined him. He wore similar clothes, black with gold, but he kept his hair shoulder-length and tied back in a ribbon in Cathretan fashion. The first man stepped aside deferentially. “Sir, this boy just charged on board—”

  “Please. I can pay.” Mark tried but failed to disguise his urgency. “My father is a sailor, a captain. He’s missing. My mother’s dead. I need to find him before the Church does. Please.” He didn’t know why he’d told them those things. The words kept coming as if an embodiment of desperation drew them out by a sharp thread. “Is this ship bound for the islands?”

  The man in the black coat—he had to be the captain—looked into Mark’s eyes. His eyes were cruel and strange, a deep blue edged in brown, and he seemed as unfeeling as the wilderness Mark had left behind. “Which island?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t really care at the moment.”

  The first mate glanced at his captain with a pleading look. The captain smiled. “If you don’t care, you’re in luck. Johns, let’s set sail.”

  Johns looked to argue, but he nodded. The captain glanced past Mark and scowled.

  The guards were coming in a hurry, dividing themselves among the ships along the pier. “Get below,” the captain said, and made his way toward the bow.

  Mark rushed toward one of the hatches, then changed his mind and darted into the main cabin. He stripped off his cloak, coat and waistcoat as he went. I’m too small and unweathered to be a sailor. He turned into what appeared to be the navigator’s tiny room, stuffed with charts, and pulled off the ribbon that bound his hair. He yanked off his weapons, boots, hat and stockings and stuffed them under the bed. He started to take off the handkerchiefs protecting his hands, then though
t better of it. A new sailor might have rope burns on his hands and he wouldn’t just leave them to rot.

  Trousers peeked out of a drawer.

  He stripped off his breeches and pulled the trousers on. They were far too large. He used the belt from his breeches and cinched it tight, then cuffed the legs. The cold air bit him. He pulled a blanket over his shoulders and spread his hands over the map stretched on the lone table in the room.

  It was a pretty good map of the Cathretan coast.

  I can read ocean maps. I can fake this.

  The captain was arguing with someone, and they were coming closer.

  Mark found some ink, stained his fingers a bit, and then washed his hands so it wouldn’t look quite so deliberate. He also ran his hand along a shelf and rubbed the dust on his cheek, forehead and near his chin, then faded the marks with a little rubbing. His skin turned pink, but the cold quickly faded the color. His short but annoying beard itched like mad and it took all his will to keep from scratching it. He pressed the skin with the backs of his hands instead.

  “So now you feel compelled to invade my private quarters,” the captain growled.

  I’m a new navigator grateful for this chance to prove myself. Mark closed his eyes and took in a breath before he opened them again.

  The captain and a guard came in. Mark nodded to the captain and went out. The guard gave him a glance—

  —and let him pass.

  The first mate rang a bell. As the guard turned away, the captain twitched his head in the direction of the main deck. Mark heard the captain and the guard follow not far behind.

  All the sailors gathered by the main mast, perhaps forty men altogether. The men didn’t speak, or look about. They just formed four loose lines and waited with their hands held behind their backs. Mark imitated them. No one gave him a second look or appeared in the least way curious.

  The captain went below with the guard. After a few minutes several more men came from below and formed up with the rest.

  I’m a young navigator. He breathed it, and believed it the way that he made himself believe that pleasing Argenwain wasn’t demeaning and unpleasant. And it hadn’t been every time. More than once, Mark had gone to him unbidden, if for no other reason than to hold the old man in his arms afterward. On those rare nights, neither of them had to be alone.

  Now, though, he had to be a sailor. He’d barely allowed himself to dream about it, and now he had to make the guards believe he was one. He noticed the impatience in the men, but they were bored too, and thinking about things. Maybe they had sweethearts ashore. Maybe they wanted another drink, or maybe they were hungry. They all had lives beyond standing here, and so he had to have one too.

  Someone he loved, waiting for him on the islands. He imagined ....

  He couldn’t make it a woman and really yearn for it. He imagined the soldier, and blushed, but he longed to see him again and that longing made the world he needed outside the ship real enough to believe in.

  He wished it was real. The soldier didn’t even have to notice him. Mark just wanted one more glance to carry with him for another three years.

  Please don’t let me be a staghorn for life.

  Even with all of Argenwain’s power and wealth, Mark could see that Argenwain would never enjoy the same life that other men took for granted, where they could walk down the street hand in hand or kiss their sweetheart under a parasol or joyously declare an engagement. Lord Argenwain had children, but for obvious reasons they didn’t stay in the same house with their father and they never brought his grandchildren to visit.

  Mark didn’t know how many men had a trace of lean to them, but he doubted there were very many. There would be few chances to meet someone. The odds that he’d find someone to love and live with the way Mark longed to love and live with someone someday ...

  ... like his parents had lived together with him.

  He didn’t even know if that was real. Maybe they had staged that love for his sake.

  If they did, then no one really loved anyone. He didn’t remember much anymore, but he remembered how happy his mother had been when she’d heard that his father’s ship had docked and he was on his way home.

  As Mark would be happy coming home to someone like that soldier, to be welcomed and safe and loved. Argenwain had never met someone to be with like that, at least as far as Mark knew. He had his friends, but it wasn’t the same, just as having a servant service him would never be like having a lover.

  The captain came back topside with the guard, who glanced over all of them. Mark thought about the soldier and wished he was with him.

  “Someday, I will catch you at it,” the guard told the captain. “It’d be better for you if you just stopped coming here. You’re not wanted. None of your men are.”

  “If I truly wasn’t wanted, I wouldn’t come,” the captain told him. “But I do good trade here. As long as there’s good trade, I’ll keep coming back.”

  The guard started to leave, but then he hesitated. “That little one. I don’t remember him.”

  “My new navigator? I would think you’d have recognized him from other ships. I know I’ve seen him around Hullundy Bay a few times before, usually in someone’s shadow.”

  “You’re short a few. Where are they?”

  “Dead. My old navigator with them. Sickness at sea a month ago.”

  Shit I’m on a sick ship and I’m wearing a dead man’s clothes. He knew it wasn’t rational. After a month, assuming the captain told the truth, the sickness would be gone. Most likely anyway. It still made him shiver.

  The guard grunted and left. As soon as he’d passed the bow of the ship behind them, the captain started walking. “Johns, get this ship out of here. You, come with me.” The captain led Mark to the cabin and sat in the narrow space beside a table big enough for a small dinner party. “You went to my navigator’s room. Why?”

  “Because I’m obviously not a regular sailor. I’m too short, too thin, too pale. And I can read maps.”

  “Charts, like this?” He stabbed his finger at the map.

  “Not well, but I understand a few of these symbols, and I can read very well. Shallows, here. Those look like ocean currents. That looks like ... seasonal winds?”

  “Who was your father?”

  Mark hesitated.

  “That’s long enough to concoct a lie.”

  “No. No. It’s just ... he disappeared.”

  “So you said.”

  “The same day my mother was murdered.”

  The captain’s eyelid twitched. “Did he kill her?”

  “No!” The fact that he’d feared it made him want to cry out the denial again, scream it, force it to be true beyond any doubt. Better to believe that Gutter had killed her than his own father. “I don’t even know why I told you those things in the first place.”

  The captain lifted his chin. Outside the sails raised and men began calling out to each other. “It’s Dainty. I’ve grown to trust her when she brings someone to me. But I’ll still want more from you. Your father’s name, for starters.”

  The ship had brought him? He’d heard of sailors believing strange things about their ships, but this made him uneasy. “What are you talking about?”

  The captain’s expression hardened. “I’ll have your father’s name. Now.”

  “Erril Seaton.” He didn’t realize how that name would make his eyes tear up. “Of the—”

  “Swiftly-By?”

  “Swift-By, sir.” He blinked several times to clear his eyes and focused his thoughts on the fact that he’d just jumped onto a ship that sacred guards disapproved of. These could be some very bad men.

  “I’ve actually heard of them, but that doesn’t do you much good, does it. He disappeared years ago. The way you spoke of it, I was under the impression that it happened recently.”

  “I can’t say any more about it without explaining more than you’d be willing to hear, sir. I hope you will simply accept that the last few d
ays have been unsettled.”

  “Even if you are his son, a lot can happen to a man’s son when he’s on his own. His good name earns you nothing on this ship.”

  “I didn’t expect it would.” The fact that his father’s name carried weight with a stranger, and that the captain remembered Swift-By, weakened him somehow. It was as if the strength he’d needed to remember it started to collapse into another’s knowledge and sleep. “Did you know him?”

  “No. Just of him.” The captain smoothed his hands over the table top. “I’ll help you. I’ll help you because you offered payment, which I’ll accept, and because I’d rather trust Dainty than turn away a young man in trouble due to my prejudicial distrust of all things related to continental nobility. Having said that, if you disappoint me in any way, you’ll be cast off the ship along with our old dinner bones and our laundry water.”

  Mark wondered what the captain might do if he found the masks, the book, and the signet ring. He wished he had somewhere to hide it all. “Thank you, sir.”

  The captain nodded.

  Mark bowed. “Am I excused?”

  “One more thing.” He stood, the chair scraping hard against the unpolished floor. “Do you believe that islanders protect those who flee from unpaid indentures?”

  “I’ve heard the same as everyone, that indentures are forgiven and that they protect men loyal to the islands regardless of their circumstances. But that’s not why I’m going there.”

  “Good. Because that was a wartime arrangement, and we’re no longer at war, Mr. Seaton.”

  He’d said ‘we.’ “I take it that you’re an islander, sir?”

  The captain’s expression warmed. He eased past Mark and Mark followed him out on deck. “I’m a free man. Nationality is of no importance unless war comes again. If we ever meet at war you’ll know my home, because I’ll be there defending her.”