Jimmy the Hand: Legends of the Riftwar, Book 3

  Flora’s lips thinned. ‘Well, the way my Pa turned out after my mother died I could hardly blame him for that, now could I?’

  Jimmy sidestepped the issue of how her father had become a brawling drunk by asking, ‘Is that why you didn’t go to Land’s End after he died?’

  With a grimace Flora shook her head. ‘I was only nine years old, Jimmy. I had no money and no idea how to get there.’ She shrugged, giving him a wry smile. ‘And the only people I ever knew were here.’

  ‘So you know how I feel,’ he said.

  Flora smiled at him. ‘I know.’ Then she put her hand over his and squeezed it. ‘Maybe after supper I can make you feel better.’

  Smiling wryly he raised his brows and sighed. At least someone was getting a free supper tonight.

  Well, I do feel better, he thought, a few hours later, stretching and smiling smugly as his eyes opened again; the candle was guttering near its finish, casting patterns of shadow on the ceiling. A lot better.

  He’d brought her to his best place; a half-ruined house with one very good room that he’d done up. Jimmy opened his eyes all the way, stretched again, yawned, and turned–only to find her gone. His sense of well-being undiminished, he crossed his arms beneath his head and remembered.

  Just before they went to sleep she had thanked him.

  He grinned. I’m a hero and no mistake, by the gods, he thought.

  Suddenly the door opened and he jumped up, clutching the sheets.

  ‘Good morning!’ Flora sang.

  ‘I thought you’d gone,’ Jimmy said, one hand over his galloping heart and the other slipping a dagger back under the pillow.

  ‘You’re not going to get rid of me that easily,’ she said, laughing.

  She pulled off her shawl. Hidden within its folds was a loaf of raisin-studded bread. Saliva rushed into his mouth at the smell of it, sweet and yeasty at the same time. She extracted a pot of honey out of one pocket and a slab of butter, wrapped in a handkerchief, from the other.

  ‘Where did you buy that?’ Jimmy asked; there wasn’t a market near this place, or a bakery.

  ‘Buy?’ she asked in astonishment. ‘I’m not as good as you are, Jimmy the Hand, but I made my name stealing baked goods, I’ll remind you!’

  True, he thought.

  Jimmy rose from the bed, wrapping a sheet around himself, smiling when Flora laughed at his sudden modesty. She sliced the bread while he poured out the rest of the wine they’d brought home the night before and they sat down to the important business of filling their stomachs.

  After they’d eaten breakfast, things began to happen with the honey and the butter and they soon ended up in bed again.

  As they lay quietly in one another’s arms Flora said, ‘I found out where Land’s End is.’

  Her words cut through him like a knot of buzzing insects briefly invading his middle. He suddenly knew this wasn’t going to turn out well.

  ‘It’s south,’ she went on when he said nothing. ‘Near the Vale of Dreams.’

  Thank you, he thought a little sourly. Here I’d just managed to pleasantly forget I’m leaving Krondor an exile, and you went and reminded me.

  When Flora spoke her voice held a little irritation; Jimmy felt a brief stab of guilt. She’s only trying to help, after all, he thought.

  ‘It takes five days to sail there,’ she said, looking across at him. When he didn’t answer and wouldn’t meet her eyes she went on, ‘The fare is four silvers, apiece, to go by ship if we sleep in the hold. They got cabins, but they’re all full of people sailing past Land’s End, on to Great Kesh.’

  After a prolonged silence, during which he could feel her eyes giving him sunburn, Jimmy looked at her sidelong. ‘How much by coach?’ he mumbled grudgingly.

  ‘There’s a ship that sails today at high tide.’

  ‘Four silvers is pretty steep,’ he snarled. ‘Didn’t it occur to you to bargain?’

  Flora turned a scalding glare on him. ‘Yes, Jimmy, it did occur to me. That’s why it’s not six. All right?’

  The way she was looking at him, it had better be all right. He changed the subject.

  ‘When’s high tide?’ he asked. He should know: he’d lived in a seaport town all his life, but had only the vaguest notion, since the knowledge was of no great use to a thief who didn’t work the docks.

  Flora stretched luxuriously before answering–the sight of which improved his mood somewhat. ‘In about three or four hours, I’d say,’ she answered.

  ‘Well if we’re supposed to be on this ship we’d better get ourselves organized,’ Jimmy said.

  ‘I know you don’t want to go,’ Flora said suddenly, her eyes sympathetic.

  He smiled at her, appreciating her understanding, and leaned over to give her a kiss. ‘But I have to,’ he said. ‘Thank you for doing what I probably wouldn’t have got around to until tomorrow.’ He considered her. ‘We should probably get you some new clothes, don’t you think?’

  She frowned. ‘Why? Most of my things are spanking new.’

  ‘Ah, true,’ he said, somewhat taken aback.

  It hadn’t occurred to him that Flora would want to keep her new dresses. They were cheap and flashy and left the observer in no doubt at all as to what she did for a living. Yet, here she was talking about finding her lost family while wearing them. How should he phrase this?

  ‘But, they, um, they’re a bit, ah, fancy for a little place like Land’s End. Don’t you think? What’s fashionable here in Krondor might be too daring for your grandfather. Especially if he’s the disapproving type.’

  Flora stared at him with her mouth open, then burst into delighted laughter, kicking her slim legs in the air, while he watched her in puzzled surprise. Every time she looked at his confused expression she went off again and it was a while before she stopped gasping and could say, ‘Oh, Jimmy, you’re such a dear!’ She gave him a fierce kiss. ‘There you are twisting yourself into knots to keep from saying, “But, Flora, you dress like a whore!” I can’t remember when someone last took my feelings into consideration like that. You’re a true friend.’

  Greatly relieved, he smiled. ‘I’m glad you approve.’

  ‘I do,’ she said, getting up. ‘I hadn’t even thought of it. But now I do think of it you’re absolutely right. Only, what am I going to tell him about how I’ve been making my living the last few years?’

  ‘Does he know your father is dead?’ Jimmy asked.

  ‘Well he certainly didn’t hear it from me,’ she said. ‘But I can’t take the chance that he doesn’t know. That kind of news has a way of travelling.’

  ‘Let’s see…’ He thought a moment. ‘How about this? You lived with a neighbour family for a few years after your Pa died, working at chores for your keep. Then a kind old lady with a little gold took you in and you’ve been her companion the last few years–you still know how to talk like a swell, so if you don’t fall into street cant, they’ll never know it’s a story.

  ‘Anyway, now the old lady’s died and her relatives wouldn’t make a place for you. But they did pay your fare to Land’s End so that you could find your mother’s family. What about your father? Did he have family there?’

  Flora shook her head as she did up her laces. ‘If he did he never spoke of them. Come to think of it, he never spoke much at all, even when Ma was alive.’

  Jimmy took a handful of silver and gave it to her. ‘Go disguise yourself as a companion to a nice old lady,’ he said. ‘What ship is it that we’ll be taking?’

  ‘Krondor’s Lady,’ Flora said, counting with expert speed. ‘Jimmy, I can’t take all this!’

  ‘Well, you don’t have to spend it all. Don’t worry about it. After all, I need you for my disguise, namely the younger brother of a nice girl who was companion to an old lady. I’ve got to get some newer clothing, and then I’ll meet you on the docks,’ he said and gave her a quick kiss. ‘See you at high tide.’

  She fled through the door, eager to be shopping, leaving Jimmy to
finish dressing alone. As he pulled on his trousers, he thought he might find a tailor who could quickly provide him with a reputable-looking coat to wear over his second-newest shirt–the one he had purchased while he and Larry had bathed had to be burned after the second crawl through the sewer drain below the cell. He should also wear boots and a hat, he thought. Yes, a young couple…no, he still looked too young. Flora was a few years older, so a grieving girl and her younger brother, yes, that would be it. On their way to Land’s End because of a family loss.

  Suddenly he was a great deal more sanguine about bringing Flora along than he had been a few minutes earlier. Silver was precious, but not as dear as his neck–which del Garza would happily stretch–or his head–which the Upright Man’s bashers would happily club–so it wasn’t a bad deal. Yes, brother and sister on their way to visit Grandpa. Besides, she filled his bed better than any girl he knew, and he thought that might be a welcome relief during exile. He was almost whistling when he left the flop. Then he stopped himself. When did ‘I’ become ‘we’? he thought to himself. I’m the one the Upright Man is running out of the city; Flora’s free to stay here. As he headed down the stairs he considered that he had never invited her to come with him and she had never asked his permission. It was just, somehow, done. Shaking his head in wonder, he realized he was now beginning to understand what some of the older men in the Mockers meant when they said they could bloody well do anything they pleased, so long as it was what their wives wanted them to do.

  He turned his mind away from irritation and back to the soft feel of Flora’s skin and her round rump and suddenly it didn’t seem too big a price to pay, letting her have her way. He was back to almost whistling when he reached the street.

  Krondor’s Lady was old and small and tubby; about a hundred feet long and thirty wide amidships. The smell filtering up from the bilges made her more than a little homelike, to one who’d spent a lot of time in the sewers.

  It had proven surprisingly easy to get aboard. While most of the guards on the docks were Bas-Tyra men, Krondor’s Lady was under the watch of some of the Sheriff’s Crushers, as the constables were known. A quick story about visiting grandpa, with Flora looking genuinely distressed–not entirely an act after her stint in the gaol–and they were allowed aboard. Jimmy was thankful for the change of clothing both had elected earlier that day. One glance at the sword at his hip and the constable had judged him a young man from a family of means.

  Flora had gone below to see where they were being permitted to sleep, while Jimmy remained on deck to watch the departure.

  ‘You make this run often?’ Jimmy asked a sailor, dodging a group of others who went running by with a roll of canvas, obviously ready to kick the annoying deck passenger out of the way.

  ‘Two, three times a year,’ the sailor said, doing something nautical involving two pieces of rope and a knife, his fingers running on with an automatic nimbleness. ‘Usually not so early. Storms, y’know.’

  ‘Oh,’ Jimmy said hollowly.

  A last net of cargo–bales, boxes and sacks–swung off from the dock and down into the hold. Sailors hammered home the wedges that held a grating over the hatchway and did various mysterious things with the ropes and sails, mostly involving hauling or running up the ratlines while other sailors screamed at them. The captain was a short grizzled wiry man, with a gold hoop in his left ear and a missing little finger on his right hand.

  ‘Loose sail!’ he shouted from the rear of the ship. Canvas thundered down and bellied out into brown patched curves. ‘Cast away fore, cast away aft, loose all, fend off! Fend off, don’t tickle the dock, you bitches’ brood!’

  Sailors loosed ropes and pushed at the dock with long two-man oars. Jimmy swallowed and watched as the roofs of Krondor began to slip away, and the deck took on a slight rocking motion under his feet. A cold clammy feeling settled in his stomach.

  Up on the sterncastle the harbour pilot directed the helmsman, while the captain kept shouting orders to his crew.

  I’m leaving Krondor, he thought. It didn’t seem quite real; it was as if he’d just said to himself I’m going to the moon. ‘Leaving Krondor’ was always something other people did.

  Like the Prince and the Princess, he thought then, which cheered him a little. Getting onto a bigger stage, that’s what I’m doing!

  The pilot had the ship moving gracefully through other ships at anchor or coming in to the docks. They dodged freighters and long, sleek warships and fishing-boats and wherries and barges. At some point that was not significant to Jimmy, the pilot hurried down to the main deck, and with agility surprising in a man of middle years he swung a leg over the side and scampered down to a waiting rowboat.

  The ship moved surprisingly slowly as it edged out of the harbour. Jimmy glanced back to the sterncastle and saw the captain keeping his own hand on the tiller as he barked orders.

  ‘Ah, comin’ on a bit fresher,’ the sailor said.

  The sky was growing clouds, cold and grey-looking. The water turned from blue to green-grey too, and began to crumple itself up into tall hills that moved toward him, topped with white foam. The ship’s blunt bow rose to meet it, dug in and rose again with white foam coming across the forward railings and swirling ankle-deep across the deck. In what seemed to Jimmy to be unreasonable haste, the land fell off to nothing but a dark line to their left, and the rocking-horse motion of the ship acquired other twists, a curling roll, left forward to right back.

  A sailor, some sort of officer, saw Jimmy the Hand’s face turn pasty-white and how he clapped a hand to his mouth. ‘The lee rail, you infernal lubber!’ he snarled, then grabbed the boy by collar and belt and ran him over to it, getting his head over the side just as the first heave struck. ‘Feed the fish, and don’t foul our deck, damn your eyes!’

  ‘I hate you,’ Jimmy mumbled feebly, not sure whether he meant himself, Flora who’d got him into this, the ship, the crew, or all of them together.

  His sides hurt, his head ached, his eyes felt as if they’d been rolled in hot sand. Now I know what the word misery was invented for, he thought, as he crawled hand-over-hand toward the rail and another spell of dry retching heaves until there was nothing left inside to come up.

  And I stink.

  So badly that he spent most of his time on deck letting the high winds blow his funk away. That meant he was mostly at the stern since the gale came from the south. He’d learned quickly that spitting wasn’t the only thing you didn’t do into the wind. The fresh air made it a little easier to live with himself. Even so, he avoided company.

  Sometimes between bouts of retching he was tormented by memories of his original plans for this voyage. He’d imagined himself playing dice with the crew and cleaning them out easily. He’d done it often enough in Krondor, though most of the sailors were drunk at the time.

  Instead, the crew were amusing themselves by sidling up to him and saying things like, ‘Arrgh, sick are ye? Whatcha need laddie-boy is some nice ham floatin’ in a bowl of warm cream! Or maybe you’d like some cold fish chowder?’ Then laughing as he swore feebly, not realizing that he’d be cutting them down right then and there, if only he weren’t so weak and if only moving didn’t make him feel worse.

  Or maybe they remember me from the dice and the taverns, and this is some sort of sick, twisted revenge.

  Flora came staggering up bearing a mug of broth for him and hunched down beside him where he hid from the wet wind behind a crate secured to the deck.

  ‘Flora,’ he said, gasping and trying to drink the salty broth. It seemed to hurt less if you had something to give the sea. ‘Do you think they recognize me? Could I have picked someone’s pocket, or won too much at dice, d’ye think?’ Then he shook his head. ‘But there’s no profit in it, so why bother?’

  She shrugged. ‘Well, my friend, if I thought someone who’d robbed or cheated me was nearby and the only revenge I was going to get was to make him throw up then I would, and gladly. And I’d consider that profit aple
nty.’ Flora smiled at his expression of abject horror. ‘But I don’t think they do recognize you, Jimmy. I hardly knew you myself when I first saw you waiting on the dock, you looked so respectable!’

  She huddled deeper into her thick shawl and huddled closer to him, shivering with cold. He welcomed her warmth, and the fact that she blocked the wind on that side.

  ‘Actually, it seems to be something they do whenever someone gets seasick; sailor or passenger,’ Flora continued. ‘I think it’s mean and I’ve asked them not to do it any more. But I honestly don’t think they can resist.’

  He tried to dump the rest of the broth overboard–his shrunken stomach was starting to protest–but she pushed it right back at him.

  So the crew didn’t want revenge on him, they just wanted to torture him for the joy of it. That was nice.

  It’s a very good thing I can’t put curses on people or by now the whole crew would be writhing in agony. Or dying horribly. And in the throes of violent sea-sickness a man can think up some very horrible things indeed.

  He knew that if it weren’t for Flora’s influence the crew would be even worse. How she kept them off him he didn’t know.

  Perhaps he should.

  ‘You’re not giving them…’ he hesitated.

  ‘Giving them bribes to leave you alone?’ Flora shook her head, smiling. ‘If I were then I’d not be getting much in return for my efforts, now would I? But no, I’m not doing that any more. I’m going to be an honest girl if it kills me. At least until I find out if I do have a family.’

  She watched him look miserably into the cup of cooling broth and gave his shoulder a pat. ‘Just drink it, Jimmy. You’ve got to get something down you or you really will be sick.’

  He gave her a piteous look, but all she did was nod encouragingly. He squeezed his eyes shut and drank the last, lukewarm half. He knew it would come up again, but at least now it was comfortably warm. Flora would have waited until he drank it even if the stuff grew a skim of ice.

  Then he thought about what she’d said. ‘I am sick,’ he pointed out.