“No one,” he says. “I fired them all. I was given to understand that smugglers and pirates like to hire their own crews. And given that I may be handing this ship over to you, I wasn’t planning on paying for a crew in the meantime.”
Handing it over? So he doesn’t mean to pay me to captain her on some errand. “I told you before, it ain’t for sale. Nor trade neither. Cap’n Gunner is intergated. Integrated? Has integrated? That ain’t right.” Damns, though. A sword for a boat? I got little use for one, and many for the other, no matter what that nattering Orholam said.
“Has integrity. Yes, you’re known for that.”
There’s a twinkle in his eye that I don’t like. Like I amuse him, poncy little buttboy. I oughta jam my thumbs through them eyes. “The answer’s no, then, and you know it, and I know it…” But I don’t move.
He doesn’t, either.
“A look isn’t going to harm anything. At least would let you know if I was telling you the truth about those cannons.”
A long moment, then I say, “I owe it to that old goat, I s’pose. Just a looksie.”
“Of course.”
Captain Gunner is renowned for his shooting, of course, but he ain’t no fool about a ship, neither. This ship is all first-rate. The last crew got a bit sloppy about some things if you look in the corners for grime, and Gunner’s never allowed that hard crease to be folded on the edge of the furled sail: looks nice ashore, but gives the cloth a weak place that will eventually rip.
Most of her, though, is simply astonishing. Master Creepy gives me a lantern and stays topside. No interest in seeing it again, he says, and he don’t want me nervous with him behind me.
Gunner inspects her for half an hour. She’s a dream.
And then Gunner goes to the gun deck. The cannons are inmistakably Phin’s work. But instead of on wheels, these cannons are on tracks. There are knobs and dials and articulated sights.
I intuitively understand some of it. It’s made so one gunner—the best Gunner—can walk up and down a full row for a broadside, and make sure that every cannon is aimed exactly as he wishes, and fire each exactly when he wishes, separately or all at wunst.
In the old days, I could train my crew for it, but I could only aim one cannon perfectly myself. Here, if I understand aright, one man could direct his crews like another set of limbs, them doin’ the dumber work of swabbing and reloading, and Gunner doin’ the artist’s bit of aimin’ and boomin’.
On the forecastle, in pride of place, is a cannon engraved with a name like a punch to my belly. I sink down beside her, filled with awe and wonder and hate. Her engraving reads ‘Ceres’ or ‘The Compelling Argument.’
She is the utter pinnacle of the cannon makers’ craft, a culverin extraordinary near four paces long, with a bore wider than my own spread hand and shot as big as my balls. With this masterpiece, I could make my own legends. I spend ten minutes with her before I go up, and spit on her before I go, then rub that spit in down the long barrel as if it were my own shaft.
Guile’s sword for this ship? The ship’s worth a hunderd swords, no matter how bejeweled and begemmed. A hunderd at least.
I must have this ship. And I can’t.
When I stole the sword, that prophet told me the sea would run with my blood if I lost the blade. I’m not a superstitious man, but I’m no fool, neither. How hard is it to keep a sword, I thought.
“Gunner’s honor,” I tell the man wrapped as a leper to hide his identity, “is not for sale.”
“Not a sale, no! I would never besmirch Gunner’s name by suggesting so. But…” I can see the man’s mask tug at the corners of his face as he grins beneath it. “Even God plays dice.”
Chapter 27
Before dawn, Kip woke to an empty tent and the fear that when he emerged, he would find no one there. They’d finally wised up. He’d tried to be bold. He’d tried to take the lead, but he hadn’t done it the way his father would have. And then he’d also infuriated his wife. Good old Kip Leaden Tongue.
Chest tight, he pulled on his clothes. Took a few deep breaths. It was quiet out there. None of the usual sounds of people moving about camp. Not even the early-morning sounds of someone going to relieve themselves. He tried to pat and finger comb his hair into some sort of relative order, and then went to face reality.
There were a lot of people standing there. Silent. Armed. Not just a lot of people. More than a hundred.
Everyone.
And the Mighty were, most unhelpfully, standing way back.
Everyone was staring at him.
“So what’s it going to be?” Kip asked. When you’ve put all your coin on the table, you can’t blink. “This mean you’re coming with me, or do I need to prove myself to you? You want me to wrestle a bear or something?”
Oh hells. Kip didn’t know why he’d picked a bear. It must have been rattling around in his head because Tisis had told him last night that in their old tongue, Arthur meant ‘bear.’ Ruadhán meant ‘little red.’ Ergo, the giant chieftain was Little Red Bear.
I just volunteered to wrestle ol’ Master Hugely McHugerson. I am dumber than words.
Conn Arthur looked troubled, as if he wasn’t sure if Kip was challenging him. Oh, please, no. But the man looked toward Sibéal Siofra, who shook her head slightly.
Mercifully, the conn said nothing.
The pygmy woman stepped forward. “The Third Eye told us impossible things, but she never told us as much as we would like.”
“Prophets,” Kip said. “They’re like that.”
“She told us to come this far to meet you, but that if we wanted any hope of defeating the White King, we would have to do battle with one of his captains at Deora Neamh… in two days.”
“And…,” Kip said.
“It’s a waterfall,” Tisis said, coming out of nowhere. “It’s a hundred leagues from here.”
“Ah,” Kip said. Given a marching speed through the forest of maybe ten leagues a day, or poling or rowing upriver at maybe fifteen leagues a day, that would seem impossible indeed. “How many drafters do you have?”
Conn Ruadhán Arthur cocked his head to the side, puzzled.
“Your pardon, Lord Guile,” Sibéal Siofra said. “We thought you knew. We’re all drafters.”
Kip looked around. Without exception, these people were pale skinned. Only a few had any luxin staining visible on their arms at all, even the older ones. That was odd. A few were so freckled it might cover up orange or red staining, but most were not.
There were many blue-eyed people among them and a number of pygmies, and the light eyes should have made drafters doubly obvious. But he’d not noticed iris shading in any of them.
“Oooh,” Tisis said as if something was dawning on her. She looked toward Kip as if she wanted to say more, but instead she said, “You’re not just from the town of Shady Grove.”
“No,” Conn Arthur said. “We’re Ghosts. Look on us and tremble,” he said sarcastically. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“Can many of you draft solid luxins?” Tisis asked.
“Yes,” Sibéal said, seeming relieved. “We just… don’t get much practice.”
Drafters who intentionally didn’t draft? What was the point? “One moment,” Kip said, and he pulled Tisis aside. Quietly he asked, “Ghosts?”
“It’s a school for drafters that’s not under the authority of the Chromeria. A long time ago, when the Chromeria was consolidating control of all drafters, they declared everyone at such schools to be heretics. Those who stayed were often declared dead by their families, either to disown them or to escape Chromeria punishment for that family member’s apostasy. Thus, Shady Grove–trained drafters became referred to as Shades, or Ghosts. Since they also tend to keep a low profile lest the Chromeria renew its hunt for them, the name stuck.”
“The Chromeria hunted them?” Kip asked.
“The Magisterium, actually. Luxors.”
Kip turned back to Sibéal and Conn Arthur. “You
like blunt speaking, right?”
“It’s usually faster,” Conn Arthur said. “Isn’t it?”
All right, Kip Blunderbuss. Come out and play. “They branded you heretics. Are you?”
The conn took a displeased moment to digest that, but then said, “We love Orholam and follow him.”
“Not to elide a painful history and many hard feelings,” Sibéal Siofra interjected. “We do have some doctrinal differences, and don’t submit to the Magisterial assertion of primacy.”
Orholam’s crooked little toe, that permanent smile of hers was hard to get past. Kip thought her true expression was an uncertain, placating smile. He sighed.
“Good old Chromeria. Never failing to make its friends fearful and its enemies bold,” Kip said. “Well, then. This is war, not an admissions test on doctrine for the Magisterium. Let’s get to work.”
He broke them up into teams to start building skimmers for everyone. He organized the correct numbers of drafters of each color needed and put Ben-hadad in charge of overseeing the creation of the skimmers themselves, letting the young genius figure out the most efficient number and composition of skimmers given the number of people they had to move and the skill or lack thereof of the drafters available.
Kip went to work learning the disposition of his new forces. Most of the Ghosts here were those who had no homes anymore. Either they’d made Shady Grove their home, or their families’ homes were in areas that the White King had already captured.
With Cruxer and Conn Arthur, Kip went over a map that Tisis was able to draw of Deora Neamh and its environs. She’d never visited, but she’d studied Blood Forest geography extensively, and she could draw. They showed the map to all the Ghosts who’d ever visited the town, and amended it as necessary.
Kip stared at the map. The problem with it was that the land was hilly—it was home to a tall waterfall—but the map itself did a poor job of showing the elevation changes. “What do they want from this town?” Kip asked.
“Slaves. Loot. The regular, I suppose,” Conn Arthur said.
“No,” Cruxer said. “There’s a water mill here, below the base of the falls. Where do farmers keep their grain before and after it’s been milled?”
They found someone who’d visited the town. He sketched a warehouse a ways down the rocky river, at the first place where the river was navigable for larger boats and barges. There was a good road between the mill and the docks. He hadn’t even thought to add it in when shown the map before, because it was outside the scope of the paper.
Kip didn’t know how long he stared at the map. They had no idea how many men and wights would be attacking the city. If it really was a foraging party, it would contain a small force of fighters meant to cow the populace, but be made up mainly of laborers and camp followers pressed into service to haul the grain back to the main camp.
“Breaker,” Cruxer said. It was almost noon, and Kip was still turning things over in his mind, visualizing the terrain. “Ben-hadad says they’re finished. He’s launching the skimmers now.”
Kip didn’t move. “The thing about prototypes?”
“Milord?”
“They fail.”
“Well, these aren’t the first skimmers that Ben’s built.”
“They’re the first ones he’s watched inept drafters build for him, with so many going at once that he can’t watch every step.”
Just then a spate of curses rang out from the water’s edge. They turned and saw an entire section of hull had disintegrated and a skimmer was sinking rapidly.
Kip grinned at Cruxer.
“Well, you don’t have to be smug about it,” he said. “If we don’t get there in time, we might lose our new allies, you know.”
“Eh, the prophecy says we can get there on time; therefore we will, right?”
Cruxer grimaced. “I don’t think it works like that. And maybe the Third Eye was lying to us just to get us to try. She could even be working for the Color Prince for all we know, and we’re going to our destruction.”
“Corvan Danavis wouldn’t let that happen,” Kip said.
“Well, maybe these Ghosts are lying about what Corvan and the Seer said.”
“How would they know such a lie would work on us?” Kip asked.
Cruxer just frowned.
“Why so dour, Crux? It’s not like you.”
The young commander rubbed his face. “Didn’t sleep well last night.”
Well, Tisis and I didn’t do anything to keep you awake, that’s for sure. “That’s not so rare. Doesn’t usually leave you grumpy.”
Cruxer pursed his lips. But then he spoke. “I had this terrible nightmare about Commander Ironfist. It felt like a premonition. We were both wounded from fighting wights or something. But then we turned on each other. We killed each other, Breaker.” He shook his head. “It felt so real.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Kip said, “I don’t believe you could kill Ironfist.”
“I know, I can’t imagine anything that would turn us against each other.”
“No, I mean the man could kick your ass while sipping kopi and reading the day’s briefings and never spill a drop.”
An unwilling grin broke over Cruxer’s face. “You’re a real flesh protuberance, you know that, right?”
“I got your back,” Kip said, patting his friend’s shoulder. “But if you fight Ironfist, I’ll have it from way, way back.”
“Thanks a lot.” Cruxer’s face fell again, though. “I wish he were here. I wish he were leading us, not me. I mean, no offense to you, Breaker. But you know what I mean, right? I’m not making sense, I’m too tired. Sorry.”
“I know what you mean. I wish he were here…” Kip forgot what he had been about to say next as something occurred to him. “Huh.”
He pulled on some spectacles and started drafting, swapping spectacles as necessary. In a few minutes he had a pretty good luxin model of the map they’d created.
Cruxer had immediately summoned the people who’d helped with the map earlier, and Kip held the luxin open so they could make the model accurate together.
The leadership had gathered by the time Kip expanded the model to include the surrounding countryside for several leagues.
“Avoid battle, seek victory,” Kip said. He remembered that from one of Master Danavis’s books. “They’re here for grain. Conn Arthur, you mount an attack on the warehouse. You come straight from the forest here.”
“I can do it, but why do we want to go after grain? You plan to keep it? If we undermine support from the people…”
“To win, the Blood Robes need that grain, so if we threaten it, they have to defend it. Try not to actually set the warehouses on fire, though. You decide how many people you need to make the attack credible, but it must fail. Fall back and regroup—probably here—within sight of them, giving them time to call for reinforcements.”
“And… what?” Conn Arthur said. “There’s no way to get around them in this valley without being seen.”
“We don’t attack them at all. This isn’t a battle; it’s an attack.”
“I don’t…” Cruxer said.
Kip asked, “What’s the trouble with moving huge amounts of grain?”
“It’s heavy, bulky,” Cruxer said.
“Right. Their goal is to transport the grain, so they may hope to take the village’s barges to send the grain down the river and then back up the river to their own tributary. But I can’t imagine that the villagers would be that dumb—if you’re sitting on a fortune in grain, the last thing you do when you see an army coming is to leave your barges in places to make your stuff easier to steal. Naturally, if you do see barges, sink them. Thus…”
Kip looked around. Everyone was giving him their total attention, not even trying to interject. Even Cruxer looked impressed. As Tisis had said, they were turning to him. He was becoming a leader in their eyes, if not his own. What did that say?
He went on. “Thus, the Blood Robes either have thei
r own wagons up here above the falls, or they have more barges even farther back. With the skimmers, the Mighty can get in place without being noticed.”
Conn Arthur said, “Why are we looking at the same thing and I see a problem, but you don’t? Like you said, their barges or wagons are up a completely different tributary above the falls. If we split our forces to attack in two places at once, how do we possibly coordinate an attack? We don’t have any idea how many soldiers, drafters, and wights they might have. We could get massacred.”
“The tributaries end up pinching close at Deora Neamh. When the battle starts at the warehouse, we’ll be able to hear the musket fire.”
“Over the noise of the waterfall?” Cruxer asked.
“Good thought,” Kip said.
“It’s not that big,” someone who’d visited the town said. “You’d hear a musket over it.” Others agreed.
“What if something goes wrong?” Conn Arthur asked.
“Oh, something will go wrong,” Kip said. “Even if it doesn’t, we use luxin flares to communicate.”
“That gives away our position if we use them,” Cruxer said. “And if these, uh, Ghosts use them, the enemy will see that they’re using flares and suspect a trap.”
“No. They won’t see them at all, because we’ll use superviolet flares,” Kip said. “Conn Arthur, tell me you’ve got at least one superviolet drafter.”
“Three or four.”
Kip went on. “And before you point out that this means we have to have two people watching the sky constantly in the superviolet spectrum, we specify times instead. We each get a sand clock or a water clock—whatever Ben-hadad can make—and we check the sky at set times. Even if this captain has superviolet drafters, they won’t know to be looking at all or when to look if they do, so they’ll miss whatever we signal. Remember, victory for us isn’t wiping them out. It isn’t even fighting them at all. It’s stopping them from getting food. Saving the village, saving the grain, and killing lots of Blood Robes—all nice, but very much secondary. If we sink the barges or burn the wagons and scatter their horses and they still get the grain and decide to carry it back to the main army, we’ll have plenty more chances to wipe them out in the forest.”