Red Seas Under Red Skies

  Oh good, thought Locke, at least I know what that means. He gave Jabril a shove toward the wheels, and grabbed onto one beside Jean. “Helm a-larboard,” Locke coughed, confident of that much. Groaning with strain, he and Jean fought to heave the wheel in the proper direction. The Red Messenger was slipping to lee at an angle, down into the troughs of the waves; in moments she’d be broadside to them and all but lost. A dark wave, impossibly heavy, surged over the starboard rail and doused them all, the merest foretaste of what awaited failure.

  But the resistance of the wheel lessened as Jabril found his place behind them and heaved; in seconds he was joined by Mazucca, and inch by straining inch Locke felt the ship’s stern come round again to larboard, until her bow was knifing into the waves once more. They’d bought time to contemplate the disaster the toppling mast had made of the rigging.

  Men boiled out of the deck hatches, inhuman shapes in the dancing light of storm-lanterns. Lightning scorched the darkness above them. Orders were issued, from Locke and Jean and Jabril, with no heed paid to whose was the higher authority. The minutes became hours, and the hours felt like days. They fought on together in an eternity of gray chaos, cold and exhausted and terrified, against the screaming winds above and the hammering waters below.

  4

  “THREE FEET of water in the well and holding, Captain.”

  Aspel delivered his report with a makeshift bandage wrapped around his head, the sleeve of someone’s jacket roughly slashed from its parent garment.

  “Very good,” said Locke, holding himself up at the mainmast much as Caldris had days before. Every joint and muscle in Locke’s body announced their discomfort; he felt like a rag doll full of broken glass, and he was soaked in the bargain. But in that he was no different from any of the survivors aboard the Red Messenger. As Chains had once said, feeling like you wanted desperately to die was fine evidence that you had yet to do so.

  The summer’s-end storm was a receding line of darkness on the northwestern horizon; it had spit them out a few hours earlier. Here, the seas were running at five or six feet and the skies were still ashen gray, but this was a paradise following the tempest. Enough funereal light filtered down from above for Locke to guess that it was day, after some fashion.

  He surveyed the shambles of the deck; lifelines and debris from the rigging were tangled everywhere. Scraps of canvas fluttered in the wind, and sailors were tripping over fallen block and tackle, cursing as they went. They were a crew of ghosts, haggard and clumsy with fatigue. Jean labored at the forecastle to conjure their first warm meal in living memory.

  “Damnation,” Locke muttered. Their escape had not been without price: three swept clean overboard, four seriously injured, two dead including Caldris. Mirlon, the cook, had been the man at the wheel when the main topgallant mast had crashed down upon him like a divine spear and shattered his skull.

  “No, Captain,” said Jabril from behind him. “Not if we can do right by them.”

  “What?” Locke whirled, confused…. Suddenly he remembered. “Oh, yes, of course.”

  “The fallen, Captain,” said Jabril, enunciating as though to a child. “The fallen haunt our decks and cannot rest until we send them off proper.”

  “Aye,” said Locke. “Let’s do that.”

  Caldris and Mirlon lay by the larboard entry port, wrapped in canvas. Pale packages bound with tarred rope, awaiting their final send-off. Locke and Jabril knelt beside them.

  “Say the words, Ravelle,” muttered Jabril. “You can do that much for them. Send their souls on down to Father Stormbringer and give them rest.”

  Locke stared at the two wrapped corpses and felt a new pain in his heart. Nearly overcome with fatigue and shame, he put his head in his hands and thought quickly.

  By tradition, ships’ captains could be proclaimed lay priests of Iono, with a minimum of study at any proper temple to the Father of Grasping Waters. At sea, they could then lead prayers, perform marriages, and even give death-blessings. While Locke knew some interior ritual of Iono’s Temple, he wasn’t consecrated in Iono’s service. He was a priest of the Crooked Warden, and here at sea, a thousand miles out into Iono’s domain, aboard a ship that was already damned for spurning His mandates…there was no way in heavens or hells Locke could presume to give these men Iono’s rest. For the sake of their souls, he’d have to invoke the only power he had any pull with.

  “Crooked Warden, Unnamed Thirteenth, your servant calls. Place your eyes upon the passing of this man, Caldris bal Comar, Iono’s servant, sworn to steal goods beneath the red flag, therefore sharing a corner of your kingdom—”

  “What are you doing?” Jabril hissed, seizing Locke by the arm. Locke shoved him backward.

  “The only thing I can do,” said Locke. “The only honest blessing I can give these men, understand? Don’t fucking interfere again.” He reached back down to touch Caldris’ wrapped body. “We deliver this man, body and spirit, to the realm of your brother Iono, mighty lord of the sea.” Locke figured a little flattery never went amiss in these matters. “Lend him aid. Carry his soul to She who weighs us all. This we pray with hopeful hearts.”

  Locke gestured for Jabril’s help. The muscular man remained deadly silent as they lifted Caldris’ body together and heaved it out the entry port. Even before he heard the splash, Locke reached back down to the other canvas bundle.

  “Crooked Warden, Thiefwatcher, your servant calls. Place your eyes upon the passing of this man, Mirlon, Iono’s servant, sworn to steal goods beneath a red flag, therefore sharing a corner of your kingdom…”

  5

  THE MUTINY came the next morning, while Locke slept senseless in his hammock, still wearing the wet clothes that had seen him through the storm.

  He was awakened by the sound of someone slamming his door and shooting home the bolt. Bleary-eyed and gasping in confusion, he all but fell out of his hammock and had to use his sea chest to push himself unsteadily to his feet.

  “Arm yourself,” said Jean, backing away from the door with both of his hatchets in hand. “We’ve got a problem.”

  That brought Locke to full wakefulness sharply enough. He buckled on his sword-belt in haste, noting with satisfaction that the heavy shutters over his stern windows were still drawn. Light peeked in around the edges; was it day already? Gods, he’d slept the whole night away in one dreamless blink.

  “There’s, ah, some of them that aren’t happy with me, aren’t there?”

  “None of them are happy with us.”

  “I think they’re surely angrier with me than they are with you. I think you could still make it as one of them; it’s my blood they’ll be after, and you can claim to be as much my dupe as they were. Take me out to them. You might still pull this scheme off and get the antidote from Stragos.”

  “Are you mad?” Jean glared back at Locke, but didn’t step away from the door.

  “You’re a strange fellow, brother.” Locke contemplated his Verrari sea-officer’s saber uneasily; in his hands it would be no less a showpiece than it was now, in its scabbard. “First you want to punish yourself for something that’s not your fault, and now you won’t let me slip you out of a mistake that’s entirely mine.”

  “Who the hell are you to lecture me, Locke? First you insist that I stay despite the real danger I pose to you, now you beg me to betray you for gain? Fuck you. You’re ten pints of crazy in a one-pint glass.”

  “That describes us both, Jean.” Locke smiled despite himself; there was something refreshing in being returned to danger of his own making after the indifferent malice of the storm. “Though you’re more of a carafe than a pint glass. I knew you wouldn’t buy it.”

  “Too gods-damned right.”

  “I will say, I would’ve liked to see Stragos’ face when we did whatever we were going to do to him,” said Locke. “And I would’ve liked to know what it was when the clever moment came.”

  “Well,” said Jean, “as long as we’re wishing, I would have liked a mil
lion solari and a parrot that speaks Throne Therin. But they’re not coming, take my meaning?”

  “Maybe the fact that this scuppers Stragos’ precious little plan is fuck-you enough.”

  “Now, Locke.” Jean sighed, and his voice softened. “Maybe they’ll want to talk first. And if they want to talk to you, with your wits about you, we might still have a chance.”

  “Doubtless you’re the only man aboard this ship who’d still express confidence in anything I do,” Locke sighed.

  “Ravelle!” The shout came from the companionway.

  “You didn’t kill any of them yet, did you, Jean?”

  “Not yet, no.”

  “Ravelle! I know you’re in there, and I know you can hear me!”

  Locke stepped up to the cabin door and shouted back through it. “Marvelously clever, Jabril! You’ve tracked me unerringly to the cabin in which I’ve been fast asleep and motionless all bloody night. Who tipped you off?”

  “We have all the bows, Ravelle!”

  “Well, damn,” said Locke. “You must have gotten into the weapon lockers, then. I suppose I was hoping we could have one of those pleasant dancing mutinies, or maybe a singing-and-card-games mutiny, you know?”

  “There’s thirty-two of us as can still move, Ravelle! Two of you in there, no food, no water…the ship’s ours. How long do you figure on staying in there?”

  “It’s a fine place,” shouted Locke. “Got a hammock, a table, nice view out the stern…big door between us and the rest of you….”

  “Which we can smash at any time, and you know it.” Jabril lowered his voice; a creak of shifting weight in the companionway told Locke he’d stepped right up to the other side of the door. “You’re glib, Ravelle, but glib’s no good against ten bows and twenty blades.”

  “I’m not the only man in here, Jabril.”

  “Aye. And believe me, there’s not one among us who’d like to face Master Valora; not with fuckin’ four-to-one odds. But the odds is better than that. Like I said, we got all the bows. You want it to come down hard, we’ll do what it takes.”

  Locke bit the inside of his cheek, thinking. “You swore an oath to me, Jabril. An oath to me as your captain! After I gave you your lives back.”

  “We all did, and we meant it, but you’re not what you said you was. You’re no sea-officer. Caldris was the real thing, gods rest him, but I don’t know what the fuck you are. You deceived us, so the oath don’t stand.”

  “I see.” Locke pondered, snapped his fingers, and continued. “So you would have kept to the oath, had I…ah, been what I claimed to be?”

  “Aye, Ravelle. Fuckin’ right we would’ve.”

  “I believe you,” said Locke. “I believe you’re no oath-breaker, Jabril. So I have a proposal. Jerome and I are willing to come peaceably out of the cabin. We’ll come up on the deck, and we’ll talk. We’ll be pleased to hear your grievances, every last one. And we’ll keep our hands empty, so long as you swear an oath to give us that much. Safe conduct to the deck, and an open talk. For everyone.”

  “Won’t be no ‘hearing grievances,’ Ravelle. It’ll just be us telling you how it’s to be.”

  “As you wish,” said Locke. “Call it whatever you like. Give me your oath of safe passage, and it’ll happen. We’ll come out right now.”

  Locke strained for several seconds to hear anything from the companionway. At last, Jabril spoke.

  “Come up with empty hands,” he said, “and don’t make no unkind moves, especially not Valora. Do that, and I swear before all the gods, you’ll come up to the deck safe. Then we’ll talk.”

  “Well,” whispered Jean, “at least you got us that much.”

  “Yeah. Maybe just a chance to die in the sunlight rather than the shade, though.” He considered changing out of his wet clothes before going up on deck, then shook his head. “Hell with it. Jabril!”

  “Aye?”

  “We’re opening the door.”

  6

  THE WORLD above the deck was one of rich blue skies and bright sunlight; a world Locke had almost forgotten over the previous days. He marveled at it, though Jabril led them to the waist under the eyes of thirty men with drawn swords and nocked arrows. Lines of white foamed on the sea at the horizons, but around the Red Messenger the waves rolled softly, and the breeze was a welcome kiss of warmth against Locke’s skin.

  “I’ll be damned,” he whispered. “We sailed right back into summer again.”

  “Stands to reason that we got blown a ways south even in the storm,” said Jean. “We must have passed the Prime Divisor. Latitude naught.”

  The ship was still something of a shambles; Locke spotted makeshift and incomplete repairs everywhere. Mazucca stood calmly at the wheel, the only unarmed man on deck. The ship was making steerage way under nothing but its main topsail. The mainmast rigging would need one hell of a sorting out before it would carry any useful canvas; the fallen topgallant mast was nowhere to be seen.

  Locke and Jean stood before the mainmast, waiting. Up on the forecastle, men were looking down on them from behind their bows. Thankfully, none of them had drawn their strings back—they looked nervous, and Locke trusted neither their judgment nor their muscle tone. Jabril leaned back against the ship’s boat and pointed at Locke.

  “You fuckin’ lied to us, Ravelle!”

  The crew shouted and jeered, shaking their weapons, hurling insults. Locke held up his hand to speak, but Jabril cut him off. “You said it yourself, down below. I got you to bloody admit it, so say it again, for all to hear. You ain’t no sea-officer.”

  “It’s true,” said Locke. “I’m not a sea-officer. That should be obvious to everyone by now.”

  “What the hell are you, then?” Jabril and the men seemed genuinely confused. “You had a Verrari uniform. You got in and out of Windward Rock. The archon took this ship, and you got it back. What’s the gods-damned game?”

  Locke realized that an unsatisfactory answer to this question would have hard consequences; those things really did add up to a mystery too considerable to brush off. He scratched his chin, then put up his hands. “Okay, look. Only some of what I told you was a lie. I, ah, I really was an officer in the archon’s service, just not a naval officer. I was one of his captains of intelligence.”

  “Intelligence?” cried Aspel, who held a bow atop the forecastle. “What, you mean spies and things like that?”

  “Exactly,” said Locke. “Spies. And things like that. I hate the archon. I was sick of his service. I figured…I figured with a crew and a ship I had a sure way to get the hell out and give him grief at the same time. Caldris came along to do all the real work, while I was learning.”

  “Aye,” said Jabril. “But that’s not what happened. You didn’t just lie to us about what you was.” He turned his back to Locke and Jean to address the crew. “He brought us out to sea without a woman aboard the ship!”

  Scowls, catcalls, rude gestures, and no few hand-signs against evil. The crew were not well pleased to be reminded of that subject.

  “Hold fast,” shouted Locke, “I meant to bring women with us; I had four women on my list. Didn’t you see them at Windward Rock? Other prisoners? They all went down with a fever. They had to be put back ashore, don’t you see?”

  “If that was you,” shouted Jabril, “maybe you thought of it once, but what did you do to fix it when they fell sick?”

  “The archon took the bloody prisoners, not me,” said Locke. “I had to work with what that left me. It left me you!”

  “So it did,” said Jabril, “and then you fuckin’ brought us out here without one single cat neither!”

  “Caldris told me to get some,” said Locke. “Forgive me, I just…I said I’m not a sailor, right? I got busy sneaking out of Tal Verrar and I left them behind. I didn’t understand!”

  “Indeed,” said Jabril. “You had no business out here if you didn’t know the bloody mandates! Because of you, this ship is cursed! We’re lucky to be alive, those of us
that is. Five men paid for what was rightly your sin! Your ignorance of what’s due Iono Stormfather by those that sail his waters!”

  “Lord of the Grasping Waters shield us!” said another sailor.

  “Our misfortune’s been made by you,” Jabril continued. “You admit your lies and ignorance. I say this ship ain’t clean till we get you off her! What’s the word of all?”

  There was a loud, immediate, and unanimous chorus of agreement; the sailors shook their weapons at Locke and Jean as they cheered.

  “That’s that,” said Jabril. “Drop your weapons on the deck.”

  “Wait,” said Locke. “You said we’d talk, and I’m not finished!”

  “I brought you on deck safe, and we did talk. Talk’s finished, oath’s paid off.” Jabril folded his arms. “Lose your weapons!”

  “Now—”

  “Archers!” yelled Jabril. The men atop the forecastle took aim.

  “What’s the choice?” Locke shouted angrily. “Disarm so we can what?”

  “Keep your arms and die bleeding on this deck,” said Jabril. “Or disarm, and swim as far as you can. Let Iono be your judge.”

  “Quick and painful or slow and painful. Right.” Locke unbound his sword-belt and let it drop to the deck. “Master Valora had nothing to do with my cock-ups. I dragged him into this same as you!”

  “Now, wait a fucking minute…,” said Jean, as he set the Wicked Sisters respectfully down at his feet.

  “What say you, Valora?” Jabril looked around for objections from the crew and saw none. “Ravelle’s the liar. Ravelle admits the crime is his; away with him and the curse is lifted fair. You’d be welcome to stay.”

  “He swims, I swim,” Jean growled.

  “He worth that much to you?”

  “I don’t have to bloody well explain myself.”

  “So be it. That I respect,” said Jabril. “Time to go.”

  “No,” shouted Locke as several sailors advanced, swords held at guard. “No! I have one thing to say first.”

  “You had your say. Stormfather’ll judge what else there is.”

  “When I found you,” said Locke, “you were in a vault. Under a fucking rock. You were locked away beneath iron and stone! You were fit to die or to push oars for the archon’s pleasure. You were dead and rotting, every last miserable one of you!”