“Tragic. Still…it’s curious again that when you were at my feet you had to ask my name. I’d have thought that my identity would be obvious to anyone in Stragos’ service. How long were you with him?”
“Five years.”
“So you came after the Free Armada was lost. Nonetheless, as a Verrari—”
“I had a vague description of you,” said Locke. “Little more than your name and the name of your ship. I can assure you, had the archon ever thought to have your portrait painted for our benefit, no man in his service would stay ignorant of your looks.”
“Excellent form. But you would do well to consider me dead to flattery.”
“That’s a pity. I’m so good at it.”
“A third curious thing occurs to me. You seemed genuinely surprised to see my children aboard.”
“It’s, ah, merely that I found it strange you’d have them with you. Out here at sea. Company to the hazards of…all this.”
“Where else might I be expected to keep an eye on them?” Zamira fingered the hilt of her drawn saber. “Paolo’s four. Cosetta’s three. Is your intelligence really so out of date that you didn’t know about them?”
“Look, my job was in-city operations against the Priori and other dissenters. I didn’t pay much attention to naval affairs beyond drawing my official salary.”
“There’s a bounty of five thousand solari on my head. Mine, and every other captain that survived the War for Recognition. I know that accurate descriptions of myself and my family were circulated in Tal Verrar last year; I got my hands on some of the leaflets. Do you expect me to believe that someone in your position could be this ignorant?”
“I hate to sting your feelings, Captain Drakasha, but I told you. I was a landsman—”
“Are.”
“…am and was, and my eyes were on the city. I had little enough time to study the basics of survival when I started getting ready to steal the Messenger.”
“Why do that, though? Why steal a ship and go to sea? Something completely outside your confessed experience? If you had your eyes on the land and the city, why didn’t you do something involving the land or the city?”
Locke licked his lips, which had become uncomfortably dry. He’d pounded a dossier of background information on Orrin Ravelle into his head, but the character had never been designed for an interrogation from this perspective. “It might sound odd,” said Locke, “but it was the best I could do. As it turned out, my fake commission as a sea-officer gave me the most leverage to hurt the archon. Stealing a ship was a grander gesture than stealing, say, a carriage.”
“And what did Stragos do to earn this grand gesture?”
“I’ve sworn an oath never to speak of the matter.”
“Convenient.”
“Just the opposite,” said Locke. “As I wish I could put you at ease.”
“At ease? How could anything you’ve told me put me at ease? You lie, and add flourishes to old lies, and refuse to discuss your motives for embarking on an insane venture. If you won’t give me answers, I have to presume that you’re a danger to this vessel, and that I risk offending Maxilan Stragos by taking you in. I can’t afford the consequences. I think it’s time to put you back where I found you.”
“The hold?”
“The open sea.”
“Ah.” Locke frowned, then bit the inside of his right cheek to contain a laugh. “Ah, Captain Drakasha, that was very well done. Amateurish, but creative. Someone without my history might have fallen for it.”
“Damn.” Drakasha smiled tightly. “I should have drawn the curtains over the stern windows.”
“Yes. I can see your people swarming over the Messenger as we speak. I presume your prize crew is unfucking the rigging so she can make more than a toddler’s crawl, right? If you gave one speck of rat shit for offending the archon, you’d be sinking that ship, not refurbishing it for sale.”
“True,” said Drakasha.
“Which means—”
“Which means that I’m still asking questions, Ravelle. Tell me about your accomplice, Master Valora. A particular friend?”
“An old associate. He helped me in Tal Verrar with…objectionable work.”
“Just an associate?”
“I pay him well and trust him with my business, yes.”
“Curiously educated.” Zamira pointed up at the cabin ceiling; a narrow skylight had vents slightly cracked to let in air from the quarterdeck. “I heard him and Ezri quoting Lucarno to one another a few minutes ago.”
“The Tragedy of the Ten Honest Turncoats,” said Locke. “Jerome is…fond of it.”
“He can read. According to Jabril, he’s not a seaman, but he can do complex sums. He speaks Vadran. He uses trader’s terms and knows his way around cargo. So I’d guess that he comes from prosperous merchant stock.”
Locke said nothing.
“He was with you before you worked for the archon, wasn’t he?”
“He was a servant of the Priori, yes.” It seemed that fitting Jean into Drakasha’s presumptions wouldn’t be as hard as Locke had feared. “I brought him with me when I joined the archon’s cause.”
“But not as a friend.”
“Just a very good agent.”
“My appropriately amoral spy,” said Drakasha. She stood up, moved beneath the skylight, and raised her voice. “On deck, there!”
“Aye, Captain?” Ezri’s voice.
“Del, bring Valora down here.”
A few moments later, the door to the cabin swung open and Jean entered, followed by Lieutenant Delmastro. Captain Drakasha suddenly unsheathed her second saber. The empty scabbards clattered to the deck, and she pointed one blade at Locke.
“The instant you rise from that chair,” she said, “you die.”
“What’s going—”
“Quiet. Ezri, I want Valora dealt with.”
“Your will, Captain.”
Before Jean could do anything, Ezri gave him a sharp kick to the back of his right knee, so fast and well placed that Locke winced. She followed this up with a hard shove, and Jean fell to his hands and knees.
“I might still have a use for you, Ravelle. But I can’t let you keep your agent.” Drakasha took a step toward Jean, raising her right-hand saber.
Locke was out of the chair before he could help himself, throwing himself at her, trying to tangle her arms in his manacle chain.
“No!” he screamed. The cabin spun wildly around him, and then he was on the floor with a dull ache coursing through his jaw. His mind, working a second or two behind the pace of events, gradually concluded that Drakasha had bashed his chin with the hilt of one of her sabers. He was now on his back, with that saber hovering just above his neck. Drakasha seemed ten feet tall.
“Please,” Locke sputtered. “Not Jerome. It’s not necessary.”
“I know,” said Drakasha. “Ezri?”
“Looks like I owe you ten solari, Captain.”
“You should’ve known better,” said Drakasha, grinning. “You heard what Jabril had to say about these two.”
“I did, I did.” Ezri knelt over Jean, a look of genuine concern on her face. “I just didn’t think Ravelle had it in him.”
“This sort of thing rarely goes just one way.”
“Should’ve known that, too.”
Locke raised his hands and pushed Drakasha’s blade aside. She yielded. He rolled over, stumbled to his knees, and grabbed Jean by one arm, ignoring his throbbing jaw. He knew it wasn’t broken, at least.
“Are you okay, Jerome?”
“Fine,” said Jean. “Scraped my hands a bit.”
“I’m sorry,” Ezri said.
“No worries,” said Jean. “That was a good hit. Not much else you could have done to knock down someone my size.” He stumbled to his feet with Locke and Ezri’s help. “A kidney punch, maybe.”
Ezri showed off the set of iron knuckles around the fingers of her right hand. “That was the contingency plan.”
“Damn, am I glad you didn’t do that. But you could’ve…. I might have fallen backwards if you hadn’t shoved fast enough. Hooking one foot around my shin from behind—”
“Thought about it. Or a good stiff jab to the sensitive spot in your armpit—”
“And an arm twist, yeah. That would’ve—”
“But I don’t trust that against someone so big; the leverage is wrong unless—”
Drakasha cleared her throat loudly, and Jean and Ezri fell silent, almost sheepishly.
“You lied to me about Jerome, Ravelle.” She retrieved her sword-belt and slid her sabers into their scabbards with a pair of sharp clacks. “He’s no hired agent. He’s a friend. The sort who’d refuse to let you get thrown off a ship by yourself. The sort you’d try to protect, even though I told you it would mean your death.”
“Clever,” said Locke, feeling a faint warmth rising on his cheeks. “So that’s what this was all about.”
“More or less. I needed to know what sort of man you were before I decided what to do with you.”
“And what have you decided?”
“You’re reckless, vain, and too clever by half,” she said. “You suffer from the delusion that your prevarications are charming. And you’re just as willing as Jerome is to die stupidly on behalf of a friend.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Well…perhaps I’ve grown fond of the ugly lump over the years. Does that mean we’re going back to the hold, or to the open sea?”
“Neither,” said Drakasha. “You’re going to the forecastle, where you’ll eat and sleep with all the other crewmen from the Red Messenger. I’ll peel your other lies apart at leisure. For the time being, I’m satisfied that if you’ve got Jerome to look after, you’ll be sensible.”
“And so we’re what? Slaves?”
“No one aboard this ship takes slaves,” said Drakasha with a dangerous edge in her voice. “We do execute our fair share of smart-asses, however.”
“I thought I was a charming prevaricator.”
“Grasp this,” said Drakasha. “Your whole world consists of the few inches of empty deck I allow you, and you’re gods-damned lucky to have them. Ezri and I will explain the situation to all of you at the forecastle.”
“And our things? The papers, I mean? The personal documents? Keep the gold, but—”
“Keep it? You really mean that? What a sweetheart this man is, Ezri.” Drakasha used her right boot to tip the cover of Locke’s sea chest closed. “Let’s call your papers a hostage to your good behavior. I have a shortage of blank parchment, and two children who’ve recently discovered the joys of ink.”
“Point thoroughly taken.”
“Ezri, haul them up on deck and get their manacles off. Let’s get back to acting as though we have somewhere important to be.”
2
ON THE quarterdeck they were met by a harried-looking woman of middle years, short and broad, with a finger-length halo of white hair above the lines of a face that had obviously contributed many years of scowls to the world. Her wide, predatory eyes were in constant motion, like an owl unable to decide whether it was bored or hungry.
“You might have caught a less wretched bunch, had you looked nearly anywhere,” she said without preamble.
“And you might have noticed it hasn’t exactly been a buyer’s market for prizes recently.” Zamira bore the woman’s manner with the ease of what must have been a very old familiarity.
“Well, if you want to use frayed hemp to weave a line, don’t blame the rope maker when it snaps.”
“I know better than to blame you for anything, Scholar. It leads to weeks of misery for everyone. How many?”
“Twenty-eight at the forecastle,” she said. “Eight had to be left aboard the prize. Broken bones in every case. Not safe to move them.”
“Will they last to Port Prodigal?”
“Assuming their ship does. Assuming they do as I told them, which is a bold—”
“That’s the best we can do for them, I’m sure. Condition of the twenty-eight?”
“I’m sure you heard me say ‘wretched,’ which derives from a state of wretchedness, which is in turn caused by their being wretches. I could use a number of other highly technical terms, only some of them completely imaginary—”
“Treganne, my patience is as long-vanished as your good looks.”
“Most of them are still suffering from long enclosure. Poor sustenance, little exercise, and nervous malaise. They’ve been eating better since leaving Tal Verrar, but they’re exhausted and battered. A handful are in what I’d call decent health. An equal number are not fit for any work at all until I say otherwise. I won’t bend on that…Captain.”
“I won’t ask you to. Disease?”
“Miraculously absent, if you mean fevers and contagions. Also little by way of sexual consequences. They’ve been locked away from women for months, and most of them are Eastern Therin. Very little inclination to lie with one another, you know.”
“Their loss. If I have further need of you—”
“I’ll be in my cabin, obviously. And mind your children. They appear to be steering the ship.”
Locke stared at the woman as she stamped away. One of her feet had the hollow, heavy sound of wood, and she walked with the aid of a strange cane made of stacked white cylinders. Ivory? No—the spine of some unfortunate creature, fused together with shining seams of metal.
Drakasha and Delmastro turned toward the ship’s wheel, a doubled affair like the one aboard the Messenger, currently tended by an unusually tall young man who was all sharp, gangling angles. At either side stood Paolo and Cosetta, not actually touching the wheel but mimicking his movements and giggling.
“Mumchance,” said Drakasha as she stepped over and pulled Cosetta away from the wheel, “where’s Gwillem?”
“Craplines.”
“I told him he was on sprat duty,” said Ezri.
“I’ll have his fucking eyes,” said Drakasha.
Mumchance seemed unruffled. “Man’s gotta piss, Captain.”
“Gotta piss,” mumbled Cosetta.
“Hush.” Zamira reached around Mumchance and snatched Paolo back from the wheel as well. “Mum, you know full well they’re not to touch the wheel or the rails.”
“They wasn’t touching the wheel, Captain.”
“Nor are they to dance at your side, cling to your legs, or in any other way assist you in navigating the vessel. Clear?”
“Savvy.”
“Paolo,” said Drakasha, “take your sister back to the cabin and wait for me there.”
“Yes,” said the boy, his voice as faint as the sound of two pieces of paper sliding together. He took Cosetta’s hand and began to lead her aft.
Drakasha hurried forward once again, past small parties of crewfolk working or eating, all of whom acknowledged her passing with respectful nods and waves. Ezri pushed Locke and Jean along in her wake.
Near the chicken coops, Drakasha crossed paths with a rotund but sprightly Vadran a few years older than herself. The man was wearing a dandified black jacket covered in tarnished brass buckles, and his blond-gray hair was pulled into a billowing ponytail that hung to the seat of his breeches. Drakasha grabbed him by the front of his tunic with her left hand.
“Gwillem, what part of ‘watch the children for a few minutes’ did Ezri fail to make clear?”
“I left them with Mum, Captain—”
“They were your problem, not his.”
“Well, you trust him to steer the ship, why not trust him to—”
“I do trust him with my loves, Gwillem. I just have a peculiar attachment to having orders followed.”
“Captain,” said Gwillem in a low voice, “I had to drop some brown on the blue, eh? I could’ve brought them to the craplines, but I doubt you would have approved of the education they’d have received.”
“Hold it in, for Iono’s sake. I only took a few minutes. Now go pack your things.”
“My things?”
/>
“Take the last boat over to the Messenger and join the prize crew.”
“Prize crew? Captain, you know I’m not much good—”
“I want that ship eyeballed and inventoried, bowsprit to taffrail. Account for everything. When I haggle with the Shipbreaker over it, I want to know exactly how far the bastard is trying to cheat me.”
“But—”
“I’ll expect your written tally when we rendezvous in Port Prodigal. We both know there was hardly any loot to sling over and count today. Get over there and earn your share.”
“Your will, Captain.”
“My quartermaster,” Zamira said when Gwillem had trudged away, swearing. “Not bad, really. Just prefers to let work sort of elude him whenever possible.”
At the bow of the ship was the forecastle deck, raised perhaps four and a half feet above the weather deck, with broad stairs on either side. In between those stairs a wide, uncovered opening led to a dark area that was half compartment and half crawlspace beneath the forecastle. It was seven or eight yards long by Locke’s estimate.
The forecastle deck and stairs were crowded with most of the Red Messenger’s men, under the casual guard of half a dozen of Zamira’s armed crewfolk. Jabril, sitting next to Aspel at the front of the crowd, seemed deeply amused to see Locke and Jean again. The men behind him began to mutter.
“Shut up,” said Ezri, taking a position between Zamira and the newcomers. Locke, not quite knowing what to do, stood off to one side with Jean and waited for instructions. Drakasha cleared her throat.
“Some of us haven’t met. I’m Zamira Drakasha, captain of the Poison Orchid. Lend an ear. Jabril told me that you took ship in Tal Verrar thinking you were to be pirates. Anyone having second thoughts?”
Most of the Messenger’s men shook their heads or quietly muttered denials.
“Good. I am what your friend Ravelle pretended to be,” Drakasha said, reaching over and putting one of her arms around Locke’s shoulders. She smiled theatrically, and several of the Messenger’s less-battered men chuckled. “I have no lords or masters. I fly the red flag when I’m hungry and a false flag when I’m not. I have one port of call: Port Prodigal in the Ghostwinds. Nowhere else will have me. Nowhere else is safe. You live on this deck, you share that peril. I know some of you don’t understand. Think of the world. Think of everywhere in the world that isn’t this ship, save one rotten little speck of misery in the blackest asshole of nowhere. That’s what you’re renouncing. Everything. Everyone. Everywhere.”