“I haven’t forgotten the matter you’re concerned about,” Drakasha said. “I’ll bring it to the council tomorrow. After that, we’ll see.”
“Matter?” Delmastro looked genuinely confused. Locke had been half expecting Jean to have told her by now, but apparently they’d been spending their private time in a wiser and more diverting fashion.
“You’ll find out tomorrow, Del. After all, you’ll be at the council with me. No more on the subject, Ravelle.”
“Right.” Locke sipped beer and held up a finger. “Something else, then. Let me request a few things of you in private before this Shipbreaker comes calling. Maybe I can help you squeeze a higher price out of the fellow.”
“He’s not a fellow,” said Drakasha. “He’s as slippery as a pus-dipped turd and about as pleasant.”
“So much the better. Think on Master Nera; at least let me make the attempt.”
“No promises,” said Zamira. “I’ll hear you, at least.”
“Orchids,” boomed a deep-voiced man as he appeared at the top of the stairs. “Captain Drakasha! You know they’re still pulling Rance’s teeth out of the walls downstairs?”
“Rance fell ill with a sudden bout of discourtesy,” said Zamira. “Then she just fell. Hello, Captain Rodanov.”
Rodanov was one of the largest men Locke had ever seen; he must have been just shy of seven feet. He was about Zamira’s age, and somewhat round in the belly. But his long, muscle-corded arms looked as though they’d be about right for strangling bears, and the fact that he didn’t deign to carry a weapon said much. His face was long and heavy-jawed, his pale hair receding, and his eyes were bright with the satisfied humor of a man who feels himself equal to the world. Locke had seen his type before, among the better garristas of Camorr, but none so towering; even Big Konar could only outdo him in girth.
Incongruously, his huge hands were wrapped around a pair of delicate wine bottles, made of sapphire-colored glass with silver ribbons below their corks. “I took a hundred bottles of last year’s Lashani Blue out of a galleon a few months ago. I saved a few because I knew you had a taste for it. Welcome back.”
“Welcome to the table, Captain.” At Drakasha’s gesture, Ezri, Jean, Locke, and Konar shuffled one chair to the left, leaving the chair next to Zamira open. Jaffrim settled into it and passed her the wine bottles. When she offered her right hand he kissed it, then stuck out his tongue.
“Mmm,” he said. “I always wondered what Chavon would taste like.”
He helped himself to a disused cup as Zamira laughed. “Who’s closest to the ale cask?”
“Allow me,” said Locke.
“Most of you I’ve met,” said Rodanov. “Rask, of course, I’m shocked as hell you’re still alive. Dantierre, Konar, good to see you. Malakasti, love, what’s Zamira got that I haven’t? Wait, I’m not sure I want to know. And you.” He slipped an arm around Lieutenant Delmastro and gave her a squeeze. “I didn’t know Zamira still let children run free on deck. When are you going to reach your growth?”
“I grew in all the right directions.” She grinned and feigned a punch to his stomach. “You know, the only reason people think your ship’s a three-master is because you’re always standing on the quarterdeck.”
“If I take my breeches off,” said Rodanov, “it suddenly looks as though she’s got four.”
“We might believe that if we hadn’t seen enough naked Vadrans to know better,” said Drakasha.
“Well, I’m no shame to the old country,” said Rodanov as Locke passed him a cup full of beer. “And I see you’ve been picking up new faces.”
“Here and there. Orrin Ravelle, Jerome Valora. This is Jaffrim Rodanov, captain of the Dread Sovereign.”
“Your health and good fortune,” said Rodanov, raising his cup. “May your foes be unarmed and your ale unspoiled.”
“Foolish merchants and fine winds to chase them on,” said Zamira, raising one of the wine bottles he’d given her.
“Did you have a good sweep this time out?”
“Holds are fit to bust,” said Drakasha. “And we pulled in a little brig, about a ninety-footer. Ought to be here by now, actually.”
“That the Red Messenger?”
“How’d you—”
“Strozzi came in just yesterday. Said he swooped down on a brig with bad legs and was about to pluck her when he found one of your prize crews waving at him. This was about sixty miles north of Trader’s Gate, just off the Burning Reach. Hell, they might be crawling through Trader’s Gate as we speak.”
“More power to them, then. We came in through the Parlor.”
“Not good,” said Rodanov, looking less than pleased for the first time since he’d come up. “Heard some strange things about the Parlor lately. His Eminence the Fat Bastard—”
“Shipbreaker,” Konar whispered to Locke.
“—sent a lugger east last month and says it got lost in a storm. But I hear from reliable lips that it never made it out of the Parlor.”
“I thought speed would be the greater virtue coming in,” said Drakasha, “but next time back, I’ll use the Gate if it takes a week. You can pass that around.”
“It’ll be my advice, too. Speaking of which, I hear you want to call the council tomorrow.”
“There’s five of us in town. I’ve got…curious business from Tal Verrar. And I want a closed meeting.”
“One captain, one first,” said Rodanov. “Right. I’ll pass the word to Strozzi and Colvard tomorrow. I take it Rance already knows?”
“Yes.”
“She might not be able to speak.”
“She won’t need to,” said Drakasha. “I’m the one with the story to tell.”
“So be it,” said Rodanov. “‘Let us speak behind our hands, lest our lips be read as the book of our designs, and let us find some place where only gods and rats may hear our words aloud.’”
Locke stared at Rodanov; that was Lucarno, from—
“The Assassin’s Wedding,” said Delmastro.
“Yeah, easy,” said Rodanov with a grin. “Nothing more difficult sprang to mind.”
“What a curiously theatrical bent you Brass Sea reavers seem to have,” said Jean. “I knew Ezri had a taste—”
“I only quote Lucarno for her,” said Rodanov. “I myself hate the bastard. Mawkish sentiment, obvious self-satisfaction, and so many little puns about fucking so all the Therin Throne’s best-dressed twits could feel naughty in public. Meanwhile the Bondsmagi and my ancestors rolled dice to see who got to burn the empire down first.”
“Jerome and I are both very fond of Lucarno,” said Delmastro.
“And that is because you don’t know any better,” said Rodanov. “Because the plays of the early Throne poets are kept in vaults by pinheads while Lucarno’s merest specks of vomit are exalted by anyone with coins to waste on scribes and bindery. His plays aren’t preserved, they’re perpetrated. Mercallor Mentezzo—”
“Mentezzo’s all right,” said Jean. “His verse is fair, but he uses the chorus like a crutch and always throws the gods in at the end to solve everyone’s problems—”
“Mentezzo and his contemporaries built Therin Throne drama from the Espardri model,” said Rodanov, “invigorating dull temple rituals with relevant political themes. The limitations of their structure should be forgiven; by comparison, Lucarno had their entire body of work to build upon, and all he added to the mix was tawdry melodrama—”
“Whatever he added, it’s enough that four hundred years after the scourging of Therim Pel, Lucarno is the only playwright with Talathri’s formal patronage whose work is still preserved in its entirety and regularly prepared in new editions—”
“An appeal to the tastes of the groundlings is not equivalent to a valid philosophical analysis of the works in question! Lucestra of Nicora wrote in her letters to—”
“Begging everyone’s pardon,” said Big Konar, “but it ain’t polite to have an argument if nobody else knows what the fuck you’re arguing about.”
br />
“I have to admit that Konar is right,” said Drakasha. “I can’t tell if you two are about to pull steel or found a mystery cult.”
“Who the hell are you?” asked Rodanov, his eyes fixed on Jean. “I haven’t had anyone to discuss this with for years.”
“I had an unusual childhood,” said Jean. “Yourself?”
“The, ah, prevailing vanity of my youth was that the Therin Collegium needed a master of letters and rhetoric named Rodanov.”
“What happened?”
“Well, there was a certain professor of rhetoric, see, who’d come up with a foolproof way to run a betting shop out of the Hall of Studious Reflection. Gladiator pits, collegium boat races, that sort of thing. He used his students as message runners, and since money can be used to buy beer, that made him our personal hero. Of course, when he had to flee the city it was whips and chains for the rest of us, so I signed on for shit-work aboard a merchant galleon—”
“When was this?” interrupted Locke.
“Hell, this was back when the gods were young. Must be twenty-five years.”
“This professor of rhetoric…was his name Barsavi? Vencarlo Barsavi?”
“How the hell could you possibly know that?”
“Might have…crossed paths with him a few times.” Locke grinned. “Traveling in the east. Vicinity of Camorr.”
“I heard rumors,” said Rodanov. “Heard the name once or twice, but never made it to Camorr myself. Barsavi, really? Is he still there?”
“No,” said Jean. “No, he died a couple of years ago, is what I heard.”
“Too bad.” Rodanov sighed. “Too damn bad. Well…I can tell I’ve detained you all for too long nattering about people who’ve been dead for centuries. Don’t take me too seriously, Valora. A pleasure to meet you. You as well, Ravelle.”
“Good to see you, Jaffrim,” said Zamira, rising from her chair along with him. “Until tomorrow, then?”
“I’ll expect a good show,” he said. “Evening, all.”
“One of your fellow captains,” said Jean as Rodanov descended the stairs. “Very interesting. So why didn’t he want our table, then?”
“Dread Sovereign’s the biggest ship any Port Prodigal captain has ever had,” said Zamira, slowly. “And she’s got the biggest crew by far. Jaffrim doesn’t need to play the games the rest of us do. And he knows it.”
There was no conversation at the table for several minutes, until Rask suddenly cleared his throat and spoke in a low, gravelly voice.
“I saw a play once,” he said. “It had this dog that bit a guy in the balls—”
“Yeah,” said Malakasti. “I saw that, too. ’Cause the dog loves sausage, and the man is always feeding him sausage, and then he takes his breeches off—”
“Right,” said Drakasha. “The very next person who mentions a play of any sort is going to swim back to the Orchid. Let’s go see how badly our friend Banjital Vo wanted his silver.”
9
REGAL WOKE Locke the next day just in time for the noon watch change. Locke plucked the kitten off the top of his head, stared into his little green eyes, and said, “This may come as quite a shock to you, but there is just no way in all the hells that I’m getting attached to you, you sleep-puncturing menace.”
Locke yawned, stretched, and walked out into a soft warm rain falling from a sky webbed by cataracts of cloud. “Ahhh,” he said, stripping to his breeches and letting the rain wash some of the smell of the Tattered Crimson from his skin. It was strange, he reflected, how the myriad stinks of the Poison Orchid had become familiar, and the smell of the sort of places he’d spent years in had become intrusive.
Drakasha had shifted the Orchid to a position just off one of the long stone piers in the Hospital anchorage, and Locke saw that a dozen small boats had come up along the larboard side. While five or six armed Blue watch held the entry port, Utgar and Zamira were negotiating vigorously with a man standing atop a launch filled with pineapples.
The early afternoon was consumed by the coming and going of boats; assorted Prodigals appeared offering to sell everything from fresh food to alchemical drugs, while representatives from the independent traders came to inquire about the goods in the hold and view samples under Drakasha’s watchful eye. The Orchid temporarily became a floating market square.
Around the second hour of the afternoon, just as the rain was abating and the sun burning through the clouds above, the Red Messenger appeared out of the Trader’s Gate passage and dropped anchor beside the Orchid. Nasreen, Gwillem, and the prize crew came back aboard, along with several of the ex-Messengers who’d recovered enough to move around.
“What the hell is he doing here?” one of them hollered when he saw Locke.
“Come with me,” said Jabril, putting an arm around the man’s shoulder. “Nothin’ I can’t explain. And while I’m at it, I’ll tell you about a thing called the scrub watch….”
Scholar Treganne ordered a boat lowered so she could visit the Messenger and examine the injured still aboard her. Locke helped hoist the smallest boat down, and while he was doing so Treganne crossed paths with Gwillem at the entry port.
“We’ve traded cabins,” she said gruffly. “I’ve got your old compartment, and you can have mine.”
“What? What? Why?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
Before the Vadran could ask any more questions, Treganne had clambered over the side and Zamira had taken him by the arm.
“What sort of bid will the Shipbreaker open with for her?”
“Two silvers and a cup of cowpox scabs,” said Gwillem.
“Yes, but what can I reasonably talk him up to?”
“Eleven or twelve hundred solari. He’s going to need two new topgallant masts, as the fore was sprung as well. It just didn’t come down. New yards, some new sails. She’s had work done recently, and that’s a help, but a look at her timbers will show her age. She’s got maybe ten years of use left in her.”
“Captain Drakasha,” said Locke, stepping up beside Gwillem. “If I may be so bold—”
“This scheme you were talking about, Ravelle?”
“I’m sure I can squeeze at least a few hundred more solari out of him.”
“Ravelle?” Gwillem frowned at him. “Ravelle, the former captain of the Red Messenger?”
“Delighted to meet you,” said Locke, “and all I need to borrow, Captain, are some better clothes, a few leather satchels, and a pile of coins.”
“What?”
“Relax. I’m not going to spend them. I just need them for show. And you’d better let me have Jerome as well.”
“Captain,” said Gwillem, “why is Orrin Ravelle alive and a member of the crew and asking you for money?”
“Del!” hollered Drakasha.
“Right here,” she said, appearing a moment later.
“Del, take Gwillem aside and explain to him why Orrin Ravelle is alive and a member of the crew.”
“But why is he asking you for money?” said Gwillem. Ezri grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away.
“My people expect to be paid for the Messenger,” said Drakasha. “I need to be sure whatever you’re scheming won’t actually make things worse.”
“Captain, in this matter I’d be acting as a member of your crew—lest you forget, I have a share of what we get for the Messenger, too.”
“Hmmm.” She looked around and tapped her fingers on the hilt of one of her sabers. “Better clothes, you say?”
10
THE SHIPBREAKER’S agents, primed by rumors from the night before, were swift to spot the new sail in Prodigal Bay. At the fifth hour of the afternoon, an ornate barge rowed by banks of slaves pulled alongside the Red Messenger.
Drakasha waited to receive the occupants of the barge with Delmastro, Gwillem, and two dozen armed crewfolk. First up the side was a squad of guards, men and women sweating beneath armor of boiled leather and chain. Once they’d swept the deck with their eyes, a team of
slaves leapt aboard and rigged lines to haul a hanging chair from barge to ship. Sweating furiously, they strained to heave this chair and its occupant up to the entry port.
The Shipbreaker was exactly as Drakasha remembered. An old, paper-skinned Therin so distended with fat that it looked as though he’d popped his seams and his viscous flesh was pouring out into the world around him. His jowls ended somewhere below the middle of his neck, his fingers were like burst sausages, and his wattles had so little firmament behind them they quivered when he blinked. He managed to rise from his chair, with the help of a slave at either hand, but he didn’t look remotely comfortable until another slave produced a wide lacquered shelf, a sort of portable table. This was set before him, and he heaved his massive belly atop it with a groan of relief.
“A limping brig,” he said to no one in particular. “One t’gallant mast gone and the other one fit for firewood. Somewhat aged. A lady whose fading charms are ill concealed by recent layers of paint and gilt. Oh. Forgive me, Zamira. I did not see you standing there.”
“Whereas I felt the ship heel over the instant you came aboard,” said Drakasha. “She was tough enough to pull through a summer’s-end storm even in the hands of an incompetent. Her lines are clean, topgallant masts are cheap, and she’s sweeter by far than most of the heaps you haul to the east.”
“Heaps procured for me by captains like yourself. Now, I’ll want to peek under her breeches and see if she has any quim left to speak of. Then we can discuss the size of the favor I’ll be doing you.”
“Pose all you like, old man. I’ll have a fair price for a fair ship.”
“Fair she is,” said Leocanto Kosta, choosing that moment to emerge from his lurking place within the companionway. The Orchid ’s little store of fine clothing had furnished him with a veneer of wealth. His mustard-brown coat had cloth-of-silver cuffs, his tunic was unstained silk, his breeches were passable, and his shoes were polished. They were also large enough for a man of Jerome’s build, but Kosta had stuffed them with rags to help them fit. One couldn’t have everything.
A borrowed rapier hung from his belt, and several of Zamira’s rings gleamed on his fingers. Behind him came Jerome, dressed as the Dutiful Manservant of Common Demeanor, carrying three heavy leather satchels over his shoulder. The speed with which they’d assumed these roles led Zamira to infer they’d used them elsewhere.