“Me? Me, too?”
There. It was reaching him at last. Kennit was proposing that Sorcor himself could have these things, not just Kennit. Kennit's smile broadened. “Of course. Of course you, why not you?” He permitted himself a deprecating laugh. “Sorcor, do you think I'd ask you to throw in with me as we have done before, would I ask you to risk everything alongside me, if all I had in mind were improving my own fortunes? Of course not! You're not such a fool. No. What I have in mind is that together we shall reach for this fortune. And not just for ourselves, no. When we are done, all our crew will have benefitted. And if Divvytown and the other pirate isles choose to follow us, they will benefit as well. But no man will be forced to throw in his hand with ours. No. It will be a free alliance of free men. So.” He leaned forward across the table to his mate. “What say you?”
Sorcor blinked his eyes and looked aside from his captain's gaze. But when he did so, he must look about the finely appointed room, on the carefully arrayed wealth Kennit had set out just for that reason. There was no spot in the room where the man's eyes could rest without avarice awaking in his heart.
But in the depths of his soul, Sorcor was a more cautious sort than Kennit had given him credit. His dark eyes came back to lock gazes with Kennit's pale ones. “You speak well. And I cannot think of a reason not to say yes. But I know that does not mean there isn't a reason.” He put his elbows on the table and leaned on his arms heavily. “Speak plainly. What must we do to bring these things about?”
“Dare,” said Kennit briefly. The licking flame of triumph he felt would not let him sit still. He had the man, even if Sorcor himself did not know it yet. He rose to pace the small cabin, wine glass in his hand. “First, we capture their imaginations and their admiration by what we dare to do. We amass wealth, yes, but we do it as no one has before. Look you, Sorcor. I need not show you a chart. All trade that comes from Jamaillia and the Southlands must pass us before it can reach Bingtown, or Chalced and the lands beyond. This is so?”
“Of course.” The mate's brow furrowed in his effort to see where this obvious fact might lead. “A ship can't get from Jamaillia to Bingtown, save that they pass the pirate isles. Unless they're fool enough to go Outside and dare the Wild Sea.”
Kennit nodded agreement. “So ships and captains have but two choices. They can take the Outside Passage, where storms off the Wild Sea are fiercest and serpents thickest and the way is longest. Or they can risk the Inside Passage, with the tricky channels and currents and us pirates. Correct?”
“Serpents, too,” Sorcor insisted on pointing out. “Almost as many serpents haunt the Inside Passage as the Outside now.”
“True. That's true. Serpents, too,” Kennit acceded easily. “Now. Imagine yourself a merchant skipper facing that choice. And a man comes to you and says, “Sir, for a fee, I can see you safely through the Inside Passage. I've a pilot who knows the channels and the currents like the back of his hand, and not a pirate will molest you on your way.' What would you say?”
“What about the serpents?” Sorcor demanded.
““And the serpents are no worse within the sheltered water of the passage than without, and a ship stands a better chance within them than if she's on the Outside, battling both serpents and storms at once. And perhaps we'll even have an escort ship for you, one full of skilled archers and laden with Baley's Fire, and if serpents attack you, the escort will take them on while you escape.' What would you say, merchant skipper?”
Sorcor narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “I'd say, how much is this going to cost me?”
“Exactly. And I'd name a fat price, but you'd be willing to pay it. Because you'd just add that fat price to your goods at the end of your run. Because you'd know you'd get through safe to sell those goods. Paying a fat price for that assurance is much better than sailing free and taking a big chance you'll lose it all.”
“Wouldn't work,” Sorcor declared.
“Why not?”
“Because the other pirates would kill you if you gave out the secret ways of our channels. Or they'd let you lead a fat ship in like a lamb to the slaughter, and then they'd fall on you both. Why should they sit back and let you have all the money?”
“Because they'd get a cut of it, one and all. Every ship that came through would have to pay into a treasury and everyone would get a cut of that treasury. Plus, we'd make them promise that there'd be no more raids against us or our towns. Our folk could sleep peaceful at night, knowing that their daddies and brothers would be coming home safe to them, and that there'd be no Satrap's boats coming to burn their towns and take them as slaves.” He paused. “Look at us now. We waste our lives chasing their ships. When we do catch one, then it's bloodshed and mayhem, and sometimes for naught. Sometimes the whole ship goes down, cargo and all, or sometimes we battle for hours and what do we get? A hold full of cheap cotton or some such trash. Meanwhile, the Satrap's ships and soldiers are putting into our villages and towns, and rounding up everyone who doesn't flee to be carted off as slaves, in revenge for our pirating. Now look at it my way. Instead of risking our lives to attack every tenth ship that comes through, and perhaps come up with nothing, we'd get a cut of every cargo on every ship that passed through our waters. We'd control it all. At no risk to our lives save what any sailor must face. Meanwhile, our homes and families are safe. The riches we garner, we keep to enjoy.”
An idea dawned slowly in Sorcor's eyes. “And we'd say no slavers. We could cut the slaves-trade's throat. No slaveships, no slavers could use the Inland Passage.”
Kennit knew a moment's dismay. “But the fattest trade to be fleeced is the slaves-trade ships. They'd be the ones that would pay the most to get through fast and easy, with their cargo alive and healthy still. What percentage of their wares do they get through . . .”
“Men,” Sorcor interrupted harshly. “Women and kiddies. Not wares. If you'd ever been inside one of those ships . . . and I don't mean on the deck, I mean inside, chained up in a hold . . . you wouldn't say “wares.' No. No slavers, Kennit. Slavers made us what we are. If we're going to change that, then we start by doing to them what they done to us. We take their lives away. Besides. It's not just that they're evil. They bring the serpents. The stink of slaveships is what lured the serpents into our channels in the first place. We get rid of the slaveships, maybe the serpents will go, too. Hells, Cap'n, they lure the serpents right into our islands and ways, chumming them along with dead slaves. And they bring disease. They breed sickness in those holds full of poor wretches, sickness we never knew or had before. Every time a slaveship ties up to take on water, they leave disease in their wake. No. No slavers.”
“All right, then,” Kennit agreed mildly. “No slavers.” He'd never suspected Sorcor had an idea in his skull, let alone that he'd felt so passionately about something. A miscalculation. He looked anew at Sorcor. The man might have to be discarded. Not just yet, and perhaps not for some time. But at some point in the future, he might outlive his usefulness. Kennit decided he must keep that in mind, and make no long-range plans based on Sorcor's skills. He smiled at him. “You are right, of course. I am sure there are many of our folk who will agree with you, and can be won over to us with such an idea.” He nodded again as if considering it. “Yes. No slavers, then. But all of this, of course, is a way down the wind. Were we to voice such ideas now, no one would listen to us. They'd say that what we suggested was impossible. Or every man would want to try it for himself, competing with every other. It would be ship against ship. We don't want that. So we must keep this idea quiet and private between us, until we've got every pirate in the islands looking up to us and ready to believe what we tell them.”
“That's likely so,” Sorcor agreed after a moment's pondering. “So. How do we get them to listen to us?”
Finally. The question he had been leading him to ask. Kennit came swiftly back to the table. He forced himself to pause for the drama of the moment. He set his own glass down, and uncorked the bottle. He refilled Sorcor's glass, and added a dollop to his own nearly full glass. “We make them believe we can do the impossible. By doing things all others deem impossible. Such as, say, capturing a liveship and using it as our main vessel.”
Sorcor scowled at him. “Kennit, old friend, that's crazy. No wooden ship can capture a liveship. They're too fleet. I've heard tell that the ship herself can scent a passage through a channel, and cry it to her steersman. And that they can feel the luff of the wind, and catch and use a breath of air that wouldn't budge another ship. Besides, even if we did fall upon one and manage to kill off her crew, the ship itself would be no good to us. They'll only sail for their own family members. Anyone else, they turn on. The ship would run herself aground, or onto the rocks, or just turn turtle on us. Look at that death ship, what was his name? The one that went mad and turned on his own family and crew? He rolled and took all hands with him. Not once, but three times, or so I've heard. And the last time they found him, he was floating upside down in the mouth of Bingtown harbor itself. Some say the ghost crew brought him home, others that he came back to show them Traders what he'd done. They dragged him out and beached him, and there he's been ever since.
Pariah.
That was his name. The
Pariah.
”
“The
Paragon,
” Kennit corrected him with wry amusement. “His name was the
Paragon,
though even his own family have taken to calling him the
Pariah.
Yes, I've heard all the old myths and legends about liveships, Sorcor. But that's what they are. Myths and legends. I believe a liveship could be taken and could be used. And if the heart of the ship could be won over, you'd have a vessel for piracy that no other ship could stand against. It's true, what you say about the currents and winds and liveships. True, also, that they can sense a serpent long before a man can spot him, and cry it out to the archers to be ready. A liveship would be the perfect vessel for piracy. And for charting out new passages through the Pirate Isles, or battling serpents. I'm not saying we should forsake all else and go hunting a liveship. I'm just saying that if one comes our way, instead of saying there's no use in pursing it, let's give it a chase. If we win it, we win it. If not, well, plenty of other ships get away from us. We'll have lost no more than we had before.”
“Why a liveship?” Sorcor asked bewilderedly. “I don't get it.”
“I . . . want one. That's why.”
“Well, then. I'll tell you what I want.” For some odd reason, Sorcor thought they were striking a bargain. “I'll go along with it,” he conceded grudgingly. “We'll chase liveships when we see them, though I don't see much use to it. Not that I'll admit that to the men. In front of the men, I'll be as hot to go after them as a hound on a scent. But you make me this balance. For every liveship we chase, we go after the next slaver we smell. And we board them, and throw the crew to the serpents, and see the slaves safe back to a town. No offense to your judgment, Cap'n, but I think that if we stop enough slavers and do away with the crews, we'll gain the respect of the others a lot faster than by capturing a liveship.”
Kennit did not mask his scowl. “I think you overestimate the righteousness and morality of our fellows here in Divvytown. I think they'd be as likely to think us soft-headed fools to waste our time pursuing slavers only to free the cargo.”
Perhaps the fine wine had gone to Sorcor's head faster than a lesser vintage would have. Or perhaps Kennit had unwittingly found the man's one nerve. His deep voice was deadly soft as he pointed out, “You only think so because you've never been chained hand and foot in a stinking hold when you're scarcely more than a lad. You've never had your head gripped in a vise to still you while a tattooist jabs your new master's mark into your face.”
The man's eyes glittered, turned inward towards a darkness only his sight could pierce. He drew a slow breath. “And then they put me to work in a tanner's pit, curing hides. They cared nothing for what it did to my own hide. I saw older men there coughing blood from their lungs. No one cared, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I was one of them. One night I killed two men and got away. But where was I to go? North where it's all ice and snow and barbarians? Back south to where my tattoo would mark me as an escaped slave, easy money for anyone who wanted to club me down and return me to my owner? Or should I make for the Cursed Shores, and live like an animal until some demon drained my blood? No. The only thing left to a man like me was the Pirate Isles and a pirate's life. But it's not what I would have chosen, Kennit, given the chance to choose. There's damn few here would have chosen this.” His voice wandered off as did his eyes. He stared past Kennit into the dim corner of the room, seeing nothing for a time. Then his gaze snapped suddenly back to Kennit's. “For every liveship we chase, we run down a slaver. That's all I'm asking. I give you a shot at your dream, you allow me one at mine.”
“Fair enough,” Kennit declared brusquely. He knew when the final bargain had been set out on a table. “Fair enough, then. For every liveship, a slaver.”
A COLDNESS WELLED UP IN WINTROW. IT HAD FILLED HIS BELLY
first and now it flowed out through him. He literally shook with it. He hated how it made his voice waver, as if he were a child on the brink of crying when all he was trying to do was present his case rationally and calmly, as he had been trained. As he had been taught in his beloved monastery. The memory of the cool stone halls where peace flowed with the wind rose up unbidden. He tried to take strength from it. Instead it only unmanned him more. He was not there, he was here, in the family's dining hall. The low table of golden oak polished until it shone, the cushioned benches and lounges that surrounded the table, the paneled walls and the paintings of ships and ancestors all reminded him that he was here, in Bingtown. He cleared his throat and tried to steady his voice as he looked from his mother to his father to his grandmother. They were all seated at the same table, but they were grouped at one end of it, like a panel about to pass judgment on him. As perhaps they were. He took a breath.