Authors: Scott Lynch
“No, thanks. I don’t know how to say ‘stop eating me’ in shark.”
“Well then, you’re stuck here with us. And we’ve been waiting for you lot to get off
the scrub watch for long enough.” She grinned up at him. “Tonight everyone gets to
know everyone else.”
Jean stared at her, eyes wide, not knowing what to say or do next. Her grin became
a frown.
“Jerome, am I … doing something wrong?”
“Wrong?”
“You keep sort of moving away. Not just with your body, but with your neck. You keep …”
“Oh, hell.” Jean laughed, reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, and felt himself
burst into an uncontrollable twit-grin when she reached up to hold it there. “Ezri,
I lost my optics when you … made us swim, the day we came aboard. I’m what they call
near-blind. I guess I didn’t realize it, but I’ve been fidgeting to keep you in focus.”
“Oh, gods,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Keeping you in focus is worth the trouble.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know.” Jean felt the anxious pressure in his stomach migrating upward to fill his
chest, and he took a deep breath. “Look, we almost got killed today. Fuck these games.
Do you want to have a drink with me?”
“WATCH,” SAID Drakasha.
Locke stood at the taffrail, looking down into the ship’s phosphorescent wake between
the glow of two stern lanterns. Those lanterns were glowing glass orchids the size
of his head, transparent petals drooping delicately toward the water.
“Gods,” said Locke, shuddering.
Between the wake and the lanterns, there was just enough light for him to spot it—a
long black shadow sliding beneath the
Poison Orchid
’s trail of disturbed water. Forty or fifty feet of something sinuous and sinister,
using the ship’s wake to conceal itself. Captain Drakasha had one boot up on the taffrail
and an expression of casual pleasure on her face.
“What the hell is it?”
“Five or six possibilities,” said Drakasha. “Might be a whaleworm or a giant devilfish.”
“Is it
following
us?”
“Yes.”
“Is it … um, dangerous?”
“Well, if you drop your drink over the rail, don’t jump in after it.”
“Don’t you think you should maybe let it have a few arrows?”
“I might, if only I were sure that this was the fastest it could swim.”
“Good point.”
“Fling arrows at all the strange things you see out here, Ravelle, and all you do
is run out of arrows.” She sighed and glanced around to ensure that they were more
or less alone. The closest crewman was at the wheel, eight or nine yards forward.
“You made yourself very useful today.”
“Well, the alternative just didn’t suit.”
“I thought I was abetting a suicide when I agreed to let you lead the boats.”
“You nearly were, Captain. It was … Look, it was inches from disaster the whole way,
that fight. I don’t even remember half of it. The gods blessed me by allowing me to
avoid soiling my breeches. Surely you know what it’s like.”
“I do. I also know that sometimes these things aren’t accidents. You and Master Valora
have … excited a great deal of comment for what you did in that battle. Your skills
are unusual for a former master of weights and measures.”
“Weighing and measuring is a
boring
occupation,” said Locke. “A man needs a hobby.”
“The archon’s people didn’t hire you by accident, did they?”
“What?”
“I said I’d peel this strange fruit you call a story, Ravelle, and I have been. My
initial impression of you wasn’t favorable. But you’ve … done better. And I think
I can understand how you kept your old crew in thrall despite your ignorance. You
seem to have a real talent for improvised dishonesty.”
“Weighing and measuring is a very,
very
boring—”
“So you’re a master of a sedentary occupation who just
happened
to have a talent for espionage? And disguise? And command? Not to mention your skill
at arms, or that of your close and unusually educated friend Jerome?”
“Our mothers were so very proud of us.”
“You weren’t hired away from the Priori by the archon,” said Drakasha. “You were double
agents. Planted provocateurs,
intended
to enter the archon’s service. You didn’t steal that ship because of some insult
you won’t speak of; you stole it because your orders were to damage the archon’s credibility.
To do something big.”
“Uh …”
“Please, Ravelle. As if there could be any other reasonable explanation.”
Gods, what a temptation, Locke thought. A mark actually inviting me to step into her
own misconception, free and clear. He stared at the phosphorescent wake, at the mysterious
something swimming beneath it. What to do? Take the opening, cement the Ravelle and
Valora identities in Drakasha’s mind, work from there? Or … his cheeks burned as the
sting of Jean’s rebuke rose again in his memory. Jean hadn’t just criticized him on
theological grounds, or because of Delmastro. It was a matter of approaches. Which
would be more effective?
Treat this woman as a mark, or treat her as an ally?
Time was running out. This conversation was the point of decision; follow his instincts
and play her, or follow Jean’s advice and … attempt to trust her. He thought furiously.
His own instincts—were they always impeccable? Jean’s instincts—arguments aside, had
Jean ever done anything but try to protect him?
“Tell me something,” he said very slowly, “while I weigh a response.”
“Perhaps.”
“Something half the size of this ship is probably staring at us as we speak.”
“Yes.”
“How do you
stand
it?”
“You see things like this often enough, you get used—”
“Not just that. Everything. I’ve been at sea a grand total of six or seven weeks in
my life. How long have
you
been out here?”
She stared at him, saying nothing.
“Some things about myself,” said Locke, “I won’t tell you just because you’re the
captain of this ship, even if you throw me back in the hold or pitch me over the side.
Some things … I want to know who I’m
talking to
first. I want to talk to Zamira, not to Captain Drakasha.”
Still she remained silent.
“Is that asking so very much?”
“I’m nine and thirty,” she said at last, very quietly. “I first sailed when I was
eleven.”
“Nearly thirty years, then. Well, like I said, I’ve been out here a few
weeks
. And in that time—storms, mutiny, seasickness, battles, flit-wraiths … hungry damn
things
lurking all over the place, waiting for someone to dip a toe in the water. It’s not
that I haven’t enjoyed myself at times; I have. I’ve learned things. But … thirty
years? And children as well? Don’t you find it all … chancy?”
“Do you have children, Orrin?”
“No.”
“The instant I decide that you are presuming to lecture me on their behalf, this conversation
will
end with you going over this rail to make the acquaintance of whatever’s down there.”
“That’s not at
all
what I meant. It’s just—”
“Have people on land acquired the secret of living forever? Have they abolished accidents?
Have they ceased to have
weather
in my absence?”
“Of course not.”
“How much more danger are my children
truly
in than some poor bastard conscripted to fight in his duke’s wars? Or some penniless
family dying of a plague with their neighborhood quarantined, or burnt to the ground?
Wars, disease, taxes. Bowing heads and kissing boots. There’s plenty of hungry damn
things
prowling on land, Orrin. It’s just that the ones at sea tend not to wear crowns.”
“Ah—”
“Was
your
life a paradise before you sailed the Sea of Brass?”
“No.”
“Of course not. Listen well. I thought that I’d grown up in a hierarchy where
mere
competence and loyalty were enough to maintain one’s station in life,” she whispered.
“I gave an oath of service and imagined that oath was binding in both directions.
I was a
fool
. And I had to kill an awful lot of
men and women to escape the consequences of that foolishness. Would you really ask
me to place my trust, and my hopes for Paolo and Cosetta, in the same bullshit that
nearly killed me before? Which system of laws should I bend to, Orrin? Which king
or duke or empress should I trust like a mother? Which of them is a better judge of
my life’s worth than I am? Can you point them out to me, write a letter of introduction?”
“Zamira,” said Locke, “
please
don’t make me out to be some sort of advocate for things that I’m not; it seems to
me that my whole life has been spent in the willful disdain of what you’re talking
about. Do I strike you as a law-and-order sort of fellow?”
“Admittedly not.”
“I’m just curious, is all. I do appreciate this. Tell me now—what about the Free Armada?
Your so-called War for Recognition? Why profess such hatred for … laws and taxes and
all those strictures, if that was essentially what you were fighting to emplace down
here?”
“Ah.” Zamira sighed, removed her four-cornered hat, and ran her fingers through her
breeze-tossed hair. “Our infamous Lost Cause. Our personal contribution to the glorious
history of Tal Verrar.”
“Why did you start it?”
“Bad judgment. We all hoped … Well, Captain Bonaire was persuasive. We had a leader,
a plan. Open mines on new islands, tap some of the safe forests for wood and resin.
Pillage as we liked until the other powers on the Sea of Brass came wringing their
hands to the bargaining table, and then beat the shit out of them with authorized
trade. We imagined a realm without tariffs. Montierre and Port Prodigal swelling up
with merchants and their imported fortunes.”
“Ambitious.”
“Idiotic. I was newly escaped from one sour allegiance and I leapt right into another.
We believed Bonaire when she said that Stragos didn’t have the clout to come down
and mount a serious fight.”
“Oh. Hell.”
“They met us at sea. Biggest action I ever saw, and the soonest lost. Stragos put
hundreds of Verrari soldiers on his ships to back the sailors; we never stood a chance
in close action. Once they had the
Basilisk
they stopped taking prisoners. They’d board a ship, scuttle it, and move on to the
next. Their archers put shafts into anyone in the water, at least until the devilfish
came.
“I needed every trick I had just to get the
Orchid
out. A few of us straggled back to Prodigal, beat to hell, and even before we got
there the Verrari pounded Montierre into the sand. Five hundred dead in one morning.
After that, they sailed back home and I imagine there was a lot of dancing, fucking,
and speeches.”
“I think,” said Locke, “you can take a city like Tal Verrar … and you can threaten
its purse strings
or
its pride, and get away with it. But not if you threaten both at once.”
“You’re right. Maybe Stragos
was
impotent when Bonaire left the city; whatever he was, we united Tal Verrar’s interests
behind him. We summoned him up like some demon out of a story.” She folded her arms
over her hat and leaned forward, resting her elbows against the taffrail. “So, we
stayed outlaws. No flowering for the Ghostwinds. No glorious destiny for Port Prodigal.
This ship is our world now, and I only take her in when her belly’s too full to prowl.
“Am I making myself clear, Orrin? I don’t regret how I’ve lived these past few years.
I move where I will. I set no appointments. I guard no borders. What land-bound king
has the freedom of a ship’s captain? The Sea of Brass provides. When I need haste,
it gives me winds. When I need gold, it gives me galleons.”
Thieves prosper, thought Locke. The rich remember.
He made his decision, and gripped the rail to avoid shaking.
“Only gods-damned fools die for lines drawn on maps,” said Zamira. “But nobody can
draw lines around my ship. If they try, all I need to do to slip away is set more
sail.”
“Yeah,” said Locke. “But … Zamira, what if I were forced to tell you that that may
no longer be the case?”
“HAVE YOU really been practicing on barrels, Jerome?”
They’d laid claim to a bottle of Black Pomegranate brandy from one of the crates broken
open amidst the revelers, and taken it back to their spot by the rail.
“Barrels. Yes.” Jean took a sip of the stuff, dark as distilled night, with a sting
like nettles beneath the sweetness. He passed the bottle back to her. “They never
laugh, they never ridicule you, and they offer no distractions.”
“Distractions?”
“Barrels don’t have breasts.”
“Ah. So what have you been
telling
these barrels?”
“This bottle of brandy,” said Jean, “is still too full for me to begin embarrassing
myself like that.”
“Pretend I’m a barrel, then.”
“Barrels don’t have br—”
“So I’ve heard. Find the nerve, Valora.”
“You want me to pretend that you’re a barrel so I can tell you what I was telling
barrels back when I was pretending they were you.”
“Precisely.”
“Well.” He took another long sip from the brandy bottle. “You have … you have such
hoops as I have never seen in any cask on any ship, such shiny and well-fit hoops—”
“
Jerome—
”
“And your staves!” He decided it was a good time to take another drink. “Your staves …
so
well planed, so tightly fit. You are as fine a cask as I have ever seen, you marvelous
little barrel. To say nothing of your bung—”
“Ahem. So you won’t share your sweet nothings?”
“No. I am utterly emboldened in my cowardice.”
“ ‘Man! What a mouse he is made by conversation,’ ” Ezri recited. “ ‘Scorns gods,
dares battle, and flinches from a maid’s rebuke! Merest laugh from merest girl is
like a dagger felt, and like a dagger, makes a lodging of his breast. Turns blood
to milkwater and courage to faint memory.’ ”