Authors: Scott Lynch
“Really?” said Jean
.
“Yes.” Locke stared down at the deck. “I said you were right.”
“And how did she—”
Locke mimed a roll of the dice, and shrugged. “We’re for Port Prodigal before anything
else happens,” he said. “Chores to do. Then she said … she’ll let us know.”
“I see. And so …”
“Did you have a good night?”
“Gods, yes.”
“Good. About, ah, what I said yesterday—”
“You don’t need—”
“I do. It was the
dumbest
of all the things I said yesterday. Dumbest and least fair. I know I’ve been … hopeless
for so long I wear it like armor. I don’t begrudge you anything you have. Savor it.”
“I do,” said Jean. “Believe me, I do.”
“Good. I’m no one you want to learn from.”
“Uh, so—”
“All’s well, Master Valora.” Locke smiled, pleased to feel the corners of his mouth
creeping up of their own volition. “But that wine I was talking about …”
“Wine? Did you—”
“Craplines, Jerome. I need to piss before my innards explode. You’re blocking the
stairs.”
“Ah.” Jean stepped down and slapped Locke on the back. “My apologies. Free yourself,
brother.”
THE
POISON ORCHID
BORE WEST BY SOUTH through muggy air and moderate seas, and the days rolled by for
Locke in a rhythm of chores.
He and Jean were placed on the Red watch, which had been put under Lieutenant Delmastro’s
direct oversight in Nasreen’s absence. Grand initiation ceremonies did nothing to
sate the ship’s appetite for maintenance; the masts still needed to be slushed, the
seams checked and rechecked, the decks swept, the rigging adjusted. Locke oiled sabers
from the weapons lockers, heaved at the capstan to shift cargo for better trim, served
ale at the midevening meals, and pulled rope fragments to oakum until his fingers
were red.
Drakasha acknowledged Locke with terse nods, but said nothing, and summoned him to
no more private conversations.
As full crew, the ex-Messengers had the right to sleep more or less where they would.
Some opted for the main hold, especially those who claimed willing hammock-partners
among the old Orchids, but Locke found himself comfortable enough with the now-roomier
undercastle. He won a spare tunic in a game of dice and used it as a pillow, a luxury
after days of bare deck alone. He slept like a stone statue after finishing each night’s
watch just before the red light of dawn.
Jean, of course, slept elsewhere after the night watches.
They had no sightings through the twenty-fifth of the month, when the
winds shifted and began to blow strongly from the south. Locke had collapsed into
his usual spot against the undercastle’s larboard wall at sunrise, and then snored
for several hours in the fashion of the eminently self-satisfied until some sort of
commotion awoke him and he found Regal draped across his neck.
“Gah,” he said, and the kitten took this as a signal to perch his forepaws on Locke’s
cheeks and begin poking his wet nose directly between Locke’s eyes. Locke seized the
kitten, sat up, and blinked. His skull felt full of cobwebs; something had definitely
woken him prematurely.
“Was it you?” he muttered, frowning and rubbing the top of Regal’s skull with two
fingers. “We have to stop meeting like this, kid. I’m not getting attached to you.”
“Land ho,” came a faint cry from outside the undercastle. “Three points off the larboard
bow!” Locke set Regal down, gave him an unambiguous nudge toward some other snoring
sleeper, and crawled out into the morning light.
Activity on deck seemed normal; nobody was rushing about, or delivering urgent messages
to Drakasha, or even crowding the rail to try to spot the approaching land. Someone
slapped Locke on the back and he turned to find himself facing Utgar, who had a coil
of rope slung over his shoulder. The Vadran nodded in a friendly fashion.
“You look confused, Red watch.”
“It’s just—I heard the cry. I thought there’d be more excitement. Will that be Port
Prodigal?”
“Nah. It’s the Ghostwinds, right, but we’re just fetching the edges. Miserable places.
Asp Island, Bastard Rock, the Opal Sands. Nowhere we’d want to touch. Two days yet
to Prodigal, and with the winds like this, we’re not getting in the way we’d like,
hey?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll see.” Utgar grinned, enjoying some private knowledge. “You’ll see for damn
sure. Get your beauty sleep, right? You’re back on the masts in two hours.”
THE GHOSTWIND Isles gradually crowded in around the
Orchid
like a gang of muggers savoring their slow approach to a target. The horizon, once
clear, sprouted islands thick with mist-capped jungle. Tall black peaks rumbled intermittently,
belching lines of steam or smoke into the heavy
gray skies. Rain washed down in sheets, not the merciless storms of the high seas
but rather the indifferent sweat of the tropics, blood-warm and barely pushed by the
jungle breeze.
The waters lightened with their passage west, from the cobalt of the deeps to sky
blue to translucent aquamarine. The place was teeming with life; birds wheeled overhead,
fish darted through the shallows in silver clouds, and sinuous shapes larger than
men shadowed them. They stalked languidly in the
Orchid
’s wake as well: scythe sharks, blue widowers, bad-luck reefmen, daggerfins. Eeriest
of all were the local wolf sharks, whose sand-colored backs made them vanish into
the pale haze below the ship. It took a keen eye to spot the ghostly incongruities
that betrayed their lurking, and they had the disconcerting habit of circling beneath
the craplines.
Locke thanked the gods that they weren’t jumpers.
For a day and a half they sailed on, heeling over to dodge the occasional reef or
smaller island. Drakasha and Delmastro seemed to know the area by heart and muttered
over Drakasha’s charts only at rare intervals. Locke began to glimpse human detritus
on the shoals and rocks—here a weathered mast, there the skeletal ribs of an ancient
keel on the sandy bottom. On one afternoon watch, he spotted hundreds of crablike
things the size of dogs congregating on the overturned bottom of a ship’s hull. As
the
Orchid
passed, the creatures fled from their artificial reef en masse, making the water
around it froth white. In moments they had vanished completely.
Locke went off that watch a few hours later, aware of a steadily growing tension in
the crew around him. Something had changed. Drakasha paced the quarterdeck ceaselessly,
ordered extra lookouts to the mastheads, and held whispered conferences with Delmastro
and Mumchance.
“She won’t tell me what’s going on,” said Jean after Locke dropped what he thought
was a subtle hint. “She’s all lieutenant and no Ezri at the moment.”
“That in itself tells us something,” said Locke. “Tells us to curb our good cheer.”
Drakasha mustered all hands at the evening watch change. All the Orchids—one vast,
sweaty, anxious mass of men and women—fixed their eyes on the quarterdeck rail and
waited for the captain’s words. The sun was a disk of burning copper crowning jungle
heights dead ahead; the colors of fire were creeping up layer by layer through the
clouds, and all around them the islands were falling into shadow.
“Well,” said Drakasha, “here it is, plain. The winds have been steady as hell these
past few days, out of the south. We can drop anchor in Prodigal tonight, but we can’t
make it through the Trader’s Gate.”
There was a general murmur from the crowd. Lieutenant Delmastro, stepping up beside
the captain, placed a hand on her weapons belt and hollered, “Quiet! Perelandro’s
piss, most of us have been here before.”
“So we have,” said Drakasha. “Stout hearts, Orchids. We’ll do the usual. Red watch,
take some ease. Expect an all-hands call in a few hours. After that, nobody sleeps,
nobody drinks, nobody fucks until we’re safe home again. Blue watch, you have the
duty. Del, see to the newcomers. Run it all down for them.”
“Run
what
down?” Locke looked around, asking the question to the air as the crew dispersed.
“Two passages to get to Port Prodigal,” said Jabril. “First, Trader’s Gate, that’s
north of the city. Twelve miles long, say. Twists and turns, shoals all over the place.
Slow going at the best of times, but with a hard south wind, piss on it. It’ll take
us days.”
“So what the hell are we doing?”
“Second way, from the west. Half as long. Still twisty, but ain’t near so bad. Especially
with this wind. But it don’t get used if anyone can help it. They call it the Parlor
Passage.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s something there,” said Lieutenant Delmastro, pushing her way through
the little crowd, ex-Messengers all, that had gathered around Jabril. Locke saw her
give Jean’s arm the briefest squeeze, and then she continued. “Something … lives there.”
“Something?” Locke couldn’t keep a hint of irritation out of his voice. “Is the ship
in danger?”
“No,” said Delmastro.
“Let me be more specific, then. Are those of us
aboard
her in danger?”
“I don’t know,” said Delmastro, sharing a glance with Jabril. “Will something come
aboard the ship? No. Absolutely not. Might you … feel like
leaving
the ship? I can’t say. Depends on your temperament.”
“I’m not sure I’d enjoy the close attention of anything swimming in these waters,”
said Locke.
“Good. Then you probably don’t have anything to worry about.” Delmastro sighed. “All
of you, think on what the captain said. A bit of rest is the thing; you’ll be called
up halfway through your usual off-watch, so snatch what you can.” She stepped up beside
Jean, and Locke overheard her whisper, “I certainly intend to.”
“I’ll, ah, find you later then, Jerome.” Locke smiled despite himself.
“You going to catch a nap?” asked Jean.
“Bloody hell, no. I expect to twiddle my thumbs and go steadily out of
my skull until called for duty. Maybe I can find someone to share a hand of cards—”
“Doubt it,” said Delmastro. “Your reputation …”
“Unjust persecution for my good fortune,” said Locke.
“Yeah, well, maybe you should consider a public streak of bad luck. Word to the wise.”
She blew Locke a mocking little kiss. “Or whatever you are, Ravelle.”
“Oh, steal Jerome and go do your worst to him.” Locke folded his arms and grinned;
Delmastro’s loosening up toward him had been a welcome change over the previous few
days. “I’ll be judging your performance by how pissed Treganne is when we see her
next. Hell, that’s how I can amuse myself. I’ll solicit wagers on how riled up you
two can get the Scholar—”
“You do
anything
of the sort,” said Delmastro, “and I’ll chain you to an anchor by your precious bits
and have you dragged over a reef.”
“No, this is a good scheme,” said Jean. “We could place our own bets with him, then
rig the contest—”
“This ship has
two
anchors, Valora!”
DUSK WAS approaching by the time Jean and Ezri crept back up to the quarterdeck. Drakasha
stood near the taffrail, cradling Cosetta in her left arm and holding a small silver
cup in her right.
“You must drink it, love,” whispered Drakasha. “It’s a special nighttime drink for
pirate princesses.”
“No,” muttered Cosetta.
“Are you not a pirate princess?”
“No!”
“I think you are. Be good—”
“Don’t want!”
Jean thought back to his time in Camorr, and to how Chains had sometimes behaved when
one of the young Gentlemen Bastards had decided to throw a fit. They’d been much older
than Cos, true, but children were children and Drakasha looked hollow-eyed with worry.
“My, my,” he said loudly, approaching the Drakashas so that Cosetta could see him.
“That looks
very
good, Captain Drakasha.”
“It does look very good,” she said, “and it tastes better than it looks—”
“Feh,” said Cosetta. “Ahhhhh! No!”
“You
must
,” said her mother.
“Captain,” said Jean, pretending to be entranced by the silver cup, “that looks
so
wonderful. If Cosetta doesn’t want it, I’ll have it.”
Drakasha stared at him, and then smiled. “Well …,” she said, sounding grudging, “if
Cosetta doesn’t want it, I suppose I have no choice.” She slowly moved the cup away
from Cosetta and toward Jean, and the little girl’s eyes grew wide.
“No,” she said. “No!”
“But you don’t want it,” said Drakasha with an air of finality. “Jerome does. So it’s
going away, Cosetta.”
“Mmmm,” said Jean. “I’ll drink it straightaway.”
“No!” Cosetta stretched for the cup. “No, no, no!”
“Cosetta,” said Drakasha sternly, “if you want it, you must drink it. Do you understand?”
The little girl nodded, her mouth an “O” of concern, her fingers straining to reach
the suddenly invaluable prize. Zamira held the silver cup to Cosetta’s lips and the
little girl drained it with urgent greed.
“Very good,” said Drakasha, kissing her daughter on the forehead. “Very, very good.
Now I’m going to take you down so you and Paolo can go to sleep.” She slipped the
empty silver cup into a coat pocket, slung Cosetta round to the front of her chest,
and nodded at Jean. “Thank you for that, Valora. Deck is yours, Del. Just a few minutes.”
“She hates doing that,” said Ezri quietly when Drakasha had vanished down the companionway.
“Feeding Cos for the night?”
“It’s milk of poppy. She puts them both to sleep … for the Parlor Passage. No way
in hell she wants them awake when we go through it.”
“What the hell is going to—”
“It’s hard to explain,” said Ezri. “It’s easier just to get it over with. But you’ll
be fine; I know you will.” She ran one hand up and down his back. “You manage to survive
me
in my poorer moods.”