Inda (57 page)

Kodl knew they would never make it to Sartor. Now he wanted to get them to Freedom Island if he could. The island had been the target of vicious pirate battles three times so far during Kodl’s years on the sea. The new holders, once Khanerenth’s royal navy, supposedly established trade, but on their own terms. Free-trader terms.

That meant Kodl and the crew would have their lives, but lose the ship because they were not affiliated privateers. And, being Iascans, they could not get letters of marque—no government would risk angering the Venn enough to issue one.

The other choice was between becoming victims of pirates or becoming pirates themselves.

Kodl was not the only one whose mood matched the frigid winter air. Captain Beagar had stayed in his cabin since leaving Khanerenth. All his long career he had been a good, careful captain, around the world times beyond count, just a few short years from an honorable retirement. And now his livelihood, his life, was all but gone, and for reasons that had nothing to do with him. The utter injustice had stunned him, leaving him unable to move, to think. The only thing that numbed the pain was the hardest liquor he could find.

The two would-be mutineers still sat down in the hold, awaiting the captain’s judgment that everyone knew was not going to come.

And in the mates’ wardroom directly below the captain’s cabin where Beagar stared sightlessly at his logbook, a half-empty jug at his elbow, Jeje sat at the table, watching the lamp swing, and fighting tears.

“Hey, are you sickening for something?” Dasta plunked down next to her, shedding snow as he stripped off his jacket and knit cap.

“Just a little cold,” Jeje lied, annoyed with herself. She’d thought the tears had stayed only a sting, but obviously her eyelids and nose were bright red.

“Is Inda down yet?” That was Tau, sitting opposite them with unconscious grace. His coloring had heightened; Jeje found the sight of his ruddy cheeks and bright eyes so sharp and sweet a pain she had to look away.

Dasta shook his head and wiped his weather-reddened beak of a nose, which had gone numb. “Leugre still snoring. Never took his watch.”

“As well,” Tau commented, and no one disagreed, even if they had to miss sleep to cover him.

“Inda stayed on for his watch. Snow’s thickening up some,” Dasta said, crouching down at the iron stove at the forward bulkhead of the mates’ wardroom. Ordinarily these lowly middies would be in their airless little cubby of a wardroom, one of the least pleasant spaces in the ship above the hold. But the first mate—now the unofficial captain—almost lived on deck. The second mate, Leugre, was sleeping off a drunken binge, and Norsh, now third mate, was nowhere to be seen.

Dasta pointed a finger at Jeje. “She’s sick too.”

Jeje peeked furtively. Tau turned his beautiful head, his eyes reflecting with golden radiance the lamplight that swung past, and darkening to shadow as the lamp reached the height of its arc. Jeje saw his quick concern, and not the least hint of the precious, magical fire of ardency that Jeje had so recently, and so secretly, discovered.

“Shall I take the midnight watch? Nothing else to do,” Tau offered.

“I hope,” Faura said from the door, her dark gaze accusing, “
someone
is going to work tonight.”

“On our way.” Jeje reached for the coat and hat that Dasta had set aside. They both smelled heavily of wet rope. No one having had liberty for over half a year, those who’d been growing shared their winter clothing around since they hadn’t enough stores left to make any. Inda had Jeje’s jacket, which was too tight in the armpits for her these days. “In fact, I may’s well go bring Inda off, and stay in the tops.”

Faura remained silent as Dasta and Jeje passed. Then she stepped up to confront Tau, one hand toying with a ringlet she’d let escape from her knit cap. She glared at Tau. “Everyone leaves when I come. Plotting mutiny?”

Tau said, “Don’t.”

She said challengingly, “Convince me.” Tau saw tears of anger, even of shame, along the rims of her lower lids.

Mutiny.
For the past year Tau had been avoiding her hints, touches, gropes, and sulky comments, hoping she’d find someone else to pursue. But Fassun’s spoiled cousin seemed to be unshakable until she got what she wanted.

Right now, though, something more than thwarted lust underlay her words, her attitude. He sighed inwardly.
If not me, who?

“Very well,” he said, and took her offered hand, raising it to his lips. He kissed her hand lingeringly, then turned it over and gave her palm a quick bite. Faura gasped.

“Only I might not have time to talk,” Tau murmured, and when she smiled in triumph at having at last gotten his attention—and wouldn’t that toad Jeje burn!—he smiled back, thinking:
You will.

Jeje reached the deck and hunched against the slap of icy wind against her face. She saw Testhy’s shock of red-tinged pale hair instead of Leugre’s wheat-colored sailor’s braid, and relaxed. He waved a mittened hand then returned to overseeing the storm sail being set on the foremast. Jeje was glad Leugre was scamping duty; his rotten temper and cruelty were far worse when Scalis, Niz, and Kodl were below on their snooze watch.

She pulled on gloves still warm from Dasta’s fingers, then scrambled up the shrouds. Timing her climb against the spectacular roll and pitch of the ship, she hoisted herself up onto the masthead and plopped down next to Inda. “Heyo.”

Inda gave her a red-nosed glance, a brief grin, and then smacked the glass back to his eye, aiming it into the wind.

Jeje waited. The night, fast descending, blended sky and sea and ships, except for pinpoints of golden light. She brushed snowflakes from her eyelids and squinted against the wind. Some lights rolled and pitched: sea lights. Other tiny ones arced high: fire arrows.

The confusion of lights close together meant that at least two pirate ships had closed with and boarded the larger ship. Inda had pointed out when the pirates first started shadowing their convoy that they mostly hunted in threes.

Everyone had watched the early attacks, with the same sort of sickening fascination with which people looked at carriage wrecks, or burned houses; then they’d given up, except for Kodl and Inda. Captain Beagar had begun drinking hard after the first Pim ship was taken. The older hands had been wild with anger, all the more because they could do nothing. Now, after seeing most of their convoy disintegrate, no one was there to watch the second Pim ship get snapped up except Inda.

“What do you see?” she asked.

“Watching the defense.”

“Doesn’t look like there was much of one,” she said.

He gestured with the glass. “They all do the same thing. It doesn’t work.”

“Come down, have a warm bite. You’ve been here since dawn. Long enough. Testhy seems willing to stay till the next watch, which I’ll take.”

Inda said, “Did you know New Year’s Week is already at least a week past, maybe two? I was trying to count it out.”

She snorted. “I didn’t know. And I don’t care. And won’t, until we reach a port, where things like dates might have a meaning—” She stopped, hating herself. Maybe Inda had finally, finally, been ready to talk about his past. And here she was, whining like a scolded brat. “Tell me about New Year’s,” she said, but she knew it was too late.

And Inda just shrugged. “Oh, I think we’ll reach a port. Though I didn’t for a while. But I’ve also been watching that fellow.” Inda waved at the lead pirate ship, and then gripped the shroud as the ship gave a sudden lurch, and crew appeared below, handling the gaff to the mizzen course.

Both Inda and Jeje looked up at the sails then into the wind, thinking the same thing: it was time to run under reefed staysails. Testhy, still on deck watch, obviously thought so as well, and called out orders to the watch.

“He watches Niz,” Inda continued. “I’ve seen him on his deck, with a glass to his eye, when Niz is in the tops. They don’t want to attack us, not when they can see a Delf.”

Jeje felt her numb lips stretch into a grin. “Those noses are easy enough to spot,” she said. “Think of that, a Delf nose being our protection.”

Delfs all seemed to have bird skulls, pointy at the front, always recognizable in a crowd; what kept the pirates wary was the equally well-known fact that the Delfs all seemed to know what ships other Delfs served on, and far too often if you attacked a ship with a Delf on it, Delf traders would appear out of nowhere to its defense. Despite their never-ending feuds they all formed instant alliances when they were attacked from outside and fought ferociously.

Inda and Jeje were still smiling when they reached the deck. They lent a hand to the furling of the mizzen course, and then clambered numbly below, where Inda devoured the lukewarm gruff and stale rocks.

“Did they get the
Pim Olla
?” Tau asked, pouring good Sartoran steeped leaf from the captain’s stores.

Inda muttered, “Yup,” then chomped another bite.

“Think we’re next?” Tau asked, one fine brow aslant. His long fingers ran up and down the edge of a little food knife.

Inda gave his head a shake. “Wary of Delfs is my guess.”

Tau held up a hand. Inda frowned, realized that the usually fastidious Tau was a little disheveled. Tau lifted his voice just slightly, saying, “Yan?”

“Out here.”

That meant on guard.

Tau leaned forward and murmured, “So let’s talk about us. And Norsh and Leugre.”

Chapter Fifteen

T
AU told them in three blunt sentences what Faura had revealed, then asked, “Should I take it to Kodl?”

Jeje opened her mouth to blurt,
Of course!
but Inda said, “He’s going to want proof. And the mood he’s in, he might rope it out of Faura. Or Fassun. And then talk turns into action when it might not’ve.”

“From the sound of it, mutiny is imminent anyway.”

Imminent,
Jeje thought, fighting against another surge of hopeless desire. At least (so she told herself) she could try to enjoy these moments, since she couldn’t seem to rid herself of them.
Imminent—the way his mother talks.

Inda said slowly, “Maybe nothing will happen. Sounds like they don’t have a real plan of action.”

Jeje said, “What would be a plan of action? All that about killing everyone they hate sounds like a plan to me.”

Inda shook his head. “That’s just hot talk. If you want to take something, well, like a ship, you’d have to first secure the ship and then those who command. They don’t sound like they have thought any of that out. And they both like getting others to run their ruses. Like in Khanerenth.”

Tau leaned forward. “You mean, putting Gillip and Black Boots up to it. Though nobody followed their lead.”

Inda said, “Right. Leugre is a K—” He shut his mouth on the word “Kepa.” Then, seeing puzzlement change to question in the others’ faces, he said, “Putting people up to things works only if they wanted to do it anyway. But the whole crew doesn’t want a mutiny.”

Tau said, “I agree. Sails—Cook—the carpenter and his mates, the bosun and his, why should they mutiny? So we lose the ship. We don’t own it, so our only loss is our back wages. We’ve lost those whatever happens, because we can’t get to the Pim guild agents. But if we get to Freedom Island and they take the ship away, those with skills can hire on elsewhere.”

“As long as they aren’t Iascan,” Jeje said.

“You learn an accent and lie,” Tau said, shrugging.

A little silence ensued, during which the lamp swung. All of them glanced at the force and height of the arc, gauging the coming weather.

Then Dasta said, “Leugre would love being a pirate. All he needs is this ship to be his.”

Inda snorted. “He might be able to take this ship. But he’ll never run a battle against another ship and win. Neither he or Norsh.”

The others turned his way, and Jeje said, “Why not? I mean, does he know that?”

Inda shrugged. “Did you watch those pirates take the other Pim ships? From what I could see, they seemed to have some kind of strategy. Imagine Norsh actually planning an attack, instead of talking hot and trying to get others to do the real work.”

Strategy. The word caught at the others. Who used words like that? Jeje realized she didn’t even know what it meant, except that it had something to do with the military in some sense. Tau’s eyes narrowed; he didn’t speak, in case Inda offered more. Dasta thought back to the first week Inda was on board, when all of a sudden he, a small boy, decked Fass, who was twice his size and strength.
Strategy.

But one look at Inda’s tightly pressed lips and they knew that, as usual, he was not going to reveal his past.

So Jeje said, “You seem to know what you’re talking about. I sure don’t. Then you think nothing will happen?”

“No,” Inda said. “I think if something happens that Norsh can use, he’ll use it. He might even talk someone into doing that something.” Inda laid his lands flat on the table. “Then it’s going to be one on one, plan or not. If I’m right, we’ve either got to find proof they’re planning mutiny, proof that will convince Kodl and the captain, or get our own defense ready.”