Oathbreaker: The Knight's Tale (11 page)

Recommendation: Execute this man for treason.

Recorded,

Winthorn

RECOMMENDATION SIGNED

The Sailor’s Tale

The errant knight met me on the streets of Westport. He offered money—and steel to back it up—for us to carry him to his destination, but we turned him down. We thought that’d be the end of it.

The dockhands shouted curses at each other as they heaved the
Ocarina
to. We waited on board ’til they had finished, and when the massive breakwater gates slammed shut at the mouth of the harbor, we started off-loading our cargo. As usual, we were exchanging friendly insults and stories with the lubbers about the far-flung coasts we’d seen, but aside from the storms, the trip wasn’t anything special, not like the time we’d seen a wizard’s castoff eyeing the ship hungrily and we had to waste ten shots from the heavy guns at it. The ports we’d visited had been dull, deadly dull. So we invented some tall tales to make ’em feel like they were missing out on more than salt spray. But our hearts wasn’t in it, and they could tell, too. They didn’t rise to any of our half-hearted jokes, and that put a damper on
everyone’s
night.

When it was done, we wanted to get to the Hulden guildhouse, get our pay, and go drinking—that might put some life back into us, but likely it’d take another sea voyage to wash this taste from our hearts. Besides, it was a dark night, and the sky was low with spring clouds, and none of us wanted to spend any more time in what would likely be a hell of a gusher when the clouds finally let loose. Still, we gathered the local gossip and discovered that we’d have the guildhouse to ourselves, a rare occurrence indeed—the other ships the Huldens or the Dengs controlled weren’t due in for a few days or had left earlier in the afternoon, laden with parts from the forges, steamshops, and alchemical presses. There was a single dirigible docked at the mast in the square, and that meant no friendly rivalries with those crews. We could have passed our time by visiting the guildhouses of other merchants, but that usually led to brawls, and we'd have enough of those in the days ahead, we figured. That was a last-ditch effort for fun.

Loading done, we collected our pay chits from Galves, the first mate, gathered our gear, and tramped up the hills of Westport to our bunks at the Hulden Sailors Guild. If you’ve never been, it’s a low-slung, rough stone building, with hewn beams and arches holding its weight. With some crowding, it can hold about three ships’ worth of sailors—about three hundred. The ranking officers and mates stay on board their ship. The guild’s outer walls are dark and its windows are small and high—after weeks or months on the high seas, most of us’ve had enough of the damned sun.

Well, except for sailors like me. My name’s Camila Voris. I’m a tiller’s engineer, so I spend most of my time below decks, slaving away on the great gears that keep the boat moving in the direction Captain “Early” Jon Meyels wants it to go. Working sixteen-hour shifts don’t give me much latitude to get up on deck, and when I do, I haven’t usually got time to watch the scenery, but what I do see, I hold as close to my heart as my lungs. I take the best chance I can to make up for that lost freedom when we hit land and we’re laid over for two weeks. So naturally, the weather set me off—I’d been hoping for sun and shine, and instead I got this coming rain. My berthmates, Pol Austin and Skag Madison, recognized it in me and kept mum, or more likely were as glum at the thought of rain. Even if we’re not aching for the sight of sun on land, none of us fancies being trapped inside during our leaves.

So that might explain why we were less than courtly polite when we found our way blocked by that young man.

Let me tell you about the
Ocarina
. She’s a fast vessel—not one of the fastest, but fast. She’s tough, too—again, not the toughest, but tough. She’s outrun the pirates of Elsidon and gunned down their fastest scout when it wouldn’t give up the pursuit. She’s a cutter with a steam engine that provides us enough power to haul heavy cargoes or other vessels and still make it to our destination on time, or else to put on a burst of speed when we’re running high. She’s got three heavy guns and two light guns each to port and starboard, and the iron-clad hull boasts a tempered-steel prow in case someone gets a little too friendly with us. She’s got three masts on the deck and three levels below-decks, and one of those masts can double as a mooring for a light dirigible if we've got our heavy anchors down. The steerhouse sits on the top of two levels at the stern of the ship, with mage-hardened windows all ’round. She’s got a speaking-tube system that lets the captain communicate across the ship, and he runs the ship hard and well. He runs the ship for House Hulden, and they lease her services to other merchant Houses of the Empire, at least in name. In practice, Early Jon picks and chooses the contracts he wants, and he’s good enough and generous enough that he’s kept his sailing crew working with him for years. He's canny in the ways of the sea, he rises before us and is abed after. The
Ocarina
is the best ship most of us’ve ever sailed on, and it’s because of that that we’re in the position we’re in today.

“Out of the way,” Pol snarled, and she reached out to shove the interloper aside. I say she
reached
because he wasn’t there when her hand got to where he’d been.

“Don’t do that,” the stranger said. His voice was flat, his face empty, and it nailed Pol to the spot. If he’d flashed or growled, she might have tried again. She backed down, though, the first time I’d ever seen her do that. And now, thinking back on it, I think she might be a better fighter than I ever thought, because I guess she never got into a fight she wasn’t sure she could win, and she never’d backed down before. At least not in front of me. But this time, she put her hands down and spoke.

“What do you want?”

“I need to speak to your captain,” the stranger said. “I need a ship, a fast one, for myself, my charge, and my steed.”

“Guild’s empty,” I said. “We’re just in, and we ain’t leaving.”

“You will. I can pay.”

Skag broke in: “We won’t. We been out to sea for a month now, and we’re due leave. You won’t find a crew willing to take you for at least a few days, unless you have truly excellent money.” Skag looked the man up and down. “A lot more than it looks like you’re carrying.” Skag had been third mate before he’d been busted back down, and he knew how a ship ran. “Anyway, the captain won’t see anyone ’til he’s seen to the replenishing of the ship.”

“I do not ask,” the man said. “I require.” His hand drifted to his sword handle, idly, slowly, and it was suddenly perfectly clear to me that it wasn’t idle at all, that this man didn’t make threats, not like sailors do.

“But you
can’t
require,” continued Skag. “Our ship is light-staffed as it is, and our sailors have spread through the city. No way we can run a ship without our men, and no way we’ll be able to find them all in this city in the next few days. They’re at the whorehouses or the gambling dens, or they’ve headed out into the country. Like I said, we’re due leave, and our sailors take it when they get it. They’ll hear if we put the word out that there’s more money to be made, but I don’t make any guarantees.”

The stranger looked at us, one after the other, studying us. Though he didn’t like it, he saw the truth in our faces like sun off the water. He nodded, tilted his head a tiny piece, and said, “My apologies for the waste of your time. I shall return tomorrow evening to speak with your captain, and with enough money to hire your services.” He turned and headed up toward Candlemaker’s Square. That’s when the clouds broke, and that’s when we bolted in.

We spent that night inside, playing cards and drinking ale, cursing the weather. It poured through the night, filling the hilly streets of Westport with the water the clouds’d reclaimed from the sea. When we stepped out the next morning, I was surprised there weren’t fish flopping in the gutters and dying on the stones. The alchemical smears from the presses had been washed away, down to harbor, leaving the streets momentarily bright and clean. The day was dry, though the sky promised to unload some more water on us later. It was under that sky that our first full day of leave began.

What does a sailor do on leave? What do we do when we’re off that boat after a month or more cooped up together?

That’s an answer I’ll leave to your imagination, but I can guarantee that most of us spent the day in the seedier parts of town, the kinds of places with proprietors who give their cut to the Bhumar thugs who stand quietly in the corners. And despite having seen the same faces in close quarters for all that time, I can guarantee that most of us spend our leave in the company of our shipmates—from what I hear, it’s like how small-town folks never move away for fear of the strange, how they stay and marry the same people they’ve seen all their lives and never cut the apron strings that hold ’em close to home. In our case, though, it’s different. Every day we’re someplace else, every day we’re cast on the waves.

But even sailors need someplace to call home. Our shipmates are our anchors, the islands in the sea of time. So we find our homes in them.

We spent the day doing those things that make vice lords richer and us poorer, and who’s to say who came out of it better? Of course, we split off from each other at one point or another and took care of our own business. Me, I went looking for the scenery and for new people to talk to. Over by the steamworks, I found a pilot who called himself Dracogen, who flew in the Deng fleet, but he'd got himself drunk and they lifted off without him, so here he was, stranded and without a paycheck, and would I be so kind as to lend him a coin or two. Seeing as he'd worn out his welcome with the pressers, I took him with me back to our part of town and introduced him around. Some of our crew'd been drifters once, and they put him to the test. Maybe he was what he said or maybe he was playing a beautiful con, but either way, he’d keep us entertained enough that he'd be guaranteed to drink and whore for free for days. He was pretty enough that he wouldn't have trouble on that end, that's for sure.