Prince of Outcasts (29 page)

The young woman in white, now liberally splashed with sticky red, nodded to him when they finally stood separated only by a few feet of deck
covered in bodies. She also wore an odd-looking round hat with a stiff brim, and knee and elbow pads, and a circle of some sort of black makeup around one pale gray eye. Wisps of tawny hair escaped from under the brim of her hat, sticking to the sweat-slick skin of her face and neck.

“Good show!” she said briskly, in a drawl that reminded him of how some Dúnedain in Mithrilwood spoke, taking after Hiril Loring's dulcet tones. “Now let's get this cleared up.”

Feldman was shouting orders from the quarterdeck through his speaking-trumpet; a quick glance showed John that the Captain was still on his feet, though his left arm was in a sling and a broken cutlass lay at his feet. Radavindraban led a party down the rail with come-alongs and pry bars and axes, loosening the grapnels and boarding ramps.

“Cover them!” John called to Fayard, and the crossbowmen sheathed their swords and unslung the weapons across their backs.

The woman in white turned and shouted orders herself to someone named Kombagle. The little barquentine cast free, turned, and crept alongside the
Tarshish Queen
. A cable was passed and rigged—Captain Ishikawa seemed to have taken charge of that—and the
Queen
turned her bow north again, and then further west of north as the thick rope came taut and rose out of the water, with spurting little jets of water as the ship's hundreds of tons bore on it.

The
Queen
responded sluggishly. As it did praus and rowboats and things he couldn't name except that they floated and had armed men on them and were coming from the western part of the bay streamed past them, falling on the drifting galleys. The flood of small boats streaming out from the pink whatever-it-was to the east moved forward likewise, and in a few moments they were exchanging flights of arrows and flung spears, then crashing together in knots of screaming hacking ferocity on the blood-tinged water.

John looked northward towards the shore. Troops were moving there from both sides, glittering blocks of spearheads and . . .

“Are those
elephants
?” he blurted.

K
ERAJAAN
OF
B
ARU
D
ENPASAR

C
ERAM
S
EA

O
CTOBER
21
ST

C
HANGE
Y
EAR
46/2044 AD

“W
ell, this is a pleasant contrast, what?” Pip said, beaming and lying back in the recliner.

She was enjoying feeling clean and the fresh clothes and the smell of dinner; also having all the leaders of the strangers here where she could appraise them and get a feeling for what was going on. They had been appropriately, though not effusively, grateful when the battle ended in the usual inconclusive withdrawal by both sides to lick wounds. Now there was time to talk.

The night was dark with a thick frosting of stars and a quarter-moon just risen, but the lamps on the poles above and the fire-pits and the bigger lanterns around the grounded
Tarshish Queen
a few hundred yards away gave plenty of light. Palms rustled overhead, and there was a heavy sweet scent from a nearby frangipani tree; she had some of the cream-and-gold blossoms tucked into her hair.

She lay back carefully, to avoid too much pressure on her bruises or the bandages covering a few cuts; fortunately the batik
kain
sarung
and light lacy
uden
blouse she was wearing were very comfortable, as well as being extremely fetching in her opinion. None of the hurts were serious, and only one had required a couple of stitches.

She was feeling a bit of a glow of satisfaction too, one that had only a little to do with the tall glass of fruit-enhanced rum in her hand; it had a little pink paper umbrella in it, which seemed to be a Balinese tradition. Or at least to be what they assumed outsiders would like, for some reason. There was a platter of mango and pineapple cubes and bits of spicy grilled chicken on little bamboo skewers on the other arm of the lounger, by way of an appetizer. Fortunately nobody had managed to hit her in the face, so eating wasn't uncomfortable.

Captain Feldman wasn't as happy, which was understandable given the state of his ship. From this camp on the shore her sailors had set up—with spars and sails for shady pavilions—there was an excellent view of the
Tarshish Queen
. It was even dramatic, in the flickering light of the torches and lanterns, glints on metal and on the surface of the water, the masts looming up into the darkness, and beyond that the yellow lights of the city. She didn't look east to Carcosa; you didn't, unless it was really necessary. Looking too much seemed to give them a grip on you, with consequences that varied but were never good. And you could never tell how much was
too
much until it was too late.

The elephants had managed to get the Montivallan ship well above the low-tide mark when they took over the tow from her ship; it was amazing how much force a half-dozen of the big animals could exert. Then they'd brought up timbers in their trunks as the mahouts shouted and waved their goads so that the crew could prop her upright on her keel when the tide went out, and pump her dry. Tomorrow they could get her stores and catapults and ballast off, then float her farther in on the next tide, and do thorough repairs on the hull damage before running her over to the rather rudimentary
Baru Denpasar
docks for fitting out.

Speaking of which . . .

“What's your ballast?” Pip asked Captain Feldman.

Even though she gathered he was on a government charter—they'd been a little evasive about that and she sensed dissension where they came from—the ballast was probably something he was planning to sell
if he could. There was always rock to replace it. Sand would do at a pinch.

“Metals,” the merchant skipper from Newport said. “Mostly rebar in bundles wound with copper wire. Some brass or lead or PVC pipe, some aluminum sheet.”

He had a good poker face, but his ears were pricking up a bit in a reflex Pip was very familiar with, someone scenting an opportunity. She'd grown up around salvagers and merchant-adventurers and listening to their stories, the sort who'd follow the scent of a score across broken glass. And probably sell the glass, too, just for the giggles and the principle of the thing. She liked and admired them, or she wouldn't have ended up on this harebrained venture; they were certainly more fun than the stodgy burghers and smug bankers . . .

Bankers! Avert the omen,
she thought, and took another sip of the rum.
Buccaneers, only with lower morals and less style.

. . . and pompous Stationmasters who were the other parts of the tip of the modern social pyramid in Australia's fragments once you got above the level of
—she shuddered—
honest toil.

The bits lower down could be fun too, particularly if you avoided the solid, stolid yeomen and worthy artisans, but only to dip into occasionally. Her mother had been fond of saying that she'd known riches and poverty both, and riches were much, much better. Daddy, of course, had been born heir to the Colonelcy.

“Metals? Oh, jolly good,” she said. “Just between me and thee, Captain, bargain hard. They're very short of steel here and they need every spearhead they can make. If it had been spring steel alloys you could write your own ticket, they want that very badly indeed.”

He shifted in his rattan recliner, winced as it put stress on his wounded left arm in its sling, and sipped again at his drink.

“The Raja is honest?” he said. “He wouldn't just take it? Monarchs tend to do that, in time of war.”

“He's
reasonably
honest. I'd worry if you announced you were planning
on sailing off with that load, since he needs it badly, but if you're willing to sell, he'll pay.”

“So he'll be as honest as his sense of duty lets him?” Feldman asked, with a crook of one eyebrow.

Pip crooked one eyebrow back at him, and they smiled in mutual recognition.

Really, no flies on this one at all! Remember that being bright doesn't mean you're always the smartest person in the room, as Mummy said.

“That's a very good way to put it, Captain,” she said with respect.

Besides the arrow wound Feldman had a couple of bandaged cuts and stabs, nothing serious either but enough to hurt. Pip suspected that he was also restless because he couldn't be up and about supervising the stripping-down of his ship, though his First Mate seemed entirely competent and they'd shut down for the night anyway. He'd commendably seen to the arrangements for the wounded; there was an infirmary tent, and his physician had confirmed that the local doctors knew their business before pitching in to help them.

Feldman said something in a language she recognized as ancient Greek, but didn't speak herself despite the best efforts of Rockhampton Girls Grammar School, though she could puzzle out a written sentence if she had to and handle Latin rather better.

Though I managed to score top marks in surreptitious drinking and covert shagging,
she thought mordantly.

At her look he quoted in English:

“‘So I will never waste my lifespan on the vain unprofitable search for a perfect man; if you find him, send me word. But that one I will love and honor who does nothing base from free will. Against Necessity, even Gods do not fight.' A poet named Simonides of Keos said that, very long ago. But some things do not change, even after the Change.”

Prince John frowned.

Which doesn't make him look any less ducky,
she thought.

In fact he looked the way a Prince should, rather than like a harassed bureaucrat, cunning politician or chinless wastrel, which in her
experience were more typical of the breed. And he'd been strumming that lute-thing quite skillfully as background music. She had a weakness for handsome, square-chinned, broad-shouldered, long-limbed young men with nice hair who could play the guitar and had big soulful greenish-brown eyes. His charms were showing to advantage, since he'd switched to a sarong too; athletic, but not blocky, and not
too
much body hair.

Wouldn't be like wrestling with a sheepskin. Some is good, too much is a bother.

If they could use a sword with dashing authority, so much the better. And he had an intriguing accent, almost French; she knew what that sounded like, because her nanny had been from the Republic of Noumea, over on New Caledonia, a refugee from one of the incessant kanak-colon fights there.

The frown gave way to a charming smile directed at her; she hadn't been wrong about feeling his interest.

“I thought that there's been an awful lot of building here, if they're short of tools,” he said. “But perhaps they used up their reserves, Lady Balwyn-Abercrombie?”

“He's not just a pretty face,” Thora Garwood said, smiling a little wryly at her. “Lady Balwyn-Abercrombie.”

“Oh, do call me Pip, all of you,” she said, smiling back. “Everyone does.”

Now that's complex,
Pip thought.

She mentally shifted her gaze between Thora and John; she prided herself on being able to read body language.

They are
so
getting it off together, but if it weren't for that I'd have sworn she was with that other musician, Deor . . . except that
he's
queer as a two-headed calf. Pity, and even more about his boyfriend; he's quite ducky in a sensitive, earnest youngish way. Nice backside, too.

She stuck to business, something that was becoming dismally familiar. Socializing on shipboard had been very limited, because she was in more or less a lion-tamer's position, and whatever you did with lions if you had any sense you didn't take them to bed. Which was all very well for the month or two she'd anticipated this trip taking, or even three or four
months, but it was going on
six
months now, which was ridiculous for a red-blooded Townsville lass. Landing here hadn't made much difference; she didn't dare let any of the courtiers get too close, or show what local custom would see as vulnerability. And an adolescence spent largely at Rockhampton Girls Grammar School had taught her that while girls could be a lot of fun and often had fewer complications, she basically preferred men.

Back to economics,
she thought, and went on aloud:

“There's a big pre-Blackout . . . pre-Change . . . wreck on the north coast that drifted hard aground; there's the ship, and its cargo was structural steel. Plenty for a very long time.”

Everyone nodded in understanding. There were a few places where they mined gold or gems, but she'd never even heard of anywhere that bothered with smelting iron or copper or any other base metal from ore. Even the most advanced countries only used a few pounds of metal per head every year; back before what the Montivallans called the Change, they'd used
tons
per head and there had been ten or twenty times more people. Even leaving aside things that could be reused directly, the world's blacksmiths and foundries weren't going to run out of salvage metal anytime in the next millennium. She recalled vaguely that it wasn't even possible to get aluminum out of bauxite since the Blackout, but there was so much to salvage that didn't matter either.

The distribution was the problem, which was another way of saying opportunity; she'd had a cargo of metals and tools on board when she arrived here, and had done very well with it in return for the spices and artwork and so forth. A massive score, just the thing to prove herself, enough to pay for the ship and the running costs and a good bit left over.

Or would have, if I hadn't been sodding stuck here! It'd all be gone by now if I hadn't managed to hit up His Clutchfisted Majesty for a good retainer for helping him with the Carcosans, and that was like pulling teeth because I was stuck and pretty much had to do it anyway; and only the fact that there's nowhere to go has kept the crew from deserting. Hmmm. But from what Captain Feldman says, the cargo would be worth three times as much where he comes from. Farther from the tropics . . .

“With that sort of resource on hand, why do they want to import, Captain?” Feldman asked curiously.

“It's rather a point-failure source,” Pip said. “Which means everyone wants to control it. No real alternative, you see.”

This part of the world hadn't had many of the big population centers where salvage was concentrated, and the dead cities were dangerous environments anyway. A quick and dirty in-and-out for gold or watchmaker's tools was one thing; her mother and her Uncle Pete and Aunt Fifi had made their initial bundle of boodle that way. But even blood desperadoes like them had put their pile into safer investments later. Working big-city ruins for ordinary metals was the sort of thing only a nearby government or the equivalent could run, because of the scale needed and because kings were best placed to fight off predators.

“Even overland across the mountains it's only a week or so . . . except for the history.”

Deor Godulfson sighed and settled back with his drink; he and Ruan were holding hands between their couches, and they'd both switched to local sarongs too, since their own clothes were mostly soaked with blood and needed attention. He seemed to regard the whole thing as raw material for epics, which showed commendable professional dedication in a way, except that they were caught in the middle of it. Which was much less comfortable than the part afterwards when you basked in fame, fortune and glory.

“To be brief, the Balinese and the good ship
South Sea Adventure
—”

She pointed eastward towards what she had taught herself to think of as
the big steel ship anchored by the pink coral fort
. Feldman raised a brow.

“You mean the—”

“Don't say the H-word! Really. For one thing the locals get very upset and for another . . . just don't, Captain. Please?”