Prince of Outcasts (30 page)

Captain Ishikawa spoke up. “This is evil, but it is not the same evil as the
kangshinmu
,” he said. At her look of enquiry: “Korean . . . magicians, I think? Sol . . . Sorcerer.”

“Remember the crocodile, Moishe,” Deor said quietly.

Good advice. My sense of the possible is getting stretched,
she thought.
And Korea does have a very bad reputation, though I hadn't known that
sorcerers
were running about the place. As opposed to Japan, which has very little reputation one way or another these days. It's
so
reassuring to know there are many different varieties of eldritch evil abroad in the world, what?

He nodded, and she went on:

“The ship formerly known as the
South Sea Adventure
arrived on these shores at about the same time as the Balinese. The Balinese were hungry and desperate and had had to leave their home for the homeland's good—they were drawing straws for that. The
Adventure
had been pirating about for a year or so to survive, picking up the skills as they went along; they had a big crew including the ones who'd been on board for the fun of it and found they'd landed in a
real
South Sea Adventure instead of just playing at it. Tubby Yanks to start with, mostly . . . no offense.”

“None taken,” Feldman said, and the others chuckled.

All the shattered kaleidoscope of varied weirdnesses that Australia had become still had a slowly-fading sense that they were Australians, and though it didn't stop them quarreling with each other they closed ranks against outsiders. Evidently the same wasn't the case over across the Pacific, but then they were a lot more isolated.

“Well, the current Raja's daddy, like most dynastic founders a lucky general, made a deal with the
Adventure
when it turned up at the same time as his invasion. Things weren't going very well for him, because the local people had a fair number of ships—boats and whatever—back then, but that applied to both sides.”

“Nothing like that four-master, though,” Feldman said thoughtfully.

“Exactly, and they had a machine shop aboard and had already made up catapults. So they swore rapacious brotherhood . . .”

Thora nodded. “The Balinese had the army, and the
Adventure
had the sea power.”

“Just so. And they fell upon the locals in cahoots, as it were, with the ship smashing up the defending fleet so the Balinese could—and did—
swarm ashore and slaughter everything in sight that didn't run for the hills very fast indeed. They don't talk about it much but apparently it was quite thoroughly bloody even by the standards of the time. And then they divvied up the spoils. The Balinese got most of the land, being your sturdy-honest-yeoman types who'd come here to till the soil and eat rice in the sweat of their brows, but the Adventurers got the surviving people because they weren't interested in farming rice with their own hands but perfectly willing to eat in the sweat of someone
else's
brows. Then the
Adventure
disposed of the ships from the Raja of Bali looking to collect tribute from their new colony ready or not . . .”

Prince John spoke thoughtfully: “And the colonists wouldn't be blamed. Plausible deniability of the best kind: denying that you even exist. All they'd know was that ships sent this way didn't come back, so they'd assume the colony failed and was massacred instead of vice versa.”

“Right-O, Your Highness!”

“Oh, John, Pip. We're a long way from Montival.”

“John, then. And the
Adventure
ferried metal back from the wreck on the north shore in big job-lots, and they pirated around for things they traded to the Balinese settlers or used themselves, in between lolling in their hammocks like lords and being served on bended knee by the surviving locals who couldn't object because otherwise the Balinese would have cut their throats one and all on the general principle that corpses can't plot revenge and neither can the children they don't have.”

“There's an old saying from a country where my ancestors lived for a while,” Feldman said. “When people cause you a problem . . . remember that death solves all problems.”

“Bloody-minded lot,” Pip said.

“Or just frank about it. My ancestors left, you'll notice.”

Pip nodded and resumed: “The
South Sea Adventure
set up their own little kingdom: the Captain on top, then the Officers, the Crew, and the Passengers in that order, and then the locals doing all the work down at the bottom.”

“There was a famous article in
Tournaments Illuminated . . .
a magazine published in Portland . . . titled ‘Feudalism: God's Will or Just Common Sense?'” Prince John said dryly. “This all sounds . . . cozy.”

“Very, I imagine. If that had been the whole story I might have been able to do business with them when I arrived back in February. Unless they'd gotten lazy and been massacred by the staff.”

“But then they fell out with the Balinese settlers?”

“Well . . . more on the order of,
but then Captain Wilde went on a little trip into the interior.
A few years later, chasing bandits or freedom fighters depending on your point of view. And he found something there. When he came back he was . . . different. So were the people who'd been with him. Pretty soon, a lot of the people over there were . . . different. The ones that didn't run fast enough. And they built that thing, the place they call Carcosa, and they renamed their ship.”

“With the H-word,” Prince John said.

“Exactly. And since then, things have been going downhill, you might say. Or getting . . . stranger. Strange and bad.”

She could tell they all agreed with that. Prince John looked as if he'd bitten down on something sour for a moment. At least they weren't showing the sort of skepticism she'd have expected back in Townsville.

“They've cut the island off from the outside world quite thoroughly, as I found out once we got here. It's not just their wanting to take over, not the usual I-want-it-because-it's-there thing.”

“Then what
do
they want?”

“We don't know. I think it
starts
with taking over the island and turning everybody here more or less . . . strange . . . too.”

“Why did you stay here once you realized what was going on?” Feldman said bluntly. “It's foreign territory to you too, and you said they paid well for your cargo.”

Pip grinned raffishly. “Perhaps I'm committed to the cause of the suffering people of Baru Denpasar. Or perhaps I just can't get out—between that bloody great steel ship, the other craft they've got, and . . . well, there was a Timorese ship here for a while. They snuck out one moonless
night, thinking they could get far enough away that the you-know-what couldn't find them.”

“What happened to them?” Thora asked.

“We're not sure, though after what you've told me I suspect a very large aquatic lizard happened to them to start with. A fishing boat picked up a survivor. He was clinging to a baulk of timber. He lived for about a week and didn't say a word while he was awake. Just huddled and shivered.”

John picked up on the clue, she was glad to observe. “And when he slept?”

“Then he mostly screamed. When he babbled . . . nobody who could speak Timorese would stay around him after that. Or talk about it.”

“Died of shock, I suppose,” Feldman said compassionately.

“Not really,” Pip said.

This time she finished her drink and signed for another from the white-coated steward. Rum helped with some things.

“As far as we can tell, he was strangled,” she said.

“By who?” Prince John asked.

“Either by himself . . .”

Toa spoke up for the first time. “Or by his own shadow, maybe. It looked like that. Didn't have a good view, though. Couple of other bastards got in my way. Nearly ran right over me trying to get away from him. Straight up.”

There was an echoing silence for a moment, and then Pip clapped her hands:

“Well, the feed's ready! The Raja sent me some of his own cooks, and they know their way about a kitchen.”

The attendants brought in a low table and set it with platters with conical pyramids of rice—several colors of it, steamed or fried or boiled—and dozens of other dishes. Ishikawa exclaimed with delight when he saw the rice, and that was the first word she'd heard him say besides his comment about Korea. His sailors were two fires over, and were much noisier in their approval; they were also punishing the
brem
, a thickly sweet, dark and potent rice wine. It might not be what they were
used to, since one of the terms for
sake
literally meant
clear spirit
, but they weren't letting that stop them. Throw in some friendly local ladies, or at least commercially acute ones, and they were content.

She knew some Hindus were vegetarians, but she was thankful the Balinese generally weren't, having been raised in a thoroughly carnivorous part of the world herself. The centerpiece of the feast for the officers and leaders was a suckling pig in scarlet glory, rubbed with turmeric and then stuffed with coriander seeds, lemongrass, lime leaves and salam leaves, chilies, black pepper, garlic, red shallots, and something gingery called kencur that crinkled the tongue; then the whole was spit-roasted over coconut husks.

Feldman made a sign to the attendants not to serve him any of that, but there were also tempe—fermented bean cake—in sweet soy sauce, chicken in coconut curry, snake bean and coconut salad, vegetables in peanut sauce, tuna steamed in banana leaves, tender slow-cooked duck rubbed with tamarind puree and salt and stuffed with eggs, cassava leaves and a spice mix called
bumbu rajang
, and a good many other things worth tasting.

They all had healthy appetites, since it had been a very long strenuous day without much time to stop until now; she thought Toa was going to demolish the pig by himself. Dessert was coffee and coconut pancakes and pineapple preserves, plus an array of fruit—durian was something she loved, though some found the strong odor off-putting.

Deor wiped his mouth on a napkin. “For people who came here because they were starving, they've done well for themselves!” he said, patting his lean ridged stomach, now slightly bulging. “It's not that the lords are eating and the rest going hungry, either, from what I could see.”

“Oh, they're excellent cooks,” Pip said. “Good farmers with plenty of land, too; and God knows they fight well, or the survivors would all be worshipping the Yellow Raja by now. The real problem is engineering.”

Toa belched and then grunted. “Or monsters from the bloody beyond,” he said. “But right, it starts with engineering.”

*   *   *

“No sharks?” John said dubiously two days later.

He stood shading his eyes with a hand and looking down over the
blinding white sand of the beach and the low white surf beating on it and hissing upward in foam. There were about twenty yards between the surf and the line of coconut palms, with the tide in, and a big raft made of bamboo sections as thick as his thigh was anchored within easy swimming distance of the beach.

“No crocodiles?” he added as an afterthought.

“No ghoulies or ghosties or sharp-toothed beasties inside the reef,” Pip replied, pointing.

Her finger indicated a streak of white foam a thousand yards out where the fangs of the coral lay just below the high-tide surface now.

“Generous of the Raja,” John said. “To let you . . . us . . . have this place.”

This beachfront house was a possession of Raja Dalem Seganing, made available to his guest-allies as a gesture of goodwill. It was hardly a building at all, to Montivallan eyes. More a matter of pillars of rough coral limestone rising from waist-high walls of the same and holding up a high steep roof of shining black-streaked borassus timbers covered in neat palm-thatch, with internal partitions of woven bamboo and rolls of rattan matting that could be let down or raised to mark the exterior. The floors were smooth cool cream-colored marble, and the foundation below was probably a concrete slab.

“Not as generous as you might think, since
they
think that upstream is good and downstream is bad, and the ocean is the source of
kelod
 . . . the domain of Yama, Lord of Hell. So they're not much on beach culture, especially compared to us in Townsville, or even those bogan degenerates in Cairns. Who may not bathe or brush their teeth, but by God at least they surf!”

She paused for a moment, and then went on coolly: “My face is up here, John. Just look up over the collarbones and above the neck.”

He flushed, and she winked to take the sting out of it; she was wearing sandals, a sarong and flowers in her hair and around her neck. Just about what he was, though . . .

She's more distracting. At least, more distracting to me, if that makes any sense . . . my blood supply isn't concentrating on my brain right now . . .

The light construction certainly went with this climate; the breeze blowing in off the sea made it comfortable enough, but it was
as
warm as an inland August noon back home, and much more humid than the lands over the Cascades ever got. The closest he could come to it was a memory of a visit to Iowa long ago with his parents. That had been in August, but apparently it was like this pretty much year round here, with the main seasonal difference being the amount of rain. Despite being insubstantial the house was fairly large—several big bedrooms, a dining room that could seat a dozen. And there was a helpful staff of six who also knew when to keep out of the way. None of them were in sight right now, for example.

Having grown up in palaces and castles, John knew that was rarer than simple skill at the official job description, though he also didn't doubt they'd have the exact details of everything that went on in real time; that went without saying. He was only conscious of the fact that some thought the lack of privacy attendant on servants irksome because he'd been outside the Association territories and in the rest of Montival fairly often.