Red Seas Under Red Skies (57 page)

“I needed every trick I had just to get the
Orchid
out. A few of us straggled back to Prodigal, beat to hell, and even before we got there the Verrari pounded Montierre into the sand. Five hundred dead in one morning. After that, they sailed back home and I imagine there was a lot of dancing, fucking, and speeches.”

“I think,” said Locke, “you can take a city like Tal Verrar…and you can threaten its purse strings
or
its pride, and get away with it. But not if you threaten both at once.”

“You're right. Maybe Stragos
was
impotent when Bonaire left the city; whatever he was, we united Tal Verrar's interests behind him. We summoned him up like some demon out of a story.” She folded her arms over her hat and leaned forward, resting her elbows against the taffrail. “So, we stayed outlaws. No flowering for the Ghostwinds. No glorious destiny for Port Prodigal. This ship is our world now, and I only take her in when her belly's too full to prowl.

“Am I making myself clear, Orrin? I don't regret how I've lived these past few years. I move where I will. I set no appointments. I guard no borders. What land-bound king has the freedom of a ship's captain? The Sea of Brass provides. When I need haste, it gives me winds. When I need gold, it gives me galleons.”

Thieves prosper, thought Locke. The rich remember.

He made his decision, and gripped the rail to avoid shaking.

“Only gods-damned fools die for lines drawn on maps,” said Zamira. “But nobody can draw lines around my ship. If they try, all I need to do to slip away is set more sail.”

“Yeah,” said Locke. “But…Zamira, what if I were forced to tell you that that may no longer be the case?”

6

“HAVE YOU
really been practicing on barrels, Jerome?”

They'd laid claim to a bottle of Black Pomegranate brandy from one of the crates broken open amidst the revelers, and taken it back to their spot by the rail.

“Barrels. Yes.” Jean took a sip of the stuff, dark as distilled night, with a sting like nettles beneath the sweetness. He passed the bottle back to her. “They never laugh, they never ridicule you, and they offer no distractions.”

“Distractions?”

“Barrels don't have breasts.”

“Ah. So what have you been
telling
these barrels?”

“This bottle of brandy,” said Jean, “is still too full for me to begin embarrassing myself like that.”

“Pretend I'm a barrel, then.”

“Barrels don't have br—”

“So I've heard. Find the nerve, Valora.”

“You want me to pretend that you're a barrel so I can tell you what I was telling barrels back when I was pretending they were you.”

“Precisely.”

“Well.” He took another long sip from the brandy bottle. “You have…you have such hoops as I have never seen in any cask on any ship, such shiny and well-fit hoops—”

“Je
rome
—”

“And your staves!” He decided it was a good time to take another drink. “Your staves…
so
well planed, so tightly fit. You are as fine a cask as I have ever seen, you marvelous little barrel. To say nothing of your bung—”

“Ahem. So you won't share your sweet nothings?”

“No. I am utterly emboldened in my cowardice.”

“‘Man! What a mouse he is made by conversation,'” Ezri recited. “‘Scorns gods, dares battle, and flinches from a maid's rebuke! Merest laugh from merest girl is like a dagger felt, and like a dagger, makes a lodging of his breast. Turns blood to milkwater and courage to faint memory.'”

“Ohhhhh, Lucarno, is it?” Jean tugged at his beard thoughtfully. “‘Woman, your heart is a mapless maze. Could I bottle confusion and drink it a thousand years, I could not confound myself so much as you do between waking and breakfast. You are grown so devious that serpents would applaud your passage, would the gods but give them hands.'”

“I like that one,” she said. “
The Empire of Seven Days
, right?”

“Right. Ezri, forgive my asking, but how the hell do you—”

“It's no more odd than the fact that you know any of this.” She took the bottle from him, tipped it back for a long draught, and then raised her free hand. “I know. I'll give you a hint. ‘I have held the world from meridian to meridian in my hands and at my whim. I have received the confessions of emperors, the wisdom of magi, the lamentations of generals.'”

“You had a library? You
have
a library?”

“Had,” she said. “I was the sixth of six daughters. I imagine the novelty wore off. Mother and father could afford live companions for the older five. I made do with all the dead playmates in mother's books.” With her next drink she drained the last of the bottle, and with a grin she tossed it overboard. “So what's your excuse?”

“My education was, ah, eclectic. Did you ever…When you were little, do you remember a toy of wooden pegs, in various shapes, that would fit into matching holes on a wooden frame?

“Yes,” she said. “I got my sisters' when they tired of it.”

“You might say that I was trained to be a professional square peg in a round hole.”

“Really? Is there a guild for that?”

“We've been working on getting a charter for years.”

“Did you have a library as well?”

“After a fashion. Sometimes we'd…borrow someone else's without their knowledge or cooperation. Long story. But there's one other reason. I'll give you a verse of your own to guess. ‘After dark,'” he recited with a flourish, “‘an ass with an audience of one is called a husband; an ass with an audience of two hundred is called a success.'”

“You were…on stage,” she said. “You were a player! Professionally?”

“Temporarily,” said Jean. “Very temporarily. I was…well…we…” He glanced aft and instantly regretted it.

“Ravelle,” Ezri said, then looked at Jean curiously. “You and he were…you two are having some sort of disagreement, aren't you?”

“Can we not talk about him?” Jean, feeling bold and nervous at once, put a hand on her arm. “Just for tonight. Can he not exist?”

“We can indeed not talk about him,” she said, shifting herself so that her weight rested against his chest rather than the rail. “Tonight,” she said, “
nobody
else exists.”

Jean stared down at her, suddenly acutely aware of the beat of his own heart. The rising moonlight in her eyes, the feel of her warmth against him, the smell of brandy and sweat and salt water that was uniquely hers—suddenly the only thing he was capable of saying was, “Uhhhhhh…”

“Jerome Valora,” she said, “you magnificent idiot, must I draw you a diagram?”

“Of—”

“Take me to my cabin.” She curled the fabric of his tunic in one fist. “I have the privilege of walls and I intend to use it. At length.”

“Ezri,” Jean whispered, “never in a hundred, never in a thousand years would I say no, but you were cut half to ribbons today, and you can barely stand—”

“I know,” she said. “That's the only reason I'm confident I'm not going to
break
you.”

“Oh, for that I'm going to—”

“I certainly hope you will.” She threw her arms wide. “First get me there.”

He picked her up with ease; she settled into his arms and wrapped hers around his neck. As Jean swung away from the rail and headed for the quarterdeck stairs, he found himself facing an arc of thirty or forty Merry Watch revelers. They raised their arms and began cheering wildly.

“Put your names on a list,” hollered Ezri, “so I can kill you all in the morning!” She smiled and turned her eyes back to Jean. “Or maybe it'll have to wait for the afternoon.”

7

“JUST LISTEN,”
said Locke. “Listen, please, with as open a mind as you can manage.”

“I'll do my best.”

“Your, ah, deduction about Jerome and myself is commendable. It does make sense, but for the parts that I've concealed until now. Starting with myself. I'm not a trained fighter. I'm a bloody
miserable
fighter. I have tried to be otherwise, but the gods know, it's always comedy or tragedy before I can blink.”

“That—”

“Zamira. Heed this. I didn't kill four men with anything resembling skill. I dropped a beer cask on a man too dumb to look up. I slit the throats of two more who got knocked aside by the cask. I did the fourth when he slipped in beer. When everyone else found the bodies, I let them make their own assumptions.”

“But I know for a fact that you charged those Redeemers all by yourself—”

“Yes. People who are about to die frequently go out of their minds. I should have died ten seconds into that fight, Zamira. It was Jerome who made it otherwise. Jerome and
only
Jerome.”

At that moment, a loud cheer abruptly rose above the noise of the near carnival at the ship's waist. Locke and Zamira both turned in time to see Jean appear at the top of the quarterdeck stairs with Lieutenant Delmastro in his arms. Neither of them so much as glanced aft at Locke and the captain; a few seconds later they were vanishing down the companionway.

“Well,” said Zamira, “to win that heart, even for a night, your friend Jerome must be even more extraordinary than I thought.”

“He is extraordinary,” Locke whispered. “He continues to save my life, time and time again, even when I don't deserve it.” He returned his gaze to the
Orchid
's roiling, glowing, monster-haunted wake. “Which is always, more or less.”

Zamira said nothing, and after a few moments Locke continued.

“Well, after he did it again this morning, I slipped and fumbled and ran like hell until the fight was over. That's all. Panic and dumb luck.”

“You still led the boats. You still went up first, not knowing what was waiting for you.”

“All bullshit. I'm a bullshit artist, Zamira. A false-facer. An actor, an impersonator. I didn't have any noble motives when I made that request. My life just wasn't worth much if I didn't do something utterly crazy to win back some respect. I faked every second of composure anyone glimpsed this morning.”

“The fact that you consider that extraordinary only tells me that it really
was
your first actual battle.”

“But—”

“Ravelle, anyone in command feigns ease when death is near. We do it for those around us, and we do it for ourselves. We do it because the sole alternative is to die cringing. The difference between an experienced leader and an untested one is that
only
the untested one is shocked at how well they can pretend when their hand is forced.”

“I don't believe this,” said Locke. “When I first came aboard, I couldn't impress you enough to make you spit in my face. Now you're making my excuses for me. Zamira, Jerome and I never worked for the Priori. I've never even met a Priori except in passing. The fact is that we're still working for Maxilan Stragos as we speak.”

“What?”

“Jerome and I are thieves. Professional, independent thieves. We came to Tal Verrar on a very delicate job of our own design. The archon's…intelligence services figured out who and what we were. Stragos poisoned us, a latent poison for which only he can supply the antidote. Until we get it or secure some other remedy, we're his puppets.”

“To what possible end?”

“Stragos handed us the
Red Messenger
, allowed us to take a crew from Windward Rock, and built up a parchment trail concerning an imaginary disgruntled officer named Orrin Ravelle. He gave us our sailing master—the one whose heart seized on us before we hit the storm—and sent us out here on his business. That's how we got the ship. That's how we tweaked Stragos' nose in such an unlikely fashion. All was to his design.”

“What's he after? Someone in Port Prodigal?”

“He wants the same thing you gave him last time you crossed paths. He's all but at war with the Priori, and he's feeling his years. If he's going to seize anything resembling popularity ever again, the time is now. He needs an enemy outside the city to bring his army and navy back into favor. That's
you
, Zamira. Nothing would be more convenient for Stragos than a wider outbreak of piracy near his city in the next few months.”

“Which is
exactly
why the Brass Sea captains have avoided going anywhere near Tal Verrar for the last seven years! We learned our lesson the bitter way. If he comes looking for a brawl, we'll duck and run before we'll grant him one.”

“I know. And so does he. Our job—our
mandate
—is to find some way to stir up trouble down here regardless. To get you to fly the red flag close enough for common Verrari to see it from the public outhouses.”

“How the hell did you ever plan on accomplishing this?”

“I had some half-assed idea to spread rumors, offer bribes. If you hadn't hit the
Messenger
, I would have tried to kindle a mess myself. But that was before we had any hint to the real state of things out here. Now Jerome and I obviously need your help.”

“To do what?”

“To buy time. To convince Stragos that we're succeeding on his behalf.”

“If you think for one second that I'll do anything to aid the archon—”

“I don't,” said Locke, “and if you think for one second that I truly mean to aid him, you haven't been listening. Stragos' antidote is supposedly good for two months. That means Jerome and I
must
be in Tal Verrar in five weeks to get another sip. And if we have no progress to claim, he may simply decide to fold his investment in us.”

“If you have to leave us to return to Tal Verrar,” she said, “that's unfortunate. But you can find an independent trader in Port Prodigal; they're never more than a few days apart. We have arrangements with a number of them that call in Tal Verrar and Vel Virazzo. You'll have enough money from your shares to buy passage.”