The Fox

by Sherwood Smith

  Barend appeared at the rail below Dasta, his hair messy from his snooze-watch. “You mean, we’re luring ’em out, is that it?” He paused, taken by a huge yawn.

  The deck watch saw Inda grin. “Throw down a war banner.”

  Barend rubbed his eyes. “We don’t know where they are.”

  “Someone will. Let gossip do our work for us.”

  Barend whistled. “Won’t she come after us with a fleet?”

  “That’s what I’m going to find out,” Inda called back.

  The Vixen skimmed out into the blue morning waters, chasing the last of the night sky into the west.

  When the horizon had sunk Cocodu’s hull behind them, Inda said to Jeje, “We’ll put into the Danai Mainport at night.”

  Jeje looked at him in surprise. “You think she’s there?”

  “I think she’s looking for us,” Inda said. “What I want to find out is what we can expect by way of aid on her side.”

  Jeje puffed her cheeks out. “You mean the Venn?”

  “Did you listen to the reports off those Chwahir fishers? About the Venn, I mean.”

  Jeje waved a hand. “Complaints. Ships they stopped, searched, levied a toll on. We already knew all that.”

  “But they also said the Venn don’t loot, they don’t kill— except those they have declared war against—and they don’t interfere with anyone who pays up.”

  “So what’s that got to do with Boruin?” Jeje scowled.

  Inda perched on the taffrail, scruffy in his fighting shirt, which was the old, stained, sun-bleached, mended, and washed one he’d taken out of Walic’s wardrobe last summer, the sleeves loose enough to hide his wrist sheaths, the laces long gone, revealing his scarred chest. His long vest was worn and creased. He was barefoot, as were they all, his deck trousers worn and bag-kneed, curls escaping from his three-day-old sailor’s queue. “Don’t you see?” Inda gestured. “If the Venn obey their own rules, how much do they really trust those who don’t have any?”

  “Using the Brotherhood to do their dirty work doesn’t make ’em any cleaner,” Jeje said, watching sail and sky.

  “What’s that?” Nugget popped up from below and pointed at the grubby canvas roll on the deck. She bent, both hands on thighs. “Looks disgusting!” she exclaimed.

  “It is disgusting,” Inda called back. To Jeje: “Take us away from land. We’ll pull in at night.” Inda yawned.

  “And until then? I take it you want a snooze-watch?”

  “No.” Inda snorted a laugh. “There’s going to be no gossip about us, only what we gather about others. So here’s your new sail. We’re going to take a nasty little fishing smack in.” He jumped off the taffrail and bent to snap open the length of canvas. They stared, appalled, at the patched, filthy sail wrapped around a small chest. “How much paint you got below?”

  Nugget gave a gasp of delight. “A ruse! We get our very own ruse!” She looked pleading. “Do I get to rip up my clothes?”

  Jeje looked exasperated. “Why waste good cloth?”

  Nugget said, “Oh, I’ll sew it all up again, but it’s not a fun ruse unless we all get to do it.” She patted her plain but well-made clothes.

  Inda smiled briefly, then said, “Do what you like about your duds, but there will be no gossip about us, understand? ”

  As Nugget bounced up and down in gleeful anticipation he grunted, lifting the chest to his shoulder; the contents, shifting, made a rich clinking sound. He set it out of the way.

  Then Jeje clapped her hands. “Let’s get to work!”

  And so it was a thoroughly nasty fishing smack that hove up behind the other fishing craft at sunset, jostling for the cheapest anchorage out in Danai Bay. There was no sign of the distinctive curve of the Vixen’s clean white mainsail and beautifully cut jibs, or the pale blue sides, the swept deck. This fishing smack looked like so many others that hadn’t gotten any catch: nets tangled, overhanging the sides in clumps, sails bunched instead of furled. And what a mainsail! It alone looked disreputable enough to ward off any interest, or to prevent anyone from noticing that the craft, ugly as it was, didn’t smell, like so many others did, of old fish and cooking oil. But the smell was pervasive, shared among the other nasty little fishing vessels anchored there. Inda had pronounced the transformed Vixen anonymous enough to permit all five of them, plus the chest, to be in the rowboat heading for shore.

  “Remember,” Inda said, when they were well away from anyone else. “We are fishers from the Dusty out of Bren, used to be merch sailors until the embargo and pirate problems docked our ships. That explains our various accents. Other than that, say nothing. Just listen.”

  Voices carried across the water from other vessels. On one side, a bad day’s catch was a fine excuse to get drunk. On the other side, a family fight was in progress, everyone from baby to granny yelling.

  Nugget chuckled, her wide eyes reflecting ship lights in pinpoints. “Woof told me that if you ask a question of strangers, someone’s sure to want to know why you asked.”

  “And to want to tell someone else,” Jeje said. “If they think they can profit by it.”

  “Got it.” Loos set his back to rowing. “No questions.”

  “I doubt we’ll hear anything,” Inda added. “But if there is anything to hear, we’ll catch it if we keep moving until midnight. Then meet back here. We’re out on the late tide.”

  Nugget wriggled at the tiller, mentally embroidering her story as she guided them expertly between the other boats. She loved her artfully torn shirt and trousers, held together by bits of fabric sewn into a motley sash.

  She yearned to be the most interesting girl in the room. Just once. In Freedom she was just Woof’s sister, and though Inda’s crew had lots of adventures, she hadn’t been on any of them. Here, if she used her old identity, she’d just be another toff without land or estate—a figure of fun, Woof had warned her once. She knew her map. They weren’t all that far from Khanerenth, which was just on the other side of Colend. There might even be other exiles here from Khanerenth.

  What could be better than a poor orphan, descended from fierce pirates—no, escaped from pirates? She was still angry that Woof had kept her from the cruise in search of Gaffer Walic, but why not pretend she’d been there?

  She was putting the finishing touches on a fine story as they closed with other rowboats. They all halted as a schooner moved slowly past, and then, bobbing on its wake, they followed in and tied up at the cheap dock, clambering over other boats to get to the ladder. While Inda stood in line to pay the moor attendant, Nugget ran off alone. She, raised in a harbor frequented by independents and privateers—some of them more pirate than not—was dazzled at the idea of a real mainland port.

  The brothers had two ideas in mind: good food—that is, food that they chose instead of what the cook served up— and sex. They could listen while enjoying themselves.

  Inda hoisted the brass-bound chest onto one shoulder and he and Jeje started up the long road toward the town. Like most port towns, it was built into the sides of the shoreline in a crescent, the scruffier buildings at the far edges. The main difference from pirate harbors was the evidence of a government lying beyond the loom of the land. There were street lamps along the main road and costly magical glowglobes in the expensive section before the big docks where the capital ships slowly rocked on the water, sails neatly furled. Under that light, in pride of place, were moored two great Venn warships with their upward curving prows and crossed yards from which would hang the towers of great square sails.

  Jeje and Inda were not the only sailors who studied the complicated rigging required by square sails and wondered how they handled in deep waters during a storm.

  A passer-by commented in accented Dock Talk, “Mighty clean, eh? Guess they can keep ’em that way by watching others fight for ’em.”

  “I say let ’em, if it cuts down Brotherhood some more.”

  The group laughed as they vanished in the crowd.

  “Bro
therhood battle?” Jeje whispered, and on Inda’s shrug, “Where are we going?” Jeje turned her thumb up at the box on his shoulder. “What is that, part of your ruse?”

  “No. Have to find where the Guild Fleet has its office.”

  Guild Fleet? There had been talk at Freeport about some of the strait harbors trying to form a Guild Fleet to protect strait shipping from the increased pirate threat, but no one was in command. From what they heard the “fleet” was mainly comprised of old ships and fisher folk stung too many times by the Venn-allied pirates. Nothing that could do much besides travel in huge convoys just as ships had been doing for ages.

  She couldn’t imagine what Inda would want with such folk, but she said only, “Woof said their sign is stars on blue.” She did not add Woof’s scathing comment: Dhalshev says that they do this sort of thing every generation or so, in absence of a strong navy. The guilds won’t put up good money unless there’s a real fleet commander, and meanwhile no one will agree on a fleet commander from any kingdom but their own, and so they’ll limp along until a storm or a squabble scatters ’em again. Surely Inda would know all that.

  Inda said, “I remember.”

  Jeje followed in silence as Inda turned up one of the streets lit by glowglobes. Sea-related guild signs hung outside of broad building with wide porches. Many were lit, though it was late; shipping guilds mostly operated by tidal flow instead of the sun’s arc.

  Inda walked down the street, glancing at every shop until he reached one with a row of five stars, for five main shipping guilds, set in a blue banner: the sign of the Guild Fleet.

  It was still lit inside. Inda set the chest onto the counter. The musical chink! of pure metal brought someone from the back. She popped the last of a sugared pastry into her mouth, dusted her fingers on her skirt, then said somewhat thickly in Dock Talk, “You want?”

  “To send this thing west through your guild contacts.”

  Frown at the chest. “How far west?”

  “Iasca Leror, Lindeth Harbor. Shipowner, Ryala Pim.”

  Jeje scowled at the floor. So Inda had taken over Kodl’s debt. She should have expected that.

  Narrow, searching glance from the clerk. “You’re aware of the embargo.”

  “I know. Pay extra.” Inda brought a heavy little bag from his inner vest pocket. “Figure there’s someone going over the mountains, if not by sea. Venn don’t control the mountains, last I heard.”

  “No. But they got allies. However, there’s ways to get people through. It can’t be that.” She pointed to the chest. “Too heavy, too obvious. I hope your shipowner Pim is honest, because this gold will have to be converted to a letter of credit to our guild in Lindeth. She can redeem it there—after she identifies herself with a guild sved.”

  The clerk rang a tiny bell.

  Inda opened a hand, palm up. “She’s honest.” As young prentices began counting out the coins, which were meticulously recorded on a slate, Inda leaned against the counter and asked casually, “What’s this I hear about a recent Brotherhood battle? We don’t get much news in the eastern islands.”

  The woman gave them a thin smile, too humorless to be a smirk. “The red sail fleet took a beating at The Nob, way west, t’other end of the strait. Right before winter.”

  “Who won?”

  “The horse barbarians.”

  “Venn?”

  “Stood off and watched.”

  “Anything else?”

  She rubbed her ear with her quill feather. “All I know. Winter passes snowed in not long after, so that was the last piece of news through, with the last trade caravan. Some recently off ships down the strait said the Brotherhood retaliated all winter long by attacking all up and down the west coast, in spite of the Venn wanting it for themselves. We don’t know what’s true, or what they won or lost. We only know the horse hordes’re too busy at home to come over the mountains and start slaughtering east.”

  Jeje felt sick, Inda cold and bleak. Neither spoke.

  The transaction did not take long. The letter of credit was made out, and below the official language about money and exchange, Inda wrote in clear Iascan script: The price of three merchant vessels, and cargo, sent by Inda Elgar. Below that he wrote something else, in letters that went downward, not across. Then he pushed the paper back, the clerk glanced at it, whistled to herself when she saw the ancient letters at the bottom (which she recognized, but couldn’t read), sealed it, and they left.

  Jeje followed in silence. After they’d reached Freedom Island, Inda had divided up all Walic’s treasure equitably, sending off the crew members he didn’t want. Jeje suspected that she was seeing the last of Inda’s share, as they had not yet divided up the spoils of their last take. So she only said, “What was that you wrote at the end?”

  He sighed. “My birth name. There’s a price on it. I don’t want the local guard after me.”

  “What were those letters?”

  “Old Sartoran.”

  They reached a tavern, entered, did a slow circuit through the crowd. The air was warm, smelling of ale, wine, food, salt, sweat. Loud voices, punctuated by laughter. Someone sang an old ballad in Sartoran triple-beat chords.

  They pushed through the crowd near the drink, near the kitchens, those lounging around the door watching passersby as they talked and laughed. They eased by—and out.

  And on to another one, then a third, then a fourth. After a time she gave up trying to listen and watched Inda watching. And he did watch, constantly. After a time, he said in a low voice, “I make out two languages here. One is derived from Sartoran, but this other one, Mearsias, is completely unrelated.”

  He didn’t speak again until the midnight bell tolled and the crowds along the boardwalk thinned. The night chill increased, and Jeje was glad to reach the boat dock, where a tired trio waited.

  As they rowed back, Inda said, “Anyone hear anything?”

  “Cursing against the Venn.” The younger brother flicked up the back of his hand. “More against that Boruin. They hate her worse’n shit in shoes. In the strait here she hasn’t been killing traders outright—that’s what she does in the east. Here she levies more on top of the regular Venn ship-toll if she catches you.”

  “The Brotherhood lost some battle out west last autumn, and the Venn didn’t help,” Nugget reported with an air of triumph. “I got that at the orphanage, where I also got a free dinner.”

  “Orphanage?” Jeje asked. “You went to an orphanage?”

  “Well, I am an orphan,” Nugget stated, her chin coming up. “We were magic-born, see, so we only had our dad, and he got killed in the civil war. My brother told me that until I’m sixteen, if I’m ever stuck on land, I should go to the orphanages. So I did. I learned lots o’ things.”

  “Good work, Nugget,” Inda said, clapping her on the shoulder. “What else did you learn?”

  “Do you want to hear about the Brotherhood battle?”

  “But we—” Jeje began.

  Inda nodded. Jeje sat back.

  “There wasn’t much, except how lots and lots of pirates got killed, and then everyone had to tell pirate stories. But it was way, way out west, and the Venn didn’t help them, and the Brotherhood was angry, and so they went not just raiding but looting and burning the lands the Venn want, belonging to those wicked flying-horse people.”

  In the golden reflection from the open scuttles of a schooner they were passing, Jeje saw Inda’s mouth thin.

  “That was all. Rest was blabber. Nothing about Boruin.”

  Inda didn’t speak again until they were back on the Vixen, riding out on the tidal ebb. The Fisher brothers got the sails up and Nugget, who seemed tireless, took the tiller again. She guided the Vixen between the little fishing craft, each with a lantern at bow and stern, and at last directly out to sea. As the wind increased, sending them pitching through the white-crested waves, Nugget pouted.

  She wasn’t going to tell Inda or Jeje how the girls at the orphanage had scoffed. How dare the
y not believe her story!

  One of these days it would all be real. Then she’d show them.

  Inda and Jeje sat at the tiny table in her low, cozy cabin, each cradling hot steeped leaf. She said, “You think that was Iasca Leror Nugget mentioned?”

  “You heard the Guild woman.” Inda looked down into his cup. Then he put his head back. “Did you sniff any mention of rift between the Brotherhood and the Venn?”

  Jeje sighed. “No. I guess I’m not as quick as you at winnowing out facts from blabber. All I got was people gabbling mostly about themselves, gossip about this or that ship, or who was pillow jigging with whom, and so on. People sure are boring when you don’t know them.”

  Inda gave her a brief grin, and then his brows quirked. “About that battle at the Nob. Don’t you have people up on the west coast below the Nob?”

  “Lindeth.” Jeje shook her head. “And if they didn’t hear about pirates long before they were sighted and get well away, then I’m a sea lizard. I won’t worry. So what did you hear that I missed?”

  Inda sat back. “Like I said. Sense of sourness between the Venn and Brotherhood. Venn want Brotherhood raids on the coast. To keep our people busy for when they finally do attack. Also, how Boruin is full of strut. They hate her for that as much as for what she’s done.” He set his empty mug aside and got up. “Let’s get this mess cleaned up, shall we?”

  Jeje moved up on deck to take down the nets that she had so artfully arranged earlier. Inda always listened, not just when he was scouting. That’s why you’ll never be a good captain, Fox, Jeje thought, frowning at an unoffending net. You see yourself in the middle of things, and Inda sees himself outside of things, putting them together, like rigging a ship, until everything works smoothly. His problem— if it is a problem—is he thinks he’s invisible, and he’s not, at least when he fights.

  Chapter Sixteen

  THE full moon was faintly visible behind a feathering of clouds when Boruin’s lookout shouted, "Sail hai!”