The Fox

by Sherwood Smith

  “Yes. I am only myself beginning to realize just how much knowledge my mother had that I can’t easily explain, ” he said. Then he leaned forward. “I mean to find her, Jeje. I realize Inda’s search must come first. And yet I suspect—it’s only instinct, though strong—his search for information and my own might not be as unrelated as one might reasonably assume.”

  He hesitated, and two wine glasses appeared before them.

  Kerrem said, “Are you going to Asfar House tonight?”

  Tau gave his head a quick shake. “I promised Eris I’d come to her musical. I need to practice.”

  “If you do, none of us have a hope,” Kerrem said, and then was gone.

  “There you go again.” Jeje pointed an accusing finger. “Expert in yet another thing.”

  “Not really.” Tau sat back, the wineglass cradled in his hands. “I’ve had a minimum of training in a wide variety of skills, but I did inherit my mother’s quick ear and eye. Most of these people, like me, play for fun, and many don’t hear how very much better someone is who’s had a lifetime of training. That means practice.” He smiled. “And listening.”

  Jeje heard about half of what he said. As she ate, she thought about how very rarely Tau talked about anything personal. But she’d seen on her single visit how close he and his mother were despite their very different attitudes and very strong wills. She said tentatively, “I hope you can find news of your mother, but . . . well, Parayid is all the way in the west, and wasn’t she taken by a pirate?”

  Tau nodded, not speaking as a couple stood nearby, waiting for a table to be cleared.

  When they were seated, Jeje spoke again. “You didn’t have a dad, did you?”

  “Magic birth. And no. No relatives left on her side, either. Or, if still alive, none she ever owned up to.”

  “The more I think about it, the odder it seems,” she said. “I mean, where in Parayid did she get her training? There not being much, oh, courtly custom in Iasca Leror.” She grinned.

  That unexpected, wicked grin, framed by long dimples, was so ravishing. Tau had to grin back. “One of my very earliest memories is her saying our name was now Darian. Daraen—friend in Sartor—what could be more appropriate for us? That’s exactly what she said. I think my interest in languages stems from that time.”

  Jeje set her fork down. “I never had fresh peas this good. How do they fix them so they don’t moosh? Never mind, it’s not like I’ll ever cook anyway.” She sat back, tasting the wine. Her brow cleared. “Good!”

  Tau sipped his. It was delicious, complex in flavor in a way that complemented the food, didn’t overwhelm it. But he only drank half; tonight he would begin his campaign, and that meant his head must be completely clear.

  “The question of my departure from Fleet lies before you,” he said.

  Jeje snorted. “Oh, Tau. I’m really going to say no, you have to stay right in the Fleet House.”

  Tau smiled in apology. “I will be back to practice with you, that I promise.”

  “Good. I can do it on my own,” she said quickly. “Though Fox said it’s better with a partner.”

  “Certainly. When we are called upon to begin training people—though I don’t see how any more than you do— we’ve got to be in fighting trim.”

  She grunted an agreement.

  He opened his hands. “Done?”

  “You mean you need to get going,” she said, looking around.

  Dusk had fallen, soft and unnoticed. The eatery people had hung paper lanterns all around the terrace, and the windows on the lane glowed golden.

  “I’ll see you at dawn,” he promised.

  Her throat was tight. She managed a nod and a careless shrug, and forced herself to be the first to depart.

  Leaving him looking somewhat wistfully after her. But he knew she would be fine—in fact, if he was gone from Fleet House they might treat her better. Not that he’d say anything about that—it was just the sort of comment he loathed himself.

  So instead he used the money he’d changed earlier while doing an errand for Chim and went to pick up the new suit of clothes he’d ordered a few days before.

  It was time to go on stage.

  Jeje did not look back. She tramped back down the lane to the harbor and its familiar strong smell of fish, brine, old wood mold, and stale beer.

  Since she’d never spoken to anyone at Fleet House, she knew nothing about the harbor other than what she’d already observed while roaming about. The air was warm and still, and her fast march made her hot and sticky, which added to her vile mood.

  When she reached the bottom of the road that led to the older part of the harbor, she looked around, her hair swinging into her mouth. She spat it out, but it stuck to her cheek, tickling horribly. Impatiently she yanked out one of her knives, gathered her hair in back, and then sawed it off.

  The coolness on her neck was a relief until she turned her head—and her earring smacked her cheek.

  She’d forgotten the earring. That was why she had been letting her hair grow—to hide it.

  “Argh.” Furious with herself, she flung the bits of fine dark brown hair into the mud and stomped them. They vanished in the sludge at once. Then she walked on, peering through the darkness past jumbles of old and rotting ship gear and rickety storehouses in search of a tavern where she could get a good dark beer. Maybe she’d at least be able to sleep, even if it didn’t improve her mood.

  Faint slants of light drew her in one direction. Few people moved about in the deepening shadows. It was getting so dark that she heard more than saw them.

  She reached a broad street parallel to the quay, dimly lit by the lights from the windows of low, ramshackle buildings. Outlined in the weak light were five men, some shambling instead of walking, oblivious to puddles and debris. One roared after stepping in a pile of dog shit that no one had wanded. He sounded drunk.

  A thin figure slipped through them—a cutpurse. At Freeport cutpurses were rare, as there was nowhere to run. Gambling was the usual way to get others’ money—

  “Hey, all alone?” A raucous voice broke her isolation.

  She sidestepped in a quick, smooth move, hands near her weapons. The speaker was a big, burly man who stank of old sweat and stale wine. Bad wine.

  He stumped forward, peering at her. “Izzat a ruby on yer ear, girl?” He turned his head and bawled, “Larian! Col! Here’s the fortune you were wantin’—”

  She sidestepped—straight into a puddle. At the sound of the splash he turned on her far faster than a drunk had any right to. She felt his fingers brush her cheek before she backed away.

  “Gimme that ruby, girl, an’ you can go. Whaja do, steal it? Fair’s fair—”

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t try me. I’m in a really bad mood.” And as he made a swipe at her again, rage burned through her. “No, I change my mind. Go ahead. Do try me,” as he grabbed for her again. Duck, thump! A fist straight into his gut. “You can only make me—” He lunged. She sidestepped, tripped him, smacked his ear open-handed as he fell. “—Make me feel better.”

  He yowled a curse, and his two friends came on at a stumbling run. Jeje laughed, and yes, her bad mood had vanished. Danger—action—it was like being on Vixen with pirates trying to board, only the ground was hard under her feet, and she had no tiller to tend.

  She smacked the first assailant, kicked the side of the knee of the second, who whirled and fell, howling and punching the air.

  The other two scrambled to their feet and tried to rush her together. A palm-heel to the midsection of the first and a forearm smack against the nose of the second sent them after their friend.

  She jumped over them, started walking, and saw a small crowd gathered. Her hands moved to her knife hilts but dropped when a woman crowed, “Fine work!”

  “Hey, Col, what’s it like to receive ’stead o’ give?”

  Laughter from the shadowy figures, as someone small darted down, feeling over the groaning drunks in search of thei
r coins.

  “Come, stranger, I’ll buy you a drink!” a man invited.

  “If it’s good dark beer,” Jeje said, wary.

  “I know where to get some,” the woman promised breezily. “What’s that accent? Western, are ye?”

  “Out o’ Freeport Harbor,” Jeje stated firmly.

  The man whistled, and the woman said, “No wonder yer walking around alone here like ye was a queen in a garden.”

  “Here? What’s wrong with here?” Jeje asked in Bren.

  The woman shifted out of Dock Talk to Bren. “Well, the King’s Guard don’t patrol here any more. Not since the shore guilds and the tax collectors have been at daggers over the taxes,” the woman explained. “So the guilds got their own hires, but they don’t come down here to the quay. None patrol here, as it’s mostly old storage. Empty as trade’s so bad. We call it the ghost yards.”

  The man said, “And trade bein’ bad, there’s a lot of old hands can’t, or won’t, get another hire, so they jump people and drink off what they steal. Like Japsar, there, and Col and their new mate. Lots of ’em hide out here inna ghost yards.”

  The woman said, “Col used to be a good sheet-anchor man, but not with the drink and Japsar’s gang.”

  They’d reached a rough-stoned alley lined with small, shoddy-fronted shops and a low-roofed, rambling tavern bright in all its windows, which were of different sizes. The buildings were all lit outside with a variety of lamps, lanterns, and here and there an expensive glowglobe—a ready-made sort of street lighting.

  Jeje was aware of whispers spreading the story behind her; it was quite a crowd that walked into the tavern, called Lower Deck, decorated with nets draped from the ceiling, fog lanterns, and barrels used to support tables. Jeje liked the look of the place at once.

  “You’re mighty young, aren’t you?” the woman asked, and Jeje looked up into a weatherworn face probably ten years older than she was.

  She shrugged, hands out. “You have to start some time.”

  They laughed at that, and a round of mugs came forth; they asked her name and in a jovial hubbub told her theirs, what they did when on hire, and what ship they’d been with last, everyone talking at once.

  Jeje kept trying to follow, but every time she identified the last speaker someone new spoke. She barely had time to learn that the woman’s name was Thess and the skinny teenage boy behind her with the same color of rusty brown hair was her son Palnas when the doors slammed open, smashing into the walls.

  The tavern went silent as Japsar walked in, muddy down one side. At his shoulder lurked Col, holding his nose, and behind him Larian, a balding, furtive man holding a dagger. And behind them five or six others, all armed.

  “Here, you,” the tavern owner shouted, striding forward so fast his apron flapped. His voice was the roar of a deckhand as he snarled curses ending with, “. . . and I meant what I said, Japsar, you pay up your score before you set foot in here.”

  “Just you bide,” Japsar said thickly, looking about, then sneering when he saw Jeje. “Just you bide, and there won’t be any trouble. Me and this girl here got some score of our own to settle.”

  Thess made to stand in front of Jeje—she was a head taller, and brawny—but Jeje pushed past. “We got no score,” she said. “You tried to take my earring. It’s mine. I earned it, so I defended it. We got no score.”

  “You stole it,” Japsar said. “So that means yer a liar as well as a shit-eater.”

  “And you,” Jeje stated, “are a stinking drunk.”

  Again Japsar moved fast, grabbing a plate off a table and slinging it toward her face.

  Jeje batted it aside with a fast forearm block, not watching as it crashed to the floor. Japsar brought a cutlass from under his long vest. He charged Jeje, as all around people exclaimed, chairs skidded, mugs thumped down—

  The man at Jeje’s table started up, but Thess put a hand on his arm. “Wait.”

  Jeje shut them all out, her forearms crossing as she whipped out her blades. She took a single step back, met Japsar’s charge with a round-block and a hard kick to his knees. He bellowed, whirling his blade. She ducked. The blade passed overhead with a hum. She jumped up, ramming her knife-handle under his chin. His head snapped back, and she kicked him straight into two of his gang; they sidestepped, jostling into the ones behind them, and Jeje waded in, blades nicking Japsar’s gang in a blur of movement that backed them into the doorway. Those in front retreated; the ones behind shoved forward until they all burst inward, staggering.

  Everyone began to fight.

  She leaped to block Col, and a gray-haired woman slung a small keg at another of Japsar’s gang; Jeje stayed in the center, kicking, punching, shoving, but as yet she had not killed anyone. Crash! Thud! Smack! Figures rocked back and forth, knocking into furniture. The tavern keeper briskly moved about, smashing mugs on bobbing heads. The fight was soon over, most of the gang lying unconscious, a couple moving and groaning—the rest having fled back out into the night. Jeje’s partisans hadn’t dealt any deathblows, and she was glad her instinct had been right to wound and not to kill.

  The tavern keeper stood nearby, wringing his hand.

  “Sorry,” Jeje said. “Do I, um, owe you—”

  The man laughed. “Why d’you think I use these?” He smacked a barrel and kicked a fallen net. “Easy to come by. They’ll help me get shipshape.” He flicked a hand toward Thess and the others who’d brought her in.

  “I’ll help,” Jeje said. “I’m a fast hand with a net.”

  Talking and laughing about the fight, the regulars all pitched in, their manner so efficient Jeje suspected that fights were more frequent than not. She helped with a good will as fresh beer was poured out for everyone by the tavern keeper’s daughter, who was about Jeje’s age and height.

  It did not take long. Some of the men dragged the unconscious ones out and dumped them in the street; pity for their state only went so far. Others helped scrub down the wooden floor, the barrel-tables were righted, and a fresh supply of old, rusty fog lamps brought out from the back to replace the broken ones.

  By the midnight watch-bells the room looked as it had when Jeje entered. Thess sat down across from Jeje. “Ruby—fighting—that would put you with Elgar the Fox, I’m thinking.”

  Jeje’s neck tightened with prickles of danger.

  She and Tau had talked for a long time about what to say and what not to say—but that had been weeks ago, and Jeje had half forgotten what they’d decided. She busied herself with her beer as she recalled what they’d agreed on, then said with her best attempt at indifference, “I’m not with anyone now.”

  “Why not?” asked the gray-haired woman whose use of a beer keg as a weapon had accounted for at least two of the gang.

  Jeje said, “Well, for one thing, Fleet Master Chim did mention something about defense training. For future convoys.”

  The tavern owner narrowed his eyes. “Convoys,” he repeated.

  Thess said in a slow, meaningful voice, “Convoy defense.”

  The gray-haired woman added, a hand beside her mouth—as if everyone around wasn’t able to hear quite clearly—“So that would mean somebody would be hiring people for such a thing?”

  These people were not exactly subtle—but neither was Jeje. She grinned. “Well, I’m working for Chim now, at the Guild Fleet House. Word is, there might be hiring for such a thing. Hiring after training. As it happens.”

  Thess patted the table. “So . . . where does that put ye? I mean, was it ye bein’ blind, or was it ye bein’ convenient, like, this fight o’ yez?”

  Jeje snorted. “I didn’t know about ghost yards, if that’s what you mean. Truth is, I was walking off a sulk. I miss being out at sea. Anyway what you call the ghost yards looks like the south end of Freeport Harbor to me.” She got to her feet. “Speaking of Chim, and jobs, I should be turning in.”

  “Hope you’ll be back,” the tavern keeper said. “Thanks for helping out.”

  “We
’ll know where to find ye,” Thess said, saluting with a flick of fingers to her forehead—the salute to a captain on her deck.

  Chapter Fifteen

  FLEET Commander Durasnir spent several exasperating days coordinating the reports of various unidentified southern craft, many of whom lingered along the harbors in an effort to reclaim missing crew. It was taking far longer than he’d expected to board and inspect each and then issue identification medallions.

  By the end of the second week, he hated to walk into his wardroom where the big maps were and his subordinates, used to his customary calm, hated to see him loom—he was tall, even for a Venn—in the doorway, his blond brow furrowed and light eyes narrowed.

  He loathed the sight of people who should have been tending meaningful duties scurrying back and forth from the maps to the table, laboriously listing the names of countless little craft that dags reported after each search, then sticking corresponding pins into the maps.

  Durasnir knew that the general questioning had begun on land, a headache of logistics: having to feed, guard, and issue identity medallions to countless angry strangers. Their task was no easier than his.

  Durasnir stood alone in his inner cabin, staring out through the stern windows at the choppy seas of the strait. The Fangs jutted in the distance.

  Instead of discouraging Prince Rajnir and Dag Erkric, the enormous number of prisoners the sweep had gathered was deemed significant. Rajnir had written via magic message the night before: If we don’t have him, surely we must have some of his fleet. They can tell us much.

  Even the Count Wafri, Rajnir reported, was enthusiastic.

  The Venn guards separated out all the redheads or anyone who could be described as having reddish hair. No explanation.

  The next few days in the cell, the men around Inda were angry and afraid. No one had done anything wrong, they kept protesting every time the guards came down into the corridor. When the guards did not listen, they told one another over and over again.