Explorer of the Endless Sea

by Jack Campbell

  “I happen to have ten extra sailors aboard,” Jules said. “Survivors we rescued off a wreck. They’re looking for a new ship. One is an excellent first officer.”

  “I can’t pay them!”

  “You can with what this cargo will bring at Dor’s.” Jules gave him a sharp look. “I’m not a patient woman, Captain Aravind. Will you work for me?”

  “Yes.” Aravind licked his lips nervously. “What if we run into another pirate between here and Dor’s?”

  “You tell that pirate this cargo is mine,” Jules said, slapping the manifests. “If they take from it, they take from me.”

  Captain Aravind inhaled slowly, his eyes on Jules. “Why?”

  She smiled. “I asked a Mage that same question. He told me there’s no answer to ‘why,’ but also too many answers to count.”

  “A Mage…” Aravind’s eyes widened. “You spoke with a Mage?”

  “Briefly,” she said.

  “I don’t understand. You ruthlessly killed that man who called himself Ron, but now you’re acting in a very…kind manner.”

  Jules pointed out towards the water. “Don betrayed me to the Imperials in exchange for money. I gave him what he deserved. You stood up bravely for your crew and are trying to make a living as a free merchant. I’m giving you what you deserve. Why is that hard to understand?”

  “Perhaps because people getting what they deserve so rarely seems to happen.”

  She couldn’t help giving him a half smile. “Doesn’t that make it all the more important that we do that when we can?”

  “I suppose it does.” He breathed in deeply once more. “I accept your offer, your generous offer, Captain Jules. How do I find Dor’s?”

  “Sail west along the southern coast. You’ll come to a place where the cliffs give way to a large valley with a river running through it. You can’t miss it. It’s an easy approach and a decent harbor.”

  “And how do I find you afterwards to pay your share?”

  “That’ll be harder,” Jules said. “I can’t set up shop anywhere because that’d attract too much interest from the Great Guilds and the Emperor. You know Kelsi’s settlement in the north?”

  “I’ve heard of it,” Aravind said. “I can find it.”

  “There are places there that will hold your payment in credit for the Sun Queen,” Jules said. “Credit to the ship, not to me personally. Ask around, and you’ll be told of them.”

  “I understand. Consider it done.” He offered his hand, and Jules shook it. “Captain, if I can ever do anything else for you, I will.”

  She nodded solemnly. “Someday I may have need of ships and sailors. When that day comes, remember this day.”

  “I will. I confess I still don’t understand, though. Surely despite the prophecy you don’t intend to battle the Great Guilds.”

  “The prophecy speaks of a daughter of my line, not me. And it would be suicide to battle both of the Great Guilds.” Jules waved toward the west. “The common people have to grow stronger. They need to get out from under the heel of the Emperor. We can build free cities out there, or at least as free as the Great Guilds permit. You can help that happen.”

  Captain Aravind looked toward the west. “I never dreamed of being part of anything greater than trying to make a living. There isn’t much room for dreams in this world.”

  “Yes, there is,” Jules said. “To the west.”

  “But most of the land to the west is a wasteland, behind horrible reefs.”

  “Everyone says that,” Jules said, thinking of Ian yesterday and quickly shoving the thought aside. “But is it a wasteland?”

  The question took Aravind aback. “That’s what all the charts show.”

  “Maybe it’s time someone checked those charts.”

  “But ships have gone west, and disappeared! Everyone’s heard those stories.”

  “Everyone has,” Jules said. “Big ships, supposedly. With good captains and good crews. What were the names of the ships? Where’d they sail from?”

  “They, uh, sailed from Sandurin. ”

  “In Landfall, everyone knows they sailed from Landfall. When did they disappear? A hundred years ago. Two hundred years ago. Fifty years ago. Did you ever meet anyone related to someone on one of those ships? Someone whose ancestor disappeared in a voyage to the west?”

  Aravind’s brow furrowed as he thought. “No.”

  “Odd, isn’t it? Wouldn’t people talk about that?” Jules nodded to him. “Something to think about. By the way, you’re from Dunlan? How’d you end up on the Sea of Bakre?”

  His smile held the sadness of long-ago dreams. “I grew up in Dunlan, on the eastern shores of the Empire, the waters of the Great World Ocean before us. The Umbari. You’re a sailor. I’m sure you understand the desire to sail beyond the horizon and see what’s there.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because the Mechanics Guild forbids the use of ships on the ocean large enough to sail beyond sight of land. All you’ll find in the harbor of Dunlan are fishing boats, and not large ones.” Aravind looked east, as if seeking sight of that faraway place. “When I was young, a few daring shipwrights tried building new boats, gradually increasing the size in the hopes the Mechanics wouldn’t notice. They did. The larger boats and the yards building them were all destroyed. It was quite a fire.”

  Jules looked east as well. “It makes you wonder what might be out there. What the Mechanics Guild doesn’t want us to find.”

  “They claim there’s nothing but endless water all around the world until you finally reach the wastes at the western end of the Sea of Bakre, if anyone could actually sail that far without running out of food and water or being destroyed in the tremendous storms that can roil the ocean. The Mechanics say the ban is to protect us from losing ships that way. But I wonder, as you do.”

  “Mechanics don’t usually spend much time worrying about the fates of commons,” Jules said.

  “It’s said in Dunlan that somewhere out there in the ocean is another great mass of land. A continent like this one,” Aravind said. “But that’s just a story. I never met anyone who had any proof of it.”

  “Another continent?” Jules switched her gaze to the west, trying to control her excitement at the idea. “Then we could reach it from the western side of this continent, too, couldn’t we?”

  “I suppose. No one knows.”

  Pulling her thoughts back from dreams of another continent, Jules led Aravind back out on deck. “All hands! Gather to listen and vote!”

  Once the crew of the Sun Queen had gathered so they could hear, Jules laid out her deal with Captain Aravind. “I know as captain I have authority to make such deals on behalf of the ship, but I wanted you all to be aware of it. There’s no profit in it today, but we’d get very little from looting this ship. Instead, it’s a guarantee of better profit within a few months’ time.”

  “They’ve got no money?” Kyle asked.

  “Just a pittance. They got cleaned out by pirates on their last voyage.”

  “Pirates?” Marta called in mock outrage. “The scum! They took our money!”

  “They did,” Jules said. “Anyone who wants to look in the ship’s strongbox is welcome to do so.”

  Daki had been speaking with the other sailors who’d been rescued from the wreck of the Merry Runner, and now raised his voice. “Captain Jules, we’d all like to take this offer of employment. It’ll keep us together, and offers good prospects for the future.”

  “Captain,” Gord said, “this seems to be the best we can make of this, but we need something better soon, don’t we? It’s been a while since we landed a good prize.”

  “We’ll get one,” Jules promised. “With this ship headed west to Dor’s, they won’t be telling anyone around here that we’re prowling these waters.”

  “Anyone else?” Liv demanded. “All right. Vote! All in favor!”

  Just about every hand went up.

  I wish you could see this, Jules thou
ght to Ian. I wish you could see that people can have a say in their own fates. “Get your things aboard this ship,” she told Daki and the others from the Merry. “Fair seas to you.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Daki said. “What I told you before, it still stands. If you have need of us, call.”

  A short time later, the grapnels were let go, and the Prosper swung about to begin tacking to the west. Captain Aravind, on his own quarterdeck, offered Jules a salute as the two ships separated.

  “You made some new friends,” Liv commented. “But Gord was right. We need something more substantial than friendship to pay the bills.”

  “We’ll get it,” Jules said.

  * * *

  In the early afternoon of the same day, long before the crew could get restless as the Sun Queen slowly trolled the sea lanes for targets, tall masts were sighted coming from the east.

  Putting on more sail again, the Sun Queen swooped down on her prey.

  “Oh, that’s a fat one, that is,” Marta cried from a spot high in the rigging. “There’ll be plenty for us aboard that ship!”

  The other ship tried to run, but the Sun Queen had the weather gage and could make best use of the wind. She closed the final distance, Jules gathering much of the crew on deck to overawe their prey.

  She herself climbed into the lower ratlines, the Mechanic revolver held high. When it came to overawing people, nothing matched that weapon.

  On the deck of the other ship, Jules saw crew gathering, armed with crossbows and cutlasses as her pirates were. But the pirates easily outnumbered the defenders, and everything about this encounter felt reassuringly normal. “Strike your sails!” Jules called across the gap remaining between the two ships, brandishing the Mechanic weapon. “Give us no trouble and none will be harmed! On my word!”

  The captain of the other ship had seemed ready to fight. But now, staring at Jules, she called out orders. Her crew set down their weapons and hastened up into the rigging to furl the sails.

  Once again the grapnels were thrown, and once again Jules led her pirates onto the deck of a prize.

  The captain approached Jules, part of a tattoo visible on one arm attesting to her origins on the lower decks. The woman’s attitude bespoke the competence of someone who’d spent their life on the waves. But she also displayed a nervousness which Jules thought a natural response to having pirates aboard. “My ship is yours. I hold you to your word to harm none.”

  Jules gestured to Liv and Gord. “Take two groups and search the ship.”

  The captain shook her head at Jules, the uneasiness even more apparent. “Not the stern cabins. On your life, not the stern cabins.”

  Jules looked aft, seeing that on this larger ship the stern cabin had been split into two halves, one to port and one to starboard. “Passengers?” Jules tried to keep her own voice calm.

  “On the port side, there’s a family of Mechanics.”

  “Are they armed?”

  “Not that I’ve seen.” The captain eyed Jules. “More to your concern is who’s in the cabin on the starboard side. It’s a Mage, and unless I’m much mistaken you’re the woman that any Mage will seek the death of.”

  “I’m that woman,” Jules said. “Just one Mage?”

  “Aye. One is more than enough, I’d say.”

  “Me, too.” Jules took a deep breath. “Liv, keep the crew together for now.”

  “What are you going to do?” Liv asked, her eyes on the door to the starboard cabin.

  “Either I wait for the Mage to come out and try to kill me, which he will, or I go in,” Jules said, keeping her voice matter of fact. “I’d rather have the initiative.”

  “Be careful, you fool,” Liv muttered.

  “I’ve got this,” Jules said, raising the revolver again.

  She paused to check the revolver, ensuring that one of the cartridges was in the cylinder ready to rotate into place when she pulled the trigger. Acutely aware that every eye on the ship was on her, Jules began walking toward the starboard cabin. Half expecting the door to fly open and the Mage to leap out at her, Jules was mildly surprised to reach the door without anything happening.

  She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly to calm herself, then another breath in. Drawing her dagger, she used the hand holding it to push the door open as Jules sprang inside.

  The interior was much dimmer than the light outside, because the curtains on the stern windows were pulled completely closed. Jules barely noticed that, her eyes fixed on the Mage sitting on the deck in the center of the cabin.

  The Mage’s eyes had been closed, but they opened with a slow deliberation that almost unnerved her. Fixing his gaze on Jules, the Mage studied her with eyes that held no feeling in a face that might have been that of a dead man, so little emotion did it hold.

  She centered the Mechanic revolver on the Mage, starting to pull the trigger.

  He disappeared.

  Jules, one step inside the cabin, paused for just an instant before taking a hasty step backwards to stand in the doorway. Her heart pounding, her dagger before her in a guard position, she searched the apparently empty cabin for any sign of the Mage.

  No one else on the ship was speaking, leaving an eerie silence in which the only sounds were the creaking of the ship’s wood, the sigh of the wind through the rigging, and the soft murmur of the sea against the hull. Jules strained her ears for any noise that might mark the movement of the Mage, but heard nothing.

  A bright beam from the late-afternoon sun lanced through the open doorway and onto the floor of the cabin, dust motes dancing in the light. Jules found herself staring at the movement of the specks of dust.

  Something unseen moved through that spot, setting the dust motes swirling.

  Jules brought her dagger up just in time to catch the thrust of the Mage’s knife aimed at her neck.

  She centered the revolver on where he must be, but hesitated, knowing that she couldn’t afford to waste a single cartridge.

  A glint of light marked the Mage knife swinging at her, Jules shifting her dagger just in time to parry the blow. Breathing heavily, she stared into the empty cabin, wondering if she’d have to shoot the revolver and hope she hit her impossible to see target.

  Between one eye blink and the next, the Mage was there, standing to one side of the door where the revolver shot aimed at the center would’ve missed him. Jules had time to notice sweat streaming down the Mage’s face, his muscles quivering with exhaustion, as she shifted her aim. What had exhausted the Mage so quickly? Surely not only two attacks with the knife.

  The Mage began another thrust as Jules pulled the trigger and the thunder of the revolver filled the world.

  He paused, a blackened hole in the robes over his abdomen, swaying slightly like a man who’d had too much to drink.

  Still showing no trace of feeling, the Mage brought his knife up again.

  Jules’ weapon thundered once more as she pulled the trigger in a spastic yank, so close to the Mage that she couldn’t miss.

  The Mage jerked, his hand still gripping the long knife but seeming unable to move. After a long moment, he took one halting step back, then his legs collapsed under him. Hitting the deck with a thud, he lay face up, his eyes open.

  Jules cautiously approached him, her Mechanic weapon still pointed at the Mage. But he didn’t move aside from the rapid, shallow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.

  She stopped, staring at the Mage’s face. It was no longer completely impassive and unfeeling. As with the other Mages she’d seen die, some sensation was coming into his expression as his strength failed.

  Was the trace of emotion she was seeing something like serenity?

  Why?

  Jules went to one knee beside him and the Mage’s eyes shifted to look at her.

  “Over…at…last,” he said, the celebratory nature of the words sounding odd in the unfeeling tones of a Mage.

  “You’re dying,” Jules said. “Are you happy about that?”

/>   “Ha…ppiness…ill…usion.”

  “Happiness is an illusion?” It wasn’t hard to understand why someone who believed that might welcome death. Jules studied the Mage’s face, seeing the traces of old scars that she’d noted on other Mages.

  Fighting the revulsion she felt over touching a Mage’s clothing, Jules pulled open his robes to expose the Mage’s chest.

  The ragged holes made by the projectiles from the Mechanic weapon were still spastically spurting gouts of blood as the Mage’s heart made its last feeble efforts to serve the needs of his body. Blood had covered much of the chest, but on what was visible Jules could see more old scars that must have been inflicted decades before. She knew of some street gangs in Landfall that used ritual scarring to form hidden marks identifying them as members, but the scars on the Mage showed no sign of any pattern. They showed the randomness of blows rendered by a variety of objects.

  Why did every Mage she’d seen close up have such scars?

  Jules looked back at the face of the Mage. “How many blows does it take to beat the humanity out of a person and leave only a Mage?” she asked.

  But his eyes had closed, and as Jules watched his last breath sighed out, taking his life with it.

  She grimaced, bracing herself on her raised knee to stand up.

  The one other Mage she’d managed to exchange some words with had seen death coming and feared it. This Mage had apparently welcomed its approach.

  Was it too much to ask that the monsters of her world have some consistency?

  She frowned down at the body, thinking about that. Mages all lacked any expression on their faces and feeling in their voices. That made them seem identical. Say the word “Mage” and every common would summon up the same image. But the two Mages she’d spoken with had clearly been individuals, different on the inside.

  What did it mean?

  How could she ever learn the answer?

  Jules turned and left the cabin, seeing everyone on deck watching her. “The Mage is dead,” she announced, looking away from the awed gazes of everyone watching her.

  “What do we do with the body?” The captain of the ship stared from Jules to the open door of the cabin and back again.