Red Seas Under Red Skies gb-2

by Scott Lynch 2007

  “So in truth,” said.Locke, “all we really know is that whoever it is wanted us dead. Not scared off, not brought in for a little chat. Plain old dead. Maybe if we can ponder that, we might come up with a few—”

  Locke stopped speaking the instant he saw their waitress approaching their booth… then looked more closely and saw that it wasn’t their waitress at all. The woman wearing the leather apron and red cap was Merrain. “Ah,” said Jean. “Time to settle the bill.”

  Merrain nodded and handed Locke a wooden tablet with two small pieces of paper pinned to it. One was indeed the bill; the other had a single line written on it in flowing script: Remember the first place I took you the night we met? Don’t waste time.

  “Well,” said Locke, passing the note to Jean, “we” d love to stay, but the quality of the service has sharply declined. Don’t expect a gratuity.” He counted copper coins onto the wooden tablet, then stood up. “Same old place as usual, Jerome.”

  Merrain collected the wooden tablet and the money, bowed and vanished in the direction of the kitchens.

  “I hope she doesn’t take offence about the tip,” said Jean when they were out on the street. Locke glanced around in every direction and noticed that Jean was doing likewise. Locke’s sleeve-stilettos were a comforting weight inside each arm of his coat, and he had no doubt that Jean was ready to produce the Wicked Sisters with a twitch of his wrists.

  “Gods,” Locke muttered. “We should be back in our beds, sleeping the day away. Have we ever been less in control of our lives than we are at this moment? We can’t run away from the Archon and his poison, which means we can’t just disengage from the Sinspire game. Gods know we can’t even see the Bondsmagi lurking, and we’ve suddenly got assassins coming out of our arseholes. Know something? I’d lay even odds that between the people following us and the people hunting us, we’ve become this city’s principal means of employment. Tal Verrar’s entire economy is now based on fucking with w.”

  It was a short walk, if a nervous one, to the crossroads just north of the Gilded Cloister. Cargo wagons clattered across the cobbles and tradesfolk walked placidly to their jobs. As far as they knew, Locke thought, the Savrola was the quietest, best-guarded neighbourhood in the city, a place where nothing worse than the occasional drunk foreigner ever disturbed the calm.

  Locke and Jean turned left at the intersection, then approached the door of the first disused shop on their right. While Jean kept a watch on the street behind them, Locke stepped up to the door and rapped sharply, three times. It opened immediately and a stout young man in a brown leather coat beckoned them in.

  “Stay away from the window,” he said once he’d closed and bolted the door behind them. The window was covered with tightly drawn sailcloth curtains, but Locke agreed that there was no need to tempt fate. The only light in the room came from the sunrise, filtered soft pink through the curtains, enabling Locke to see two pairs of men waiting at the rear of the shop. Each pair consisted of one heavy, broad-shouldered man and one smaller man, and all four of the strangers were wearing identical grey cloaks and broad-brimmed grey hats.

  “Get dressed,” said the man in the leather coat, pointing to a pile of clothing on a small table. Locke and Jean were soon outfitted in their own matching grey cloaks and hats. “New summer fashion for Tal Verrar?” said Locke.

  “A little game for anyone trying to follow you,” said the man. He snapped his fingers and one set of grey-clad strangers moved to stand right behind the door. “I’ll go out first. “Vbu stand behind these two, follow them out, then enter the third carriage. Understood?”

  “What carri—” Locke started to say, but he cut himself off as he heard the clatter of hoofs and wheels in the street immediately outside. Shadows passed before the window and after a few seconds the man in the brown coat unbolted the door. “Third carriage. Move fast,” he said without turning around, and then he threw the door open and was out into the street.

  At the kerb just outside the disused shop three identical carriages were lined up. Each was black lacquered wood with no identifying crests or banners, each had heavy drapes drawn over its windows and each was pulled by two black horses. Even their drivers all looked vaguely similar and wore the same reddish uniforms under leather overcoats.

  The first pair of grey strangers stepped out through the door and hurried to the first carriage in line. Locke and Jean left the disused shop a second later, hurrying to the rear carriage. Locke caught a glimpse of the last team of grey strangers all but running to the door of the. middle carriage behind them. Jean worked the latch on the rear carriage’s door, held it open for Locke and flung himself inside afterward.

  “Welcome aboard, gentlemen.” Merrain lounged in the right forward corner of the compartment, her waitress’s clothing discarded. She was now dressed as though for a ride in an open saddle, in field boots, black breeches, a red silk shirt and a leather vest. Locke and Jean settled beside one another in the seat across from her. Jean’s slamming of the door threw them into semi-darkness, and the carriage lurched into motion.

  “Where the hell are we going?” Locke began to shrug off his grey cloak as he spoke.

  “Leave that on, Master Kosta. You’ll need it when we get out again. First we’ll all tour the Savrola for a bit. Then we’ll split — one carriage to the Golden Steps, one to the northern edge of the Great Gallery and us to the docks to catch a boat.” “A boat to where?” “Don’t be impatient. Sit back and enjoy the ride.”

  That was difficult, to say the least, in the hot and stuffy compartment. Locke felt sweat running down his brow and he grumpily removed his hat and held it in his lap. He and Jean attempted to pelt Merrain with questions, but she answered with nothing but non-committal “hmmms” until they gave up. Tedious minutes passed. Locke felt the carriage rattling around several corners, then down a series of inclines that had to be the ramp from the upper heights of the Savrola to the sea-level docks. “We’re almost there,” said Merrain after another few minutes had passed in uncomfortable, jouncing silence. “Hats back on. When the carriage stops, go straight to the boat. Take your seat at the rear and for the gods” sakes, if you see anything dangerous, duck.”

  True to her word, the carriage rattled to a halt just a few heartbeats later. Locke planted his hat over his hair once again, fumbled for the door mechanism and squinted as it opened into bright morning light. “Out,” said Merrain. “Don’t waste time.”

  They were down on the interior docks at the very north-eastern tip of the Savrola, with a sheer wall of black Elderglass behind them and several dozen anchored ships on the gleaming, choppy water before them. One boat was lashed to the nearest pier, a sleek gig about forty feet long with a raised and enclosed gallery at the stern. Two lines of rowers, five to a side, filled most of the rest of its space.

  Locke hopped down from the carriage and led the way toward the boat, past a pair of alert men wearing cloaks as heavy as his own, quite inappropriate for the weather. They were standing at near-attention, not lounging, and Locke caught a glimpse of a sword-hilt barely hidden beneath one cloak.

  He all but scampered up the flimsy ramp to the boat, hopped down into it and threw himself onto the bench at the rear of the passenger gallery. The gallery, fortunately, was only enclosed on three sides; a decent forward view of their next little voyage would be vastly preferable to another trip inside a dark box. Jean was close behind him, but Merrain turned right, climbed through the mass of rowers and seated herself in the coxswain’s position at the bow.

  The soldiers on the dock rapidly pulled back the ramp, unlashed the boat and gave it a good push away from the dock with their legs. “Pull,” said Merrain, and the rowers exploded into action. Soon the boat was creaking to their steady rhythm and knifing across the little waves of Tal Verrar’s harbour.

  Locke took the opportunity to study the men and women at the oars — they were all leanly muscled, all with hair neatly trimmed short, most with fairly visible scars. Not one of
them looked to be younger than their mid-thirties. Veteran soldiers, then. Possibly even Eyes without their masks and cloaks.

  “I have to say, Stragos’s people put on a good production,” said Jean. He then raised his voice: “Hey! Merrain! Can we take these ridiculous clothes off yet?” She turned only long enough to nod and then returned her attention to the waters of the harbour. Locke and Jean eagerly removed their hats and cloaks and piled the clothing on the deck at their feet.

  The ride across the water took about a third of an hour, as near as Locke could tell. He would have preferred to be free to study the harbour in all directions, but what he could see out through the open front of the gallery revealed enough. First they headed southwest, following the curve of the inner docks, past the Great Gallery and the Golden Steps. Then they turned south, putting the open sea on their right, and sped toward a huge crescent island of a like size with the one on which the Sinspire sat.

  Tal Verrar’s south-western crescent wasn’t tiered. It was more like a naturally irregular hillside, studded with a number of stone towers and battlements. The huge stone quays and long wooden docks at its northwestern tip comprised the Silver Marina, where commercial vessels could put in for repairs or refitting. But past that, past the bobbing shapes of old galleons waiting for new masts or sails, lay a series of tall, grey walls that formed enclosed bays. The tops of these walls supported round towers, where the dark shapes of catapults and patrolling soldiers could be seen. The bow of their boat was soon pointed at the nearest of these huge stone enclosures.

  Til be damned,” said Jean. “I think they’re taking us into the Sword Marina.”

  2

  The vast stone walls of the artificial bay were gated with wood. As the boat approached, shouts rang out from the battlements above and the clanking of heavy chains echoed off stone and water. A crack appeared in the middle of the gate, and then the two doors slowly swung inward, sweeping a small wave before them. As the boat passed through the gate Locke tried to estimate the size of everything he was seeing; the opening itself had to be seventy or eighty feet wide, and the timbers of the doors looked to be as thick as an average man’s torso.

  Merrain called instructions to the rowers and they brought the boat in carefully, coasting gently up to a small wooden dock where a single man waited to receive them. The rowers had placed the boat at an angle, so that the end of the dock barely scraped the hull of the boat between the rowers and the passenger gallery.

  “Your stop, gentlemen,” called Merrain. “No time to tie up, I’m afraid. Be nimble or get wet.”

  “You’re the soul of kindness, madam,” said Locke. “I” ve shed any lingering regret about failing to leave a tip for you.” He moved out of the gallery and to the gunwale on his right hand. There the stranger waited with one arm held out to assist him. Locke sprang up to the dock easily enough with the man’s help, and the two of them in turn yanked Jean to safety.

  Merrain’s rowers backed water immediately; Locke watched as the gig made sternway, aligned itself with the gate and then sped back out of the little bay at high speed. Chains rattled once again and water surged as the gates drew closed. Locke glanced up and saw that teams of men were turning huge capstans, one on either side of the bay doors.

  “Welcome,” said the man who’d helped them out of the boat. “Welcome to the most foolish damn venture I ever hear of, much less got pressed into. Can’t imagine whose wife you must” ve fucked to get assigned to this here suicide mission, sirs.”

  The man could have been anywhere between fifty and sixty; he had a chest like a tree stump and a belly that hung over his belt as though he was trying to smuggle a sack of grain beneath his tunic. Yet his arms and neck were almost scrawny in their wiriness, seamed with jutting veins and the scars of hard living. He had a round face, a woolish white beard and a greasy streak of white hair that fell straight off the back of his head like a waterfall. His dark eyes were nestled in pockets of wrinkles under permanent furrows.

  “That might” ve been a pleasant diversion,” said Jean, “if we” d known we were going to end up here anyway. Who might you be?”

  “Name’s Caldris,” said the old man, “Ship” s master without a ship. You two must be Masters de Ferra and Kosta.” “Must be,” said Locke.

  “Let me show you around,” said Caldris. “Ain’t much to see now, but you’ll be seeing a lot of it.”

  He led the way up a set of rickety stairs at the rear of the dock, which opened onto a stone plaza that rose four or five feet above the water. The entire artificial bay, Locke saw, was a square roughly one hundred yards on a side. Walls enclosed it on three sides, and at the rear rose the steep glass hillside of the island. There were a number of structures built on platforms sticking out from that hillside: storage sheds, armouries and the like, he presumed.

  The gleaming expanse of water beside the plaza, now sealed off from the harbour once again by the wooden gates, was large enough to float several ships of war, and Locke was surprised to see that there was only one craft tied up. A one-masted dinghy, barely fourteen feet long, rocked gently at the plaza’s side. “Quite a bay for such a small boat,” he said.

  “Eh? Well, the ignorant need room in which to risk their lives without bothering anybody else for a while,” said Caldris. “This here’s our own private pissing-pond. Never you mind the soldiers on the walls; they’ll ignore us. Unless we drown. Then they’ll probably laugh.” “Just what is it,” said Locke, “that you think we’re doing here, Caldris?”

  “I” ve got a month or so in which to turn two ignorant straight-legged fumblethumb landlubbers into something resembling phoney sea-officers. All gods as my witness, sirs, I suspect this is all gonna end in screaming and drowning.”

  “I might have taken offence at that if I didn’t know that every name you just called us was true,” said Locke. “We told Stragos we didn’t know the first damn thing about sailing.” “The Protector seems mighty set on having you out to sea regardless.” “How long have you been in his navy?” asked Jean.

  “Been at sea forty-five years, maybe. In the Verrari navy even before there was Archons; been in the Thousand-Day War, the old wars against Jerem, the war against the Ghostwinds Armada… seen a lot of shit, gentlemen. Thought I had it sewn up — been master on Archon’s vessels for twenty years. Good pay. Even got a house coming, or so I thought. Before this shit. No offence.” “None taken,” said Locke. “This some sort of punishment detail?”

  “Oh, it’s punishment, Kosta. It’s punishment all right. Just weren’t no crime done to earn it. Archon sort of volunteered me. Fuck me, but that’s what all my loyalty bought. That and a taste of the Archon’s wine, so I can’t just quit or run away on you. Poisoned wine. The waiting sort of poison. I take you to sea, outlive all this nonsense, I get the antidote. Maybe my house, if I’m lucky.” “The Archon gave you poisoned wine?” said Locke.

  “Didn’t know it was poisoned, obviously. What was I supposed to do,” Caldris spat, “not fuckin” drink it?”

  “Of course not,” said Locke. “We’re passengers in the same boat, friend. Except it was cider with us. We had a hell of a thirst.” “Oh, really?” Caldris gaped. “Ha! Fuck me raw! Here I thought I was the biggest damn fool on the Sea of Brass. Here I thought I was the damnedest halfwit of a blind, uselsss… old… ah…”

  He soon noticed the glare Locke and Jean were giving him in unison, and he coughed loudly. “Which is to say, sirs, that misery does love company, and I can see that we’re all going to be real enthusiastic about this here do-or-die mission.”

  “Right. So, ah, tell us,” said Jean. “Exactly how are we going to get on with this?”

  “Well, first I reckon we talk, second I reckon we sail. I got just a few things to say before we tempt the gods, so open your ears. First, it takes five years or so to make a landsman into a halfway decent sailor. Ten to fifteen to make a halfway decent sea-officer. So fuckin” attend this: I ain’t making no halfway decent sea-officers of
you. I’m making shams. I’m making it so you’re not embarrassed to talk rope and canvas around real sailors, and that’s about it. Maybe, just maybe, that’s what I can do to you in a month. So you can pretend to give orders while taking “em from me. Taking “em good.””

  “Fair enough,” said Locke. “The more you handle, the more comfortable we’ll be, honest.”

  “I just don’t want you to decide you’re heroes who” ve learned the full business, so’s you start changing sails and trim and courses without my leave. Do that and we’re all gonna die, fast as a one-copper fuck in a one-whore cathouse. I hope that’s clear.”

  “Not to get ahead of ourselves,” said Jean, “but where the hell is this ship on which we would never, ever dare do anything like that?”

  “It’s around,” said Caldris. “Getting a bit of finishing in another bay, just to help it hold together. For the time being, that there’s the only vessel you’re fit to board.” He pointed at the dinghy. “That’s what I’ll learn you on.” “What does that little thing have to do with a real ship?” Locke said.

  “That little thing is what I learned on, Kosta. That little thing is where any real sea-officer starts. That’s how you cop to the basics — hull, wind and water. Know “em on a boat and you can think it out on a ship. So, off with your coats and vests and fancy shit. Leave anything you mind getting wet as I’m making no promises. Boots as well. You’ll do this barefoot.”

  Once Locke and Jean had stripped down to their tunics and breeches, Caldris led them over to a large covered basket that sat on the stones near the docked dinghy. He undid the cover, reached in and removed a live kitten. “Hello, you monstrous little necessity.” “Mrrrrwwwwww,” said the monstrous little necessity.

  “Kosta.” Caldris shoved the squirming kitten into Locke’s arms. “Look after her for a few minutes.”

  “Urn… why do you keep a kitten in that basket?” The kitten, dissatisfied with Locke’s arms, decided to wrap her paws around his neck and experiment on it with her claws.