by Scott Lynch
“Did you sleep last night, Master Caldris?”
“I found myself strangely unable, Captain.”
“You must rest sometime.”
“Aye, and the ship must generally stay above the waves, or so I’ve heard it suggested.”
Locke sighed, faced the bow, and studied the darkening southern sky. “A summer’s-end storm, I daresay. Been through enough of them in my time.” He spoke loudly and casually.
“Soon enough you’ll be in one more, Captain.”
Locke spent the afternoon counting stores in the main hold with Mal as his scribe, marking little lines on a wax tablet. They ducked and weaved through a forest of salted meat in treated cloth sacks, hung from the beams in the hold and swaying steadily with the increasing motion of the ship. The hold was danker already from constant occupation by the crew; those who had been inclined to sleep in the more open space beneath the forecastle had abandoned it as the promise of hard weather had loomed. Locke was certain he smelled piss; someone was either too lazy or too frightened to crawl out and use the craplines. That could get ugly.
The whole sky was a cataract of haze-gray by the fourth hour of the afternoon. Caldris, slumped against the mast for a brief respite while Bald Mazucca and another sailor held the wheel, ordered sails trimmed and lanterns passed around from the storm lockers. Jean and Jabril led parties belowdecks to ensure that their cargo and equipment was all properly stowed. A weapons locker flying open, or a barrel tumbling around in a rocking ship, would send hapless sailors to meet the gods.
After dinner, at Caldris’ whispered insistence, Locke ordered those sailors who’d dipped into the ship’s store of tobacco to smoke their last until further notice. Open flames would no longer be tolerated anywhere; alchemical lanterns would provide all of their light, and they would use the hearthstone or—more likely—take cold meals. Locke promised an extra half of a wine ration each night if that became necessary.
A premature darkness had infused the sky by the time Locke and Jean could sit down for a quiet drink in the stern cabin. Locke closed the shutters over his stern windows, and the compartment seemed smaller than ever. Locke regarded the dubious comforts of this symbol of Ravelle’s authority: a padded hammock against the larboard bulkhead, a pair of stools, his sword and knives hung on the wall by storm clasps. Their “table” was a flat wooden board atop Locke’s chest. Sad as it was, it was princely compared to the glorified closets claimed by Jean and Caldris, or the way the men seemed to burrow in cargo and canvas matting on the main deck.
“I’m so sorry about the cats,” said Locke.
“I could have remembered as well,” said Jean. Unspoken was the obvious statement that he’d trusted Locke enough not to feel that he needed to concern himself. Jean might be doing his best to stay polite, but guilt twisted in Locke’s stomach more sharply for it.
“No sharing this blame,” said Locke, sipping his warm ale. “I’m the captain of the bloody ship.”
“Don’t be grandiose.” Jean scratched his belly, which had been reduced by his recent activity to a much less dramatic curve than it had once possessed. “We’ll think of something. Hell, if we spend a few days plowing through a storm, the men won’t have time to worry about anything except when and how hard to piss their breeches.”
“Hmmm. Storm. Fine opportunity for one of us to misstep and look a fool in front of the men. More likely to be me than you.”
“Quit brooding.” Jean grinned. “Caldris knows what he’s doing. He’ll haul us through somehow.”
There was a sudden heavy impact on the cabin door. Locke and Jean jumped up from their stools in unison, and Locke darted for his weapons. Jean shouted, “What passes?”
“Kosta,” came a faint voice, followed by a feeble rattling, as though someone was trying and failing to work the latch.
Jean pulled the door open just as Locke finished buckling on his sword-belt. Caldris stood at the bottom of the companionway, clutching the doorframe for support, swaying on his feet. The amber glow of Locke’s cabin lamp revealed wretched details: Caldris’ eyes were bloodshot and rolling upward, his mouth hung open, and his waxy skin was glazed with sweat.
“Help, Kosta,” he whispered, wheezing with a sound that was painful just to hear.
Jean grabbed him and held him up. “Damn,” he muttered. “He’s not just tired, Leo … Captain. He needs a bloody physiker!”
“Help … Kosta,” moaned the sailing master. He clawed at his left upper arm with his right hand, and then at his left breast. He squeezed his eyes shut and winced.
“Help me?” Locke put a hand beneath Caldris’ chin; the man’s pulse was wild and erratic. “What do you mean, help me?”
“No.” Caldris grimaced with concentration, sucking in a harsh breath between each word. “Help. Me. Kosta!”
“Lay him on the table,” said Jean, and together he and Locke pressed the old man down onto his back.
“Sweet gods,” said Locke, “is it the poison? I don’t feel any different.”
“Nor I,” said Jean. “I think … I think his heart is seizing up. I’ve seen it before. Shit. If we can calm him down, maybe get him to drink something—”
But Caldris moaned again, dug feebly at the left side of his chest with both hands, and shuddered. His hands fell limp. One long, strangled exhalation escaped from his throat, and Locke, in rising horror, felt frantically around the base of his neck with the fingers of both hands.
“His pulse is gone,” Locke whispered.
A soft rattle on the cabin roof, gentle at first but quickly rising in tempo, told them that the first drops of rain were beginning to fall on the ship. Caldris’ eyes, fixed on the ceiling, were lifeless as glass.
“Oh, shit,” said Jean.
II
CARDS UP THE SLEEVE
“Gamblers play just as lovers make love and drunkards drink—blindly and of necessity, under domination of an irresistible force.”
Jacques Anatole Thibault
CHAPTER EIGHT
SUMMER’S END
1
DARK WATER ACROSS THE BOW, water at the sides, water in the air, falling with the weight of lead pellets against Locke’s oilcloak. The rain seemed to come first from one side and then another, never content to fall straight down, as the Red Messenger rocked back and forth in the gray hands of the gale.
“Master Valora!” Locke held fast to the safety lines knotted around the mainmast (as they were knotted all around the deck) and bellowed down the main-deck hatch. “How much water in the well?”
Jean’s answer came up a few moments later. “Two feet!”
“Very good, Master Valora!”
Locke caught a glimpse of Bald Mazucca staring at him, and he suppressed a feeling of unease. He knew that Caldris’ sudden death the day before had been taken by the crew as an omen of the worst sort; they were openly muttering about women and cats, and the focal point of all their unkind attention was one Orrin Ravelle, whose status as captain and savior was steadily fraying. Locke turned toward the helmsman and found him once again squinting ahead into the stinging rain, seemingly absorbed in his duty.
Two cloaked sailors stood at the second wheel behind Mazucca; in seas this strong control of the rudder could easily fly free from the grip of a single man. Their faces were dark shadows within their hoods; they had nothing friendly to say to Locke, either.
The wind screamed through the lines and yards overhead, where most of the sails were tightly furled. They continued to push vaguely southwest under the press of nothing but close-reefed topsails. They were heeled over so far to starboard that Mazucca and his assistants were not merely standing in wait at their wheels. The crashing sea demanded their constant, tedious concentration to keep the ship stable, and still the sea was rising.
A rush of gray-green water ran over Locke’s bare toes and he sucked in breath; he’d abandoned his boots for the more certain footing of unprotected feet. Locke watched that water roll across the deck, unwelcome but
constant guest, before it poured away down the scuppers and leaked past the edges of the storm-canvas laid beneath the hatch gratings. In truth the water was warm, but here in the sunless heart of the storm, with the wind like knives in the air, his imagination made it seem cold.
“Captain Ravelle!”
Jabril was approaching along the larboard rail, storm lantern in one night-black hand. “It might’ve been advisable to take down the fuckin’ topgallant masts a few hours ago,” he shouted.
Since Locke had risen that morning, Jabril had offered at least half a dozen rebukes and reminders without prompting. Locke stared upward at the very tips of the main and foremasts, nearly lost in the swirling haze overhead. “I gave it some thought, Jabril, but it didn’t seem necessary.” According to some of what Locke had read, even without sails flying from their yards, the topgallant masts might give unwanted leverage to deadly storm winds, or even be lost over the side as the vessel bucked and heaved. He’d been too busy to think of striking them down.
“It’ll seem pretty gods-damned necessary if they come down and take more of the rigging with them!”
“I might have them struck down in a while, Jabril, if I think it proper.”
“If you think it proper?” Jabril gaped at him. “Are you bereft of your bloody senses, Ravelle? The time to strike the bastards was hours ago; now the hands we have are in sore need elsewhere, and the fuckin’ weather’s up! We might try it only were the ship in peril … but damn me, she might soon be! Have you not been out this far on the Sea of Brass before, Captain?”
“Aye, of course I have.” Locke sweated within his oilcloak. Had he known the real extent of Jabril’s sea-wisdom, he might have tasked the man with minding such details, but now it was too late, and some of his incompetence was laid bare. “Forgive me, Jabril. Caldris was a good friend. His loss has left me a bit off-kilter!”
“Indeed! As the loss of the fuckin’ ship might leave us all more than a touch off-kilter, sir.” Jabril turned and began making his way forward along the larboard rail, then after a few seconds whirled back to Locke. “You and I both know for a damn truth there’s not a single bloody cat on board, Ravelle!”
Locke hung his head and clung to the mizzen. It was too much to hope that Mazucca and the hands standing behind him hadn’t heard that. But of course, at his glance, they said nothing and betrayed nothing, staring fixedly ahead into the storm, as though trying to imagine he were not there at all.
2
BELOWDECKS WAS a nightmare. At least on deck one had masts and crashing seas to offer some perspective on one’s place. Down here, in the enveloping fug of sweat, urine, and vomit, the shuddering walls themselves seemed to tilt and lurch at malicious whim. Streams of water poured down from hatchways and gratings, despite the weather precautions the crew had taken. The main deck echoed with the muffled howling of the wind, and the clanking sound of the pumps rose from the orlop below.
Those pumps were fine Verrari gearwork, capable of heaving water up and dashing it over the side at some speed, but they demanded eight-man shifts in seas like this, and the labor was backbreaking. Even a crew in good health would have found the job onerous; it was just plain bad luck for this bunch that so few of them had come out of prison at anything near their full strength.
“The water gains, Captain,” said a sailor Locke couldn’t recognize in the near darkness. He’d popped his head up the hatchway from the orlop. “Three feet in the well. Aspel says we busted a seam somewhere; says he needs men for a repair party.”
Aspel was their approximation of a ship’s carpenter. “He’ll have them,” Locke said, though from where, he knew not. Ten doing important work on deck, eight at the pumps … damn near their time to be relieved, too. Six or seven still too bloody weak to be of any use save as ballast. A squad in the orlop hold with Jean, resecuring casks of food and water after three had come loose and broken open. Eight sleeping fitfully on the main deck just a few feet away, having been up all night. Two with broken bones, trying to dull the pain with an unauthorized ration of wine. Their rudimentary scheme of watches was unraveling in the face of the storm’s demands, and Locke struggled to subsume a sharp pang of panic.
“Fetch Master Valora from the orlop,” he said at last. “Tell him he and his men can look to the stores again once they’ve given Aspel a hand.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Captain Ravelle!”
Another shout rose from below as the first sailor disappeared, and Locke stood over the hatchway to answer. “What passes?”
“Our time at the bloody pumps, sir! We can’t keep up this gods-damned pace forever. We need relief. And we need food!”
“You shall have them both,” said Locke, “in but ten minutes.” Though from where, again, he knew not; all his choices were sick, injured, exhausted, or otherwise engaged. He turned to make his way back up to the deck. He could swap the deck-watch and the men at the pumps; it would bring joy to neither group, but it might serve to nudge the ship ahead of total disaster for a few more precious hours.
3
“WHAT DO you mean, you haven’t been turning the glasses?”
“Captain Ravelle, sir, beggin’ your double-fuckin’ pardon, but we ain’t had no time to turn the glasses nor mind the log since … hell, I suppose I can’t say. A while now.”
Bald Mazucca and his mate looked more like they were clinging to his wheel for dear life than steering the ship with it. Two teams of two had the wheels; the air was a frenzy of howling wind and stinging rain. The sea, cresting twenty feet or more, slammed past the bow again and again, washing the deck white and sluicing past Locke’s ankles. At long last they’d been forced to abandon a southerly course, and now they were dead west before the wind, pulled by one lonely storm forecourse. They scudded again and again through waves high as houses.
A bolt of yellow flitting past in the periphery of Locke’s vision was a storm-lantern flying free and vanishing over the side, soon to be a curiosity for the fish far below.
Locke hauled himself over to the binnacle and flipped through the damp pages of the master’s log; the last hasty entry read:
3rd hr afternoon 7 Festal 78 Morgante s/sw 8 kts
please may Iono spare these souls
Locke couldn’t remember when it had last felt like the third hour of the afternoon. The storm turned high noon dark as the insides of a shark’s gullet, and the crackle of lightning gave uncanny illumination to what might have been deep evening. They were as unfixed in time as they were in place.
“At least we know we’re somewhere on the Sea of Brass,” he shouted above the din. “We’ll be through this mess soon enough, and then we’ll take sightings to fix our latitude.”
If only that was as easily done as said. Fear and exhaustion had set Locke’s senses reeling; the world was gray and whirling in every direction, and he’d thrown up his last cold meal at the taffrail … gods knew when. Hours before, probably. If Bondsmage of Karthain had appeared on deck at that moment and offered to use magic to steer the ship to safety, Locke might have kissed their boots.
There was a sudden terrible sound overhead; an explosive crack followed by the warbling hiss of a broken line lashing the air. Seconds later came a louder crash, and then a snap-snap-snap like the noise of a whip biting flesh.
“ ’Ware above,” cried Jabril from somewhere forward; Locke and the ship seemed to lurch at once from another hammering wave. It was this loss of footing that saved Locke’s life. A shadow swooped past his left shoulder as he slipped to the wet deck, sputtering. There was a splintering crash, screams, and sudden blackness as something slick and yielding enshrouded him.
Sail canvas! Locke shoved at it, working his way out from beneath it. Strong hands grabbed his forearms and hauled him to his feet. They belonged to Jean, who was braced against the starboard quarterdeck rail. Locke had slid a few feet to his right with the fall. Muttering thanks, he turned to see exactly what he feared.
The main topgallant mast had
torn away. Its stays must have been snapped by some trick of wind or the ship’s tumult. It had plunged forward and down, unfurling and trailing sail from its yard as it went, before a mess of tangled rigging had snapped it backward like a pendulum just above the deck. It covered the wheels, and the four men previously manning them were nowhere to be seen. Locke and Jean moved in unison, fighting across wet canvas and torn rope while smaller pieces of debris continued to rain down around them. Already Locke could feel the ship moving in an unhealthy fashion beneath them. The wheels must be seized, the rudder put right instantly.
“All hands,” Locke cried with every ounce of conviction he possessed. “All hands on deck! All hands to save the ship!”
Jean heaved against the fallen topgallant spar, bracing himself against the mainmast, letting loose a howl of sheer exertion. Wood and canvas shifted, then crashed to the deck. Some of the handles of the two wheels had been reduced to splinters, but the wheels themselves were substantially intact. Locke could now see Bald Mazucca crawling slowly to his feet behind them; another man lay on deck with the top of his head plainly smashed in.
“Seize the wheel,” Locke cried, looking around for more help. “Seize the bloody wheel!” He found himself tangled with Jabril.
“Captain,” Jabril hollered straight into his face, “we are like to broach!”
Oh good, thought Locke, at least I know what that means. He gave Jabril a shove toward the wheels, and grabbed onto one beside Jean. “Helm a-larboard,” Locke coughed, confident of that much. Groaning with strain, he and Jean fought to heave the wheel in the proper direction. The Red Messenger was slipping to lee at an angle, down into the troughs of the waves; in moments she’d be broadside to them and all but lost. A dark wave, impossibly heavy, surged over the starboard rail and doused them all, the merest foretaste of what awaited failure.