The House of the Four Winds: Book One of One Dozen Daughters

by Mercedes Lackey

  “And the part about you being a hardened and experienced pirate,” Clarice said.

  “Well, as a medical man, I can say this much: dead is dead,” Dr. Chapman said. “The question is, do we do anything about it?”

  “Why of course we do,” Dominick said. “We hold a funeral service for our upright man of God.”

  * * *

  The meeting was over soon after that. Clarice waited for Dominick to ask her to stay behind, but he did not. But she could hardly demand he entertain her—if she was weary, he must be truly exhausted after the evening’s events. So she went off to her cabin as if it were any other night and prepared herself for bed. She spent an hour in her bunk tossing and turning before deciding that no matter how grueling the evening had been, sleep was not going to come. She dressed herself again and went up on the deck.

  The moon had long since set, and the night sky was choked with stars. Asesino rocked gently at anchor.

  Dominick was on the forecastle, sitting on the deck with his back to the rail looking up at the stars. “I thought you’d come, Clarence. You want answers. Thank you for keeping my secret even without them.”

  “Is it you who keeps the secret, Dominick?” Clarice asked boldly. “And not … another?”

  “The secret of the magic necklace that turns me into a dancing dog?” Dominick said bitterly. “I think it is my own choice—but how can I know? You do not know how hard tonight I struggled to be something—anything!—other than what she wished me to be. It was as if I lived through a dream from which I could not awaken.”

  “But you did nothing you need to regret,” Clarice said helplessly. Small consolation to a man enslaved by magic!

  “Not yet,” Dominick said bleakly. “I think I am only compelled to follow direct orders. But if I am commanded to sail Asesino to the ends of the earth and back again, apparently I shall. Though I have tested the length of her leash tonight, and I think there is a way to save you all.”

  For an instant Clarice’s heart sang with joyous hope. There was an escape, and Dominick had found it. “Tell me!”

  “As I say, I must do all I am told to do, but I think I may also do anything I have not been forbidden to. And so, when we are in open sea, I will put myself over the side. And you will all be safe—Dickon is no navigator, but he has wit enough to find Cibola—”

  “But you will drown!”

  “Keep your voice down,” Dominick snapped. “There are still talebearers among the crew.” He got to his feet and stood staring down at her. “What else can I do? If we survive the voyage, we will not survive the homecoming,” he added as Clarice still said nothing.

  “How—? How can you possibly…” Kill yourself? Leave me? There was no possible way to finish that sentence.

  “At least I will die by my own choice—and free you all with my death. It is the lot I have drawn. I should be grateful I’ve been left that much freedom. I thought you would be happy for me—for the sake of friendship, if nothing else.”

  He walked away, leaving Clarice alone.

  At least there was no one near to hear her furious weeping.

  8

  QUEEN OF HELL

  KAYIN HAMMERED on her cabin door far too early the next morning, waking Clarice from an uneasy sleep. For a baffled moment she listened to him shouting they were late, then realized she and Kayin were supposed to go to Rollo Thompson’s today to arrange for Asesino’s refitting. She scrambled into her clothes and hurried up on deck, blinking in surprise. The island had moved.

  Then she shook her head in exasperation at her obtuseness. Dorado was exactly where it had always been. It was Asesino that had moved. While she had lain, furious and grieving, in her narrow bunk, the ship had been conveyed to Mr. Thompson’s wharf, and the gangplank led to the landing stage below.

  She looked around. Asesino seemed lifeless with all her sails furled, and the deck seemed oddly deserted. Of course the crew have all gone ashore, she told herself chidingly.

  “Where is Dominick?” she demanded, and flinched inwardly at the sharpness she heard in her voice.

  “Gone ashore right after breakfast. Four bells, that’d be,” Kayin said. “An, er, a lady called for him.”

  “Was she half-naked and barefoot?” Clarice asked spitefully. The surprise on Kayin’s face was nothing to the shock she felt at her own words. Last night she’d wept at the thought that Dominick could see no solution to their problem but his own death. Now, she’d gladly strangle him herself. To go off alone with Shamal! Of all the stupid…!

  “She was a fine lady,” Kayin said, his expression clearly indicating he had no idea whether that was the right answer. “Dressed up like rich folks in Albion. She had a parasol,” he added hopefully. “And a fine carriage.”

  At least that didn’t sound like Shamal after all. “Fine,” Clarice said shortly, trying not to ask herself the question of just what fine lady would have come for Dominick; she could somehow not imagine either Aubrianna or Melisande Watson with a parasol and a carriage. “Let’s go and see how badly Rollo Thompson is going to cheat us.”

  Kayin clapped her heartily on the shoulder. “There’s the spirit, laddibuck!” he said in obvious relief. “We’ll make a sailor of you yet. Only…,” he said slowly. “Our Mr. Thompson’s going to be all over Asesino, isn’t he? And prying into every nook and cranny, I’ll be bound. He knows where the first mate bunks as well as anyone, I guess. And it’s going to look odd if your things aren’t there, what with Dominick telling all of them you’re that, and all.”

  Privately, Clarice doubted Thompson could tell one sea chest from another. Still, it was plain Kayin wanted to make the change. And everything Clarice owned was safely behind a stout lock even Dobbs hadn’t been able to pick.

  “Dobbs?” she blurted out.

  “Crew’s been told. We’ll say out a service for him come Sunday. We don’t have a body or any place to put it, anyway.”

  “I suppose that’s best,” Clarice said slowly. She wondered what they did with the dead here. Perhaps they cart them up the mountain and throw them into the volcano, she thought giddily.

  Kayin was still looking at her, clearly waiting for her answer to the question of changing cabins. “Are you sure you don’t mind?” she asked carefully.

  He grinned at her. “And me with a cabin of my own and a door to it either way? We can shift around again once we’re out to sea if you like. But the captain depends on you, and there’s no mistake about that. And, well, stands to reason. You and him, you’re two of a kind, see?”

  I’m not the one plotting to throw myself over the side and calling it a plan! She took a deep breath and pulled the tattered cloak of her masquerade about herself once more. “I’m sure you’re right, Kayin. I’ll get my trunk moved as soon as we get back.”

  “No need to trouble yourself.” Kayin stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled shrilly. “Hoy! Neddy! See you get Mr. Swann squared away before you go ashore!”

  From the far end of the deck, Ned Hatcliff got to his feet and semaphored his agreement.

  Well, Clarice thought. That’s a nice tactful, circumspect, undercover way to handle things.

  * * *

  Rollo Thompson was not precisely a thief. Nor was he any more dishonest than many innkeepers Clarice had met in her travels. It was just that he encouraged his clients to make assumptions, and the inevitable misunderstandings always worked in his favor.

  Clarice spent hours with Thompson in his cramped and sweltering cubbyhole office, going carefully over pages and pages of lists containing all the things Asesino needed. Each and every item and amount held a trap for the unsuspicious, and Mr. Thompson was tireless in his attempts to hurry her along. But he was dealing with someone who had been trained by an expert—her mother—in ferreting out those who thought selling to the Crown meant a license to enrich oneself, so she was equally tireless in her insistence on plodding slowly and carefully through a full discussion of each and every item.

  “Now t
hen. This cost for salt pork seems quite low,” she said.

  After several minutes of discussion, it transpired that this was the cost per dozen barrels, not the cost of the six dozen barrels they meant to order. Clearly not even a mistake—how was he to know Mr. Swann wasn’t entirely familiar with this utterly commonplace method of reckoning costs?

  And so the true figure was reckoned and written into the margin, with Mr. Thompson grumbling indulgently.

  If a price wasn’t too low, it was too high: the cost for twelve when they needed six, the cost for lemons when they’d ordered limes, or bread instead of biscuit, lard for butter, mutton for bacon—and those were only the things she knew the use of! All she could do was question everything, for if Mr. Thompson was a swindler and a cheat, he was at least an honest one and would not tell her a flat-out lie.

  When they were nearly finished with the manifest, Randolph returned with the inventory of the ship’s cargo, for he and his sibling had boarded Asesino as soon as Kayin and Clarice had arrived. The inventory had been countersigned by Geordie, so that information, at least, was not in dispute. Since the numbers were beyond reproach, Clarice and Thompson argued instead about the quality of the items—resolved by consulting Asesino’s manifest, with its dangling seals from the portmaster of Albion, the guildmaster of the Provender’s Guild (tea and spices), the seal of the Vintner’s Brotherhood (wine and brandy), the seals of the Glassmaker’s Guild and the brass foundry where the beads had been made, and the seal of the Chief Cargomaster in Ordinary (who’d verified the crates as they were loaded).

  By then, Clarice had a pounding headache, and even Mr. Thompson looked weary. “You’re a sharp lad and no mistake,” he said admiringly. “Well then! And here’s the two tallies—what I’ll offer for your goods and what you’ll offer for mine. And see? They match right up.”

  “Of course you’ve already figured in the tithe to the House,” Clarice said, rubbing her temples. “And paid it.”

  “Of course!” Thompson said, looking wide-eyed and innocent.

  “And will give me a letter to that effect. So there can be no confusion, you understand. And then you will take ten percent off your charges for wasting half my day, and you will give that to me in silver, not gold, so my crew can spend it here without getting cheated in the exchange. And do please be very clear on one thing. If I discover that your material is not entirely to the standards we have agreed upon, I will leap over the side of my ship, swim back here, and cut your throat as you sleep. I trust we have reached a full and complete understanding?” She should have been shocked at her own words. Surely they were nothing either Princess Clarice or Mr. Swann would have considered saying.

  But she was becoming someone else. Someone she’d once been unable to imagine.

  “Full and complete.” Thompson was beaming at her, which made Clarice think she should have demanded he take even more off the price. But she found it hard to convince herself it mattered. Either they’d be safely away from here with a hold full of what they needed …

  … or they’d all be dead and nobody would care anymore.

  * * *

  Mr. Thompson accompanied her as she left the chandlery. The wharf was a busy place now; Asesino was being unloaded. The sight before her was the Albion docks in miniature—save that the laborers on the Albion docks did not bear whip scars on their backs and brands upon their cheeks. Or wear the iron collar about their necks that marked them as slaves.

  Beasts of burden in coincidentally human form.

  Clarice stopped, staring. Well, here was the answer to one of the questions she had asked herself last night: Who did the work? Slaves! She ground her teeth, feeling sick at the sight.

  Slavery was illegal in every other place she knew.

  “Ah, admiring my fine ladies and gentlemen, are you?” Thompson asked. “You’ll be needing to take on crew before you sail, you looking a bit shorthanded, if you don’t mind me saying so. I could let you have some of them at a good price. Fine workers. Strong. And no trouble about finding wages for them, eh?”

  And when they come and slay us in our beds, how could I even say it was wrong?

  “I imagine the captain has made other plans,” Clarice said, and moved toward the gangplank. The slaves moved quickly aside to let her pass.

  Slaves.

  I wish I had never been born, Clarice thought miserably.

  * * *

  The following morning she spent hours following Kayin or Geordie about the ship as they oversaw Mr. Thompson’s slave laborers. Kayin had tried every tongue he knew, but he had no language in common with them and was reduced to issuing his orders in pidgin Albionnaise.

  Everyone was engaged in the hundreds of tiny tasks a ship’s crew dealt with in port. Geordie was having a jacket made at the tailor’s. Dickon had found a bookshop. Duff Evans, the ship’s carpenter, was seeing to the sharpening and repair of some of his tools at the blacksmith’s.

  Everyone had something to occupy him but her. Following Kayin through the bowels of the ship hardly counted. He would have done the same things whether she was there or not. Her presence was just another masquerade.

  That evening she dined with Dr. Chapman, Dickon, Kayin, and a few others from Asesino. Mr. Emerson was one of those at liberty, which meant that everyone had to take meals ashore. Dr. Chapman was in a merry humor, for he’d found a thaumaturgical physician to speed the healing of his broken arm. The cost was high, he said, but worth it entirely.

  Dominick wasn’t there.

  “I asked him to come along,” Dickon said, “and he said he was ‘stuffed as a tick’ and didn’t think he could bear the sight of food—possibly for several days.”

  There was general laughter at that, for Dickon was an excellent mimic, and it prompted a story from Dr. Chapman about the dangers of gorging the moment one made port. Of course, Rogerio responded with a story of his own, only to be capped by Kayin, and the meal passed merrily enough.

  But when Clarice returned to Asesino afterward, Dominick was nowhere to be seen. She lingered on deck for an hour or so, but he did not appear, and short of going and knocking on his cabin door …

  No.

  So she went to bed.

  In the morning, she was already ashore before she remembered she hadn’t looked for Dominick before she left. He was in neither of the two taverns that were open during the day to serve food, so she breakfasted and returned to the ship to continue watching over its refitting. By the end of the day, she was quite certain she knew every nook and cranny of Asesino intimately, and Dominick wasn’t in any of them.

  Nor did he join them at dinner, though tonight the whole of the Asesino’s new-minted officers and senior crew had commandeered the large table at the back of the Bucket O’Blood. In the midst of the boisterousness of the impromptu dinner party, she felt not merely alone, but lonely. As if the presence or absence of one man made the difference between companionship or isolation.

  She couldn’t ask where he was. No one else at the table seemed the least worried, and Dr. Chapman, if no one else, was always expecting disaster. If Dominick’s absence were unusual, he would be the first to speak up.

  But she had no heart to remain once she had finished her meal.

  When she stepped aboard the ship, Ned Hatcliff greeted her and assured her all was quiet. “Pirates,” he said sagely, “are your quiet and peaceful sorts, Mr. Swann.” At her skeptical look, he grinned. “Stands to reason, don’t it? Murdering and pillaging is their business, like. Who’d do a job of work without getting paid? Why, it’d be like a soldier starting a war while he was on leave.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” she answered doubtfully.

  She circled the deck, trying not to look—or feel—as if she was dawdling in hopes Dominick would magically appear. (A bad choice of words, that, she told herself, in this place where thaumaturgy seemed to be as pervasive as rain.) At last she admitted to herself that his arrival was unlikely, but a stubborn glimmer of hope made her lean h
er hip against a barrel propped against the rail and take out her cigarillo case. A touch of her spellmatch and the tip kindled. She blew out a cloud of smoke.

  If anyone were to look in my direction, they’d see the perfect image of a young gentleman swashbuckler—sword at hip, hat on head, taking a moment’s ease before his next adventure.

  She wished with all her heart it were the truth. Her sister Jennet was addicted to such stories. In them, the wicked were confounded, the virtuous triumphed … and the dashing hero never spent chapters wondering whether he’d fallen in love with someone … and if he had not, why was he so miserable?

  “Dearest Mama,” she said silently, mentally composing a letter she would never write and had no way to send, “I know that when I left Swansgaarde, you expected me to seek adventure in some civilized place from which I could send regular letters and receive them as well. I know yours would have been filled with good advice. And when I met a young man and wrote to you of him, you would have been able to tell me whether it was love or merely infatuation. You would have been able to tell me how I might know if his heart was true, and if mine was as well. You would have said I must bring him to Heimlichstadt, so that you and Papa could meet him.…”

  The fantasy was too painful. Clarice threw her half-smoked cigarillo over the side and went below.

  But tonight she did not sleep well.

  * * *

  The loading, Kayin said next morning, was nearly done. This afternoon he and Geordie would go about the town to collect a work party so that they could see the supplies safely put away by their own people.

  “Never trust a man to stow a cargo who won’t have to sail in the ship afterward,” Kayin said grimly. “It won’t turn out well at all.”

  “‘The eye of the master maketh the ox fat,’” Clarice said, quoting the old proverb.

  “That’s true enough. Still, once we’ve done with Mr. Thompson and his little ways, there’s no reason you need to stand about with us. And probably far better you don’t,” he added darkly.