Quillifer

by Walter Jon Williams

  I consulted acquaintances at the Butchers’ Guild, at that of the cannoneers, where I was now welcome as an amusing friend, and with Blackwell and the Roundsilvers. The duke suggested I invest in property and become a landlord, and Blackwell that I buy an interest in his new play.

  I laughed at Blackwell’s suggestion, and he, having made the offer facetiously, laughed with me. I decided against buying property because I knew not where I wanted to live, whether I would continue my bleak life in the capital, return to Ethlebight, or travel abroad. So, I returned to the business I knew best, and bought cattle and swine. There was war in Duisland, for all there had yet been no fighting, and I knew that soldiers and officers and sailors must eat. My animals were intended for the camps that would soon be forming around the capital, or to be salted and put up in casks for the navy. This put me in touch with people who contracted to supply the military, and one of them told me of a venture that had fallen short of money. A friend of his had bought a ship with the intent of leasing it to the state to convey soldiers and troops to the war in Bonille. But the ship proved to be in a poorer state than he was led to believe, and required repairs before it could leave port. He had put his entire fortune into the Sea-Holly, and was desperate; and so I rescued him, paid for the repairs, and now enjoyed a half-interest in his emprise.

  I was a little disturbed to discover that the government paid my new partner not in silver but in bills drawn on the treasury, which would be honored only at the government’s convenience. I reflected that I was probably safe enough, as I knew the Chancellor personally, and could apply to him for payment if I so needed. Still, there was a large secondary market in these notes, and I purchased a few of them at a discount, some from my own partner. I could afford to wait to redeem them, as I still had enough to live on and, though running low on coin, had not yet begun to sell the jewelry I had got from Sir Basil’s treasury.

  The Estates began meeting after the new year, and the new taxes were going into place under the direction of the Chancellor. I owned nothing that could be taxed besides a burned-out house in Ethlebight, and so far the government was not taxing land without whole structures on it.

  Master Lipton, the cannoneer, invited me to the tests of the duke’s great cannon, and so I paraded out of Innismore along with the glittering guns, each drawn by forty horses, lumbering along with great caissons containing the necessary powder and the round stone cannonballs, the whole array under the command of members of the Guild of Carters and Haulers. Gun crews had been drawn from the Loyall and Worshipfull Companie of Cannoneers, who, once we had arrived at the gun range, took charge of the guns, and also began clearing nearby trenches and earthworks of debris.

  The duke himself did not come, as he was involved with the Great Council and the House of Peers, and the duchess was acting as his hostess for a series of dinners and salons in which many of the issues plaguing the Estates would be settled.

  The guns were set up on the north bank of the Saelle, and their fire was to be directed at an uninhabited island about three hundred yards away. It took half an hour to load the first gun, what with forty pounds of gunpowder being ladled down the long barrel, and the giant cannonball hoisted up on a special sling. I, along with the Carters and Haulers and most of the cannoneers, watched from an earthwork two hundred yards away as an apprentice put a portfire in the touch hole and lit it. He scampered for safety in a trench, and the huge gun went off with a roar that stunned into silence the gulls and bitterns that had been calling from the mud flats. I could actually see the huge ball fly through the air and plow its way through the reeds on the island bank.

  Flame continued to lick from the gun’s muzzle even after the stone ball had crashed to a halt in a shower of mud. A vast cloud of white smoke rolled over the scene, and I could taste the sharp taste of brimstone on the air.

  Lipton, standing next to me, gave a nod. “That flew well. Maybe there is something in that monkish nonsense chanting after all.”

  The guns were each fired five times, which took up most of the day, after which Master Cannoneer Lipton agreed to sign the papers certifying that the guns would make a suitable addition to the royal armory. But by that point, I had lost interest in the proceedings, for I recognized a small galleon drifting up the river along with the tide.

  Meteor, the privateer’s commission of which was shared by myself and Kevin Spellman. And which was coming up the river with flags flying, for behind it came a capture, a galleon even larger than the privateer, and flying the white flag of submission.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  * * *

  he prize is owned by the Duke of Andrian,” said Kevin. “Lady Tern had been gone for a twelvemonth, and her master had no idea there was a war and put up no resistance. And it’s loaded with cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, and nutmeg from the Candara Coast, spices so valuable they might as well be bars of silver.”

  Delight rose in me like bubbles in a mineral spring. “I hardly think the courts will resist depriving Clayborne’s stepfather of such a fortune. Not when the Crown gets twenty percent. But,” I added cautiously, “perhaps my name should be kept out of the records insofar as that is possible.”

  Kevin raised his eyebrows. “Your name? Your reputation has been damaged in some way?”

  “A mere prejudice on the part of the monarch,” said I. “But I am trying to remain out of her sight for the present.”

  Kevin’s look turned cautious. “And . . . the other lady?”

  “It is a related story, but for another time.”

  I hardly wanted to discuss Orlanda at this moment. We were in Meteor’s great cabin, or rather the half of it used by Kevin. We ate steak-and-kidney pies I’d bought on shore, and were well into our second bottle of ruby-red Loretto wine.

  Kevin had told me all the news from Ethlebight. A well-spoken messenger had arrived bearing a list of the corsairs’ captives, along with the sums named for ransom. The Aekoi knew better than to send one of their own on such a mission, and tended to use men from Varcellos for this task, as Varcellos was a nautical nation between Duisland and the Empire, and so this gentleman was a Varcellan.

  “I have seen the list of captives,” said Kevin. “And I should tell you, your Master Dacket is not on it.”

  I looked at him in sudden sorrow, both for my master and for my hopes, for he it was who could certify me a lawyer without my having to apply to one of the Moots. That meant another one of my hopes had been pinned to the floor and trampled.

  “I saw him taken, he and his sons,” I said. “Are the sons on the list?”

  Kevin shook his head. “They are not mentioned.”

  “They might have died in the way to the Empire.”

  “Or it may be a bookkeeper’s error.” He put a hand on my arm. “Fear not, it may be sorted.”

  “I fear he is lost.”

  “We may be thankful that my family is coming home,” he said. “Thanks to our sale of the privateering commissions, I was able to raise the money and pay their ransoms. And a squadron of fast cruisers is now outfitting in Ethlebight, or have already gone to sea in search of prizes.”

  I told Kevin some of the news from Berlauda’s court, and let him know of my various commercial ventures.

  “Should I now sponsor you for membership in the Mercers?” asked he.

  “I hardly think I’m rich enough.”

  He looked rueful. “Nor am I now.”

  I laughed. “After you’ve taken Lady Tern?” said I. “A fortune’s just fallen into your lap!”

  “There will be no money from Lady Tern till the ship is condemned by a prize court, and in the meantime, I must pay the lawyers who argue our case. The ransoms took almost all my silver. I have precious little cash.”

  “Well.” I shrugged. “If you need a loan . . .”

  “To provision Meteor for another cruise will take more money than you possess, I fear. I’ll have to resort to a moneylender.”

  “With Lady Tern as your security, you sh
ould have no trouble raising a loan. In fact, I can introduce you to some reliable bankers.”

  “My family has a banker here.” Kevin poured claret into his goblet and gazed at it reflectively. “I think the wine is making me maudlin. We have been luckier than we have any right to be, given the war and all that happened to Ethlebight. And yet I feel sad that I had to pay ransoms, and think not to praise my good fortune that I could afford to pay without pawning my shirt.”

  “It is hardly a night for sorrow,” said I. “Perhaps we should sing a song.”

  He laughed. “Perhaps we should.”

  “Yet before we break into ‘Saucy Sailor,’ ” I said, “my Sea-Holly sails for Longfirth in a few days with a cargo of soldiers and supplies for the garrison. Perhaps Meteor could convoy her to Bonille, and save me the cost of insurance. And then we two could go privateering, and leave Selford in its misery behind.”

  Kevin had drunk enough wine to think this a perfect idea. While a winter storm roared and rattled through the city, we arranged to leave Lady Tern and its precious cargo in the hands of the lawyers, I paid my landlady three months’ rent in advance, new supplies were brought aboard, and the soldiers marched up Sea-Holly’s gangboard. The storm having passed, and the ships now busked and boun, we dropped down the Saelle on an ebb tide and set off across the Sea of Duisland to Longfirth, the Queen’s fortress-city in Clayborne’s rebellious domain.

  The last of the storm wind came strong from the southwest, a near gale, and Sea-Holly had to reef its topsails, but Meteor lived up to its name, and plunged into each wave like an exuberant spaniel, the foam rising in white sheets from its stem. The backstays were taut as harp strings, and the timoneers fought with the whipstaff as the following sea crashed repeatedly into the rudder. The ship had come alive, the wind singing through the rigging, the timbers groaning as they worked, and flags snapping overhead. The ship’s master, Captain Oakeshott, kept a keen and practiced eye on the ship and its crew, so that nothing broke or was carried away.

  I looked to windward, and saw a line of soldiers on Sea-Holly’s lee rail, every one of them seasick and jettisoning their cargo of breakfast into the ocean. There were five hundred such soldiers aboard, and I could only imagine the reeking mess belowdecks.

  I was fortunate in not being subject to seasickness, and so I vastly enjoyed my day on the plunging ship, every moment taking me away from Selford, and—I hoped—from Orlanda. I hoped that, as is alleged for some spirits, she could not cross water, but then I reflected that she was a water nymph, and could hardly be brought to a halt by her native element. And then I began to worry what mischief she might be up to, were she aware of my voyage and of Lady Tern’s capture. Could Orlanda arrange for the prize court to refuse our suit? Or use her arts to persuade the Queen to confiscate the ship and all its cargo?

  Darker suppositions entered my mind. She could set fire to the ship, create a total loss, and leave Kevin in debt. Or exert her power to start a plank on the Meteor, so that the ship filled and sank and drowned us all.

  I tried to drive these worries from my mind, because if Orlanda were in some way overhearing my thoughts, I wanted not to offer her ideas that might surpass her own. And so I sang to myself “Saucy Sailor” and “The Female Smuggler” and other songs appropriate to the great ocean sea, and by and by my heart lifted, and delight began to fill me, for despite my troubles, I was young and at sea and on a great adventure.

  During the brief voyage, I set myself to discover everything I could about the ship and its handling. I wished to be a good privateersman, and sent myself to school to become one.

  Captain Oakeshott was a stern man, only two-and-thirty, though the wind, weather, and sun had left their marks on his face, and he looked older. His face had burnt to mahogany, and his long hair and full beard were black. He wore a gold ring in one ear, and looked most piratical.

  The captain kept Meteor zigzagging in hopes of sighting a prize, but the storm seemed to have driven all ships off the ocean, and when night fell, we shortened sail and kept Sea-Holly close company. The screens that divided the great cabin were broken down, and Captain Oakeshott supped with us, and over fiery brandy told us a hundred stories of his life at sea, some of which were doubtless true. Then the screens went up again, and the captain retired to his half of the cabin, and Kevin to his own. I slung a hammock in Kevin’s cabin, and with the sea rocking me to slumber, I probably slept better than Kevin in his deep, coffin-like bed.

  The weather moderated the next day, and Sea-Holly shook the reefs out of its sails, and we continued in company until the long, low, watery country around Longfirth came into sight, with its two lights aglow even in daylight. There we hove to, and raised a flag to summon a pilot.

  The pilot was necessary, because the entrance to the River Brood was guarded by sandbanks, and these would likely have shifted in the late storm. The pilots took our two ships through the sandbanks, past the wooden lighthouses, and then guided us up the eight leagues of water that separated Longfirth from the ocean.

  The wind was still favorable, and we arrived in the city just before sunset. Sea-Holly moored to one of the wharves in order to discharge its presumably grateful soldiers, but Meteor, which had no business in town, anchored in the river at a buoy, and a boat carried me, Kevin, and Oakeshott to shore. The captain had to report his business to the Lord Captain of the Port, Kevin wished to call on some of his father’s business associates, and I was free to wander over the town and enjoy myself.

  I had never been in Bonille before. The inhabitants call it “the Island,” deriving the name from Bonne Isle, which I consider a false etymology. And in any case Bonille is not an island, but a peninsula; and Fornland, which is an island, is not in their view as much an island as Bonille. It is all part of their pretension.

  When long ago the first of the Aekoi regiments marched to the west coast of Bonille, they viewed the piece of ocean before them and, not wanting to travel any farther, in hope called it Mare Postremum, meaning the Final Sea. They did not know that Fornland was over the horizon, and the whole great ocean beyond, all the way to the Land of Chimerae, and greatly would it have dismayed them if they had known it. So, Bonille is not an island, and the sea is not the final one, but these false ideas will probably persist to the end of time.

  Now that Fornland and Bonille have been united, the Final Sea is now called the Sea of Duisland, though the old name persists on maps. The Crown claims ownership of this piece of water, and collects revenue from any foreign ships passing through.

  The harbor was busy with ships repairing storm damage. Some had lost yards or sails; some had dragged anchors and collided; and one large galleon, Star of the North, bound from Amberstone to Steggerda in the Triple Kingdom, had lost two of its four masts, and had suffered some damage to the hull as well, possibly in collision with another vessel, possibly from its own fallen masts turned to battering rams by the wind.

  Much of the city was built of brick, as Ethlebight, and so I felt at home, though I noted the brick was not as varied or brilliant as in my own town. As Berlauda’s outpost in Clayborne’s country, Longfirth was full of soldiers, and they had overloaded the citadel and were billeted in the town, among the people, as much an occupying army as a garrison. When word had come that Sir Andrew de Berardinis had secured Longfirth for the Queen, the Trained Bands of Selford had been mustered and sent over the sea to assist the defenders, but the Trained Bands were a militia, and were supposed to serve only for a set time. In anticipation of a siege by Clayborne’s army, these militia were being replaced by companies of professional soldiers as fast as the Crown could raise them and ship them over the sea along with supplies of food and ammunition.

  I climbed the city walls, which gave me a good view of the surrounding country. It was flat and watery, and the winter sun gleamed off the quicksilver shimmer of lagoons and ponds. Behind the city, toward the interior, was the Long Firth itself, where the River Brood widened to a long, deep, narrow lake that disa
ppeared into a misty horizon. Sentries paced the walls, and I was challenged enough so that I returned to the town, lest I be taken up for a spy.

  Back in the city, I viewed the old citadel with its towering walls of red brick, where Sir Andrew’s royal garrison was quartered, and across the main square the imposing city hall, covered with the badges of its guilds and of prominent families. The scents of roasting meat came from a tavern near the hall, along with the sound of many voices singing, and I peered in the door. The singer was a young woman with a rosy complexion and glossy brown hair that tumbled about her ears, and she was accompanied by a young man playing a seven-course guitar of the sort common in Varcellos. For the most part the songs were old, and the audience was able to sing along. The smoky common room was full, and every seat was taken. I got a mug of cool, dark beer pumped up from the cellar, and stood by the back of the room as I listened to the songs and watched the hard-working turnspit dog as he ran in his wheel, spinning the roasts and fowls before the great hearth.

  After a time, the minstrels paused to wet their throats and pass the hat, and I contributed willingly, though kept an eye out for any cutpurses lurking in the shadows, as such folk were known to follow such entertainers about and take purses while the audience enjoyed the performance. The minstrels wandered out into the square to drink their barley wine before singing again, and I followed them, for the inn was hot and full of smoke, and the cold drafts of winter air, drawn into my lungs, refreshed me and made me realize that I was very hungry. The inn was more crowded than ever, and I thought it might be a long time before I would find a table, especially as there were large parties that would pay more than a single man.