by Scott Lynch
“Look you both,” Caldris yelled. “Here she is in person. The ship we’re damn likely to die on!” He clapped Locke on the back and laughed. “She’s styled the Red Messenger.”
“Is she now?” The vessel was quiet and still, sails furled, lamps unlit. There was something unfathomably melancholy about a ship in such a condition, Locke thought. “One of the archon’s, I presume?”
“No. It seems the gods have favored the Protector with a chance to be bloody economical with this mission. You know what stiletto wasps are?”
“Only too well.”
“Some idiot tried to put into port with a hive in his hold, not too long ago. Gods know what he was planning with it. That got him executed, and the ship was ruled droits of the archonate. That nest of little monsters got burned.”
“Oh,” said Locke, sniggering. “I’m very sure it was. Thorough and incorruptible, the fine customs officers of Tal Verrar.”
“Archon had it careened,” continued Caldris. “Needed new sails, some shoring up, fresh lines, bit of caulking. All the insides got smoked with brimstone, and she’s been renamed and rechristened. Still plenty cheap, compared to offering up one of his own.”
“How old is she?”
“Twenty years, near as I can tell. Hard years, likely, but she’ll hold for a few more. Assuming we bring her back. Now show me what you’ve learned. What do you think she is?”
Locke studied the vessel, which had two masts, a very slightly raised stern deck, and a single boat stored upside down at its waist. “Is she a caulotte?”
“No,” said Caldris, “she’s more properly a vestrel, what you’d also call a brig, a very wee one. I can see why you’d say caulotte. But let me tell you why you’re off on the particulars….”
Caldris launched into a number of highly technical explanations, pointing out things about leeward main braces and cross-jacks that Locke only half understood in the manner of a visitor to a foreign city listening to eager directions from a fast native talker.
“…she’s eighty-eight feet, stem to stern, not counting the bowsprit, of course,” finished Caldris.
“I hadn’t truly realized before now,” said Locke. “Gods, I’m to actually command this ship.”
“Ha! No. You are to feign command of this ship. Don’t get blurry-eyed on me, now. All you do is tell the crew what my proper orders are. Hurry aboard.”
Caldris led them up a ramp and onto the deck of the Red Messenger, and while Locke gazed around, absorbed in every visible detail, a gnawing unease was growing in his stomach. He’d taken all the minutiae of shipboard life for granted on his single previous (and bedridden) voyage, but now every knot and ring-bolt, every block and tackle, every shroud and line and pin and mechanism might hold the key to saving his life…or foiling his impersonation utterly.
“Damn,” he muttered to Jean. “Maybe ten years ago, I might have been dumb enough to think this was going to be easy.”
“It’s not getting any easier,” said Jean, squeezing Locke on his uninjured shoulder. “But we’re not yet out of time to learn.”
They paced the full length of the ship in the warm drizzle, with Caldris alternately pointing things out and demanding answers to difficult questions. They finished their tour at the Red Messenger’s waist, and Caldris leaned back against the ship’s boat to rest.
“Well,” he said, “you do learn fast, for lubbers. I can give you that much. Notwithstanding, I’ve taken shits with more sea wisdom than the pair of you combined.”
“Come ashore and let us try to teach you our profession some time, goat-face.”
“Ha! Master de Ferra, you’ll fit in just fine in that wise. Maybe you’ll never truly know shit from staysails, but you’ve got the manner of a grand first mate. Now, up the ropes. We’re visiting the maintop this morning while this fine weather holds.”
“The maintop?” Locke stared up the mainmast, dwindling into the grayness above, and squinted as rain fell directly into his face. “It’s bloody raining!”
“It has been known to rain at sea. Ain’t nobody passed you the word?” Caldris stepped over to the starboard main shrouds; they passed down just the opposite side of the deck railing, and were secured by deadeyes to the outer hull itself. Grunting, the sailing master hoisted himself up onto the rail and beckoned for Locke and Jean to follow. “The poor bastards on your crew will be up there in all weather. I’m not taking you out to sea as virgins to the ropes, so get your asses up after me!”
They followed Caldris up into the rain, carefully stepping into the ratlines that crossed the shrouds to provide footholds. Locke had to admit that nearly two weeks of steady hard exercise had given him more wind for a task like this, and begun to mitigate the pain of his old wounds. Still, the strange and faintly yielding sensation of the rope ladder was like nothing familiar to him, and he was only too happy when a dark yardarm loomed out of the drizzle just above them. A few moments later, he scampered up to join Jean and Caldris on a circular platform that was blessedly firm.
“We’re two-thirds up, maybe,” said Caldris. “This yard carries the main course.” Locke knew by now that he was referring to the ship’s primary square sail, not a navigational plan. “Farther up, you got your topsails and t’gallants. But this is fine enough for now. Gods, you think you got it bad today, can you imagine climbing up here with the ship bucking side to side like a bull making babies? Ha!”
“Can’t be as bad,” Jean whispered to Locke, “as some fucking idiot toppling off and landing on one of us.”
“Will I be expected,” said Locke, “to come up here frequently?”
“You got unusually sharp eyes?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Hell with it, then. Nobody’ll expect it. Captain’s place is on deck. You want to see things from a distance, use a glass. You’ll have top-eyes hugging the mast farther up to do your spotting.”
They took in the view for a few more minutes, and then thunder rumbled in the near distance, and the rain stiffened.
“Down we go, I think.” Caldris rose to his knees and prepared to slide over the side. “There’s tempting the gods, and then there’s tempting the gods.”
Locke and Jean reached the deck again with no trouble, but when Caldris jumped down from the shrouds he was breathing raggedly. He groaned and massaged his upper left arm. “Damn. I’m too old for the tops. Thank the gods the master’s place is on the decks, too.” Thunder punctuated his words. “Come on, then. We’ll use the main cabin. No sailing today; just books and charts. I know how much you love those.”
10
BY THE end of their third week with Caldris, Locke and Jean had begun to nurture guarded hopes that their brush with the two dockside assassins would not be repeated. Merrain continued to escort them each morning, but they were given some freedom at night provided they went armed and ventured no farther than the interior waterfront of the Arsenale District. The taverns there were thick with the archon’s soldiers and sailors, and it would be a difficult place for someone to lurk unnoticed in ambush.
At the tenth hour of the evening on Duke’s Day (which of course, Jean corrected himself, the Verrari called Council’s Day), Jean found Locke staring down a bottle of fortified wine at a back table in the Sign of the Thousand Days. The place was spacious and cheerfully lit, noisy with the bustle of healthy business. It was a naval bar—all the best tables, under hanging reproductions of old Verrari battle pennants, were filled with officers whose social status was clear whether or not they were wearing their colors. Common sailors drank and gamed at the penumbra of tables surrounding them, and the few outsiders congregated at the little tables around Locke.
“I thought I might find you here,” said Jean, taking the seat across from Locke. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m working. Isn’t it obvious?” Locke seized the wine bottle by its neck and gestured toward Jean. “This is my hammer.” He then rapped his knuckles against the wooden tabletop. “And this is m
y anvil. I am beating my brains into a more pleasant shape.”
“What’s the occasion?”
“I just wanted half a night to be something other than the captain of a phantom fucking sailing expedition.” He spoke in a controlled whisper, and it was plain to Jean that he was not yet drunk, but more possessed of an earnest desire to be so. “My head is full of little ships, all going round and round gleefully making up new names for the things on their decks!” He paused to take a sip, then offered the bottle to Jean, who shook his head. “I suppose you’ve been diligently studying your Lexicon.”
“Partly.” Jean turned himself and his chair a bit toward the wall, to allow him to keep an unobtrusive eye on most of the tavern. “I’ve also penned some polite little lies to Durenna and Corvaleur; they’ve been sending notes to the Villa Candessa, asking when we’ll come back to the gaming tables so they can have another go at butchering us.”
“I do so hate to disappoint the ladies,” said Locke, “but tonight I’m on leave from everything. No ’Spire, no archon, no Durenna, no Lexicon, no navigational tables. Just simple arithmetic. Drink plus drinker equals drunk. Join me. Just for an hour or two. You know you could use it.”
“I do. But Caldris grows more demanding with every passing day; I fear we’ll need clear heads on the morrow more than we’ll need clouded ones tonight.”
“Caldris’ lessons aren’t clearing our heads. Quite the opposite. We’re taking five years of teaching in a month. It’s all jumbling up inside me. You know, before I stepped in here tonight I bought half a peppered melon. The stall woman asked which of her melons I wished cut, the one on the left or the right. I replied, ‘The larboard!’ My own throat has turned traitorously nautical on me.”
“It is something like a madman’s private language, isn’t it?” Jean slipped his optics out of his coat pocket and onto the end of his nose so he could examine the faint etching on Locke’s wine bottle. An indifferent Anscalani vintage, a blunt instrument among wines. “So intricate in its convolutions. Say you have a rope lying on the deck. On Penance Day it’s just a rope lying on the deck; after the third hour of the afternoon on Idler’s Day it’s a half-stroke babble-gibbet, and then at midnight on Throne’s Day it becomes a rope again, unless it’s raining.”
“Unless it’s raining, yes, in which case you take your clothes off and dance naked round the mizzenmast. Gods, yes. I swear, Je…Jerome, the next person who tells me something like, ‘Squiggle-fuck the rightwise cock-swatter with a starboard jib’ is going to get a knife in the throat. Even if it’s Caldris. No more nautical terms tonight.”
“You seem to be three sheets to the wind.”
“Oh, that’s your death warrant signed, then, four-eyes.” Locke peered down into the depths of his bottle, like a hawk eyeing a mouse in a field far below. “There’s altogether too much of this stuff not yet in me. Get a glass and join in. I want to be a barking public embarrassment as soon as possible.”
There was a commotion at the door, followed by a general stilling of conversation and a rise in murmuring that Jean recognized from long experience as very, very dangerous. He looked up warily and saw that a party of half a dozen men had just set foot inside the tavern. Two of them wore the partial uniforms of constables, under cloaks, without their usual armor or weapons. Their companions were dressed in plain clothing, but their bulk and manner told Jean that they were all prime examples of that creature commonly known as the city watchman.
One of them, either fearless or possessed of the sensibilities of a dull stone, stepped up to the bar and called for service. His companions, wiser and therefore more nervous, began to whisper back and forth. Every eye in the tavern was upon them.
There was a scraping sound as a tough-looking woman at one of the officers’ tables pushed her chair back and slowly stood up. Within seconds, all of her companions, uniformed or otherwise, were standing beside her. The motion spread across the bar in a wave; first the other officers, and then the common sailors, once they saw that the weight of numbers would be eight-to-one in their favor. Soon enough, four dozen men and women were on their feet, saying nothing, simply staring at the six men by the door. The tiny knot of folk around Locke and Jean stayed planted in their seats; at the very least, if they remained where they were, they would be far out of the main line of trouble.
“Sirs,” said the oldest barkeeper on duty as his two younger associates reached surreptitiously beneath the counter for what had to be weapons. “You’ve come a long way now, haven’t you?”
“What do you mean?” If the constable at the bar wasn’t feigning puzzlement, thought Jean, he was dimmer than a snuffed candle. “Came from the Golden Steps, is all. Fresh off duty. Got a thirst and a fair bit of coin to fill it.”
“Perhaps,” said the barkeep, “another tavern would be more to your taste this evening.”
“What?” The man seemed at last to become aware of the fact that he was the focal point of a waiting mob’s attention. As always, thought Jean, there were two sorts in a city watch—the ones that had eyes for trouble in the backs of their heads, and the ones that used their skulls to store sawdust.
“I said…,” the barkeep began, clearly losing patience.
“Hold,” said the constable. He put both hands up toward the patrons of the tavern. “I see what’s what. I already had a few tonight. You got to forgive me; I don’t mean nothing. Aren’t we all Verrari here? We just want a drink, is all.”
“Lots of places have drinks,” said the barkeep. “Lots of more suitable places.”
“We don’t want no trouble for anyone.”
“Wouldn’t be any trouble for us,” said a burly man in naval tunic and breeches. His table-mates shared an evil chuckle. “Find the fucking door.”
“Council dogs,” muttered another officer. “Oathless gold-sniffers.”
“Hold on,” said the constable, shaking off the grasp of a friend who was trying to pull him to the door. “Hold on, I said we didn’t mean nothing. Dammit, I meant it! Peace. We’ll be on our way. Have a round on me, all of you. Everyone!” He shook out his purse with trembling hands. Copper and silver coins rattled onto the wooden bar. “Barkeep, a round of good Verrari dark for anyone who wants it, and keep what’s left.”
The barkeeper flicked his gaze from the unfortunate constable to the burly naval officer who’d spoken earlier. Jean guessed the man was one of the senior officers present, and the barkeep was looking to him for a judgment.
“Groveling suits you,” the officer said with a crooked grin. “We won’t touch a drink with you, but we’ll be happy to spend your money once you’re out that door for good.”
“Of course. Peace, friends, we didn’t mean nothing.” The man looked as though he might babble on, but two of his comrades grabbed him by the arms and dragged him out the door. There was a general outburst of laughter and applause when the last of the constables had vanished into the night.
“Now that’s how the navy adds money to its budget,” yelled the burly officer. His table-mates laughed, and he grabbed his glass and held it up toward the rest of the tavern. “The archon! Confusion to his enemies at home and abroad.”
“The archon,” chorused the other officers and sailors. Soon enough, they were all settling down into good humor once again, and the eldest barkeep was counting the constable’s money while his assistants set out rows of wooden cups beside a tapped cask of dark ale. Jean frowned, calculating in his head. Drinks for roughly fifty people, even plain dark ale, would set the constable back at least a quarter of his monthly pay. He’d known many men who’d have chanced a chase and a beating before parting with that much hard-earned coin.
“Poor drunk idiot,” he sighed, glancing at Locke. “Still want to make yourself a barking public embarrassment? Seems they’ve already got one in these parts.”
“Maybe I’ll just hold fast after this bottle,” said Locke.
“Hold fast is a nautical—”
“I know,” said Locke. “I’ll
kill myself later.”
The two younger barkeeps circulated with large trays, passing out wooden cups of dark ale, first to the officers, who seemed mostly indifferent, and then to the ordinary sailors, who received them with enthusiasm. Seemingly as an afterthought, one of them eventually made his way to the corner where Locke and Jean and the other civilians sat.
“Sip of the dark stuff, sirs?” He set cups down before Locke and Jean and, with dexterity approaching that of a juggler, dashed salt into them from a little glass shaker. “Courtesy of the man with more gold than brains.” Jean slid a copper onto his tray to be sociable, and the man nodded his appreciation before moving on to the next table. “Sip of the dark stuff, madam?”
“Clearly, we need to come here more often,” said Locke, though neither he nor Jean touched their windfall ale. Locke, it seemed, was content to drink his wine, and Jean, consumed by thoughts of what Caldris might challenge them with the next day, felt no urge to drink at all. They passed a few minutes in quiet conversation, until Locke finally stared down at his cup of ale and sighed.
“Salted dark ale just isn’t the thing to follow punched-up wine,” he mused aloud. A moment later, Jean saw the woman seated behind him turn and tap him on the shoulder.
“Did I hear you right, sir?” She looked to be a few years younger than Locke and Jean, vaguely pretty, with bright scarlet forearm tattoos and a deep suntan that marked her as a dockworker of some sort. “Salted dark not to your taste? I don’t mean to be bold, but I’ve just run dry over here….”
“Oh. Oh!” Locke turned, smiling, and passed his cup of ale to her over his shoulder. “By all means, help yourself. My compliments.”
“Mine as well,” said Jean, passing it over. “It deserves to be appreciated.”
“It will be. Thank you kindly, sirs.”
Locke and Jean settled back into their conference of whispers.