by Jay Lake
The crowd, of course, loved her. The people of the City Imperishable streamed toward the berth as if meeting their new queen.
Onesiphorous
Boudin found him working in the laundry.
Onesiphorous did not mind the duty. It was hotter than midsummer, and the wet was enough to make you feel as if you were drowning, but no one ever came down there but servants. He wasn't likely to be bothered by bluecoats or corsairs. Most especially he would not be accosted by the Openers who reportedly swaggered along the bridges and walkways of Port Defiance, terrorizing their fellow dwarfs.
The Boxers and their allies on the citizens' council had disappeared into attics and locked rooms, or thrown into what few cells the Harbormaster possessed. The servants in the Flag Towers whispered that there had been talk of a prison hulk, somewhere to set the filthy traitors to rotting.
Everyone among the palace staff seemed to know that Onesiphorous was working in the lower halls at menial tasks. He was kept safe by the fact that they held little enough love for the Harbormaster and nothing but venom for the corsairs. Still, he knew he had to move on soon. Eventually someone would sell him upstairs for greed, or out of sheer panic. But he had no place else to go. And here he learned so much.
Gossip had always been a dwarf's stock in trade, but usually from the front office or behind an account book. Working with servants belowstairs was a novel experience for Onesiphorous. When one was little more than mobile furniture, prop for an oil rag, people would say anything without consideration.
The walls might have ears, but as far as those in charge were concerned, the servants did not. And so he heard everything that happened in the Flag Towers, and by extension Port Defiance.
If only he could do something with the information.
"She send me back, ah," Boudin said apologetically. He wore grubby whites and carried a kettle—nothing more than a drudge out in the halls on some errand.
"It's your head, boy." Onesiphorous stirred a huge pot of linens with a long wooden paddle. He hadn't bothered with the wig down here, but still wore his smock.
He made a very ugly woman indeed.
"She say plantation men not happy. Rock men not happy either."
"Rock men." He hadn't heard that term before. "I presume you mean Jade miners?"
"Yes, ah."
"Nor are there a lot of happy people here in Port Defiance." Onesiphorous had taken refuge in fatalism of late. It seemed safer than optimism. The corsairs talked of raiding the City Imperishable, but that was like wolverines attacking a beached whale. Nonetheless, they could certainly fire the docks and create havoc. The tightening blockade was much more damaging at both ends, in less obvious ways.
Few in Port Defiance bought and sold goods for local use, or with local money. Now that the City Imperishable was cut off, trade was much more difficult here as well.
Somebody was definitely going to betray him to those upstairs, soon.
And then there was Ashkoliiz.
Boudin went on. "She say you come back to green shadows. She make you welcome, take you round find friends in the white houses and the rock tunnels."
"I need to leave soon," Onesiphorous said. Though in truth, right now he mostly wanted to meditate on the patterns of the linen in his vat. "They will catch me before much longer."
"She say that too, ah. You be found, you be floating on the tide. Crab food."
"Ah." He looked closely at Boudin. The boy seemed a bit older. Maybe it was the stained uniform he was wearing.
Anyone could wander in to the Flag Towers if they dressed invisibly.
"Have you seen Big Sister?" he asked.
Boudin shrugged. "Maybe she fly away home. Me, I got a boat, got a place to take you where the corsair-men don't sharpen they swords on dwarf spines. You coming?"
Onesiphorous shouldered his paddle and picked up his wig. "Perhaps my time here is done. Lead on."
He'd survived two weeks in this damnable place, living in fear but without incident. On the way to Boudin's boat they ran into two corsairs.
Onesiphorous and the boy turned a corner as they headed for one of the understairs which would lead them down to a walkway. A pair of blade-thin men walked the other direction. They were tanned dark by the ocean sun, their muscles like ropes, dressed identically in black silk trousers and leather vests. They were deep in conversation, barely glancing at dwarf and boy.
"You," said one behind Onesiphorous. From his accent, he'd been born in the Saltus basin—it wasn't a Sunward Sea voice. "You're either the shortest woman I've ever seen, or by Dorgau you're a dwarf."
Onesiphorous stopped. He didn't turn around. Wait, he thought, but he didn't know for what.
"She is being the ugliest woman as well, yes," laughed the other.
"Let's see you."
Onesiphorous spun as hard as he could, swinging the laundry paddle wide. One of the corsairs caught it open-handed with a rough laugh as Boudin threw his kettle.
The lid flew off and a rank green fluid spilled across the second corsair's face. He shrieked like a girl and clawed at his eyes.
The first man released the paddle and drew his blade. "You are to be going nowhere!" he shouted as he stabbed at Onesiphorous.
The dwarf tried to block with the paddle, but the first impact shattered it in his hands. Boudin put his shoulder down and crashed into the corsair's groin, catching the cutlass in his shoulder.
"Go," the boy groaned, sliding to the ground with his arms tangled around the corsair's legs. "She waiting."
Torn, Onesiphorous went. He ducked into the next corner, threw open the door, and clattered down to the underslung walkway. He could see Boudin's boat tied up at the next rock pillar.
Behind him, the screaming continued. Someone else keened in agony as a counterpoint. Symphony of pain for two voices, Onesiphorous thought. Scored by him.
He tried to row toward the western bank where Boudin had previously taken him. He didn't have the trick of the oars, though, and the tide was running out. Onesiphorous couldn't beat the current, so he headed for another stand of rocks with the hope of hiding among the boats tied there. He wasn't even sure where he was going, just away from the Flag Towers.
If it had been night he might have found some hope of getting away. As it was, all they had to do was look out a window to find him.
Trying to make a dock against the pull of the tide, he bashed the hull of a small, ragged fishing boat.
A dark-haired woman sat up. She blinked sleep out of her eyes to look over the side. Her shoulders were bare. "Hai!" she shouted, then launched into a stream of sibilant curses from far down the Sunward Sea.
"Help," he said quietly, fighting with the oars to keep the tide from pulling him away.
She glared, then slipped over her rail with a line coiled in one hand. She was naked except for a pair of tan trousers torn off above the knee. Waist-length brown hair trailed behind her. Dark aureoles were two blind eyes upon her chest.
"Hold water," she hissed, working to tie her line off to the cleat on his bow. Onesiphorous paddled as best he could. The southern woman somehow got the line secured. Almost immediately it went taut, forcing a groan from both hulls.
She kicked back to her boat, climbed in, and hauled him close. Onesiphorous tried to help, but she cursed again, so he lifted the oars free from the water as he'd seen Boudin do.
Their boats bumped once more a moment later. The woman threw a sausage-shaped wad of netting over the side to keep the hulls from banging together further, then lashed his line down.
"Come," she said.
Onesiphorous let himself be dragged over the side. There he dropped into the bottom of her boat. A tiny cabin with a chimney perched amidships, topped by a single mast. Coils of netting surrounded it, along with several large wooden boxes. The deck looked like a fishing vessel, but it didn't smell like a fishing vessel.
His rescuer shrugged into a dark grey silk vest, dyed with pale streaks. He didn't recognize the fashion
of the cloth. "You dwarf," she said. "Sit now." She sat with him and tugged a sheet of canvas over them both.
They were enveloped in a beige light. He couldn't shake the image of her breasts bobbing as she'd slid into the water—this woman was slim, and either young or extraordinarily fit.
"Dwarf row boat from palace, not know oars from ears. You running away."
Onesiphorous didn't see any point in denying the obvious. "Yes."
"City man?"
"Yes."
"Hmm." She studied him. "You make ugly woman. Call me Silver. I call you Oarsman, yes? No names."
She was no more a fisherman than her vessel was a fishing boat. "From the Sunward Sea." He made it a flat statement.
"Home port Bas Gronegrim." She patted the deck. "Sail close to shore, go far, not get lost. You home port City Imperishable, you already lost so close to home."
"I need to get back," he said.
"Everybody here want somewhere else. I not care your politics. Ssardali." That was obviously another curse, just from the tone. "Brothers fight, neighbors stay away, yes? I care dessai. Eh . . . no . . . corsairs, you say. Big problem home now. Make bigger problem home when settle in here."
"I don't care about the damned corsairs," Bijaz said. "I just want Port Defiance back under the City's flag, and my people headed home."
"Same same. I want take black flag down, you want put your flag up."
"Yes. Can you help me travel upriver?"
"No one go up less they have inspection, papers. Attalassi. Everything control now, yes. Little boats go little places, still good. You got little place?"
"The swamps. Would we be able to reach the west side of the delta?"
"By night, sure certain. But you." She grinned. "What you do for me, Oarsman? Yet can I sell you to bluecoats, yes."
"I have no funds." Which was not strictly true. He still had the money he'd tucked away when he'd left his office for the swamps, the day of the coup. And the silver bells were likely worth something. But that wasn't what she meant, not even if he'd had an entire strongbox with him.
Except, in a sense, he did. "I can speak for the Lord Mayor of the City Imperishable."
"Imago." She said the word oddly, slowly, like it was something she'd read but never before used in conversation. "His words have power now?"
"Right here, right now, no." Onesiphorous thought quickly. "But I can pledge substantial funds to hiring a fleet if Bas Gronegrim can supply the ships."
"My city not fight dessai. Not open battle. Princes sail the decks." She touched his nose. "Do better, Oarsman. I already spend risk to save you from tide."
He could draw on power of the City Imperishable, except it was all money and trust. Manufacturing, too, but electricks and gun barrels were scarcely at issue right now. Not directly.
"Monopolies," Onesiphorous offered. "Trade concessions. Not for gunships in open battle, but enough pressure to force the corsairs out. If princes sail the decks, then people move back and forth between that black fleet and the palaces of your city. Am I right?"
"Dwarf knows politics." She looked thoughtful. "I got no power make treaty. I just sail, look, make letter home. Ssardali, little man, I send letter home say I find trade or patents, maybe they pay good attention, yes."
"One hopes."
"You got City Imperishable attalassi? Official papers and seal?"
His thin hopes collapsed. "In my office. Which I was chased out of two weeks past."
"Where your office?"
"Under the bridge between Axos and Lentas."
"Fine. Little Oarsman, we go look. Find you stuff, you tell me no lies, you write letters. Everything good."
Everything was far from good, but for the first time, he saw a path forward. "One thing," he said. "I write you letters, I also write letters home to the Lord Mayor. Maybe they go upriver, maybe not, but I have to try."
She tucked her hair behind her ear, then reached back to coil it up. "Everybody try."
The last thing Onesiphorous wanted was to return where he could be found. Heading for his office seemed the height of folly. Still, he'd stayed away since the corsairs took over. And it didn't seem likely the two in the lower halls would have any idea who he really was.
Silver rowed Boudin's boat, leaving hers tied up with a cluster of small fishing craft. The looks she got as they cast off told Bijaz that none of the locals were fooled by her pretense of fishing, any more than he had been. These were poor people, he thought. The poor never went to authority if they could help it. Far too easy to get in trouble themselves.
It took her about fifteen minutes to reach the base of Axos. That rock finger was forty feet in diameter, and had stone steps carved up to the Tidewatch.
He wore a cutting of one of Silver's unused fishing nets like a shawl, and still had his wig on. She took his elbow as they mounted the stairs. "Step wise, Mother," she said, but he could hear the giggle in her voice.
Onesiphorous figured he might as well play into the role, so he shuffled slowly. A young woman and her mother weren't likely to raise suspicion.
It took a while at his pace to make the walkway outside his office. Someone had nailed boards across the doorway and affixed a poster over them. That in turn had been scrawled over with enough graffiti to render the message unreadable.
"In there," he said.
Silver stepped casually onto the little rope bridge which connected his office to the walkway, and tugged at the boards. More sibilant cursing.
"I back soon." She trotted off.
Onesiphorous looked around. The walkway was on the east side of his office, so his view was mostly of the nearby islets, with the Jade Coast beyond. A storm worked itself up to the south, and little shipping was in port. There was almost no incidental traffic.
Port Defiance normally bustled day and night. The factors and syndics were no doubt feeling the financial pain daily. Somehow he didn't think the corsairs would care overmuch. Silver had implied that they needed a home port, but within the Flag Towers, they'd seemed violent and disorganized—hardly interested in settling into a long-term occupation.
Finally, Silver returned with a metal bar. Blood glistened on one end, and a few shreds of hair. He didn't ask.
Wordless, she popped the boards free and threw them into the water. When she had removed them all, the metal bar followed the wood. Onesiphorous had been in Port Defiance long enough to wince at the waste of good materials, but he couldn't disagree with her sentiment. Not to mention getting rid of the evidence.
"Now," she whispered.
Within, his office had been vandalized. It certainly hadn't been stripped—frustration or anger, rather than a thorough search. The tall windows still stood open as he had left them.
His seal had been in the strongbox at the bottom of the desk. Imago's letters, blank sheets entrusted to him with the Lord Mayor's signature at the bottom, were in a small cardstock portfolio. "We look for a folder," he told Silver. Onesiphorous opened his hands about a foot apart. "This size. It is a buff color."
She gave him a blank look.
"Tan, like your trousers."
"Yes." She began digging through the scattered papers.
He checked his desk. The drawers had all been yanked out, but the strongbox was still there. Definitely vandalism. A political raid would have carried the secured container away on principle. Onesiphorous adjusted the dials on the little lock, which popped open.
Sixty gold obols, the seal, his commission as the Lord Mayor's personal representative.
"You need money?" he asked. "Gold?"
Silver laughed as she tossed her way through the piles of paper. "Gold? They call me thief if I have gold. Poor fisher girl."
"Right." Onesiphorous looked down at the coins. They weighed too much to easily carry with any discretion. He scooped the bright gold into one of the upper drawers then carried the impromptu box to the windows. Reaching out, he dumped the money into the ocean.
"Sea King blesses you." Sil
ver held up the portfolio. "You did good to give that to the ocean. We go now, before they come."
He wondered again who she'd killed to get that metal bar, but decided he didn't care. When had he become so brutally indifferent? "Let's go."
Imago
All the Lord Mayor could do now to salvage the situation was ensure that Ashkoliiz did not come before the Assemblage of Burgesses. Otherwise, the cause was lost. Imago turned to Enero and pointed at the steamer as it was tying up.