Ship of Magic

by Robin Hobb

Page 79

 

  He felt the man shift in the hammock and then settle more comfortably. After that there was almost silence. The ship could sense his breathing. It was not much for company, but it was more than Paragon had had for many a month. He folded his arms more comfortably across his bare chest, and focused on the sound of Brashen breathing.

  Kennit faced Sorcor across the white linen cloth on the captain's table. The mate wore a new shirt of red - and - white striped silk, and garish earrings: mermaids with tiny pearls in their navels and green glass eyes. Sorcor's scarred face looked painfully scrubbed above his beard and his hair was sleeked back from his brow with an oil that was probably supposed to be aromatic. To Kennit, the scent suggested both fish and musk. But he let nothing of that opinion show on his face. Sorcor was ill at ease enough. Formality always strained the man. Formality plus the captain's disapproval would probably paralyze his mind entirely.

  The Marietta creaked softly against the dock. Kennit had closed the cabin's small window against the stench of Divvytown, but the noise of night revelry still penetrated in a distant cacophony. There was no crew aboard save for the ship's boy to wait the table and a single man on watch on deck. “That will do,” Kennit told the boy abruptly. “Be careful cleaning those. That's pewter, not tin. ”

  The boy left the cabin with his tray of dishes, shutting the door firmly but respectfully behind himself. For a few moments, there was almost silence within the snug chamber as Kennit deliberately considered the man who was not only his right hand on the deck, but his sounding line for the crew's temper.

  Kennit leaned back slightly from the table. The white beeswax candles had burned about a third down. He and Sorcor had disposed of a sizable lamb's haunch between them. Sorcor had eaten the most of it; not even formality could curb his appetite when confronted with any food a notch better than swill. Still silent, Kennit leaned forward again, to lift a bottle of wine and refill both their long-stemmed crystal goblets. It was a vintage that Sorcor's palate probably had no appreciation for, but tonight it was not the quality of the wine but the expense of it that he wanted the mate to notice. When both glasses were near brimming, he lifted his and waited for the mate to take up his as well. He leaned forward to gently ring their glasses together. “To better things,” he offered softly. With his free hand, he indicated the more recent changes in his chamber.

  Sorcor had been dumbfounded when he had first entered. Kennit had always had a taste for quality, but in the past he had restrained it save for pragmatic areas. He had far rather wear small earrings of gold with flawless gemstones than ornate brass gauded with glass. The quality had been in the cut and fabric of his clothing, rather than in a vast amount of ostentatious garments. Not so now. The simplicity of his cabin had given way to glitter and splendor as he had spent every last coin of his last trip's share in Divvytown. Some of the items were not of the very finest quality, but they were the best Divvytown had to offer. And they had had the desired effect upon Sorcor. Beneath the awe in the mate's eyes were the beginnings of a gleam of avarice. Sorcor needed but to be shown to desire.

  “To better things,” Sorcor echoed him in his bass voice, and they drank together.

  “And soon. Very soon,” Kennit added as he leaned back against the cushions of his austerely carved oak chair.

  Sorcor set down his glass and regarded his captain attentively. “You have something specific in mind,” he guessed.

  “Only the ends. The means are still to be considered. That's why I invited you to dine with me. That we might consider our next voyage, and what we desire from it. ”

  Sorcor pursed his lips and sucked his teeth speculatively. “I desire what I've always desired from a voyage. Rich booty, and plenty of it. What else is there for a man to want?”

  “A lot, dear Sorcor. A very great deal. There is power, and fame. Security in one's riches. Comfort. Homes and families safe from the slaver's whip. ” The last item had no place at all in Kennit's personal list of desires, but well he knew it was the fantasy of many a sailor. A fantasy he suspected they would find stifling were it ever granted to them. It didn't matter. What he was offering the man was what Sorcor thought he wanted. Kennit would have offered him sugared lice if he had believed they'd be a better bait.

  Sorcor affected a clumsy nonchalance. “A man can want such things, of course. But he's only going to have them if he's born to them. A noble or lord or some such. It's never going to be for me, nor even for you, begging your pardon for saying so. ”

  “Ah, but it will be. It will be if we have the spine to reach out and take those things for ourselves. Lords and nobles, you say, and a man has to be born to it, you say. But somewhere, there had to be the first lord. Somewhere back there, there had to be some common man who reached out and took what he wanted, and kept it, too. ”

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  Sorcor took another drink of his wine, slugging it down like beer. “I suppose,” he conceded. “I suppose those things all had to get started somehow. ” He set his wine back down on the table and considered his captain. “How?” he finally asked, as if fearing he wouldn't like the answer.

  Kennit rolled his shoulders, in a movement gentler than a shrug. “As I have told you. We reach out and take it. ”

  “How?” Sorcor repeated stubbornly.

  “How did we get this ship, and this crew? How did I get the ring on my finger, or you the earrings you wear? What we'll be doing is no different than anything we've done before. Except in scale. We'll be setting our goals a bit higher. ”

  Sorcor shifted nervously. When he spoke, his deep voice had gone almost dangerously soft. “What do you have in mind?”

  Kennit smiled at him. “It's very simple. All we must do is dare to do something no one has dared do before. ”

  Sorcor frowned. Kennit suspected the wine was reaching his wits. “This is that 'king' stuff you were talking before, isn't it?” Before Kennit could answer, the mate shook his heavy head slowly. “It won't work, Cap'n. Pirates don't want a king. ”

  Kennit forced his smile to remain. He shook his own head in response to his mate's charge. As he did so, he felt the blistered flesh under the linen bandage break anew. The nape of his neck grew wet with fluid. Fitting. Fitting. “No. My dear Sorcor, you took my earlier words much too literally. What do you suppose, that I see myself sitting on a throne, wearing a gold crown covered with jewels while the pirates of Divvytown bend a knee to me? Folly! Sheerest folly! No man could look at Divvytown and imagine such a thing. No. What I see is what I have told you. A man living like a lord, with a fine house and fine things, and knowing he will keep his fine house and fine things, yes and knowing his wife may sleep safely at his side, and his kiddies in their beds as well. ” He took a measured sip of his wine and replaced the glass on the table. “That is kingdom enough for you and me, eh, Sorcor?”

  “Me? Me, too?”

  There. It was reaching him at last. Kennit was proposing that Sorcor himself could have these things, not just Kennit. Kennit's smile broadened. “Of course. Of course you, why not you?” He permitted himself a deprecating laugh. “Sorcor, do you think I'd ask you to throw in with me as we have done before, would I ask you to risk everything alongside me, if all I had in mind were improving my own fortunes? Of course not! You're not such a fool. No. What I have in mind is that together we shall reach for this fortune. And not just for ourselves, no. When we are done, all our crew will have benefitted. And if Divvytown and the other pirate isles choose to follow us, they will benefit as well. But no man will be forced to throw in his hand with ours. No. It will be a free alliance of free men. So. ” He leaned forward across the table to his mate. “What say you?”

  Sorcor blinked his eyes and looked aside from his captain's gaze. But when he did so, he must look about the finely appointed room, on the carefully arrayed wealth Kennit had set out just for that reason. There was no spot in the room where the man's eyes could re
st without avarice awaking in his heart.

  But in the depths of his soul, Sorcor was a more cautious sort than Kennit had given him credit. His dark eyes came back to lock gazes with Kennit's pale ones. “You speak well. And I cannot think of a reason not to say yes. But I know that does not mean there isn't a reason. ” He put his elbows on the table and leaned on his arms heavily. “Speak plainly. What must we do to bring these things about?”

  “Dare,” said Kennit briefly. The licking flame of triumph he felt would not let him sit still. He had the man, even if Sorcor himself did not know it yet. He rose to pace the small cabin, wine glass in his hand. “First, we capture their imaginations and their admiration by what we dare to do. We amass wealth, yes, but we do it as no one has before. Look you, Sorcor. I need not show you a chart. All trade that comes from Jamaillia and the Southlands must pass us before it can reach Bingtown, or Chalced and the lands beyond. This is so?”

  “Of course. ” The mate's brow furrowed in his effort to see where this obvious fact might lead. “A ship can't get from Jamaillia to Bingtown, save that they pass the pirate isles. Unless they're fool enough to go Outside and dare the Wild Sea. ”

  Kennit nodded agreement. “So ships and captains have but two choices. They can take the Outside Passage, where storms off the Wild Sea are fiercest and serpents thickest and the way is longest. Or they can risk the Inside Passage, with the tricky channels and currents and us pirates. Correct?”

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  “Serpents, too,” Sorcor insisted on pointing out. “Almost as many serpents haunt the Inside Passage as the Outside now. ”

  “True. That's true. Serpents, too,” Kennit acceded easily. “Now. Imagine yourself a merchant skipper facing that choice. And a man comes to you and says, 'Sir, for a fee, I can see you safely through the Inside Passage. I've a pilot who knows the channels and the currents like the back of his hand, and not a pirate will molest you on your way. ' What would you say?”

  “What about the serpents?” Sorcor demanded.

  “ 'And the serpents are no worse within the sheltered water of the passage than without, and a ship stands a better chance within them than if she's on the Outside, battling both serpents and storms at once. And perhaps we'll even have an escort ship for you, one full of skilled archers and laden with Baley's Fire, and if serpents attack you, the escort will take them on while you escape. ' What would you say, merchant skipper?”

  Sorcor narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “I'd say, how much is this going to cost me?”

  “Exactly. And I'd name a fat price, but you'd be willing to pay it. Because you'd just add that fat price to your goods at the end of your run. Because you'd know you'd get through safe to sell those goods. Paying a fat price for that assurance is much better than sailing free and taking a big chance you'll lose it all. ”

  “Wouldn't work,” Sorcor declared.

  “Why not?”

  “Because the other pirates would kill you if you gave out the secret ways of our channels. Or they'd let you lead a fat ship in like a lamb to the slaughter, and then they'd fall on you both. Why should they sit back and let you have all the money?”

  “Because they'd get a cut of it, one and all. Every ship that came through would have to pay into a treasury and everyone would get a cut of that treasury. Plus, we'd make them promise that there'd be no more raids against us or our towns. Our folk could sleep peaceful at night, knowing that their daddies and brothers would be coming home safe to them, and that there'd be no Satrap's boats coming to burn their towns and take them as slaves. ” He paused. “Look at us now. We waste our lives chasing their ships. When we do catch one, then it's bloodshed and mayhem, and sometimes for naught. Sometimes the whole ship goes down, cargo and all, or sometimes we battle for hours and what do we get? A hold full of cheap cotton or some such trash. Meanwhile, the Satrap's ships and soldiers are putting into our villages and towns, and rounding up everyone who doesn't flee to be carted off as slaves, in revenge for our pirating. Now look at it my way. Instead of risking our lives to attack every tenth ship that comes through, and perhaps come up with nothing, we'd get a cut of every cargo on every ship that passed through our waters. We'd control it all. At no risk to our lives save what any sailor must face. Meanwhile, our homes and families are safe. The riches we garner, we keep to enjoy. ”

  An idea dawned slowly in Sorcor's eyes. “And we'd say no slavers. We could cut the slaves-trade's throat. No slaveships, no slavers could use the Inland Passage. ”

  Kennit knew a moment's dismay. “But the fattest trade to be fleeced is the slaves-trade ships. They'd be the ones that would pay the most to get through fast and easy, with their cargo alive and healthy still. What percentage of their wares do they get through . . . ”

  “Men,” Sorcor interrupted harshly. “Women and kiddies. Not wares. If you'd ever been inside one of those ship . . . and I don't mean on the deck, I mean inside, chained up in a hold . . . you wouldn't say 'wares. ' No. No slavers, Kennit. Slavers made us what we are. If we're going to change that, then we start by doing to them what they done to us. We take their lives away. Besides. It's not just that they're evil. They bring the serpents. The stink of slaveships is what lured the serpents into our channels in the first place. We get rid of the slaveships, maybe the serpents will go, too. Hells, Cap'n, they lure the serpents right into our islands and ways, chumming them along with dead slaves. And they bring disease. They breed sickness in those holds full of poor wretches, sickness we never knew or had before. Every time a slaveship ties up to take on water, they leave disease in their wake. No. No slavers. ”

  “All right, then,” Kennit agreed mildly. “No slavers. ” He'd never suspected Sorcor had an idea in his skull, let alone that he'd felt so passionately about something. A miscalculation. He looked anew at Sorcor. The man might have to be discarded. Not just yet, and perhaps not for some time. But at some point in the future, he might outlive his usefulness. Kennit decided he must keep that in mind, and make no long-range plans based on Sorcor's skills. He smiled at him. “You are right, of course. I am sure there are many of our folk who will agree with you, and can be won over to us with such an idea. ” He nodded again as if considering it. “Yes. No slavers, then. But all of this, of course, is a way down the wind. Were we to voice such ideas now, no one would listen to us. They'd say that what we suggested was impossible. Or every man would want to try it for himself, competing with every other. It would be ship against ship. We don't want that. So we must keep this idea quiet and private between us, until we've got every pirate in the islands looking up to us and ready to believe what we tell them. ”

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  “That's likely so,” Sorcor agreed after a moment's pondering. “So. How do we get them to listen to us?”

  Finally. The question he had been leading him to ask. Kennit came swiftly back to the table. He forced himself to pause for the drama of the moment. He set his own glass down, and uncorked the bottle. He refilled Sorcor's glass, and added a dollop to his own nearly full glass. “We make them believe we can do the impossible. By doing things all others deem impossible. Such as, say, capturing a liveship and using it as our main vessel. ”

  Sorcor scowled at him. “Kennit, old friend, that's crazy. No wooden ship can capture a liveship. They're too fleet. I've heard tell that the ship herself can scent a passage through a channel, and cry it to her steersman. And that they can feel the luff of the wind, and catch and use a breath of air that wouldn't budge another ship. Besides, even if we did fall upon one and manage to kill off her crew, the ship itself would be no good to us. They'll only sail for their own family members. Anyone else, they turn on. The ship would run herself aground, or onto the rocks, or just turn turtle on us. Look at that death ship, what was his name? The one that went mad and turned on his own family and crew? He rolled and took all hands with him. Not once, but three times, or so I've heard. And the last time they found him, he
was floating upside down in the mouth of Bingtown harbor itself. Some say the ghost crew brought him home, others that he came back to show them Traders what he'd done. They dragged him out and beached him, and there he's been ever since. Pariah. That was his name. The Pariah. '”

  “The Paragon” Kennit corrected him with wry amusement. “His name was the Paragon, though even his own family have taken to calling him the Pariah. Yes, I've heard all the old myths and legends about liveships, Sorcor. But that's what they are. Myths and legends. I believe a liveship could be taken and could be used. And if the heart of the ship could be won over, you'd have a vessel for piracy that no other ship could stand against. It's true, what you say about the currents and winds and liveships. True, also, that they can sense a serpent long before a man can spot him, and cry it out to the archers to be ready. A liveship would be the perfect vessel for piracy. And for charting out new passages through the Pirate Isles, or balding serpents. I'm not saying we should forsake all else and go hunting a liveship. I'm just saying that if one comes our way, instead of saying there's no use in pursing it, let's give it a chase. If we win it, we win it. If not, well, plenty of other ships get away from us. We'll have lost no more than we had before. ”

  “Why a liveship?” Sorcor asked bewilderedly. “I don't get it. ”

  “I . . . want one. That's why. ”

  “Well, then. I'll tell you what I want. ” For some odd reason, Sorcor thought they were striking a bargain. “I'll go along with it,” he conceded grudgingly. “We'll chase liveships when we see them, though I don't see much use to it. Not that I'll admit that to the men. In front of the men, I'll be as hot to go after them as a hound on a scent. But you make me this balance. For every liveship we chase, we go after the next slaver we smell. And we board them, and throw the crew to the serpents, and see the slaves safe back to a town. No offense to your judgment, Cap'n, but I think that if we stop enough slavers and do away with the crews, we'll gain the respect of the others a lot faster than by capturing a liveship. ”

  Kennit did not mask his scowl. “I think you overestimate the righteousness and morality of our fellows here in Divvytown. I think they'd be as likely to think us soft-headed fools to waste our time pursuing slavers only to free the cargo. ”