Red Seas Under Red Skies: The Gentleman Bastard Sequence, Book Two (Gentleman Bastards 2)

Vel Virazzo is a deep-water port about a hundred miles south-east of Tal Verrar, carved out of the high rocky cliffs that dominate the mainland coast on the Sea of Brass. A city of eight or nine thousand souls, it has long been a sullen tributary of the Verrari, ruled by a governor appointed directly by the Archon.

A line of narrow Elderglass spires rises two hundred feet out of the water just offshore, one more Eldren artefact of inscrutable function on a coast thick with abandoned wonders. The glass pylons have fifteen-foot platforms atop them and are now used as lighthouses, manned by petty convicts. Boats bring and leave them to climb up the knotted rope ladders that hang down the pylons. That accomplished, they winch up their provisions and settle in for a few weeks of exile, tending red alchemical lamps the size of small huts. Not all of them come back down right in the head, or live to come back down at all.

Two years before that fateful game of Carousel Hazard, a heavy galleon swept in toward Vel Virazzo under the red glow of those offshore lights. The hands atop the galleon’s yardarms waved, half in pity and half in jest, at the lonely figures atop the pylons. The sun had been swallowed by thick clouds on the western horizon and a soft, dying light rippled across the water beneath the first stars of evening.

A warm, wet breeze was blowing from shore to sea, and little threads of mist appeared to be leaking out of the grey rocks to either side of the old port town. The galleon’s yellowed canvas topsails were close-reefed as she prepared to lay-to about half a mile offshore. A little harbourmaster’s skiff scudded out to meet the galleon, green and white lanterns bobbing in its bow to the rhythm of the eight heaving oarsmen.

‘What vessel?’ The harbourmaster stood up beside her bow lanterns and shouted through a speaking trumpet from thirty yards away.

‘Golden Gain; Tal Verrar,’ came the return shout from the galleon’s waist.

‘Do you wish to put in?’

‘No! Passengers only, coming off by boat.’

The lower stern cabin of the Golden Gain smelled strongly of sweat and illness. Jean Tannen was newly returned from the upper deck and had lost some of his tolerance for the odour, which lent further edge to his bad mood. He flung a patched blue tunic at Locke and folded his arms.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ he said, ‘we’re here. We’re getting off this bloody ship and back onto good, solid stone. Put the bloody tunic on; they’re lowering a boat.’

Locke shook the tunic out with his right hand and frowned. He was sitting on the edge of a bunk, dressed only in his breeches, and was thinner and dirtier than Jean had ever seen him. His ribs stood out beneath his pale skin like the hull timbers of an unfinished ship. His hair was dark with grease, long and unkempt on every side, and a fine thistle of beard fringed his face.

His upper left arm was crisscrossed with the glistening red lines of barely sealed wounds; there was a scabbed puncture on his left forearm, and beneath that a dirty cloth brace was wound around his wrist. His left hand was a mess of fading bruises. A discoloured bandage partially covered an ugly-looking injury on his left shoulder, a scant few inches above his heart. Their three weeks at sea had done much to reduce the swelling of Locke’s cheeks, lips and broken nose, but he still looked as though he’d tried to kiss a kicking mule. Repeatedly.

‘Can I get a hand, then?’

‘No, you can do it for yourself. You should’ve been exercising this past week, getting ready. I can’t always be here to hover about like your fairy fucking nursemaid.’

‘Well, let me shove a gods-damn rapier through your shoulder and wiggle it for you, and then let’s see how keen you are to exercise.’

‘I took my cuts, you sobbing piss-wallow, and I did exercise ’em.’ Jean lifted his own tunic: above the substantially reduced curve of his once-prodigious belly was the fresh, livid scar of a long slash across his ribs. ‘I don’t care how much it hurts; you have to move around or they heal tight like a caulk-seal and then you’re really in the shit.’

‘So you keep telling me.’ Locke threw the tunic down on the deck beside his bare feet. ‘But unless that garment animates itself, or you do the honours, it seems I must go to the boat like this.’

‘Sun’s setting. Summer or not, it’ll be cool out there. But if you want to be an idiot, I suppose you do go like that.’

‘You’re a son of a bitch, Jean.’

‘If you were healthy, I’d re-break your nose for that, you self-pitying little—’

‘Gentlemen?’ A crew-woman’s muffled voice came through the door, followed by a loud knock. ‘Captain’s compliments, and the boat is ready.’

‘Thank you,’ yelled Jean. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. ‘Why did I bother saving your life, again? I could’ve brought the Grey King’s corpse with me instead. Would’ve been better fucking company.’

‘Please,’ said Locke forcefully, gesturing with his good arm. ‘We can meet in the middle. I’ll pull with my good arm and you handle the bad side. Get me off this ship and I’ll get to exercising.’

‘Can’t come soon enough,’ said Jean, and after another moment’s hesitation he bent down for the tunic.