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

The perfumed air was humid and heavy; rain lurked in the creeping arc of clouds enclosing the eastern sky. There was a buzzing flutter of unseen wings from the darkness of the trees, and here and there pale gold and scarlet lights drifted around the trunks like some fairy mischief.

‘Lantern beetles,’ said Jean, mesmerized despite himself.

‘Think on how much dirt they must have had to haul up here, to cover the Elderglass deeply enough to let these trees grow . . .’ whispered Locke.

‘It’s good to be a duke,’ said Jean. ‘Or an archon.’

At the centre of the garden was a low structure like a boathouse, lit by hanging alchemical lanterns in the heraldic blue of Tal Verrar. Locke heard the faint lapping of water against stone, and soon enough saw that there was a dark channel perhaps twenty feet wide cut into the ground just beyond the little structure. It meandered into the darkness of the forest-garden like a miniature river. In fact, Locke realized, the lantern-lit structure was a boathouse.

More guards appeared out of the darkness, a team of four being half-led and half-dragged by two massive black dogs in armoured harnesses. These creatures, waist-high at the shoulders and nearly as broad, bared their fangs and sniffed disdainfully at the two thieves, then snorted and pulled their handlers along into the Archon’s garden.

‘Very good,’ said Stragos, appearing out of the darkness a few strides behind the dog team. ‘Everything’s prepared. You two, come with me. Sword-Prefect, you and yours are dismissed.’

The Eyes turned as one and marched off toward the palace, their boots crunching faintly on the gravel underfoot. Stragos beckoned to Locke and Jean, then led them down to the water’s edge. There, a boat floated on the still water, lashed to a little post behind the boathouse. The craft looked to be built for four, with a leather-padded bench up front and another at the stern. Stragos gestured again, this time for Locke and Jean to climb down onto the forward bench.

Locke had to admit it was pleasant enough, settling against the cushions and resting his arm against the gunwale of the sturdy little craft. Stragos rocked the boat slightly as he stepped down behind them, untied the lashing and settled on his own bench. He took up an oar and dipped it over the left gunwale. ‘Tannen,’ he said, ‘be so kind as to light our bow lantern.’

Jean glanced over his shoulder and spotted a fist-sized alchemical lantern in a faceted glass hanging off his side of the boat. He fiddled with a brass dial atop the lantern until the vapours inside mingled and sputtered to life, like a sky-blue diamond casting ghosts of the lantern’s facets on the water below.

‘This was here when the Dukes of the Therin Throne built their palace,’ said Stragos. ‘A channel cut down into the glass, eight yards deep, like a private river. These gardens were built around it. We archons inherited this place along with the Mon Magisteria. While my predecessor was content with still waters, I have made modifications.’

As he spoke, the sound of the water lapping against the sides of the channel became louder and more irregular. Locke realized that the rushing, gurgling noise slowly rising around them was the sound of a current flowing through the river. The bow lantern’s reflected light bobbed and shifted as the water beneath it undulated like dark silk.

‘Sorcery?’ asked Locke.

‘Artifice, Lamora.’ The boat began to slide gently away from the side of the channel, and Stragos used the oar to align them in the centre of the miniature river. ‘There’s a strong breeze blowing from the east tonight, and windmills at the far side of my garden. They can be used to drive water wheels beneath the surface of the channel. In still air, forty or fifty men can crank the mechanisms by hand. I can call the current up as I see fit.’

‘Any man can fart in a closed room and say that he commands the wind,’ said Locke. ‘Though I will admit, this whole garden is . . . more elegant than I would have given you credit for.’

‘How pleasant to have your good opinion of my aesthetic sense.’ Stragos steered them in silence for a few minutes after that, around a wide turn, past hanging banks of silver creeper and the rustle of leaves on low-hanging branches. The smell of the artificial river rose up around them as the current strengthened - not unpleasant, but more stale and less green, somehow, than the scent of natural ponds and rivers Locke recalled.

‘I presume this river is a closed circuit,’ said Jean.

‘A meandering one, but yes.’

‘Then, ah . . . forgive me, but where exactly are you taking us?’

‘All in good time,’ said Stragos.

‘Speaking of where you’re taking us,’ said Locke, ‘would you care to return to our earlier subject? One of your guards must have struck me on the head; I thought I heard you say that you wanted us to go to sea.’

‘So I do. And so you shall.’

‘To what possible end?’

‘Are you familiar,’ said Stragos, ‘with the story of the Free Armada of the Ghostwind Isles?’

‘Vaguely,’ said Locke.’

‘The pirate uprising on the Sea of Brass,’ mused Jean. ‘Six or seven years ago. It was put down.’

‘I put it down,’ said the Archon. ‘Seven years ago, those damn fools down in the Ghostwinds got it into their heads to make a bid for power. Claimed to have the right to levy taxes on shipping on the Sea of Brass, if by taxes you mean boarding and plundering anything with a hull. They had a dozen fit vessels and a dozen more or less fit crews.’

‘Bonaire,’ said Jean. ‘That was the captain they all followed, wasn’t it? Laurella Bonaire?’

‘It was,’ said Stragos. ‘Bonaire and her Basilisk; she was one of my officers, and that was one of my ships, before she turned her coat.’

‘And you such a pleasant, unassuming fellow to work for,’ said Locke.

‘That squadron of brigands hit Nicora and Vel Virazzo and just about every little village on the nearby coast; they took ships in sight of this palace and hauled sail for the horizon when my galleys went out to meet them. It was the greatest aggravation this city had faced since the war against Camorr, in my predecessor’s time.’

‘I don’t recall it lasting long,’ said Jean.

‘Half a year, perhaps. That declaration was their downfall; freebooters can run and skulk well enough, but when you make declarations you usually end up in battle to uphold them. Pirates are no match for real naval men and women, when it’s line-against-line on the open sea. We hammered them just off Nicora, sank half their fleet and sent the rest pissing their breeches all the way back to the Ghostwinds. Bonaire wound up in a crow’s cage dangling over the Midden Deep. After she watched all of her crew go in, I cut the rope that held her up myself.’

Locke and Jean said nothing. There was a faint watery creak as Stragos adjusted the course of their boat. Another bend in the artificial river was looming ahead.

‘Now, that little demonstration,’ the Archon continued, ‘made piracy a fairly unpopular trade on the Sea of Brass. It’s been a good time for honest merchants since then; of course there are still pirates in the Ghostwinds, but they don’t come within three hundred miles of Tal Verrar, nor anywhere near Nicora or the coast. My navy hasn’t had anything more serious than customs incidents and plague ships to deal with for nigh on three or four years. A quiet time . . . a prosperous time.’

‘Isn’t it your job to provide just that?’ said Jean.

‘You seem a well-read man, Tannen. Surely your readings must have taught you that when men and women of arms have bled to secure a time of peace, the very people who most benefit from that peace are also the most likely to forget the bleeding.’

‘The Priori,’ said Locke. ‘That victory made them nervous, didn’t it? People like victories. That’s what makes generals popular . . . and dictators.’

‘Astute, Lamora. Just as it was in the interests of the merchant councils to send me out to deliver them from piracy,’ said Stragos, ‘it was in their interest to wring my navy dry soon afterward. Dividends of peace . . . pay off half the ships, put them up in ordinary, loose a few hundred trained sailors from the muster rolls and let the merchants snap them up . . . the taxes of Tal Verrar paid to train them, and the Priori and their partners were happy to steal them. So it has been, and so it is, with the Sea of Brass at peace, the Marrows squabbling inwardly, Lashain without a navy and Karthain far beyond the need even to consider one. This corner of the world is calm.’

‘If you and the Priori are so very unhappy with one another, why don’t they just run you out of funds completely?’ Locke settled back against his corner of the boat and let his left hand hang far over the gunwale, trailing in the warm water.

‘I’m sure they would if they could,’ said Stragos, ‘but the charters of the city guarantee me a certain minimal budget from general revenues. Though every finnicker and comptroller in the city is one of theirs, and they contrive some damned elaborate lies to trim even that. My own ledger-folk have their hands full chasing after them. But it’s discretionary funds they won’t cut loose. In a time of need they could swell my forces with gold and supplies at a moment’s notice. In a time of peace, they begrudge me every last centira. They have forgotten why the Archonate was instituted in the first place.’

‘It does occur to me,’ said Locke, ‘that your predecessor was supposed to sort of . . . dissolve the office when Camorr agreed to stop kicking your arse.’

‘A standing force is the only professional force, Lamora. There must be a continuity of experience and training in the ranks; a worthwhile army or navy cannot simply be conjured out of nothing. Tal Verrar might not have the luxury of three or four years to build a defence when the next crisis comes along. And the Priori, the ones who prattle the loudest about “opposing dictatorship” and “civic guarantees”, would be the first to slip away like rats, loaded down with their fortunes, to take ship for whatever corner of the world would give them refuge. They would never stand or die with the city. And so the enmity between us is more than personal, for my part.’

‘While I’ve known too many grand merchants to dispute your general idea of their character,’ said Locke, ‘I’ve had a sudden, sharp realization about where this conversation has been going.’

‘As have I,’ said Jean, clearing his throat. ‘Seems to me that with your power on the wane, this would be a terribly convenient time for new trouble to surface somewhere out on the Sea of Brass, wouldn’t it?’

‘Very good,’ said Stragos. ‘Seven years ago, the pirates of the Ghostwinds rose up and gave the people of Tal Verrar reason to be glad of the navy I command. It would be convenient if they might be convinced to trouble us once again . . . and be crushed once again.’

‘Send us out to sea to find an excuse for you, that’s what you said,’ said Locke. ‘Send us out to sea. Has your brain swelled against the inside of your skull? How the screaming fucking hell do you expect the two of us to raise a bloody pirate armada in a place we’ve never been and convince it to come merrily die at the hands of the navy that bent it over the table and fucked it in the arse last time?’

‘You convinced the nobles of Camorr to throw away a fortune on your schemes,’ said Stragos without a hint of anger. ‘They love their money, yet you shook it out of them like ripe fruit from a tree. You outwitted a Bondsmage. You outwitted Capa Barsavi to his very face. You evaded the trap that caught your Capa Barsavi and his entire court.’

‘Only some of us,’ whispered Locke. ‘Only some of us got away, arsehole.’

‘I need more than agents. I need provocateurs. You two fell into my hands at an ideal time. Your task, your mission, will be to raise hell on the Sea of Brass. I want ships sacked from here to Nicora. I want the Priori pounding on my door, pleading with me to take more gold, more ships, more responsibility. I want commerce south of Tal Verrar to set full sail and run for port. I want underwriters soiling their breeches. I know I might not get all that, but by the gods I’ll take whatever you can give me. Raise me a pirate scare the likes of which we haven’t had in years.’

‘You are cracked,’ said Jean.

‘We can rob nobles. We can do second-storey work. We can slide down chimneys and slip locks and rob coaches and break vaults and do a fine spread of card tricks,’ said Locke. ‘I could cut your balls off, if you had any, and replace them with marbles, and you wouldn’t notice for a week. But I hate to tell you that the one class of criminal we really haven’t associated with, ever, is fucking pirates!’

‘We’re at a bit of a loss when it comes to the particulars of making their acquaintance,’ added Jean.

‘In this, as in so much, I’m well ahead of you,’ said Stragos. ‘You should have no trouble making the acquaintance of the Ghostwind pirates because you yourselves will become perfectly respectable pirates. Captain and first mate of a pirate sloop, as a matter of fact.’