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

The mutiny came the next morning, while Locke slept senseless in his hammock, still wearing the wet clothes that had seen him through the storm.

He was awakened by the sound of someone slamming his door and shooting home the bolt. Bleary-eyed and gasping in confusion, he all but fell out of his hammock and had to use his sea-chest to push himself unsteadily to his feet.

‘Arm yourself,’ said Jean, backing away from the door with both of his hatchets in hand. ‘We’ve got a problem.’

That brought Locke to full wakefulness sharply enough. He buckled on his sword-belt in haste, noting with satisfaction that the heavy shutters over his stern windows were still drawn. Light peeked in around the edges; was it day already? Gods, he’d slept the whole night away in one dreamless blink.

‘There’s, ah, some of them that aren’t happy with me, aren’t there?’

‘None of them are happy with us.’

‘I think they’re surely angrier with me than they are with you. I think you could still make it as one of them; it’s my blood they’ll be after, and you can claim to be as much my dupe as they were. Take me out to them. You might still pull this scheme off and get the antidote from Stragos.’

‘Are you mad?’ Jean glared back at Locke, but didn’t step away from the door.

‘You’re a strange fellow, brother.’ Locke contemplated his Verrari sea-officer’s sabre uneasily; in his hands it would be no less a showpiece than it was now, in its scabbard. ‘First you want to punish yourself for something that’s not your fault, and now you won’t let me slip you out of a mistake that’s entirely mine.’

‘Who the hell are you to lecture me, Locke? First you insist that I stay despite the real danger I pose to you, and now you beg me to betray you for gain? Fuck you. You’re ten pints of crazy in a one-pint glass.’

‘That describes us both, Jean.’ Locke smiled despite himself; there was something refreshing in being returned to danger of his own making after the indifferent malice of the storm. ‘Though you’re more of a carafe than a pint glass. I knew you wouldn’t buy it.’

‘Too gods-damned right.’

‘I will say that I would’ve liked to have seen Stragos’s face when we did whatever we were going to do to him,’ said Locke. ‘And I would’ve liked to know what it was when the clever moment came.’

‘Well,’ said Jean, ‘as long as we’re wishing, I would have liked a million solari and a parrot that speaks Throne Therin. But they’re not coming, take my meaning?’

‘Maybe the fact that this scuppers Stragos’s precious little plan is fuck-you enough.’

‘Now, Locke.’ Jean sighed, and his voice softened. ‘Maybe they’ll want to talk first. And if they want to talk to you, with your wits about you, we might still have a chance.’

‘Doubtless you’re the only man aboard this ship who’d still express confidence in anything I do.’ Locke sighed.

‘RAVELLE!’ The shout came from the companionway.

‘You didn’t kill any of them yet, did you, Jean?’

‘Not yet, no.’

‘RAVELLE! I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE, AND I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME!’

Locke stepped up to the cabin door and shouted back through it: ‘Marvellously clever, Jabril! You’ve tracked me unerringly to the cabin in which I’ve been fast asleep and motionless all bloody night. Who tipped you off?’

‘We have all the bows, Ravelle!’

‘Well, damn,’ said Locke. ‘You must have raided the weapons lockers, then. I suppose I was hoping we could have one of those pleasant dancing mutinies, or maybe a singing-and-card-games mutiny, you know?’

‘There’s thirty-two of us as can still move, Ravelle! Two of you in there, no food, no water ... the ship’s ours. How long do you figure on staying in there?’

‘It’s a fine place,’ shouted Locke. ‘Got a hammock, a table, nice view out through the stern window ... big door between us and the rest of you—’

‘Which we can smash at any time, and you know it.’ Jabril lowered his voice; a creak of shifting weight in the companionway told Locke he’d stepped right up to the other side of the door. ‘You’re glib, Ravelle, but glib’s no good against ten bows and twenty blades.’

‘I’m not the only man in here, Jabril.’

‘Aye. And believe me, there’s not one among us who’d like to face Master Valora; not with fuckin’ four-to-one odds. But the odds is better than that. Like I said, we got all the bows. You want it to come down hard, we’ll do what it takes.’

Locke bit the inside of his cheek, thinking. ‘You swore an oath to me, Jabril. An oath to me as your captain! After I gave you your lives back.’

‘We all did, and we meant it, but you’re not what you said you was. You’re no sea-officer. Caldris was the real thing, gods rest him, but I don’t know what the fuck you are. You deceived us, so the oath don’t stand.’

‘I see.’ Locke pondered, snapped his fingers and continued: ‘So you would have kept to the oath, had I ... ah, been what I claimed to be?’

‘Aye, Ravelle. Fuckin’ right we would’ve.’

‘I believe you,’ said Locke. ‘I believe you’re no oath-breaker, Jabril. So I have a proposal. Jerome and I are willing to come peaceably out of the cabin. We’ll come up on the deck, and we’ll talk. We’ll be pleased to hear your grievances, every last one. And we’ll keep our hands empty, so long as you swear an oath to give us that much. Safe conduct to the deck, and an open talk. For everyone.’

‘Won’t be no “hearing grievances”, Ravelle. It’ll just be us telling you how it’s to be.’

‘As you wish,’ said Locke. ‘Call it whatever you like. Give me your oath of safe passage, and it’ll happen. We’ll come out right now.’

Locke strained for several seconds to hear anything from the companionway.

At last, Jabril spoke: ‘Come up with empty hands,’ he said, ‘and don’t make no unkind moves, especially not Valora. Do that, and I swear before all the gods, you’ll come up to the deck safe. Then we’ll talk.’

‘Well,’ whispered Jean, ‘at least you got us that much.’

‘Yeah. Maybe just a chance to die in the sunlight rather than the shade, though.’ He considered changing out of his wet clothes before going up on deck, then shook his head. ‘Hell with it. Jabril!’

‘Aye?’

‘We’re opening the door.’