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

The ship’s boat was unlashed, hoisted out and plopped over the starboard side into the deep-blue waters of the Sea of Brass.

‘They get oars, Jabril?’ One of the sailors had been assigned the task of removing the water cask and rations from the boat, and he’d pulled out the oars as well.

‘Think not,’ said Jabril. ‘Iono moves them if He wants them moved. We leave them to float; that was the word.’

Parties of armed sailors lined up fore and aft to prod Locke and Jean toward the starboard entry port. Jabril followed close behind. When they reached the edge, Locke saw that the boat was tied up with one knotted line that would allow them to climb down.

‘Ravelle,’ said Jabril quietly. ‘You really hold with the Thirteenth? You really one of his divines?’

‘Yeah,’ said Locke. ‘It was the only honest blessing I could give for their sakes.’

‘I suppose that makes sense. Spies, things like that.’ Jabril slipped something cold beneath Locke’s tunic, against the small of his back, sliding it precariously into the top of his breeches. Locke recognized the weight of one of the stilettos from his belt.

‘Stormfather maybe takes you fast,’ whispered Jabril, ‘or maybe He lets you float. Long fuckin’ time. Until you decide you just plain had enough ... you know?’

‘Jabril ...’ said Locke. ‘Thank you. I, ah, wish I could have been a better captain.’

‘I wish you’d been any kind’a captain at all. Now get over the fuckin’ side and be gone.’

So it was that Locke and Jean watched from the gently bobbing boat as the Red Messenger limped on, south-west by west under tattered sail, leaving them in the middle of nowhere under a mid-afternoon sun that Locke would have given ten thousand solari for just a day or two earlier.

One hundred yards, two hundred, three ... their former ship slowly made way across the rippling sea, at first with what must have been half the crew gazing astern, watching. But soon enough they lost interest in the dead men in their wake. Soon enough they returned to the task of keeping their precious little wooden world from succumbing to its wounds.

Locke wondered who would inherit the stern cabin, Jean’s hatchets, their unusual tools and the five hundred solari stashed at the bottom of his personal chest - a mixture of their last funds and Stragos’s financing.

Thieves prosper, he thought.

‘Well, splendid,’ he said, stretching his legs as best he could. He and Jean faced each other from opposite rowing benches of a boat built for six. ‘Once again we’ve engineered a brilliant escape from immediate peril and stolen something of value to take with us. This boat must be worth two solari.’

‘I just hope that whoever ends up with the Wicked Sisters bloody well chokes,’ said Jean.

‘What, on the hatchets?’

‘No, on anything. Whatever’s convenient. I should’ve thrown them out the cabin window rather than let anyone else have them. Gods.’

‘You know, Jabril slipped me a stiletto as I went off.’

Jean pondered the implications of this for a moment, then shrugged. ‘When a smaller boat comes along, at least we’ll have a weapon to board and carry her.’

‘Are you, ah, comfortable back there in the stern cabin?’

‘I am,’ said Jean. He got off the bench, slid sideways and crammed himself into the stern with his back against the starboard gunwale. ‘Bit tight, but luxurious trimmings.’

‘That’s good,’ said Locke, pointing to the middle of the boat. ‘Hope it doesn’t get more cramped when I install the hanging garden and the library right about there.’

‘Already took that into account.’ Jean leaned his head back and closed his eyes. ‘Hanging garden can go in on top of my bathhouse.’

‘Which can double as a temple,’ said Locke.

‘You think that necessary?’

‘I do,’ said Locke. ‘I daresay the two of us are going to be doing a hell of a lot of praying.’

They floated in silence for many minutes. Locke also closed his eyes, breathed deeply of the tangy air and listened to the faint whisper of the waves. The sun was a warm and welcome pressure on the top of his head, and this above all conspired to lull him into a half-dozing state as he sat. He looked within for some hint of anguish and found only a hollow numbness; he seemed to have relaxed into relief at this final collapse of all his plans. Nobody else to fool, no more secrets to keep, no duties required of him or Jean as they drifted, merely drifted, waiting for the gods to make their next whim known.

Jean’s voice recalled him to the present after some unguessable interval had passed, and he blinked as he re-opened his eyes to the bright gleam of sun on water.

‘Locke,’ said Jean, evidently repeating himself, ‘sail ho, three points off the starboard bow!’

‘Ha-ha, Jean. That would be the Red Messenger, sailing away from us for ever. Surely you remember her.’

‘No, said Jean, more insistently. ‘Fresh sail ho, three points off the starboard bow!’

Locke glanced over his right shoulder, squinting. The Red Messenger was still plainly visible, now about three-quarters of a mile distant. And there, off to the left of his former ship, difficult to see at first against the bright fusion of sea and sky - yes, a dusty white square just cresting the horizon.

‘I’ll be damned,’ said Locke. ‘Looks like our lads are going to have their first chance at some plunder.’

‘If only it’d had the courtesy to show up yesterday!’

‘I’ll wager I would have screwed things up regardless. But ... can you imagine those poor bastards grappling their prey, leaping over the rails, swords in hand, screaming, “Your cats! Give us all your gods-damned cats!”’

Jean laughed. ‘What a bloody mess we’ve unleashed. At least we’ll have some entertainment. This’ll be damn awkward with the Messenger in such a state. Maybe they’ll come back for us and beg us to lend a hand.’

‘They’d beg you, maybe,’ said Locke.

As Locke watched, the Messenger’s forecourse shuddered into existence, an unfolding square of white. Straining, he could just see tiny figures dashing to and fro on the deck and in the rigging. His former ship put her bow a touch to larboard, bringing the wind onto her larboard quarter.

‘She’s limping like a horse with a broken ankle,’ said Jean. ‘Look, they won’t trust the mainmast with any canvas. Can’t say I blame them.’ Jean scrutinized the scene for a few moments more. ‘Their new friend’s coming up north-north-west, I think. If our lads sneak west and look harmless enough, maybe . . . otherwise, that new ship’s got plenty of room to run west or south. If she’s in any decent shape at all, Messenger’ll never catch her.’

‘Jean ...’ said Locke, very slowly, a bit hesitant to trust his own naval judgment. ‘I don’t ... I don’t think escape is anywhere on their minds. Look, they’re straight on for the Messenger.’

The next few minutes confirmed this. Indeed, the newcomer’s sails soon doubled in size, and Locke could see the faintest line of the hull beneath them. Whatever she was, she was angled well north of west, fit to cut straight across the path of the Red Messenger.

‘And she’s fast,’ said Jean, clearly fascinated. ‘Look at her come on! I’d bet my own liver the Messenger’s not even making four knots. She’s doing twice that or more.’

‘Maybe they just don’t give a whit for the Messenger,’ said Locke. ‘Maybe they can see she’s wounded and they’re just going to fly right past.’

‘A “kiss my arse and fare-thee-well”,’ said Jean. ‘Pity.’

The newcomer grew steadily; blurry shapes became a sleek, dark hull, billowing sails, the thin lines of masts.

‘Two masts,’ said Jean. ‘Brig, flying loads of canvas.’

Locke felt an unexpected surge of urgency; he tried to restrain his excitement as the Messenger plodded feebly to the south-west while the newcomer steadily gained on her. Now the strange vessel showed her starboard side to them. As Jean had said, she had two masts, as well as a swift low profile and a hull so black she gleamed.

A dark speck appeared in mid-air above her stern. It moved upward, expanded and burst apart into a huge fluttering flag - a banner of solid crimson, bright as fresh-spilled blood.

‘Oh, gods,’ cried Locke. ‘You have to be fucking kidding!’

The newcomer raced on, foam-capped water surging at her bow, closing the gap with the Red Messenger with every passing second. Low white shapes appeared from behind her - boats crammed with the dark specks of sailors. The new ship swung round to the Messenger’s lee like a hungry beast cutting off her prey’s escape; meanwhile, her boats knifed across the gleaming water to launch their attack from windward. Whatever Jabril and his crew did to try to foil their entrapment, it wasn’t enough; chorus after chorus of belligerent cheers echoed faintly across the water, and little black specks were soon swarming up the Messenger’s sides.

‘No!’ Locke was unaware that he’d leapt to his feet until Jean pulled him back down hastily. ‘Oh, you bastards! You rotten, miserable, skulking bastards! You can’t take my fucking ship—’

‘Which was already taken,’ said Jean.

‘I come a thousand miles to shake your bloody hands,’ Locke screamed, ‘and you show up two hours after they put us overboard!’

‘Not even half that,’ said Jean.

‘Bloody fucking limp-cocked witless laggard pirates!’

‘Thieves prosper,’ said Jean, biting his knuckles as he snorted with laughter.

The battle, if it could be called that, didn’t last five minutes. Someone on the quarterdeck brought the Messenger around, luffing straight into the wind, killing what little speed she’d had. All her sails were taken in and she soon drifted gently with one of the marauder’s boats tied up at her side. Another boat hurried back to the ship that had birthed it. That vessel, under a far lazier press of sail than it had set out to snatch up the Messenger, then came round on a starboard tack and began to bear down in the general direction of Locke and Jean - an ominous monster toying with its next tiny meal.

‘I think this might be one of those “good news, bad news” situations,’ said Jean, cracking his knuckles. ‘We may need to ready ourselves to repel boarders.’

‘With what? One stiletto and hurtful insinuations about their mothers?’ Locke clenched his fists; his anger had become excitement. ‘Jean, if we get aboard that ship and talk our way into her crew, we’re back in the game, by the gods!’

‘They might just mean to kill us and take the boat.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Locke. ‘We’ll see. First we’ll exchange courtesies. Have ourselves some diplomatic interaction.’

The pirate vessel came on slowly as the sun sank toward the west, and the colour of sky and water alike gradually deepened by a shade. She was indeed black-hulled - witchwood - and larger than the Red Messenger even at a glance. Sailors crowded her yardarms and deck railings; Locke felt a pang of envy to see such a large and active crew. She sliced majestically through the water, then luffed-up as orders were shouted from the quarterdeck. Sails were reefed with precise and rapid movements; she slowed to a crawl, blocked their view of the Red Messenger and presented her larboard side at a distance of about twenty yards.

‘Ahoy the boat,’ cried a woman at the rail. She was rather short, Locke could see - dark-haired, partially armoured, backed up by at least a dozen armed and keenly interested sailors. Locke felt his skin crawl under their scrutiny, and he donned a cheerful mask.

‘Ahoy the brig,’ he shouted. ‘Fine weather, isn’t it?’

‘What do you two have to say for yourselves?’

Locke rapidly considered the potential advantages of the pleading, cautious and cocky approaches, and decided that cocky was the best chance they had of making a memorable impression. ‘Avast,’ he cried, standing up and hoisting his stiletto over his head, ‘you must perceive we hold the weather gauge, and you are luffed-up with no hope of escape! Your ship is ours, and you are all our prisoners! We are prepared to be gracious, but don’t test us.’

There was an outbreak of laughter on the deck of the ship, and Locke felt his hopes rise. Laughter was good; laughter like that rarely preceded bloody slaughter, at least in his experience.

‘You’re Captain Ravelle,’ shouted the woman, ‘aren’t you?’

‘I, ah, see my reputation precedes me!’

‘Previous crew of your previous ship might have mentioned you.’

‘Shit,’ Locke muttered.

‘Would you two care to be rescued?’

‘Yes, actually,’ said Locke. ‘That would be a damn polite thing for you to do.’

‘Right, then. Have your friend stand up. Both of you get all your clothes off.’

‘What?’

An arrow hissed through the air, several feet above their heads, and Locke flinched.

‘Clothes off! You want charity, you entertain us first! Get your big friend up and get naked, both of you!’

‘I don’t believe this,’ said Jean, rising to his feet.

‘Look,’ shouted Locke as he began to slip out of his tunic, ‘can we just drop them in the bottom of the boat? You don’t want us to throw them overboard, right?’

‘No,’ said the woman. ‘We’ll keep ’em plus the boat, even if we don’t keep you. Breeches off, gentlemen! That’s the way!’

Moments later Locke and Jean stood, precariously balanced in the wobbling boat, stark naked with the rising evening breeze plainly felt against their backsides.

‘Gentlemen,’ yelled the woman, ‘what’s this? I expected to see some sabres, and instead you bring out your stilettos!’

The crew behind her roared with laughter. Crooked Warden! Locke realized others had come up along the larboard rail. There were more sailors just standing there pointing and howling at him and Jean than there were in the entire crew of the Red Messenger.

‘What’s the matter, boys? Thoughts of rescue not enticing enough? What’s it take to get a rise out of you down there?’

Locke responded with a two-handed gesture he’d learned as a boy, one guaranteed to start fights in any city-state in the Therin world. The crowd of pirates returned it, with many creative variations.

‘Right, then,’ cried the woman. ‘Stand on one leg. Both of you! Up on one!’

‘What?’ Locke put his hands on his hips. ‘Which one?’

‘Just pick one of two, like your friend’s doing,’ she replied.

Locke lifted his left foot just above the rowing bench, putting his arms out for balance, which was becoming steadily harder to keep. Jean did the same thing beside him, and Locke was absolutely sure that from any distance they looked a perfect pair of idiots.

‘Higher,’ said the woman. ‘That’s sad. You can do better than that!’

Locke hitched his knee up half a foot more, staring defiantly up at her. He could feel the vibrations of fatigue and the unstable boat alike in his right leg; he and Jean were seconds away from capping embarrassment with embarrassment.

‘Fine work,’ the woman shouted. ‘Make ’em dance!’

Locke saw the dark blurs of the arrows flash across his vision before he heard the flat snaps of their release. He dived to his right as they thudded into the middle of the boat, realizing half a second too late that they’d not been aimed at flesh and blood. The sea swallowed him in an instant; he hit unprepared and upside-down, and when he kicked back to the surface he gasped and sputtered at the unpleasant sensation of salt water up his nose.

Locke heard rather than saw Jean spit a gout of water as he came up on the other side of the boat. The pirates were roaring now, falling over themselves, holding their sides. The short woman kicked something and a knotted rope fell through an entry port in the ship’s rail.

‘Swim over,’ she yelled, ‘and pull the boat with you.’

By clinging to the gunwales and paddling awkwardly, Locke and Jean managed to push the little boat over to the ship, where they fell into shadow beneath her side. The end of the knotted rope floated there, and Jean gave Locke a firm shove toward it, as though afraid they might yank it up at any second.

Locke hauled himself up against the fine-grained black wood of the hull, wet and naked and fuming. Rough hands grasped him at the rail and heaved him aboard. He found himself looking at a pair of weathered leather boots, and he sat up.

‘I hope that was amusing,’ he said, ‘because I’m going to—’

One of those boots struck him in the chest and shoved him back down to the deck. Wincing, he thought better of standing and instead studied the boot’s owner. The woman was not merely short - she was petite, even from the perspective of someone literally beneath her heel. She wore a frayed sky-blue tunic over a loose black leather vest decorated with slashes that had more to do with near-misses than high fashion. Her dark hair, which piled curl upon curl, was tightly bound behind her neck, and the belt at her waist carried a minor arsenal of fighting knives and sabres. There was obvious muscle on her shoulders and arms, an impression of strength that made Locke quickly stifle his anger.

‘Going to what?’

‘Lie here on the deck,’ he said, ‘and enjoy the fine afternoon sun.’

The woman laughed; a second later Jean was pulled up over the side and thrown down beside Locke. His black hair was plastered to his skull and water streamed from the bristles of his beard.

‘Oh my,’ said the woman. ‘Big one and a little one. Big one looks like he can handle himself a bit. You must be Master Valora.’

‘If you say so, madam, I suppose I must be.’

‘Madam? Madam’s a shore word. Out here to the likes of you, it’s lieutenant.’

‘You’re not the captain of this ship, then?’

The woman eased her boot off Locke’s chest and allowed him to sit. ‘Not even hardly,’ she said.

‘Ezri’s my first,’ said a voice behind Locke. He turned, slowly and carefully, to regard the speaker.

This woman was taller than the one called Ezri, and broader across her shoulders. She was dark, with skin just a few shades lighter than the hull of her ship, and she was striking, but not young. There were lines about her eyes and mouth that proclaimed her somewhere near forty. Those eyes were cold and that mouth was hard - clearly she didn’t share Ezri’s sense of mischief about the two unclothed prisoners dripping water on her deck.

Her night-coloured braids, threaded with red and silver ribbons, hung in a mane beneath a wide four-cornered cap, and despite the heat she wore a weather-stained brown frock coat, lined along the insides with brilliant gold silk. Most astonishingly, an Elderglass mosaic vest hung unbuckled beneath her coat. That sort of armour was rarely seen outside of royal hands - each little slat of Elderglass had to be joined by a latticework of metal, since humans knew no arts to meld the glass to itself. The vest glittered with reflected sunlight, more intricate than a stained-glass window - a thousand fingernail-sized chips of gleaming glory outlined in silver.

‘Orrin Ravelle,’ she said. ‘I’ve never heard of you.’

‘Nor should you have,’ said Locke. ‘May we have the pleasure of your acquaintance?’

‘Del,’ she said, turning away from Locke and Jean to look at Ezri, ‘get that boat in. Give their clothes the eye, take anything interesting and get them dressed again.’

‘Your will, Captain.’ Ezri turned and began giving instructions to the sailors around her.

‘As for you two,’ the captain said, returning her gaze to the two drenched thieves, ‘my name is Zamira Drakasha. My ship’s the Poison Orchid. And once you’re dressed, someone will be along to haul you below and throw you in the bilge hold.’