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

By the seventeenth of Festal, Jean had come to dread the sight and smell of the ship’s vinegar as much as he’d come to appreciate his glimpses of her lieutenant.

His morning task, on most days, was to fill one bucket with the foul red stuff and another with seawater, and set to swabbing the deck and bulkheads along the full length of the main deck, at least where he could reach. Fore and aft were long compartments called crew berths, and one would be in use at any given time, crammed with four or five dozen people in and out of hammocks, their snores mingling like the growls of caged beasts. That berth Jean would carefully avoid, instead swabbing out ship’s stores (what the crew called the ‘delicates room’ for its rack of glass bottles under netting), the main-deck hold and armoury and the empty crew berth - though even when empty each berth contained a mess of barrels, crates and nettings that had to be laboriously shifted.

Once the reek of watered vinegar was fully mingled with the usual below-decks stench of old food, bad liquor and all things unwashed, Jean would usually move throughout the lowest two decks, the orlop and the bilge, swinging a large yellow alchemical light before him to help dissipate the miasmas that caused disease. Drakasha was a great one for the health of her crew; most of the sailors pierced their ears with copper to ward off cataracts and drank pinches of white sand in their ale to strengthen their bellies against rupture. The lower decks were lighted at least twice a day, much to the amusement of the ship’s cats. Unfortunately, this meant climbing, crawling, scrambling and shoving past all manner of obstacles, including busy crewfolk. Jean was always careful to be polite and make his obedience by nodding as he passed.

This crew was always in motion; this ship was always alive. The more Jean saw and learned on the Poison Orchid, the more convinced he became that the maintenance schedule he’d set as first mate of the Red Messenger had been hopelessly naive. No doubt Caldris would have spoken up eventually, had he lived long enough to notice.

There appeared to be no such thing, in Captain Drakasha’s opinion, as a state of adequate repair for a ship at sea. What was checked or inspected one watch was checked again the next, and the next, day after day. What was braced was then rebraced, what could be mended was remended. The pump and capstan mechanisms were greased daily with fat scraped from the cooking pots; the masts were ‘slushed’ top to bottom with the same brown gunk, for protection against the weather. Sailors wandered in constant, attentive parties, inspecting plank seams or wrapping canvas around rigging where the ropes chafed against one another.

The Orchids were divided into two watches, Red and Blue. They would work in six-hour shifts, one watch minding the ship while the other rested. The Red Watch, for example, had duty from noon till the sixth hour of the evening, and would come back on duty from midnight till the sixth hour of the morning. Crew on the off-watch could do as they pleased, unless the call of ‘all hands’ summoned them to the deck for some strenuous or dangerous undertaking.

The scrub watch didn’t fit into this scheme; the former men of the Red Messenger were worked from dawn to dusk, and took their meals after they were dismissed rather than around noon with the actual crew.

For all their grumbling, Jean didn’t get the sense that the Orchids genuinely resented their new shipmates. In fact, he suspected that the ex-Messengers were taking up most of the less interesting chores, leaving the Orchids that much more time to sleep, or mend personal effects, or gamble, or fuck without a hint of shame in their hammocks or under their blankets. The lack of privacy aboard ship was still a major astonishment to Jean; he was neither a prude nor a virgin, but his idea of the right place had always involved stone walls and a firmly locked door.

A lock would mean little on a ship like this, where most any noise was a shared noise. There was a pair of men on the Blue Watch who could be heard from the taffrail if they were doing it in the forward berth, and a woman on the Red Watch who screamed the damnedest things in Vadran, usually just as Jean was drifting off to sleep on the deck above her. He and Locke had puzzled over her grammar and concluded that she didn’t actually speak Vadran. Sometimes her performances were followed by applause.

That aside, the crew seemed to take pride in their discipline. Jean witnessed no fights, few serious arguments and little out-of-place drinking. Beer or wine was taken in a respectable fashion at every meal, and by some complicated scheme that Jean had yet to work out, each member of the crew was allowed, about once a week, to go on what was called the Merry Watch, a sort of watch-within-a-watch. The Merry Watch would set up on the main deck and be allowed a bit of freedom at the ship’s waist (especially for throwing up). They could drink more or less as they saw fit, and were excused even from all-hands calls until they’d recovered.

‘It’s not ... exactly what I expected,’ said Jean as Ezri stood at the larboard rail one morning, pretending not to watch him touch up the grey paint on the bottom of the ship’s smallest boat. She did that, every now and again. Was he imagining things? Was it his quoting Lucarno? He’d avoided quoting anything else at her, even when the opportunity had presented itself. Better to be a mystery, in his book, than to make a cheap refrain of something that had caught her attention.

Thirteen gods, he thought with a start, am I angling myself for a pass at her? Is she-

‘Pardon?’ she said.

Jean smiled. Somehow he’d guessed she wouldn’t mind his speaking without invitation. ‘Your ship. It’s not exactly what I expected. From what I’ve read.’

‘From what you’ve read?’ She laughed, crossed her arms and regarded him almost slyly. ‘What’ve you read?’

‘Let me think.’ He dipped his brush in the grey alchemical slop and tried to look busy. ‘Seven Years Between the Gale and the Lash.’

‘Benedictus Montcalm,’ she said. ‘Read that one. Mostly bullshit. I think he traded drinks for stories off real sailors until he had his fill.’

‘How about the True and Accurate History of the Wanton Red Flag?’

‘Suzette vela Ducasi! I know her!’

‘Know her?’

‘Know of her. Crazy old bitch wound up in Port Prodigal. Scribes for coppers, drinks every coin she gets. Barely speaks decent Therin any more. Just haunts the gutter and curses her old publishers.’

‘Those are all the books I can remember,’ said Jean. ‘Not much of a taste for histories, I’m afraid. So, how’d you manage to read everything you have?’

‘Ahhh,’ she said, tossing her hair backward with a flick of her neck. She wasn’t scrawny, thought Jean - no angles on Ezri, just healthy curves and muscle. Had to be healthy to knock him down as she had, even by surprise. ‘Out here, the past is a currency, Jerome. Sometimes it’s the only one we have.’

‘Mysterious.’

‘Sensible.’

‘You already know a bit about me.’

‘And fair’s fair, is it? Thing is, I’m a ship’s officer and you’re a dangerous unknown.’

‘That sounds promising.’

‘I thought so, too.’ She smiled. ‘More to the point, I’m a ship’s officer and you’re scrub watch. You’re not even real yet.’ She framed him with her hands and squinted. ‘You’re just a sort of hazy something on the horizon.’

‘Well,’ he said, and, aware that he sounded like a nitwit even as he repeated himself, ‘ah, well.’

‘But you were curious.’

‘I was?’

‘About the ship.’

‘Oh. Yeah, I was. I just wondered ... now that I’ve seen a fair bit of it—’

‘Where’s the singing, where’s the dancing on the yardarms, where’s the ale-casks fore and aft, where’s the drinking and puking sunrise to sunset?’

‘More or less. Not exactly a navy, you know.’

‘Drakasha is former navy. Syrune. She doesn’t talk about it much, but she doesn’t try to hide her accent any more. She did, once.’

Syrune, thought Jean, an island empire even more easterly than Jerem and Jeresh; proud and insular dark-skinned folk who took their ships seriously. If Drakasha was one of them, she’d come from a tradition of sea-officers that some said was as old as the Therin Throne.

‘Syrune,’ he said. ‘That explains some things. I thought the past was a currency?’

‘She’d’ve let you have that bit for free,’ said Ezri. ‘Trust me, if history’s a coin she’s sitting on a gods-damned fortune.’

‘So she, uh, bends the ship to her old habits?’

‘More like we let ourselves be bent.’ Ezri gestured to him to keep painting, and he returned to work. ‘Brass Sea captains are special. They have status, on the water and off. There’s a council of them in Prodigal. But each ship ... the brethren sort of go their own way. Some captains get elected. Some only rule when it’s time to take arms. With Drakasha ... she rules because we know she’s our best chance. At anything. They don’t fuck around in Syrune.’

‘So you keep naval watches, and drink like nervous husbands, and mind your manners?’

‘You don’t approve?’

‘Gods’ blood, I damn well approve. It’s just tidier than I imagined, is all.’

‘You wouldn’t call anything we do naval if you’d ever served on a real ship of war. Most of our crew have, and this is a slacker’s paradise by comparison. We keep our habits because most of us have been aboard other pirate ships, too. Seen the leaks that gain a little bit every day. Seen the mechanisms rusting. Seen the rigging fraying. What good’s slacking all the time if the ship comes apart beneath you while you sleep?’

‘So you’re a prudent bunch.’

‘Yeah. Look, the sea either makes you prudent, or it kills you. Drakasha’s officers take an oath. We’re sworn that this ship goes down in battle, or by the will of the gods. Not for want of work, or canvas, or cord. That’s a holy vow.’ She stretched. ‘And not for want of paint, either. Give the whole thing another coat, and look sharp about it.’

Officers. Jean reviewed the Orchid’s officers as he worked, to keep his mind off Ezri. There was Drakasha, obviously. She kept no watch but appeared when and as she saw fit. She seemed to be on deck at least half the day, and materialized like magic when anything interesting happened. Beneath her, Ezri ... dammit, no thoughts concerning Ezri. Not now.

Mumchance, the sailing master, and his little crew of trusted wheel-hands. Drakasha might allow ordinary crewfolk to hold the helm in steady weather, but for any operation of skill, it was Mum and his bunch or nobody. Roughly equal with Mum were the quartermaster - currently assigned to the Red Messenger - and the physiker, Treganne, who would likely never admit to being equal with anyone who didn’t have a temple with their name on it. Drakasha had the great cabin, naturally, and the four highest officers were allowed little closet-rooms in the companionway, canvas-walled things like his old cabin.

Then there was a carpenter, a sailmaker, a cook and a boatswain. The only privilege of being a petty officer seemed to be the right to boss a few other crewfolk about from time to time. There was also a pair of ... under-lieutenants, Jean supposed. Ezri called them her watch chiefs, and they were Ezri when Ezri wasn’t around. Utgar had the Blue Watch and a woman called Nasreen led the Red, but Jean had yet to meet her since she’d been entrusted with the Messenger’s prize crew.

It seemed that all the menial, back-and-forth mucking about was giving Jean - and the rest of the scrub watch - the chance to learn the ship’s hierarchy, along with its layout. He supposed that was by design.

The weather had been consistent since their capture. Steady light breezes from the north-east, clouds that came and went like a tavern dancer’s favour, endless low waves that made the sea gleam like a million-faceted sapphire. The sun was a pounding heat by day and enclosure stifled them at night, but Jean was conditioned to this work by now. He was as brown as Paolo and Cosetta. Locke, too, seemed to be making the best of it - tanned and bearded and genuinely wiry, for once, rather than merely slender. His size and an unwise boast about his agility had got him assigned to mast-slushing duty, foremast and main, each and every morning.

Their food still came late after each long day, and though charmless it was more than ample. They had a full liquor ration now, too. As much as Jean hated to admit it, even to himself, he didn’t mind this turn of events so very much. He could work and sleep in confidence that the people ruling the ship knew their business; he and Locke no longer had to run everything on improvisation and prayer. If not for the damned log, with its relentless record of day after day passing them by, day after day of the antidote waning, it would have been a good time. A good and timeless interval, with Lieutenant Delmastro to puzzle over.

But neither he nor Locke could stop counting the days.