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

On the nineteenth, at half-past noon, Drakasha shouted for Locke to come to her cabin. Locke ran aft as fast as he could, visions of Tomas and Mazucca vivid in his mind.

‘Ravelle, what the unhallowed hells is this?’

Locke paused to take in the scene. She’d rigged her table in the centre of the cabin. Paolo and Cosetta were seated across from one another, staring at Locke, and a deck of playing cards was spread in an unfathomable pattern between them. A silver goblet was tipped over in the middle of the table ... a goblet too large for little hands. Locke felt a flutter of anxiety in the pit of his stomach, but looked closer nonetheless.

As he’d suspected ... a mouthful or so of pale-brown liquor had spilled onto the tabletop from the goblet and fallen across a card. That card had dissolved into a puddle of soft, completely unmarked grey material.

‘You took the cards out of my chest,’ he said. ‘The ones in the double-layered oilcloth parcel.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you were drinking a fairly strong liquor with your meal. One of your children spilled it.’

‘Caramel brandy, and I spilled it myself.’ She produced a dagger and poked at the grey material. Although it had a liquid sheen, it was hard and solid, and the tip of the dagger slid off it as though it were granite. ‘What the hell is this? It’s like ... alchemical cement.’

‘It is alchemical cement. You didn’t notice that the cards smelled funny?’

‘Why the hell would I smell playing cards?’ She frowned. ‘Children, don’t touch these anymore. In fact, go and sit on your bed until Mummy can wash your hands.’

‘It’s not dangerous,’ said Locke.

‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘Paolo, Cosetta, put your hands in your laps and wait for Mummy.’

‘They’re not really cards,’ said Locke. ‘They’re alchemical resin wafers. Paper-thin and flexible. The card designs are actually painted on. You wouldn’t believe how expensive they were.’

‘Nor would I care. What the hell are they for?’

‘Isn’t it obvious? Dip one in strong liquor and it dissolves in a few seconds. Suddenly you’ve got a little pat of alchemical cement. Mash up as many cards as you need. The stuff dries in about a minute, hard as steel.’

‘Hard as steel?’ She eyed the grey splotch on her fine lacquered tabletop. ‘How does it come off?’

‘Um ... it doesn’t. There’s no solvent. At least not outside of an alchemist’s lab.’

‘What? Gods damn it, Ravelle—’

‘Captain, you’re being unfair. I didn’t ask you to take those cards out and play with them. Nor did I spill liquor on them.’

‘You’re right,’ said Drakasha with a sigh. She looked tired, Locke thought. The faint frown-lines around her mouth looked as though they’d had a long recent workout. ‘Gather these up and throw them overboard.’

‘Captain, please. Please.’ Locke held his hands out toward her. ‘Not only are they expensive, they’d be ... damned difficult to duplicate. It’d take months. Let me just roll them back up in oilcloth and put them in the chest. Please think of them as part of my papers.’

‘What do you use them for?’

‘They’re just part of my little bag of tricks,’ he said. ‘All I have left of it, really. One last, important little trick. I swear to you, they’re absolutely no threat to you or your ship ... you have to spill booze on them, and even then they’re just an annoyance. Look, if you save them for me, and find me some knives with scalpel-edges, I’ll devote all my time to getting that shit off your table. Prying from the sides. Even if it takes all week. Please.’

As it turned out, it took him ten hours, scraping away with infinite care atop the forecastle, as though he were performing surgery. He worked without rest, first by sunlight and then by the glow of multiple lanterns, until the devilishly hard stuff had been scraped off with nothing but a ghost upon the lacquer to show for it.

When he finally claimed his minuscule sleeping space, he knew his hands and forearms would ache well into the next day.

It was worth it, and had been worth every minute of work, to preserve the existence of that deck of cards.