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

It was full night on the deck of the Poison Orchid, and the ship rode at anchor beneath a star-pierced sky. The moons had not yet begun to rise. Drakasha stood at the quarterdeck rail, backlit by alchemical lamps, wearing a tarpaulin for a cloak. Her hair was covered by a ludicrous woollen wig, vaguely resembling the ceremonial hairpiece of a Verrari magistrate. The deck fore and aft was crowded with shadowed crewfolk, and in a small clear space amidships stood the prisoners.

Nineteen men from the Red Messenger had survived the morning’s fight. Now all nineteen stood, bound hands and feet, in an awkward bunch at the ship’s waist. Locke shuffled forward behind Jean and Jabril.

‘Clerk of the court,’ said Drakasha, ‘you have brought us a sad lot.’

‘A sad lot indeed, Your Honour.’ Lieutenant Delmastro appeared beside the captain, clutching a rolled scroll and wearing a ridiculous wig of her own.

‘As wretched a pack of dissolute, cockless mongrels as I’ve ever seen. Still, I suppose we must try them.’

‘Indeed we must, ma’am.’

‘With what are they charged?’

‘Such a litany of crimes as turns the blood to jam.’ Delmastro opened the scroll and raised her voice as she read. ‘Wilful refusal of the kind hospitality of the Archon of Tal Verrar. Deliberate flight from the excellent accommodations provided by said Archon at the Windward Rock. Theft of a naval vessel with the stated intention of applying it to a life of piracy.’

‘Disgraceful.’

‘Just so, Your Honour. Now, the next bit is rather confusing: some are charged with mutiny, while others are charged with incompetence.’

‘Some this, some that? Clerk of the court, we cannot abide untidiness. Simply charge everyone with everything.’

‘Understood. The mutineers are now incompetent and the incompetent are also mutineers.’

‘Excellent. Very excellent, and so very magisterial. No doubt I shall be quoted in books.’

‘Important books, too, ma’am.’

‘What else do these wretches have to answer for?’

‘Assault and larceny beneath the red flag, Your Honour. Armed piracy on the Sea of Brass on the twenty-first instant of the month of Festal, this very year.’

‘Vile, grotesque and contemptible,’ shouted Drakasha. ‘Let the record show that I feel as though I may swoon. Tell me, are there any who would speak in defence of the prisoners?’

‘None, ma’am, as the prisoners are penniless.’

‘Ah. Then under whose laws do they claim any rights or protections?’

‘None, ma’am. No power on land will claim or aid them.’

‘Pathetic, and not unexpected. Yet without firm guidance from their betters, perhaps it’s only natural that these rodents have shunned virtue like a contagious disease. Perhaps some small chance of clemency may be forthcoming.’

‘Unlikely, ma’am.’

‘One small matter remains, which may attest to their true character. Clerk of the court, can you describe the nature of their associates and consorts?’

‘Only too vividly, Your Honour. They wilfully consort with the officers and crew of the Poison Orchid.’

‘Gods above,’ cried Drakasha, ‘did you say Poison Orchid?’

‘I did indeed, ma’am.’

‘They are guilty! Guilty on every count! Guilty in every particular, guilty to the utmost and final extremity of all possible human culpability! ’ Drakasha tore at her wig, then flung it to the deck and jumped up and down upon it.

‘An excellent verdict, ma’am.’

‘It is the judgment of this court,’ said Drakasha, ‘solemn in its authority and unwavering in its resolution, that for crimes upon the sea, the sea shall have them. Put them over the side! And may the gods not be too hasty in conferring mercy upon their souls.’

Cheering, the crew surged forth from every direction and surrounded the prisoners. Locke was alternately pushed and pulled along with the crowd to the larboard entry port, where a cargo net lay upon the deck with a sail beneath it. The two were lashed together at the edges. The ex-Messengers were shoved onto the netting and held there while several dozen sailors under Delmastro’s direction moved to the capstan.

‘Make ready to execute sentence,’ said Drakasha.

‘Heave up,’ cried Delmastro.

A complex network of pulleys and tackles had been rigged between the lower yards of the foremast and mainmast; as the sailors worked the capstan, the edges of the net drew upward and the Orchids holding the prisoners stepped back. In a few seconds the ex-Messengers were off the deck, squeezed together like animals in a trap. Locke clung to the rough netting to avoid slipping into the centre of the tangled mass of limbs and bodies. There was a generally useless bout of shoving and swearing as the net swung out over the rail and swayed gently in the darkness fifteen feet above the water.

‘Clerk of the court, execute the prisoners,’ said Drakasha.

‘Give ’em a drop, aye!’

They wouldn’t, thought Locke, at the very same moment they did.

The net full of prisoners plunged, drawing unwilling yelps and screams from the throats of men who’d done murderous battle on the Kingfisher in relative silence. The pull on the edges of the net slackened as it fell, so at least they had more room to tumble and bounce when they hit the surface of the water - or, more accurately, the strangely yielding barrier of net and sail canvas with the water beneath it like a cushion.

They rolled around in a jumbled, shouting mass for a second or two while the edges of their trap settled down into the waves, and then the warm, dark water was pouring in around them. Locke felt a brief moment of genuine panic - hard not to when the knots binding his hands and feet were very real - but after a few moments the edges of the net-backed sail began to draw upward again, until they were just above the surface of the ocean. The water still trapped with the prisoners was about waist-deep to Locke, and now the sail canvas formed a sort of shielded pool for them to stand and flounder about in.

‘Everyone all right?’ That was Jean; Locke saw that he’d claimed the edge of the net directly across from him. There were half a dozen shoving, splashing men between them. Locke scowled at the realization that Jean was quite content to stay where he was.

‘Fuckin’ jolly,’ muttered Streva, holding himself upright by one arm. The other had been lashed to the front of his chest in a crude sling. Several of the ex-Messengers were nursing broken bones, and nearly all of them had cuts and bruises, but not one had been excused from this ritual by his injuries.

‘Your Honour!’ Locke glanced up at the sound of Delmastro’s voice. The lieutenant was peering down at them from the larboard entry port with a lantern in one hand; their net was resting in the water three or four feet from the Orchid’s dark hull. ‘Your Honour, they’re not drowning!’

‘What?’ Drakasha appeared next to Delmastro with her false wig back on her head, now more wildly askew than ever. ‘You rude little bastards! How dare you waste this court’s time with this ridiculous refusal to be executed! Clerk, help them drown!’

‘Aye, ma’am, immediate drowning assistance. Deck pumps at the ready! Deck pumps away!’

A pair of sailors appeared at the rail with the aperture of a canvas hose held between them. Locke turned away just as the gush of warm salt water started pounding down on them all. Not so bad, he thought, just seconds before something more substantial than water struck the back of his head with a wet, stinging smack.

Bombardment with this new indignity - greased oakum, Locke quickly realized - was general and vigorous. Crewfolk had lined the rail and were flinging it down into the netted prisoners, a veritable rain of rags and rope fragments that had the familiar rancid stink of the stuff he’d spent several mornings painting the masts with. This assault continued for several minutes, until Locke had no idea where the grease ended and his clothes began, and the water in their little enclosure was topped with a sliding layer of foulness.

‘Unbelievable,’ shouted Delmastro. ‘Your Honour, they’re still there!’

‘Not drowned?’

Zamira appeared at the rail once again and solemnly removed her wig. ‘Damnation. The sea refuses to claim them. We shall have to bring them back aboard.’

After a few moments, the lines above them drew taut and the little prison of net and canvas began to rise from the water. Not a moment too soon, it seemed - Locke shuddered as he felt something large and powerful brush against the barrier beneath his feet. In seconds they were mercifully above the tips of the waves and creaking steadily upward.

But their punishment was not yet over; they hung once more in the darkness when the net was hoisted above the rail and were not brought back in above the deck.

‘Free the spinning-tackle,’ shouted Delmastro.

Locke caught sight of a small woman shimmying out onto the tangle of ropes overhead. She pulled a restraining pin from the large wooden tackle by which the net was suspended. Locke recognized the circular metal bearing within the tackle; heavily greased, it would allow even awkward and weighty cargoes to be spun with ease. Cargoes like them.

Crewfolk lined the rail and began to grab at the net and heave it along; in moments the prisoners were spinning at a nauseating rate, and the world around them flew by in glimpses - dark water . . . lamps on the deck . . . dark water . . . lamps on the deck . . .

‘Oh, gods,’ said someone, a moment before he noisily threw up. There was a sudden scramble away from the poor fellow, and Locke clung grimly to his place at the edge of the net, trying to ignore the kicking, shuddering, spinning mass of men.

‘Clean ’em up,’ shouted Delmastro. ‘Deck pumps away!’

The hard stream of salt water gushed into their midst once more, and they spun furiously. Locke intersected the spray every few seconds as each rotation of the net brought him around. His dizziness grew and grew as the minutes passed, and though it was becoming extremely fashionable, he focused every speck of dignity on simply not throwing up.

So intense was his dizziness and so swift was their deliverance that he didn’t even realize they’d been swung back onto the deck until the net he was clinging to collapsed into slackness. He toppled forward onto netting and canvas above good, hard planks once again. The net had ceased spinning but the world took its place, rotating in six or seven directions at once, all of them profoundly unpleasant. Locke closed his eyes, but that didn’t help. It merely made him blind as well as nauseous.

Men were crawling over him, moaning and swearing. A pair of crewfolk reached down and heaved Locke to his feet; his stomach nearly surrendered at that point and he coughed sharply to fight back his nausea. Captain Drakasha was approaching, her false wig and cloak discarded, and she was tilted at a funny angle.

‘The sea won’t have you,’ she said. ‘The water refuses to swallow you. It’s not yet your time to drown, praise Iono. Praise Ulcris!’

Ulcris was the Jereshti name for the god of the sea, not often heard in Therin lands or waters. There must be more eastern islanders aboard than I realized, thought Locke.

‘Lord of the Grasping Waters shield us,’ chanted the crew.

‘So you’re here with us between all things,’ said Drakasha. ‘The land won’t have you and the sea won’t claim you. You’ve fled, like us, to wood and canvas. This deck’s your firmament, these sails your heavens. This is all the world you get. This is all the world you need.’

She stepped forward with a drawn dagger. ‘Will you lick my boots to claim a place on it?’

‘NO!’ the ex-Messengers roared in unison. They’d been coached on this part of the ritual.

‘Will you kneel and kiss my jewelled ring for mercy?’

‘NO!’

‘Will you bend your knees to pretty titles on pieces of paper?’

‘NO!’

‘Will you pine for land and laws and kings, and cling to them like a mother’s tit?’

‘NO!’

She stepped up to Locke and handed him the dagger.

‘Then free yourself, brother.’

Still unsteady, and grateful for the aid of the crewfolk beside him, Locke used the blade to saw through the rope that bound his hands, and then bent over to cut the rope between his ankles. That accomplished, he turned and saw that all of the ex-Messengers were more or less upright, most of them held by one or two Orchids. Close at hand he could see several familiar faces - Streva, Jabril, a fellow called Alvaro . . . and just behind them, Jean, watching him uneasily.

Locke hesitated, then pointed to Jabril and held out the blade.

‘Free yourself, brother.’

Jabril smiled, took the blade and was finished with his bonds in a moment. Jean glared at Locke, who closed his eyes, not wanting to make further eye contact, and listened as the dagger made its passage through the group, from hand to hand. ‘Free yourself, brother,’ they murmured, one after another. And then it was done.

‘Unbound by your own hands, you are outlaw brethren of the Sea of Brass,’ said Captain Drakasha, ‘and crewmen of the Poison Orchid.’