Red Seas Under Red Skies: The Gentleman Bastard Sequence, Book Two (Gentleman Bastards 2)
3
All the new initiates and half the ship’s old company were on the Merry Watch, fuelled by rack after rack of the fine eastern wines they’d plucked from the Kingfisher. Locke recognized some of the labels and vintages. Stuff that wouldn’t sell in Camorr for less than twenty Crowns a bottle was being sucked down like beer, or poured into the hair of celebrating men and women, or simply spilled on deck. The Orchids, men and women alike, were mixing eagerly with the ex-Messengers now. Dice games and wrestling matches and song-circles had erupted spontaneously. Propositions spoken and unspoken were everywhere. Jabril had vanished belowdecks with a crew-woman at least an hour before.
Locke took it all in from the shadows of the starboard side, just below the raised quarterdeck. The starboard stairs weren’t flush with the rail; there was space enough for a lean person to wedge comfortably between the two. ‘Ravelle’ had been greeted warmly and eagerly enough when he’d circulated on deck, but now that he’d found a cosy exile nobody seemed to be missing him. In his hands was a large leather jack full of blue wine that was worth its weight in silver, as yet untouched.
Across the great mass of laughing, drinking sailors, Locke could make out Jean at the ship’s opposite rail. While Locke watched, the shape of a woman, much shorter, approached him from behind and reached out toward him. Locke turned away.
The water slipped past, a black gel topped with curls of faintly phosphorescent foam. The Orchid was setting a good pace through the night. Laden, she yielded less than before to the chop of the sea and was parting these little waves as if they were air.
‘When I was a lieutenant apprentice,’ said Captain Drakasha, ‘on my first voyage with an officer’s sword, I lied to my captain about stealing a bottle of wine.’
She spoke softly. Startled, Locke looked around and saw that she was standing directly over him, at the forward quarterdeck rail.
‘Not just me,’ she continued. ‘All eight of us in the apprentices’ berth. We “borrowed” it from the captain’s private stores and should have been smart enough to pitch the bottle over the side when we’d finished.’
‘In the . . . navy of Syrune, this was?’
‘Her Resplendent Majesty’s Sea Forces of Syrune Eternal.’ Drakasha’s smile was a crescent of white against darkness, faint as the foam topping the waves. ‘The captain could have had us whipped, or reduced in rank, or even chained up for formal trial on land. Instead she had us strike down the royal yard from the mainmast. We had a spare, of course. But she made us scrape the varnish off the one we’d taken down . . . this is a spar of oak, you know, ten feet long and thick as a leg. The captain took our swords and said they’d be restored if and only if we ate the royal yard. Tip to tip, every last splinter.’
‘Ate it?’
‘A foot and a quarter of sturdy oak for each of us,’ said Drakasha. ‘How we did it was our business. It took a month. We tried everything. Shaving it, scraping it, boiling it, pulping it. We had a hundred tricks to make it palatable and we forced it down, a few spoonfuls or chips a day. Most of us got sick, but we ate the yard.’
‘Gods.’
‘When it was over, the captain said she’d wanted us to understand that lies between shipmates tear the ship apart, bit by bit, gnawing at it just as we’d gnawed the royal yard down to nothing.’
‘Ah.’ Locke sighed and at last took a sip of his warm, excellent wine. ‘I take it this means I’m due for a bit more dissection, then?’
‘Come join me at the taffrail.’
Locke rose, knowing it wasn’t a request.