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

Locke stood at the taffrail, looking down into the ship’s phosphorescent wake between the glow of two stern lanterns. Those lanterns were gleaming glass orchids the size of his head, transparent petals drooping delicately toward the water.

‘Gods,’ said Locke, shuddering.

Between the wake and the lanterns, there was just enough light for him to spot it - a long, black shadow sliding beneath the Poison Orchid’s trail of disturbed water. Forty or fifty feet of something sinuous and sinister, using the ship’s wake to conceal itself. Captain Drakasha had one boot up on the taffrail and an expression of casual pleasure on her face.

‘What the hell is it?’

‘Five or six possibilities,’ said Drakasha. ‘Might be a whaleworm or a giant devilfish.’

‘Is it following us?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it . . . um, dangerous?’

‘Well, if you drop your drink over the rail, don’t jump in after it.’

‘Don’t you think you should maybe let it have a few arrows?’

‘I might, if only I was sure that this is the fastest it can swim.’

‘Good point.’

‘Fling arrows at all the strange things you see out here, Ravelle, and all you do is run out of arrows.’ She sighed and glanced around to ensure that they were more or less alone. The closest crewman was at the wheel, eight or nine yards forward. ‘You made yourself very useful today.’

‘Well, the alternative just didn’t suit.’

‘I thought I was abetting a suicide when I agreed to let you lead the boats.’

‘You nearly were, Captain. It was . . . look, it was inches from disaster the whole way, that fight. I don’t even remember half of it. The gods blessed me by allowing me to avoid soiling my breeches. Surely you know what it’s like.’

‘I do. I also know that sometimes these things aren’t accidents. You and Master Valora have . . . excited a great deal of comment for what you did in that battle. Your skills are unusual for a former master of weights and measures.’

‘Weighing and measuring is a boring occupation,’ said Locke. ‘A man needs a hobby.’

‘The Archon’s people didn’t hire you by accident, did they?’

‘What?’

‘I said I’d peel this strange fruit you call a story, Ravelle, and I have been. My initial impression of you wasn’t favourable. But you’ve . . . done better. And I think I can understand how you kept your old crew in thrall despite your ignorance. You seem to have a real talent for improvised dishonesty.’

‘Weighing and measuring is a very, very boring—’

‘So you’re a master of a sedentary occupation who just happened to have a talent for espionage? And disguise? And command? Not to mention your skill at arms, or that of your close and unusually educated friend Jerome?’

‘Our mothers were so very proud of us.’

‘You weren’t hired away from the Priori by the Archon,’ said Drakasha. ‘You were double agents. Planted provocateurs, intended to enter the Archon’s service. You didn’t steal that ship because of some insult you won’t speak of; you stole it because your orders were to damage the Archon’s credibility. To do something big.’

‘Uh—’

‘Please, Ravelle. As if there could be any other reasonable explanation.’

Gods, what a temptation, Locke though. A mark actually inviting me to step into her own misconception, free and clear. He stared at the phosphorescent wake, at the mysterious something swimming beneath it. What to do? Take the opening, cement the Ravelle and Valora identities in Drakasha’s mind, work from there? Or . . . his cheeks burned as the sting of Jean’s rebuke rose again in his memory. Jean hadn’t just criticized him on theological grounds, or because of Delmastro. It was a matter of approaches. Which would be more effective?

Treat this woman as a mark, or treat her as an ally?

Time was running out. This conversation was the point of decision: follow his instincts and play her, or follow Jean’s advice and . . . attempt to trust her. He thought furiously. His own instincts - were they always impeccable? Jean’s instincts - arguments aside, had Jean ever done anything but try to protect him?

‘Tell me something,’ he said very slowly, ‘while I weigh a response.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Something half the size of this ship is probably staring at us as we speak.’

‘Yes.’

‘How do you stand it?’

‘You see things like this often enough, you get used—’

‘Not just that. Everything. I’ve been at sea a grand total of six or seven weeks in my life. How long have you been out here?’

She stared at him, saying nothing,

‘Some things about myself,’ said Locke, ‘I won’t tell you just because you’re the captain of this ship, even if you throw me back in the hold or pitch me over the side. Some things . . . I want to know who I’m talking to first. I want to talk to Zamira, not to Captain Drakasha.’

Still she remained silent.

‘Is that asking so very much?’

‘I’m nine and thirty,’ she said at last, very quietly. ‘I first sailed when I was eleven.’

‘Nearly thirty years, then. Well, like I said, I’ve been out here a few weeks. And in that time - storms, mutiny, seasickness, battles, flit-wraiths . . . hungry damn things lurking all over the place, waiting for someone to dip a toe in the water. It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed myself at times; I have. I’ve learned things. But . . . thirty years? And children as well? Don’t you find it all . . . chancy?’

‘Do you have children, Orrin?’

‘No.’

‘The instant I decide that you are presuming to lecture me on their behalf, this conversation will end with you going over this rail to make the acquaintance of whatever’s down there.’

‘That’s not at all what I meant. It’s just—’

‘Have people on land acquired the secret of living for ever? Have they abolished accidents? Have they ceased to have weather in my absence?’

‘Of course not.’

‘How much more danger are my children truly in than some poor bastard conscripted to fight in his duke’s wars? Or some penniless family dying of a plague with their neighbourhood quarantined, or burned to the ground? Wars, disease, taxes. Bowing heads and kissing boots. There’s plenty of hungry damn things prowling on land, Orrin. It’s just that the ones at sea tend not to wear crowns.’

‘Ah—’

‘Was your life a paradise before you sailed the Sea of Brass?’

‘No.’

‘Of course not. Listen well. I thought that I’d grown up in a hierarchy where mere competence and loyalty were enough to maintain one’s station in life,’ she whispered. ‘I gave an oath of service and imagined that oath was binding in both directions. I was a fool. And I had to kill an awful lot of men and women to escape the consequences of that foolishness. Would you really ask me to place my trust, and my hopes for Paolo and Cosetta, in the same bullshit that nearly killed me before? Which system of laws should I bend to, Orrin? Which king or duke or empress should I trust like a mother? Which of them is a better judge of my life’s worth than I am? Can you point them out to me, write a letter of introduction?’

‘Zamira,’ said Locke, ‘please don’t make me out to be some sort of advocate for things that I’m not; it seems to me that my whole life has been spent in the wilful disdain of what you’re talking about. Do I strike you as a law-and-order sort of fellow?’

‘Admittedly not.’

‘I’m just curious, is all. I do appreciate this. Tell me now - what about the Free Armada? Your so-called War for Recognition? Why profess such hatred for . . . laws and taxes and all those strictures, if that was essentially what you were fighting to emplace down here?’

‘Ah.’ Zamira sighed, removed her four-cornered hat and ran her fingers through her breeze-tossed hair. ‘Our infamous Lost Cause. Our personal contribution to the glorious history of Tal Verrar.’

‘Why did you start it?’

‘Bad judgment. We all hoped . . . well, Captain Bonaire was persuasive. We had a leader, a plan. Open mines on new islands, tap some of the safe forests for wood and resin. Pillage as we liked until the other powers on the Sea of Brass came wringing their hands to the bargaining table and then beat the shit out of them with authorized trade. We imagined a realm without tariffs. Montierre and Port Prodigal swelling with merchants and their imported fortunes.’

‘Ambitious.’

‘Idiotic. I was newly escaped from one sour allegiance and I leapt right into another. We believed Bonaire when she said that Stragos didn’t have the clout to come down and mount a serious fight.’

‘Oh. Hell.’

‘They met us at sea. Biggest action I ever saw, and the soonest lost. Stragos put hundreds of Verrari soldiers on his ships to back the sailors; we never stood a chance in close action. Once they had the Basilisk they stopped taking prisoners. They’d board a ship, scuttle it and move on to the next. Their archers put shafts into anyone in the water, at least until the devilfish came.

‘I needed every trick I had just to get the Orchid out. A few of us straggled back to Prodigal, beat to hell, and even before we got there the Verrari pounded Montierre into the sand. Five hundred dead in one morning. After that, they sailed back home and I imagine there was a lot of dancing, fucking and speeches.’

‘I think,’ said Locke, ‘you can take a city like Tal Verrar . . . and you can threaten its purse-strings or its pride, and get away with it. But not if you threaten both at once.’

‘You’re right. Maybe Stragos was impotent when Bonaire left the city; whatever he was, we united Tal Verrar’s interests behind him. We summoned him up like some demon out of a story.’ She folded her arms over her hat and leaned forward, resting her elbows against the taffrail. ‘So we stayed outlaws. No flowering for the Ghostwinds. No glorious destiny for Port Prodigal. This ship is our world now, and I only take her in when her belly’s too full to prowl.

‘Am I making myself clear, Orrin? I don’t regret how I’ve lived these past few years. I move where I will. I set no appointments. I guard no borders. What landbound king has the freedom of a ship’s captain? The Sea of Brass provides. When I need haste, it gives me winds. When I need gold, it gives me galleons.’

Thieves prosper, thought Locke. The rich remember.

He made his decision, and gripped the rail to avoid shaking.

‘Only gods-damned fools die for lines drawn on maps,’ said Zamira. ‘But nobody can draw lines around my ship. If they try, all I need to do to slip away is set more sail.’

‘Yeah,’ said Locke. ‘But . . . Zamira, what if I were forced to tell you that that may no longer be the case?’