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

He and Jean were placed on the Red Watch, which had been put under Lieutenant Delmastro’s direct oversight in Nasreen’s absence. Grand initiation ceremonies did nothing to sate the ship’s appetite for maintenance; the masts still needed to be slushed, the seams checked and rechecked, the decks swept, the rigging adjusted. Locke oiled sabres from the weapons lockers, heaved at the capstan to shift cargo for better trim, served ale at the mid-evening meals and pulled rope fragments to oakum until his fingers were red.

Drakasha acknowledged Locke with terse nods but said nothing, and summoned him to no more private conversations.

As full crew, the ex-Messengers had the right to sleep more or less where they would. Some opted for the main hold, especially those who claimed willing hammock-partners among the old Orchids, but Locke found himself comfortable enough with the now-roomier undercastle. He won a spare tunic in a game of dice and used it as a pillow, a luxury after days of bare deck alone. He slept like a stone statue after finishing each night’s watch just before the red light of dawn.

Jean, of course, slept elsewhere after the night watches.

They had no sightings until the twenty-fifth of the month, when the winds shifted and began to blow strongly from the south. Locke had collapsed into his usual spot against the undercastle’s larboard wall at sunrise, and then snored for several hours in the fashion of the eminently self-satisfied until some sort of commotion awoke him to find Regal draped across his neck.

‘Gah,’ he said, and the kitten took this as a signal to perch his forepaws on Locke’s cheeks and begin poking his wet nose directly between Locke’s eyes. Locke seized the kitten, sat up and blinked. His skull felt full of cobwebs; something had definitely woken him prematurely.

‘Was it you?’ he muttered, frowning and rubbing the top of Regal’s skull with two fingers. ‘We have to stop meeting like this, kid. I’m not getting attached to you.’

‘Land ho,’ came a faint cry from outside the undercastle. ‘Three points off the larboard bow!’ Locke set Regal down, gave him an unambiguous nudge toward some other snoring sleeper and crawled out into the morning light.

Activity on deck looked normal; nobody was rushing about, or delivering urgent messages to Drakasha, or even crowding the rail to try to spot the approaching land. Someone slapped Locke on the back and he turned to find himself facing Utgar, who had a coil of rope slung over his shoulder. The Vadran nodded in a friendly fashion.

‘You look confused, Red Watch.’

‘It’s just . . . I heard the cry. I thought there’d be more excitement. Will that be Port Prodigal?’

‘Nah. It’s the Ghostwinds, right, but we’re just fetching the edges. Miserable places. Asp Island, Bastard Rock, the Opal Sands. Nowhere we’d want to touch. Two days yet to Prodigal, and with the winds like this, we’re not getting in the way we’d like, hey?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ll see.’ Utgar grinned, enjoying some private knowledge. ‘You’ll see for damn sure. Get your beauty sleep, right? You’re back on the masts in two hours.’