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

‘So what do we do now?’ asked Locke.

‘Word’ll go out to all the usual vultures that we’re back in,’ said Drakasha. ‘Less than a day or two and they’ll be courting us. Liquor and rations will go first; always easiest to sell. Nautical spares and stores we keep for ourselves. As for the silks and finer things, those independent traders moored at the Hospital docks are our friends in that regard. They’ll try to clean us out for fifteen to twenty per cent of market value. Good enough for us, then they haul it back across the sea and sell it at full price with innocent smiles on their faces.’

‘What about the Messenger?’

‘When she shows up, the Shipbreaker will pay us a visit. He’ll offer us piss in a clay bowl and we’ll talk him up to piss in a wooden jug. Then she’s his problem. She’s worth maybe six thousand solari with her rigging intact; I’ll be lucky to take him for anything near two. His crew will sail her east and sell her to some eager merchant for about four, undercutting his competition and carving a fat profit at the same time.’

‘Hell,’ said Lieutenant Delmastro, ‘some of the ships on the Sea of Brass routes have been taken and resold three or four times.’

‘This Shipbreaker,’ said Locke, feeling a scheme in the birthing, ‘I take it the fact that his trade is also his name means he doesn’t have any competitors?’

‘All dead,’ said Delmastro. ‘The ugly and publicly instructive way.’

‘Captain,’ said Locke, ‘how long will all of this take? It’s nearly the end of the month, and—’

‘I’m well aware of what day it is, Ravelle. It takes as long as it takes. Maybe three days, maybe seven or eight. While we’re here everyone on the crew gets at least one chance at a day and night ashore, too.’

‘I—’

‘I haven’t forgotten the matter you’re concerned about,’ Drakasha said. ‘I’ll bring it to the council tomorrow. After that, we’ll see.’

‘Matter?’ Delmastro looked genuinely confused. Locke had been half-expecting Jean to have told her by now, but apparently they’d been spending their private time in a wiser and more diverting fashion.

‘You’ll find out tomorrow, Del. After all, you’ll be at the council with me. No more on the subject, Ravelle.’

‘Right.’ Locke sipped beer and held up a finger. ‘Something else, then. Let me request a few things of you in private before this Shipbreaker comes calling. Maybe I can help you squeeze a higher price out of the fellow.’

‘He’s not a fellow,’ said Drakasha. ‘He’s as slippery as a pus-dipped turd and about as pleasant.’

‘So much the better. Think on Master Nera; at least let me make the attempt.’

‘No promises,’ said Zamira. ‘I’ll hear you, at least.’

‘Orchids,’ boomed a deep-voiced man as he appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Captain Drakasha! You know they’re still pulling Rance’s teeth out of the walls downstairs?’

‘Rance fell ill with a sudden bout of discourtesy,’ said Zamira. ‘Then she just fell. Hello, Captain Rodanov.’

Rodanov was one of the largest men Locke had ever seen; he must have been just shy of seven feet tall. He was about Zamira’s age, and somewhat round in the belly. But his long, muscle-corded arms looked as though they’d be about right for strangling bears, and the fact that he didn’t deign to carry a weapon said much. His face was long and heavy-jawed, his pale hair receding, and his eyes were bright with the satisfied humour of a man who feels himself equal to the world. Locke had seen his type before, among the better garristas of Camorr, but none so towering; even Big Konar could only outdo him in girth.

Incongruously, his huge hands were wrapped around a pair of delicate wine bottles made of sapphire-coloured glass with silver ribbons below their corks. ‘I took a hundred bottles of last year’s Lashani Blue out of a galleon a few months ago. I saved a few because I know you have a taste for it. Welcome back.’

‘Welcome to the table, Captain.’ At Drakasha’s gesture, Ezri, Jean, Locke and Konar shuffled one chair to the left, leaving the chair next to Zamira open. Jaffrim settled into it and passed her the wine bottles. When she offered her right hand he kissed it, then stuck out his tongue.

‘Mmm,’ he said, ‘I always wondered what Chavon would taste like.’ He helped himself to a discarded cup as Zamira laughed. ‘Who’s closest to the ale cask?’

‘Allow me,’ said Locke.

‘Most of you I’ve met,’ said Rodanov. ‘Rask, of course, I’m shocked as hell you’re still alive. Dantierre, Konar, good to see you. Malakasti, love, what’s Zamira got that I haven’t? Wait, I’m not sure I want to know. And you.’ He slipped an arm around Lieutenant Delmastro and gave her a squeeze. ‘I didn’t know Zamira still let children run free on deck. When are you going to reach your growth?’

‘I grew in all the right directions.’ She grinned and feigned a punch to his stomach. ‘You know, the only reason people think your ship’s a three-master is because you’re always standing on the quarterdeck.’

‘If I take my breeches off,’ said Rodanov, ‘it suddenly looks as though she’s got four.’

‘We might believe that if we hadn’t seen enough naked Vadrans to know better,’ said Drakasha.

‘Well, I’m no shame to the old country,’ said Rodanov as Locke passed him a cup full of beer. ‘And I see you’ve been picking up new faces.’

‘Here and there. Orrin Ravelle, Jerome Valora. This is Jaffrim Rodanov, captain of the Dread Sovereign.’

‘Your health and good fortune,’ said Rodanov, raising his cup. ‘May your foes be unarmed and your ale unspoiled.’

‘Foolish merchants and fine winds to chase them on,’ said Zamira, raising one of the wine bottles he’d given her.

‘Did you have a good sweep this time out?’

‘Holds are fit to bust,’ said Drakasha. ‘And we pulled in a little brig, about a ninety-footer. Ought to be here by now, actually.’

‘That the Red Messenger?’

‘How’d you—’

‘Strozzi came in just yesterday. Said he swooped down on a brig with bad legs and was about to pluck her when he found one of your prize crews waving at him. This was about sixty miles north of Trader’s Gate, just off the Burning Reach. Hell, they might be crawling through Trader’s Gate as we speak.’

‘More power to them, then. We came in through the Parlour.’

‘Not good,’ said Rodanov, looking less than pleased for the first time since he’d come up. ‘Heard some strange things about the Parlour lately. His Eminence the Fat Bastard—’

‘Shipbreaker,’ Konar whispered to Locke

‘—sent a lugger east last month and says it got lost in a storm. But I hear from reliable lips that it never made it out of the Parlour.’

‘I thought speed would be the greater virtue coming in,’ said Drakasha, ‘but next time back, I’ll use the Gate if it takes a week. You can pass that around.’

‘It’ll be my advice, too. Speaking of which, I hear you want to call the council tomorrow.’

‘There’s five of us in town. I’ve got . . . curious business from Tal Verrar. And I want a closed meeting.’

‘One captain, one first,’ said Rodanov. ‘Right. I’ll pass the word to Strozzi and Colvard tomorrow. I take it Rance already knows?’

‘Yes.’

‘She might not be able to speak.’

‘She won’t need to,’ said Drakasha. ‘I’m the one with the story to tell.’

‘So be it,’ said Rodanov. ‘“Let us speak behind our hands, lest our lips be read as the book of our designs, and let us find some place where only gods and rats may hear our words aloud.”’

Locke stared at Rodanov; that was Lucarno, from—

‘The Assassin’s Wedding,’ said Delmastro.

‘Yeah, easy,’ said Rodanov with a grin. ‘Nothing more difficult sprang to mind.’

‘What a curiously theatrical bent you Brass Sea reavers seem to have,’ said Jean. ‘I know Ezri has a taste—’

‘I only quote Lucarno for her,’ said Rodanov. ‘I myself hate the bastard. Mawkish sentiment, obvious self-satisfaction and so many little puns about fucking so all the Therin Throne’s best-dressed twits could feel naughty in public. Meanwhile the Bondsmagi and my ancestors rolled dice to see who got to burn the Empire down first.’

‘Jerome and I are both very fond of Lucarno,’ said Delmastro.

‘And that is because you don’t know any better,’ said Rodanov. ‘Because the plays of the early Throne poets are kept in vaults by pinheads while Lucarno’s merest specks of vomit are exalted by anyone with coins to waste on scribes and bindery. His plays aren’t preserved, they’re perpetrated. Mercallor Mentezzo—’

‘Mentezzo’s all right,’ said Jean. ‘His verse is fair, but he uses the chorus like a crutch and always throws the gods in at the end to solve everyone’s problems—’

‘Mentezzo and his contemporaries built Therin Throne drama from the Espadri model,’ said Rodanov, ‘invigorating dull temple rituals with relevant political themes. The limitations of their structure should be forgiven; by comparison, Lucarno had their entire body of work to build upon, and all he added to the mix was tawdry melodrama—’

‘Whatever he added, it’s enough that four hundred years after the scourging of Therim Pel, Lucarno is the only playwright with Talathri’s formal patronage whose work is still preserved in its entirety and regularly prepared in new editions—’

‘An appeal to the tastes of the groundlings is not equivalent to a valid philosophical analysis of the works in question! Lucestra of Nicora wrote in her letters to—’

‘Begging everyone’s pardon,’ said Big Konar, ‘but it ain’t polite to have an argument if nobody else knows what the fuck you’re arguing about.’

‘I have to admit that Konar is right,’ said Drakasha. ‘I can’t tell if you two are about to pull steel or found a mystery cult.’

‘Who the hell are you?’ asked Rodanov, his eyes fixed on Jean. ‘I haven’t had anyone to discuss this with for years.’

‘I had an unusual childhood,’ said Jean. ‘Yourself?’

‘The, ah, prevailing vanity of my youth was that the Therin Collegium needed a master of letters and rhetoric named Rodanov.’

‘What happened?’

‘Well, there was a certain professor of rhetoric, see, who’d come up with a foolproof way to run a betting shop out of the Hall of Studious Reflection. Gladiator pits, Collegium boat races, that sort of thing. He used his students as message runners, and since money can be used to buy beer, that made him our personal hero. Of course, when he had to flee the city it was whips and chains for the rest of us, so I signed on for shit-work aboard a merchant galleon—’

‘When was this?’ interrupted Locke.

‘Hell, this was back when the gods were young. Must be twenty-five years.’

‘This professor of rhetoric ... was his name Barsavi? Vencarlo Barsavi? ’

‘How the hell could you possibly know that?’

‘Might have ... crossed paths with him a few times.’ Locke grinned. ‘Travelling in the east. Vicinity of Camorr.’

‘I heard rumours,’ said Rodanov. ‘Heard the name once or twice, but never made it to Camorr myself. Barsavi, really? Is he still there?’

‘No,’ said Jean. ‘No, he died a couple of years ago, is what I heard.’

‘Too bad.’ Rodanov sighed. ‘Too damn bad. Well ... I can tell I’ve detained you all for too long nattering about people who’ve been dead for centuries. Don’t take me too seriously, Valora. A pleasure to meet you. You as well, Ravelle.’

‘Good to see you, Jaffrim,’ said Zamira, rising from her chair along with him. ‘Until tomorrow, then?’

‘I’ll expect a good show,’ he said. ‘Evening, all.’

‘One of your fellow captains,’ said Jean as Rodanov descended the stairs. ‘Very interesting. So why didn’t he want our table, then?’

‘Dread Sovereign’s the biggest ship any Port Prodigal captain has ever had,’ said Zamira, slowly. ‘And she’s got the biggest crew by far. Jaffrim doesn’t need to play the games the rest of us do. And he knows it.’

There was no conversation at the table for several minutes, until Rask suddenly cleared his throat and spoke in a low, gravelly voice.

‘I saw a play once,’ he said. ‘It had this dog that bit a guy in the balls—’

‘Yeah,’ said Malakasti. ‘I saw that, too. ‘Cause the dog loves sausage, and the man is always feeding him sausage, and then he takes his breeches off—’

‘Right,’ said Drakasha, ‘the very next person who mentions a play of any sort is going to swim back to the Orchid. Let’s go and see how badly our friend Banjital Vo wanted his silver.’