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

‘Fire?’ Locke looked up from his hand in the card game that had broken out in the undercastle. ‘Shit!’ He dropped his cards to the deck, forfeiting his seven-solari bet for the round. Nearly a year’s pay for an honest Verrari labourer; common stakes for the games that took place after shares were paid out. There was a lot of spare coinage floating around the ship, since they’d left Port Prodigal in such a hurry.

Emerging from the undercastle, he nearly slammed into Delmastro.

‘Lieutenant, is that Tal Verrar?’

‘Has to be.’

‘And the fire? Is that certain?’ Fire in the city could mean some sort of disaster, or it could mean civil war. Chaos. Stragos might already be dead, or besieged, or even victorious - and therefore in no further need of Locke or Jean.

‘It’s the twenty-first, Ravelle.’

‘I know what bloody day it is; I just – oh. Oh!’

The twenty-first of Aurim: the Festa Iono, the grand pageant of the Lord of the Grasping Waters. Locke sighed with relief. Away from the usual rhythms of the city, he’d all but forgotten about the holiday. At the Festa Iono, the Verrari gave thanks for Iono’s influence on the city’s fortunes by ceremonially burning old ships while thousands of drunkards made a mess of the docks. Locke had only ever seen it from the balconies of the Sinspire, but it was a lively time. Hell, that would make slipping into the city easier; there’d be a thousand things going on to keep the watch busy.

‘All hands,’ came the cry from astern. ‘All hands at the waist! Captain wants a word!’

Locke grinned. In the event of an all-hands call during a card game, the game had to stop, and everyone with a stake in the pot got it back. His seven solari would be returning home soon enough.

The Orchids mustered noisily at the waist, and after a few minutes were waved to silence by Drakasha. The captain set an empty cask beside the mainmast and Lieutenant Delmastro leapt atop it, wearing a respectable overcoat from the ship’s store of fine clothing.

‘For the rest of the night,’ she shouted, ‘we’re the Chimera, and we’ve never even heard of the Poison Orchid. I’m the captain! I’ll be pacing the quarterdeck if anyone needs anything, and Drakasha will be in her cabin unless things go to hell.

‘If another ship hails us, I’ll be the one that answers. The rest of you pretend that you don’t speak Therin. Our task is to deliver two of our new friends to shore, for a job that’ll be important to us all. Ravelle, Valora - we’ll send you out in the same boat you donated to our cause all those weeks ago.’ She paused to allow a sudden outburst of chatter to die off. ‘We should drop anchor in the next two hours. If you’re not back by sunrise, this ship will be gone - and we’ll never come within five hundred miles of this city again.’

‘We understand,’ said Locke.

‘Once the anchor’s down,’ continued Delmastro, ‘I’ll want double watches aloft. Rig razor-nets on both sides for a quick raise, but leave them down. Lay polearms at the sides, up against the rails, and ready sabres at both the masts. If a customs boat or anything else carrying a uniform tries to pay us a visit, we’ll invite them aboard and detain them for the night. If anything more than that troubles us, we repel boarders, lay on the canvas and run like hell.’

There was a general murmur of approval for that idea.

‘That’s it. Stand in to Tal Verrar. Mumchance, put us about a mile off the Emerald Galleries. And raise an Ashmiri grey ensign at the taffrail.’

Ashmere, though lacking a merchant or military fleet of its own, did a brisk business in registrations of convenience for smugglers, bounty-privateers and tariff-dodging merchants. Nobody would look twice at them for the sake of that ensign. More importantly, nobody would approach merely for the sake of making small talk with fellow countrymen far from home. Locke approved. And anchoring in the waters south-east of the city would give them a good approach to the Castellana , so they could drop in on Stragos without lurking too close to the crowded marinas or the main anchorage.

‘Hey,’ said Utgar, slapping Locke and Jean on the backs, ‘you two, what the hell are you getting yourselves into? You want a bodyguard?’

‘Ravelle’s the only bodyguard I need,’ said Jean with a smirk.

‘Fair enough. I’ll give you that. But what are you sticking your noses into, hmm? Something dangerous?’

‘Probably not,’ said Locke. ‘Look, Drakasha will spin the full tale, probably sooner than you think. For tonight, let’s just say we’re on ordinary errands.’

‘Saying hello to grandmother,’ said Jean. ‘Paying off uncle’s gambling debts. Picking up three loaves of bread and a bushel of onions at the Night Market.’

‘Fine, fine. Keep your secrets. Rest of us’ll stay behind and be bored, right?’

‘Not likely,’ said Locke. ‘This ship’s full of little surprises, isn’t it?’

‘True enough,’ said Utgar, chuckling. ‘True enough, hey. Well, be careful. Eyes of the gods upon you and all that.’

‘Thanks.’ Locke scratched his beard, and then snapped his fingers. ‘Hell. I nearly forgot something. Jerome, Utgar, see you in a bit.’

He jogged aft, dodging Blue Watch work parties and bored Reds helping haul forth weapons from the arms lockers. He took the quarterdeck stairs in two quick leaps, slid down the companionway rails and knocked loudly on Drakasha’s cabin door.

‘It’s open,’ she shouted.

‘Captain,’ said Locke, closing the door behind him, ‘I need to borrow the money that was in my sea-chest again.’

Drakasha was lounging on her hammock with Paolo and Cosetta, reading to them from a heavy book that looked an awful lot like a Wise Mariner’s Practical Lexicon. ‘Technically, that money got cut up into shares,’ she said, ‘but I can give you the equivalent out of the ship’s purse. All of it?’

‘Two hundred and fifty solari should do. Oh. It, um, won’t be coming back with me.’

‘Fascinating,’ she said. ‘That’s a definition of “borrow” that doesn’t exactly compel me to get up from this hammock. On your way out—’

‘Captain, Stragos is just one half of tonight’s business. I need to keep Requin purring, too. He has the power to crush this scheme like an insect if I don’t. Besides - if I tickle his fancy, there’s one more useful item I might be able to squeeze out of him, now that I think of it.’

‘So you need a bribe.’

‘Between friends we call them considerations. Come on, Drakasha. Think of it as an investment in our desired outcome.’

‘For the sake of my peace and quiet, fine. I’ll have it waiting for you when you leave the ship.’

‘You’re too—’

‘I am not even remotely too kind. Begone.’