Red Seas Under Red Skies: The Gentleman Bastard Sequence, Book Two (Gentleman Bastards 2)
7
Mount Azar was quiet this morning, the twenty-fifth of Aurim, and the sky above Salon Corbeau was blue as a river’s depths, unmarked by the old volcano’s grey smoke. It was another mild winter on the northern Brass Coast, in a climate more reliable than Verrari clockwork.
‘New swells coming in,’ said Zoran, chief dock attendant of the morning watch.
‘I don’t see any more waves than what we already got.’ Giatti, his more junior counterpart, stared earnestly across the harbour.
‘Not swells, you idiot, swells. Gentlefolk. The landed and larded class.’ Zoran adjusted his olive-green tabard and brushed it clean, wishing that he didn’t have to wear Lady Saljesca’s damned felt hat. It made him look taller, but it generated sweat without keeping it out of his eyes.
Beyond the natural rock walls of Salon Corbeau’s harbour, a stately brig, a two-master with a dark witchwood hull, had just joined the two Lashani feluccas at anchor in the gentle sea. A longboat was coming in from the new arrival: four or five of the quality rowed by a dozen oarsmen.
As the longboat pulled up alongside the dock, Giatti bent down and began uncoiling a rope from one of the dock pilings. When the bow of the boat was secure, Zoran stepped to its side, bowed and extended his hand to the first young woman to rise from her seat.
‘Welcome to Salon Corbeau,’ he said. ‘How are you styled, and how must you be announced?’
The short young woman, unusually muscular for someone of her station, smiled prettily as she took Zoran’s hand. She wore a forest-green jacket over a matching set of frilled skirts; the colour set her curly chestnut hair off rather well. She appeared to be wearing rather less make-up and jewellery than might be expected, however. A poorer relative of whoever owned the ship?
‘Forgive me, madam, but I must know whom I’m announcing.’ She stepped safely onto the dock, and he released his grip on her hand. To his surprise, she didn’t release hers, and in one smooth motion she was up against him with the menacing weight of a blackened-steel dagger touching the crook of his thigh. He gasped.
‘Heavily armed pirates, party of ninety-eight,’ the woman said. ‘Scream or fight back and you’re going to be one surprised eunuch.’