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

Tal Verrar. Half a day’s sailing to the city they’d avoided like a colony of slipskinners these past seven years; to the home of a navy that could crush even his powerful Sovereign if roused to anger. There was no genuine freedom in these waters, only a vague illusion. Fat merchant ships he could never touch; a rich city he could never sack. Yet he could live with that. It was grand, provided only that the freedom and the plunder of the southern seas could remain available.

‘Captain,’ said Ydrena, appearing on deck with a chipped clay mug of her usual brandy-laced morning tea in one hand, ‘I don’t mean to ruin a fine new morning—’

‘You wouldn’t be my first if I needed my arse kissed more than I needed my ship sailed.’

‘We made great time coming up, but now we’ve been a week out here without a lead, Captain.’

‘We’ve seen two dozen sail of merchants, luggers and pleasure-galleys just these past two days,’ said Rodanov, ‘and we have yet to see a naval ensign. There’s still time to find her.’

‘No quarrel with that logic, Captain. It’s the finding her that’s—’

‘A royal pain in the arse. I know.’

‘It’s not as though she’ll be roaming around announcing herself as Zamira Drakasha of the Poison Orchid,’ said Ydrena, taking a sip of her tea. ‘“Well met, we’re infamous shipwreckers from the Ghostwinds, mind if we pull alongside for a visit?”’

‘She can claim whatever name she likes,’ said Rodanov, ‘paint whatever she wants on her stern, mess with her sail plan until she looks like a constipated xebec, but she’s only got one hull. A dark witchwood hull. And we’ve been seeing it for years.’

‘All hulls are dark until you get awful close, Captain.’

‘Ydrena, if I had a better notion, believe me, we’d be pursuing it.’ He yawned and stretched, feeling the heavy muscles in his arms flex pleasantly. ‘Only word we’ve got is a few ships getting hit, and now Salon Corbeau. She’s circling out here somewhere, keeping west. It’s what I’d do – more sea room.’

‘Aye,’ said Ydrena. ‘Such a very great deal of sea room.’

‘Ydrena,’ he said softly, ‘I’ve come a long way to break an oath and kill a friend. I’ll go as far as it takes, and I’ll haunt her wake as long as necessary. We’ll quarter this sea until one of us finds the other.’

‘Or the crew decides they’ve had—’

‘It’s a good long haul till we cross that line. In the meantime, double all our top-eyes by night. Triple them by day. We’ll put half the fucking crew up the masts if we have to.’

‘New sail ahoy,’ called a voice from atop the foremast. The cry was passed back along the deck and Rodanov ran forward, unable to restrain himself. They’d heard the cry fifty times that week if they’d heard it once, but each time might be the time.

‘Where away?’

‘Three points off the starboard bow!’

‘Ydrena,’ Rodanov shouted, ‘set more canvas! Straight for the sighting! Helm, bring us about north-north-east on the starboard tack!’

Whatever the sighting was, the Dread Sovereign was at home in wind and waters like this; her size and weight allowed her to crash through waves that would steal speed from lighter vessels. They would close with the sighting very soon.

Still, the minutes passed interminably. They came about to their new course, seizing the power of the wind now blowing from just abaft their starboard beam. Rodanov prowled the forecastle, waiting—

‘Captain Rodanov! She’s a two-master, sir! Say again, two masts!’

‘Very good,’ he shouted. ‘Ydrena! First mate to the forecastle!’

She was there in a minute, pale-blonde hair fluttering in the breeze. She tossed back the last of her morning tea as she arrived.

‘Take my best glass to the foretop,’ he said. ‘Tell me ... as soon as you know anything.’

‘Aye,’ she said. ‘At least it’s something to do.’

The morning progressed with torturous slowness, but at least the sky was cloudless. Good conditions for spotting. The sun rose higher and grew brighter, until—

‘Captain,’ hollered Ydrena, ‘witchwood hull! That’s a two-masted brig with a witchwood hull!’

He couldn’t stand waiting passively any more. ‘I’m coming up myself,’ he shouted.

Laboriously, he crawled up the foremast shrouds to the observation platform at the maintop, a place he’d left to smaller, younger sailors for many years. Ydrena was perched there, along with a crewman who shuffled aside to make room for him on the platform. Rodanov took the glass and peered at the ship on the horizon, stared at it until not even the most cautious part of himself would let him deny it.

‘It’s her,’ he said. ‘She’s done something fancy to her sails, but that’s the Orchid.’

‘What now?’

‘Set every scrap of canvas we can bear,’ he said. ‘Steal as much of this ocean from her as we can before she recognizes us.’

‘Do you want to try to bring her up with signals? Offer parley, then jump her?’

‘“Let us speak behind our hands, lest our lips be read as the book of our designs,”’ he said.

‘More of your poetry?’

‘Verse, not poetry. And no. She’ll recognize us, sooner or later, and when she does she’ll know exactly what our business is.’

He passed the glass back to Ydrena and prepared to climb back down the shrouds.

‘Straight on for her, cloaks off and weapons free. We can give her that much, for the last fight she’ll ever have.’