'They might just mean to kill us and take the boat.'
'We'll see,' said Locke. 'We'll see. First we'll exchange courtesies. Have ourselves some diplomatic interaction.'
The pirate vessel came on slowly as the sun sank toward the west, and the colour of sky and water alike gradually deepened by a shade.
She was indeed black-hulled - witchwood - and larger than the Red Messenger even at a glance. Sailors crowded her yardarms and deck railings; Locke felt a pang of envy to see such a large and active crew. She sliced majestically through the water, then luffed-up as orders were shouted from the quarterdeck. Sails were reefed with precise and rapid movements; she slowed to a crawl, blocked their view of the Red Messenger and presented her larboard side at a distance of about twenty yards.
'Ahoy the boat,' cried a woman at the rail. She was rather short, Locke could see - dark-haired, partially armoured, backed up by at least a dozen armed and keenly interested sailors. Locke felt his skin crawl under their scrutiny, and he donned a cheerful mask.
'Ahoy the brig,' he shouted. 'Fine weather, isn't it?'
'What do you two have to say for yourselves?'
Locke rapidly considered the potential advantages of the pleading, cautious and cocky approaches, and decided that cocky was the best chance they had of making a memorable impression. 'Avast,' he cried, standing up and hoisting his stiletto over his head, 'you must perceive we hold the weather gauge, and you are luffed-up with no hope of escape! Your ship is ours, and you are all our prisoners! We are prepared to be gracious, but don't test us.'
There was an outbreak of laughter on the deck of the ship, and Locke felt his hopes rise. Laughter was good; laughter like that rarely preceded bloody slaughter, at least in his experience.
'You're Captain Ravelle,' shouted the woman, 'aren't you?'
'I, ah, see my reputation precedes me!'
'Previous crew of your previous ship might have mentioned you.'
'Shit,' Locke muttered.
'Would you two care to be rescued?'
'Yes, actually,' said Locke. 'That would be a damn polite thing for you to do.'
'Right, then. Have your friend stand up. Both of you get all your clothes off.'
'What?'
An arrow hissed through the air, several feet above their heads, and Locke flinched.
'Clothes off! You want charity, you entertain us first! Get your big friend up and get naked, both of you!'
'I don't believe this,' said Jean, rising to his feet.
'Look,' shouted Locke as he began to slip out of his tunic, 'can we just drop them in the bottom of the boat? You don't want us to throw them overboard, right?'
'No,' said the woman. 'We'll keep 'em plus the boat, even if we don't keep you. Breeches off, gentlemen! That's the way!'
Moments later Locke and Jean stood, precariously balanced in the wobbling boat, stark naked with the rising evening breeze plainly felt against their backsides.
'Gentlemen,' yelled the woman, 'what's this? I expected to see some sabres, and instead you bring out your stilettos!'
The crew behind her roared with laughter. Crooked Warden! Locke realized others had come up along the larboard rail. There were more sailors just standing there pointing and howling at him and Jean than there were in the entire crew of the Red Messenger.
'What's the matter, boys? Thoughts of rescue not enticing enough? What's it take to get a rise out of you down there?'
Locke responded with a two-handed gesture he'd learned as a boy, one guaranteed to start fights in any city-state in the Therin world. The crowd of pirates returned it, with many creative variations.
'Right, then,' cried the woman. 'Stand on one leg. Both of you! Up on one!'
'What?' Locke put his hands on his hips. 'Which one?'
'Just pick one of two, like your friend's doing,' she replied.
Locke lifted his left foot just above the rowing bench, putting his arms out for balance, which was becoming steadily harder to keep. Jean did the same thing beside him, and Locke was absolutely sure that from any distance they looked a perfect pair of idiots.
'Higher,' said the woman. 'That's sad. You can do better than that!'
Locke hitched his knee up half a foot more, staring defiantly up at her. He could feel the vibrations of fatigue and the unstable boat alike in his right leg; he and Jean were seconds away from capping embarrassment with embarrassment.
'Fine work,' the woman shouted. 'Make 'em dance!'
Locke saw the dark blurs of the arrows flash across his vision before he heard the flat snaps of their release. He dived to his right as they thudded into the middle of the boat, realizing half a second too late that they'd not been aimed at flesh and blood. The sea swallowed him in an instant; he hit unprepared and upside-down, and when he kicked
back to the surface he gasped and sputtered at the unpleasant sensation of salt water up his nose.
Locke heard rather than saw Jean spit a gout of water as he came up on the other side of the boat. The pirates were roaring now, falling over themselves, holding their sides. The short woman kicked something and a knotted rope fell through an entry port in the ship's rail.
'Swim over,' she yelled, 'and pull the boat with you.'
By clinging to the gunwales and paddling awkwardly, Locke and Jean managed to push the little boat over to the ship, where they fell into shadow beneath her side. The end of the knotted rope floated there, and Jean gave Locke a firm shove toward it, as though afraid they might yank it up at any second.
Locke hauled himself up against the fine-grained black wood of the hull, wet and naked and fuming. Rough hands grasped him at the rail and heaved him aboard. He found himself looking at a pair of weathered leather boots, and he sat up.
'I hope that was amusing,' he said, 'because I'm going to?
One of those boots struck him in the chest and shoved him back down to the deck. Wincing, he thought better of standing and instead studied the boot's owner. The woman was not merely short - she was petite, even from the perspective of someone literally beneath her heel. She wore a frayed sky-blue tunic over a loose black leather vest decorated with slashes that had more to do with near-misses than high fashion. Her dark hair, which piled curl upon curl, was tightly bound behind her neck, and the belt at her waist carried a minor arsenal of fighting knives and sabres. There was obvious muscle on her shoulders and arms, an impression of strength that made Locke quickly stifle his anger.
'Going to what}'
'Lie here on the deck,' he said, 'and enjoy the fine afternoon sun.'
The woman laughed; a second later Jean was pulled up over the side and thrown down beside Locke. His black hair was plastered to his skull and water streamed from the bristles of his beard.
'Oh my,' said the woman. 'Big one and a little one. Big one looks like he can handle himself a bit. You must be Master Valora.'
'If you say so, madam, I suppose I must be.'
'Madam? Madam's a shore word. Out here to the likes of you, it's lieutenant.'
'You're not the captain of this ship, then?'
The woman eased her boot off Locke's chest and allowed him to sit. 'Not even hardly,' she said.
'Ezri's my first,' said a voice behind Locke. He turned, slowly and carefully, to regard the speaker.
This woman was taller than the one called Ezri, and broader across her shoulders. She was dark, with skin just a few shades lighter than the hull of her ship, and she was striking, but not young. There were lines about her eyes and mouth that proclaimed her somewhere near forty. Those eyes were cold and that mouth was hard - clearly she didn't share Ezri's sense of mischief about the two unclothed prisoners dripping water on her deck.
Her night-coloured braids, threaded with red and silver ribbons, hung in a mane beneath a wide four-cornered cap, and despite the heat she wore a weather-stained brown frock coat, lined along the insides with brilliant gold silk. Most astonishingly, an Elderglass mosaic vest hung unbuckled beneath her coat. That sort of armour was rarely seen outside of royal hands - each little slat of Elderglass had to be joined by a latticework of metal, since humans knew no arts to meld the glass to itself. The vest glittered with reflected sunlight, more intricate than a stained-glass window - a thousand fingernail-sized chips of gleaming glory outlined in silver.
'Orrin Ravelle,' she said. 'I've never heard of you.'
'Nor should you have,' said Locke. 'May we have the pleasure of your acquaintance?'
'Del,' she said, turning away from Locke and Jean to look at Ezri, 'get that boat in. Give their clothes the eye, take anything interesting and get them dressed again.'
'Your will, Captain.' Ezri turned and began giving instructions to the sailors around her.
'As for you two,' the captain said, returning her gaze to the two drenched thieves, 'my name is Zamira Drakasha. My ship's the Poison Orchid. And once you're dressed, someone will be along to haul you below and throw you in the bilge hold.'
CHAPTER NINE The Poison Orchid
i
Their prison was at the very bottom of the Poison Orchid, on what was ironically the tallest deck on the ship, a good ten feet from lower deck to ceiling. However, the pile of barrels and oilcloth sacks crammed into the compartment left nothing but a coffin-dark crawlspace above their uneven surface. Locke and Jean sat atop this uncomfortable mass of goods with their heads against the ceiling. The lightless room stank of muck-soaked orlop ropes, of mouldering canvas, of stale food and ineffective alchemical preservatives.
This was technically the forward cargo stowage; the bilge proper was sealed behind a bulkhead roughly ten feet to their left. Not twenty feet in the opposite direction, the curved black bow of the ship met wind and water. The soft waves they could hear were lapping against the ship's sides three or four feet above their heads.
'Nothing but the friendliest people and the finest accommodations on the Sea of Brass,' said Locke.
'At least I don't feel too disadvantaged by the darkness,' said Jean. 'Lost my bloody optics when I took that tumble into the water.'
'Thusfar today we've lost a ship, a small fortune, your hatchets, and now your optics.'
'At least our setbacks are getting progressively smaller.'Jean cracked his knuckles and the sound echoed strangely in the darkness. 'How long do you suppose we've been down here?'
'Hour, maybe?' Locke sighed, pushed himself away from the starboard bulkhead and began the laborious process of finding a vaguely comfortable niche to slide into, amidst barrel-tops and sacks of hard, lumpy objects. If he was going to be bored, he might as well be bored lying down. 'But I'd be surprised if they mean to keep us here for good. I think they're just... marinating us. For whatever comes next.'
'You making yourself comfortable?'
'I'm fighting the good fight.' Locke shoved a sack out of the way and at last had enough space to rest in. 'That's better.'
A few seconds later, there came the creaking tread of many pairs of feet just overhead, followed by a scraping noise. The grating to the deck above (which had been wrapped in oilcloth to seal them in darkness) was being raised. A wan fight intruded into the blackness, and Locke squinted.
'Doesn't that just figure,' he muttered.
'Cargo inspection,' came a familiar voice from above. 'We're looking for anything out of place. You two qualify.'
Jean crawled over to the pale square of fight and looked up. 'Lieutenant Ezri?'
'Delmastro,' she said. 'Ezri Delmastro, hence Lieutenant Delma-stro.'
'My apologies. Lieutenant Delmastro.''
'That's the spirit. How do you like your cabin?'
'Could smell worse,' said Locke, 'but I think I'd have to spend a few days pissing on everything to get there.'
'Stay alive until our supplies start to run low,' said Delmastro, 'and you'll drink some things that'll make this stench a happy memory. Now, usually I'd drop a ladder, but it's only three feet. I think you can manage. Come up slow; Captain Drakasha's got a sudden eagerness to have a word with you.'
'Does that offer include dinner?'
'You're lucky it includes clothes, Ravelle. Get up here. Smallest first.'
Locke crawled past Jean and heaved himself up through the hatch into the moderately less stifling air of the orlop deck. Lieutenant Delmastro waited with eight of her crewfolk, all armed and armoured. Locke was seized from behind by a burly woman as he stood up in the passageway. A moment later Jean was helped up and held by three sailors.
'Right.' Delmastro seized Jean's wrists and snapped a pair of black-ened-steel manacles around them. It was Locke's turn next; she fitted the cold restraints and fastened them without gentleness. Locke gave the manacles a quick professional appraisal. They were oiled and rust-free, and too tight to wiggle out of even if he had time to make some painful adjustments to his thumbs.
'Captain's finally had a chance to talk to some of your old crew at length,' said Delmastro. 'Mighty curious, is what I'd call her.'
'Ah, that's wonderful,' said Locke. 'Another fine chance to explain myself to someone. How I do so love explaining myself.'
Their wary escort herded them along, and soon they were on deck in the very last light of dusk. The sun was just passing beneath the western horizon, a blood-red eye closing lazily under lids of faintly red cloud. Locke gulped the fresh air gratefully, and was again struck by the impression of population that hung about the Poison Orchid. She was crammed with crew, men and women alike, bustling about below or working on deck by the light of an increasing number of alchemical lanterns.
