of Thieves' Teeth. Felt like a warm breeze on a fine spring day. I loved every second of?oof!'
'Ass!'
'Where did you get such sharp elbows? You grind those things against a whetstone, or?oof!'
Ezri lay on top of Jean on the demi-silk hammock that took up most of the space in her compartment. It was just barely long enough for him to lie with one arm above his head (brushing the interior bulkhead of the ship's starboard side), and he could have spanned its width between his outstretched arms. An alchemical trinket the size of a coin provided a faint silver light. Ezri's witchwood-dark curls were touched with fey highlights; scattered strands gleamed like threads of spider-silk in moonlight. He ran his hands through that damp forest of hair, massaged her warm scalp with his fingernails, and she let her muscles go slack with a gratifying moan of relaxation.
The motionless air in the compartment was thick with sweat and the trapped heat of their first endless, frantic hour together. The place was also, Jean noticed for the first time, utterly wrecked. Their clothes were scattered in purest chaos. Ezri's weapons and few possessions littered the deck like navigational hazards. A small net containing a few books and scrolls hung from a ceiling beam and tilted toward the compartment door, indicating that the whole ship was heeled over to larboard.
'Ezri,' he muttered, staring at the stiffened canvas partition that formed their left-hand 'wall'. A pair of large feet and a pair of small feet had given it a serious denting. 'Ezri, whose cabin did we nearly kick our way into a little while ago?'
'Oh ... Scholar Treganne's. Who told you to stop doing that to my hair? Oh, much better.'
'Will she be pissed off?'
'More so than usual?' Ezri yawned and shrugged. 'She's free to find a lover of her own and kick it back whenever she pleases. I'm too preoccupied to be diplomatic' She kissed Jean's neck, and he shivered. 'Besides. Night hasn't nearly run its course yet. We may yet kick the whole damn thing down if I have my way, Jerome.'
'Then it's your way we'll have,' said Jean, gently shifting the weight of her body until they were laying on their sides, face to face. He ran his hands as carefully as he could over the stiff bandages on her upper arms; the only thing she couldn't in good sense take off. His hands
moved to her cheeks, and then to her hair. They kissed for the sort of endless moment that only exists between lovers whose lips are still new territory to one another.
'Jerome,' she whispered.
'No. Do something for me, Ezri, in private: never call me that.'
'Why not?'
'Call me by my real name.' He kissed her neck, put his lips to one of her ears and whispered into it.
'Jean ...' she repeated.
'Gods, yes. Say that again.'
'Jean Estevan Tannen. I like that.'
'Yours and yours alone,'Jean whispered.
'Something in return,' she said. 'Ezriane Dastiri de la Mastron. Dame Ezriane of the House of Mastron. Nicora.'
'Really? You have an estate or something?'
'Doubt it. Spare daughters who run away from home don't tend to receive holdings.' She kissed him again, then ruffled his beard with her fingertips. 'In fact, with the letter I left mother and father, I'm sure I was disinherited at the best possible speed.'
'Gods. I'm sorry.'
'Don't be.' She moved her fingers down to his chest. 'These things happen. You keep moving. You find things here and there that help you forget.'
'You do indeed,' he whispered, and then they were too busy to talk for a good long while.
9
Locke was pulled out of his vivid thicket of dreams by a number of things: the rising heat of day, the pressure of three cups of wine in his bowels, the moans of the hung-over men around him and the sharp prick of claws from the heavy little creature sleeping on the back of his neck.
Struck by a sudden foggy memory of Scholar Treganne's spider, he gasped in horror and rolled over, clutching at whatever was clinging to him. He blinked several times to clear the veil of slumber from his eyes and found himself struggling not with a spider but with a kitten, narrow-faced and black-furred.
'The hell?' Locke muttered.
'Mew,' the kitten retorted, locking gazes with him. It had the expression common to all kittens, that of a tyrant in the becoming. / was comfortable, and you dared to move, those jade eyes said. For that you must die. When it became apparent to the cat that its two or three pounds of mass were insufficient to break Locke's neck with one mighty snap, it put its paws on his shoulders and began sharing its drool-covered nose with his lips. He recoiled.
'That's Regal,' said someone to Locke's left.
'Regal? No, it's ridiculous.' Locke tucked the kitten under his arm like a dangerous alchemical device. Its fur was thin and silky, and it began to purr noisily. The man who'd spoken was Jabril; Locke raised his eyebrows when he saw that Jabril was lying on his back, stark naked.
'His name,' said Jabril. 'Regal. He's got that white spot on his throat. And a wet nose, right?'
'The very one.'
'Regal. You been adopted, Ravelle. Ain't that ironic?'
'My life's ambition realized at last.' Locke glanced around the half-empty undercastle. Several of the new Orchids were snoring loudly; one or two were crawling to their feet and at least one was sleeping contentedly in a pool of his own vomit. Or so Locke assumed it was his own. Jean was nowhere to be seen.
'And how was your evening, Ravelle?' Jabril pushed himself up on both elbows.
'Virtuous, I think.'
'My condolences.' Jabril smiled. 'You ever met Malakasti from the Blue Watch? Got the sorta red hair and the daggers tattooed on her knuckles? Gods, I don't think she's human.'
'You vanished early from the party, I'll say that.'
'Yeah. She had some demands. And some friends.' Jabril massaged his temples with his right hand. 'That boatswain from Red Watch, fellow with no fingers on his left hand. Had no idea they taught gods-fearing Ashmiri lads them sorts of trick. Whew.'
'Lads? I didn't know you, ah, stalked that particular quarry.'
'Yeah, well, seems I'll try anything once.' Jabril grinned. 'Or five or six times, as it turns out.' He scratched his belly and appeared to become aware of his lack of clothes for the first time. 'Hell. I remember owning breeches as recently as yesterday ...'
Locke emerged into sunlight a few minutes later with Regal still tucked under his arm. As Locke stretched and yawned, the cat did the
same, attempting to wriggle out of Locke's grasp and presumably climb back atop his head. Locke held the tiny fellow up and stared at him.
'I'm not getting attached to you,' he said. 'Find someone else to share your drool with.' Well aware that any mistreatment of the little fellow might get him thrown over the side, he set the kitten down and nudged him with a bare foot.
'You sure you're authorized to give orders to that cat?' Locke turned to see Jean standing on the forecastle steps, just finishing pulling a tunic on. 'Gotta be careful. He might be a watch-mate.'
'If he acknowledges any rank, I think he puts himself somewhere between Drakasha and the Twelve.' Locke stared up at Jean for several seconds. 'Hi.'
'Hello ...'
'Look, there's a lot of tedious "I was an ass" sort of conversation to stumble through, and I'm still feeling a bit victimized by that blue wine, so let's just assume?
'I'm sorry,' said Jean.
'No, that's my job.'
T meant... we really found our jagged edges again, didn't we?'
'If there's one thing a battle isn't, it's calming on the nerves. I don't blame you for ... what you said.'
'We can think of something,' said Jean, quietly and urgently. 'Something together. I know you're not... I didn't mean to insult your?
T deserved it. And you were right. I spoke to Drakasha last night.'
'You did?'
T told her ...' Locke grimaced, stretched again, used the motion to cover a series of hand signals. Jean followed, his eyebrows rising.
Didn't mention Bondsmagi, Sinspire, Camorr, real names. All else, truth.
'Really?' said Jean.
'Yes.' Locke stared down at the deck. 'I said you were right.'
'And how did she?
Locke mimed a roll of the dice and shrugged. 'We're for Port Prodigal before anything else happens,' he said. 'Chores to do. Then she said ... she'll let us know.'
T see. And so?
'Did you have a good night?'
'Gods, yes.'
'Good. About, ah, what I said yesterday?
'You don't need?
'I do. It was the dumbest of all the things I said yesterday. Dumbest and least fair. I know I've been ... hopeless for so long I wear it like armour. I don't begrudge you anything you have. Savour it.'
'I do,' said Jean. 'Believe me, I do.'
'Good. I'm no one you want to learn from.'
'Uh, so?
'All's well, Master Valora.' Locke smiled, pleased to feel the corners of his mouth creeping up of their own volition. 'But that wine I was talking about?
'Wine? Did you?
'Craplines, Jerome. I need to piss before my innards explode. You're blocking the stairs.'
'Ah.'Jean stepped down and slapped Locke on the back. 'My apologies. Free yourself, brother.'
CHAPTER TWELVE Port Prodigal
i
The Poison Orchid bore west by south through muggy air and moderate seas, and the days rolled by for Locke in a rhythm of chores.
He and Jean were placed on the Red Watch, which had been put under Lieutenant Delmastro's direct oversight in Nasreen's absence. Grand initiation ceremonies did nothing to sate the ship's appetite for maintenance; the masts still needed to be slushed, the seams checked and rechecked, the decks swept, the rigging adjusted. Locke oiled sabres from the weapons lockers, heaved at the capstan to shift cargo for better trim, served ale at the mid-evening meals and pulled rope fragments to oakum until his fingers were red.
Drakasha acknowledged Locke with terse nods but said nothing, and summoned him to no more private conversations.
As full crew, the ex-Messengers had the right to sleep more or less where they would. Some opted for the main hold, especially those who claimed willing hammock-partners among the old Orchids, but Locke found himself comfortable enough with the now-roomier undercastle. He won a spare tunic in a game of dice and used it as a pillow, a luxury after days of bare deck alone. He slept like a stone statue after finishing each night's watch just before the red light of dawn.
Jean, of course, slept elsewhere after the night watches.
They had no sightings until the twenty-fifth of the month, when the winds shifted and began to blow strongly from the south. Locke had collapsed into his usual spot against the undercastle's larboard wall at sunrise, and then snored for several hours in the fashion of the eminently self-satisfied until some sort of commotion awoke him to find Regal draped across his neck.
'Gah,' he said, and the kitten took this as a signal to perch his forepaws on Locke's cheeks and begin poking his wet nose directly between Locke's eyes. Locke seized the kitten, sat up and blinked.
His skull felt full of cobwebs; something had definitely woken him prematurely.
'Was it you?' he muttered, frowning and rubbing the top of Regal's skull with two fingers. 'We have to stop meeting like this, kid. I'm not getting attached to you.'
'Land ho,' came a faint cry from outside the undercastle. 'Three points off the larboard bow!' Locke set Regal down, gave him an unambiguous nudge toward some other snoring sleeper and crawled out into the morning light.
Activity on deck looked normal; nobody was rushing about, or delivering urgent messages to Drakasha, or even crowding the rail to try to spot the approaching land. Someone slapped Locke on the back and he turned to find himself facing Utgar, who had a coil of rope slung over his shoulder. The Vadran nodded in a friendly fashion.
'You look confused, Red Watch.'
'It's just... I heard the cry. I thought there'd be more excitement. Will that be Port Prodigal?'
'Nah. It's the Ghostwinds, right, but we're just fetching the edges. Miserable places. Asp Island, Bastard Rock, the Opal Sands. Nowhere we'd want to touch. Two days yet to Prodigal, and with the winds like this, we're not getting in the way we'd like, hey?'
'What do you mean?'
'You'll see.' Utgar grinned, enjoying some private knowledge. 'You'll see for damn sure. Get your beauty sleep, right? You're back on the masts in two hours.'
2
The Ghostwind Isles gradually crowded in around the Orchid like a gang of muggers savouring their slow approach to a target. The horizon, once clear, sprouted islands thick with mist-capped jungle. Tall, black peaks rumbled intermittently, belching lines of steam or smoke into the heavy grey skies. Rain washed down in sheets, not the merciless storms of the high seas but rather the indifferent sweat of the tropics, blood-warm and barely pushed by the jungle breeze.
The waters lightened with their passage west, from the cobalt of the deeps to sky-blue to translucent aquamarine. The place was teeming with life; birds wheeled overhead, fish darted through the shallows in silver clouds and sinuous shapes larger than men shadowed them. They
stalked languidly in the Orchid's wake as well: scythe sharks, blue widowers, bad-luck reefmen, daggerfins. Eeriest of all were the local wolf sharks, whose sand-coloured backs enabled them to vanish into the pale haze below the ship. It took a keen eye to spot the ghostly incongruities that betrayed their lurking, and they had the disconcerting habit of circling beneath the craplines.
