'Gods,' whispered Jean, 'how did I ever live before I met you?'
'Sadly, poorly, miserably,' she said. 'I make everything so much better. It's why the gods put me here. Now stop moping and tell me something pleasant!'
'Something pleasant?'
'Yeah, slackwit, I've heard that other lovers sometimes tell one another pleasant things when they're alone?
'Yes, but with you it's sort of on pain of death, isn't it?'
'It could be. Let me find a sabre?
'Ezri,' he said with sudden seriousness. 'Look - when this is over, Stragos and all, Leocanto and I might be ... very rich men. If our other business in Tal Verrar goes well.'
'Not if,' she said. 'When.'
'All right,' he said. 'When it does ... you really could come with us. Leo and I spoke about it a bit. You don't have to choose one life or another, Ezri. You can just sort of ... go on leave for a bit. We all could.'
'What do you mean?'
'We could get a yacht,' said Jean, 'in Vel Virazzo, there's this place -
the private marina, where all the swells keep their boats and barges. They usually have a few for sale, if you've got a few hundred solari on hand, which we intend to. We have to go to Vel Virazzo anyway, to sort of... finish our business. We could have a boat fitted out in a couple of days and then just... poke around a bit! Drift. Enjoy ourselves. Pretend to be useless gentlefolk for a while.'
'And come back to all this later, you mean?'
'Whenever you want,' said Jean. 'Have it as you like. You always get your way, don't you?
'Live on a yacht for a while with you and Leocanto,' she said. 'No offence, Jean, you're passable for a landsman, but by his own admission he couldn't con a shoe across a puddle of piss?
'What do you think we'd be bringing you along for, hmmm?'
'Well, I would have imagined that this had something to do with it,' she said, moving her hands strategically to a more interesting location.
'Ah,' he said, 'and so it does, but you could sort of be honorary captain, too?
'Can I name the boat?'
'As if you'd let anyone else do it!'
'All right,' she whispered. 'If that's the plan, that's the plan. We'll do it.'
'You really mean?
'Hell,' she said, 'with just the swag we pulled from Salon Corbeau, everyone on this crew can stay drunk for months when we get back to the Ghostwinds. Zamira won't miss me for a while.' They kissed. 'Half a year.' They kissed again. 'Year or two, maybe.'
'Always a way to attack,' Jean mused between kisses, 'always a way to escape.'
'Of course,' she whispered. 'Hold fast, and sooner or later you'll always find what you're after.'
12
Jaffrim Rodanov paced the quarterdeck of the Dread Sovereign in the silvery-orange light of earliest morning. They were bound north by west with the wind on the starboard quarter, about forty miles southwest of Tal Verrar. The seas were running at five or six feet.
Tal Verrar. Haifa 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. The 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.'
....J -
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Between Brethren
i
'Does Jerome know that you're asking me to do this?'
'No.'
Locke stood beside Drakasha at the taffrail, huddled close to her so they could converse privately. It was the seventh hour of the morning, more or less, and the sun was ascending into a cloudless bowl of blue sky. The wind was from the east, a touch abaft their starboard beam, and the waves were getting rowdy.
'And you feel that?
'Yes, I do feel that I can speak for both of us,' said Locke. 'There's no other choice. We won't see Stragos again unless you do as he asks. And to be frank, if you do as he asks, I think our usefulness ends. We'll have one more chance at physical access to him. It's time to show this fucker how we used to do things in Camorr.'
'I thought you specialized in dishonest finesse.'
'I also do a brisk trade in putting knives to peoples' throats and shouting at them,' said Locke.
'But if you request another meeting after we sink a few ships for him, don't you think he'll be prepared for treachery? Especially in a palace crowded with soldiers?'
'All I have to do is get close to him,' said Locke. 'I'm not going to pretend I could fight my way through a wall of guards, but from six inches with a good stiletto, I'm the hand of Aza Guilla Herself.'
'Hold him hostage, then?'
'Simple. Direct. Hopefully effective. If I can't trick an antidote out of him, or cut a deal with his alchemist, maybe I can frighten him half to death.'
'And you honestly believe you've thought this through?'
'Captain Drakasha, I could barely sleep these past few days for pondering it. Why do you think I wandered back here to find you?'
'Well?
'Captain!' The mainmast watch was hailing the deck. 'Got action behind us!'
'What do you mean?'
'Sail maybe three points off the larboard quarter, at the horizon. Just came around real sudden. Went from sort of westerly to pointed right at us.'
'Good eyes,' said Drakasha. 'Keep me informed. Utgar!'
'Aye, Captain?'
'Double the watch on each mast. On deck there! Make ready for a course change! Stand by tacks and braces! Wait for my word!'
'Real trouble, Captain?'
'Probably not,' said Drakasha. 'Even if Stragos has changed his mind since yesterday and decided to hunt us down now, a Verrari warship wouldn't be coming from that direction.'
'Hopefully.'
'Aye. So what we do is we change our own heading, nice and slow. If their course change was innocent, they'll sail merrily past.' She cleared her throat. 'Helm, come around north-west by north, smartly! Utgar! Get the yards braced for a wind on the starboard quarter!'
'Aye, Captain!'
The Poison Orchid slowly heeled even further to larboard, until she was headed almost due north-west. The stiff breeze now blew across the quarterdeck, nearly into Locke's face. To the south he fancied that he could see tiny sails; from the deck the vessel was still hull-down.
A few minutes later came the shout: 'Captain! She's come five or six points to her larboard! She's for us again!'
'We're off her starboard bow,' said Drakasha. 'She's trying to close with us. But that doesn't make sense.' She snapped her fingers. 'Wait. Might be a bounty-privateer.'
'How could they know it's us?'
'Probably got a description of the Orchid horn the crew of that ketch you visited. Look, we could only hope to disguise my girl for so long. These lovely witchwood planks of hers are too distinctive.'
'So ... how much of a problem is this?'
'Depends on who's got the speed. If she's a bounty-privateer, that's a profitless fight. She'll be carrying dangerous folk and no swag. So if we're the faster, I mean to show her our arse and wave farewell.'
'And if not?'
'A profitless fight.'
'Captain,' hollered one of the top-eyes, 'she's a three-master!' 'This just gets better and better,' said Drakasha. 'Go wake up Ezri and Jerome for me.'
2
'Bad luck,' said Delmastro. 'Bad damned luck.'
'Only for them, if I have my way,' said Zamira.
The captain and her lieutenant stood at the taffrail, staring at the faint square of white that marked their pursuer's position on the horizon. Locke waited with Jean a few steps away, at the starboard rail. Drakasha had nudged the ship a few points south, so that they were travelling west-north-west with the wind fine on the starboard quarter, what she claimed was the Orchid's best point of sail. Locke knew this was something of a risk: if their opponent was the faster, they could lay an intercepting course that would bring them up much sooner than a stern chase. The trouble was that such a chase to the north could not last; unlimited sea room existed only to their west.
'I'm not sure we're gaining any ground, Captain,' said Delmastro after a few minutes of silence.
'Nor I. Damn this jumpy sea. If she's a three-master she may have the weight to carve a better speed out of it.'
