Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch
There were several minutes of activity as the ship came slowly around to its new course and the crew rebraced the yards. All the while, Jean became more convinced that he wasn’t imagining the sound-dampening nature of the fog. The noise of their activity simply died when it hit that shroud. In fact, the only evidence of a world beyond the mist was the wet, earthy smell of jungle blowing in with the warm breeze across the quarterdeck.
“By the mark seven,” called a leadsman.
“Twenty-two minutes, Del.”
“Aye,” said Delmastro, turning her glasses like an automaton.
The next twenty-two minutes passed in claustrophobic silence, punctuated only by the occasional flutter of sail canvas and the shouts of the leadsmen. Tension built as the minutes crawled by, until—
“Time, Captain.”
“Thanks, Del. Mum, put your helm down. Bring us southwest by west.” She raised her voice. “Lively, now! Tacks and sheets! To the larboard tack, southwest by west!”
Sails shuddered, and crewfolk ran about swearing and working ropes as the ship heeled back onto the larboard tack. They spun at the heart of the fog; the jungle-scented breeze seemed to rotate around them like a boxer dancing around an opponent, until Jean could feel it against his left cheek.
“Hold steady, Mum,” said Drakasha. “Ezri, fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen, aye.”
“Here it fucking comes,” muttered Mumchance.
“Belay that crap,” said Drakasha. “Only thing truly dangerous out here is us, got it?”
Jean felt a prickling sensation on the skin of his forehead. He reached up and wiped away the sweat that was beading there.
“A quarter less five,” called a leadsman.
Jean, whispered a faint voice.
“What, Orrin?”
“Huh?” Locke was gripping the rail with both hands and barely spared a glance for Jean.
“What did you want?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Are you—”
Jean Tannen.
“Oh gods,” said Locke.
“You too?” Jean stared at him. “A voice—”
“Not from the air,” whispered Locke. “More like…you know who. Back in Camorr.”
“Why is it saying my—”
“It’s not,” said Drakasha in a low, urgent voice. “We all hear it talking to us. We all hear our own names. Hold fast.”
“Crooked Warden, I will fear no darkness for the night is yours,” muttered Locke, pointing the first two fingers of his left hand into the darkness. The Dagger of the Thirteenth, a thief’s gesture against evil. “Your night is my cloak, my shield, my escape from those who hunt to feed the noose. I will fear no evil, for you have made the night my friend.”
“Bless the Benefactor,” said Jean, squeezing Locke’s left forearm. “Peace and profit to his children.”
Jean…Estevan…Tannen.
He felt the voice, realizing somehow that the impression of sound was just a trick he played upon himself, an echo in his ears. He felt its intrusion into his awareness like the brush of insect legs against his skin. He wiped his forehead again, and realized that he was sweating profusely, even for the warm night.
Forward, someone started sobbing loudly.
“Twelve,” Jean heard Ezri whispering. “Twelve more minutes.”
The water is cool, Jean Tannen. You…sweat. Your clothes itch. Skin…itch. But the water is cool.
Drakasha squared her shoulders and strolled down the quarterdeck steps to the waist. She found the sobbing crewman, hauled him gently to his feet, and gave him a pat on the back. “Chins up, Orchids. This isn’t flesh and blood. This isn’t a fight. Stand fast.”
She sounded bold enough. Jean wondered how many of her crew knew or guessed that she drugged her children rather than put them through this.
Was it merely Jean’s imagination, or was the fog lightening to starboard? The haze was no thinner, but the darkness behind it seemed to abate…to acquire a sickly luminescence. A whispering hiss of water grew into a steady, rhythmic pulse. Waves breaking over shoals. The black water rippled at the edge of their little circle of light.
“The reef,” muttered Mumchance.
“By the deep four,” called a leadsman.
Something stirred in the fog, the faintest impression of movement. Jean peered at the swirling gloom, straining to catch it again. He rubbed at his chest, where his sweat-soaked tunic seemed to irritate the skin beneath.
Come to the water, Jean Tannen. Water so cool. Come. Lose tunic, lose sweat, lose itch. Bring…the woman. Bring her with you to the water. Come.
“Gods,” whispered Locke, “whatever’s out there knows my real name.”
“Mine as well,” said Jean.
“I mean, it’s not calling me ‘Locke.’ It knows my real name.”
“Oh. Shit.”
Jean stared down at the black water and heard the sound of it breaking over the unseen reef. It couldn’t be cool…it had to be as warm as everything else in this damn place. But the sound…the sound of those waves was not so unpleasant. He listened, entranced for several seconds, then raised his head lethargically and stared into the fog.
Something was there, for the briefest instant—a dark shape visible through the curtains of mist. Man-sized. Tall, thin, and motionless. Waiting there, atop the reef.
Jean shuddered violently, and the shape disappeared. He blinked as though waking from a daydream. The fog was now as dark and solid as ever, the imagined light gone, the hissing rush of water over shoals no longer so pleasing to his ears. Sweat ran in itching streams down his neck and arms, and he welcomed the distraction, scratching himself furiously.
“By the…by the, ah, deep four…and a quarter four…,” murmured a leadsman.
“Time,” said Ezri, seeming to come out of a daze of her own. “Time, time!”
“Surely not,” muttered Locke. “That wasn’t…but a few minutes.”
“I looked down and the sands were run out. I don’t know when it happened.” She raised her voice urgently. “Captain! Time!”
“Rouse up, rouse up!” Drakasha bellowed as though the ship were under attack. “Tacks and sheets! Come west by north! Wind to the larboard quarter, brace the yards!”
“West by north, aye,” said Mumchance.
“I don’t understand,” said Ezri, staring at her timing glasses. Jean saw that her blue tunic was soaked with sweat, her hair was matted, and her face was slick. “I was watching the glasses. It was like…I just blinked, and…all the time was gone.”
The deck was alive with vigorous commotion. Once more the breeze shifted, the fog swirled around them, and Mumchance settled them onto their new course with precise, almost delicate shifts of his wheel.
“Gods,” said Ezri. “That one was as bad as I can remember.”
“Never been like that before,” added Mumchance.
“How much longer?” asked Jean, not ashamed to sound anxious.
“That’s our last turn,” said Ezri. “Assuming we didn’t slip south far enough that we run aground on something in these next few minutes, it’s straight on west by north all the way to Port Prodigal.”
They slipped on through the dark waters, and gradually the strange sensations on Jean’s skin ebbed. The fog withdrew, first opening into cleaner darkness before the ship, and then unraveling behind them. The light from the lanterns seemed to pour back out into the night, unrestrained, and the reassuring noise of the jungle on either side of the channel returned.
“By the deep eight,” came a leadsman’s shout.
“That’s the main channel,” said Drakasha, ascending the steps to the quarterdeck once again. “Well done, everyone.” She turned to look out over the waist. “Take in most of the lanterns. Leave a few out for navigation, so we don’t surprise anyone coming into the harbor. Keep the leads going.” She reached out and put her arms on Mumchance and Ezri, squeezing their shoulders. “I know I said no drinking, but I think
Her gaze fell on Locke and Jean. “You two look as though you could use a job. Fetch up an ale cask and serve it out at the mainmast.” She raised her voice to a shout. “Half a cup for anyone who wants it.”
As Jean hurried forward with Locke close behind, he was pleased to feel the tension of a few moments earlier evaporating. Crewfolk were smiling again, chattering away at one another, even laughing here and there. A few kept to themselves, arms folded and eyes downcast, but even they seemed relieved. The only odd thing about the scene, Jean realized, was how assiduously most of them seemed to be trying to keep their attention focused on the ship and the people around them.
More than an hour would pass before many of them would allow themselves to glance out at the water again.
5
IF YOU could stand on air a thousand feet above Port Prodigal, this midnight, you would see a tenuous ribbon of light set like a jewel in the midst of boundless tropical darkness. Clouds veil the moons and the stars. Even the thin red lines of volcanic flow that sometimes ignite the far horizons are missing; those dark mountains smolder tonight without visible fire.
Prodigal claims a long beach on the north side of a vast, hilly island.
Miles of ancient rain forest recede into the night behind it; not a speck of light burns anywhere within that grim expanse.
The broad harbor, enclosed on all sides, is uncommonly friendly to ships once they slip through either of the arduous passages that bring them from the sea. There are no reefs, no smaller islands, no navigational hazards marring the sandy white bottom of the bay. At the eastern end of town the water shallows to waist depth, while in the west even heavy ships may all but kiss the shore and keep eight or nine fathoms beneath their keels.
A forest of masts rocks gently above these depths, a floating hodgepodge of docks, boats, working ships, and hulls in every state of disrepair. There are two loosely defined anchorages serving Port Prodigal—first, the Graveyard, where float the hundreds of hulls and wrecks that will never move on the open sea again. East of that, claiming all the larger, newer docks, lies the Hospital, so-called because its patients may yet live.
6
A BELL began tolling, its slow clang echoing off the water, as soon as the Poison Orchid emerged from the Parlor Passage.
Locke stared over the ship’s larboard rail, toward the lights of the city and their rippling reflections on the bay.
“Harbor watch’ll ring that damn thing until we drop anchor.” Jabril had taken note of his curiosity and taken the rail beside him. “Gotta let everyone know they’re on the job so they keep getting paid their liquor ration.”
“You spend much time here, Jabril?”
“Born here. Prison in Tal Verrar is what I got the one time I tried to see some other oceans.”
Dropping anchor in Prodigal Bay had none of the ceremony Locke had seen elsewhere; no shore pilots, no customs officers, not even a single curious fisherman. And, to his surprise, Drakasha didn’t take the Orchid all the way in. They settled about half a mile offshore, furled sails, and kept their lanterns burning.
“Drop a boat to larboard,” ordered Drakasha, peering at the city and its anchorages through her glass. “Then rig razor nets at the starboard. Keep lanterns burning. Dismiss Blue watch below but have sabers ready at the masts. Del, get Malakasti, Dantierre, Big Konar, and Rask.”
“Your will, Captain.”
After helping a work party heave one of the ship’s larger boats over the side, Locke approached Drakasha on the quarterdeck and found her still studying the town through her glass.
“I take it you have reason for caution, Captain?”
“We’ve been out for a few weeks,” said Drakasha, “and things change. I’ve got a big crew and a big ship, but neither of them is the biggest there is.”
“Do you see something that makes you nervous?”
“Not nervous. Curious. Looks like most of us are home for once. See that line of ships, at the eastern docks, closest to us? Four of the council captains are in town. Five, now that I’m back.” She lowered her glass and looked sidelong at him. “Plus two or three independent traders, near as I can tell.”
“I really hope it doesn’t come to that,” he said quietly.
At that moment Lieutenant Delmastro returned to the quarterdeck, armed and armored, with four sailors in tow.
Malakasti, a thin woman with more tattoos than words in her vocabulary, had a shipwide reputation as a knife fighter. Dantierre was a bearded, balding Verrari who favored tattered nobleman’s silks; he’d gone outlaw after a long career as a professional duelist. Big Konar, true to his name, was the largest slab of human flesh aboard the Orchid. And Rask—well, Rask was a type that Locke recognized almost immediately, a murderer’s murderer. Drakasha, like many garristas back in Camorr, would keep him on a short leash, and give him his head only when she needed blood on the wall. Lots of blood on the wall.
A brutal crew, none of them young and none of them new to Drakasha’s command. Locke pondered this while all hands were briefly mustered at the waist.
“Utgar has the ship,” Drakasha announced. “We’re not putting in tonight. I’m taking Del and a shore party to sound out the town. If all’s well, we’ll have a busy few days…and we’ll start divvying up the shares tomorrow evening. Try not to gamble it all away to your watchmates before it’s even in your hands, eh?
“In the meantime, Red watch, mind the ship. Razor nets on starboard stay up until we come back. Post lookouts up every mast and keep an eye on the waterline. Blue watch, some of you sleep near the arms lockers if you’re so inclined. Keep daggers and clubs at hand.” To Utgar, she said more quietly, “Double guard on my cabin door all night.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Drakasha vanished into her cabin for a few moments. She reemerged in her Elderglass mosaic vest, with her sabers in fine jeweled scabbards, gleaming emeralds in her ears, and gold rings over the black leather gloves on her hands. Locke and Jean confronted her together, as unobtrusively as they could.
“Ravelle, I do not have time—”
“Captain,” said Locke, “you’ve put together a bruising crew because you’re out to scare someone who might give you trouble, haven’t you? And if they’re too stupid to take a hint, you want people who can end things quick. I strongly, strongly suggest that Jerome would serve you well on both counts.”
“I…hmmm.” She stared at Jean, as though only just noticing the width of his shoulders and upper arms. “That might just add the finishing touch. All right, Valora, you fancy a short night out?”
“I do,” said Jean. “But I work best as part of a team. Orrin is just the man to—”
“You two think you’re so clever,” said Drakasha. “But—”
“I mean it,” said Jean hurriedly. “Humble apologies. But you’ve seen what he does. You’ll have a pile of strongarms at your back; bring him for…situations unforeseen.”
“Tonight is delicate business,” said Drakasha. “Misstepping in Port Prodigal after midnight is like pissing on an angry snake. I need—”
“Ahem,” said Locke. “Originally, we’re from Camorr.”
“Be on the boat in five minutes,” said Drakasha.
7
DRAKASHA TOOK the bow, Delmastro the stern, and everyone else an oar. At a stately pace they scudded across the calm surface of the bay.
“At least that jackass finally stopped ringing the bell,” muttered Jean. He had taken a spot on the last rowing bench, next to Big Konar, so he could chat with Ezri. She was trailing one of her hands in the water.
“Is that wise?” Jean asked.
“What, fiddling with the water?” Ezri hooked a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the Parlor Passage outlet. “You can’t see them by night, but at the entrances to the bay there are rows of huge white stones set across the bottom. Regular lines of them.”
“Eldren stones,” muttered Konar.
“They don?
“But not too close to the docks. Piss,” said Konar, almost apologetically.
“Well, damn,” said Jean. “That sounds nice.”
“Sure, I guess,” said Ezri. “Makes fishing a pain in the ass. Little boats crowd the Trader’s Gate passage and muck up the works there more than usual. Speaking of mucking up the works…”
“Mmm?”
“I don’t see the Red Messenger anywhere.”
“Ah.”
“But she was crawling like a snail,” she said. “And we do have some interesting company in her place.”
“Such as?”
“See that first row of ships? Starboard to larboard, that’s Osprey, Pierro Strozzi’s lugger. His crew’s tiny and so’s his ambition, but he could sail a barrel through a hurricane. Next to that, Regal Bitch, captain Chavon Rance. Rance is a pain in the ass. Has a real temper. Next is Draconic, Jacquelaine Colvard’s brig. She’s reasonable, and she’s been out here longer than anyone.
“That big three-master on the far end is the Dread Sovereign, Jaffrim Rodanov’s lady. Nasty piece of work. Last I saw she was on the beach getting careened, but now she looks ready for sea.”
With six people pulling at the oars, they made short work of the trip. In just a few moments they were alongside a crumbling stone jetty. As Jean secured his oar, he spied a man’s corpse bobbing gently in the water.
“Ah,” said Ezri. “Poor bastard. That’s the mark of a lively night in these parts.”
Drakasha’s shore party tied the boat to the very end of the jetty and went up as though boarding an enemy vessel, with wary hearts and hands near their weapons.
“Holy gods,” exclaimed a mostly toothless drunk cradling a wineskin in the middle of the jetty. “It’s Drakasha, isn’t it?”
“It is. Who are you?”
“Banjital Vo.”
“Well,” said Drakasha, “Banjital Vo, I’m making you responsible for the safety of the boat we just tied up.”
“But…I—”
“If it’s here when we come back, I’ll give you a Verrari silver. If anything’s happened to it, I’ll ask around for you, and when I find you I’ll pull your gods-damned eyes out.”