3
ON THE nineteenth, at half past noon, Drakasha shouted for Locke to come to her cabin. Locke ran aft as fast as he could, visions of Tomas and Mazucca vivid in his mind.
“Ravelle, what the unhallowed hells is this?”
Locke paused to take in the scene. She’d rigged her table in the center of the cabin. Paolo and Cosetta were seated across from one another, staring at Locke, and a deck of playing cards was spread in an unfathomable pattern between them. A silver goblet was tipped over in the middle of the table…a goblet too large for little hands. Locke felt a flutter of anxiety in the pit of his stomach, but looked closer nonetheless.
As he’d suspected…a mouthful or so of pale brown liquor had spilled onto the tabletop from the goblet, and fallen across a card. That card had dissolved into a puddle of soft, completely unmarked gray material.
“You took the cards out of my chest,” he said. “The ones in the double-layered oilcloth parcel.”
“Yes.”
“And you were drinking a fairly strong liquor with your meal. One of your children spilled it.”
“Caramel brandy, and I spilled it myself.” She produced a dagger and poked at the gray material. Although it had a liquid sheen, it was hard and solid, and the tip of the dagger slid off it as though it were granite. “What the hell is this? It’s like…alchemical cement.”
“It is alchemical cement. You didn’t notice that the cards smelled funny?”
“Why the hell would I smell playing cards?” She frowned. “Children, don’t touch these anymore. In fact, go sit on your bed until Mommy can wash your hands.”
“It’s not dangerous,” said Locke.
“I don’t care,” she said. “Paolo, Cosetta, put your hands in your laps and wait for Mommy.”
“They’re not really cards,” said Locke. “They’re alchemical resin wafers. Paper-thin and flexible. The card designs are actually painted on. You wouldn’t believe how expensive they were.”
“Nor would I care. What the hell are they for?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Dip one in strong liquor and it dissolves in a few seconds. Suddenly you’ve got a little pat of alchemical cement. Mash up as many cards as you need. The stuff dries in about a minute, hard as steel.”
“Hard as steel?” She eyed the gray splotch on her fine lacquered tabletop. “How does it come off?”
“Um…it doesn’t. There’s no solvent. At least not outside of an alchemist’s lab.”
“What? Gods damn it, Ravelle—”
“Captain, you’re being unfair. I didn’t ask you to take those cards out and play with them. Nor did I spill liquor on them.”
“You’re right,” said Drakasha with a sigh. She looked tired, Locke thought. The faint frown lines around her mouth looked as though they’d had a long recent workout. “Gather these up and throw them overboard.”
“Captain, please. Please.” Locke held his hands out toward her. “Not only are they expensive, they’d be…damned impossible to duplicate. It’d take months. Let me just roll them back up in oilcloth and put them in the chest. Please think of them as part of my papers.”
“What do you use them for?”
“They’re just part of my little bag of tricks,” he said. “All I have left of it, really. One last, important little trick. I swear to you, they’re absolutely no threat to you and your ship…. You have to spill booze on them, and even then they’re just an annoyance. Look, if you save them for me, and find me some knives with scalpel edges, I’ll devote all my time to getting that shit off your table. Prying from the sides. Even if it takes all week. Please.”
As it turned out, it took him ten hours, scraping away with infinite care atop the forecastle, as though he were performing surgery. He worked without rest, first by sunlight and then by the glow of multiple lanterns, until the devilishly hard stuff had been scraped off with nothing but a ghost upon the lacquer to show for it.
When he finally claimed his minuscule sleeping space, he knew his hands and forearms would ache well into the next day.
It was worth it, and had been worth every minute of work, to preserve the existence of that deck of cards.
4
ON THE twentieth, Drakasha gave up on the easterly course and put them west by north with the wind on the starboard beam. The weather held; they cooked by day and sweated by night, and the ship sailed beneath streams of flit-wraiths that hung over the water like arches of ghostly green light.
On the twenty-first, as the promise of dawn was just graying the eastern sky, they had their chance to prove themselves.
Locke was knocked out of a too-short sleep by an elbow to the ribs. He awoke to confusion; the men of the scrub watch were shifting, stumbling, and muttering all around him.
“Sail ho,” said Jean.
“Heard it from the masthead just a minute ago,” said someone near the door. “Two points off the starboard quarter. That’s well east and a little north of us, hull down.”
“That’s good,” said Jabril, yawning. “The dawn glimpse.”
“Dawn?” It still seemed dark, and Locke rubbed his sleep-blurred eyes. “Dawn already? Since I no longer have to pretend to know what the hell I’m doing, what’s a dawn glimpse?”
“Sun’s coming up over the horizon, see?” Jabril seemed to relish the chance to lecture Locke. “Over in the east. We’re still in shadow over here, to the west a’ them. Hard to see us, but we got a good eye on them with that faint light behind their masts, savvy?”
“Right,” said Locke. “Seems like a good thing.”
“We’re for her,” said Aspel. “We’ll move in and take her. This ship is loaded with crew, and Drakasha’s a bloody-handed bitch.”
“It’s a fight for us,” said Streva. “We’ll go first.”
“Aye, and prove ourselves,” said Aspel. “Prove ourselves and be quits with this scrub watch shit.”
“Don’t be tying silver ribbons on your cock just yet,” said Jabril. “We don’t know her heading, or what speed she makes, or what her best point of sailing is. She might be a ship of war. Might even be part of a squadron.”
“Be fucked, Jabbi,” said someone without real malice. “Don’t you want to be gone from scrub watch?”
“Hey, time comes to board her, I’ll row the boat naked and attack the bastards with my good fuckin’ looks. Just wait and see if she’s prey, is all I’m sayin’.”
There was noise and commotion on deck; orders were shouted. The men at the entrance strained to hear and see everything.
“Delmastro’s sending people up the lines,” said one of them. “Looks like we’re going to come north a few points. They’re doing it quick-like.”
“Nothing’s more suspicious than a sudden change of sail, if they see us,” said Jabril. “She wants us to be nearer their course before we’re spotted, so it looks natural.”
Minutes passed; Locke blinked and settled back down against his familiar bulkhead. If action wasn’t imminent, there was always time for a few more minutes of sleep. From the groaning and shuffling around him, he wasn’t alone in that opinion.
He awoke a few minutes later—the sky seen through the ventilation hatch was lighter gray—to Lieutenant Delmastro’s voice coming from the undercastle entrance.
“…where you are for now. Keep quiet and out of sight. It’s about five minutes to the switchover from Red to Blue, but we’re suspending regular watches for action. We’ll be sending Red down in bits and pieces, and half of Blue will come up to replace them. We want to look like a merchant brig, not a prowler with a heavy crew.”
Locke craned his neck to look out over the shadowy shapes around him. Just past Delmastro, in the predawn murk, he could see crewfolk at the waist wrestling several large barrels toward the ship’s larboard rail.
“Smoke barrels on deck,” called a woman.
“No open flames on deck,” shouted Ezri. “No smoking. Alchemical lights only. Pass the word.”
Minutes passed, and the light of dawn grew steadily. Locke nonetheless found his eyelids creeping back downward. He sighed relaxed, and—
“On deck there,” came a shout from the foremast head. “Send to the captain she’s got three masts, and she’s northwest by west. Topsails.”
“Aye, three masts, northwest by west, topsails,” shouted Ezri. “How does she bear?”
“Broad on the starboard beam, aft a point maybe.”
“Keep sharp. Is she still hull down?”
“Aye.”
“The moment she lifts her skirts over that horizon, you peek and tell us what’s under them.” Ezri returned to the undercastle and pounded loudly on the bulkhead beside the entrance. “Scrub watch, rouse up. Stretch your legs and use the craplines, then get back under here. Be quick. We’ll be fighting or running soon enough. Best to have your innards in good order.”
It was less like moving with a crowd than being squeezed from a tube. Locke found himself pushed onto deck, and he curled his back and stretched. Jean did likewise, then stepped up beside Delmastro. Locke raised an eyebrow; the little lieutenant seemed to tolerate Jean’s conversation to the same extent that she disdained his. So long as one of them was getting information from her, he supposed.
“Do you really think we’ll be running?” asked Jean.
“I’d prefer not.” Delmastro squinted over the rail, but even from Locke’s perspective the new ship couldn’t be seen on deck just yet.
“You know,” said Jean, “it’s to be expected that you won’t see anything from down there. You should let me put you on my shoulders.”
“A short joke,” said Delmastro. “How remarkably original. I’ve never heard the like in all my days. I’ll have you know I’m the tallest of all my sisters.”
“Sisters,” said Jean. “Interesting. A bit of your past for free?”
“Shit,” she said, scowling. “Leave me alone, Valora. It’s going to be a busy morning.”
Men were returning from the craplines. Now that the press had lessened, Locke climbed the stairs and made his way forward to do his own business. He had sufficient unpleasant experience by now to elbow his way to the weather side—damned unfortunate things could happen to those on the lee craplines in any kind of wind—of the little wooden brace, which crossed the bowsprit just a yard or two out from the forepeak. It had ratlines hanging beneath it like a miniature yardarm, and against these Locke braced his feet while he undid his breeches. Waves pounded white against the bow, and spray rose to splash the backs of his legs.
“Gods,” he said, “to think that pissing could be such an adventure.”
“On deck, there,” came the cry from the foremast a moment later. “She’s a flute, she is. Round and fat. Holding course and sail as before.”
“What colors?”
“None to be seen, Lieutenant.”
A flute. Locke recognized the term—a round-sterned merchantman with a homely curved bow. Handy for cargo, but a brig like the Orchid could dance around it at will. No pirate or military expedition would make use of such a vessel. As soon as they could draw her in, it seemed they’d have their fight.
“Ha,” he muttered, “and here I am, caught with my breeches down.”