“I dropped a cask on one,” said Locke. “Two more got their throats slit while they were still dumb. The last was kind enough to slip in beer and make it easy. Same as always, Jean. I’m no bloody warrior.”
“But now they think you are. You pulled it off.”
They found Mal, slumped against the mainmast, unmoving. His hands were curled around the sword buried in his stomach, as though he were trying to keep it safe. Locke sighed.
“I have what you might call mixed feelings about that right now,” he said.
Jean knelt down and pushed Mal’s eyelids closed. “I know what you mean.” He paused, seeming to weigh his words before continuing. “We have a serious problem.”
“Really? Us, problems? What ever could you mean?”
“These people are our people. These people are thieves. Surely you see it too. We can’t sell them out to Stragos.”
“Then we’ll die.”
“We both know Stragos means to kill us anyway—”
“The longer we string him along,” said Locke, “the closer we get to pulling off some part of our mission, the closer we are to a real antidote. The more time we get, the greater the chance he’ll slip…and we can do something.”
“We can do something by siding with our own kind. Look around you, for the gods’ sake. All these people do to live is steal. They’re us. The mandates we live by—”
“Don’t fucking lecture me about propriety!”
“Why not? You seem to need it—”
“I’ve done my duty by the men we brought from Tal Verrar, Jean. But they and all of these people are strangers. I aim to have Stragos weeping for what he’s done, and if I have to spare them to achieve that, by the gods, I’ll spare them. But if I have to sink this ship and a dozen like it to bring him down, I’ll damn well do that, too.”
“Gods,” Jean whispered. “Listen to yourself. I thought I was Camorri. You’re the pure essence. A moment ago you were morose for the sake of these people. Now you’d fucking drown them all for the sake of your revenge!”
“Our revenge,” said Locke. “Our lives.”
“There has to be another way.”
“What do you propose, then? Stay out here? Spend a merry few weeks in the Ghostwinds, and then politely die?”
“If necessary,” said Jean.
The Poison Orchid, under reduced sail, drew near the stern of the Kingfisher, putting herself between the flute and the wind. The men and women lining the Orchid’s rail let loose with three raucous cheers, each one louder than the last.
“Hear that? They’re not cheering the scrub watch,” said Jean. “They’re cheering their own. That’s what we are, now. Part of all this.”
“They’re str—”
“They’re not strangers,” said Jean.
“Well.” Locke glanced aft, at Lieutenant Delmastro, who’d risen to her feet and taken the Kingfisher’s wheel. “Maybe some of them are less strange to you than they are to me.”
“Now, wait just a—”
“Do what you have to do to pass the time out here,” said Locke, scowling. “But don’t forget where you come from. Stragos is our business. Beating him is our business.”
“‘Pass the time’? Pass the gods-damned time?” Jean sucked in an angry breath. He clenched his fists, and for a second looked as though he might grab Locke and shake him. “Gods, I see what’s twisting under your skin. Look, you may be resigned to the fact that the only woman you’ll ever consider is years gone. But you’ve been screwed down so tight about that, for so long, that you seem to think the rest of the world keeps your habits.”
Locke felt as though he’d been stabbed. “Jean, don’t you even—”
“Why not? Why not? We carry your precious misery with us like a holy fucking relic. Don’t talk about Sabetha Belacoros. Don’t talk about the plays. Don’t talk about Jasmer, or Espara, or any of the schemes we ran. I lived with her for nine years, same as you, and I’ve pretended she doesn’t fucking exist to avoid upsetting you. Well, I’m not you. I’m not content to live like an oath-bound monk. I have a life outside your gods-damned shadow.”
Locke stepped back. “Jean, I don’t…I didn’t—”
“And quit calling me Jean, for fuck’s sake.”
“Of course,” said Locke coldly. “Of course. If we keep this up we’ll be breaking character for good. I can prowl below myself. You get back to Delmastro. She’s holding on to that wheel to stay on her bloody feet.”
“But—”
“Go,” said Locke.
“Fine.” Jean turned to leave, then paused one last time. “But understand—I can’t do it. I’ll follow you to any fate, and you know it, but I can’t fuck these people over, even for our own sake. And even if you think it’s for our sake…I can’t let you do it, either.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means you have a lot to think about,” said Jean, and he stomped away.
Small parties of sailors had begun slipping over from the Orchid. Utgar rushed up to Locke, red-faced with excitement, leading a group of crewfolk carrying lines and fend-offs to help hold the ships alongside one another.
“Sweet Marrows, Ravelle, we just found out about the Redeemers,” Utgar said. “Lieutenant told us what you did. Fuckin’ amazing! A job well done!”
Locke glanced at the body of Mal resting against the mainmast, and at Jean’s back as he approached Delmastro with his hands out to hold her up. Not caring who saw, he flung his saber down at the deck planks, where it stuck tip-first, quivering from side to side.
“Oh, indeed,” he said. “It seems I win again. Hooray for winning.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ALL ELSE, TRUTH
1
“BRING THE PRISONERS FORWARD,” said Captain Drakasha.
It was full night on the deck of the Poison Orchid, and the ship rode at anchor beneath a star-pierced sky. The moons had not yet begun to rise. Drakasha stood at the quarterdeck rail, backlit by alchemical lamps, wearing a tarpaulin for a cloak. Her hair was covered by a ludicrous woolen wig, vaguely resembling the ceremonial hairpiece of a Verrari magistrate. The deck fore and aft was crowded with shadowed crewfolk, and in a small clear space amidships stood the prisoners.
Nineteen men from the Red Messenger had survived the morning’s fight. Now all nineteen stood, bound hands and feet, in an awkward bunch at the ship’s waist. Locke shuffled forward behind Jean and Jabril.
“Clerk of the court,” said Drakasha, “you have brought us a sad lot.”
“A sad lot indeed, Your Honor.” Lieutenant Delmastro appeared beside the captain, clutching a rolled scroll and wearing a ridiculous wig of her own.
“As wretched a pack of dissolute, cockless mongrels as I’ve ever seen. Still, I suppose we must try them.”
“Indeed we must, ma’am.”
“With what are they charged?”
“Such a litany of crimes as turns the blood to jam.” Delmastro opened the scroll and raised her voice as she read. “Willful refusal of the kind hospitality of the archon of Tal Verrar. Deliberate flight from the excellent accommodations provided by said archon at Windward Rock. Theft of a naval vessel with the stated intention of applying it to a life of piracy.”
“Disgraceful.”
“Just so, Your Honor. Now the next bit is rather confusing; some are charged with mutiny, while others are charged with incompetence.”
“Some this, some that? Clerk of the court, we cannot abide untidiness. Simply charge everyone with everything.”
“Understood. The mutineers are now incompetent and the incompetent are also mutineers.”
“Excellent. Very excellent, and so very magisterial. No doubt I shall be quoted in books.”
“Important books too, ma’am.”
“What else do these wretches have to answer for?”
“Assault and larceny beneath the red flag, Your Honor. Armed piracy on the Sea of Brass on the twenty-first instant of the month of Festal, this very year.”
“Vile, grotesque, and contemptible,” shouted Drakasha. “Let the record show that I feel as though I may swoon. Tell me, are there any who would speak in defense of the prisoners?”
“None, ma’am, as the prisoners are penniless.”
“Ah. Then under whose laws do they claim any rights or protections?”
“None, ma’am. No power on land will claim or aid them.”
“Pathetic, and not unexpected. Yet without firm guidance from their betters, perhaps it’s only natural that these rodents have shunned virtue like a contagious disease. Perhaps some small chance of clemency may be forthcoming.”
“Unlikely, ma’am.”
“One small matter remains, which may attest to their true character. Clerk of the court, can you describe the nature of their associates and consorts?”
“Only too vividly, Your Honor. They willfully consort with the officers and crew of the Poison Orchid.”
“Gods above,” cried Drakasha, “did you say Poison Orchid?”
“I did indeed, ma’am.”
“They are guilty! Guilty on every count! Guilty in every particular, guilty to the utmost and final extremity of all possible human culpability!” Drakasha tore at her wig, then flung it to the deck and jumped up and down upon it.
“An excellent verdict, ma’am.”
“It is the judgment of this court,” said Drakasha, “solemn in its authority and unwavering in its resolution, that for crimes upon the sea the sea shall have them. Put them over the side! And may the gods not be too hasty in conferring mercy upon their souls.”
Cheering, the crew surged forth from every direction and surrounded the prisoners. Locke was alternately pushed and pulled along with the crowd to the larboard entry port, where a cargo net lay upon the deck with a sail beneath it. The two were lashed together at the edges. The ex-Messengers were shoved onto the netting and held there while several dozen sailors under Delmastro’s direction moved to the capstan.
“Make ready to execute sentence,” said Drakasha.
“Heave up,” cried Delmastro.
A complex network of pulleys and tackles had been rigged between the lower yards of the foremast and mainmast; as the sailors worked the capstan, the edges of the net drew upward and the Orchids holding the prisoners stepped back. In a few seconds the ex-Messengers were off the deck, squeezed together like animals in a trap. Locke clung to the rough netting to avoid slipping into the center of the tangled mass of limbs and bodies. There was a generally useless bout of shoving and swearing as the net swung out over the rail and swayed gently in the darkness fifteen feet above the water.
“Clerk of the court, execute the prisoners,” said Drakasha.
“Give ’em a drop, aye!”
They wouldn’t, thought Locke, at the very same moment they did.
The net full of prisoners plunged, drawing unwilling yelps and screams from the throats of men who’d done murderous battle on the Kingfisher in relative silence. The pull on the edges of the net slackened as it fell, so at least they had more room to tumble and bounce when they hit the surface of the water—or, more accurately, the strangely yielding barrier of net and sail canvas with the water beneath it like a cushion.
They rolled around in a jumbled, shouting mass for a second or two while the edges of their trap settled down into the waves, and then the warm dark water was pouring in around them. Locke felt a brief moment of genuine panic—hard not to when the knots binding hands and feet were very real—but after a few moments the edges of the net-backed sail began to draw upward again, until they were just above the surface of the ocean. The water still trapped with the prisoners was about waist-deep to Locke, and now the sail canvas formed a sort of shielded pool for them to stand and flounder about in.
“Everyone all right?” That was Jean; Locke saw that he’d claimed the edge of the net directly across from him. There were half a dozen shoving, splashing men between them. Locke scowled at the realization that Jean was quite content to stay where he was.
“Fuckin’ jolly,” muttered Streva, holding himself upright by one arm. The other had been lashed to the front of his chest in a crude sling. Several of the ex-Messengers were nursing broken bones, and nearly all of them had cuts and bruises, but not one had been excused from this ritual by his injuries.
“Your Honor!” Locke glanced up at the sound of Delmastro’s voice. The lieutenant was peering down at them from the larboard entry port with a lantern in one hand; their net was resting in the water three or four feet from the Orchid ’s dark hull. “Your Honor, they’re not drowning!”
“What?” Drakasha appeared next to Delmastro with her false wig back on her head, now more wildly askew than ever. “You rude little bastards! How dare you waste this court’s time with this ridiculous refusal to be executed! Clerk, help them drown!”
“Aye, ma’am, immediate drowning assistance. Deck pumps at the ready! Deck pumps away!”
A pair of sailors appeared at the rail with the aperture of a canvas hose held between them. Locke turned away just as the gush of warm salt water started pounding down on them all. Not so bad, he thought, just seconds before something more substantial than water struck the back of his head with a wet, stinging smack.