3
DUSK WAS approaching by the time Jean and Ezri crept back up to the quarterdeck. Drakasha stood near the taffrail, cradling Cosetta in her left arm and holding a small silver cup in her right.
“You must drink it, love,” whispered Drakasha. “It’s a special nighttime drink for pirate princesses.”
“No,” muttered Cosetta.
“Are you not a pirate princess?”
“No!”
“I think you are. Be good—”
“Don’t want!”
Jean thought back to his time in Camorr, and to how Chains had sometimes behaved when one of the young Gentlemen Bastards had decided to throw a fit. They’d been much older than Cos, true, but children were children and Drakasha looked hollow-eyed with worry.
“My, my,” he said loudly, approaching the Drakashas so that Cosetta could see him. “That looks very good, Captain Drakasha.”
“It does look very good,” she said, “and it tastes better than it looks—”
“Feh,” said Cosetta. “Ahhhhh! No!”
“You must,” said her mother.
“Captain,” said Jean, pretending to be entranced by the silver cup, “that looks so wonderful. If Cosetta doesn’t want it, I’ll have it.”
Drakasha stared at him, and then smiled. “Well…,” she said, sounding grudging, “if Cosetta doesn’t want it, I suppose I have no choice.” She slowly moved the cup away from Cosetta and toward Jean, and the little girl’s eyes grew wide.
“No,” she said. “No!”
“But you don’t want it,” said Drakasha with an air of finality. “Jerome does. So it’s going away, Cosetta.”
“Mmmm,” said Jean. “I’ll drink it straightaway.”
“No!” Cosetta stretched for the cup. “No, no, no!”
“Cosetta,” said Drakasha sternly, “if you want it, you must drink it. Do you understand?”
The little girl nodded, her mouth an “O” of concern, her fingers straining to reach the suddenly invaluable prize. Zamira held the silver cup to Cosetta’s lips and the little girl drained it with urgent greed.
“Very good,” said Drakasha, kissing her daughter on the forehead. “Very, very good. Now I’m going to take you down so you and Paolo can go to sleep.” She slipped the empty silver cup into a coat pocket, slung Cosetta round to the front of her chest, and nodded at Jean. “Thank you for that, Valora. Deck is yours, Del. Just a few minutes.”
“She hates doing that,” said Ezri quietly when Drakasha had vanished down the companionway.
“Feeding Cos for the night?”
“It’s milk of poppy. She puts them both to sleep…for the Parlor Passage. No way in hell she wants them awake when we go through it.”
“What the hell is going to—”
“It’s hard to explain,” said Ezri. “It’s easier just to get it over with. But you’ll be fine; I know you will.” She ran one hand up and down his back. “You manage to survive me in my poorer moods.”
“Ah,” said Jean, “but when a woman has your heart, she doesn’t have poor moods. Only interesting moods…and more interesting moods.”
“Where I was born, obnoxious flatterers were hung out to dry in iron cages.”
“I can see why you ran away. You inspire such flattery that any man who talked to you at length would have been caged up after—”
“You are beyond obnoxious!”
“I need to do something to keep my mind off whatever’s coming—”
“What we just did below wasn’t enough?”
“Well, I suppose we could always go back down and—”
“Alas that the biggest bitch on this ship isn’t even Drakasha or myself, but duty.” She kissed Jean on the cheek. “You want something to keep yourself busy, you can get started with preparations for the passage. Get to the for’ard lantern locker and bring me the alchemical lights.”
“How many?”
“All of them,” she said. “Every last one you can find.”
4
THE TENTH hour of the evening. Night fell like a cloak over the Ghostwinds; and the Poison Orchid, under topsails, stood in to the Parlor Passage gilded in white and amber light. A hundred alchemical lanterns had been shaken to life and placed around the ship’s entire hull, a few in the rigging but most beneath the rail, casting rippling facets of false fire on the dark water just below.
“By the deep six,” called one of the two sailors Drakasha had placed at the sides, where they cast their lead lines to gauge the amount of water between the ship’s hull and the sea bottom. Six fathoms; thirty-six feet. The Orchid could slip through far shallower straits than that.
Ordinarily, soundings were occasional and one leadsman would suffice to take them. Now the men, two of her oldest and most experienced, cast their lines and called the results continually. What’s more, each of them was watched by a small party of…minders, was the best word Jean could come up with. Sailors who were armed and armored.
Strange precautions had been ordered all over the ship. The small, elite crew who waited above to work the sails had safety lines lashed around their waists; they would dangle like pendulums if they fell, but at least they’d probably live. Real fires were extinguished, smoking strictly forbidden. Drakasha’s children slept in her cabin with the stern shutters locked and the companionway door guarded. Drakasha herself had her Elderglass mosaic vest buckled on, and her sabers hung ready in their scabbards.
“A quarter less six,” called a leadsman.
“Fog coming up,” said Jean. He and Locke stood at the starboard rail of the quarterdeck. Drakasha paced nearby, Mumchance had the wheel, and Delmastro stood by the binnacle with a small rack of precision timing glasses.
“That’s how it starts,” said Mumchance.
The Orchid was entering a mile-wide channel between cliffs that rose to about half the height of the masts and were surmounted by dark jungle that rose and faded into the blackness. There were faint sounds of things unseen in that jungle; screeches, snapping, rustling. The ship’s arcs of lanterns made the waters around them clear for fifty or sixty feet, and at the edges of that gleaming circle Jean saw threads of gray mist beginning to curl out of the water.
“And a half five,” came the cry from the starboard leadsman.
“Captain Drakasha.” Utgar stood at the taffrail, log-line pinched between his fingers. “Four knots, hey.”
“Aye,” said Drakasha. “Four knots, and our stern’s even with the mouth of the passage. Give me ten minutes, Del.”
Delmastro nodded, flipped one of her glasses over, and kept watch as sand began to trickle from the upper chamber to the lower. Drakasha moved to the forward quarterdeck rail.
“Heed this,” she said to the crewfolk working or waiting on deck. “If you start to feel peculiar, stay away from the rails. If you cannot abide the deck, go below. This is a chore we must endure, and we’ve come through it before. You cannot be harmed if you stay on the ship. Hold fast to that thought. Do not leave the ship.”
The mist was rising now, layering upon itself. The shadowy outlines of cliffs and jungles beyond were swiftly vanishing. Before them was nothing but blackness.
“Ten, Captain,” said Delmastro at last.
“By the mark five,” cried one of the leadsmen.
“Mum, put your helm down.” Drakasha used a stick of charcoal to scrawl a quick note on a folded parchment. “Two spokes a-lee.”
“Aye, Captain, helm a-lee by two.”
At the sailing master’s slight adjustment to the wheel, the ship leaned to larboard. Sailors overhead made faint adjustments to sails and rigging acting on instructions Drakasha had drilled into them before they’d entered the passage.
“Give me twelve minutes, Del.”
“Aye, Captain, twelve it is.”
As those twelve minutes passed, the fog grew thicker, like smoke from a well-fed fire. It closed on either side, a swirling gray wall that seemed to lock their own light and sound in a bubble, closing off all hint of the outside world. The creak of the blocks and rigging, the slap of the water on the hull, the babble of voices—all these familiar things echoed flatly, and the jungle noises vanished. Still the fog encroached, until it crossed the ephemeral line of well-lit water created by the lanterns. Visibility in any direction now died at forty feet.
“Twelve, Captain,” said Delmastro.
“Mum, put up your helm,” said Drakasha, staring at the compass in the binnacle. “Helm a-weather. Bring us northwest by west.” She shouted to the crewfolk at the waist, “Make ready to shift yards! Northwest by west, wind to the larboard quarter!”
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?”