It knocks my knees a bit weak, to be forthright.
It’s one thing to shout at the world that you’re the best. I been doin’ that since it warn’t true. It’s a whole ’nother fish for the best in the world to acknowledge you as the best, too.
It’s like finding another barrel a’ brandy in the hold two days after you run dry and got the shakes.
“How many?”
“Forty guns. Various sizes. Some with parts my cannon caster and gunner together couldn’t even make sense of. Phin laughed and said you’d know what they were for, or figure it out, or—if, after all I’d promised, if the guns weren’t actually for you, that we could go… sodomize ourselves.”
I’m not sure what that means, but he’s a shipowner. They like fancy talk to keep ’em company while they sit on their piles of money and stupid. It sounds like old Phin gave him hell, though, and that makes me happier than the first lovelorn sailor on shore leave through the door at an understaffed brothel.
“I don’t believe you,” I says. “Who’s manning her?”
“No one,” he says. “I fired them all. I was given to understand that smugglers and pirates like to hire their own crews. And given that I may be handing this ship over to you, I wasn’t planning on paying for a crew in the meantime.”
Handing it over? So he doesn’t mean to pay me to captain her on some errand. “I told you before, it ain’t for sale. Nor trade neither. Cap’n Gunner is intergated. Integrated? Has integrated? That ain’t right.” Damns, though. A sword for a boat? I got little use for one, and many for the other, no matter what that nattering Orholam said.
“Has integrity. Yes, you’re known for that.”
There’s a twinkle in his eye that I don’t like. Like I amuse him, poncy little buttboy. I oughta jam my thumbs through them eyes. “The answer’s no, then, and you know it, and I know it…” But I don’t move.
He doesn’t, either.
“A look isn’t going to harm anything. At least would let you know if I was telling you the truth about those cannons.”
A long moment, then I say, “I owe it to that old goat, I s’pose. Just a looksie.”
“Of course.”
Captain Gunner is renowned for his shooting, of course, but he ain’t no fool about a ship, neither. This ship is all first-rate. The last crew got a bit sloppy about some things if you look in the corners for grime, and Gunner’s never allowed that hard crease to be folded on the edge of the furled sail: looks nice ashore, but gives the cloth a weak place that will eventually rip.
Most of her, though, is simply astonishing. Master Creepy gives me a lantern and stays topside. No interest in seeing it again, he says, and he don’t want me nervous with him behind me.
Gunner inspects her for half an hour. She’s a dream.
And then Gunner goes to the gun deck. The cannons are inmistakably Phin’s work. But instead of on wheels, these cannons are on tracks. There are knobs and dials and articulated sights.
I intuitively understand some of it. It’s made so one gunner—the best Gunner—can walk up and down a full row for a broadside, and make sure that every cannon is aimed exactly as he wishes, and fire each exactly when he wishes, separately or all at wunst.
In the old days, I could train my crew for it, but I could only aim one cannon perfectly myself. Here, if I understand aright, one man could direct his crews like another set of limbs, them doin’ the dumber work of swabbing and reloading, and Gunner doin’ the artist’s bit of aimin’ and boomin’.
On the forecastle, in pride of place, is a cannon engraved with a name like a punch to my belly. I sink down beside her, filled with awe and wonder and hate. Her engraving reads ‘Ceres’ or ‘The Compelling Argument.’
She is the utter pinnacle of the cannon makers’ craft, a culverin extraordinary near four paces long, with a bore wider than my own spread hand and shot as big as my balls. With this masterpiece, I could make my own legends. I spend ten minutes with her before I go up, and spit on her before I go, then rub that spit in down the long barrel as if it were my own shaft.
Guile’s sword for this ship? The ship’s worth a hunderd swords, no matter how bejeweled and begemmed. A hunderd at least.
I must have this ship. And I can’t.
When I stole the sword, that prophet told me the sea would run with my blood if I lost the blade. I’m not a superstitious man, but I’m no fool, neither. How hard is it to keep a sword, I thought.
“Gunner’s honor,” I tell the man wrapped as a leper to hide his identity, “is not for sale.”
“Not a sale, no! I would never besmirch Gunner’s name by suggesting so. But…” I can see the man’s mask tug at the corners of his face as he grins beneath it. “Even God plays dice.”
Chapter 27
Before dawn, Kip woke to an empty tent and the fear that when he emerged, he would find no one there. They’d finally wised up. He’d tried to be bold. He’d tried to take the lead, but he hadn’t done it the way his father would have. And then he’d also infuriated his wife. Good old Kip Leaden Tongue.
Chest tight, he pulled on his clothes. Took a few deep breaths. It was quiet out there. None of the usual sounds of people moving about camp. Not even the early-morning sounds of someone going to relieve themselves. He tried to pat and finger comb his hair into some sort of relative order, and then went to face reality.
There were a lot of people standing there. Silent. Armed. Not just a lot of people. More than a hundred.
Everyone.
And the Mighty were, most unhelpfully, standing way back.
Everyone was staring at him.
“So what’s it going to be?” Kip asked. When you’ve put all your coin on the table, you can’t blink. “This mean you’re coming with me, or do I need to prove myself to you? You want me to wrestle a bear or something?”
Oh hells. Kip didn’t know why he’d picked a bear. It must have been rattling around in his head because Tisis had told him last night that in their old tongue, Arthur meant ‘bear.’ Ruadhán meant ‘little red.’ Ergo, the giant chieftain was Little Red Bear.
I just volunteered to wrestle ol’ Master Hugely McHugerson. I am dumber than words.
Conn Arthur looked troubled, as if he wasn’t sure if Kip was challenging him. Oh, please, no. But the man looked toward Sibéal Siofra, who shook her head slightly.
Mercifully, the conn said nothing.
The pygmy woman stepped forward. “The Third Eye told us impossible things, but she never told us as much as we would like.”
“Prophets,” Kip said. “They’re like that.”
“She told us to come this far to meet you, but that if we wanted any hope of defeating the White King, we would have to do battle with one of his captains at Deora Neamh… in two days.”
“And…,” Kip said.
“It’s a waterfall,” Tisis said, coming out of nowhere. “It’s a hundred leagues from here.”
“Ah,” Kip said. Given a marching speed through the forest of maybe ten leagues a day, or poling or rowing upriver at maybe fifteen leagues a day, that would seem impossible indeed. “How many drafters do you have?”
Conn Ruadhán Arthur cocked his head to the side, puzzled.
“Your pardon, Lord Guile,” Sibéal Siofra said. “We thought you knew. We’re all drafters.”
Kip looked around. Without exception, these people were pale skinned. Only a few had any luxin staining visible on their arms at all, even the older ones. That was odd. A few were so freckled it might cover up orange or red staining, but most were not.
There were many blue-eyed people among them and a number of pygmies, and the light eyes should have made drafters doubly obvious. But he’d not noticed iris shading in any of them.
“Oooh,” Tisis said as if something was dawning on her. She looked toward Kip as if she wanted to say more, but instead she said, “You’re not just from the town of Shady Grove.”
“No,” Conn Arthur said. “We’re Ghosts. Look on us and tremble,” he said sarcastically. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“Can many of you draft solid luxins?” Tisis asked.