Corsair (7 page)

Then he’d stood watch on, watch off with the captain on the three-week voyage home.

During the long sleepless hours, he found himself thinking of Cosyra. He vowed, if the damned
Zarafshan
didn’t fall apart under him, or if he or the man at the wheel didn’t fall asleep and the ship go at full sail onto a reef, that this time he’d attempt its magic, find out just what had happened to the woman. She’d be, what, seventeen to his eighteen, almost nineteen?

When they’d entered the Nalta River’s mouth, the captain had sent a boat ashore to the semaphore station, to signal to Pol of the voyage.

Gareth was holding hard, counting the yards left to go as the
Zarafshan
dropped all sails but one and turned toward the Radnor factory. As soon as the mooring lines went across and the damned ship was tied firm, he’d hire a carriage to his uncle’s house and sleep for a week.

No, two weeks.

There were people waiting at the quay. There was his uncle, surprisingly his wife, Priscian, some servants, and two men, strangers, waving wildly.

Then he recognized the strangers, grown though they were: the last survivors of his native village, Thom Tehidy, a bigger barrel than before, and Knoll N’b’ry, his quick-witted companion.

Fatigue fell away.

Just let him get his feet on solid land, and then there’d be a time to remember!

I did not expect to see either of you again,” Gareth said, feeling a little drunk, although, unlike the others, he’d had nothing but charged water with his meal. His uncle and aunt had cheerfully invited Thom and Knoll into their home, although Gareth thought he detected a slightly quizzical expression from Aunt Priscian over his friends’ stained working dress.

They’d eaten lavishly, after Gareth had bathed and ordered his sea clothes to be burned. Then Thom had suggested they go out, seeing Gareth’s uncle hiding a yawn.

“That might not be too wise,” Pol said, before Gareth could answer.

Knoll had lifted an eyebrow.

“A couple of years ago,” Gareth said, “I did something pretty dumb, and I’ve got a certain lord upset at me.”

“Which one, if I might ask?” Knoll asked. “For since we’ve been in Ticao, we’ve learned there’s some to walk most small among, and others, generally the biggest blow-mouths, to never worry about”

Pol had given Gareth a look, signifying he’d said more than enough.

But Gareth cared little for secrets, then or ever.

“Lord Quindolphin,” he said. “I loosed pigs at his daughter’s wedding.”

“Mmph,” Thom said. “That’s bad, for he’s a vengeful bas — pardon, Lady Radnor, not a nice man at all. His son’s worse, and they carry goons about with them like body lice, ever ready to do their bidding, as long as it’s bloody-handed.”

“But we know a tavern,” Knoll said, “where not Quindolphin, nor his kin, nor his swordsmen would dare enter.”

“Then why should a boy like Gareth be safe?” Priscian asked. Gareth concealed a wince. She would probably always think of him as a babe, even if she lived to see him as a graybeard.

“Which tavern would that be?” Pol asked, interested.

“The Slit Nose,” Thom said, a bit proudly.

“I know it,” Pol said. “A place of thieves, rogues, villains — ”

“And watermen,” Knoll said. “Which is what we are.”

“I’ve not been in a public house like that in … twenty years,” Pol said, just a bit wistfully.

“And well you shouldn’t,” Priscian said. “A King’s Servant, soon to be a Merchant Prince? Highly out of his station.”

Pol smiled gently, didn’t reply, and, not for the first time, Gareth wondered about his uncle.

“Come, then,” Thom said. “I fancy a rough pint, and I see your family’s a-yawn, and we keep no one up past his bedtime.”

Gareth wondered why he hadn’t collapsed two hours ago, nose into the meat pasty, but still felt fully alert.

His friends made their thanks for the meal, were told there would be a proper feast in the next few days celebrating Gareth’s homecoming and that they were more than welcome.

It was a spring night, but there was a chill coming off the river. The three pulled their cloaks about them, and Gareth noted Knoll’s was more than a bit threadbare.

Taking side streets, they went to the waterfront, then down a noisome alley.

“Follow the screeches,” Thom said, “and you’ll never get lost.”

The Slit Nose’s door yawned open into the night, and music and singing shouts echoed around them. They were about to enter when two men stumbled out, swinging broadsides at each other.

“Here, now,” Thom said cheerfully. “Mark your target and ignore the innocent.”

One of the men broke away and swung at Tehidy. Thom lifted him by his collar, and tossed him over his shoulder to thud into a stone wall.

“You want to play, too?” he asked the other brawler, who shook his head rapidly, ducked under Tehidy, and was gone.

“I see you’ve lost none of your strength,” Gareth said, as they went through the crowd to a table where only a drunk snored, his head in a pool of wine.

Knoll unceremoniously pushed him onto the floor, whistled shrilly through his fingers, and a barmaid saw him.

“Aye, m’love,” she shouted over the din. “The usual?”

“The usual … and some iced water?”

“You’ve not bathed?”

“For my friend here the virgin.”

The drinks arrived. Gareth noted that Thom sat with his back against a wall, and Knoll half-turned, to watch the room.

“My uncle told you all of me,” Gareth said. “It’s your turn now.”

With Thom interrupting, when he thought Knoll wasn’t being properly fulsome about himself, Gareth learned the two boys had indeed been taken in by another village.

“But ‘twasn’t like our own,” Knoll said. “They thought they’d brought in a couple of servies, almost slaves.”

“Busting our ass in the fishhold with the nets,” Thom agreed. “And with not a share in the price, but only a handful of coppers and a bit of silver now and then.”

But that hadn’t been the worst. The village was one of those who owed tribute to the king, and the tribute was paid with two young men, every year or so, for the navy when the impressment officers came along.

“Even if you hadn’t been so down on serving the king,” Knoll said, “there were enough time-served men in the village with their tales of shipwreck, wormy biscuit, and battle to discourage us.”

“ ‘Twasn’t the wreck and battle so much,” Thom put in. “ ‘Twas that when they were used up and washed up, the king’s service threw them out without a coin, without a pension, without anything except the clothes on their back, to make their way back home, and sit damned near begging at the door. Not like pirating, where, if you’re lucky, you can walk away from the sea with gold and jewels, eh?”

“Naturally,” Gareth said, “you two being outsiders, the minute you got old enough for the king, you were the target.”

“You’ve lost none of your quickness of wit,” Knoll said. “And so we ran, ran to Ticao, figuring there’d be chance enough here for everyone.

“There’s chance, for certain,” he said, a bit gloomily. “Just enough to keep you from starving, not enough to make you rich, and there seems to always be someone in the way.”

“Like the godsdamned Waterman’s Guild,” Thom said. “It’s not satisfying to them for us to learn the landings, and the river, and the current, and find a boat that somebody’ll sell you at ruinous rates, and then make it pretty so men and women with gold’ll sit on your cushions and let you row ‘em back and forth and up and down.

“No. You apply to the Guild, and in their own good time, perhaps they let you in. Or perhaps not. In the meantime, you can starve for all of them. Or work the downriver landings, where there’s never any custom.”

“If they find you pushing your way in at a landing where good fares await,” Knoll put in, “they’re not above stoving your boat in, or pushing you overside, or even tapping you along the head with a pig of iron and seeing if you can float all the way downriver to the ocean. Facedown.”

“Not that they’ve ever tried any of that shit on us,” Thom said grimly. “A couple thought they could, back six months, when we first went on the river, and found themselves wet and overturned. And then, when they thought all was settled, somebody waited on them at their slip and wanted to carry on the discussion.”

“But that didn’t make us any better loved by the Guild,” Knoll agreed. “So we’re keeping ourselves fed … but look at our clothes. Hardly the finest, which is what attracts the big custom. And our boat could do with a haul out and re-caulking, which we can’t afford either.”

“And we sure aren’t living in a mansion, either,” Thom said, then brightened as he upended his jack of ale, and signaled for another. “But if there’s beer in the cask, all can’t be bad.”

“Still, Ticao is far better than being in that damned village,” Knoll said, “hauling fish from now to the grave.”

Tehidy turned somber.

“Perhaps. Perhaps. But I’ll still never forget what drove us out of our homes.”

“Of course not,” Knoll said. “Once, maybe twice, I thought I could sneak up on one of those damned Slavers and give him swimming lessons. But once the man got away, and the next time there were too many of them, even though Thom said once we got among them they’d think we were a throng.”

“I’ve done a little good in that direction,” Gareth said, and, without heroics, told them of his crusade. At the end of his story Tehidy, good humor restored, roared laughter.

“Good, good, Gareth. And it’s better seeing you, and seeing how things are going so well for you.”

Gareth started to say something that, now he knew where his friends were, things’d be better for them, as well. He had more than a sufficiency of gold saved, and thought N’b’ry-Tehidy Water Ferrymen might benefit from a silent partner.

But that could wait until later.

They talked of other things, including the specifics of what had driven Gareth into his odd form of semi-exile, and Gareth found himself telling them of Cosyra and the charm.

“Damn me,” Tehidy said. “That’s romantic. And you haven’t used the spell?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Knoll said.

“I’m … not sure,” Gareth said. “Maybe I’m afraid it won’t work … or that it will, and I won’t like what it shows me.”

“Reach down,” Thom said, “below your belt. Between your legs.”

“Why?” Gareth said.

“Just do as I say, dammit!”

Gareth obeyed.

“And what do you feel?”

“Why … my balls, of course.”

“Good!” Tehidy said. “Thought you’d lost them for a minute. Don’t you think it’s best to bang ‘em together and see what happens?”

Gareth drank water, and nodded slowly, twice.

“It is,” he said. “It surely is.”

• • •

It took Gareth a time to discover how the sea eagle charm worked. At first, he thought Cosyra’s wizard had tricked her, and taken her money without providing any service. But then he realized when the eagle’s beak was pointed in a certain direction, the amulet warmed. Turned away, it grew instantly cold.

Gareth had waited to make the test for two days, while his body finally wreaked revenge, and he did nothing but eat and sleep.

After sunset on the fourth night, he put on a dark cloak and started out. Then he’d stopped, remembering his enemy — who, most ironically, he’d never even seen — and borrowed from his uncle’s extensive armory a short-barreled pistol with a bore almost as big as two of his fingers together. He loaded it, lit the slow match and covered it, and went out into the windy night.

He assumed his quest would lead him toward the river, and possibly even across, into the slums. Instead, the eagle’s beak led north and slightly west, toward the great hill which was crowned by the king’s castle.

Gareth lost his way twice, following the eagle instead of the twisting alleys and ending against solid stone walls. He retraced his steps, and then the eagle grew warm, warmer.

He looked about, realized he was in a wealthy district.

If the charm is working, and is real
he thought,
Cosyra is not a whore. Perhaps a scullery maid, or even the daughter of a servant.

A single lane turned off the road, and the eagle “pointed” in that direction. He followed, until he was stopped by a wrought-iron gate, cast with odd animals and plants climbing up it.

On the other side was a cobbled yard, a gatehouse, and an imposing mansion four stories high, with turrets and a glassed widow’s walk atop it that would give a view of the entire city, save what the royal castle above blocked.

There were lights on inside, and lamps flickering in the wind, stronger at this height.

It was quite a house, something a great lord might own.

Of course Gareth wouldn’t disturb the household at this hour. But by the gods, he would not give up, and would return on the morrow and ask the head of the household’s servants about Cosyra.

Quite a house indeed, he thought, and turned, when a voice came from the shadows beyond the gate:

“It took you long enough.”

He jolted, and a slight, cloaked figure came out.

“Cosyra? How did you know I was coming?”

“When I had the charm magicked,” she said, “of course I had a small ring linked to it.

“But you didn’t answer my accusation, Gareth Radnor. What took you so long?”

“I, uh, was at sea.”

“Not all the time,” she said.

Gareth decided the only option he had was to tell the truth. There was a silence when he was through, then a tinkling laugh.

“You
really
thought that I’d be a staggering doxy, or else a married barmaid with a dozen lovers?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, I’m not.”

She stepped into the lamplight, shed her cloak. Cosyra had been a beautiful girl, now she was a woman. She still wore her dark hair short, she hadn’t grown more than an inch or so, and she was still small-figured. But she was very, very lovely, lips soft, inviting, eyes smiling.

Gareth noticed all this … and something as important. Cosyra wore a multicolored blouse that looked like heavy, raw silk, and black pantaloons. At her wrist were bracelets, each reflecting the lamplight in a different color. No servant could ever afford such clothing or baubles.