Legends of the Riftwar (82 page)

Suddenly he was a great deal more sanguine about bringing Flora along than he had been a few minutes earlier. Silver was precious, but not as dear as his neck–which del Garza would happily stretch–or his head–which the Upright Man's bashers would happily club–so it wasn't a bad deal. Yes, brother and sister on their way to visit Grandpa. Besides, she filled his bed better than any girl he knew, and he thought that might be a welcome relief during exile. He was almost whistling when he left the flop. Then he stopped himself.
When did ‘I' become ‘we'?
he thought to himself.
I'm the one the Upright Man is running out of the city; Flora's free to stay here
. As he headed down the stairs he considered that he had never invited her to come with him and she had never asked his permission. It was just, somehow, done. Shaking his head in wonder, he realized he was now beginning to understand what some of the older men in the Mockers meant when they said they could bloody well do anything they pleased, so long as it was what their wives wanted them to do.

He turned his mind away from irritation and back to the soft feel of Flora's skin and her round rump and suddenly it didn't seem too big a price to pay, letting her have her way. He was back to almost whistling when he reached the street.

 

Krondor's Lady
was old and small and tubby; about a hundred feet long and thirty wide amidships. The smell filtering up from the bilges made her more than a little homelike, to one who'd spent a lot of time in the sewers.

It had proven surprisingly easy to get aboard. While most of the guards on the docks were Bas-Tyra men,
Krondor's Lady
was under the watch of some of the Sheriff's Crushers, as the
constables were known. A quick story about visiting grandpa, with Flora looking genuinely distressed–not entirely an act after her stint in the gaol–and they were allowed aboard. Jimmy was thankful for the change of clothing both had elected earlier that day. One glance at the sword at his hip and the constable had judged him a young man from a family of means.

Flora had gone below to see where they were being permitted to sleep, while Jimmy remained on deck to watch the departure.

‘You make this run often?' Jimmy asked a sailor, dodging a group of others who went running by with a roll of canvas, obviously ready to kick the annoying deck passenger out of the way.

‘Two, three times a year,' the sailor said, doing something nautical involving two pieces of rope and a knife, his fingers running on with an automatic nimbleness. ‘Usually not so early. Storms, y'know.'

‘Oh,' Jimmy said hollowly.

A last net of cargo–bales, boxes and sacks–swung off from the dock and down into the hold. Sailors hammered home the wedges that held a grating over the hatchway and did various mysterious things with the ropes and sails, mostly involving hauling or running up the ratlines while other sailors screamed at them. The captain was a short grizzled wiry man, with a gold hoop in his left ear and a missing little finger on his right hand.

‘Loose sail!' he shouted from the rear of the ship. Canvas thundered down and bellied out into brown patched curves. ‘Cast away fore, cast away aft, loose all, fend off! Fend off, don't tickle the dock, you bitches' brood!'

Sailors loosed ropes and pushed at the dock with long two-man oars. Jimmy swallowed and watched as the roofs of Krondor began to slip away, and the deck took on a slight rocking motion under his feet. A cold clammy feeling settled in his stomach.

Up on the sterncastle the harbour pilot directed the helmsman, while the captain kept shouting orders to his crew.

I'm leaving Krondor
, he thought. It didn't seem quite real; it was as if he'd just said to himself
I'm going to the moon
. ‘Leaving Krondor' was always something other people did.

Like the Prince and the Princess
, he thought then, which cheered him a little.
Getting onto a bigger stage, that's what I'm doing!

The pilot had the ship moving gracefully through other ships at anchor or coming in to the docks. They dodged freighters and long, sleek warships and fishing-boats and wherries and barges. At some point that was not significant to Jimmy, the pilot hurried down to the main deck, and with agility surprising in a man of middle years he swung a leg over the side and scampered down to a waiting rowboat.

The ship moved surprisingly slowly as it edged out of the harbour. Jimmy glanced back to the sterncastle and saw the captain keeping his own hand on the tiller as he barked orders.

‘Ah, comin' on a bit fresher,' the sailor said.

The sky was growing clouds, cold and grey-looking. The water turned from blue to green-grey too, and began to crumple itself up into tall hills that moved toward him, topped with white foam. The ship's blunt bow rose to meet it, dug in and rose again with white foam coming across the forward railings and swirling ankle-deep across the deck. In what seemed to Jimmy to be unreasonable haste, the land fell off to nothing but a dark line to their left, and the rocking-horse motion of the ship acquired other twists, a curling roll, left forward to right back.

A sailor, some sort of officer, saw Jimmy the Hand's face turn pasty-white and how he clapped a hand to his mouth. ‘The lee rail, you infernal lubber!' he snarled, then grabbed the boy by collar and belt and ran him over to it, getting his head over the side just as the first heave struck. ‘Feed the fish, and don't foul our deck, damn your eyes!'

 

‘I hate you,' Jimmy mumbled feebly, not sure whether he meant himself, Flora who'd got him into this, the ship, the crew, or all of them together.

His sides hurt, his head ached, his eyes felt as if they'd been rolled in hot sand.
Now I know what the word misery was invented for
, he thought, as he crawled hand-over-hand toward the rail and another spell of dry retching heaves until there was nothing left inside to come up.

And I stink.

So badly that he spent most of his time on deck letting the high winds blow his funk away. That meant he was mostly at the stern since the gale came from the south. He'd learned quickly that spitting wasn't the only thing you didn't do into the wind. The fresh air made it a little easier to live with himself. Even so, he avoided company.

Sometimes between bouts of retching he was tormented by memories of his original plans for this voyage. He'd imagined himself playing dice with the crew and cleaning them out easily. He'd done it often enough in Krondor, though most of the sailors were drunk at the time.

Instead, the crew were amusing themselves by sidling up to him and saying things like, ‘Arrgh, sick are ye? Whatcha need laddie-boy is some nice ham floatin' in a bowl of warm cream! Or maybe you'd like some cold fish chowder?' Then laughing as he swore feebly, not realizing that he'd be cutting them down right then and there, if only he weren't so weak and if only moving didn't make him feel worse.

Or maybe they remember me from the dice and the taverns, and this is some sort of sick, twisted revenge
.

Flora came staggering up bearing a mug of broth for him and hunched down beside him where he hid from the wet wind behind a crate secured to the deck.

‘Flora,' he said, gasping and trying to drink the salty broth. It
seemed to hurt less if you had something to give the sea. ‘Do you think they recognize me? Could I have picked someone's pocket, or won too much at dice, d'ye think?' Then he shook his head. ‘But there's no profit in it, so why bother?'

She shrugged. ‘Well, my friend, if I thought someone who'd robbed or cheated me was nearby and the only revenge I was going to get was to make him throw up then I would, and gladly. And I'd consider that profit aplenty.' Flora smiled at his expression of abject horror. ‘But I don't think they do recognize you, Jimmy. I hardly knew you myself when I first saw you waiting on the dock, you looked so respectable!'

She huddled deeper into her thick shawl and huddled closer to him, shivering with cold. He welcomed her warmth, and the fact that she blocked the wind on that side.

‘Actually, it seems to be something they do whenever someone gets seasick; sailor or passenger,' Flora continued. ‘I think it's mean and I've asked them not to do it any more. But I honestly don't think they can resist.'

He tried to dump the rest of the broth overboard–his shrunken stomach was starting to protest–but she pushed it right back at him.

So the crew didn't want revenge on him, they just wanted to torture him for the joy of it. That was nice.

It's a very good thing I can't put curses on people or by now the whole crew would be writhing in agony. Or dying horribly
. And in the throes of violent sea-sickness a man can think up some very horrible things indeed.

He knew that if it weren't for Flora's influence the crew would be even worse. How she kept them off him he didn't know.

Perhaps he should.

‘You're not giving them…' he hesitated.

‘Giving them bribes to leave you alone?' Flora shook her head, smiling. ‘If I were then I'd not be getting much in return for my
efforts, now would I? But no, I'm not doing that any more. I'm going to be an honest girl if it kills me. At least until I find out if I do have a family.'

She watched him look miserably into the cup of cooling broth and gave his shoulder a pat. ‘Just drink it, Jimmy. You've got to get something down you or you really will be sick.'

He gave her a piteous look, but all she did was nod encouragingly. He squeezed his eyes shut and drank the last, lukewarm half. He knew it would come up again, but at least now it was comfortably warm. Flora would have waited until he drank it even if the stuff grew a skim of ice.

Then he thought about what she'd said. ‘I
am
sick,' he pointed out.

‘You're not dying. But if you don't keep drinking water or broth, though, you actually might.'

Well, that was a pleasant thought.

Jimmy began to feel the broth dancing in his aching stomach and knew it wouldn't be long before the stuff made a break for it. He was too ashamed of his condition to encourage her presence at such times.

‘Cook says if you can keep that down, and spend a while just looking at the horizon, so your senses can adjust, you just might get over this sickness. Some people do.' Then with a piteous look she added, ‘And some people don't.'

‘Maybe you should go below,' he suggested.

She looked at him askance, then nodded. ‘It is getting cold out here.' Flora tucked a tendril of hair back under her enveloping shawl. ‘I'll be back later with something else.'

‘Oh, gods!' Jimmy groaned and rushed to the rail.

Flora hurried away; even then he managed to feel a mute animal gratitude.

Jimmy willed himself to hold the content of his stomach down. He did as suggested and watched the horizon and soon noticed
that the rise and fall of the ship was less distressing on his stomach when he could see the motion as well as feel it. He took slow, deep breaths and attempted another sip of broth.

Gradually he became aware that one of the other passengers was watching him. The man was about thirty; of medium build, but standing with an easy balance that made some corner of Jimmy's mind say
swordsman
despite his dress; he was wearing dark clothes of good wool, but they'd seen hard use and were stained with salt. The sort of clothes might be worn by a travelling merchant in a small way of business, or by a ship's officer.

But that belt has wear on it,
Jimmy thought, glad of something to distract him from his wet, chill misery.
Look at the way it's polished, and stretched a little. That's the attachment for a sword-sling
.

Like Jimmy, the man kept himself to himself, though probably for different reasons, lending the occasional, very competent, hand to the sailors when the seas became unusually rough. Otherwise he spent his time either gazing out to sea or staring at the young thief. Jimmy was beginning to find it very annoying.

It also worried him. After separating from Flora in Krondor he'd retrieved his gold and turned a fair bit of it into silver and copper, much of which he'd secreted about his person. There were times he thought the stranger somehow knew that he was carrying well over a hundred and fifty in silver and gold even though it shouldn't have been obvious to anyone.

Unless that someone had seen him changing his gold to silver.

Certainly Jimmy didn't look rich; Flora had outfitted him from a used-clothing store, one where respectable shopkeepers and craftsmen went. True, there were a large number of pockets, but that was something common to all the boys Jimmy knew, town or Mocker. And having a lot of pockets didn't necessarily mean that each one was full of money. Even if, in his case, it was.

The only bright spot is that if he wants to rob me he'll have to do it here on deck in front of the captain and the crew, and Flora, when she's here
.

It would take a good long time, too, because as one of the best pickpockets in Krondor he'd long known the value of spreading your valuables around. And with no less than twelve pockets, not including the ones he'd sewn himself, he'd had plenty of places to put his gold. Of course, if he ever fell overboard he'd sink like a stone, but you couldn't have everything. Besides, the way he was feeling right now the idea actually had some appeal.

Jimmy clung to the rail and slanted his eyes toward the stranger where the man squatted with his back against the mainmast. The man caught his glance and rose in a single graceful movement. As he approached the stranger took something from his belt pouch.

Jimmy tensed.

The man held out a strap of leather. ‘Let's put this on you.' Without waiting for an answer he grabbed Jimmy's left wrist and fastened it on, then positioned it just so. ‘I couldn't bear to watch you suffer any more, lad,' the fellow said. His voice was deep and mild.