The Ships of Merior (33 page)

‘Say again?’ She leaned on crossed arms, the fingers hooked into her coarse linen sleeves tensed to a sudden, stark white. ‘You want the
Drake
, for time unspecified, to sail to a destination, also unspecified, with added contract, that your judgement overrules mine in unfamiliar waters? Lunacy. What about cargo? My holds are filled. Or are your very bodies the contraband?’

Only Dakar caught the fleeting, bitter irony that prefaced Arithon’s smile. ‘I only have cargo for pick-up, and
it’s held in another harbour. Outbound, I don’t care what you carry. The return run’s all that concerns me.’

Dhirken blinked. ‘Lunacy,’ she repeated. ‘You’ve wasted my time and gained an unkindly debt, through your friend’s stupid meddling with my crew.’

Her phrasing raised a sudden, queasy thrill that flattened Dakar’s appetite. He ceased chewing, a half-gnawed fin dangled in one hand and grease glistening in his beard. For the Shadow Master across from him did nothing, ever, without thought; he had embraced a hostile try at insurrection without a ripple of annoyance. Yet whatever tangled wiles coiled behind his mild calm, his expression stayed guileless and shuttered.

‘Think about this,’ he said to Dhirken, a little amused, but not patronizing.
‘Black Drake
would become the fastest, richest ship to ply the ports of the continent.’

‘Hah!’ Dhirken straightened, hooked the flask, and banged it to a strident clash of coins between Arithon’s hands, which lay relaxed on the table; soft next to hers. Not horned in callus like a sailor’s, but with fingers long and fine as the musician he was, under his deep layers of subterfuge. With a scorn that presumed him inept with a sword, she gave him her sneering refusal. ‘Drink, fool, and dream. My brig is already fast enough to outrun the patrols in the strait. I don’t need to risk her planks to a ham-fingered idiot who would likely see her smashed on a shoal.’

The pair locked eyes, Arithon unwilling to rise to provocation, and Dhirken, cross enough to knife him. As if drawn by their dissent, the Kittiwake’s owner strode back to claim his due for damages.

By chance, Dakar saw, his final accounting matched the quantity of the silver on the table. Not without forethought, the landlord was accompanied by two brute-thewed giants armed with cudgels.

‘Pay my reckoning,’ he demanded. Confident the loom
of his heavies would leave the slighter man cowed, he bent to scoop up the coins.

Snake-quick, Arithon moved. The landlord’s grab entangled with the brandy jug. One thrown silver glittered spinning through gloom, caught before it landed by a street waif half-hidden in the cranny behind the wooden mermaid.

Dirty, ragged, grinning through missing front teeth, the creature tugged a bundle from the depths of his niche, and said, ‘Master, here is your instrument.’

Arithon stood. He accepted the wrapped bulk of the lyranthe, his amity toward the landlord turned baleful. ‘You’ll have your coin, I gave my word. What made you think you’d need force to claim my debt?’

‘Fiends! You’re a bard?’ The landlord chewed his lip, less apologetic than uncertain. The last musician to show his face in the Kittiwake had left with his lyranthe in splinters. Flanked by Dhirken’s cynical regard, and the dull-witted interest of his thugs, he hesitated just long enough to note the gleam of fine metal and jewels as Arithon unveiled the priceless instrument bequeathed him by a master now dead.

Then the last veiling leather fell away. Arithon braced his hip on the trestle edge, scattered off a run like white sparks, and tenderly nursed the abalone and ebony pegs that tuned fourteen silver-wound strings. Bright sound sheared across the Kittiwake’s din. By the time he had finished, conversation had lapsed. Heads turned, and fraught silence webbed the close air to the dimmest alcove in the room.

For an instant the musician paused, head tilted that familiar fraction to one side, fingers poised above fret and string as he measured the temper of the crowd. They offered no easy, willing audience. Their wants were varied as their roughest tastes and trades: the tar-stained sail-hands with wenches like gaudy birds in their laps; the cordwainers from the shipyards, shirtless, their
muscled arms glistening hot sweat; the knife-scarred, off-duty garrison soldiers grouped in tight knots over a battered pair of dice.

Before that suspended opening could pass, Arithon reeled off through a dance tune. He played saucy and fast, in heartfelt, glorious tribute to Halliron’s best style. And the Kittiwake’s riff-raff roared back an approval that rattled the crockery on the shelves.

The landlord backed off, stupefied. Past the first, stiff moment of surprise, Dhirken laid her elbows in spilled spirits and coins, her chin cupped in her palms to listen.

The measures spun faster, and faster still, alive as the crackle of summer lightning. A few of the doxies sprang up to dance a jig, and soon the floor planks were shaking. In minutes the whole Kittiwake rocked in celebration, while more customers packed in from the street. By then, Arithon had bent his head to his soundboard. Black hair veiled his expression, wholly; even Dakar, who was closest, never noticed the flash of the tears that splashed and wet his flying knuckles.

Halliron Masterbard was dead; gone. In a headlong, passionate harmony of celebration, the man proven fit to succeed him made the most coarse-mannered dive in Ship’s Port reel with ruffians who stamped and clapped and shrieked. As if by whipping up joy to bring catharsis, he could fill the bereft void in his heart.

Dakar aroused from the thick dark of sleep at the gouge of stiff fingers in his ribs.

He groaned, stirred, and scrubbed bleary eyelids with his fists. The unheard-of surprise that he was not hung-over shocked him enough to sit up. In a dimness red-lit by the flicker of a last, failing oil lamp, he squinted to assess his surroundings.

Against a backdrop of wildly sprawled bodies, he made out the slight form of Arithon, standing impatient with
the lyranthe furled up and slung from a strap at his shoulder.

‘Tide’s turning,’ said the Shadow Master in a low, urgent whisper. ‘If you’re sailing with me, I leave now.’

Dakar blinked, still turgid from sleep. He cradled pained hands over his distended belly and none too softly, belched up the aftertaste of cod. ‘You spell-touched the whole house into sleep with your masterbard’s gift, you unprincipled bastard.’

‘You ate too much,’ said Arithon in rejoinder.

‘What about them?’ Dakar’s groggy gesture encompassed the patrons heaped and snoring over trestles and bricks.

‘Brandy or beer, does it matter? The
Drake
will be ready to weigh anchor. Are you coming or staying?’

‘Coming.’ Dakar heaved to his feet. ‘For nothing else, just to see you hurt for this.’

A soft thread of laughter mocked him back. ‘Don’t trouble. Dhirken’s crew will likely be at my throat before your wits have had time to wake up.’ Arithon flicked an airy, tight-cuffed wrist. ‘Do you want to lend a hand?’

Dakar peered, made out in wavering flame light the slumped form of Dhirken’s shoulders. Her hands with their blunt, close-trimmed nails, her tanned cheek, and the wind-wisped, flamboyant plait trailed through puddled brandy and wet coins. ‘Dharkaron! You do ask for trouble. How’d you convince her to take your contract?’

‘I didn’t.’ Efficient without seeming hurried, Arithon reached out, caught a wrist as lean-boned as a belaying pin, and tugged the lady captain upright on the bench. Her body lolled backward against his chest and the taut cloth of her tunic pressed the round swell of small breasts.

‘Well, there’s one question answered without you risking your bollocks,’ Arithon said.

He flashed a fast grin, unstrapped the heavy cutlass,
and thrust baldric, weapon, and the unslung weight of his lyranthe into Dakar’s arms. Then he bent and hefted the woman in a seaman’s carry across his shoulders. Her weight made him stagger a half-step. Wrist and feet dangling, her hips folded close against his nape, she was easily larger than he was, a limp body difficult to balance. He shrugged her bulk to ease a pressure point, and even that slight change in his stance raised a sweet-chinking clangour of metal.

The floor around the table lay spangled with silver, coins struck by the foundries of a dozen different port towns: the tribute of the Kittiwake’s revellers to a masterbard whose night’s entertainment had pleased them. As though embarrassed by their generosity, Arithon gave another hitch to his load. ‘Well, I’ve settled my debt to the tavern. The landlord should be satisfied, don’t you think?’

Dakar looked at him, eyes round as an adder’s and his brows pinched in unaccustomed thought. ‘Dhirken,’ he said. ‘If you wanted her service, why not spare the bother and just lie to her?’

‘Because I happen to need her trust.’ Green eyes reflected the expectant, curbed patience a hale man might show a blind half-wit, until the silence stretched too long. ‘Oh, Dakar,’ the Master of Shadow said finally, his words drenched in irony that jabbed.

‘Trust you?
Dharkaron’s Black Spear and Chariot!’ Dakar sucked in a breath, hot to launch into a tirade, then stopped. ‘Her men,’ he ventured through a pregnant pause. ‘For
this
, you had to be rid of them.’

Arithon waited, quietly subtle as slow poison.

‘Oh, you bastard,’ gasped Dakar, slammed sick by the recognition that his rage had been teased and then used, himself a dumb pawn strategically advanced to further his enemy’s design. The brawl in the Kittiwake had offered no setback at all, but played straight into Arithon’s hand.

The wrapped, fragile instrument in Dakar’s arms became all that stayed him from violence. His hatred soared to fresh dimensions, directed as much at himself for falling prey to a ploy so smooth he had never thought to guard. Speechless, breathless, thwarted enough to kick his own shin from sheer fury, he barged ahead. Through the Kittiwake’s common room, stumbling over slack and snoring bodies, blundering around benches, he slammed at last through the doorway to reach the night air in the street. On his heels in uncanny quiet for a man with a burden, Arithon bore Captain Dhirken.

‘A woman,’ Dakar groused, his beard hairs caught and tweaked by a tangle of baldric straps and studs. In case he might just be dreaming, or sick, he twisted to recheck his bearings. But the pair that emerged from the Kittiwake’s torpid gloom were solidly, dishearteningly real. ‘Your neck’s going to stiffen if you lug her like that,’ he stated in unhelpful satisfaction.

Arithon bore him no rancour. ‘I’ll be lucky if that’s the worst that befalls me.’ As Dakar ploughed on toward the quayside, he tipped his chin a hampered fraction sideways. ‘No, turn left. I’ve things to retrieve from my lodgings.’

Pulled up short in the gloom by the gate to the harbourmaster’s office, Dakar threw back a blank glare.

‘Navigational instruments,’ Arithon prodded gently. ‘Charts. How could you forget? They’re the point of this whole sordid exercise.’

Which was unlikely to be the innocent truth, Dakar knew; not when the perpetrator was Arithon s’Ffalenn, whose motives ran to mazes of trickery the Fatemaster himself would be pained to unravel.

Captain Dhirken awakened thick-headed. Before she opened gummed eyelids, she knew by the slap and rush of the wake that her brig was well under way. The creak of burdened canvas laid the
Black Drake
over on port tack. Since the captain’s elbow and hip were not jammed alee in her berth, she judged the weather was mild. The gusts that wafted through the overhead hatch grating smelled dry and unlikely to freshen. A kick of white spray off the rudder and a thrummed note of strain in the cordage meant staysails and topsails were set aloft. Attuned to her vessel as other women were to their lovers, she knew the square main should be braced around slightly more to starboard to balance the trim of the jibs.

Moved by habit, Dhirken rolled to arise, when a male voice dispatched crisp orders. Her mate acknowledged. Feet thumped on deck as sail hands moved to obey, followed by the squeal of lines through the mainsheet blocks.
Drake
rocked and settled, docile as a stroked maiden, into harmony with wind and heading.

Odd, mused Dhirken, still drowsy as her feet met cold planking. Her mate’s skill at the helm had never been
so deft. She braced against a bulkhead, unsettled to find she had slept in her clothes; never a habit of hers, unless a storm was brewing. The bracers she chose for her forays ashore had gouged her side into dimples, and the hair wisped loose from yesterday’s braid held a clinging, smoky reek of used tobacco.

The voice on the quarterdeck called another order, and awareness woke late that its timbre matched none of
Drake’s
officers.

Dhirken ripped into an explosive, whispered fit of swearing. Impelled by sheer rage, she dredged up the memory of a sticky table in the Kittiwake, and the blandishments offered by a green-eyed, silver-tongued bard. His jug of strong spirits had not turned her wits. She recalled every meandering thread of his conversation, and a proposal too brash for any right-minded captain to endorse; which apparently had not stopped the scheming dog from believing he could force her will by trickery.

Balanced like a dancer as her brig rollicked over a swell, knuckles braced against a deck beam, Dhirken made a blind snatch toward the hook by the unlighted lantern. The brass-strapped scabbard of her cutlass slapped into her groping palm.

Relieved to find her weapon hung in its proper place; reassured that her ship’s boy at least still minded his duty, Dhirken steadied enough to rein in the raw worst of her fury. ‘Lad?’ she called through the gloom.

Every boy to sign with the
Drake
answered to the same address; they earned names when they mastered the skills of deepwater sailors, and outgrew any instinct that tempted her to tousle their hair like lost little brothers.

This particular brat was a sluggard. ‘Lad!’ Dhirken repeated in a stabbing whisper. ‘Roust out! Now! I need you.’ She poked with the sheathed tip of her cutlass and entangled the mesh of an empty hammock.

A scrape at the companionway made her crouch and whirl around.