Thieves' World: Enemies of Fortune (3 page)

The crew was mad with desire, seeing gold for every man jack of them; and now he might have caught the contagion himself … hell, if he’d fall off now and let that Yenizedi dog skin past, laughing at them. Wizard or no wizard aboard that ship, they had old Korgun up there for a charm, and they were going to take that Yenizeder bastard this time.

He ran up on deck, already feeling the difference in the ship’s motion with the new sails abroad, and hoping their weather-worn canvas held … that was the devil in it, because if something carried away, they might not have the speed to make it past that squall. Fool, something said to him, reminding him there was still escape. Fool, no treasure is worth it. But there was no hesitation in the crew at all, who worked like madmen. Catapults brought to the forecastle were bowsed up to the fine, fair view of a square-rigged ship coming closer and closer, as the
Widowmaker’s
full spread of canvas hurled her along the fine line between that squall and hidden rocks.

Thought I didn’t have the charts, did you? he asked his enemy. Thought we’d not have the nerve? The
Widowmaker
ripped along, rigging singing, the whole deck humming. Old Korgun was getting a soaking up there, the bow wave sending up continuous spray, so that the gunners had to canvas their catapults’ cables and shield their slowmatches from the wet.

Closer and closer, with the white squall a haze on their larboard bow, and the
Fortunate
towering up ahead of them. No need for the glass now. A blind man could see the tall stern of their enemy, could see one head and another take a look at them over the taffrail—could see activity back there and know that they were preparing their own rain of fire and missiles, and their deck so high they didn’t have to worry about the spray. A silver-haired man leaned on the rail up there—Yenizedi, no question, and their wizard. Wind caught that hair and spread it like a banner.

“Off covers!” Camargen shouted at his gunners. “Fire at will!”

Canvas came off. Bombs were heaved up and settled into their padded slots, their fuses set alight, and
thump-thump-thump!
the catapults cut loose, two at once and the others close after, the glass bombs flying. One smacked against their enemy’s stern-post, one fell in the sea, and others hit near the rail. Silver-hair vanished for a moment and reappeared.

The gunners worked like fiends, angling up for maximum loft, winching back, no longer in unison. It was a race, and the first went off, then two and three so close they made one
thump,
sailing up and over the enemy’s rail, spreading fire. The fourth hit the rail itself, right where Silver-hair was standing. The heavy bomb splintered the rail and spattered fire.

Silver-hair’s robe caught. He made a futile gesture to put it out, turned in a sheet of fire, and in a gust of wind, lost his footing and fell, his black robes and pale hair a downward trail, a small flutter of fire amid the dark cloak.

“Ha!” the gunners crowed.

“Get that bugger!” Camargen roared to midships, and junior officers and spare gunners rushed to the rail to seize up two of the xebec’s long oars from their stowage. They ran them out, while the gunners kept lobbing bombs at their target, and now bombs came back, belated fire from a towering great merchantman. Bombs burst on the deck and made puddles of fire that spread in the watery sheet of spray as crew ran to dowse them and wash them overboard.

Camargen dodged between two such and saw the wretch hauled in, half drowned and snagged between crossed oars.

Silver-hair it was, but not the old wizard, not wearing any great ruby, but a young man, a drowned duck of a young man who coughed up water and had to be hauled up to his feet, streaming water.

“He’s not the one,” Camargen said as the thump of catapults went on and an enemy missile exploded off the mainmast. “Search him for valuables and pitch the bastard in the hold.”

“Fool!” the drowned man cried. “You’re caught, we’re all caught, we’re all gone mad! Turn back! Turn back now or we’re cursed, all of us are cursed!”

The hands had their superstitions. “Wot curse?” one asked, shaking him.

“There is no curse,” Camargen said, grabbing the wretch by the front of his icy shirt to shut him up.

“Curse there is,” Silver-hair said, teeth chattering, lips turned blue. “We’ve been years at this, years, now, and we’re both caught in it. Cut Korgun free and fall back or we’ll all be caught, forever. It’s not a natural storm! We’ve all run mad, and there’s no end to this chase!”

“Cap’n!” the lookout cried. “Cap’n!”

The merchantman ahead of them half vanished in a blinding gust of windswept spray. From a mile away the squall swelled up between one breath and the next and drove down on them in a blinding mist.

There was no time for fools. The gale rushed on them. “Helm!” Camargen shouted, seeing that the helmsman was struggling. “Hargen, Cali, to the helm!” A solid wash of spray broke over them, and he struggled aft, to make his orders heard. Their chase was aborted. They were, with the merchantman, fighting to get through, if they had gained enough headroom around that point of the coast “Shorten sail!” he yelled, under a wash of water. Sea and sky began to mix, and the air was a steady roar as he turned.

Their prisoner had escaped. Silver-hair was hand-overhanding his way forward, toward the catapults and their glass bombs.

“Damn it to hell!” Camargen ran to stop him before he got to fire that would float and burn. “Stop him!” But Silver-hair had dodged past the gunners, struggling to secure their pieces and their fire-globes, ran the length of the forecastle and clambered up onto the bowsprit as Camargen gave chase. Metal flashed in Silver-hair’s right hand as he clasped the bowsprit with both legs and his left arm, cloak let fly to the storm, shirt soaked, hair streaming cometlike against the storm.

“Damn you!” Camargen pushed past the startled gunners and seized a hold on the bowsprit himself, saw Silver-hair forge farther and farther out, toward the end of the bowsprit, where the mainstay held, the stay of not only the mainmast, but all the masts, Silver-hair with this shining metal in hand, and no good intention.

Bent on killing them all, on killing the whole ship. If that stay went, they were dead men, all.

Water, fresh and salt, mingled in the air. Camargen swarmed outward on the bowsprit, got hold of Silver-hair’s leg and hauled, and Silver-hair half lost his hold, turning with his back to the gale and his free hand lifted, holding not a knife, but a wizard’s wand.

“The hell you do!” Camargen shouted against the wind, and hauled with all his strength, for life itself.

A violent gust hit them. The
Fortunate
completely vanished behind a great mountain of water, and the
Widowmaker
nosed down, her bowsprit aimed at the trough. He seized a fistful of trouser-leg and hauled with all his strength, to get his hands on Silver-hair himself.

Silver-hair slipped further, and grabbed him. “You don’t understand,” Silver-hair shouted at him. “Let me get us through!”

He had a grip on Silver-hair’s belt now, hauled him against the bowsprit only to get his hand on his throat, and as he did, Silver-hair slipped, dragging them both over, dragging them right down where rope and chains held waterlogged old Korgun. With a crack like a catapult, the bowsprit shook.

Canvas had ripped, a tattered streamer of the lateen foresail blowing over their heads, trailing its sheets. Then, sickening shock, the great cable of the mainstay parted a strand, and another, unwinding before their eyes.

Crack!
again, and something had given way. The whole mainstay parted, the mainmast pulled violently aside, and death was taking them apart, trailing canvas. Cables and canvas frayed and parted as if sudden rot had taken them. Camargen had Silver-hair by the throat now, and vengeance was all he had, vengeance for his crew, for the
Widowmaker
herself, for all the long sorry chase and the end of it in a watery grave. Old Korgun looked on, blue-lit in lightning and spray, and Camargen kept his grip, kept it while the timbers parted in a series of sickening cracks and lost-soul groans, and the whole fabric of the ship came undone. They went under together, tangled in each other, and while he drowned, he kept strangling the one who’d done it to them, in hatred more precious than his last-held breath.

“
W
here did you get this?” Bezul held the necklace in front of Kadithe’s face and Bezul’s sharp gaze raked him up and down.

Kadithe Mur ducked his head and mumbled: “I made it.”

The little bell rang over the Changer’s door and Bezul’s strong fingers grabbed his arm, pulling him into a little room just inside the shop’s warrens, closing the door behind them.

“Sit!” Bezul hissed and Kadithe hunched on the edge of the wooden chair facing the small, cluttered desk. Bezul threw himself down in the desk-side chair and laid the necklace, gently as if it were a butterfly wing, on the table between them. “You tell me and you tell me straight, boy,
is that stolen?”

“No.”

“I don’t deal in that sort of thing. You know I don’t.”

“I tell you,
I didn’t steal it!”

Bezul’s wife, Chersey, cracked the door and asked, was everything all right.

“Fine, my dear,” Bezul answered quietly, and Kadithe scowled at the floor.

She nodded, once, and disappeared from the door, her point made.

“All right, boy, start talking, and fast. You say you made it. Out of what?”

He shrugged, resentment rising. “Stuff. Shite lying in the gutter, under the scrap from th’ fires. Lotsa bits left lyin’ ’round iff’n ya opens yer eyes.”

Hell, half and more of Bezul’s stock out in that warehouse he called a store came from the same source, just better stuff, gang-scavenged.

“Who taught you?”

His eyes dropped. He’d been a fool to come here, or rather should have stuck with the odd repair job Bezul had for him. The new bits and bobs,
his
work, only raised questions he dared not answer. Secrecy, more, anonymity, Grandfather had always said, was their only safety.

“Just … give it back,” he said sullenly and reached for the piece, only to find Bezul’s square-fingered hand covering it.

“Not so fast.” Nothing could hide from those keen eyes. They bore past pretense and saw:

“Kadithe. Kadithe … Mur?”

He jumped. He’d never given the name.
Never.
But Bezul nodded slowly.

“Mur. Aye, you have the look of his boy.” He sat back, taking the necklace with him, and said, almost to himself: “I thought the line had died out.”

“Just …
give it to me.”

“Grandson?”

He set his jaw.

“Where is he, boy?”

Counting the necklace lost, he darted for the door, only to run headlong into Bezul’s wife.

“Here, now.” She caught his arms, and gentle but firm, made him lift his head. She
tsked
softly and wrapped a kind arm around his shoulders.

Kind. So why did he still feel like a prisoner?

“What’s going on, Bezul?” she asked, over his averted head.

“The boy here wanted to trade this for a shirt and a blanket. Take a look. Tell me what you think.”

She made him look up again. “Promise me you won’t run?”

He swore, his voice breaking, and threw himself back in the chair. She picked the necklace up; lamplight caught the moonstone ring on her finger, making it glow with life. A beautiful stone … with a setting that failed to do it justice. All urge to escape faded in the face of that beautiful stone, how
he’d
set it, given half a—

Chersey exclaimed softly, then moved over to the lamp, and all thought of the ring vanished. If he hadn’t been terrified, the look on her face would have made him happier than he’d been in … a very long time.

“Beautiful. So very delicate. I haven’t seen work like this since …” Her voice trailed off and her eyes lifted to meet her husband’s. Then she turned to Kadithe, lifted his face with a finger beneath his chin, then brushed his hair back from his eyes to study him the same way she’d studied the necklace. “Where is he, child? We heard his shop was ruined, burned to the ground, that he died.”

He said nothing, only wished desperately that he could leave.

She chuckled softly, the way Grandfather chuckled when he recalled his time in the palace. “He was always so
proud
of his bronze-work, his statues. He never appreciated … Of course, it wasn’t stylish. Large, ostentatious, that’s what the nabobs wanted. But the jewelry he made was for his daughter-in-law. She was small, delicate.” She smiled at him; he shuddered. “A lot like you, child.”

He ground his teeth.
Delicate
wasn’t something he wanted to be. Delicate didn’t survive what he’d survived these last years. o way. No froggin’, shite’n way in hell.

“He says
he
made it.”

“Does he, now?” She took his hands before he kenned her intent, studied them from all angles, touching the calluses, the tiny pricks and cuts the metal left, apologized when she inadvertently pressed a still-raw burn, then smiled and placed the necklace in his hands before releasing him altogether. “He’s taught you well.” She settled on the edge of the desk. “So, husband, how are we going to help this talented young man?”

“What about the shop?” Bezul asked.

“We’re out. Says so on the door. Don’t change the subject. He’s not, I take it, a member of that annoying guild.”

Bezul raised a brow It him; he shook his head. He didn’t know what guild she was talking about, but he shite’n sure wasn’t a member.

“Thought not. He’s far too young. They have all those
rules.
As if that necklace shouldn’t be evidence enough.”

“What … rules?” he whispered, before he could shut his fool mouth. It was a dream she offered, not reality. He’d just wanted to exchange the damned necklace for a blanket.

“You must put in your time with a master—”

“Meaning you have to pay someone who’s paying huge sums to the guild for the privilege of being slave labor for at least five years.”