Across the Long Sea (11 page)

“Better for being in my cups,” Mal agreed. “No' a good place to be, I admit. But I need real sleep, lad, so stop the scowling.”

“Yes, my lord. No, my lord.” Liam dipped one finger in a spill of red wine and used the wet to draw patterns on the table surface. “You sound all funny when you're sotted, my lord. Have you a plan?”

Mal pillowed his cheek on the back of one hand. For once he was glad of his diminutive stature. The bunk was close but not uncomfortable. He suspected a taller man might find it unbearable.

“Baldebert said we're approaching the Sunken Islands, lad. If that's so, our best plan is to grab deck and pray we sail safely past. The rest can wait until land.”

“That's as I afeared,” Liam muttered, but the gimlet stare he cast Mal's way was more disappointed than frightened. “Can't you do anything
now
, my lord? I've no wish to see these monstrous elephants, and I don't much trust the captain, for more than the obvious reasons.”

“Abduction, you mean? I'm thinking Selkirk made a tidy profit off my kidnapping. Mother's always had a talent for haggling.” Mal's bones ached. He rolled onto his back. The shelf above the bunk was inlaid; several colors of wood joined together in a repeating star pattern and polished smooth. “You could steal the first mate's knife and saw off my hands and feet at the joints, I suppose, rid me o' the bracelets. But even then I couldna turn you into a bird and send you winging back to Wilhaiim, at least no' before I bled out all over the deck like a lance-­struck swine.”

Liam paused in drawing patterns in the wine. He chewed his lower lip.

“What's a Rani, then, and what's he got to do with us?”

“She,” Mal corrected. “It's only another title. A noble lady, or princess.” He frowned, trying to think past wine. “Roue's a small province; I think it's got a king. Or did so, once. They're no' a very open ­people, generally, though some o' that's got to do with distance. The last delegation come to Wilhaiim was before Renault's time.”

“His Majesty's going to be right furious when he discovers you've been bought away, my lord, and your own family collecting the blood coin.”

“Aye,” Mal agreed, staring thoughtfully at the inlaid stars overhead. “I'll no' argue that.”

A
STEADY
DIET
of red wine and porridge and comfortable sleep eased Mal's throat and lungs and kept the vertigo at bay. He learned to take just enough wine to keep his head from spinning, and to eat the ship's porridge slowly, and to sleep whenever the sea began to toss. He grew steadier on his feet, and the pain in his limbs eased, and after two days in sickbed he felt healthy enough to be bored.

The first mate was in and out, tending to Mal's needs and once or twice playing draughts with Liam to pass quiet hours. Of Baldebert they'd seen nothing. When pressed the mate said his captain was too busy for leisure.

“Busy with what?” Liam was also growing dull in confinement.

The first mate, collecting supper's spent dishes, regarded the boy with something akin to sympathy.

“The captain's set to seeing us through safe water,” he said. “While the two of you hide belowdecks, the rest of us are watching the islands roll past, watching them funnel clouds form and split again. The sea around the islands is always changing, but Baldebert's got a way of finding the best way home.”

It was the most Mal had heard the first mate speak since he'd become nursemaid. The sailor's expression shone with enthusiasm. Liam's quickly grew to match.

“I want to see,” the lad said, forgetting dignity to bounce on his toes. “My lord, please can I go up?”

“We both will go,” Mal decided, kicking aside bedding. “Fresh air will do me good, I think.”

The first mate looked doubtful, but his protest was halfhearted.

“You'll hup back below if I tell you so,” he cautioned. “The worse funnels come on with little or no warning. A man can find himself overboard before he realizes storm has struck.”

“I will!” Liam nodded. “Don't worry, my lord.” He darted out of the cabin, leaving Mal to follow more slowly.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, as the first mate preceded him through the door. “He's a fine lad, and a good page, but he's meant to be outdoors, I think.”

“Some of us are,” the mate agreed, rolling with the ship as he carried dishes away.

M
AL
LOOKED
FIR
ST
for Jacob, and was disappointed to find the rigging empty. The ship's great sails were still furled, lashed to the masts, despite a healthy wind Mal hadn't noticed in the captain's cabin. The gust was strong enough to toss spray upon the decks. The reek of salt and sweat was strong; apparently his nose was working once again.

Even tarred, the boards were slippery with wet. Mal walked carefully, pausing here and there to scan the mast and foredeck, in search of black feathers. He worried that the wind had blown the raven into the sea, or sent the bird smashing to the deck.

“Gone for fresh water, I'd wager,” Baldebert said, materializing at Mal's side. “Flown off to one of the islands. Bit more than an average bird, that one. Your familiar, is it?”

The captain had shed his tricorn and tied his hair out of the wind. His togs were more wet than dry, and a nasty, fresh-­looking cut bled on the back of his hand. He sucked the cut clean as he regarded Mal, the absent habit of a man well used to scrapes and torn skin.

“He's a friend,” Mal said. “Are the islands truly so close?”

“Never known a bird to indulge in friendship.” Baldebert shrugged. “Come and see, my lord necromancer. Shellshale's so close you can spit across her, if you like.”

Mal followed the captain across open air to the starboard bulwark. Past the small shelter of the cabin, the wind picked up, tugging at Mal's hair and trousers. It wasn't a cold wind, but heavy with moisture and heat.

“There.” Baldebert pointed across the gunwale. “Shellshale. Not more than a hillock above the water, but they say she's the top of a great mountain hidden beneath the waves. Beyond that, just on the horizon there, that's the Horn. Bit more land above water than any of the other eight, our Horn. That's where your bird will have gone for fresh water.”

“We've different names for them, but I've seen maps.”

Baldebert pressed his palms to the gunwale and stood on his toes, stretching. The gash on his hand was bleeding again, ignored. The captain was a head taller than Mal, although lean as an acrobat. Mal tried to imagine the longer man folded into the captain's bunk and couldn't.

“Maps are no good, here. Below the waterline the land is constantly changing. Shipping routes are clear one season, and dangerous the next.” He tossed Mal a surprisingly youthful grin. “Most ships won't attempt it. Most go around.”

“But not you, Admiral.”

The other man sobered. “Not when time is precious,” he said. “And my cargo good as diamonds.” He turned from the gunwale, executing a neat, pointed half bow in Mal's direction.

“Am I?” Mal murmured, thinking of Selkirk's coffers.

“Indeed.” Baldebert cocked his head, hearing something past the wind Mal didn't. “I'm wanted on the fo'c'sle. Come, my lord. Would you like to see how it's done?”

“Aye,” Mal admitted. Privately, he could admit to curiosity. He knew navigational principles in the abstract, of course. He'd spent hours as a lad studying the formulas under his father's watchful eye. But he'd never been able to witness those principles at work—­that pleasure had been Rowan's.

An eagerness rose within him, momentarily banishing vertigo. He was like a boy again, the anticipation of seafaring adventure not yet ripped away by the curse in his blood.

“Lead on,” he said, waving a hand at Baldebert. “Please. Show me what this ship of yours can do.”

 

Chapter Nine

T
HE
FIRST
WATER
funnel blew past
The Cutlass Wind
in the dark hours before dawn. It was the silence and stillness that woke Mal first, the sudden cease of rain and smothering heat. He propped himself on his elbows in the captain's bunk, squinting through the cabin's single window, trying to gauge the time. He saw only the black of deepest night or heavy storm.

A knock at the cabin door sent Liam lurching upright from his nest of blankets beneath the table. By the time the lad had located the latch, Mal had managed to roll from the bunk. Vertigo threatened. He thought it was the utter stillness of the ship on the sea that made the hair on his arms stand on end.

A sailor Mal didn't recognize thrust a shimmering lantern and a plump wineskin in Liam's direction.

“For the magus, from the captain,” the man said, hushed. He crooked a thumb at Liam. “You're with me, lad. We need hands on deck. Looks to be a wild one.”

“I want the boy here,” Mal began, even as Liam set wine and lantern on the table and hastily wriggled into his trousers.

The sailor drew a length of cord from his pocket, quickly knotted one end to his belt, and the other to Liam's wrist.

“All hands,” he said. “Funnel hits, we need bilge workers, and extra muscle for the oars.”

“Don't worrit yourself, my lord,” Liam said, eager. “I know what to do; I've been practicing. I won't go overboard, and I'll not let you drown. My lord.”

“Not on my watch,” the sailor agreed. “Baldebert says drink it all down, my lord, and blow out the lantern once the skin's empty, so as to prevent fire.”

Mal gritted his teeth and nodded. Liam remembered to bow once in his direction before he dashed away in the sailor's wake, tethered by the single piece of cord. Mal knew the line was for safety, but still the leash galled.

He sank into a chair, head spinning, and uncorked the wineskin. He swallowed half of the drink down, watching the flame in the lantern dance on a draft he didn't feel. The wine worked its usual cure, settling his stomach and making his head pleasantly muzzy. The lantern light turned the bracelets on his wrists sepia. He traced the ivory with the tip of one finger, mouth pulled tight.

M
AL
EXPECTED
THE
storm to hit slowly in an increase of wind and rain and swell. Instead it fell with a roar and a crash, rolling the ship sideways and sending the deck spinning. Mal clutched the table to keep from falling, and then had to grab at the lantern as it toppled. He caught it around the glass shield and swore loudly when heat stung his palms.

The ship bucked. Mal fell, taking the lantern with him. He managed to snuff the flame with his thumb as he went down, but the glass shattered against a table leg. Mal lay on the boards in the dark, stunned. He could hear shouts from above, and more distant, muffled cries from the hold below: the oars master's screamed entreaties as he berated his living engine.

“Blood of the King.” Mal managed to make his knees, moving carefully to avoid broken glass. He found the lip of the table and pulled himself upright, grateful for the bolts anchoring the furniture to the deck. He couldn't locate the wineskin, and supposed it was spilling its contents uselessly across the cabin floor.

Hands spread front and side, Mal edged his way around table and chairs to the cabin wall. The wood thrummed against his knuckles; the vibration reminded Mal of the sound of angry bees. He found the door without much trouble, but struggled with the latch and had to pull hard on the door itself, finally kicking the jamb with his heel until the door swung free.

Wind howled into the cabin, bringing with it salt and sting and the screams of men. Mal's ears popped. He hung on to the door frame even as seawater washed in small ripples over the threshold.

“Get back!” A swab stood guard outside the cabin door, his young face a pale blotch in the night. “Get back inside, my lord!”

“Nay.” Mal clung to the outside of the cabin. “Are we flooded?”

The swab blinked. Mal motioned at the water on the deck. The boy's mouth gaped but he shook his head.

“Not yet. The captain's got the bilge rats working hard. They're doing as best they can, but the sea, she's fast.”

“Go join them,” Mal ordered. “I don't need a guard dog. You're wasted here.”

“But, my lord—­”

“All hands,” Mal snapped. The lad nodded, and staggered off into the night.

The wind was a weight against Mal's chest, pinning him to the bulwark as he inched slowly along the deck, following the sound of the silver whistle. Sailors and swabs dashed back and forth. The furled sails rattled against constraining rope and the masts groaned.
The Cutlass Wind
danced dangerously atop waves that rose half again as high as the gunwale.

When Mal was almost across the deck, nearer the great gun than the captain's cabin, the wind died to nothing and the ship wallowed on abruptly flat water. Clouds overhead parted and a low red sun shone through, and Mal was able to lift his head and look about. What he saw made his heart rise into his throat and stick behind his teeth.

“God's balls,” he said. “That man is mad.”

Baldebert stood still on the bowsprit, placid as a lake heron on windfall. He was lashed in place with cord, his hair and clothes plastered close against his slender form. Even as his crew ran this way and that, and the first mate sagged against the ship's wheel, Baldebert continued to toss the dipsea and shout his mark.

“Too close,” the captain called, hoarse. “Hard, forward. Hurry now. We're nearer out than in, boys.”

Mal looked about for Liam, but couldn't find him for the surge of men on the deck. Someone shoved a wooden pail into his hands.

“If you're not going to stay out of the way, make yourself useful,” the sailor suggested. “Get below and bail before the next one hits. Pump's o'erwrought. The engine drowns, we're all dead.”

“The next one?” Mal looked at the setting sun. “The sky's clear.”

“Another funnel sighted east,” the sailor said. “Two in a crossing innit unheard of; three's the seas' own rage. Never should have attempted the pass this time of year, naught but a death trap, we'll be broke to splinters and a feast for kelp, but the Rani had to have her magus, and Baldebert's not one to forbid her anything.” The sailor put his hands on Mal's shoulder, turned him about, and pushed. “That way. Go. Feel the rumble? Not long now.”

Mal carried the pail with him to the middle of the deck and the main hatch. The deck tilted sharply as he staggered: returning vertigo, or the roiling sea. He crouched in ankle-­deep water. When he dragged the hatch open, the flood ran like a small waterfall over the lip and into the hold.

“Oi! Shut that! We're trying to keep the sea
out
, you imbecile!”

Mal slithered feet first over the lip, groping with bare toes until he found the expected ladder. His wet tunic caught on the hatch, tearing, and the bucket smacked his shoulder, but he managed to get the hatch closed again, and the fall of bilgewater slowed to a trickle. He clamored down several rungs into the hold, breathing shallowly against the stench of unwashed humanity.

“Necromancer.” The woman standing at the foot of the ladder steadied Mal as the ship rocked abruptly starboard and then back. “My apologies. I didn't expect—­”

Mal caught a quick impression of bright red hair, greased back from a high forehead, and an unfortunate crooked nose. Then he shoved the woman away, bent at the waist, and lost his breakfast to the flooded hold. As he choked and heaved, he saw his vomit was far from the worst refuse floating around his shins. The bilge was a veritable sewer of human misery.

“My lord!” Liam appeared at Mal's elbow. The lad was soaked through and owl-­eyed. He gripped a pail in both hands, and his teeth chattered with fear or chill. “What are you doing?”

“Helping,” Mal said. “Show me what to do.”

The redheaded woman scraped Mal with a doubtful gaze. She wore an iron collar about her neck, and an officer's tunic over her trousers. A silver whistle dangled on a fine chain from her belt. “Can you stand straight?”

“Aye,” Mal replied, and made himself do so.

“Right.” She shrugged in the manner of one used to oddities upon the sea. “Go and bail the rear of the engine. Don't distract the oars with your unnecessary pity; we're here of our own making, let us do our job.”

Mal blinked, trying to process her wounded pride past the spinning in his head and the rocking under his feet. Water slapped against his kneecaps. The ship was settling lower into the ocean, he realized, and felt the ooze of fearful sweat on his brow.

“This way, my lord.” Liam tugged Mal further into the hold. The boy lowered his voice to an aggrieved hiss. “You shouldn't be out. I can't keep you safe
and
bail both.”

Mal didn't bother with an answer. He was too struck with horror for coherence.
The Cutlass Wind's
engine sighed and groaned and struggled even as she ship rose and fell and rocked, and the water rose. The blank, wretched faces of the men and women manning the oars seemed to Mal more repugnant than the offal floating about his legs. The engine rowed with a rhythm that had more to do with the chains collaring one oarsman to the next than real skill. If the woman at the head of the starboard rank worked her oar, so must the skinny man the next bench back.

Mal counted twenty oars on the starboard, fifteen on portside. There were more men than women; the women, at least, were allowed the modesty of thin shifts, while their male companions went entirely naked in the cloying humidity.

“My lord!” Liam hissed again. “Don't stare. They prefer you don't.”

Even as the boy spoke caution, one of the oars—­a scarred, balding man with yellow desert eyes—­turned his head and regarded Mal with hatred. Without breaking rhythm, the man spat into the bilge, showing blunt white teeth in an angry grimace.

“They're very proud, my lord,” Liam murmured. He nudged Mal past the last of the oars. Beyond the engine the water gurgled and rolled. Mal stopped, bent double, tasting bile. Liam waited until he'd recovered, then put Mal's bucket gently back into his shaking hands. “Bucket brigade, my lord,” the boy explained. “I need to get back. Rest here for a bit, aye? My lord.”

Mal nodded and stared into the stern. The belly of the ship was lit by a faint red light, filtering down through narrow portholes cut into the deck above. As much water as light fell across the miserable huddle of swab and sailor working desperately alongside the motionless bilge pump. The pump looked fine and new, the thick chain still untouched by rust, but the rush of water had proved too much, and most of the canvas bags meant to carry water up and out of the bilge were burst and useless. Instead swab and sailor made use of buckets and strength, scooping water and passing pails full of ocean water along the hold and up a living chain of agile men. Sailors above deck hauled the load through a hatch meant for the pump, and returned the buckets empty.

It was a woefully inefficient attempt to staunch a mortal wound.
The Cutlass Wind
was going down.

“Father's like to be well entertained by this debacle, aye, brother? That or nigh dead of shame.”

Mal took a shallow breath of wet air. He turned, bucket dangling, and regarded Rowan's laughing spirit with real relief. His older brother, looking both far happier and more substantial than Mal expected, winked back. The bilgewater ran back and forth through his calves; Mal couldn't tell if the ghost had feet beneath the waterline.

“Nay, no ghost, not I.” Rowan shook his head sadly. “The pretty ivories on your hands and feet keep you dull as any simpleton, blind and deaf. Ra'Vadin's ghoul could sing in your ear and you'd never notice. I'm but the voice of your gut-­wrenching terror, brother.”

“Hallucination,” Mal diagnosed, sagging against the bilge wall. “That bad, am I?”

“Worse,” Rowan replied, cheerful. “Deep sea turns a magus queer, everyone knows. But the jewelry's the real problem. Get rid o' them bangles, Mal, and it's possible you could save yourself and the ship as well.”

Mal stared stupidly at the ivory encircling his wrists, then at the bit of rotten apple floating near his knee. “Too late. We're sunk.”

“Malachi!” Rowan grasped Mal's shoulders and shook him until the vertigo in his skull smoothed to a low roar. “Pay attention. You're not sunk yet. I didn't die at sea so you could follow me down. Think of something! You always were the clever one.”

Mal lifted his arms above the water. His bucket whirled away, forgotten. He couldn't see Liam. Behind him the engine still rowed, responding to each blast of the silver whistle, even as water hampered their rhythm.

“They don't come off,” he said. “I can't think with them on, and I can't take them off.”

“Nay,” Rowan said, and smiled. “But Baldebert can. And I wager right about now the captain'd do near anything to save this ship.”

Baldebert was still lashed to the bowsprit, a living figurehead above the carved maid. He'd lost the dipsea, replaced the lead in his hand with a long dirk, but the blade hung loose in his fingers. Mal crawled across the deck on hands and knees, seawater running over his fingers. He was not the only coward worming across the boards; several swabs lay on their backs in the water, staring skyward. Mal heard the roar of angry wind and was afraid to look around.

The first mate had lashed himself to the wheel, but had given up on holding the spoke steady. He scarce looked around when Mal pulled himself upright along the wheel prop.

“We're free of the islands,” the mate shouted. “But we're lost. We've taken on too much water, and more'n half the crew gone overboard, the engine like to drown. The funnels come one after another; there's naught left for us but the sinking.”