Inda (58 page)

Dasta glanced at Tau. “Fass?”

Tau said, “In with Norsh, but reluctantly. I don’t think we dare talk to him or any of his mates.”

The others agreed. Fassun always followed whoever seemed strongest. That meant if the mutiny could be stopped and Kodl became captain, Fassun would switch sides in a heartbeat.

Inda murmured, “If it happens, it has to be before we get to Freedom Island. Or they lose the ship, too.”

Tau played with the little knife, lamplight running and winking on the blade in ribbons of fire. “What would a ‘something’ be that Norsh or Leugre could use?”

Inda rubbed his nose. “If anything happens to the captain.”

Jeje struggled for clear sight, for sense. She hated this feeling that she’d slipped into a dreamworld. No, a nightmare. “So we’d better start listening everywhere we can?”

Inda said, “And put a guard on the captain’s cabin.”

“All on double watches.” Tau yawned. “And just in case we were feeling lazy, the wind smells of a coming storm.”

They all watched the widening arc of the lamp, and sniffed the air, which smelled faintly of ice.

“I’ll volunteer first,” Yan spoke softly from his post at the door.

“It’s a toss-up whether they’ll do anything to the captain before he drowns himself in wine,” Tau observed.

They could all see his regret, which they shared, but since there was nothing to be said, they left for their various jobs in silence.

 

 

 

Four ugly days of fighting rain, sleet, and wind kept everyone busy. It took a full day just to get storm sail on the masts. They lost two foresails, ripped to shreds in moments, before they bent a stiff new storm sail on, Sails and her mates laying aloft themselves to help sheet it home.

The ship ran under nearly bare poles, the half moon just above the horizon casting an icy blue glow over the white-topped breakers, when Jeje finally was sent below to rest.

Zimd had just arrived, stretching and yawning. “Well that was fun,” she said, chortling. “I’m ready for spring.”

Jeje sighed, too tired to speak.

Zimd jumped onto her hammock, put hands on knees. “Jeje. You aren’t heart-achin’ for your pretty boy
now,
are you?”

Jeje made a fist, dropped her hand, and walked out, tired as she was. Too tired, obviously. Zimd’s teasing was just stupid. So why did it upset her so much? Instinct drove her down below toward the hold, where no one would see her, and she wouldn’t see Tau’s golden eyes.
I know why I hate it so much. It’s because I haven’t hidden it, and thought I had.

“. . . dead.”

At first the whisper seemed a part of the voice in her head, but that word caught her attention.

Embarrassment snuffed quick as a candle in rain, Jeje tiptoed between barrels and carefully numbered ends of tall rolls of sailcloth stacked outside of the purser’s office. “You sure Beagar’s dead?”

That was Indutsan’s dry voice. Then Leugre’s snigger.

“Knife right through his chest,” Fassun muttered, his voice shaking. “Face down at the table.”

Norsh laughed. “Probably fell on it drunk. He wouldn’t have the guts to do it sober.”

“Or Black Boots stabbed him in the chest, then shoved him forward. Why else is he hidin’ down in the—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Norsh snapped. “We have to jump. Now. Before Kodl finds out and gets the forecastle shits together.”

“So we pick targets?” Leugre asked. “Didn’t we say that before? I want Kodl. He’s snoring away this moment—”

Jeje backed away, too quickly; she bumped into a thick roll of sailcloth on which a wooden spoon had been balanced, and she saw it too late, her fingers just touching the end of it before it clattered to the deck.

Norsh said sharply, “Who’s that?”

Jeje ran. The others slammed out and pounded down the companionway right behind her. She dashed upward yelling “Tau! Inda!” at the same time someone on deck roared, “Capn’s dead!”

Norsh shouted, “Get the others! Get the others!”

Inda had been drinking hot cider in the wardroom; he emerged into the waist just as Jeje ran up, Leugre pounding after her, a boarding sword in one hand, a grappling hook in the other.

“Get Kodl,” Inda said to Jeje without looking at her.

She vaulted up the ladder to the weather deck.

Leugre stood there, breathing hard, feeling unreal, despite the weapons he kept gripping and regripping in each hand, despite the sharp smell of sweat from his own body, and the faint smell of sweet cider in the air. They were, at last, going to take over the ship. Mutiny! They would be pirates! He always heard about them, but never thought of pirates being actual people like him.

But in his way was Scalis’ strutting Marlovan horse turd.

Inda shut out the sounds of feet on wooden boards, the creakings of the ship, the flacking of sails being taken in, and the thumps and yells of Norsh’s people running about wildly waving weapons.

He faced Leugre, his eyes flickering from side to side.

Leugre mistook that glance for fear.

“Want it easy or hard?” he asked, licking his lips. “Easy, you have to beg.”

The brat shuffled crabwise to the side, a purposeless movement to Leugre, who was trying to decide how long he could take killing him before he had to go find Kodl; then somehow all he could see was shadow, since the deck lamp was now above and behind the Marlovan, the light distracting his eyes.

“Hard,” Inda said.

“Leugre?” came the call from somewhere behind him.

Leugre slashed with the grappling hook at the Marlovan, the sword in his left ready for the kill. The grappler clattered on a barrel, and Leugre stumbled against a bulkhead; then pain splintered his throat from a lethal palm-heel strike. He fell, choking to death on his own blood.

Just then Gillip, Black Boots, and one of his mates arrived, saw Leugre fall, and they rushed Inda, who blocked the ladder to the deck, hands empty—

Up on deck Niz and Scalis arrived from fore and aft at a run. They saw the Marlovan boy in the waist make a smooth circular movement with both hands, too quick to follow, but suddenly he stood there holding two knives, not out like swords, but half-hidden against his forearms, and as the sailors rushed him, he flowed into the shadows of the swinging lamp above, whirled around, and within five heartbeats three sailors lay on the deck bleeding their lives out.

Inda leaped over the last one and dashed back to the ladder, looking around in fast assessment—

“Hah!” a hoarse laugh cracked the air.

Inda’s head jerked sideways and up. There stood Scalis and Niz, lounging against the binnacle, as if nothing were going on. But nothing
was
going on now, Inda realized, his mind catching up: the fights had all ended.

“That’s five you owe me,” Scalis said to Niz, his breath clouding in the bright lamplight. “Knives, like I told ya.” And significant nods.

Kodl appeared from the cabin. “Where is Norsh? I thought he would come after me.”

Sailors assembled from all directions, everyone talking, some frightened, some of them holding violently struggling conspirators, Fassun, Indutsan, and Faura among them.

Niz cocked his head toward the hatchway. “Quiet, sounds it. Who did he get?”

Then they heard noise below. Some grasped weapons as they surrounded the hatchway. To their surprise what appeared was yellow hair, then an unremarkable face: Dun. His expression was mild as always as he gave a vague wave. “I’m afraid Norsh met with an accident belowdecks.”

“Accident?” Kodl asked.

“Disagreement with my number one hammer. The hammer won.”

Kodl sighed in relief. He looked around then, assessing what they had. Four lower deckhands lay dead in the waist, two on deck, and there would be more below. Sails and her first sail mate had Faura by the arms. Fassun stood distraught, a knife held at his neck by one of Scalis’ forecastlemen.

When Kodl saw Fassun his triumph died. “Turn these ones loose into a boat. They can take their gear. Indutsan goes with ’em,” he added, catching sight of the purser held by the Delf.

Indutsan searched for allies, his eyes angry, but he’d been caught and knew it.

Scalis ordered a boat to be lowered. The rest of the crew started talking all at once, their voices high and sharp, many of them moving back and forth to no real purpose. All except Inda, Kodl noticed. He leaned on the lee railing, staring at the harbor across the bay; the making tide was steadily bringing them into Freeport Harbor.

Kodl joined the boy at the rail. They stood there as the ship pitched gently on the flowing tide, watching the tiny gleams of golden light strung along the far end of the massive bay, like fireflies in a meadow.

Inda could still feel the impact of Leugre’s flesh on his palm. There was no triumph, just a sense of sickness.
He would have killed me,
Inda’s inner voice argued.
They all would have killed me.
But the answer was heavy, nauseating silence. His guts heaved, causing cold sweat to break out all over him; he realized his knees and belly had gone watery.

“Good work, Elgar,” Kodl said.

Inda made a gesture of negation, realized he was still holding his knives, and that his hands shook. His grip was so tight it took a moment to loosen his fingers. Then he noticed the blood splashed down his shirt. He ripped it off, used it to clean the knives, and pitched it overboard, trembling more from reaction than the cold.

Then he shoved the knives back in the sheaths that everyone could now see.

Jeje appeared and silently held out Tau’s coat. It was warm from his body. Inda pulled it on, grateful for the warmth, though he still shivered.

Kodl had been watching the boy, who faced him mutely, his thin ribs, glimpsed through the open front of the coat, expanding and contracting with his labored breathing. Kodl turned his head, saw the entire crew on deck, silent under the creaking timbers.

I am captain now,
he thought, but of course there was no joy, only irony.
Captain at last—for the shortest cruise ever known.

But the work must be done, and done right, in respect to Captain Beagar, who had been murdered. Anger burned through Kodl when he remembered the lifeless body, the knife angled in a way that looked impossible for someone thrust into himself.

But Inda had killed the murderers, which was at least justice, even if it didn’t satisfy Kodl’s desire for vengeance. All that remained was to honorably finish the captain’s work, as much as he could. So he would do it.

“We will sail for Freedom Island,” he said, lifting his voice so even those in the tops could hear. “Because we must. There is no longer any convoy that would accept us, and we can’t hire protection. We will lose the ship, and probably the cargo as well, because we haven’t any money to join the Freedom Island confederation. You pay or you lose your ship, is the word I heard. But I will not consent to piracy. What individuals choose to do after we land is their affair.”

“So they won’t force us into the galleys?” someone called.

“Not Freedom Island, from what Vorzcin heard and told me, before she jumped ship. Which is why I risked the run here,” Kodl said bleakly. “We haven’t a hope of keeping our liberty in any pirate port. And nobody in a kingdom port will hire any of us Iascans. Here at least we get a chance, though your choices will be limited to hiring on with privateers or free traders, but I’ve heard some of them are pretty decent, the free traders being mostly smugglers who run goods buyers think overtaxed. They aren’t looking for fights.”

Inda flicked his palm up. His head throbbed. Iascan ships were targets now, because of what had happened in the land that was no longer his home. By the Marlovans who had exiled him. But to the rest of the world he was still a Marlovan.

“Is there another choice?” Inda asked, thinking:
Sindan will never find me now.

Niz muttered something, and Scalis’ rusty laugh was just audible over the
slap-slap
of the sea against the hull, and the clatter of blocks as the ship lurched on the making tide.

Kodl raised a hand as if to silence them, and then used that same hand to point southward toward the glittering row of harbor lights, faint and golden at the base of those black mountains. “Let’s get ourselves into harbor safely first. There will be time enough to plan after.”

Chapter Sixteen

B
Y the next watch Inda sensed another conspiracy forming, this one involving him. He saw it in the appraising looks some of the older men sent him, the grins and whispers of Niz and Scalis, who showed no reaction to the sudden deaths of former shipmates. Niz seemed, in fact, to be annoyed that he had been busy on the foremast when all the fun occurred, arriving when it was too late to do anything but witness the end.

Fun. For a time Inda kept flexing and wringing his hand, as if that would get rid of the physical memory of Leugre’s neck crushing. He’d killed four people altogether, but somehow that one was the worst.

Tau caught him at it finally, his pale gold gaze flicking from wringing hand to Inda’s face and then narrowing. “They would have killed you first,” he said. As if Inda had spoken.

Inda leaned against the capstan. “I know.”

“You also know you’re going to have to teach the rest of us. If you believe, that is, we are worth keeping alive.” He walked away without waiting for an answer.

Inda was still brooding about that as he helped with the grim chores of bringing up the dead and performing the Words of Disappearance over them—the crew all lined up in the remains of their best shore-going clothes for the captain’s Disappearance—and then the cleaning of the deck of blood, which used just about all the magic on their clean-buckets. Not that anyone cared. The ship was no longer theirs.

And Inda was still thinking during the late watch, when Kodl at last went into the captain’s cabin to sort his papers, putting the official ones with Indutsan’s books, and setting aside personal ones for the galley fire. He had Inda with him, ostensibly holding an extra lamp, but as a silent threat in case any of the other crew had ideas about another mutiny.