Treason's Shore (69 page)

Mutt twisted his head: there was the betting book, and the ceramic pot with the money collected over the years from those who wrote a guess and bought in. Someday someone would identify that sky, and if they could find the one who’d guessed right, that person would get the pot.

Mutt remembered that pot, and the guess book, and the sky, from his very first day in Freeport. He had been so young he couldn’t remember much from before then. Just cold, hunger, and this building, and the grown-ups chasing him out again when he tried to climb up and steal the pot.

He’d always meant to steal the pot, just because. He had even organized some of the other orphans at the doss down at the far end of the Saunter, where castoffs lived, if you didn’t mind hard work for nothing more than a place to sleep and food to eat. Then Inda took him on. When he next returned to Freeport, the bet and the pot and the weird sky were just funny.

Now he was sitting here, a captain in his own right, member of the toughest independent fleet in the southern world. The indies and privateers gave place when he and his fellow captains in the Fox Banner Fleet sauntered the Saunter. Weird what life did to you. If you survived.

Just beyond the windows lay a brick terrace full of benches and tables; in good weather, those tables, with their vantage on the Octagon, the main pier, and the city square, were the place to be seen.

The
squeak-squeak-squeak
of wheels that spent too much time in the salt air broke Mutt’s reverie.

“Beautiful, eh?” Mutt tipped his head toward
Cocodu,
his new command, alone there in the harbor.

Only a captain could see beauty in a ship wallowing under a single scrap of sail, otherwise bare poles glistening suspiciously, a bag dangling from the mainmast top.

Dasta leaned back in his wheelchair, smiling wistfully around his tavern. “Beautiful,” he repeated.

He still had bad dreams about those days following the Venn attack. The list of dead, including old shipmates—Fox’s angry voice offering someone a king’s ransom if they could heal Dasta’s backbone. “It late,” an old woman quavered in heavily accented Dock Talk, as Dasta lay shivering and sweating in his bunk. “Much late, you here much late.”

Dasta gazed in satisfaction at his tavern. A fighting ship captain needed at least one working leg. His legs were just there, unable to move, so Dasta had used his part of the treasure and bought the best tavern on Freedom Island.

His
tavern. He liked tavern keeping, he’d discovered. He liked hearing the tales the captains brought in. The only thing that really hurt bad was a year ago spring, when Fox gave the orders to sail. He’d watched them all grin and hasten to pack up their gear, just like he’d once done. Then they’d sailed away, leaving him sitting on his newly bricked terrace.

He was glad to have them around now . . . except why
were
they here? Fox lounged around as if it were still winter.

“You know Nugget’s going to compete?” Dasta asked.

Mutt grinned. “Why d’you think I sent
Cocodu
way out there to prepare? I knew she’d post her posse on the roofs to spy out whatever she could.”

“That’s exactly what they’ve been doing,” Dasta said.

Nugget’s headquarters was Dasta’s second best room upstairs.

“Charge ’em double for being annoying.” Mutt snickered.

They were all rich, or at least rich as mariners understood rich. Mutt was glad Dasta had bought this tavern, now his second home. Mutt even had a room of his own—he’d paid Dasta five years’ rent, so no one would ever sleep in it or touch his few belongings. It was the idea of a home that he liked, a place always waiting for him whenever the tide brought him back.

Not that he would leave anything important there. His mind snapped to his share of the treasure, still stored on
Cocodu
. Mutt thought back to his promotion as captain right after the battle at Jaro, and Dasta lying in the bunk, shivering and sweating by turns as he whispered on and on in an effort to tell Mutt things a captain should know about
Cocodu
. Dasta had spent years tapping and twisting at all the bric-a-brac in the cabin, discovering new secret compartments over time. During his fits of wakefulness, he’d directed Mutt to most of them.

Made sense to keep one’s stash there. If the ship went down, Mutt was likely to be going down with it. He still didn’t know what to do with that much treasure anyway . . . sometimes he wondered what Nugget would do with hers . . .
Nugget.

“I’m not surprised Nugget’s going for it,” Mutt said, watching that bag swinging against
Cocodu
’s mainmast. “It’s not the gold. It’s winning.”

Dasta grunted. “She’ll get it, too. She’s been drilling her team out back of Lark.”

“I know.” Mutt grinned. “I bet against her. Just to make her mad.”

Dasta chuckled, then made their old ship rat signal for “captain coming.” “Fox given out any orders?” he asked Mutt.

Mutt shrugged and spread his hands. “You know how gabby he is.” Sometimes he felt so tough, being a captain of a fast raffee with a wicked rep. The girls along the Saunter thought him something fine, that’s for sure. But when Fox loomed up, silent as a cat, he felt like a ship rat again. “I don’t know what he’s up to. Nobody does. Know what else? I think Dhalshev hates him. Wishes we were gone.”

Dasta snorted. “Always known
that
.”

Above, from the balcony around the Octagon’s top, Harbormaster Dhalshev watched the competitors shoving their way through the crowds to line up along the stone rail carved with a lyre motif.

Thick as the crowd was, everyone flowed around the single black-clad figure walking down the middle of the Saunter toward Dasta’s Chart House, hand raised against the sun as Fox contemplated
Cocodu
being anchored stern-on.

Dhalshev eyed that lean, straight-backed figure. The only color about Fox at this distance was the ruby glinting in one ear and that bright red hair.

“Lookin’ at Fox?” The deep, slightly husky voice belonged to Jeje, the single member of the Fox Banner Fleet permitted entry to the Octagon’s command center at the very top.

“Is he always the center of attention?” Dhalshev asked, not taking his eyes away from Fox.

“I dunno. He’s not popular, like, say, Mutt. Or Dasta. Or Eflis. I think people notice him just to stay out of his way.”

Dasta or Eflis or you,
Dhalshev thought, but didn’t say it. You never knew with Jeje. She might get flustered, or she might turn that ferocious scowl onto you and vanish. “Why does he wear only one of those ruby earrings?” Dhalshev asked. “From what I understand of your tradition, he could wear two.”

“He won’t. And just laughs when anyone asks why.” Jeje made a spitting motion, more habit than conviction.

“I’m certain I’d get the same nonanswer if I asked what his plans were.”

“Heyo.” Jeje leaned against the rail. “He’s not going to take over Freedom, if that’s where you’re going.”

He already runs it,
Dhalshev thought wryly. Everyone deferred to Fox, everyone. Dhalshev maintained a carefully neutral affect toward him, something he didn’t have to think about with anyone else, even the occasional pirate who sailed in. These latter obeyed Dhalshev’s rules, or he could raise the harbor against the pirates. Pirates knew it, sailors knew it, merchants knew it.

Fox could order his fleet to take the harbor, and though the harbor might fight back, they’d lose. Harbor knew it, Fox Banner Fleet knew it. Dhalshev knew it.

Dhalshev knew Fox knew it.

The last gold bag team was in place along the wall now, the individuals jostling impatiently. Dhalshev waved to his signaler on duty, who blew the horn, and a shout rose below as the teams stampeded down the ramps to the floating docks. Gusts of laughter rose, and howls of encouragement or insult (or both), as people got shoved or tripped (or thrown) into the water. Boats launched, oars splashing hard. Boats rammed one another, tried to hook one another. Laughter and shouting rose to such a pitch the sea birds roosting on the slanting roofs flapped skyward, scolding.

“Here’s a strange thing,” Dhalshev said as he pinpointed golden-haired Nugget below, her team skimming to cut off the fastest boat. “Even kings can’t guarantee orderly transfer of power. Though most would like to. Especially the ones who took over.”

“Kings.” This time Jeje did spit, but out over the water below the rail. “Whyja bring up kings? Fox remind you of one?”

Dhalshev did not make the mistake of thinking that in any way complimentary.

Fox sauntered up the wide brick stair to Dasta’s tavern, and crammed as the place was, sure enough, everyone got out of his way until he dropped down next to Dasta’s chair at the best table. They could see the bay, the curve of the Saunter into the main street, and the Octagon—and they could be seen.

“No,” Dhalshev said. “And yes. In all ways he’d make the most sense to replace me as harbormaster. But I don’t want him for that very reason.”

Jeje looked up, quick concern. “You’re not abandoning Freeport? It’s home!”

“No, no,” Dhalshev said, patting the air. “But I wasn’t young when I settled this place, nearly twenty years ago. Some days during winter, I wonder how much longer I’ll get up those steps. I’d like to hand it off to someone who would maintain what I’ve made.”

“And you don’t know with Fox. Well, neither do we. He’s got some plan in that brick head of his,” Jeje exclaimed. “I just hate that. He smiles and I want to smack his face off. Last year the weather was just as bad, or almost, and we sailed anyway. Went after that villain Finna, the renegade Venn. Fox says it’s the weather, why we haven’t sailed by now, but I
know
he’s waiting for something.”

So that answered Dhalshev’s main question. If Fox hadn’t told Jeje, then he wasn’t talking to anyone, except maybe Barend—but he was even more close-mouthed than Fox.

Out on the water, Nugget stood poised on the bow of her boat, bare feet balancing on the gunwales, her hand swinging her rope in a glittering circle.

Just as three boats converged on hers, she sent the rope shooting upward in a perfect arc, the hook catching on the upper shrouds. She leaped up, turning end over end as the rope wrapped round her legs; below, her crew whipped out spears from the boat bottom and turned on the attackers, sending two scurrying. One held its position, only to get a full pot of oil splattered over them.

“Nugget’s got it,” Jeje said. “Heh!”

“Not yet. She seems to be sitting there on the fore-masthead.” Dhalshev rubbed his jaw, remembering Nugget’s shrill voice when she was small, her limitless hunger for attention. “Is this demonstration to prove to the world she’s as good as those with two arms?”

“Naw, she already did that long ago. Had to, the way Fox smacked her around until she fought back. I think it’s ’cause Mutt got up her nose. Those two, they’re either brother and sister—squabbling like ’em, I mean—or else lovers. Nobody knows which they’ll be one day or the next, least of all them.”

Dhalshev observed the furious scramble on the
Cocodu
’s deck. Splashes all around the rail caused whoops and shouts in the spectators; above, Nugget swung back and forth, bopping heads. As yet she hadn’t hooked over to the mainmast to grab the bag, though the younger crew of the Fox Banner Fleet, who’d spent all last spring learning to fly about the upper masts, knew she could any time she wanted to.

“Didn’t you sit her and Mutt down?” he asked, as one who’d ended up being in some wise a father to Nugget.

“I did. Year before last. Put ’em on stink-oil duty when we had that brush with the Venn off The Fangs. It worked—for a day. Until Nugget saw Fox in action.”

“She hadn’t seen that?”

“Of course she had! But between one time and another she’d woken up. All that one year, she flirted with Eflis, mostly trying to make Mutt mad, but also experimenting around. Then it was Fox she wanted, all because she liked the way he looked in battle.”

Dhalshev laughed at the sheer unlikelihood.

“Brief. Very brief. But very intense.”

Dhalshev grimaced. “I can’t see those two hammock dancing.”

“Neither could Fox, because it never happened. Intense on her part. He ignored her. The night we celebrated Sparrow’s and Eflis’ handfasting—this was last spring, just before we took on Finna—she tried walking into his cabin wearing nothing but her arm fringe on one shoulder and a jug of wine on the other.”

Dhalshev was surprised into a hoot of laughter.

“He steered her right out and barred his door. Had half the fleet laughing. Older half. Younger ones fuming on her part, though she just pranced around in her skin and ended up with Mutt.”

Dhalshev smiled.

“By the time we got done with that renegade Venn, they were fighting again.” Jeje jerked up her chin. “Heyo. There goes the bag—Pilvig! I wonder if that’s some kind of payback. Now, time to get ready for the wedding.”

And she dashed out, leaving Dhalshev still without a clue why Fox kept the highly trained, battle-ready fleet in harbor. The weddings were an excuse, not a reason.