The Fox (11 page)

Jeje’s face and neck burned. She made a noise of disgust deep in her chest, and then, to get away from the subject, “Why worry about pirates? Didn’t the king you wanted take over? Can’t you go back and be a navy again, especially if they need one?”

Woof leaned against one of the wind-battered lyre carvings that masked the structure supports. “The civil war happened because the old king thought he was above the laws. The new king swore to uphold the laws.”

“Yah. So?”

Woof shook his head. “You really are a sea rat, aren’t you? If we go back, then we have to submit to the law, see? And right near the top of the list is what happens to a fleet commander who takes most of a kingdom’s fleet and leaves the kingdom, though he’d sworn to protect it.”

“Even though he did a
good
thing? And
everyone
knows it?” Jeje stopped, hands on hips. On Woof’s nod, she threw her hands out wide and snorted her disgust so hard her nose tingled. “That’s
just
why I hate kings and politics. It’s all fart stinks, and kings are the biggest stinks of all.”

Woof laughed. “Come on, let’s get busy.”

Chapter Six

ONCE before an internal awareness changed the course of Inda’s life, though he did not know it at the time: when the twelve-year-old Evred Montrei-Vayir discovered that the ten-year-old Inda Algara-Vayir trusted him unconditionally—without ambition, calculation, or even awareness.

Here is another internal decision that changed Inda’s life, and again he was not aware of it at the time: Coco’s demand for cinnamon rolls.

The runaway Chwahir boy Uslar was too small to be a pirate; the first mate would have killed him outright had not the cook mentioned needing extra hands. They ate well on the
Coco
. Captain Walic had declared that if Cook wanted extra hands, extra hands he would have, so Uslar and the other boy, Mutt, were assigned to him.

The cook, who was not a bad sort, though he drank heavily (he drank heavily because he was not a bad sort) muttered to Uslar late one night, “If you have somethin’ they want, it makes you valuable, see?”

Uslar had taken that advice, offering one morning, when there was extra pastry crust, to make a cinnamon roll the way Rig had taught him. The result was an instant success.

Now, two months afterward, Coco herself came into the galley, her wide skirts brushing the edges of the tiny space. The cook, instantly anxious, set down his mixing spoon.

“Cook.” Coco’s small mouth downturned. “There wasn’t a single cinnamon roll at my breakfast. I thought I gave orders for two every day.”

She held up two fingers, and waggled them coyly. Nobody mistook that for a humorous gesture.

“Yes,” Cook said, sending an anguished look at his cook-mates. “You did, Mistress Coco.”

Uslar stood at the chopping board, trying to be invisible. Mutt, perched behind him on a stool so his almost healed ankle took no weight, hunched down. His face blanched, making his freckles stand out.

Uslar watched Coco’s profile with the unwavering intensity of the prey when the predator is near; she resembled a pastry: with her little upturned nose and her soft second chin, bits of unconfined doughy flesh jiggling around her otherwise tight dress. She looked young and merry in lamplight, but when she stepped out in strong sun she appeared closer to her age, which was near forty.

“And?” Her voice was strident as she tapped the nails of those two fingers against the breadboard.

Uslar’s mouth dried with fear. He’d heard whispers about Coco and her penchant for knives and blood.

“We haven’t a walnut on the ship.” Cook spread his hands. “Not one o’ the prizes we took had any nuts at all, not the smallest walnut, or even an almond. It’s the shaved nuts, see, that makes them rools what they are. I tried, but all I got was a tasteless mess, no rool you’d want to eat.”

The ribbons on her flounces quivered, but all she said was, “Walnuts, is it? Then we shall have to get some.”

And she rustled away. Mutt sighed in relief. Uslar was too frightened to make even that much noise; he watched the Cook’s strong right arm stiffen at his side, his left hand flipping backside-up in Coco’s direction, the tendons and muscles so taut his fingers trembled. But the next heartbeat the cook was back at his chopping, and so Uslar resumed his steady mixing, around and around and around.

Walic sat in his comfortable chair on deck, considering his next move. His mates each wanted something different, which he ordinarily would have ignored except that he liked each of their plans. Which first? Which first?

All three were sweating, the captain’s good mood from the night before rapidly evaporating. When Coco bustled up onto the captain’s deck, hips swinging, harsh sunlight glaring off the brilliant yellow of her silks, a jet of irritation scorched his temper.

“There are no cinnamon rolls because Cook is out of nuts,” she stated with dramatic petulance, ignoring the mates, who backed out of her way.

Walic massaged his jaw. She did not look the least bit appetizing in the strong light. Sweat marred the bodice of her gown, her skirts swept over half the captain’s deck as if claiming it for her own, and the brilliants in the embroidery threw out pinpoints of reflection strong enough to bring tears to the eyes. When he regarded her under the shade of his hand, she looked no better: her face and the neckline of her low gown had gone blotchy in the heat and her fat jiggled when she tapped her foot.

The irritation flared into anger. But then she tilted her head, smiled wistfully, and said with a girlish pout, “Coco is so, so sorry, sweeting. It’s so horridly hot and Coco was so, so disappointed.”

He let out his breath, looking at the small hands clasped meekly under her rounded breasts so cozily squashed into the gown. He thought about unlacing the front of that gown, and what she’d do then, to make the fire run like it had last night, after her imperious demands on her pet.

Best of all, she couldn’t see how Prettyboy hated her. Walic chuckled. Coco thought everyone was in love with her. Well, let her think it—it made for more fun in the cabin and it also meant no one was likely to conspire with her. If her new toy ever showed the least sign of real desire for her, it would be his death warrant. There would be no conspiracies aboard his ship.

“Can’t have you going without, can we?” He chuckled again when he thought about what he’d do to Prettyboy in front of her if he ever sniffed any hint of mutiny.

“No, love,” Coco said, running her fingernails along his jawbone. “No, and you won’t go without either. You wait and see what fun Coco and her pretty-pretty cook for youoo-oo, ” she crooned, and then left the deck with a last twitch of her hips and a coy over-the-shoulder glance.

No, she couldn’t go without walnuts, not Coco, who managed to be amusing even when acting stupid. He considered his mental map of the islands to the north. His first mate wanted them to cruise in
Widowmaker
’s old territory.

The second mate shook his head, muttering: “I can’t get it out of my head that Ramis o’ the
Knife
is also here-abouts. I say we go south, because the big guild convoys aren’t due round Chwahirsland for at least a month—”

“If, by some chance, they avoid Boruin,” the first mate pointed out sarcastically.

“They been sending fleets of warships,” the second mate retorted.

They had their exchanges choreographed by now; they argued so the captain would not sniff an alliance, which he’d see as conspiracy. They took opposite points of view and never joined against Walic.

The second spat over the rail—not quite in the first’s direction. “Captain o’ the schooner even said so, before I killt him. And the big Sartoran silk merchants have yet to come north. If we go south and squat on a point off Lands End, we’re sure to catch something good from either direction.”

“And the Khanerenth navy? They’ll be playing cards, no doubt.”

Walic liked them to seem on the verge of fighting.

The second mate appealed to Walic, hands open. “We can take ’em, they’re spread so thin, long ’s they don’t have time to pull together.”

Walic shook his head. “They’ve got more scouts than we do, after Stupid and Prettyboy’s Marlovan burned so many of ours. Northeast. Inglenook Islands lie there. We’ve all seen the nut trees growing wild.”

The mates flicked their fingers to their foreheads— Walic liked the niceties of naval salutes to captains—and because the captain was watching, First Mate gave Second Mate a sneer, and Second smirked, rocking on his heels, his hair-chimes jingling. No conspiracy here, captain!

They tacked for five days north by east through fitful seas until they sighted the islands bumping up on the horizon.

The heat had mounted steadily, intensified by the fretful winds that too often died away in the middle of the day, leaving them to wallow and roll, sails sagging, until even the hardiest was feeling sick.

“Everyone wants a squall,” Thog whispered to Mutt after she clambered down from helping set staysails once again. “Everyone wants one so much I am afeared they’ll knife Sails if she says she feels it coming once more.”

The Sails aboard this pirate vessel had been taken off a capital ship years ago, and was quite kind to the young ones, giving Mutt easy chores when Cook didn’t want his unpracticed hands in the kitchen. Uslar had been learning from Rig, which meant he was in the kitchen for full watches, making pastry. Cook and Sails made certain that both boys were seen to be useful.

Thog promised herself she would remember that.

They returned to working on the stiff storm-sails, dyed bloodred, that Captain Walic wanted ready for the day he would be invited into the Brotherhood. The red canvas usually upset Thog, but today she refused to think about what she would do that day. Her head ached enough.

“We’ll be doing sails, same ’s always,” Mutt said. “But maybe you won’t be pulled up during your off-watch to sew ribbons for
her
.”

“That won’t change,” Thog retorted. She added in Chwahir—which Mutt had begun to understand—“I’ll be sewing her ribbons back on her clothes even if a gale blows every sail out to sea.”

She and Mutt smothered their laughter.

On deck, the first mate sat under the awning the hands had rigged on the captain’s deck, wearing only a vest and a pair of cotton deck trousers, and rapped out orders.

The two mates had been relentless in trimming the ship instantly to catch the fickle breezes, which meant the hands had spent more than their watches hauling rope and tending sail in the miserable heat.

At sunset the second mate appeared, his hair-chimes faintly ringing as he yawned.

“Who do we send? Feegy wants to go, and that means his cousin. Says he knows nut trees.”

The first mate snorted as he propped a broad bare foot on a barrel. “And you believed him? He just wants to get out of the sail-making party.”

The other shrugged. “Said it’s those lines o’ trees out behind the big ruin. Makes sense to me.”

Both pirates were sea-bred, and though they knew nuts came from trees, neither of them could tell you which trees made what kind of nuts. Or how you could tell the difference.

The first mate ran his hands over his thinning hair, which was already damp from sweat. “We’ll send ’em. They either come back with full baskets or get the rope’s end. But I don’t think two’s enough. Let’s send Rat.”

“Yes. He knows something about land. Another?”

The second mate rubbed his big jaw, his chimes ringing; the sound irritated the first mate, but he’d learned years ago to keep his mouth shut about it. “One of the new ones? Young ones climb masts faster, makes sense they’d climb trees as fast.”

They looked round, making sure Gaffer was still below. Neither spoke about what was foremost in their minds, though no one was in hearing range. Gaffer Walic had been satisfied that the Marlovan wanted up and down the coast had died by accident in the battle, but First Mate—who had been at the head of one of the boarding parties—had conducted his own investigation. Walic wouldn’t like that kind of presumption . . . unless it proved to be right.

“Something still crosses my hawse,” he said in a whisper. “On how those orders got mixed. ’Twas Fox, near’s I can find, who killed that yellow-haired prince.”

But Walic liked Fox. He was never seen talking to anyone except maybe Rat, who was quiet and obedient. He fought better than most hands on the ship, and he carried out the training of newcomers with callous dispatch. They knew better than to accuse one favored by Walic without unassailable proof. So either they found the proof or waited until he fell out of Walic’s favor.

Second Mate lowered his voice. “New one, Stupid, stays away from Fox. Seen that over and over.”

The first mate said, “Seen it, too.” So that at least removed the fear of conspiracy. Having arrived at a decision, he sat back, lacing his battle-scarred fingers around a knee. “Send Stupid with Rat and the cousins. Whoever comes in with the least amount gets the rope-end, and watch-on-watch for a week. Meanwhile we use the time to sound that inlet again. The chart for these islands is rising ten years old, and the bottom’s bound to have changed.”

That decided, they turned their attention to the sails as the wind died, becalming them within sight of their islands.

Next morning before dawn a gust of wind brought the ship to life as the fiery eye of the sun appeared on the eastern horizon. Walic’s fleet, approaching from the south, carried more on the tide than by the wind, which was failing again.

Uslar had just woken; reddish beams of light shafted through the scuttle to highlight the wood grain of the bulkhead inside the stuffy forepeak.

“Uslar! Come see!”

It was Thog, outside the canvas that served as a doorway. The air was already stifling, so Uslar pulled on his clothes and plunged his head into the bucket. The zing of magic felt better than the warm water; blinking drops off his eyelashes, he ran up in time to see sunlight paint the sides of cliffs. The smell of vegetation had woven into his dreams during the night, raising his spirits. Now they soared as he gazed in wide-mouthed astonishment at the great carvings of winged figures on the sides of the sheer rock.