The Sigil Blade (2 page)

“Until four days ago, I was on a square rigged freighter of Domirian make, called the
Royal Accrual
,” Edryd began.

Greven’s eyes darkened. “Your ship was built in one of the countries in the Ossian League,” he said. “You don’t look at all like someone from Domiria, and I would hope you are not an Ossian.”

“No, no of course I’m not,” said Edryd. He didn’t seem particularly troubled by Greven’s assumptions, but he made an effort to dispel them, without volunteering any information about where it was he was actually from. “I was a part of the crew, but not as a matter of choice, you understand.”

“I don’t,” said Greven.

“Before I ended up on the
Accrual
, I was a passenger on a small boat making its way up the Ossian Coast. There were three of us—the owner of the boat, his son, and myself. We were in an inlet replenishing our fresh water when we were met onshore by a landing party from the
Accrual
.”

“I’m going to guess that your encounter did not go well?” someone suggested smartly from across the room.

“The captain of the
Accrual
declared our ship a wreck and claimed the salvage rights on our cargo. Well, as you might imagine, the owner of the boat didn’t agree.”

“Rightly so,” insisted Greven.

“There was quite a bit of shouting, and even though there was nothing worth taking, just provisions, nets, dried fish, and a bit of oil, they proceeded to ransack the boat anyway. I don’t think they were too happy with any of it, because they left it all on the beach. The only thing they wanted to take in the end was us. They ordered us to board the
Accrual
, and when we refused, they busted holes in the old man’s boat.”

“Bastards,” muttered a dark haired man who had twisted around in his chair at the next nearest table to the one at which Edryd and Greven were sitting. It was becoming clear that more than a few of the people in the room were taking an interest in the conversation.

“I hope you won’t judge me for this, but I didn’t know the old man. I had paid him for passage up the coast, and that was the extent of our association,” Edryd said. He stopped then, as if not wanting to continue.

“What happened?” Greven asked.

“I left them there. I watched from the deck of the
Accrual
as they stranded the man and his son.”

“You should have done something,” demanded the dark haired man from the nearby table, turning his chair to more directly face Edryd and Greven.

“What could he have done, Ivor?” said a second man, who sat cross from the one who had just spoken. “Apart from staying behind with a broken boat, or making some sort of useless protest, I don’t see as he had many options.”

“I would like to think they may have been able to repair the boat,” Edryd rationalized, moving the story along. “And while I do regret abandoning those two, I regret it more for my own sake than I do for theirs. Things did not go well for me after that.”

Greven and his customers were all paying close attention now, and everything Edryd said increased their desire to learn more.

“Domiria being a League state, I had no fears that that I would be made into a slave, but to my misfortune, the captain had novel interpretations on more than just salvage laws.”

The room grew quiet.

“Ossians,” Ivor spat angrily, interrupting the silence. “The League only banned the sale of slaves as a means to attack the wealth and power of Seridor and her allies!” he declared vehemently. Ivor’s allegiance in the long running conflict between the Ossian League states and Seridor seemed clear enough.

“There is no love here in An Innis for Ossians or for the League,” Greven explained. “I am sure you must already know that this island was once a prospering slave market.”

Edryd would have liked to object, and insist that there was no such thing as a prospering slave market. The benefit realized by those who profited in such a trade, was necessarily more than offset by the suffering of those who were being transacted. But that wouldn’t have made Edryd any friends in this crowd, so instead he nodded agreeably, all the while filtering out much of what Greven had to say in reference to the “better days” that might never come again.

“… between that and a trade in Edoric metals,” Greven went on, “and assorted valuables taken from captured Ossian merchant ships, we did quite well, but of late, League influence and expansion is making things difficult for us.”

“Well, I’m not taking sides,” Edryd said, although in his heart he did feel something bordering on sincere disdain towards these unprincipled men of An Innis, and by extension the people of Seridor, where he suspected many of them were from. “But I would agree,” Edryd said with feigned sympathy, “given my recent experiences on the
Accrual
, that as Ivor said only a moment ago, tactical rather than moral concerns motivated the League to ban slavery. If Captain Vaedres was in any way typical, and if Ossians are anything like the men of Domiria, then they wield their laws and codes primarily as weapons against enemies, and as tools for obtaining leverage in matters of trade.”

Edryd’s description was greeted with broad agreement. Ivor, in particular, seemed to appreciate Edryd’s support of his earlier comment and regarded him approvingly.

“The captain offered me a rate of six strand per month if I would agree to a yearlong contract as part of his crew,” said Edryd, calling everyone’s attention back to the story.

“Six strand,” groaned Greven, “that is hardly a competitive wage for that kind of work.”

“In other circumstances, I would never have entertained the offer had it been twice that amount,” Edryd agreed, “but I wasn’t given a choice as simple as that. He claimed that I owed twenty strand for passage to the nearest port, and said that unless I had the means to pay right away, which he well knew I did not, I would have to remain until I paid the debt.”

“That would never hold up,” Ivor’s friend said. “At least not under the laws that govern League ships it wouldn’t. What you are describing, it amounts to being forced into involuntary service under a threat of imprisonment. Couldn’t you report the captain?”

Ivor’s friend seemed to be far more educated than the others, and Edryd wondered about that, but for now, he simply took note of it and moved on. “I made it clear that I intended to do exactly that,” Edryd said, “but the captain only laughed and reminded me that on board the
Accrual
, he was the arbiter of Domirian law. I was told in very specific terms, that I was bound to his ship for as long as he remained unsatisfied with the balance of my service.”

“Sounds like slavery to me,” said Ivor.

“Technically it wasn’t,” disagreed Ivor’s friend, “even if the only differences are a matter of the words chosen when describing the arrangement.”

“What did you do?” Greven asked.

“I agreed to the contract, and three days on we made the next port. As I was leaving the ship, Captain Vaedres advanced me thirty strand in copper coins, which represented several months of wages.”

“I’m not sure your captain was as bad as you are making out,” said Greven. “He showed a good deal of trust to someone so recently taken into employment. A generous amount if you ask me.”

“Well I didn’t ask,” Edryd said disagreeably, pausing afterward for a moment in an effort to soften the edge in his voice before he continued. “Anyway, I puzzled over that a little bit myself, but it was not long before I discovered that the captain’s motives were anything but generous.”

Greven hadn’t taken offense to Edryd’s tone, but he did look confused. “What was there to stop you from simply leaving with all of that money and never going back?” he asked.

“The advance,” Edryd answered. “The contract that he was holding over my head was a weak thing at best. But with a mutually agreed upon sum of borrowed money, accepted in front of witnesses, the captain had gained a more legitimate means to control me.  He could, in theory, threaten me with imprisonment if it was not repaid.”

Sudden comprehension spread across the faces of the men listening to Edryd’s story. “That’s an intelligent captain, to be sure,” Greven said with a hint of admiration.

“You still should have left,” Ivor insisted.

“I would have done that if I could have,” Edryd agreed. “As I sat in a tavern deciding what to do, I was joined by some of the crew. A few of them began actively encouraging me with helpful tips on how to best make use of my wages, and I was having trouble trying to politely refuse the advice. I excused myself by saying that I was returning to the ship, but one of my new friends said that he would join me.”

“He was following you,” Greven surmised.

“I was certain that he was,” Edryd confirmed. “All I could think to do was to return the advance as soon as possible. We were not allowed to keep personal coin while on the ship, so I turned it in as soon as I returned to the
Accrual
. Once back on board though, I was no longer permitted to leave without consent from the captain. At the next port we made, after I declined to accept an advance on my wages while going ashore, Vaedres made me stay aboard with the portion of the crew that was protecting the ship, and that pattern continued everywhere we went.”

He had a crowd now, many of whom were showing intense interest. Edryd wondered why no one appeared to suspect that some, if not all of the details, were being embellished, but he continued to invent with confidence as he created more layers and added them to the story.

“Months later, when I was finally allowed leave,” Edryd said, “I began testing how far I could get from the ship and was surprised when no one followed me. I had just escaped. I couldn’t believe my luck. That is until I realized it was not luck at all. It hit me then, all at once, that I had not been paid a single coin for four months of work.” Everyone laughed at this part.

“Embarrassed and angry,” Edryd continued, “I stormed back to the
Accrual
and demanded my wages. Vaedres offered to pay me a tiny fraction of what I was owed. A wiser man, or even just a less uniquely stupid and petty one, would have cut his losses and left with whatever he could get. Instead, I insisted that I would never leave until I was paid in full.”

“I would have done the same!” Ivor approved. “I wouldn’t allow myself to be taken advantage of either.”

Ivor’s friends laughed quietly at his outburst. Greven smiled in amusement as well.

“What?” Ivor demanded.

“You have, Ivor, by your own admission, proclaimed yourself as being both stupid and petty,” the other man at Ivor’s table explained.

Ivor, his face expressing a mixture of anger and embarrassment, did not understand the logic behind the insult, and he was struggling in vain to think of a suitable retort. All he could come up with was, “you would do well, Vannin, to be silent when no one has asked your opinion.” This only made everyone laugh at Ivor a little harder.

“Don’t take this wrong, Ivor, but it’s a comfort to know that I am not alone in being too proud and foolish for my own good,” Edryd said.

“I should think you were a fool because you stood up to that captain?” Ivor complained.

“If you did you wouldn’t be wrong,” Edryd responded. “Confronting him nearly cost me my life.”

Edryd was getting to the crux of his story now, and everyone could sense it.

“The contract, I could have broken,” Edryd said, “but the money the captain owed to me, that kept me bound more securely than anything else ever could. The captain would have been only too happy if I chose to walk away from what I was owed, but he was no less pleased at keeping me on at just six strand a month.”

“He was never going to honor the debt,” Greven pointed out. “You must have realized that.”

“I did,” Edryd agreed.

“So why did you stay?”

“I was angry. I had wasted part of an entire year of my life with nothing to show for it, and so I resolved then to take the ship from him, no matter what it cost me.”

“Now even I will call you something short of wise,” marveled Ivor.

“We should all agree on that,” Edryd replied with a sigh.

“I do at least respect your courage,” Greven said, as the rest of the men in the room stared expectantly at Edryd and waited for him to continue.

“I had been, up to that point, making a highly successful effort to be of as little value during my term of involuntary employment as possible. I knew hardly any of the crew and almost nothing about the ship or its captain. But from that moment, I began to learn everything I could about every shipmate, every piece of cargo we moved between ports, and every merchant, lord, or monarch we transacted with. I intended to use that information to make sure that the captain would never again command a ship, or obtain any income from the contacts he had spent a lifetime cultivating.”

“Remind me not to do anything to ever offend you,” Greven said with amusement.

Edryd went on to tell of his role in organizing a mutiny on the ship, which, at its peak, had drawn in a quarter of the crew. He also described how his name had surfaced during an investigation by the captain, which had begun when one of the conspirators, incautious in his attempts to bring more men to their side, had been caught.