anything before?’ Brashen had demanded with drunken indignance as Paragon had fumbled his way through the simple motions.
‘No. No one. At least, nothing like this. When I was young, I saw it done, but no one ever offered me a chance to try it for myself,’ Paragon had answered. He wondered how many times since then he had dragged out the memory to pass the long night hours, how many times he had held his empty hands up before him and woven imaginary lines into the simple webbing of a hammock. It was one way to keep the deeper madness at bay.
Within the captain’s quarters, he knew Brashen had kicked his shoes off. They slid down into a corner, the same corner that everything slid into. But the hammock was secured to hooks that Brashen had mounted, and so it hung level as the man grunted and clambered his way into it. Paragon could feel it give with his weight, but the hooks held. It was as Brashen had said: surprisingly little new rot. As if Brashen could sense how hungry the ship was for companionship, he roused himself enough to call, ‘I’m really tired, Paragon. Let me sleep a few hours and then I’ll tell you all my adventures since the last time I saw you. My misadventures, too.’
‘I can wait. Get some sleep,’ the ship told him affably. He wasn’t sure if Brashen heard him or not. It didn’t matter.
He felt the man shift in the hammock and then settle more comfortably. After that there was almost silence. The ship could sense his breathing. It was not much for company, but it was more than Paragon had had for many a month. He folded his arms more comfortably across his bare chest, and focused on the sound of Brashen breathing.
Kennit faced Sorcor across the white linen cloth on the captain’s table. The mate wore a new shirt of red-and-white striped silk, and garish earrings: mermaids with tiny pearls in their navels and green glass eyes. Sorcor’s scarred face looked painfully scrubbed above his beard and his hair was sleeked back from his brow with an oil that was probably supposed to be aromatic. To Kennit, the scent suggested both fish and musk. But he let nothing of that opinion show on his face. Sorcor was ill at ease enough. Formality always strained the man. Formality plus the captain’s disapproval would probably paralyse his mind entirely.
The Marietta creaked softly against the dock. Kennit had closed the cabin’s small window against the stench of Downtown, but the noise of night revelry still penetrated in a distant cacophony. There was no crew aboard save for the ship’s boy to wait the table and a single man on watch on deck. ‘That will do,’ Kennit told the boy abruptly. ‘Be careful cleaning those. That’s pewter, not tin.’
The boy left the cabin with his tray of dishes, shutting the door firmly but respectfully behind himself. For a few moments, there was almost silence within the snug chamber as Kennit deliberately considered the man who was not only his right hand on the deck, but his sounding line for the crew’s temper.
Kennit leaned back slightly from the table. The white beeswax candles had burned about a third down. He and Sorcor had disposed of a sizable lamb’s haunch between them. Sorcor had eaten most of it; not even formality could curb his appetite when confronted with any food a notch better than swill. Still silent, Kennit lifted a bottle of wine and refilled both their long-stemmed crystal goblets. It was a vintage that Sorcor’s palate probably had no appreciation for, but tonight it was not the quality of the wine, but the expense of it that he wanted the mate to notice. When both glasses were near brimming, he lifted his and waited for the mate to take up his as well. He leaned forwards to gently ring their glasses together. ‘To better things,’ he offered softly. With his free hand, he indicated the more recent changes in his chamber.
Sorcor had been dumbfounded when he had first entered. Kennit had always had a taste for quality, but in the past he had restrained it save for pragmatic areas. He had far rather wear small earrings of gold with flawless gemstones than ornate brass gauded with glass. The quality had been in the cut and fabric of his clothing, rather than in a vast amount of ostentatious garments. Not so now. The simplicity of his cabin had given way to glitter and splendour as he had spent every last coin of his last trip’s share in Divvytown. Some of the items were not of the very finest quality, but they were the best Divvytown had to offer. And they had had the desired effect upon Sorcor. Beneath the awe in the mate’s eyes were the beginnings of a gleam of avarice. Sorcor needed but to be shown to desire.
‘To better things,’ Sorcor echoed him in his bass voice, and they drank together.
‘And soon. Very soon,’ Kennit added as he leaned back against the cushions of his austerely-carved oak chair.
Sorcor set down his glass and regarded his captain attentively. ‘You have something specific in mind,’ he guessed.
‘Only the ends. The means are still to be considered. That’s why I invited you to dine with me. That we might consider our next voyage, and what we desire from it.’
Sorcor pursed his lips and sucked his teeth speculatively. ‘I desire what I’ve always desired from a voyage. Rich booty, and plenty of it. What else is there for a man to want?’
‘A lot, dear Sorcor. A very great deal. There is power, and fame. Security in one’s riches. Comfort. Homes and families safe from the slaver’s whip.’ The last item had no place at all in Kennit’s personal list of desires, but well he knew it was the fantasy of many a sailor. A fantasy he suspected they would find stifling were it ever granted to them. It didn’t matter. What he was offering the man was what Sorcor thought he wanted. Kennit would have offered him sugared lice if he had believed they’d be a better bait.
Sorcor affected a clumsy nonchalance. ‘A man can want such things, of course. But he’s only going to have them if he’s born to them. A noble or lord or some such. It’s never going to be for me, nor even for you, begging your pardon for saying so.’
‘Ah, but it will be. It will be if we have the spine to reach out and take those things for ourselves. Lords and nobles you say, and a man has to be born to it, you say. But somewhere, there had to be the first lord. Somewhere back there, there had to be some common man who reached out and took what he wanted, and kept it too.’
Sorcor took another drink of his wine, slugging it down like beer. ‘I suppose,’ he conceded. ‘I suppose those things all had to get started somehow.’ He set his wine back down on the table and considered his captain. ‘How?’ he finally asked, as if fearing he wouldn’t like the answer.
Kennit rolled his shoulders, in a movement gentler than a shrug. ‘As I have told you. We reach out and take it.’
‘How?’ Sorcor repeated stubbornly.
‘How did we get this ship, and this crew? How did I get the ring on my finger, or you the earrings you wear? What we’ll be doing is no different than anything we’ve done before. Except in scale. We’ll be setting our goals a bit higher.’
Sorcor shifted nervously. When he spoke, his deep voice had gone almost dangerously soft. ‘What do you have in mind?’
Kennit smiled at him. ‘It’s very simple. All we must do is dare to do something no one has dared do before.’
Sorcor frowned. Kennit suspected the wine was reaching his wits. ‘This is that “king” stuff you were talking before, isn’t it?’ Before Kennit could answer, the mate shook his heavy head slowly. ‘It won’t work, Cap’n. Pirates don’t want a king.’
Kennit forced his smile to remain. He shook his own head in response to his mate’s charge. As he did so, he felt the blistered flesh under the linen bandage break anew. The nape of his neck grew wet with fluid. Fitting. Fitting. ‘No. My dear Sorcor, you took my earlier words much too literally. What do you suppose, that I see myself
