The Fox

by Sherwood Smith

  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.

  Eons of wind and rain had worn the edges from the figures, but the angle of the morning light highlighted the carvings with shadow, marking the round faces and narrow eyes on the figures as they sped upward, wings outstretched, toward the sky.

  Round faces, narrow eyes: Chwahir, or not quite Chwahir, for “Chwahir” was the name the ones who stayed on land gave themselves. Those who took to the mountains, never to return, had taken new names, leaving behind only stories handed down through generations until the sense of them was as blurred as the details of those carvings.

  Uslar and Thog lingered until a couple of stinging lashes from the rope end sent them scrambling up the mast to help with the sails. Both kept peeking back until the curve of the headland carried the carvings out of sight and all that remained were the ruins of an enormous, round-windowed building cut into the hills behind the cliffs. A plateau extended out from the southwest side, sloping gently away. Groves of trees grew in once-neat rows—peach, apple, pear, plum. On the summit was a far older ruin, made of marble brought from the far north; along its face were carved leaf-shaped arches.

  The island was small, southernmost of a string of islands jutting up like a row of monster’s teeth. The others were even smaller, mostly vertical rock; this was the only one with ruins and the remains of a plantation. It appeared to be deserted.

  The boat was let down on the lee side, and the four nut-seekers clutched their baskets, already glad of the shadow of the ship, early as it was. The cousins were about the same age and height as Inda, but shaped like sticks, with ropy muscles from hard work and harder play. They were brown-skinned, sun-streaked sailor queues bumping against their upper backs; their chief characteristic was faces set in sneers of habitual challenge. The lighter-haired one was mean by intent, the other mean because his cousin’s view of the world shaped his own: it had been the first one’s idea to run away from their apprenticeships to become pirates.

  “Make it fast,” an old hand hollered. “There’s a storm comin’ in. I can smell it.”

  “You been smelling it for a week, Longtooth,” the first mate shouted. “Sure it’s not your own stink?”

  The sound of laughter seemed both sharp and curiously monotone, like barks in the heavy air.

  Inda wiped his palms down his deck trousers and gripped his oars. His head ached behind his eyes; from the way everyone glowered or squinted, they had headaches as well. Neither he nor Barend spoke. The cousins kept up a running conversation as they rowed up an inlet on the high point of the tide, past fingers of land and unseen pools busy with singing frogs, until the flow carried their boat onto the shingle.

  The familiar smells of land made Inda uneasy, even though the individual scents were not those of home. The cousins jostled the two others aside to grab the biggest baskets and they ran up the trail, the leader shouting, “If you come near us, I’ll bust your face in.”

  Barend and Inda watched them toil straight up toward those ancient orchards. It was obvious the pirate cousins mistook fruit trees for nut trees, and Inda, who had endured petty bullying from them, had no intention of enlightening them.

  Once the cousins were out of sight, Barend and Inda trudged in the other direction, where both had marked a row of tall candle-chestnut trees when the ship came round, their distinctive flowers looking like pale pink candles set at the ends of broad branches. The raucous squawk of crows brought their eyes skyward. Back and forth, back and forth, the crows cawed; then they shot from the topmost branches, swooped down in a black cloud and up again to a new tree, where they called again one to another.

  The sight, the sound, cast Inda back into early childhood, watching birds through his bedroom windows, cawing and diving in and out of the huge black oaks beyond the castle walls.

  “Reminds me of Ola-Vayir,” Barend said. He spoke in Iascan—another internal blow. “They had a big row of trees on the sea side of their castle. Their branches were like this.” He laced his fingers. “They call it ‘pleached.’ I stayed there, if we landed at Lindeth, when I’d come home.”

  Inda threw back his head. The chestnut trees grew in a curving row adjacent to what was once a road slanting up to the newer ruin. On a southeast-facing slope he spied other trees: the green, shady ingrifole whose nuts, if the summers were long and hot enough, were rich and buttery. The singing frogs could just be heard from this height.

  Barend gazed out to the sea, deep green from here, the choppy waves winking with shards of reflected light. Beyond them the Coco rode peacefully, consorts farther out, the smaller ships clustered about them. Only Coco, as monarch, rode alone.

  He breathed deeply of the thick air; there was a metallic tang to it, like a knife that�
��s been run against the whetstone a long time.

  “It’s good to talk again without being on the watch for Gaffer Shitbrain’s spies. But we should talk with purpose. Like, who of your people can we trust to join a mutiny, when we get a chance to plan one?” Barend asked, switching into Marlovan. When Inda did not speak, he ran rapidly through the crew members, describing what he and Fox had decided about each.

  Inda ignored him, walking faster as he surveyed the ridge. Closer to the ruins grew walnut trees. Over toward the orchards were two ragged rows of pecan and almond. The cousins would no doubt find those, if they weren’t distracted by fruit pits.

  Barend finished—and got no response. “Inda?”

  “I see at least four kinds of nuts. And I’d love to see those two turds hauling ropes for me,” Inda answered in Dock Talk, then turned away.

  Reaching the first of the chestnuts, he got to work. Barend sighed and joined him there under the thick trees, grown so close together the two Iascans could not see the sky.

  It was a relief to be out of the sun. Both picked and sorted so intently neither was at first aware of the abrupt silence of frogs and crows. But a gust of hot wind—this time they both smelled the hot-metal tang—that sent leaves rattling caused them both to look up at stirring branches. The shadows had vanished; together they dashed away from the trees and looked skyward to see a spreading cloud covering the sun, changing the light around them to a weird green.

  Barend whooshed his breath out. “Old Longtooth was right. There’s a big one coming. We better find shelter,” he said. Then he laughed. “And let the squall shake down the nuts for us.”

  “You’ve been at sea too long,” Inda retorted, squinting skyward. “A big squall will strip the trees bare and fling the nuts out to sea.”

  Neither spoke. They worked as fast as they could, no longer choosing the best. They grabbed everything they could reach. By mutual consent Barend labored up the lane of chestnuts and Inda ran along the crumbling wall to the walnuts. Stinging pellets of hail struck him by the time he had his second basket halfway filled. He scanned quickly, ran around the corner to get the ingrifoles, and was nearly knocked down by a blast of cold, wet wind.

  Rattle, tok! The wind snatched the top layer of nuts from one basket. He dashed back around the side of the wall, shoved the baskets into a thorn bush, and then, ignoring his torn skin, raced to the trees and picked up as many nuts as he could until his shirt was full. The bushes tossed wildly in the wind that howled around the tumbled stone corners; he yanked the baskets out, dumped in the wind-stolen load, and felt his way along the wall until he reached a doorway. The shocking drop in wind caused him to stumble, nearly falling.

  “Over here.” Blue lightning lit the air behind Barend.

  The wind screamed outside the wall as he made his way across the dusty tiled floor of what had once been a huge refectory.

  Lightning flared again, and thunder crashed right overhead, reverberating through the stone. The hot-metal smell intensified. Lightning strike! Barend and Inda grabbed up their baskets and headed farther inside the ruin, where the cracked roof did not admit rivers of dust-clogged water.

  A smaller antechamber with archways at the north and south was reasonably dry, though water was trickling in from the northern room. Through the southern arch they could see another small room with round windows giving a view of the sea. The storm was coming out of the northwest, so these southern windows were relatively sheltered. The sea beyond had changed to a dark, threatening gray churning with white tops. Walic’s fleet had hauled round to the southeast to ride out the storm in the island’s lee; one consort was visible beyond the great jut of the headland, riding with bare poles except for a scrap of reefed sail.

  “So, back to our mutiny. Fox wants us gauging everyone’s loyalties and fighting ability,” Barend said. “We have our ideas on who we might be able to use, like I told you, but we don’t know your old mates.”

  Loyalties. Inda’s gut soured, but he said nothing.

  Barend sent Inda a quick glance, then set his baskets down. Water leaked from each into the dusty floor as he prowled the perimeter, making certain the cousins were not anywhere within view—or hearing.

  When he returned, he tried a third time. “From your old crew, Tcholan knows how to fight, and Fox thinks he’ll join us, right enough. Those Chwahir brats and Mutt can shoot, at least. We know that from Fox’s drills. They’re academy scrub age, they’ll do what they’re told, won’t they? And Fox thinks your bawdy-boy knows how to use his hands. Even though he never comes weather-side for drills. But how much longer he’ll last before Coco gets out her knife makes it hard to plan to use him. Do you think he’ll join, or does he like his berth?”

  Inda had dropped down into the dust in the middle of the room. His head jerked up. “What was that about knives?”

  Barend grimaced. “Coco. When she gets tired of her toys, or they make her mad, she carves ’em up. If Walic doesn’t suspect ’em of mutiny and carve ’em up first.”

  Inda sank back, sickened. “I’ve got to warn Tau.”

  Barend said, “Oh, I think he knows it. At least he knows how to keep ’em happy. It’s been a long while since the two of ’em have had one of their torture parties. Fox,” he added, “thought he was a sellout, or another Coco, but he isn’t sure. That’s why we need to know if he’d join us, or work against us to keep his easy place.”

  “Easy?” Inda repeated, grimacing.

  Barend lifted a shoulder. “Might be easy to him—aside from the knowledge that one mistake and he’s knife practice. But all of us live under that threat. Meanwhile he never stands a watch, gets the best food, and all he has to do is pillow-jig with those two—he might even like it, he’s certainly good at it, or he’d be dead—and sit on cushions while Coco plays with his hair. Sometimes he twiddles around with some stringed instrument they have down there and sings ballads. The hands yatch about it, but I’ve noticed the night watch find excuses to be near the scuttles aft to listen when the second mate isn’t watching them.”

  Inda remembered their ship rat days on the trader when Tau and Jeje had sung ballads together—in those days she took the lower part—but then Tau suddenly stopped for no reason that Inda could see, and he’d never sung again.

  “Not as tough as laying aloft in sleet at midnight when we’re on the chase, so no lights allowed. Two hands have been lost that way since they took me. Good riddance to both.” Barend flung up the back of his hand.

  Inda stared down at his scraped hands. Knife practice. This was far worse than Thog’s whispered words about the red sails and Walic’s intent to join the Brotherhood. Tau had to know, but he hadn’t said anything. No, not true: he had. In his own way. It’s the only thought keeping me sane.

  “He hates his place,” Inda muttered, his face tight with conflict. “But you and Fox want to be pirates.”

  Barend twitched his fingers toward the windows in the south room. Now nothing could be seen but the blue-white flare of lightning on a solid sheet of rain. “What else is there? As pirates, we’d be free. If we do manage to jump ship and land, being Iascan gets us proscribed, maybe jailed. And if someone suspects us of being Marlovan, like as not we’ll be handed off to the Venn. You’ve got a price on your head, named personally. And the funny thing is, Fox said, you are named as a pirate.”

  Inda finally faced Barend, his gaze unnervingly steady, his expression strange. Barend stared back, uncomfortable, until Inda’s gaze lifted and went distant. Inda was lost in thought, so lost he didn’t see or hear. Like Sponge used to do.

  Inda said in just the sort of musing voice Sponge used to use, “Pirates. Were they born wanting to kill, to burn and destroy, or do you think they’ve all been betrayed when they were small, then? And so they can betray, because . . .” He groped in the air with his scratched-up hands. “Because the lessons about honor and duty they yapped at us when we were little aren’t true? Or are some born to cheat and lie and steal, no matter how they
were raised?”

  Barend laughed. Thunder rumbled and wind and rain roared outside. Brown water washed down through cracks in the northern room’s farther wall, streamed through the archway, and crossed their shelter to vanish in the southern room. He said, “Nobody else asks questions like that except Sponge. Do pirates become pirates because they were betrayed or because they’re born that way? I can just see him asking that.”

  Inda leaned forward, his expression so intent, so altered from the witless blank they’d seen since Inda’s capture that Barend stared back, baffled.

  “Tell me,” Inda said, in a low, swift voice. “About Sponge. Was Hadand there, too?” Longing so sharp it hurt like a knife ripped through him when he thought of his sister— remembered her determination when they sneaked into the throne room before dawn and practiced the Odni knife forms.

  But here was one who knew his home: the urge to hide behind the wall was strong, as strong as several years of habit could make it, but he fought to breach the wall, eager—hungry—for a glimpse of those at home.

  Barend uttered a foolish laugh, self-conscious under that ferociously unwavering regard. He wished things were like before, when Inda was ignoring him. No. At least Inda talked now. Fox would say that was good for their plans.

  He wriggled his toes in the rushing stream, sending spatters of water into the drifts of dust obscuring the ancient tiles. So talk back. “It makes me think of the old nursery. I can almost smell it, the summer sage coming in the row of windows.” It was easier to talk if he didn’t look at those terrible staring eyes. “The beeswax candles with the herbs put in ’em. Here at the table Sponge reads, and I’m at the other end drawing pictures of horses. Hadand writes letters over there, and little Kialen is working one of her embroidery things for the queen. It’s all quiet. Then Sponge looks up and out he comes with one of those questions.”

  Inda smiled for the first time in a thousand years. A weird giddiness seized his mind, and the wall—for the moment—was gone. “And? What happens next?”