“That wasn’t what I was suggesting!”
“And Captain Stansfield’s no Tartar, nor shrieking monk, neither. It’s only discipline aboard ship he’ll be concerned with.”
“Look,” Dansby said, then paused. Just how was he to convince the guard that his proposition to Fell hadn’t been what Fell assumed it was?
“It’s only,” Heritage said, “that if what happens the other side of the ship’s hatch is to stay the other side of the ship’s hatch, as they say, that it has to, well, stay the other side of the ship’s hatch, right? Whatever you used to do, and there’s not a thing wrong with that, mind you, can’t have you setting up shop in the hold and a line of fellows up the ladders come each Banyan Day.”
“I —”
Bloody hell — if I’m to convince him against what Fell thought, then I’ve to convince him of what I actually was offering, and that’s bloody worse.
He wasn’t sure what punishment he’d be assessed for Fell’s accusation, but offering the man smuggling contacts would surely garner more.
“I mean to say,” Heritage said, “I’ve been known to visit a house of that sort — well, my sort, and not your sort, if you take my meaning — a time or two in port, myself.” He stared off into the distance and a soft smile touched his lips. “Thrice in one night that time in Ruthersford.” He sighed. “But I was a younger man then.”
Dansby made to speak, but Heritage cut him off. “With the ladies, mind you, if I wasn’t clear, so I’ll have no offers from you to get special treatment, understand?”
Dansby sighed. “I understand.”
Heritage nodded. “Right, then. Lieutenant Morefield’s on his way down to see to you.”
“No need to name Dansby, is there?” Prat laughed, setting the last of the three plates he’d brought to the table before Kel.
The others seemed amused to have Dansby back to his mess by supper, after being seen by Lieutenant Morefield in Tyche’s brig. He’d found that the Navy’s ability to spread a tale far, wide, and nearly instantly was on fine display.
He’d no sooner stepped onto the gundeck than he’d been met with so much in the way of hoots, hollers, and more than one demand for his price.
“No need,” Dansby agreed, scowling at his plate.
A stale heel of bread stared back at him from next to a cup of ship’s water unadulterated by any bit of rum or other spirit that might have cut the flavor of untold times through both recycler and crew.
Lieutenant Morefield had given him a choice: a summary punishment of the lieutenant’s choice or Captain’s Mast on the charge of “attempted bribery of a ship’s warrant officer in contravention to the good order and proper working of the crew at large” as well as the more serious charge of “commerce of a carnal nature, in detriment to the orderly working of Her Majesty’s Ship”.
As Captain’s Mast could very well get him flogged, Dansby’d gone with the former — very nearly changing his mind as Morefield launched into a long-winded lecture about the dangers to a ship’s discipline wrought by Dansby’s sort of enterprise and peppered with very nearly as many protestations of Morefield not caring what Dansby might choose to do when eventually — someday, if he were quite lucky and kept his commercial proclivities to himself — he was allowed off Tyche.
“Now, mind you,” Morefield said, “you’ll not be doing any earnings yourself. The houses in most ports take a dim view of independent operators flitting in off ships, and the Navy itself, nor your shipmates, won’t like it. You’re representing Tyche now, and we’ll not have it said this ship sells her stern to any other crew, you understand?”
Dansby sighed. He found himself doing that quite a bit of late. “Yes, sir.”
Morefield nodded. “Good. You take your own ease in port like everyone else aboard. You’re a Navy man now and get the Navy’s pay — and you’ll have not a farthing come from any other way.”
Sigh. “Aye, sir.”
“Then it’s bread and water for a fortnight, but you’ll eat with your own mess.”
Lieutenant Morefield had stared at him for a moment, as though judging whether he should assess more or whether Dansby would take the lesson to heart. Eventually he’d nodded to Heritage and left.
Now Dansby was left to face a fortnight of stale bread and staler water, while the purser still charged the ship for his portion of beef and spirits to line his own pockets.
The others at the mess table tucked into their own portions.
Dansby worked a bite of bread between his jaws. The dry stuff soaked up all the moisture and wanted more, cutting his gums with its gritty bits. Reluctantly he reached for his cup.
Jordan, their gun captain and ostensible leader of the mess, watched him take a drink, then sighed. He took his own cup of weak beer in one hand and dashed Dansby’s water to the deck with the other, then poured a third of his own into Dansby’s cup.
“Thank you,” Dansby said. He’d not expected that, even though it was a mercy made possible by Morefield’s order he eat with his own mess. Kept separate, his mates would have been unable to help him, though they weren’t obligated to, and Dansby hadn’t been certain any would.
Jordan grunted. “Never mind, lad, you’re a good mate.” He paused. “Mind you, I’m not one to —”
“Look, I don’t —” Dansby tried to say. If there were any hope to stop the whole ship from thinking his buttocks were up for auction, he’d have to start with convincing his own mates.
“Did you ever work a house?” Prat asked, transferring a bit of his own beef to Dansby’s plate and pouring drink into his cup, though not so much as Jordan had.
“I’m not —”
“Were it a mixed house?” Kel asked, adding a bit of his own beef and drink to Dansby’s. “Did you ever work a mixed house?” His eyes stared off into the distance for a moment. “Not that it’d be of benefit to you, but living in a house full of ladies all running about in their all-togethers …”
“I —”
Dansby broke off his own protestations to watch the expressions on his mates’ faces change in quite an odd way. They were all staring at him, first with open curiosity, then their brows furrowed, first one, then the others, as though coming to the same question in their own time — then brows raised and lips pursed, as though pondering the implications of that question.
“Or …” Kel began, raising a hand to point at Dansby. “… were it of benefit, so to speak, in that a man might partake of …” Kel’s hands worked as though he might pluck the words he was searching for from the air. “… certain delights with … less than … typical discernment as to …”
“Bloody hell, Kel,” Prat said, smacking the other man’s shoulder before leaning toward Dansby. “It don’t matter a whit if the lad’s one to ram a ewe so much as tack to windward. Who bloody cares?”
Dansby took a deep breath, ready to scream it to the bulkheads if he had to that this was all a sort of misunderstanding and …
“That’s right, lads,” Jordan said, leaning in as much as Prat was. “It’s what our young Dansby’s learned in those houses that’s important. The girls talk, lads, and they’ll talk to a friendly bugger as well as to one of their own kind. Or —”
“The secrets of the houses,” Kel whispered, eyes going wide.
“But —”
“Do you get a discount?” Kel asked.
“I —”
“How do they know you should get the discount?” Prat asked.
“No, I —”
“Are there code words?” Jordan demanded. “You’ll share with your mates, aye?”
“Look —”
“Is it true they’ll give a man back his coin if he …” The speaker, behind Dansby at the next mess table, cleared his throat. “… performs to a, ah, certain specification?”
Dansby turned to find that the mess behind him was staring with as much intensity as his own mates — as were those others nearby, and there were whispered words traveling from those to messes f
arther away, so that even as he watched new faces turned to stare at him.
“They tell you the tricks, did they? The girls, I mean,” came from a nearby table.
“Aye,” another said, “what they like? The special moves, make a man profit from the visit?”
Dansby looked around, finding that nearly the whole of those on the gundeck were staring at him, even Lieutenant Morefield, though he cast his own gaze about as though oblivious to the discussion, while cocking his head to better hear what happened at Dansby’s table.
He sat back in his chair, noted that his plate and cup had been filled by those around him — and a second cup of beer added to the mix — while the questions had been asked, and grinned.
“Well, lads,” he said, “let me tell you this …”
Nine
It was more than a bit of food and beer sent Dansby’s way for the sharing of his “secrets”.
All of Tyche’s crew saw him better than before, with many a grin, nod, and wink as they neared their next stop — though no few of the winks forced Dansby to, again, beg off with the admonition that Lieutenant Morefield had made it clear he wasn’t to practice his ostensible trade aboard ship.
That his “secrets” and “tricks” amounted to little more than, pay the girl a bit of attention, a compliment or three, not going amiss, and tip well, then return to that same house and girl, didn’t seem to bother the lads a bit. Dansby’d always found, though he’d had little chance to practice it since Kaycie came aboard, that the girls of the houses were still, well, girls. Commercial they might be, but a kind word and bit of flattery still turned their heads and made the whole thing a bit nicer for all involved — after that, a bit of a tip would make them remember a man for next time.
Tyche’s crew treated his words like some magic spell or holy-bloody-writ, muttering their reminders as though they were saying prayers or casting spells, and they treated Dansby as some bringer of divine guidance.
“— compliment her,” Prat muttered while giving their gun’s crystalline barrel a good scrub. “You have lovely hair.”
“A bit wooden,” Dansby whispered from his place at the gun’s breech — head and hands buried in the open space to scrub at where the shot canisters’ lasing tubes would meet with that barrel. There was a particularly stubborn bit of carbon there — dust or some other burnt onto the barrel from the last firing. He was determined to get every last bit, as his time on bread and water was up and the crew’s newfound acceptance seemed to have convinced the officers that he’d accepted his own fate and wasn’t likely to run.
Morefield had told him he’d be allowed liberty with the rest in this next port, and he wanted nothing to spike that possibility.
“You have lovely hair,” Prat said again.
“You’re speaking as though you’ve memorized the words.”
“And well I have,” Prat said.
Dansby sighed. “Yes, man, but the lass has to think they’re words for her alone, not something you say to every tart you come across.” He sat back on his heels. “Look, listen to the difference, right?”
He looked at Prat across the width of the gun’s barrel and let his face soften. A bit of wideness to the eyes, a bit more unfocused — more unfocused than usual, as the target was Prat, whose pock-marked, stubble-strewn face and long, greasy hair were not to Dansby’s usual standards.
“Your hair …” Dansby let his voice trail off, his jaw go slack and lips parted as though stunned to insensibility, then smiled and blinked as though recovering himself from some far-off place. “It’s lovely.”
Prat’s own eyes had gone wide and he blinked suddenly, shaking himself and staring at his hand, which he’d raised to touch his hair all unknowing, before jerking it down.
“Witchery,” he whispered.
“Well, aye, lads,” Dansby said. “If they’ll cast a bit of witchery on us — you —” He corrected himself hurriedly, remembering how his own predilections were supposed to point. “— all their potions and notions to paint their faces and scent their hollows and such — then why shouldn’t we — you — cast a bit of a spell in return. All’s fair, lads, including turnabout, eh?”
There were nods of agreement, though Prat was still staring at him with disturbing intensity.
“One last bit of advice, lads, but an important bit,” Dansby said, as he saw Lieutenant Morefield enter the gundeck. That likely meant they’d be bowsing up the guns to their places soon in preparation to transition into normal-space for their next port of call. “It’ll cost a few pence, but it’ll show rewards, I promise you.”
Work had stopped at nearly every gun, the gun crews leaning toward Dansby’s to catch his words, or the whispered repetition as they were passed to those too far away to hear.
Dansby looked around at their faces. Streaked with grime somehow from cleaning the gundeck that was very nearly spotless when they’d started, dripping with sweat, hair, long and short, dangling in clumps, their jumpsuits dark with the sweat of scrubbing at deck, bulkheads, and guns.
“Bathe, lads.”
Corders Hole was much like the others Tyche had stopped at.
A rough, no nonsense mining station in an otherwise unremarkable system. The station itself was relatively new, but battle-scarred, its hull showing the marks of more than one miner more adept at creating rents and gouges than piloting a ship.
Dansby was on the hull with his entire watch. Tyche’s masts were folded down along her hull, spars and sails stowed away for their time in normal-space.
The ship eased closer to the station’s quay, aligning the aft airlock with the station’s hatch. That hatch looked to be newly replaced, a gouge in the station’s hull running up to its surface, then stopping only to continue on past the hatch itself.
Lines fired from Tyche to handlers on the station who made them fast to clamps and winches there and then began pulling the ship against the station’s side and the standoffs.
As soon as the ship was securely in place, Tyche’s docking tube extended to mate with the station’s hatch.
Dansby’s radio crackled with the call to return inboard, and he joined the rest of his watch as they made their way to the forward sail locker and thence inside. The air of the sail locker was rank with the odor of sweat, aged from the newest of those stripping off their vacsuits to the decades-old scents that had settled into the very bones of the ship.
“Smile,” Kel muttered as he packed his vacsuit for stowage under his bunk. “Compliment. Tip.”
“Bathe,” Dansby prompted.
Kel nodded. “Bathe. Smile. Compliment. Tip.”
Dansby shook his head and sighed. He had no doubt the lads would get a better bit of service from their efforts, but he despaired of some of them ever understanding why.
His own vacsuit packed away, he changed to a fresh jumpsuit and joined the line of men streaming off the ship. His, the starboard, watch had been on duty for their docking and therefore got first liberty, while the port watch saw to the loading and unloading of supplies. That arrangement met Dansby’s preferences quite well, as it meant their next port would see his watch doing the loading, and he had some plans for the addle shipments there.
As his turn to enter the docking tube came, Lieutenant Morefield pulled him aside.
“A moment, if you will, Dansby,” Morefield said, motioning.
“Aye, sir?”
Dansby had a moment’s concern that the lieutenant had changed his mind and he’d be confined to the ship yet again.
“You’re a good man to have aboard, Dansby,” Morefield said. “I wanted to mention that.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And also mention that there are but two other ships in Corders Hole just now and we’ll have a marine at each, you know.”
Dansby nodded. “Aye, sir.”
“So, I’d best see you back aboard when liberty’s done, as Corders Hole is not so very large that a man can hide for long.”
“I assure you, Lieutenan
t Morefield, sir, that I’ve every intention of being back aboard when I’m supposed to.”
Morefield squinted at him and grunted. “See that you do.” He frowned. “You seem such a likely lad, Dansby, but —” He grunted again. “There’s something about you.”
Dansby sighed. “Aye, sir, there’s many have said the same.”
Ten
Joking and joshing from his mates aside, Dansby had serious business to attend to while on Corders Hole.
He left them to try out his advice at the houses dotting Corders Hole’s quayside corridor and moved farther into the station. He noted there was already a line of Tyches for the nearest bathhouse, so his mates might see some value yet — at least Corders Hole’s girls would have a pleasanter time.
He needed a tablet, and a good one, which first meant he needed some ready cash, and that wouldn’t come from naval spacers — not the amount he needed, at least.
No, he needed the sort of cash that came from a rich load of ore being assayed and paid out, and the sort of men holding that cash who’d be most interested in drinking and playing hard before they isolated themselves in their little mining scows for another term of weeks amongst Corders Hole’s orbiting rocks.
He didn’t think the addle carried by Tyche would keep him from finding that here — he was looking for the independent miners, not those who worked for corporations and might be fed the drug to keep them working. Independents were more likely to be after stimulants than addle.
A quick look at a station map showed him that Corders Hole at least tried to keep the miners and spacers separated, with the mining docks and smelters opposite the shipping quay.
There’d be some overlap, but likely only by those men who sought out the other side in an effort to share their troubles in the manner that had put Dansby himself aboard Tyche. He wasn’t looking for that, at least right now.
Perhaps another time, if I can’t contact Elizabeth and get myself out of this mess.
Spacer, Smuggler, Pirate, Spy Box Set Page 20
