Tantamount

by Thomas J. Radford

It wasn't what Horatio had been asking. But now that she'd put the idea in his head he seemed crestfallen that there was only one of her.

  “Leave it alone, Piper.” Nel put a hand on the big man's arm, recognising a lost cause when she saw it. She appraised the golem, sizing it up. It was small, for a golem anyway, but would still test the gangway.

  “We'll have to use the crane to get it aboard,” she said. “That all right with you . . . Scarlett?”

  “Yes, that'll be fine,” the woman said. “I should have some other things around here as well. You can see that they're stored with him.”

  Nel raised an eyebrow at that but didn't comment. Time enough to lay things out for this woman once they were away from Cauldron. Assuming Quill ever turned up, that was. She was starting to wonder if she was going to have to send people out after him. First things first though. They had a ship to finish loading.

  Alone in her cabin for what felt like the first time in days, Nel hefted her wand in one hand. Opposite her was a target, three concentric rings marked in chalk, rubber, and tar against the stern wall of her cabin. The wall was pitted with scorch marks from past target practice. She added another one with a flick of her wrist, slightly off-centre.

  The sight brought a grimace to Nel's face. It had been a long time since she'd practiced with any serious intent. The wand in her hand was almost fully charged—the only time she'd used it in the last few months was back on the dock against Ebon's giantess. She checked and found half a dozen charged crystals in a chest under her hammock— the ammunition for her wand. There were other weapons aboard, kept locked and secured in the armoury below decks. Only she and the captain had keys to the armoury. And only the officers were allowed to regularly carry weapons and only Nel regularly did.

  She wondered what Scarlett would do if Nel told her to put her weapons aside while she was aboard. The problem was that it didn't matter. Even if she agreed she still had that golem, which by now was nestled snugly in the hold amidst Ebon's cargo. The thing was a walking weapon, solid as . . . well, as a rock, heavy to boot, unable to feel pain, forearms that had protruding blade-like fins. The glass came to such a fine point it'd accidentally sliced through the harness, almost dropping the construct when it was being hoisted by the crane.

  Nel grimaced. She was little closer to finding and putting her crew back together. She had her captain back but had lost her navigator. And she still had no idea what had happened to Violet.

  “Skipper!” Banging accompanied the call.

  “Sharpe is back,” Piper said without preamble once she opened the door. “And he is alone.”

  “Violet?” Nel asked quickly, not quite registering his words. “Is Violet with him?”

  “No.” Piper shook his head. “Just Sharpe, no Violet, no Quill.”

  “Hells,” Nel swore. She was going to get to the bottom of this right now. “Where is he?”

  “The captain's cabin,” Piper said.

  “Good.” He wouldn't get very far with the captain, not with two crew members missing and a woman the captain had no chance with aboard. If Sharpe thought he was going to slip into a berth on the Tantamount on the back of two disappearances he was in for a shock.

  Nel burst into the captain's cabin without knocking—the door was halfway open in any case. It was already crowded with three people inside, and Nel and Piper made five, six if you counted Bandit. Horatio looked up, startled at her sudden entrance, knocking over a carafe of wine. It spread out quickly, a dark purple stain on one of his charts, tacked to the desk. Nel didn't recognise the chart but the wine was some of Horatio's good stock. His supposedly depleted stock. Not even off the docks and he was pulling out his best moves already—not good.

  “Nel!” Horatio squawked, staring at her. “What's going on? Are we being boarded?”

  Nel stared at him before remembering she was still brandishing her wand in one hand. She shoved it angrily into her holster. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Scarlett was unobtrusively sliding her own weapons back from their half drawn state. The woman was quick.

  “No, we're not,” Nel said, not feeling inclined to explain further. “You.” She turned on Sharpe. “You owe me some answers.”

  Behind her she heard the door swing shut with an ominous thud. Piper. At least he was reliable.

  “Answers about what?” Sharpe asked, hands in his pockets, looking innocent for all the world.

  “For a starter, where the hells is my navigator? Where's Quill?” Nel demanded.

  Sharpe blinked slowly, considering the question. He gestured. “Like I was just telling the captain, Quill is back in Cauldron. He's waiting for us.”

  Hoatio nodded in confirmation. “That was what he was just telling us, Nel.”

  “Why is Quill in Cauldron?” Nel demanded.

  “Because he followed me there,” Sharpe said. “Now you're going to ask me what I was doing there.”

  “Seems a relevant question, seeing as you told me you wanted a berth on this ship,” Nel retorted. “Skipping out to find your pleasure in that slum is a strange way to go about it.”

  “This sounds like an internal affair,” Scarlett interrupted them with a theatrical sigh that was too contrived for Nel's liking. “If you don't mind, I'll take my leave, Captain.”

  “Oh.” Horatio's disapointment was obvious. “Well, yes, of course, my dear. Piper, would you show our guest to her quarters? There's a good man. We'll see you later, of course. High tea at the captain's table. I insist.”

  “High tea?” Nel muttered, but not taking her eyes off Sharpe while Scarlett and Piper were leaving the room.

  “Nel,” Horatio said, his voice coming clearly and firmly for a change, “you need to hear Sharpe out.”

  There was a satisfied gleam in Sharpe's eyes. Given his opening, he didn't wait to be asked twice. “I can get your missing girl back.”

  I can. Your girl. As if Nel was the one who had lost her and Sharpe was the only one who could get her back. There were lots of other ways he could have said it; I know where she is, I know what happened to her. But no, he'd said he could get her back, him and only him. Which meant there'd be a price attached. Nel didn't have to ask what that was going to be.

  “The ship's headed to Grange,” she said. “That's not the same as Marching. Don't think we're going to be making any special detours for you, whatever you've got to say about Violet.”

  “The two are very close really,” Horatio commented. “Easy enough to board a trader heading that way.”

  “I'm from Grange, originally,” Sharpe said. “Grange is fine.”

  “Then what were you meant to be doing on Marching?” Nel said.

  Sharpe rolled his shoulders. “Visiting.”

  “Visiting,” Nel repeated. She didn't buy it but would worry about it later. “Tell me where to find Violet.”

  “We have a deal then?” Sharpe asked.

  Nel swore, not caring about the look on Horatio's face at her language. They hadn't even finished taking on the last deal they'd been forced into, a deal she could connect back to Sharpe with only a little mental gymnastics and here she was about to agree to another one. What were the odds they happened to be headed so close to where he was desperate to go?

  “If you were any kind of decent person you'd just tell us about Violet,” she said.

  “But I'm not,” Sharpe said with a crooked grin. “And this isn't any kind of decent ship and crew. I need to get home, and I'm offering you help in exchange for that. That's as fair and decent as this gets.”

  “Are you sure that's all you're offering?” Nel growled.

  “Nel,” Horatio said with a frown on his face. He was focused today, Nel realised. One of his better days. Not enough to catch all of what was going on but enough to realise he was missing things.

  Sharpe gave that guarded smile of his again. “We could sweeten the pot, if you prefer, Skipper.”

  Nel snorted. “You've got nothing else I want. Tell me where Violet is and you can
have your berth. But if you want to eat you'll pull your weight on the voyage.”

  “I might be safer not eating.” Sharpe pursed his lips. “Quill is still going on about being poisoned.”

  “Where are they?” Nel said with finality.

  Sharpe became serious, putting the games aside. “There's a slum house on the far side of Cauldron. They're expecting a delivery to go out tonight, hired some extra muscle to make sure it went down smoothly. Quill and I are part of that muscle.”

  Nel was sceptical. “How'd that happen?”

  “We asked. They offered.”

  “And the cargo?” Nel asked.

  “Violet is the cargo,” Horatio said.

  They both stared at him. His face was sombre.

  “I'm right, aren't I? They're running people—women, children,” Horatio concluded.

  “And anything exotic,” Sharpe agreed. “And a Kitsune girl is definitely exotic. That's why they snatched her.”

  “And this has nothing to do with Ebon and his crew?” Nel asked.

  “Are they involved in the slave trade?” Sharpe asked.

  “Not that I've seen,” Nel said grudgingly.

  “Then no, it really doesn't. Just another independent gang running out of Cauldron.”

  “They might be cutting the Web in,” Horatio mused. “Have to be some reason they haven't come down on them. Slaving is bad for business, makes people nervous when people just go missing like Violet did.”

  “I got the impression it was a very mobile industry,” Sharpe said dryly.

  Nel sighed. “Not a lot of kids like Violet in places like Cauldron.” She should have known better than to let the girl out, certainly better than to let her wander around alone.

  “But she was there and now they have her.” Sharpe shrugged. “So let's get her back.”

  “You have a plan?” Horatio asked.

  “I'm sure I saw a golem down in the hold when I came aboard. That springs to mind,” Sharpe suggested. “Big bruiser like that we could just about walk in through the front door.”

  “And if they are cutting the Web in that's going to start a bigger fight than we can handle,” Horatio said. “Something subtler is called for here.”

  Nel agreed with the captain. And using the golem assumed, a big assumption in her opinion, getting Scarlett's co-operation. They were indebted enough as it was.

  “Will they have noticed you're gone by now?” she asked Sharpe.

  “Doubtful.” He shrugged. “That's why Quill stayed behind. He's the more visible of the two of us.”

  “All right,” Nel said. She glanced out the back of the ship, through the stern windows at the end of Horatio's cabin. Outside she could see the steam rising from Cauldron's vents, swirling around some of the higher structures. And Old Smoky right in the middle of it all.

  “This is what we're going to do,” Nel said. “Horatio.”

  The captain blinked at her.

  “I'm going to need you to work some magic.”

  “Of course, Nel,” he said.

  “On Scarlett.”

  The look on Horatio's face was priceless.

  Chapter 5

  In the end Nel and Sharpe left the ship alone, just the two of them. Nel considered taking Piper or even Jack with them, but neither was inconspicuous and her plan depended on discretion. She left Horatio to follow through with his part, trusting in his own nature and a temporary lull in the fog the captain usually lived in. Ebon watched them leave—there was no way they could have avoided that—but he said nothing. She didn't care what he made of their last minute expedition.

  Sharpe led the way through Cauldron's twisted streets, taking them off the roads Nel would have taken by herself, away from the main trading districts of Cauldron and into the seedier back alleys where the locals lived. Locals that might spend less time in the area than visiting ships spent at the docks.

  And Nel could see why. Cauldron wasn't the most inviting place. Its allure was twisted up in that very fact, that no honest merchantman would set foot on its surface and no official groups operated out of it. And that was where the slavers came in.

  There were all sorts of people in the universe. Not just the obvious human, Kelpie, Brood, or any of the diverse peoples Nel had met in her travels. In fact, if there was one thing she detested it was those who categorised people into neatly defined boxes with traits and tendencies. She'd yet to find two people she could define that way, let alone an entire group. People, they were varied. And if there was some sort of scale that could be used to define people in general the slavers came down near the lower end of the scale. But not at the very end, Nel conceded. No, that end belonged to the people that gave slavers and their like purpose. The hedonists and the sadists, the perverse and degraded individuals or masses. The ones who were never satisfied, who always craved more at the expense of others. They were the ones who would go into excess to satisfy themselves. It might be physical or material, psychological or immaterial, it never mattered. They wanted what they wanted, when they wanted it, and that inevitably came at the expense of others.

  With this in mind, Nel kept a watchful eye on Sharpe. It had occurred to her that Sharpe could have been setting her up, intending to line his pocket by tacking her onto the end of a slaver's train. Possibly Quill had already undergone the same fate, though Nel pitied anyone stupid enough to purchase the malcontentious Kelpie. Was it a likely scenario? There was a simple way to test those waters.

  “Are you setting me up, Sharpe?”

  He turned towards her slowly, mildly amused. “Would I do that, Skipper?”

  “Don't call me that,” she rebuked him.

  “What am I supposed to call you?” he said in exasperation. “You have this childish self-loathing for your own names, you've made it clear I'm not on your crew, so calling you skipper is out. And you're not in the Alliance anymore so any sort of rank you might have had is out. Why did you leave the service anyway? You could have made captain by now.”

  “None of your damned business,” Nel snapped.

  But Sharpe wouldn't let it drop. “You did more than your compulsory service, stayed on after you earned your voting rights. You were set on the career track. And then you left. Sounds wrong to me. Whose ship did you rig the wrong way to end up here and now?”

  Someone on the Tantamount had loose lips and Nel didn't care for it. Her past wasn't quite black listed, it was just none of Sharpe's business.

  “I had issues with my captain,” she said shortly. “No desire to be one myself after that. And weren't you the one mouthing off about the past not being important?”

  Sharpe rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “Just curious as to why such a rising star as yourself should change course. The Alliance needs people like you. It's a nasty universe.”

  “I have a younger brother who was more than happy to fill the void,” Nel muttered. A younger brother who came at the opposite end of the scale Nel had been trying to place Sharpe on. All righteous indignation and cynicism was her sibling. But it was the lower end of that scale Nel had to contend with now. Her brother could have the Alliance.

  “Here they come,” Sharpe lowered his voice.

  The further people came down the end of that scale the more excessive, the more depraved their needs and tastes became. And watching the pathetic line of dejection marching through the last of the alleys, Nel could witness the extent of that depravity.

  The slaver's line was heartbreaking, a procession of wretched individuals who could be boxed together. They were all broken, physically and spiritually.

  From the safe recess of a building overlooking their route, Nel and Sharpe watched the procession. At the back of the line one of the slaves staggered and fell, face down in the dirt. The slaver standing over them cracked her whip without hesitation, not at the fallen slave but at the next one in line. Nel saw blood fly on the air, ripped from the shredded skin of the slave's back. She heard the scream but refused to let herself feel it. The line start
ed to move again, dragging the fallen link with it.

  Sharpe shifted to face her, his own face hidden in the falling shadows. This far from the docks the only illumination came from the vents. Those were close enough to Old Smoky to be covered in a thick cloud of smoke and ash.

  “Do you want to save them?” he asked, his voice as carefully controlled as Nel felt her face was.

  It wasn't a question she could allow herself time to think about. “I'm here for Violet,” she said. “The rest of them aren't my concern.”

  “It's a hard person who lets themselves think like that,” Sharpe said.

  “It's a hard universe,” Nel said bluntly.

  “I'm surprised at you,” Sharpe commented, studying her. “I expected this to bring out the heroine in you. All this pain and suffering. Are you the same person who dived across the void to save a stranded sailor?”

  “I came for my crew, Sharpe. No one else.”

  “Quill told me a story, about you.”

  “Then you can tell it to the marines, Sharpe.”

  “They wouldn't know this one. It was about a bar fight. All the best stories have them.”

  Nel glared at him.

  “This one started with a young boy getting knifed in a fight. No reason for it, just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe said the wrong thing. Except his skipper jumps in to try and stop it happening. This story ends with Quill dragging you out. It's not a happy ending.”

  “What's your point, Sharpe?” Nel said coldly.

  “You can't save everyone, Skipper. And I think maybe that's what you're afraid of. But we can save Violet, we just have to wait for her to turn up.”

  “I haven't seen her yet.”

  “Patience is a virtue,” Sharpe said. “In a place like this virtues should be cherished. Wait. If we don't see either of them soon, we can try another spot.”

  The waiting chafed at Nel. Partly because of the memories Sharpe had dragged up. But she'd long since made her peace with that, buried it deep down inside. Her thoughts strayed once to a sandy haired boy who'd once followed her around but she put it out of her mind. There was nothing she could do for him. She was here for Violet. And Quill.