Corsair Princess

by Hausladen, Blake;

  It was the Whittle’s turn for attention, and no one made the mistake those next three days of hindering my efforts. The sails and spars were replaced, the aft chain pump was rebuilt, and every bit of the Whittle was scrubbed. I inspected every seam, long nail, and fitting myself, and the carpenters had the entire crew busy repairing and perfecting her. My cabin surrendered a third of its space for two more water barrels, and provisions went aboard. As a finishing touch, the leaping forebody of a black Fell Pony was fitted as a masthead, and it and the rails were lacquered black.

  It was the morning of the 20th when I ordered the cargo and passengers aboard. I welcomed Nace to come aboard aft and met him on deck as the hatch covers were being sealed.

  “Chairman Nace, you look well,” I said. “Your family too, I trust?”

  “Very well, Admiral,” he said, though he did not look well or calm. I’d known the man since Sevat had finished his first carriage. In a word, he was unflappable, but not that day. He did his best to compose himself. “My wife has accepted a teaching position at Fana’s school, and my daughter is engaged. It has been quite a year.”

  He took hold of the black rail of my ship, and the heat of the sun upon the black lacquer must have stung his hand. He gripped it all the same.

  “That bad is it?” I asked.

  “Urnedi teeters on the edge, I am afraid.” He kept his voice low. “The sanction was a terrible blow. Your ship darting around the coast has kept up spirits, but everything rides on your and Barok’s successful return. I’m having trouble keeping down food, to tell you the truth.”

  “You don’t have customers for any of this, do you?”

  He shook his head no. “Barok has received no reply to any of his invitations to Thanin, Abodeen, or Khrim. Mercanfur’s captain had to pay a docking fee at Kormandi just to go ashore and deliver the letter. We’ve a few contacts in Abodeen, though, so we’ll start there.”

  “Abodeen it is then,” I said and waved his men aboard. “You’ll be sharing the same forward wareroom. I recommend you learn the watch schedule and alternate the times you sleep like the rest of us.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said and tried a salute. The rest of the consortium men attempted the same. One poked himself in the eye because of the bob of the ship in the water and another abandoned it halfway through to swat at a small swarm of gnats.

  “Salutes are made by those in a uniform, gentlemen. My boatswain will show you around the ship. Stay out of the way of my crew, and you won’t get thrown overboard. Work a few watches on the ropes, and they might just make it easy for you.”

  They went below, and I got us out to sea. It wasn’t until that evening that I was able to read the rest of the letters that had been waiting those three days in my cabin. I regretted not responding to the one from Umera that came with a parcel containing two fresh uniforms. The rest reminded me of the life I’d left behind in the Kaaryon. Each was an invitation to meal or event and served no more purpose than to satisfy social agendas.

  They were a waste of good vellum. The back side of each was serviceable, however, and I filled a pair of them as the Whittle carried us farther east.

  Dia,

  21st ~ A long letter for you this time I believe, as I will be adding to it during the long days of straight sailing across the gulf. I hope to host a dinner for my officers and passengers when my hold is empty and we are on our way home with a tall stack of coins.

  * * *

  23rd ~ Oh, how soon I spoke. The sea is fickle. I had thought that sailing east across the Gulf would be the best course to lay for Miandi, but the winds farther north tussle unmanageably, and when they do blow, it is westerly.

  * * *

  25th ~ We reached Miandi today, a day later than we’d hoped, but six deckhands richer from all the practice the consortium men got on deck. We were all hands on the rails and full sails aloft when we dived unannounced into the harbor. The show inspired quite a reception, and we will be dining this evening at a manor house that overlooks the harbor. Nace believes he’ll have our business concluded here by morning.

  * * *

  Additional ~ Nace is as bad a judge of nobles as I am of how the winds blow in the North. Abodeen is not interested in us. The tithe road leaving Miandi runs straight to Alsonelm and all of their trade in linen, silk, and wheat happens there. The dinner was a social event, with the sole purpose, it seems, of laughing at our yellow uniforms and the breasts contained in mine. We leftat once, and in parting, I removed the Shadow from the city without permission or explanation.

  * * *

  27th ~ We reached Khrim today. You’ve never seen so many freckled faces in all your life. You’d think it was contagious because every person there seemed covered in them. Red hair, too, but that doesn’t bother me as much as it does some. I wish I had better things to say about our visit to Letsemi, but Khrim is poor and they could afford very little. Nace sold a small collection of silver jewelry, and another man sold a crate of painted vases. It was suggested that we’d do better at the towns further south along the coast.

  * * *

  29th ~ The Aneth coast has nothing for us. They sell silkworms to Abodeen and horses to the markets in the Kaaryon. The rest of what they have they eat.

  33rd ~ Tomorrow we arrive in Sesmundi. We’ve been to sea fifteen days now, and I have no hope that we will do better at this distant port. We are learning too clearly with each village we pass how poor Bessradi has made the rest of the world. I’ve spent an amount of the powder as we passed each, out of pity more so than duty.

  * * *

  34th ~ Dia, I am not sure if I should be fearful or overjoyed. The harbor of Sesmundi is broad and filled with ships.

  * * *

  Additional ~ Three ships close on us now. I hope to write more once this encounter is resolved.

  64

  Arilas Barok Yentif

  The Summer of 1196

  Admiral Elsar Mercanfur himself was in command of the large and unfamiliar ship that picked up Selt, my guards, and I at the mouth of the Urnedi River on the 15th of Summer. The admiral looked as he always did, full of purpose and willing to knock a man over the rail for offending his ship. Which, in this case, would be particularly hard to do. It took me a long moment to figure out that it could only be the corsair they’d taken.

  I complimented him the ship’s fitness, and he invited us aboard.

  “No cargo?” he asked. “You’re going to Almidi empty-handed?”

  “Just those,” I replied. “The Council kept my stipend as sanction.”

  Gern indicated the seven small chests his men carried, leaving the admiral with nothing to do but welcome us aboard. He went to great lengths to help Selt’s wife and their newborn boy up the gangway. I would have preferred that they’d stayed behind, but then my reeve would have stayed, too. They were a remarkably private couple, but their love for each other was as striking as the blue eyes of their baby boy. There was no separating them.

  We started for Almidi at once.

  We got out beyond the noisy chop of the surf, and the wind and waves became as regular as the beat of the drum that urged on the rowers. The deck became a writhing demon, pitching left and right and—

  My stomach curled in my guts like a dying lizard. I clutched the rail, got one look out at the green pitch of the sea, and was done for.

  I cannot describe the time that followed. I lost it to a haze of sickness and despair. The sea wished for me to die. I wished it, too. The illness seemed to last for days. Soups, ales, peppercorns—all remedies were poison. I am certain I struck someone for their attempts at nursing. The sea and all those who sailed her could rot.

  “Hold still now, my lord,” someone said, rather more insistently than the last man I’d cuffed.

  “Go lay with a dog, you criminal,” I spat and did my best to break his arm.

  The blue light of the Spirit washed over me, and I fell backward into bliss. I grabbed the man’s hands and pressed them hard against my stomach.
The world woke around me. The mist of sickness dissipated. I laughed and kept laughing even after the man and his song fell away.

  Gern helped me up on deck while poor Horace slept off his marvelous magic.

  Almidi was in view.

  “You could have sung to me yesterday, rot you all,” I said.

  “Not sure how long the effects will last,” Gern said. “The lieutenant here is also a healer, but it did not seem wise to risk spending both of them.”

  Gern had kept a pair of ready healers by my side for so long I’d forgotten them. The prospect of being without that protection was alarming. I thanked them for suffering me, and we focused forward.

  Hundreds lined the long mooring, perhaps as many as a thousand, all of them waving a kerchief or pennant of some kind. They hollered, and I waved weakly back at them.

  “Those are our bank notes,” Selt said.

  My heart began to pound. The men of Almidi waited to exchange their notes for silver. Each sheet was a promise I had made to deliver silver to the bearer. I had coins enough to repay no more than three percent of what Selt had loaned out.

  “Who are they?” I asked Selt.

  “All kinds in that crowd. Craftsmen, suppliers, shopkeepers.”

  I asked, “Do you know any of them? Are these the men you lent to?”

  “Ahh … no,” he replied after a long look at the faces there. His anxiety spread.

  Gern asked, “Where is the regent? I’d expected the landing would be secured.”

  Where was he, indeed.

  “No time to worry about that now. Everyone wave,” I ordered and began waving and yelling at the crowd. “Come on, now, everyone. Let Almidi hear you.” The men were reluctant in the face of such a mob. “Everyone now, rot your eyes! I want to hear Enhedu cheer like we’re glad to be here.”

  Gern and Mercanfur got behind it, and we made fools of ourselves for all our yelling. The crowd’s tone became more enthusiastic.

  “You don’t mean to go ashore?” Gern asked. “I don’t have enough men to secure you in that crowd.”

  “Smile, Captain,” I said and tapped his arm up. “Get those chests up on deck.”

  He looked at me like I was mad, but got men moving as we edged in toward the pier.

  “I want my silver,” cried a man in the crowd. He looked drunk and was nearly knocked into the water by the press.

  The greencoats crowded close around me.

  “Lord Prince,” Gern said, “I—”

  “Be ready to march behind me through the town. This is a parade. Keep your men smiling and waving. Understood?”

  I gave none of them time to disagree. The men appeared with the chests, we touched onto the pier, and stepped up to the rail.

  “Gangway here,” I ordered and helped move the heavy ramp up and over the rail. I leapt down it as soon as it was in place before anyone could stop me or start up. I was never in my life so glad for the head and shoulders I had above most men. A smaller man would have been swept over the side by the pushing crowd. I bulled my way forward.

  “Are any of you account holders?” I shouted.

  One man said, “I just hold your note, Lord Prince. Silver please. Right here in my hand.”

  Any other Yentif alive would have ordered you spiked to the shoring along with everyone you ever knew, you loose-lipped drunken ass.

  I put my hand on his chest, pushed him back into the crowd, and turned to a man whose face lit up at the mention of an account. The din settled as the crowd strained to catch my words.

  “You, sir, you have an account with the Bank of the Pinnion?”

  “I do, Lord Prince. I—”

  “Excellent. Follow me, sir. Follow me,” I said and pulled him through the crowd by the arm. “Account holders, follow me. The rest, you are next. Redemptions will be made to any who want one after my account holders have been paid their interest.”

  “Paid?” asked the man I pulled bodily through the crowd.

  “Indeed, sirs. You are all due interest for the trust you put in our bank. Account holders, follow me!”

  I waited for no one.

  I set my shoulder against the mass and pushed with all my strength. Greencoats and sailors were left far behind as the crowd of account holders jammed themselves in behind me.

  “How much?” the first man asked.

  “You will be paid the rate agreed to on your account. It is due to you each season. Which way to the market?” I asked.

  He pointed toward the rising hill on the west side of town, and I altered our course. I managed one glance back down. A column of greencoats had formed up and marched behind the animated crowd.

  “And redemptions?” my reluctant guide asked and extended a half-dozen notes toward me. One was badly stained. Was that blood?

  “What do you need to purchase?” I asked him.

  “Tools. But the smith won’t take notes. No one will.”

  Selt elbowed his way in next to me then, one hand upon his war hammer and the other clutched around his satchel full of notes.

  “Did you hear that, bondsman?” I asked with an encouraging smile.

  “My lord?” he replied, but managed to lose his panicked expression.

  He’d have to catch up as we went. I continued up into the broad plaza atop the first plateau of the town’s hill. The long outer wall of the fortress was just above, and the working cranes along it were a heartening sign.

  The market was busy. The crowds couldn’t decide what to make of us. Most edged away. I made straight for the very large smithy at its forward corner. The man and several of his workers were there under a broad awning. The whole group worked to fill a cask with horseshoes. Each man had a piece of the process worked into a simple science. One shoe after another clattered into the barrel as the hot forge roared red, hammers swung, and the water barrel hissed from the kiss of a hot shoe. It was an impressive operation.

  The smith’s eyes went round, and the work came to a halt. He brought his hammer with him when he came forward with his men to halt the crowd.

  “What is all this then?” he asked.

  “I am Prince Barok Yentif,” I said with a bow. “I’m in need of horseshoes. I’ve heard you are the man to see, and it seems that I was not misled.”

  The exasperated crowd quieted as they gathered in the sight of this man. I smiled at him for his position in the town.

  “How many?” he asked.

  “4,000 sets,” I replied, inventing both the need and the number. “All hot forged like these, and none made of pig iron slag, either. These are for Akal-Tak, and I’ll only have your best.”

  He folded his arms. “Order that size, I’d go a standard a set. 4,000 even, and you have a deal.”

  “3,800.”

  “Deal.”

  “Excellent. Selt, Please pay the man.”

  “Notes are no good here. Coins only, or you can—”

  Selt interrupted him. “He is an account holder, Lord Prince. He borrowed 600.”

  I said, “Sir, you are aware that a condition of the loan was that you must accept notes as tender from any bearer. I can call the full value of the notes if you do not.”

  He spit on the ground. “And who’s going to enforce that for you, ehh?”

  The greencoats pressed forward then, and there was no making them smile that day.

  “Hold on now,” the smith said. “The funds are spent—I don’t have the coins to pay until I can sell it all.”

  I turned to the man who needed tools.

  “What other smiths are there in Almidi? This one is going to need to speak to the bailiffs.”

  “Now wait a moment,” the smith cried to a crowd that had no sympathy. “Wait now. I have the shoes you want right here.”

  “Then accept my notes for them—a fair price paid, and you have everything you need.”

  The man was exasperated. The hammer bobbed in his hand as though he was deciding whether to discard it in disgust or hit me with it.

  I let my
voice drop a register, and advanced a half step. I asked him, “Who refuses to take notes from you?”

  His grip on the hammer steadied. “Everyone. I was able for a few days to buy some of what I needed, but no one is accepting them anymore. You can’t buy penny wine with one of your five silver notes.”

  “What are you missing?”

  “Lead, iron, copper,” he said. “The men I deal with in the Kaaryon and Thanin wouldn’t take your note.”

  “I have secured a supply of ore from Heneur. For a fair price, you may purchase from me whatever amount you need. What else are you missing?”

  “What? Ore from Heneur? With notes? I can buy ore from you with these?” he asked and pulled a fist-full of them from his vest.

  “Yes. You can also repay your debt to the bank with notes, as well as the interest you owe. But you must recognize my notes regardless of who holds them.”

  He folded his arms.

  “I am not one of the Pormes,” I said to him. “My success and survival are bound to yours. This is not the first time I have been to Almidi. My dealings here are extensive, and you must know the details as well as the next man. Every promise I have made, I have kept. You have borrowed from me. Will you put your trust in me to enforce the value of our commitment?”

  The crowd of people listening was enormous. Half of Trace was watching. The smith could not have cared less. His arms slowly unfolded, he set his hammer aside, and extended his hand toward me. I suffered his crushing grip with a smile.

  I prompted the account holder with a wave. “You needed tools?”