And so he came to her bed once again. Afterward, when he customarily rose to depart, she said, “Please stay, Evred. At least try, just to rest, like we did when we were small.”
He hesitated. Hadand asked so little of him. He assented, and to his surprise, he did fall asleep, and stayed asleep through the night, waking just before dawn to the comforting stroke of her fingers through his hair, just as she had done when they were children.
Chapter Thirty-five
JEJE braced the tiller against her hip as she eyed the two faces before her.
Mutt and Nugget glared at one another, bodies leaning into the slant of Vixen’s deck.
Jeje flicked her gaze down the length of the scout. Three of the five new ship rats were busy forward, chattering with one another as they tended sail under the direction of Loos Fisher.
The allies had waited until they had a strong, steady wind out of the northeast, but at dawn, when the Chwahir sailed across the front of Jaro Harbor shooting fire arrows at the anchored Venn fleet, the wind had inexorably shifted, bringing rain.
First things first. “You two,” Jeje said, “are going to sit here tending stinking fish oil unless you make a truce. And convince me it’s real.”
“But he’s been acting like a—”
“But I’m first mate now! Fox says, after the next battle—”
“I’ll deal with Fox,” Jeje cut in. “He’s let the two of you divide up the old ship rats in your stupid feud. Maybe he thinks it’s funny. I don’t. You’re going to get along, or it’s fish oil duty. I don’t care how good you were in that attack off Llyenthur, or how much you think you deserve a jump.”
They did deserve a jump—a promotion—and they had been good when a blizzard had driven the Fox Banner Fleet to the north side of the strait, and ships swarmed out of the old Venn-rebuilt harbor at Llyenthur to attack them.
Mutt sidled a glance at Nugget. He was still amazed at what she’d done, swinging around upside down from Sable’s tall masts, switching from line to line with a coil or two around her knees as she used her single hand to whap enemies from above.
But he wasn’t going to say so, not after the way Nugget had been strutting on Sable, with Captain Eflis laughing and cheering her on between loud, smacking kisses.
Nugget fumed every time she thought about how amazing Mutt had been, commanding the Skimit so that it knifed between two of the attackers with a handsbreadth to spare, cut booms out to rake the rigging of the biggest one. Why hadn’t she been on board, in the tops?
Oh, she was glad to have been on Sable when those two galleys boarded from either end. She’d discovered that a belaying pin was as good as a knife. Maybe better. With a knife you had to slash fast because you were swinging and had nothing to brace against, but whacking a wooden mallet on the skull of somebody trying to gut a shipmate sent you arcing away fast, if you knew how to control the arc. And she did. After all that practice, she did!
That knowledge brought her chin up. “If some people think they’re too good for other people who might have made some mistakes, well, I’m not going to talk bad about them, like some people do to others.”
Mutt scowled, sure there was an insult somewhere in all that. Jeje ignored Nugget and gauged the speed of the lumbering Chwahir round-hulls doing their best to get away (slow) the Venn in their formidable arrowhead (fast and getting faster), and her own speed (very fast). Though she was the fastest craft in view, she might not be fast enough for this crazy maneuver.
She checked the choppy gray sea, the cloud-streaked sky, and the arched prows of the Venn warships just emerging from a band of heavy rain. They looked like plunging dragons with wings outspread. “Right. Get out the flat pans. You two are on oil duty.”
“Oil!” Mutt protested. “The ship rats can do oil!”
“Eflis promised me I can—”
“If,” Jeje said as she tightened her grip, “you yap any more, it’s going to be for the next five battles. We’re coming up on Death next, so I can report. Shall I have Fox put you two in the hold instead?”
The sounds of two scampering pairs of feet were her answer. Jeje swung round. Vixen’s tiller vibrated in her grip, sending shudders up through her bones and skull, making her grin so wide her teeth chilled. It was more exhilarating than wine or sex or fire to be at sea again, driving every stitch of sail to that trembling point between speed and disaster, running against a clear enemy, and, best of all, she was aboard her beloved Vixen while doing it.
It would be beyond best if Tau were here, but she was used to that wish. He’ll be back. Just like the sun. I have to make sure I’m alive to see him.
The sky changed dramatically as a last, determined winter wind tumbled under the warmer air of spring and once again the Venn were shrouded by thick rain.
The roll and thump of barrels recalled her attention. From just forward of the mast a few paces away, on the other side of Vixen’s enormous, curving mainsail, came Nugget’s voice. “. . . no, they can’t just suddenly appear. If there were hundreds of Venn, well, Fox and Eflis would have seen them coming up the strait.”
“But th-th-they c-c-came s-s-suddenly at Tr-tr-ad Var-ruh-ruh- adhe.” The boy’s intermittent stutter was always worse when he talked about home. “C-c-come dawn. Th-there they were. On the wuh-wuh- water. Far as you could s-s-see.”
For a moment everyone, including Jeje, considered how that must have felt that terrible morning. Then Jeje sniffed and swiveled to eye the seascape as the wind whined a steady note in the rigging. If it shifted around to the south . . .
Nugget said, “The Venn woulda had to come down last summer. You can’t sail a fleet against the east wind.”
“But we did,” one of the older rats said.
“That’s tacking,” Nugget instructed. “Haven’t you learned anything? Our sails can tack back and forth, north side to south side, but the Venn? When the wind’s strong enough, they can tack and tack, but they get pushed right back to the west.”
“So why do they have the square sails?” the older boy asked.
Nugget was quite certain he’d been taught, but she remembered her ship rat days, when she paid attention to maybe one in five things the oldsters droned on about.
She also loved showing off. A trifle self-consciously, she said, “Those big square sails are best at deep water sailing. They rig different because they sail different. We can get much tighter up into the wind but we have to hug the coasts. You go deep water, and next thing you know, people are singing ‘Leahan Anaer,’ only you don’t know it because you’re lost at sea.”
Mutt straightened from tying down a shallow iron pan on an iron-work support, and saw the tight-lipped fright in the stuttering boy’s face. Did his family sing the ‘Leahan Anaer’ for his parents, vanished somewhere at sea between pirate attacks and Venn? He was the one who’d been crying at nights. No wonder the Marlovans wanted to be rid of him, Mutt thought impatiently, then he moved away from the pans, goaded by memories of his own.
“If they tried coming up the strait in winter, they’d wallow worse than those Chwahir tubs,” Nugget went on, always glad to have an audience. “I sure hope the wind doesn’t veer anymore’n it has. Look at the pickle-butts shifting to cut ’em off if they turn southward out to sea.”
“W-wuh-we have h-h-horses.” The boy seemed to find comfort in that. “Much faster than shuh-shuh-ships.”
“Well, they’re no use at sea,” Nugget pointed out.
Jeje heard a chuckle from Viac Fisher as he tested the tautness of the sail and grinned. The tall, tough, hawk-nosed Fisher brothers had become Vixen’s regulars. They were Venn-descended Gerandans—which was why Inda renamed them “Fisher” for their earlier trade—but Jeje had discovered they’d never been loyal to their ancestors. In fact, they had only just stopped the habit of spitting over the rail whenever the Venn were mentioned.
Loos Fisher called from the mast, “Death just a finger off the bow.” He dropped lightly to the deck.
Jej
e swung the tiller, the Fisher brothers shifting sail without having to be told.
The Fox Banner Fleet had been hiding on the west side of the rocky promontory away from Jaro Harbor; the rest of the alliance lay far to the east. Jeje hoped.
Now the Death was in the lead, tacking hard to the southeast. Jeje jinked southward to intercept Death, and the wind hit with a smack on the other side of Vixen’s hull, nearly lifting them out of the water. The Fishers whooped and the rats shrilled in delight and alarm. With the wind abaft, Vixen was practically flying.
A tousled fair head popped up from below a moment later. “Are we sinking?” cried the youngest, sister to the stutterer.
Jeje laughed as she peered through her glass and spotted the Fox Banner capital ships hull up on the horizon. “No.” She smacked the back of her thigh. “Got the wind right where we like it! Gotta report what I saw.”
Nugget ducked under the mainsail yard, her frizzled cloud of sun-bleached hair blowing back from her brow. “Think he’ll let us thread the needle?”
“Might have to,” Jeje yelled, though she knew that being forced to sail between these tight, disciplined Venn meant they’d end up as fireships. Nobody believed they could outfight the bigger, well-drilled and disciplined Venn warships.
They had to get to the weather side of the Venn.
On the Death, two men reinforced Fox at the helm. They watched sea, sky, and horizon as the Death surged forward, masts aslant. If they kept the wind amidships they might make it, but if the oncoming storm veered to blow from the southeast, even fast schooners couldn’t sail straight into the wind.
Barend ran aft, his sharp-boned face ruddy from the brisk air and occasional splashes of water from the surging sea. Despite the cold he had a crimson kerchief twisted around his broad brow to catch the sweat. He’d been driving ship and crew to their limits since they emerged from hiding beyond the promontory west of Jaro Harbor. At dawn it had been all hands: luff, reef, jib-sails in and out, sails belling, tightening, flashing in near synchrony, Fibi the Delf bringing the best out of Cocodu to match Barend’s demands of the Death as they fought to get between the chasing Venn and the Chwahir, as promised.
“Damn Chwahir are slow,” Barend commented, peering eastward—straight into cloud and rain.
Fox finished the thought. “Won’t matter if our loyal allies are in position. Signal! I want Vixen—”
“Already here,” Barend commented, glass to his eye. “Look behind you. She’s flying in on us there on the weather beam.”
Vixen ranged up on their lee side shortly after.
Fox leaned against the stern rail, smiling down at Jeje, whose dramatic line of black brow made her mood clear. “Well?” he prompted.
“The Venn are in that band o’ rain, hot after the Chwahir. We’d better put on some speed.” Jeje scowled eastward. Was Deliyeth out there, or holding back?
Barend cursed as he tipped his head. “Wind might shift to the southeast.”
“Then why are we waiting around?” Jeje’s deep voice roughened. “You already got Fangras shifted, I just saw that comin’ up. We better get ahead, or we’re all going to have to thread the needle. Give me Sable and her pack o’ schooners, that way you can use Fangras to protect the Chwahir’s sterns if Deliyeth hangs back to see if we get cut up first.”
“You think so too, eh?” Fox lifted a shoulder. “Take Eflis, then. She’d like nothing better than to attack an entire squadron of Venn with only your little boat as backup.”
From her position abaft Death, Eflis watched Vixen through her glass. The scout slanted at a dangerous angle, speeding so fast white water arced a lacy feather behind. Eflis could barely make out the small crew standing at the high rail to stiffen the scout a bit more, the barrels of fish oil they’d been gathering for months lashed behind them.
Jeje did not slow when she neared, just cut across the bow, then splashed down the weather side. Jeje yelled up toward the captain’s deck, “They’re in that rain! We gotta top the needle, thread it if we can’t make it!”
Eflis let out a whoop, then called to her flag mid, “Signal! All my ships, arrow formation, on me! Barrels at the ready!”
Crew swarmed above, putting on every stitch Sable could carry, in a long-practiced maneuver that made this the fastest capital schooner in the eastern seas. Eflis whooped again as the deck lifted under her feet.
A sweet tinkle of braid chimes—Sparrow was there. Not just there, but wanting Eflis to know she was there. Sparrow usually moved around noiselessly.
As the Sable plunged into the white-topped waves, sending cold spray down the deck, they stood shoulder to shoulder, Eflis laughing aloud as she tended the wheel herself. When it came time to fight, she’d roam the ship as she always did, but now, she needed to feel the pull of wood and wind and water, taking Sable to just the edge of snapping a mast, or broaching to . . .
Vixen sailed past the stern. Nugget’s curls streamed as she kissed her fingers to Eflis, then cut her eyes to the right to see how lean, dark-haired young Mutt was taking her extravagant gesture.
Eflis flickered her fingers from the wheel to wave back, then gripped the spokes again.
“Eflis.” Sparrow’s voice was nearly lost on the wind.
“Aw, Sparrow, you know why she’s doing that.” Eflis laughed. “A few kisses, me teaching and her flirting, isn’t that fair exchange? Heyo, look starboard. Venn prows coming out of the cloudburst, what a tight formation.”
Sparrow’s hands tightened on the binnacle awning. How alive Eflis was, how strong, how beautiful! At fourteen Sparrow had been a runaway, talking herself aboard a suspicious trader as a deck scrub. Two attacks later, she ended up wounded on the shore of Khanerenth, where she met Eflis, whose family had lost everything in the revolution. The girls had taken to pirating in revenge against the new king.
Sparrow never thought about the future; life with Eflis had seemed like endless youth, love, adventure lived at a dashing pace under the threat of sudden death. Then one summer morning she’d been shocked by the lines crinkling the corners of Eflis’ eyes, the faint blurring beside her mouth and under her chin revealed in that clear light. Time and age were even more inexorable than enemies, because no matter how fast you moved, how well you drilled, you could not fight them.
“It does mean something.” Sparrow was surprised when her voice went unsteady. “Kisses mean something.”
Eflis flicked a round-eyed glance of surprise, then another, longer glance. “Sparrow? You’re not carrying a hate for young Nugget? You know I don’t mean nothin’ by any of ’em, boys or girls.”
“Nugget’s not the cause. Only a result.” Emotion swelled, difficult to define, to catch and hold. “She’s young, young as we once were.”
Sparrow had always distrusted words. On Toar, where she had come from, people used words as weapons, or as art, for mood, for gain. For fun. Not for the truth.
“But we aren’t young anymore,” Sparrow said, her voice husky. “Time’s against us . . .”
Eflis had been intently watching the angle of the fast-moving armada of Venn ships angling in on the weather side as they pursued the fleeing Chwahir. Her mind streamed with images that flitted by too fast to form full thoughts: wind shifting with the storm brought Venn out, Fox miscalculated? Get there in two waves, maybe Fox figured on that, why does Sparrow hate time?
“What are ye wantin’, love?” Eflis turned her head. “Deck! Weapons at the ready. Torches at the ready.”
Out on the water, the triangle steadily shrank: the Chwahir the base, their round-hulled tubs blundering straight downwind. The Venn in pursuit formed one side of the triangle, and racing close-hauled to the breaking point to intercept the Venn were Vixen in the lead, the Sable and the Fox Banner Fleet all in a line.
They had to cross in front of the Venn to make the plan work or their smoke would just blow across them, and their allies—supposedly coming up from behind The Fangs from the east—would be seen and pounced on by the Venn.
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br /> “Topgallants,” Eflis called.
Frightened looks were sent her way; this breeze was too high for three levels of sail.
Eflis kicked off her shoes and spread her stockinged feet on the deck, testing the vibration from keelson to the masts. If they carried away a spar from the press of sail, they’d die. No second chance: the Venn were distinct now.
“Arrow crews aloft!” she cried when the topgallants were sheeted home.
Sable jerked twice, trembled, then up came the bow. It plunged down, sending a wash of water down the deck. Those with torches braced with one hand, the other held up to keep their flames alight. The sail crews scrambled to ease the weather helm—the gathering of water on the lee side which could slow them down.
The ship responded like a sea bird taking flight.
Two cableslengths ahead, Vixen had just crossed the tip of the Venn wedge, barely beyond arrow range.
“Screens!” Eflis yelled, and the netting dropped, tenting them, blurring the sea, sky, enemy, and friend alike.
A faint crow from the scout ship carried back, despite the whipping wind cutting across the beam at a sharp angle. Eflis leaned her entire body into the wheel, holding, holding . . . her feet began to slide . . . “Brace!”
Sparrow and her ship master sprang to each side, adding their strength to keep the helm steady despite the massive forces of water and wind torquing the ship from different angles.
“Steady,” Eflis shouted as arrows began to zip and hiss through the air overhead: the Venn were not aiming at crew from their extreme range, they were trying to puncture the drum-taut sails in hopes the wind would shred the canvas and the ship would turn up into the wind and founder. “Ready about!”
The command was unnecessary: everyone was in position, hands to the line. Each leaned unconsciously forward, stomachs tightened in an effort to speed the Sable a little faster . . .
And the schooner knifed past the point of the Venn arrow. For a moment they stared straight into the enemy formation in all its power. Those great warships, the towers of sail, everyone on station—and this was considered a small reinforcement? If we ever have to face their entire navy . . .
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