The Larion Senators e-3

by Rob Scott

  ‘Uh, sir, we’re not shipping any cargo, sir. There are no ledgers; we don’t have a quartermaster, and there are no barges to cast off.’

  ‘Very well then, Mr Tubbs, nice work. Why don’t you help yourself to a jigger or two from my private stores?’ Marrin was lost in his performance, so engrossed in playing up the captain’s idiosyncrasies for his appreciative audience that he didn’t notice the sudden silence that had fallen over the crew.

  ‘Do you really think that’s wise, Mr Marrin?’ the captain said. ‘Beer at this aven?’

  Marrin stammered apologies, slinking back from the helm, his face blazing red despite the cold. ‘Sorry, sir, it’s just- Um, Tubbs looked thirsty, sir.’

  ‘Get us underway, please.’ The captain had been a good sport, but now it was time to work. The crew of the Morning Star leaped into action, each to his or her appointed place, some scuttling up the rigging like monkeys, setting the sails, checking the lines; others manned the capstan whilst the day’s first watch took up position as they came about for their run up the coast.

  Captain Ford smiled. The Morning Star was his life, and he was happy to be back to sea. He felt the brig-sloop beneath his feet; he knew this ship inside out and could almost guide her through the water by touch alone. She was only a little larger than a naval pleasure-boat, but they were single-masted, with fore and aft rigging, while the Morning Star was square-rigged on both her fore and mains. She was sleeker even than the quickest of the Malakasian schooners, already fast, and running empty she’d make even quicker time. Ford wondered what the record was from Orindale to Averil. With a northern Twinmoon and an empty hold, whatever it was, the Morning Star stood a good change of beating it. Or we might heel and swamp, he thought, searching for Marrin in the rigging.

  ‘Marrin,’ he called.

  The youth dropped to the deck.

  ‘Did we take on additional ballast for this run? With no cargo, the Twinmoon and a northerly course, an unexpected gust could have us heeling to the scuppers.’ He wasn’t angry, not yet, but making good time was secondary to keeping the Morning Star afloat.

  ‘We did, sir, just a bit. I thought you might want to hurry along so we didn’t add much, just enough to compensate for drafting so high.’ As Sera Moslip joined them, Marrin elbowed her in the ribs and said with a raucous laugh, ‘The ballast, Captain, and whatever Sera’s added to her backside. I know you always count on that for a bit of additional weight. That old Nedra could certainly cook, couldn’t she?’

  Sera, excited to be underway as well, pressed her lips into a thin smile before rearing back and slugging Marrin hard across the jaw. She shook an aching fist and muttered, ‘Sorry, Captain.’

  The crew roared as Marrin fell to the deck.

  The captain didn’t bother to hide his own grin. ‘May the gods bless and keep you, Sera,’ he muttered under his breath.

  ‘Thank you, Captain,’ she murmured back, equally quietly.

  Marrin, bleeding from a split lip, pulled himself up and stood on trembling legs. He turned to the captain, embarrassed, and shouted, ‘I do love this job!’

  A roar of approval came from the sailors busying themselves on deck and in the rigging. The boy knew how to take his licks. It would be a fine sea day.

  Garec laughed so hard his head hurt. He hooted and whistled and shouted Sera’s name along with the crew, while Marrin pulled himself together. ‘Did you see that, Kellin?’ Garec said, clapping her on the back. ‘That was beautiful; she’s like Versen, no gods-rutting warning at all, just, blam! and you’re on your backside waiting for the fog to lift. Oh, he would have loved this.’

  Brexan, who had been quiet all morning, brightened. ‘I wish you would do more of that,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Talk of him.’ Brexan’s face was half in shadow.

  ‘Of Versen?’ Garec said, looking a little surprised. ‘All right, I’ll talk of him all the way to Pelli- ah, Averil, if you like.’ He searched her face, not sure what he expected to see. Brexan simply stared back at him. ‘You got to know him well in a short period of time, didn’t you?’ he said finally.

  ‘I don’t know what’s worse for me now,’ she said, ‘wanting what I had, keeping my little box of memories all tidy and neat, or wanting what you have, a lifetime of stories, highs and lows, good and bad. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘I do,’ Kellin said. ‘It’s like my father – he died when I was young, and I never asked my mother about him. She told me some things, but I’ve always been content with what I remember of him. He’s the only perfect person I’ve ever known. He probably had just as many flaws as the rest of us, but I’m not interested in knowing them.’

  Garec felt the Morning Star creak as it rolled beneath them. He said, ‘I don’t know what to tell you, Brexan, but I’ve lost six close friends in the last two Twinmoons. Sallax, Versen and Brynne were the best friends I’d ever hoped to have.’ Without looking at Kellin, he added, ‘I am as alone as I can imagine, but like anyone, I find comfort where I can, from Kellin, from knowing my family is safe at home, working the farm, from feeling like we’re nearing the end of a painfully long struggle… and most especially from my memories of who they were – who they still are – in my mind.’ He reached for Kellin, who took his hand. ‘Did you know that Versen could eat his own weight in eddy-fish? Eddy-fish… We lived a quarter-aven from the ocean, and all he ever wanted to eat were those fatty bottom-feeding river fish that any seventy-Twinmoon-old kid would throw back as worthless. We used to stay up late, drinking and singing, and sometime after the middlenight aven, when the rest of us were beginning to drift, he’d come charging in with rods and rigs, a couple of bottles of wine in his cloak, wanting to go night-fishing.’

  Garec looked around the deck and smiled. ‘I wish now that I had gone with him more often, but it was always humid and the bugs were bad down there. But Sallax often went, and they’d come back after dawn, hungover, and smelling like a warm case of death, and we’d all eat eddy-fish for breakfast. It was wonderful.’

  ‘How did he prepare it?’ Brexan was crying, but she was smiling through her tears.

  Garec snorted, then, embarrassed, said, ‘He always rolled them in something – ground sugarroot, pepperweed, greenroot, anything he could lay his hands on. We teased him about it, that all he was doing was trying to find the perfect mask for the flavour – eddy-fish tastes like day-old laundry water to most people. But actually, he had a way with them that made them edible – the sweet potatoes were the best.’ He licked his lips, savouring the memory. ‘It was his own invention. He’d fillet the fish, dunk the bits in egg, and then coat them in mashed-up sweet potatoes. Then he fried them… gods, I can remember the smell! Those mornings everyone joined us for breakfast.’

  ‘Sweet potato-wrapped eddy-fish, for breakfast?’ Kellin made a face.

  ‘And beer,’ Garec added.

  ‘Sounds wonderful,’ Brexan said as she wiped her eyes. ‘You’ll have to make it for us one day.’

  ‘I’ll have a go at it, but I don’t know where we’re going to find eddy-fish out here.’ He turned to watch Orindale fade off their stern.

  Kellin pointed at Marrin, now climbing the rigging above the mainsail like a lemur. ‘Punched out, and he can still crawl about up there. I’d have given up five or six times already.’

  ‘Or bailed my stomach, for the gods and everyone to see,’ Brexan agreed.

  ‘We were lucky to find them,’ Kellin said softly, ‘and even more lucky to find you, Brexan.’

  ‘They do seem to be a competent crew,’ Garec mumbled.

  ‘I hate lying to them,’ Kellin said.

  ‘So do I.’ Brexan was glad for the chance to bare her soul a bit. ‘I don’t know how we’ll convince them to make for Pellia.’

  ‘We won’t have to,’ Garec said. ‘Steven and Gilmour will take care of that.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem right,’ Brexan said, pressing the point. ‘These are good people.’

  ‘
This is bigger than us, Brexan,’ Garec said. ‘You know that. If a guilty conscience and the loss of their trust is all we have to suffer from here on in, then I’m all for it. Unfortunately, there’s much, much worse waiting for us in Malakasia; trust me.’ Garec blurred for a moment, his shadowy doppelganger, the Bringer of Death, appearing, flickering and then fading like Orindale harbour. He had seen and suffered more than either of them knew; that much was apparent. If he could stay focused on their goal, surely they could too.

  ‘Come on,’ he said and started towards the helm. ‘Let’s see if we can help.’

  A GIFT

  The Wayfarer Inn wasn’t one of Pellia’s most popular watering holes, but it enjoyed a steady business letting out rooms to merchants, sailors and the occasional naval officer. The front room was comfortable, and warm even in the worst winter Twinmoons, and the bar was well-stocked with an interesting selection of wines and well-kept beer, and hearty food was always on offer. Yet the inn lacked the one thing that brought drinkers in droves: it lacked women. It was situated two streets away from the marketplace and four blocks from the waterfront, far enough from Pellia’s shipping and market districts that young people ignored it. There was little tourist trade, even in summer, so the Wayfarer relied on its regulars, the dinner-aven crowds, and the letting of rooms to cover the Moon’s overheads. It was a lean living for Erynn Kestral’s family, but most Twinmoons the bills were paid, the firewood replenished, the larder restocked and the casks refilled.

  Once or twice in every ten Twinmoons, Erynn’s parents planned a Moon party, not on the Twinmoon itself – there were too many festivities planned by the waterfront and marketplace taverns, and the Wayfarer couldn’t possibly compete with them – but a few days afterwards. Morgan Kestral liked to wait just long enough for Twin-moon hangovers to fade, wine shakes to subside and indigestion to pass. Then he and Illia would spread the news that they were slaughtering a pig, or a dozen fat gansels, and there’d be a few extra casks, from the Peeramyde Brewery in south Pellia.

  The locals, many of whom worked in the marketplace or on the wharf, carried word of the party across the city and on the eve of the festivities, assuming Morgan and Illia’s timing had been right, the district was abuzz with anticipation.

  The street in front of the Wayfarer was clogged with hawkers and revellers. Musicians played for spare Mareks; prostitutes – men and women – worked the shadows and the street corners, and after dark, people dragged out wood, old furniture, once even a broken-down cart, and built a great bonfire on the cobblestones. The city guards would carry off anyone who flagrantly broke the law: stabbings, gang assaults and too-public negotiations for fennaroot were generally frowned on, but the mood was usually good and the party raged on until dawn.

  When the street reopened the following morning and the debris was shovelled away, Morgan and Illia were exhausted, looking ten Twinmoons older, but the locals were happy and the Wayfarer’s future was secured for a bit longer, thanks to the great pile of copper Mareks secreted under a floorboard in the Kestrals’ bed chamber.

  As a young girl, Erynn had envied the older children in her street on festival nights, for she was confined to her room upstairs, where she would sit for avens watching the partygoers, drinking and eating and dancing and groping one another, their voices growing louder and louder as the night wore on until the whole street was just one teeming, screaming mass of roiling pleasure. Watching from above, Erynn was entranced by this fundamental, basic kind of revelry. For her, it captured the essence of Pellia’s dockers, fishermen and merchants. It was sexy and violent and fun and dangerous all at once, and the girl longed to be there, smelling, tasting and feeling the myriad sensations.

  Now Erynn was old enough to work the party, and she was exhausted, constantly moving from the open fire-pit for trenchers of meat to the bar for fresh tankards. She was inside the Wayfarer just long enough to break into a sweat, then as she pushed her way between the partygoers outside, she felt the layer of moisture on her skin threaten to freeze and she realised she’d wake the following midday with a thundering cold. Already her throat felt sore – as did her budding breasts, which had been pinched and fondled so many times Erynn worried that they might not be there at all. Only the pain assured her that they were still attached. And her backside was so bruised that she might never sit down again. I’ll fall down, she thought; that’s how I’ll get some rest.

  Yet the heavy apron pocket full of coppers heartened her. With every new tray of beer or spitted pork, Erynn braced herself for another go at the crowd. More copper, she told herself, just keep collecting their money. She was careful to empty the coins out every third or fourth lap, in case she was robbed, or jounced so hard she tumbled over. Her legs ached so much that it wouldn’t take much to knock her to her knees, and Erynn didn’t want to risk losing a night’s wages across the cobblestones if that happened.

  And then there was Karel, the soldier. He was only a few Twinmoons older than she, but he was finished with school – the gratis Twinmoons, anyway – and had already enlisted in the army. He came around a lot, stopping in for a meal or tankard of beer, and he was always polite, greeting Erynn’s parents and using a napkin while he ate. He wasn’t attractive; with his wide eyes and a sloping forehead beneath a tangle of tiny curls, he looked a bit dough-headed, but Erynn liked him immensely, and had already decided to let him kiss her tonight – if he was still around when the party finally died. He had tried to kiss her already, in the shadows across the street, but Erynn had been in a hurry, and her tray had been full of dirty trenchers and half-empty tankards. She didn’t want their first kiss to be over a filthy trencher filled with uneaten bread crusts and pig-fat and discarded pipe ashes.

  And then there was Hoyt, who was older than her, old than Karel, even. Erynn thought the dashing, witty Pragan was gorgeous, even if he was a bit unkempt, and he set her heart thrumming. She had been smitten at first sight. Now she made a point of going via the fireplace and Hoyt’s table, adding unnecessary distance to each hurried lap, but that didn’t matter. Passing by the fire helped to banish the cold, and this way, she never had to go more than a few moments without seeing him. If this was how people were supposed to behave when they drank and told the truth and coveted one another, then Erynn Kestral wanted to be as near as possible to Hoyt Navarro in case he decided to join the fray and maybe even come looking for her.

  Hoyt was in a sour mood. Grimacing into his beer, he kneaded his shoulder, trying to shift the pain. ‘I don’t know why it still hurts,’ he grumbled. ‘Alen stitched it neatly enough, it’s been treated with querlis and I’ve kept it immobile. It ought to be feeling better by now.’

  ‘You were stabbed,’ Alen said, ‘and by a nasty rutting Seron; that’s going to take time to get over properly. Finish eating, then you can head back upstairs to bed. I don’t like the idea of Milla alone up there, anyway.’

  ‘She’s all right,’ Hannah said, peeling back Hoyt’s collar to get a look at his stitches. ‘She was sound asleep when I checked on her.’

  ‘You need the rest, Hoyt.’ Alen sounded determined.

  ‘I guess you’re right,’ Hoyt said as he nibbled at a piece of pork. Erynn had brought them great slices from the spitted animal roasting out back as soon as it was ready. Now she collected Alen’s empty trencher and checked they all had drinks.

  ‘That was some news about those terrorists, huh?’ she asked anyone listening. Erynn didn’t care who answered, as long as someone did, giving her a reason to linger.

  ‘We hadn’t heard much about it.’ Hannah took the bait, although her aim was to divert the girl to another topic.

  ‘Really?’ Erynn sounded surprised. ‘The whole city’s talking about it. It was terrible, a whole squadron or something, a bunch of them anyway, shooting arrows, flaming arrows. And then they had dogs or wolves, or some kind of creatures trained to attack all together. It was horrible. I bet it was Ronans; my father says they’re the worst of the foreigners.’


  ‘Oh, does he?’ Hoyt said, craning his neck to see her over his shoulder. ‘Does he really?’

  Erynn hesitated. ‘Um, yes, well, not all the time, you know.’ She glanced at his shoulder and the bulky bandage peeking out beneath his collar and blushed crimson. ‘Um, I’ll just get rid of this trencher.’ She loaded it onto her tray and was gone.

  ‘Does she have to keep doing that?’ Hoyt frowned.

  ‘What?’ Hannah laughed, ‘she’s over the moon for you, Hoyt – give her a break; she’s just a kid. Don’t let your shoulder turn you into an old fart.’

  ‘ “Over the moon”?’

  ‘Over the moon; you know, full of passion,’ Hannah explained, ‘she’s intrigued by the mystique of an older man. Trust me; it’s very common at that age.’

  Hoyt smirked. ‘So she ought to be after Alen, then. Good rutters, he’s older than… than the city!’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Alen interrupted, indignant, ‘Pellia was here days before I was born.’

  ‘Enjoy the attention while you can,’ Hannah said. ‘We’ll be gone from here before too long.’

  ‘It’s just irritating, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s adorable, and you’re going to break her heart. There’s nothing you can say or do, short of promising to take her away and marry her-’

  ‘Stand the tides,’ Alen corrected.

  ‘Fine,’ Hannah went on, ‘short of standing the tides with her, nothing will ruin her memory of the handsome stranger who passed through her life and ignited the fires of ardent, youthful love.’

  ‘Holy rutting whores, but do you make this stuff up for the theatre or something?’ Hoyt drained his beer in a gulp.

  ‘Just the voice of experience, brother, the voice of experience.’

  ‘Well, I don’t- Oh gods, here she comes again!’

  Erynn danced between the tables. She paused in front of the fire, warming herself and trying hard not to look at their table. In a moment, she was on her way over again.