by Brent Weeks
It was so simple to say the words. Gavin had thought it would be impossible to tell the truth he’d worked so hard to hide for so long. But he felt nothing. He should feel something, shouldn’t he?
“The sea she sends me mysteries to invigorate,” Gunner said.
Gavin was sure, this time, that Gunner had used the wrong word on purpose. “You’re quite an invigorator. No wonder you’re Ceres’s favorite.”
Gunner spat into the water, but Gavin could tell he was pleased. “You’re Dazen? Straight bullseye?”
“I been shootin’ in the dark so long I ain’t sure what I am, now. I was Dazen, though. Straight shootin’.” Gavin wasn’t sure why he did that, dropping into patter when he spoke with others who did so. He’d always done it, though, copying accents and odd phrasing when he spent too long in any one place.
“You say this because you know Gunner worked for Dazen,” Gunner said. “You’re lying. Hoping to edge with me.”
Hoping to edge?—oh, hoping to gain an edge. “Sure. And before I killed my brother, he told me your birth name was Uluch Assan. You were so very important to him, those were his last words.”
Gunner’s eyes glittered dangerously. “Not impossible for a Prism to learn an old name.”
“Before you agreed to work for me—me Dazen—all those years ago, you told me lies about how you killed that sea demon as we sat in the slaves’ quarters drinking that foul peach liquor. And when you professed to believe that there was no such thing as superviolet luxin, we played a little game with a feather to quell your doubts.”
A worried look crossed the pirate captain’s face. “Took Gunner three shots to hit that damned dancing feather. Was an eagle feather, though, not quail.”
There was no point correcting him, so Gavin continued, “I feared I’d made you so furious that you wouldn’t work for me. I let you hit it … on the sixth shot, ya damned liar.”
Gunner went rigid. Shit. The man told lies to aggrandize himself so often, he might think that his version was the truth. Not the battle to pick, Gavin. Gunner strode away suddenly, heading to midship.
Gavin stayed where he was, on his aching knees. It was bad stretching now, he was certain of it. The two sailors who’d accompanied him looked confused as to what they were expected to do.
“Free his grabbies!” Gunner shouted. He was rummaging in a barrel.
The sailors unlocked the manacles, but kept Gavin on his knees.
Gunner grabbed something from a barrel and threw it at Gavin. He bobbled it in his bandaged, stiff hands, and it bounced on the deck. A sailor fetched it and gave it back to him. A big, wrinkled apple.
“Take him to the beakhead,” Gunner said. “Watch him close as Aborneans groats. A Guile in a corner is a sea demon in your washtub.”
Here I didn’t think you bathed. Gavin didn’t say it, though. There was little to be gained by mocking his captor, his master, and much else to be retained. Teeth, for instance.
The sailors pulled him to his feet and pulled to him to the prow. They turned him around, forced him to his knees again. Gunner was forty paces away, at the farthest point astern. He held a gleaming white musket. Or a musket-sword? It had a single blade with twin black whorls crisscrossing up the blade, bracketing shining jewels. The blade had a small musket inset in much of the spine except for the last hand’s breadth, which was pure blade.
Gavin had a dim recollection of the thing, but it slipped away from him. Something about that night, and a clash with his father and Grinwoody and Kip. He had suffered great violence before and lost hours of time to it, and he’d certainly known men in the war who’d lost memories of injuries. But there was something about Gunner fishing him out of the waves, and then beating him with the flat of the blade? It could only be that. Gavin was still recovering from his bruises, but he didn’t have any stab wounds or he probably would be dead by now.
Still, what a terrible idea. To make a musket barrel thick enough to deal with the power of exploding powder was to make a weapon far too thick and heavy to be an effective sword. Was this some sort of odd jest?
“If you’re Dazen, you’ll remember our little demonstration,” Gunner shouted.
It was, of course, the part of Dazen and Gavin’s meeting that Gavin Guile—the real Gavin Guile—would have heard about. ‘Recalling’ the demonstration would prove nothing. But apparently Gunner didn’t realize that.
“The seas were calm that day, and you were only twenty paces back,” Gavin said.
That day, the cabin boy had wet himself, holding an apple in his trembling outstretched hand above his head. Later, Gavin had heard the story that the boy had held the apple on his head. No one explained how a boy would balance an apple on his head on a rocking boat. But it did make a better story.
Twenty paces made a good story. Forty was suicide. Gunner might be the best shot in the world. It didn’t matter. Even with an identical charge of powder, and wadding tamped down to exactly the same pressure, and a perfectly round musket ball with no flaws from its casting—even with no wind, and no lurching deck, a musket was only accurate to within a space maybe as large as Gavin’s head at forty paces. Some men liked to believe differently, but the truth was that if you hit a smaller target at that range, it was purely luck. Gavin knew how good of a shot Gunner was. He didn’t believe the man’s story of killing a sea demon, but if anyone in the world could have done such a thing through accuracy alone, it would have been Gunner.
And there’s the problem with arrogance wed with excellence and insanity—a marriage with three partners is already overfull. Reality’s intrusions were unwelcome. Gunner had spent the last twenty years convincing others that he was unable to miss; now he seemed to have convinced himself, too.
“Gunner got given a gooder gun than, than, than…” The pirate devolved into curses, angry at not coming up with an alliterative way to say ‘than he had twenty years ago.’
It wasn’t full-on rage, merely frustration, but Gavin had seen Gunner shoot a man because he was hungry. Gunner was going to go through with this.
Gavin’s stomach sank. What could he do without drafting? Maybe knock out each of the two sailors next to him—and what? Jump off the ship? There was no shore in sight. They’d simply turn around and pick him up. And trusting his body to be strong enough to take out these two sailors and jump before Gunner could shoot him was optimistic at best. He might not even be able to swim with how much abuse his body had taken recently.
He was overcome with a weariness more than physical. This? This was to be his end?
Gavin had been in too many battles to believe that there was some force that protected the men who should live. One of the greatest swordsmen in the world had been killed next to him, while out of sight of the enemy—a freak ricocheting bullet had caught his kidney. A stallion worth satrapies had stumbled on a body after the battle was done, and broke his leg. A general got dysentery because he’d shared his men’s water and meat, rather than eat at his high table. A thousand indignities, a thousand tales that ended without moral or meaning, merely mortality.
War is cause, all else is effect.
Gavin took a bite of the apple. It was sweet and tart. The best apple he’d tasted in his entire life.
Pride, you wanted some little piece of me? Here. Take the whole fucking thing. Gavin spoke in his orator’s voice: “Captain Gunner, I don’t think anyone in the world can make this shot. You think you’re this good? I don’t. I think you’re better. You make this shot, and you’ll be a legend forever. You miss it, and you’re just another pirate who talks big.” Gavin put the apple in his mouth, held it in his teeth, and turned his head to the side, giving Gunner only a profile view.
All activity on the deck stopped.
So I die with an apple in my mouth. My father would have some words about this, no doubt. And Karris will be rightly furious.
Because he’d turned, Gavin couldn’t see how Gunner responded, if he was furious or amused. Gavin couldn’t see any of th
e other sailors’ reactions. He only saw gray sea and gray sky. The only light granted to him was ugliness. He was only beginning to regret that he’d wasted his last words taunting a pirate when something wet splattered across his face.
He wondered if it was his teeth. There was that momentary delay, when you’re hurt badly and you’re not sure what’s happened. Was he dead? That flash perhaps the spark of his cranium exploding? He didn’t hear the musket bark, but that happened sometimes.
Cheers erupted around the deck. The apple was gone.
One of the sailors picked up a few chunks from the deck. He fit them back together. Held them up. He shouted, “Cap’n Gunner cored it perfect!”
Gunner seemed oblivious to the cheers. He set the white gun-sword across his shoulder and swaggered over to Gavin. That swagger scared Gavin more than Gunner’s normal insanity. It meant Gunner was surprised he’d made the shot, too. Orholam’s balls. “Not one man in the world could make that shot,” Gunner announced. “Cap’n Gunner made that shot!”
“Cap’n Gunner!” the crew roared.
Gunner stood over Gavin, triumphant. He twisted a bit of his ratty beard and chewed on it. “Manacles!” he barked to the sailors beside Gavin.
They slapped Gavin in chains once more, but he was barely aware of it.
Thank Orholam, if he’d gotten himself killed Karris would never have forgiven him. In fact, when he got free, this was going to be one story he wouldn’t be telling her.
Gunner laid the musket-sword across his palms. Showing it off, now, so Gavin supposed it was safe—advisable even—to show appreciation. The blade was a thing of beauty, covered with some kind of white lacquer, Gavin guessed, and adorned with gems so large they had to be semi-precious stones. Gavin was no expert at swordsmithing, but it looked like a parade piece rather than a warrior’s tool. The gems appeared to go all the way through the blade—weakening the structure—and painting the blade white with black whorls? You’d have to keep an artisan on hand to repaint it constantly. A single cutout in the blade gave a hand rest to steady the gun when firing, weakening the blade further. But Gavin saw no frizzen, no pan, no hammer, no way to balance the butt to achieve any sort of accuracy or to absorb the kick. Was this a jest? It was too thin to be a credible musket anyway.
“I don’t even load it,” Gunner said. He knew that Dazen had shared his appreciation for masterwork firearms. “It makes its own bullets, and they’re more accurate than—well, you saw. Trigger pops down here when it’s loaded.”
“How … how?” Gavin asked. It was an impossibility, of course. But he’d just had an apple shot out of his mouth at forty paces on the deck of a rolling ship. He found himself quite credulous at the moment.
Gunner grabbed the pommel, twisted, pulled it back. A small, smoky chamber was revealed. Gunner poured black powder into it from a powder horn, pushed it back in, and then pulled the pommel back out. It unfolded to make a small buttstock. He grinned like a first-year discipulus who’d gotten away with a prank.
And there it was again, that hint that the crazy was at least half for show. Gunner had spoken without a hitch. It made sense immediately, once Gavin thought about it. Gunner was eccentric. He’d always chosen words wrong. Being thought eccentric or stupid would mean being the target of ridicule among the hard men he led, so instead he had to be absolutely crazy. Men get nervous around insanity, wonder if it’s catching, and keep their distance. Perfect for a new captain who not only wanted to continue being a captain, but wanted to become a legend.
“How accurate?” Gavin said.
“Hit a scrogger at four hundred paces. Ball don’t wobble. It’s better magic than all the magic you once called yours, Giggly Guile.” Gunner lifted the musket to his shoulder and tracked a seagull on the wing two hundred paces out. He fired, just as it swooped lower—and missed. “’Course, she still won’t do it all for you. Makes me respect her the more. She demands excellence, like the sea.”
Gavin hadn’t watched the shot, though. He was studying the musket. There appeared to be knobs and small dials in the space revealed by the extended stock, marked with tiny runes. That Gunner didn’t call attention to them made Gavin believe that the pirate hadn’t yet figured out what they did.
“May I?” Gavin said.
Gunner looked at him. He laughed. “Former Prism though you be, Gunner’s no fool enough to put magic in your hands.” He spat into the sea, then took a rag and began cleaning the black powder residue off the blade. “Have to hold her real careful. Dangerous as Ceres, this one.” He sank into thought, and Gavin wondered if he’d been brought onto deck simply for Gunner to show off.
Not that he minded. Any rest from the oars was rest. Of course, he’d rather not have muskets discharged in his general direction while he was resting, but beggars and choosers and all that.
“What ransom should I ask for you?” Gunner asked.
Ah, so he brought me up to talk? And couldn’t help but shoot at my head, though he had a ransom in mind? Maybe the madness wasn’t all for show. “My father believes me dead. Hell, Gunner, I believed me dead.” And like that the memory was back, hot and sharp: Grinwoody crashing into them, two blades and four men, and Gavin had seen that there was no way to save Kip from the tangle of hands and odd angles—except to divert the blade into his own chest.
Whatever possessed me? Oh, Karris, did I do it just to do one thing that might make you proud of me?
But thoughts of Karris were too painful. She was all color in a world gone gray.
And his own father had only wanted the dagger. Musket-sword now, Gavin supposed. The Blinder’s Knife, Andross had called it. It was one thing to wonder if your father cares more about gold or status than he does about you. Every son of every rich and powerful man must fear that, but that his father would kill him for a dagger? His own father?
“The boy,” Gavin said. “Where is he?”
“Threw him overboard for Ceres. As thanks. Ceres and me is square now.” Gunner grinned unpleasantly. “How much, little Guile? Five hells, what do I call you? Dazen? Feels like talking to a ghost.”
“You can call me Gavin. It’s easier. You can ask any ransom you like. The more ridiculous, the better. He’ll stall you until he can get spies to confirm you have me. Truth is, he’ll botch it so that you kill me and he can hunt you down afterward. He’ll make it look like you’re bloodthirsty and he had no blame in making you kill me. He doesn’t want me, Gunner.”
Gunner grinned like he liked a challenge, and the mask was back. “So’s long as he wants you as much as a pants pox, why should Gunner keep you resting tidy next to his own joyful jewels?”
Oops. But Gavin’s golden tongue was already moving. “If you kill me, he can give up his pretense that he wants to ransom me. That means he won’t load up a treasure ship in the first place. He’ll just bring the warships.”
Gunner scowled. He jumped up on the gunwale, squatted, one hand holding on to a rigging line, thinking. “You’re being turrable helpful.” Gunner spat in the ocean again. “Funny thing about the Angari. Feed their galley slaves like they’re freemen. You seen? Treat ’em real good. The best slaves on the crew get taken in to port, fed real food, even taked to a bosom house. They lose a man every so often doing that, but it makes the whole crew work hard. Feeding ’em good makes ’em strong. Cuts what cargo you can carry since ya has to carry so much food. But this little here galley can go two or three times as fast as most anything on the Cerulean Sea. A few galleasses could chase me down if the wind was right, but if I have room, I can cut against the wind and leave ’em behind. They shot the Everdark Gates in this ship. She’s light as a cork and fast as a swallow. Perfect ship for a pirate, if you can snatch up enough cargoes. Beautiful little ship. And only the four swivel guns and one long tom. This is the best galley with the best crew on the whole sea—” Gunner dropped his voice to a whisper. “And I hate her. One cannon! One. I should demand Pash Vecchio’s great ship, what’s her name?”
“The Garg
antua?” Gavin asked.
“That’s it!”
“That might be difficult—”
“Your father’s the Red. He’s richer than Orholam. You’re the Prism. They’d revirginize old whores to get you back.”
“I sank the Gargantua. Before the battle at Ru Harbor.”
In a moment, Gunner had drawn a pistol from his belt, cocked it, stuck it over the hollow of Gavin’s right eye. A killing rage lit his eyes. Whatever part of his madness was for show, this part wasn’t that. With difficulty, he uncocked the pistol. “This prisoner is exuberical,” Gunner said. “Put him back on his oar until he works it off.”
Chapter 5
Teia and some of the Blackguards finished their morning calisthenics on the Wanderer’s rear castle as the sun climbed the horizon. She and Cruxer and five of the other top inductees were the only ones from their Blackguard trainee class on this ship. The others were on another ship with the other half of the remaining full Blackguards. Though they were constantly reminded that they hadn’t taken full vows and were thus not full Blackguards yet, that didn’t mean the Blackguards watered down the nunks’ exercises. Cruxer had followed their example manfully, and they had followed Cruxer’s as well as they could, muddling through complicated forms they’d seen but had not yet learned.
Commander Ironfist, leading them, took no notice of the stragglers. The legendary warrior had always been a cipher, but for the past week he’d been even more intense than usual. Teia didn’t know if the exercises (and their horrible butchery of them) was another pedagogical technique, or if the leader of the Blackguard simply didn’t see them. Regardless, the commander scrubbed his scalp with a wet cloth, cooling off. He had a stubble of wiry hair on his head now. He’d stopped shaving it bald and anointing it with oil after the Battle of Ru, more specifically, after the Miracle Shot—a prayer and six thousand paces and a direct hit on a newborn god. He glanced at the rising sun, its disk not yet fully clear of the horizon, glowered, and wrapped his ghotra around his head and headed down the steep steps to midships.
