Corsair

by Chris Bunch

  The man with the glass lifted his arm, and lowered it.

  The monk struck, struck again …

  Three … four … five … six … seven … eight … nine …

  Gareth stood, braced against the chimney, fixed his eyes on his target.

  Ten … eleven …

  Gareth whipped the sling into life.

  Twelve …

  Gareth released one end of the sling, and the stone hummed across the distance …

  Thirteen!

  Gareth had a moment to see one of the monks drop to his knees in prayer, heard the clamor from the square, tucked his sling in his pouch, and scrabbled back down the slates. He grabbed the knotted rope and slid over the edge, hand-over-handing down, down. Then Labala had him, and Fox was whipping the rope back down from where it’d been looped around the chimney. He was the one who could climb a sheet of glass if you dared him, who’d clambered up a drain spout for eleven nights and fixed the rope for Gareth to climb.

  Labala was holding back laughter, great whooping roars that’d ring as loudly as the gong if he let them out.

  They turned to run, and a voice called.

  “You! You three! Stand where you are!”

  It had to be a warder.

  None of the three responded, but began to run.

  “I said stop!” the warder called, and pelted after them, truncheon raised.

  The fourth member of the team, Cosyra, dumped a bucket of slops out from the doorway she’d been stationed in, and the warder shrieked, skidded, and went flat. Cosyra leapt over him, ran after the others.

  Even laughing as hard as she was, she caught up in a block.

  They ran on a few blocks, ducked into a deserted mews.

  “Eleven nights,” Labala gurgled, his bulk jiggling with laughter. “They’ll be gaoinga in the headbone in another ten.”

  “There won’t be another ten,” Gareth said flatly.

  “Why not?” Fox asked.

  “We almost got caught tonight,” he said. “It won’t be nearly as funny if we end up in some priestly dungeon after twelve nights … or fifteen.”

  Labala pouted.

  “But we had them going so much!”

  “Gareth’s right,” Cosyra said. “Always best to stop when you’re ahead.”

  “Truths,” Fox agreed. “So what’s next?”

  Gareth thought. “I’ve got a couple of ideas.”

  “So do I,” Cosyra said.

  “I’d like a night or two to hammer them out,” Gareth said. “Meet here, two nights gone?”

  Labala grunted, Fox nodded.

  “Two nights from now,” Cosyra said, and, without further farewell, went out of the mews and was gone.

  Gareth and the others made good-byes, and Gareth made his way through the dark streets, ducking the torch of a warder’s patrol once, and spotting two footpads in an alley that he went around to his uncle’s house.

  The ladder he’d left against the outer wall was still in place, and Gareth went up it deftly. The courtyard on the other side was empty, and he put the small ladder on the wall top, where it’d not be seen, went down the eight feet to the brick courtyard on one of his aunt’s flowering vines. He crossed the courtyard, used the jagged corners of the mansion’s brick facing to climb two stories, went across to a drain on a windowsill, up another story, and into his bedroom.

  He uncovered a lantern, blew it into life, looked at himself in the mirror. A bit dusty, hands and feet dirty. He stripped, put his clothes in a hamper for a laundress, washed, and slid into bed.

  His body said it was time for sleep, that the morning’s dullness with its quills and ink would come too soon, but his mind was still moving fast.

  It’d been close to a year since his parents’ murder by the Linyati. The coastal watch had arrived just at dusk, and Gareth had wanted to rave where had they been, why were they always late?

  But his village had been the third raided that day. One guardsman told him, although Gareth didn’t absorb the information until later, that this was, indeed, as far north as the dreaded and loathed Linyati had come on their raids, and perhaps this would be enough to get King Alfieri off his ass and declare war on the Slavers.

  His mate had snorted, and said nothing would get that lard-butt moving except maybe setting fire to the throne itself. Or, he added, getting a priest to ban all the wenching he did, although that’d more likely get the priest banned.

  Gareth didn’t care what kings did … all he wanted was to have his parents back, to say the words he’d not said that day. Or, failing that, to learn how to use a sword, and somehow find the Slavers who’d brought ruin to his village and kill them all, slowly.

  Knoll and Thom, and two other villagers who’d seen the dark ships beach and fled into the moors, would be taken in by the nearest village and raised as one of them, as was common along the coast, where accident, storm, and creatures of the depths not infrequently brought tragedy.

  A letter of credit was semaphored from Ticao, and Gareth went by the first coach to the capital, to be taken in by his father’s brother, Pol.

  All he took with him from the ransacked house, besides what clothes he thought he might need, realizing most of what he owned would mark him for the bumpkin he was, was an ornate wand his father had been given when he completed his studies, a small but very dangerous-looking razor-edged sorcerous dagger used for cutting herbs, wicks, and magical circles, and a ring with a cameo of his mother that his father had made when they’d become betrothed.

  The rest, and whatever else was salvageable in the village, would be auctioned, and whatever money raised would go to help support Thom and Knoll in their new homes.

  The three boys made hesitant farewells, minds on the pyres burning on the headlands, and the bodies turning to ash on them. They swore they’d meet again, someday, and they’d never forget one another, all three knowing their words to be impossible dreams, no better than lies.

  Gareth turned away from the ruins, toward a new life in the great city.

  Pol Radnor was eight years younger than his brother, the wizard, and, at least as far as girth and ostensible merriment, very much like him. But where the Mage Daav Radnor had been content with being a minor magician in a sleepy village, helping the people and their animals with their woes and sicknesses, sometimes able to cast a bit of a weather spell, Pol was very ambitious.

  He’d spent only three years as a shipper’s clerk before becoming a purser on one of his magnate’s ships. Two voyages later, he had made enough contacts and profit for his employer to loan him the money for a single cargo. The ship didn’t sink, and pirates didn’t spot the small merchantman, and Pol had begun his rise.

  Now he owned directly or controlled half a dozen ships, had agents in twice that many ports, and was known as a fortunate man. The cargoes he agreed to carry not only arrived at their destination, but not infrequently at exactly the time they could bring the highest profits. Some said Pol had the Gift for the future, but he denied it with a chuckle, saying he was no more than lucky.

  However, he was known to say, to his handful of cronies, that a man made his own luck.

  It took little time for Gareth to realize that if it was possible to make your luck through hard work and careful insinuation into the right circles, Pol Radnor was lucky indeed, and it should not be long before his uncle would be named a King’s Servant, then possibly knighted, and, if he were successful enough, be granted a Merchant Prince’s cloak and allowed to wear furs on his robes.

  He’d married well, to an older, rather plain woman named Priscian, another magnate’s daughter. So far, their marriage was unblessed, but Pol seemed unworried. Priscian’s dowry had not only included two ships with their crews and a newly built mansion not far from the river that divided Ticao in half, but a country estate and, most importantly, the gold and servants to operate them handsomely.

  Gareth had always been a bit suspicious of Pol’s cheeriness, thinking no one could be that honestly hearty
that much of the time. But after almost a year he grudged the man’s jollity must be sincere. He did notice, though, that Pol seemed happiest when his receivables were for gold, rather than silver.

  Pol had allowed Gareth a respectable time, almost a month, for mourning, then announced the young man’s future. He would be permitted to follow in his uncle’s footsteps, first as a clerk, then as a chief clerk, then, if all went well, put in control of an entire division of Pol’s mercantile empire, for empire it surely would be in a few short years, Megaris blessing them.

  Gareth asked when he’d be allowed to go to sea.

  “Never, if it’s any of me, son,” Pol said. “I went, twice, and a blasted waste of time it was. Nothing but crude men, storms, seasickness, pirates, and uncertainty.

  “I learned my lesson, and am going to do you the great favor of not making you repeat the course.

  “As they say, a man with one foot on dry land is blessed, and a man with both feet there is in league with the gods.

  “While you live in this house, I’ll never allow you such suffering.”

  And so Gareth joined the household. There were a dozen servants, and everyone rose at dawn. Gareth noted that, even though Pol and his wife went regularly to the Merchant’s Temple, having their own box seat high on the walls, they didn’t spend time praying when alone.

  That suited Gareth well. He’d decided if there were any gods, they were uncaring, or maybe malignant, and most likely nothing but stone statues, mewling priests, and self-righteous canons.

  After rising and washing, the household ate heartily, if simply, for Pol believed a man worked best on a full stomach.

  Gareth had a tutor come in for an hour each day, for Pol thought his lack of knowledge, particularly of figures, deplorable. Once a week another man came in and talked of music, art, books, for Pol said a good merchant must be able to talk about anything to his clients.

  After that, Gareth made his way to Pol’s factory along the riverfront, which had offices and clerks’ warrens in front, and huge warehouses behind.

  That was pure torture for the boy, for the ships of a hundred nations docked along the water, their masts standing close to the upper stories of the Merchant Princes’ buildings, bowsprits sometimes nearly blocking the path of the wagons clattering back and forth. Ships that he’d never be allowed to sign on to, ships that would visit strange and wonderful parts of the world he’d never see.

  Even worse was when his uncle called a sorcerer in to cast the spell that’d give Gareth the traders’ patois. Why, he asked Pol, was he doing this, if he had no intent of letting Gareth go to sea? “We deal with merchants from many lands,” Radnor said briskly, “who come to my office frequently. You can generally strike a better bargain if you have a tongue in common with the other party.”

  At least once a month Gareth asked if he could be loaned to another magnate with a recommendation he be allowed to sign aboard a ship, for seasoning, “for surely, Uncle, how can a man be a good merchant if he has no knowledge of his distant clients and their lands?”

  “By reading and correspondence,” Pol might reply, “which you’ve been most slight about. All things can be learned in books, and there’s no need to be tossed about in a leaking hulk eating wormy beef and drinking small beer if you can sit in comfort, now is there?”

  “But — ”

  “But me no buts,” Pol would say, not unkindly. “Now, to your accounts, and pay more attention there than you have been. Your chief has found, he told me, some twenty errors in your last accounting alone.

  “That’s not good, Gareth. That’s not what can make me proud of you, proud of yourself, now is it?”

  Not being able to find a reply, Gareth would slink back to his canted desk, which grew larger and higher from the ground every day, more and more covered with scribbles on paper, his stool taller and taller, stretching toward heavens as dull as the wintry Sarosian skies, when he longed for tropic sunshine and warm blue waters splashing on sandy beaches.

  The clerks around him were all older, and all seemed to have found a home, and delighted in telling stories of how they almost sent a cargo of oranges to the tropics, or how they’d gotten lucky, and found an erroneous entry, and saved Hern Radnor so many gold coins.

  There wasn’t even any point in pranking them, for all that happened the two or three times he tried something was a long look and a tired sigh.

  At dusk, or after twelve turnings of the glass during the short winter days, the office was closed.

  The evening meal was heavy, Pol giving himself two glasses of the finest ale before dinner, three glasses of wine with the sumptuous feast — food from many lands that Pol traded with — and two brandies before bed as he read and responded to his agents’ correspondence.

  Gareth got drunk once on the ale, didn’t like the sickness it brought nor the way he felt the next day, and forever after remained a non-toper, never really minding, unlike most of his countrymen, if he were forced to drink small beer, very watered wine, or even simple water itself.

  After the evening meal, no one cared what Gareth did, so long as he was back inside the compound by two turnings before middle-night.

  When he discovered the small ladder in a shed, his path was open, and he’d retire early and slide out across the roofs. No one seemed to check on him, and he suspected they would not care much if they did find his bed empty.

  Ticao was a magical city to explore.

  It had been built long ages past, first as an upriver trading village, sensibly ten leagues from the sea, to guard against raiders. Its river, the Nalta, was wide enough for a ship to tack up, especially after dredges had begun deepening the main channel over the past one hundred years. It continued north into the farming heartland of Saros, and canals had been built from east and west, so most of the goods Saros traded in came through Ticao.

  On the northeast bank of the river was the trading heart of Ticao, around and in the old walled city. Beyond that rose the heights, where the king’s castle and other noble buildings sat. Pol said that while he certainly wanted to be a Merchant Prince, he would never build on the king’s mountain, since one requirement was that in time of war, if the capital were threatened, all these homes would be razed to give clear fields of fire to the cannon in the Royal castle.

  Ticao had spread across the river, where working quarters and slums sprawled, just as the city had reached north, beyond the King’s mountain, through greater and smaller country homes into the rolling countryside.

  Streets, alleys, wound through the city, and it seemed impossible to ever know Ticao completely, for there was always a new shop, tea-bar, or tavern being opened. Here and there through Ticao were parks, spreading tree-spattered grasslands, and it was a royal edict that they be open to any citizen.

  And so he explored the avenues and alleys of Ticao, never clambering back into his bedroom before midnight, sometimes not until dawn, after which he would spend a yawning day at his desk, trying to ignore the frowns from the chief clerk.

  Ticao was thronged with seamen and traders from foreign parts, including men from Linyati. The first time he saw one of the olive-complected, blank-faced sailors, he asked a beggar who the man was.

  “Slavers,” the man spat, hand still out for a coin.

  “The ones who raid our villages?”

  “Th’ same.”

  “Why are they allowed ashore?” Gareth asked in shock.

  “ ‘Cause our nimby-namby king doesn’t want war with anybody, wants the seaways to be open to all, so Saros can bring home the most gold.

  “Damned fool, with all respect. There’s some who know the way to deal with scum like the Slavers is at sword point. ‘At’s how I got all crippled up, lad, in a grand battle ashore with a bunch of them. I fought my best, kept my mate alive, but took a terrible wound. Here, for a copper or two I’ll show you, right — ”

  Gareth dropped a coin, hurried away.

  He saw them again, seldom singly, mostly in groups of
half a dozen, to prevent the mutterers who trailed them from becoming bolder and hurling cobbles or filth. The things the Slavers bought made no sense. Sometimes it would be a sweetmeat, sometimes a jewel. Anything edible or drinkable was immediately gulped down, as if they were small boys sneaking behind their parents’ back.

  Gareth trailed them often, trying to figure out what they were, following them back to their strange ships, ships whose portholes were alight from within from dusk to dawn, as if the Slavers never slept.

  He asked what they came to Ticao to trade, since slavery had been outlawed for generations in Saros. A clerk from another factory made a face, said the slaves they took, generally from the savage continent of Kashi, separated from the continent of Linyati by a long isthmus, were sold elsewhere, to other countries who still held bondage legal. Those trade goods were perfectly legitimate to bring into Saros.

  “Damned shame, too,” the young man added. “Our factor’s lost three ships in five years, and one or another of our seamen managed to make his way home later to tell us they’d not been wrecked by storms, but seized by the Slavers.

  “Good King Alfieri ought to fit out a fleet, and drive them back to their own lands. No one needs dealing with murderous bastards like them.”

  Twice Gareth hurled a stone at a knot of Linyati, and was breathlessly pursued down alleys, the Slavers waving daggers or the thin-bladed swords they preferred. Their language was a series of coughs, like one of the lions Gareth saw in the King’s Menagerie.

  Once he lurked on a rooftop, waited until four of the Slavers passed underneath, and tipped a full chamberpot over.

  But this was very small beer, he knew, and wanted greater revenge, revenge with a pistol or sword.

  His uncle Pol told him he shouldn’t bear hatred, for it kept the memory of that murderous day alive. That was fine with Gareth. He wanted not one, not ten, but a hundred dead Slavers for his mother and father, even more for the others of his village who now wore chains on some unknown shore.

  But Gareth did not let himself become a dark brooder, like fishermen he’d known who’d lost a son or a brother at sea. He loved pranking, jesting against those he thought were pompous, foolish, or malicious, whether rich merchants, cheating shopkeepers, or pompous citizens, once even a fraud claiming to be a magician, who persuaded an entire street of credulous whores of his talents with love potions.