The Queen's Pardon (Alexis Carew Book 6)

by J. A. Sutherland

  “Nabb,” she called, “send a man to the kitchen and bring me back a large knife, if you please.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Isikli’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. His hired hands and sons, Alexis wasn’t certain how to tell them apart, dressed as they all still were in varying night-clothes, stared at her impassively.

  In a moment, she heard Nabb set something on the table behind her and turned to find what must have been the largest knife available. The hilt filled Alexis hand as she took it up and turned back to the bound men.

  Setting the blade of the knife against the rope binding Isikli to his chair, she found the knife was as sharp as it was large and parted the bonds with ease.

  “Have someone put on a pot of tea, as well, will you, Nabb?”

  There was silence for a moment. “Aye … sir …”

  Alexis cut the rest of Isikli’s bonds and motioned him to sit at the table. She moved herself to the table’s end so that they were near each other, then remained silent, watching the man, until the tea was ready.

  It came not in a pot, but in a large, brass samovar, and the cups Nabb had brought in were of metal and glass, not porcelain.

  “Sorry there’s no proper tea set, sir,” Nabb said as he ushered the lads carrying the samovar from the room again. He glared at Isikli as though the farmer’s lack of that were the gravest thing that had happened here.

  “It’s all right, Nabb,” Alexis said. “Mister Isikli?” She gestured to the samovar and cups.

  She was probably breaking any number of the man’s customs regarding tea and guests, but despite freeing him from his bonds she did want it clear to him that she was now in control of his farm, family, and fate.

  Isikli scowled for a moment, then took a cup, filled it with tea and a generous amount of sugar, then sipped. Alexis did the same. The tea had an odd taste — either the tea or the sugar, she couldn’t be sure which.

  Or possibly the water.

  The Dark knew a spacer understood the ways in which poor water could change any number of things.

  She sipped again, then set her cup down.

  “Mister Isikli,” Alexis began her pitch in earnest, “let me tell you about my home on Dalthus.”

  Alexis talked for nearly as long as she dared. Until Kannstadt appeared at the dining room’s doorway to peek in and see what she was about, followed by Captain Ellender, his ear and neck red and raw from the removal of the slave accoutrements, though not so badly as Kannstadt and his men, as there was far better equipment at the farmhouse. She gestured for Nabb to keep others away after that and kept talking.

  She described for Isikli her grandfather’s homestead, with its house so very like the man’s own, yet with no slaves. Yes, there were the indentures, but they had rights and were free to seek work elsewhere if they could find someone to buy their debt. Any number of them did so, though the flow was more toward her grandfather’s employ than away.

  She spoke of the thousands of hectares of golden wheat ripening under clear skies only here and there dotted with white clouds, and nary a swamp nor knee-deep mud in sight. Tilled, planted, and harvested by the great machines — though those fields were almost entirely for export. She could tell the idea of a field’s crop being so in excess of what the farmer and his family needed to survive that it could be shipped off-world stunned the man.

  The home fields, those worked to supply the farm or by individual tenants for their own use, lacked such machines, but still provided a bounty far in excess of what Isikli could easily imagine.

  Beasts more than geese, as well. Chickens, goats, pigs — well, she saw him turn up his nose at that, but he seemed interested in the idea of vast herds of sheep and the mutton they supplied.

  Finally, Isikli drained his cup and set it down harder than a man might wish to with something so prized as this tea set must be to a farm so poor.

  “Enough,” he said. “Enough of your brags. We know worlds like yours. Richer than ours, yes, but Erzurum makes one hard. And proud.” He straightened his shoulders. “Tales of your nation’s wealth and strength will not sway me.”

  “I don’t wish to sway you with tales of my nation’s strength, Mister Isikli,” Alexis said. “I wish to offer it to you.”

  Isikli stared at Alexis’ tablet as though unsure the thing had translated properly, while behind her Nabb coughed, then sucked in air.

  “I will leave Erzurum, Mister Isikli,” Alexis said. “With my lads, and with or without these codes I need from you. If not from you, then from the next farm my forces take, you see? I will return to my home on that world I just described, and if you are the one to assist me, I will bring you along.” She looked from Isikli to his sons and farmhands. “You, your family, these men who work for you —”

  Isikli snorted. “As slaves to work your fields? A nice revenge.”

  “As freeholders, Mister Isikli, with no indenture. Land — good land — to work and profit from as you will.”

  She was making quite free with her grandfather’s lands and goodwill with such a promise and could only be grateful that she knew him well and could promise he’d agree. Oh, she’d hear more about her bringing home more stray cats and broken birds — an odd phrase, given that as a child she’d only ever brought home a single puppy to care for, and that after the boys in town had abused it so horribly she’d set upon them with a stick and broken the nose of the farrier’s son so that it never did look properly straight again.

  A wild swing. I’d have thrashed the boy properly if I’d been more than three years old.

  Alexis watched Isikli and the others carefully, seeing how they weighed her words.

  She drained her own tea and set the cup down with far more care than Isikli had.

  “You are caught up in these circumstances with me, Mister Isikli. What is there for you here after my men and I leave? Assuming I can convince Captain Kannstadt not to return to his own methods, I will take every slave from this farm. We’ll have to destroy your comms, of course, so that you can’t alert the pirates after we leave. Possibly we’ll have to take you with us — a horrid trudge through these swamps to your neighbors?

  “Then we will take that farm, and free more slaves, and make that farmer the same offer of a better life on Dalthus for his aid. Will all your neighbors tell me no, Mister Isikli? With you and your men here paraded before them to show the alternative?

  “And when I’ve taken my men and one of your neighbors home with me, Mister Isikli —"

  Alexis stood and picked up the knife, examining the blade for a moment before driving it down into Isikli’s table and leaving it to quiver there.

  “What will the pirates do with you?”

  Alexis left the farmer to stare at the still quivering blade and think about her offer, edging past Nabb to leave the farmhouse and move out into the yard under the ever-present drizzle. She wrapped her arms around herself and wandered through the knots of men idling about.

  Within a few moments, Kannstadt was at her side.

  “You heard, I suppose?” Alexis asked.

  The Hanoverese captain nodded. “Samt und stahl,” he said. “You have steel below your softness.” He drew a deep breath. “Are all New Londoners so? As you and Ian?”

  Alexis looked away. “I don’t know that there was anything particularly soft about what I just did to that man,” she said. “He has no choice. He knows it. If not Isikli himself, then his son, or son-in-law, or one of his hands must know the codes. He has no choice at all but to throw his lot in with complete strangers — worse, enemies, from his point of view, I suppose. No choice but to hope we win out against all the odds and then I make good on the promise.”

  She shivered, certainly from the rain creeping down from her vacsuit liner’s collar.

  “And what does he gain if he does? Travel light years to a world he doesn’t know and doesn’t understand, then try to make a new life where all those around him don’t even speak his language. Would you welcome being for
ced into that, Captain Kannstadt?”

  “You offer him better than he should receive,” Kannstadt said, “and I fear you and your world will regret it one day.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Kannstadt looked around Erzurum, as though taking in the whole world. “There are some things best to stamp out,” he muttered.

  Alexis suspected he was speaking again of that conflict between Hanover and Isikli’s people, and how they’d come to be exiled to Erzurum in the first place.

  “What do you —”

  “Captain, sir!” Nabb called from the farmhouse door. “That fellow’s asking for you!”

  Twenty-Three

  That Little Bit, that Bloody Bit,

  She took what few she had,

  And marched ‘em ‘cross the planet,

  Just a handful of her lads.

  “Damn him!”

  Alexis held back from throwing her tablet across the room, but only barely and only because it was so valuable to them.

  “I should have slit his bloody throat when I had the chance!”

  She’d entered the codes Isikli gave her — not without some trepidation — and expected to be able to contact Malcomson aboard his Bachelor’s Delight, at least. Possibly even Villar and the rest of her crew, if one of the other ships would patch her through to wherever Mongoose’s boats had landed.

  Instead, the only signals she found on Erzurum’s net were from the pirate ships — and those were, inexplicably, in orbit around the planet with no sign of Malcomson, the other privateers, or the crew of Mongoose.

  In some final desperation, she tried to tune in on Mongoose’s command channel, entering her own codes. It was a last-ditch move, for her former ship was dark and in some long orbit around Erzurum’s star, so she nearly dropped the tablet with surprise when Villar’s image and voice came on.

  Villar’s face was splotched with dirt and soot, and streaked with wet from his eyes. His voice cracked as he spoke, and he had to visibly square his shoulders and compose himself.

  “Captain —” Villar cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “Captain, I’m sorry, but I don’t see any other way.” His throat worked convulsively. “They say — even Captain Malcomson says — that you must be dead or captured by the pirates and they won’t admit it. I don’t see how that could be — but …”

  He sighed.

  “Captain Malcomson’s agreed to drop one of Delight’s satellites in orbit over where your boat went down. It’s small enough the pirates might miss it in all the junk around the planet after the battle — and I’ve set it not to transmit except on Mongoose’s command channel and only to your codes.” He swallowed again. “I hope that was right — I hope you get this.” Another sigh. “Or maybe not — perhaps it would be best if …

  “I don’t know how much of what happened you’re aware of, so I’ll start from your boat’s crash.

  “We couldn’t come for you, sir — the Dark knows we wanted to. There was nearly a mutiny against Hacking and his boat to try —” Villar’s lips twitched. “— or maybe it was Boots they was after, sir. You know how some of them are. Nearly as bad as Creasy.”

  The slight smile broke to firm, thin lips as Villar clenched his jaw and his voice trembled. It nearly broke Alexis’ heart to see her normally reserved first officer display such emotion.

  “We were in a stalemate with the pirates, you see? I think we went after too many targets and spread ourselves too thin on the ground — they had more forces groundside, and more boats, than we expected. Not one of our boats could lift or they’d have three or four pirates after it. But neither could the pirates attack us — more boats than men, I suspect. From what I heard from the natives, it’s more the ships in orbit and the boats that keep the Erzurum population in line. The pirates aren’t from here, you see, they’re … well, sir, it’s a mixed lot, as they all are, but their leader is this bloke named Ness, and he’s from New London.

  “Should’ve just stayed home if we wanted to fight our own pirates, don’t you think, sir?”

  A voice called from off camera and Villar turned.

  “What?” More words Alexis couldn’t catch, then, “Right.”

  Villar turned back to the camera.

  “Sorry, sir, but Captain Malcomson’s reminded me we have little time. We’re aboard Delight, you see — all of us, save you and your boat crew. So, here’s what happened.

  “It was a standoff, but not a peaceful one, sir. The ships kept firing on one another, and there were a few hits — you know how a normal-space battle goes, I suppose. Down here they’d fire their boat’s guns at our positions once in a while — from too far away to do any real damage, but there were fires from it and some casualties. I’ve attached the Discharged Dead lists for Mongoose, sir, but —” He turned to the side. “Yes, yes, time, I know, Captain Malcomson, but she’s a right to know who’s fallen.”

  He turned back.

  “A few days into the stalemate, this Ness contacted us — well, he contacted the ships in orbit, see? He’s commanding that frigate up there. Seems he saw things much as we were already doing — neither side could break the stalemate without suffering heavy losses. Our ships couldn’t break orbit without exposing themselves to the frigate’s fire, the pirate forces couldn’t take ours in orbit without more damage than they’d like, neither force on the ground could really attack the other — we were too spread out and the pirates didn’t want their infrastructure damaged, nor really have enough forces to take us on the ground, most being aboard the ships.”

  Villar closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.

  “So, Ness offered a deal. He’d let us go — withdraw his frigate and other ships from the Lagrangian points as ours left orbit, if we’d leave the system.”

  Alexis frowned, wondering at how this Ness would ever think — and then she realized, or remembered, that she wasn’t with a Naval force this time. Those ships up there weren’t commanded by Queen’s officers going on about the Queen’s work. They were privateers — but one step, if that, removed from piracy themselves, and only a few words above the Royal Seal making the difference, and no sense of any real duty.

  Neither the captains nor crews of those ships were in it for any sort of honor or duty, they were after coin — and one couldn’t spend one’s coin if one had fallen in a hopeless fight.

  “They’re not Navy men, sir,” Villar said, echoing her thoughts. “Captain Spensley was all for it — he’d recovered enough to take Oriana’s quarterdeck back from Wakeling, you see, and it was him who Ness treated with the most. Pennywell was reluctant, but I think Gallion’s crew wanted out of this mess and he had little choice but to go along.” Villar wiped at his cheeks, smearing soot and tears in equal measure. “Lawson was opposed — and Kingston with her, of course.”

  Of course — Captain Kingston and his little Osprey were wont to follow Captain Lawson’s Scorpion like a lost puppy.

  Villar glanced to the side and spoke lower. “Captain Malcomson had some words, sir, both for the other captains and, ah, for you. He —”

  “Shooda split tae hacket dobber frae bawbag tae drampipe, ya daft caileag!”

  The big Scot’s bellowing voice echoed from her tablet’s speakers and nearly shook dust from the farmhouse’s ceiling.

  Kannstadt looked at her uncomprehendingly.

  Villar’s image glanced to the side.

  “He’s, ah, grabbing at his throat and …” He cleared his own throat. “Ah, lower parts, sir, and making a sort of … I think he means you should’ve gutted that bastard Spensley when you had a chance, sir.”

  “Frae bawbag tae drampipe!”

  “From, ah, throat to … ah, his personals, sir, if I have it right.”

  Alexis couldn’t but agree. Perhaps there was something to the observation Nabb and Isom had made that she tended to not be sure a fallen enemy was dead before she left him behind. Would things have truly been different if she’d finished Spensley in their duel? Perhaps, or perhaps
not — she couldn’t be sure another of the private ship captains wouldn’t have taken the lead in accepting Ness’ deal. She sighed — it was one thing to kill a man in a fight, quite another to do it when he was helpless and injured — at least to no other purpose. Which, she had to admit, she’d done before with throwing a bound Daviel Coalson off to drift and die alone in darkspace.

  “Well, yes, time, Captain Malcomson,” Villar was saying, “but I did have to translate what you — very well, sir, I’ll get to it!”

  Villar rubbed at his forehead.

  “In any case, sir, Ness would not allow us time to search for you and refused to admit his men had you captive, if they do — and, to be frank, Captain Spensley did not spend too very much effort in the asking, and him being the lead in talking to Ness, you see?”

  Villar paused and clenched his eyes shut. A tear leaked out and cleared a path down the smeared soot on his cheek.

  “I thought that we should stay, sir, me and the lads to look for you, but … I couldn’t think of how we’d get free of Erzurum if we did. Not after the others leave and it’s all back in the pirates’ hands again. Even Captain Malcomson can’t stay and fight with the Delight alone, so I don’t see how Mongoose’s crew could do so with no ship at all. And I thought that … what you would want of me was to get the lads free and away from …”

  Villar was silent for a long moment, more tears streaking his face.

  “We found no sign of the missing spacers, sir. There were a slaves at the installations we took, but they were all from Barbary planets — no navy men, at all, from any fleet. A few from merchantmen, it seemed, but that’s the risk of the Barbary. I’m sorry this was all for naught, sir, and there’s little hope any expedition will be sent in return. I — I still must think you would want me to get the lads home.”

  Alexis’ own throat tightened at the sight, knowing what the decision must cost and wishing she could have been there to ease it from him. Just one moment to tell him he was doing the right thing to get so many of Mongoose’s crew safe and away from Erzurum, no matter it meant abandoning her and her boat crew.