“I saw him taken, he and his sons,” I said. “Are the sons on the list?”
Kevin shook his head. “They are not mentioned.”
“They might have died in the way to the Empire.”
“Or it may be a bookkeeper’s error.” He put a hand on my arm. “Fear not, it may be sorted.”
“I fear he is lost.”
“We may be thankful that my family is coming home,” he said. “Thanks to our sale of the privateering commissions, I was able to raise the money and pay their ransoms. And a squadron of fast cruisers is now outfitting in Ethlebight, or have already gone to sea in search of prizes.”
I told Kevin some of the news from Berlauda’s court, and let him know of my various commercial ventures.
“Should I now sponsor you for membership in the Mercers?” asked he.
“I hardly think I’m rich enough.”
He looked rueful. “Nor am I now.”
I laughed. “After you’ve taken Lady Tern?” said I. “A fortune’s just fallen into your lap!”
“There will be no money from Lady Tern till the ship is condemned by a prize court, and in the meantime, I must pay the lawyers who argue our case. The ransoms took almost all my silver. I have precious little cash.”
“Well.” I shrugged. “If you need a loan . . .”
“To provision Meteor for another cruise will take more money than you possess, I fear. I’ll have to resort to a moneylender.”
“With Lady Tern as your security, you should have no trouble raising a loan. In fact, I can introduce you to some reliable bankers.”
“My family has a banker here.” Kevin poured claret into his goblet and gazed at it reflectively. “I think the wine is making me maudlin. We have been luckier than we have any right to be, given the war and all that happened to Ethlebight. And yet I feel sad that I had to pay ransoms, and think not to praise my good fortune that I could afford to pay without pawning my shirt.”
“It is hardly a night for sorrow,” said I. “Perhaps we should sing a song.”
He laughed. “Perhaps we should.”
“Yet before we break into ‘Saucy Sailor,’ ” I said, “my Sea-Holly sails for Longfirth in a few days with a cargo of soldiers and supplies for the garrison. Perhaps Meteor could convoy her to Bonille, and save me the cost of insurance. And then we two could go privateering, and leave Selford in its misery behind.”
Kevin had drunk enough wine to think this a perfect idea. While a winter storm roared and rattled through the city, we arranged to leave Lady Tern and its precious cargo in the hands of the lawyers, I paid my landlady three months’ rent in advance, new supplies were brought aboard, and the soldiers marched up Sea-Holly’s gangboard. The storm having passed, and the ships now busked and boun, we dropped down the Saelle on an ebb tide and set off across the Sea of Duisland to Longfirth, the Queen’s fortress-city in Clayborne’s rebellious domain.
The last of the storm wind came strong from the southwest, a near gale, and Sea-Holly had to reef its topsails, but Meteor lived up to its name, and plunged into each wave like an exuberant spaniel, the foam rising in white sheets from its stem. The backstays were taut as harp strings, and the timoneers fought with the whipstaff as the following sea crashed repeatedly into the rudder. The ship had come alive, the wind singing through the rigging, the timbers groaning as they worked, and flags snapping overhead. The ship’s master, Captain Oakeshott, kept a keen and practiced eye on the ship and its crew, so that nothing broke or was carried away.
I looked to windward, and saw a line of soldiers on Sea-Holly’s lee rail, every one of them seasick and jettisoning their cargo of breakfast into the ocean. There were five hundred such soldiers aboard, and I could only imagine the reeking mess belowdecks.
I was fortunate in not being subject to seasickness, and so I vastly enjoyed my day on the plunging ship, every moment taking me away from Selford, and—I hoped—from Orlanda. I hoped that, as is alleged for some spirits, she could not cross water, but then I reflected that she was a water nymph, and could hardly be brought to a halt by her native element. And then I began to worry what mischief she might be up to, were she aware of my voyage and of Lady Tern’s capture. Could Orlanda arrange for the prize court to refuse our suit? Or use her arts to persuade the Queen to confiscate the ship and all its cargo?
Darker suppositions entered my mind. She could set fire to the ship, create a total loss, and leave Kevin in debt. Or exert her power to start a plank on the Meteor, so that the ship filled and sank and drowned us all.
I tried to drive these worries from my mind, because if Orlanda were in some way overhearing my thoughts, I wanted not to offer her ideas that might surpass her own. And so I sang to myself “Saucy Sailor” and “The Female Smuggler” and other songs appropriate to the great ocean sea, and by and by my heart lifted, and delight began to fill me, for despite my troubles, I was young and at sea and on a great adventure.
During the brief voyage, I set myself to discover everything I could about the ship and its handling. I wished to be a good privateersman, and sent myself to school to become one.
Captain Oakeshott was a stern man, only two-and-thirty, though the wind, weather, and sun had left their marks on his face, and he looked older. His face had burnt to mahogany, and his long hair and full beard were black. He wore a gold ring in one ear, and looked most piratical.
The captain kept Meteor zigzagging in hopes of sighting a prize, but the storm seemed to have driven all ships off the ocean, and when night fell, we shortened sail and kept Sea-Holly close company. The screens that divided the great cabin were broken down, and Captain Oakeshott supped with us, and over fiery brandy told us a hundred stories of his life at sea, some of which were doubtless true. Then the screens went up again, and the captain retired to his half of the cabin, and Kevin to his own. I slung a hammock in Kevin’s cabin, and with the sea rocking me to slumber, I probably slept better than Kevin in his deep, coffin-like bed.
The weather moderated the next day, and Sea-Holly shook the reefs out of its sails, and we continued in company until the long, low, watery country around Longfirth came into sight, with its two lights aglow even in daylight. There we hove to, and raised a flag to summon a pilot.
The pilot was necessary, because the entrance to the River Brood was guarded by sandbanks, and these would likely have shifted in the late storm. The pilots took our two ships through the sandbanks, past the wooden lighthouses, and then guided us up the eight leagues of water that separated Longfirth from the ocean.
The wind was still favorable, and we arrived in the city just before sunset. Sea-Holly moored to one of the wharves in order to discharge its presumably grateful soldiers, but Meteor, which had no business in town, anchored in the river at a buoy, and a boat carried me, Kevin, and Oakeshott to shore. The captain had to report his business to the Lord Captain of the Port, Kevin wished to call on some of his father’s business associates, and I was free to wander over the town and enjoy myself.
I had never been in Bonille before. The inhabitants call it “the Island,” deriving the name from Bonne Isle, which I consider a false etymology. And in any case Bonille is not an island, but a peninsula; and Fornland, which is an island, is not in their view as much an island as Bonille. It is all part of their pretension.
When long ago the first of the Aekoi regiments marched to the west coast of Bonille, they viewed the piece of ocean before them and, not wanting to travel any farther, in hope called it Mare Postremum, meaning the Final Sea. They did not know that Fornland was over the horizon, and the whole great ocean beyond, all the way to the Land of Chimerae, and greatly would it have dismayed them if they had known it. So, Bonille is not an island, and the sea is not the final one, but these false ideas will probably persist to the end of time.