"Come ashore and let us try to teach you our profession sometime, goat-face."
"Ha! Master de Ferra, you'll fit in just fine in that wise. Maybe you'll never truly know shit from staysails, but you" ve got the manner of a grand first mate. Now, up the ropes. We're visiting the maintop this morning while this fine weather holds." "The maintop?" Locke stared up the mainmast, dwindling into the greyness above, and squinted as rain fell directly into his face. "It's bloody raining!"
"It has been known to rain at sea. Ain't nobody passed you the word?" Caldris stepped over to the starboard main shrouds; they passed down just the opposite side of the deck railing and were secured by deadeyes to the outer hull itself. Grunting, the sailing master hoisted himself up onto the rail and beckoned for Locke and Jean to follow. "The poor bastards on your crew will be up there in all weather. I'm not taking you out to sea as virgins to the ropes, so get your arses up after me!"
They followed Caldris up into the rain, carefully stepping into the ratlines that crossed the shrouds to provide footholds. Locke had to admit that nearly two weeks of steady hard exercise had given him more wind for a task like this, and begun to mitigate the pain of his old wounds. Still, the strange and faintly yielding sensation of the rope ladder was like nothing familiar to him, and he was only too happy when a dark yardarm loomed out of the drizzle just above them. A few moments later, he scampered up to join Jean and Caldris on a circular platform that was blessedly firm.
"We're two-thirds up, maybe," said Caldris. "This yard carries the main course." Locke knew by now that he was referring to the ship's primary square sail, not a navigational plan. "Further up, you got your topsails and t" gallants. But this is fine enough for now. Gods, you think you got it bad today, can you imagine climbing up here with the ship bucking side to side like a bull making babies? Ha!"
"Can't be as bad," Jean whispered to Locke, "as some fucking idiot toppling off and landing on one of us." "Will I be expected," said Locke, "to come up here frequently?" "You got unusually sharp eyes?" "I don't think so."
"Hell with it, then. Nobody'll expect it. Captain's place is on deck. You want to see things from a distance, use a glass. You'll have top-eyes hugging the mast further up to do your spotting."
They took in the view for a few more minutes, and then thunder rumbled in the near distance and the rain stiffened.
"Down we go, I think." Caldris rose and prepared to slide over the side. "There's tempting the gods, and then there's tempting the gods."
Locke and Jean reached the deck again with no trouble, but when Caldris jumped down from the shrouds he was breathing raggedly. He groaned and massaged his upper left arm. "Damn. I'm too old for the tops. Thank the gods the master's place is on the decks, too." Thunder punctuated his words. "Come on, then. We'll use the main cabin. No sailing today; just books and charts. I know how much you love those."
10
By the end of their third week with Caldris, Locke and Jean had begun to nurture guarded hopes that their brush with the two dockside assassins would not be repeated. Merrain continued to escort them each morning, but they were given some freedom at night provided they went armed and ventured no farther than the interior waterfront of the Arsenate District. The taverns there were thick with the Archon's soldiers and sailors, and it would be a difficult place for someone to lurk unnoticed in ambush.
At the tenth hour of the evening on Duke's Day (which of course, Jean corrected himself, the Verrari called Councils" Day), Jean found Locke staring down a bottle of fortified wine at a back table in the Sign of the Thousand Days. The place was spacious and cheerfully lit, noisy with the bustle of healthy business. It was a naval bar — all the best tables, under hanging reproductions of old Verrari battle pennants, were filled with officers whose social status was clear whether or not they were wearing their colours. Common sailors drank and gamed at the penumbra of tables surrounding them, and the few outsiders congregated at the little tables around Locke.
"I thought I might find you here," said Jean, taking the seat across from Locke. "What do you think you're doing?"
Tm working. Isn't it obvious?" Locke seized the wine bottle by its neck and gestured toward Jean. "This is my hammer." He then rapped his knuckles against the wooden tabletop. "And this is my anvil. I am beating my brains into a more pleasant shape." "What's the occasion?"
"I just wanted half a night to be something other than the captain of a phantom fucking sailing expedition." He spoke in a controlled whisper, and it was plain to Jean that he was not yet drunk, but more possessed of an earnest desire to be so. "My head is full of little ships, all going round and round gleefully making up new names for the things on their decks!" He paused to take a sip, then offered the bottle to Jean, who shook his head. "I suppose you" ve been diligently studying your Lexicon."
"Partly." Jean turned himself and his chair a bit toward the wall, to allow him to keep an unobtrusive eye on most of the tavern. "I" ve also penned some polite little lies to Durenna and Corvaleur; they" ve been sending notes to the Villa Candessa, asking when we'll come back to the gaming tables so they can have another go at butchering us."
"I do so hate to disappoint the ladies," said Locke, "but tonight I'm on leave from everything. No "Spire, no Archon, no Durenna, no Lexicon, no navigational tables. Just simple arithmetic. Drink plus drinker equals drunk. Join me. Just for an hour or two. You know you could use it."
"I do. But Caldris grows more demanding with every passing day; I fear we'll need clear heads on the morrow more than we'll need clouded ones tonight."
"Caldris's lessons aren't clearing our heads. Quite the opposite. We're taking five years of teaching in a month. It's all jumbling up inside me. You know, before I stepped in here tonight I bought half a peppered melon. The stall-woman asked which of her melons I wished cut, the one on the left or the right. I replied, "The larboard!" My own throat has turned traitorously nautical on me."
"It is something like a madman's private language, isn't it?" Jean slipped his optics out of his coat pocket and onto the end of his nose so he could examine the faint etching on Locke's wine bottle. An indifferent Anscalani vintage, a blunt instrument among wines. "So intricate in its convolutions. Say you have a rope lying on the deck. On Penance Day it's just a rope lying on the deck; after the third hour of the afternoon on Idler's Day it's a half-stroke babble-gibbet, and then at midnight on Throne's Day it becomes a rope again, unless it's raining."
"Unless it's raining, yes, in which case you take your clothes off and dance naked round the mizzenmast. Gods, yes. I swear, Je… Jerome, the next person who tells me something like, "Squiggle-fuck the right-wise cock-swatter with a starboard jib," is going to get a knife in the throat. Even if it's Caldris. No more nautical terms tonight." "You seem to be three sheets to the wind."
"Oh, that's your death warrant signed, then, four-eyes." Locke peered down into the depths of his bottle, like a hawk eyeing a mouse in a field far below. "There's altogether too much of this stuff not yet in me. Get a glass and join in. I want to be a barking public embarrassment as soon as possible."
There was a commotion at the door, followed by a general stilling of conversation and a rise in murmuring that Jean recognized from long experience as very, very dangerous. He looked up warily and saw that a party of half a dozen men had just set foot inside the tavern. Two of them wore the partial uniforms of constables, under cloaks, without their usual armour or weapons. Their companions were dressed in plain clothing, but their bulk and manner told Jean that they were all prime examples of that creature commonly known as the city watchman.