“And you are?”
“Marius Helles.” Marius gave the captain a good looking over. He was tall, thin, with a nose like a flamingo’s beak and a chin to match. His hair was tied back in the style favoured by certain Scorban nobles who had the sense to know exactly how long their family was, and wished for it to continue. His uniform, while certainly conforming to the standards of the Scorban Trading Guild in cut and style, looked to have been hand-sewn by merchants who wished to keep all their fingers, and knew exactly which material would be most costly for the job. Almost every trader Marius had ever met dressed for comfort first, warmth and dryness second, and protocol last. This man looked as if none of these attributes rated quite as highly as dancing. He drew up a pince-nez on a chain, and stared down at Marius from a mental distance of many miles.
“And just what do you think you’re doing on my ship, Mister Helles?”
“Spone sent me up.”
“And?”
“I’m your passenger. My companion left a deposit to secure a cabin.”
“Ah. Yes.” The captain leaned back in his chair and folded long hands over his stomach. “Your strump… companion.”
“Is there a problem?”
The captain stared at Marius for several seconds, taking in the hood pulled over his face, the guarded stance, the motley combination of mismatched clothing. He smiled, a tight little thing worn by anyone who negotiates from a position of complete strength, and who has made their final assumption long before the voices have run out.
“A small one,” he said. “The amount she left with us. It was, shall we say–”
“A deposit.”
“Yes. Quite so. Passage itself will take rather more remuneration, I’m afraid. A passenger takes up considerable space, particularly one who will contribute nothing to our trading mission.”
“How much?” Marius had been expecting this sort of tactic. After all, when everyone can see the barrel, it’s only the one stretched across it who has to worry about its size.
“Let me see…” The captain counted off on his fingers, silently staring at the ceiling. “Another eighty riner should cover our expenses. That is,” he added as Marius became even stiller, “unless there’s a problem.”
“No.” Marius sucked his teeth. He needed this man. “Not a problem. Eighty riner, food and board in a private cabin from here to your destination. You are travelling to the Faraway Isles?”
“Port Moubard, actually. Will that suffice?” The amusement in the captain’s voice could have strangled a parrot. Marius resisted the temptation to think of the captain as a parrot.
“I’m not fussy.”
“Evidently not.” The captain indicated the desk. “Payment in advance, naturally.”
“When do you sail?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“When do you sail?”
The captain stared at Marius. Marius stared back. Faced with the darkness under his unmoving hood, the captain blinked and made busy with his parchment.
“First tide tomorrow morning. I’ll be battening up three hours before first light.”
“You’ll have your money by dusk.”
“Good.” The captain waved towards the door – Marius was dismissed. “Be here by then, with my money, and I’ll have a space cleared for you among the men.”
“I said a private cabin.”
“That’s not possible, I’m afraid. We simply do not have the room to–”
“Ninety five riner, for a room above decks.”
“Fine, fine.” The captain returned to his parchment. “Let it not be said that Ethamanel Bomthe was not an understanding man.”
“Bomthe?”
The captain looked up.
“You’re aware of me?”
“Not a bit.” Marius swung about and pushed through the doors, leaving the captain blinking behind him.
Ninety-five riner in just over fifteen hours. One thing was certain – Marius wasn’t going to make that kind of money from honest work. Neither was he going to be able to pick enough purses. That left few options. Marius strolled down the gangway, deep in thought, dodging the stream of navvies still loading the Minerva with wares. At the bottom, the man called Spone gave him a distracted wave.
“All right for the off, then?”
Marius waved back. “Just getting my stuff.”
“Right you are. See you for embarkation. Don’t get in any trouble.”
Trouble, Marius thought as he headed off down the docks. That’s just what I intend to get into.
ELEVEN
North of the river, Borgho City takes on a different aspect. Whereas the south quadrants are closed in, warrens of alleyways and tenements, and progress is often marked as much by who decides to block off which alley mouth with their stall as by a traveller’s memory of the streets, the northern quadrants are more spacious. The streets are wider, the guards who patrol them – and guards actually do patrol them, which is another distinct difference – are cleaner, and once you crest the first line of foothills and move onto the slopes of Varius’ Folly, the hill that dominates this end of town, the houses begin to resemble small palaces rather than apartments, separated from each other by orchards and fences of ornate metalwork. There is good reason for this. Back when Borgho City was the centre of its own little fiefdom – before King Nandus disappeared on his disastrous campaign against the ocean, and the Prince of the House of Scorby had swept down at the front of ten thousand men and announced that Borgho was now part of the new Kingdom of Scorby, much to the citizens’ indifference – the hillside had been occupied by whatever nobles the King had anointed each week. Even Littleboots had lived there, towards the top, in gold-plated stables that stretched for half an acre, with his own liveried servants and a field of finest grass, imported from Feen. The gold-plating had lasted less than twenty-four hours after the servants realised their equine master wasn’t coming back. But the stables still stood, as well as the warren of escape tunnels the King had built underneath, for Littleboots to use in the case of revolution. The whole thing had been claimed by the horse’s neighbour, a duke of some renown who swapped killing foreigners for importing their artwork, and the stables now stood as a magnificent folly at the bottom of his extended gardens. Whether the Duke knew of the tunnels beneath the stables was a matter of conjecture. His son did, and addicted to gambling as he was, it provided the perfect locale for a gaming hall of no little grandeur and quite a lot of bankruptcies.
All Marius needed was a stake, and a table to join.
The stake was no problem. Marius had had very little opportunity to be thankful for the deadness of his flesh, but the gewgaws he had lifted from Captain Bomthe’s side table made no impression on his pain receptors, even as the motion of walking caused them to dig into his back and buttocks. With a definite destination in mind, and a time frame to match, he wasted little time in extricating himself from the docks and striding through the peacock-coloured frontages of the fashion houses and lending men towards the gentle rise that marked the end of the commercial quarters and the beginning of their residential area. No aspiring merchants here – the owners of these double and triple storied keeps, surrounded by as many square feet of lawn as could be placed between their bedrooms and the press of humanity beyond the stone walls and elaborate metal gates, were the unofficial rulers of Borgho City. The King of Scorby may be sovereign of every stone in the ground and man or woman who walked across them, but just try ruling the citizenry without first feeding them, or clothing them, or at the very least, letting them watch pretty women take their clothes off while getting smashed on a Saturday night. The higher up the slope, the larger the lawn, and the more powerful the resident. At the top, well, Marius had been close, and the men and women who lived there were as far removed from the ordinary citizens of the city as Marius was from his birthright, and with as little concern for it. Right now, however, as he did his best to saunter as unobtrusively as possible along the well-lit promenades, and avoid the attentions of the fit and alert guardsmen who strolled along in pairs, he had a residence of only middling intimidatory presence on his mind.