The families in the crowd were outraged. They had already paid a fee just to enter the square, on the off-chance of finding work for their boys. Even the orphans who came alone had paid a copper whelk.
"Flikkermen! Who hired them? That rancid Company?"
"The marines shouldn't work with them bloodworms!"
"Ehe, tinshirt! Bring that Ormali cub back! Changed our minds!"
The latter shouts were from the fishermen, but the marine ignored them. He seized Pazel again and dragged him to the scaffold.
The blond officer looked him over, then scowled at the guard. "An Ormali! Are you a soldier or a junk peddler, sir?"
"Why, he's top quality!" cried the soldier. "Sponsored by the fishermen's club and all. You're a seasoned tarboy, aren't you, cub?"
Pazel hesitated only an instant. None of these screaming townsfolk knew what it was like to be an Ormali in the Empire of Arqual. However bad Rose made life on the Chathrand, it would be better than starving, or being sent to break stones in the Forgotten Colonies.
"I am, sir!" he cried. "I was much appreciated by Captain Nestef of the Eniel, who told me I knew my rigging like a true sailor, and my knots, and my flags, and my signals, to say nothing of my dispatch in foul weather, and he never meant to leave me ashore, I'm-"
"Buffoon!" said the blond officer to the marine. "Take that chattering monkey from my sight."
"You watch your tongue," growled the soldier. "I don't care how rich that old woman's made ye-"
"Rich enough to tire of swindlers," said the officer.
"You're addressing a member of His Supremacy's Tenth Legion!"
"Then our labors pay for your grog and boots and girlies. Now get hence."
Watching his luck slip away, Pazel took a drastic risk: he tugged at the first mate's sleeve. "Please, sir! I won't chatter, or act monkeyish, I was not known for either quality on the Eniel, where Captain Nestef complimented me on four occasions, twice in the presence of gentlemen, sir, and he said I was a tarboy of distinction, and that I was helpful on deck and below, and that my tea was fit for court, that I skinned my potatoes with great efficiency, wasting nothing but removing the rot, sir, and-"
"Mr. Uskins," said a deep voice. "Take the boy."
It was Captain Rose. Pazel looked up at the pulpit, and for an instant the big man stared back. The mouth was lost in the red beard, but the green eyes were chilling.
"My father had a chatterbox among his boys," he said. "The tailor stitched his mouth shut with twine."
Uskins tossed the marine a coin and waved irritably at Pazel. "Over there with the rest. Go on!"
Already wondering if he had made a mistake, Pazel obeyed. The boys were huddled together, whimpering. Some were mere urchins, come to work for food and shelter on the Great Ship; a few had the salt-roughened hair and strong arms of tarboys. It seemed they had passed the night on the wharf, huddled in doorways, abandoned barges, crates. But they had fled in a heartbeat at the sight of Rose.
Like all seafarers, Pazel had heard of Captain Nilus Rotheby Rose. He was the most famous commander of the Chathrand, and the longest serving. Famous because crafty: rumor had it that he had once smuggled a fortune in contraband silks out of Ibithraйd by sewing the priceless cloth up inside double-sails. And famous because crueclass="underline" another story had him hanging a second mate by the ankles from the bowsprit for ten leagues. The crime was yawning on watch.
Rose was also the only captain of the Great Ship ever to have been fired. Pazel had no idea why. But the Chathrand Trading Family set the highest standards in the Empire. It was a rare and shocking thing for one of their commanders to lose his ship.
And completely unheard of, a miracle almost, for him to get it back.
A few minutes more and some thirty boys had been purchased. A single glance told Pazel that he was the only Ormali. No surprise there. But it was startling how many misfits the Flikkermen had rounded up. Less than two-thirds had the black hair and broad shoulders of Arqual. The other boys were of all kinds: one had skin the color of brandy, another startling green eyes, two others sky-blue stars tattooed on their foreheads. Pazel had seen such boys over the years, but never in an Arquali crew. They would be outcasts, like Pazel himself. And that could mean-why not? — that they would be his friends.
And at the very least, Jervik was not among them.
Now the first mate, Uskins, turned to face the boys. He was smiling, suddenly. The change in his looks was so extreme he seemed almost a different man.
"Well and good, lads!" he boomed. "You've no cause for worry. Mr. Fiffengurt here will be taking you aboard. He's our quartermaster, and a Sorrophrani blood and bone, and he'll be in charge of you for the whole of your service. Any troubles you have, he'll see you through."
The still-restless townsfolk, and many of the boys, sighed their relief. The quartermaster's was an important rank in the Merchant Service, and Fiffengurt (there he was, descending the gangway) was a man they trusted. He would take care of their boys, and shield them from Rose. Pazel, however, was unconvinced, and he saw the same caution in the eyes of the older tarboys. Every voyage began with smiles and soothing noises.
Fiffengurt drew near. He was thin and strong, a boiled bone of a man with knobby joints and untidy white whiskers (a bit like shaving lather) on his cheeks and chin. He said a cordial good morning, and smiled at the boys. Or did he? Was he looking at something behind them?
Fiffengurt saw the confused turning of heads, and laughed.
"Lazy eye!" he told them, pointing to his right. "Pay no attention to this one, it's blind anyway. My left eye's the one that sees you. Listen: Mr. Uskins told you right. You tarboys are in my keeping. Do right by me and I'll do the same for you; do wrong and you'll find me a right old terror! Now let's be still and hear what the captain has to say."
Rose had indeed stepped behind the lectern. His heavy hands gripped its sides, and he looked down at the townsfolk with an inscrutable cold gaze, and waited. Again, the shouts and murmurs died away.
"You think you know me," said Rose, in a low voice that somehow rolled across the Plaza. "You do not. There was a Captain Rose who sailed the Great Ship, in all the waters from here to Serpent's Head, and who lost her ten years ago-but I am not that man. Before you stands one who has known the burden of power, and craves it no more. People of Sorrophran, I now live to serve, as once I lived to be served. At the pleasure of His Supremacy I will command Chathrand once more, but when this voyage ends, so too ends my career as a mariner. I will retire to the Isle of Rappopolni. I am an aspirant to the Brotherhood of Temple Roln."
The old woman jumped so violently that her cat leaped to the ground. Mr. Uskins gaped. Around the plaza there were chuckles, grunts of disbelief. Rappopolni was a sacred island in the Narrow Sea. Thousands visited its temple each year. The monks of Temple Roln embraced a life of poverty and self-sacrifice: two qualities no one would ever have attributed to Rose.
"In his kindness," Rose went on, "the Emperor has sent me a spiritual companion. On this voyage, Brother Bolutu will help me in my devotions, even as he tends, with equal compassion no doubt, to the animals in our hold."
The black man did not so much as blink. He watched Rose as if observing a natural curiosity, such as a snake swallowing an egg twice the size of its head.
"To another matter now," said Rose. "I know that many of you fine sailors hoped to sign on this morning. It is true that we need more deckhands-three hundred more, indeed, to complete our crew. But I regret to say we will be signing crew in Etherhorde, and Etherhorde alone."
Now the people howled. "Treachery! Trickery!" A woman raised her fist and shouted: "You'll take the lads but not their fathers, will 'ee? What's it you plan to do with 'em that you can't have the fathers aboard?"