The Fox Read online

  The only thing left from before was the fantastically expensive wooden tub full of magically pure and warm water built into the cubby off the main room.

  Tau cautiously drew a breath but caught a faint whiff of Coco’s scent and felt his throat close with disgust. It was so faint it might only be memory, but he crossed behind Inda and sat on the bench, turning his head to breathe the misting rain that wafted in through the open stern windows.

  Jeje’s gaze swept the room. Tau had gone remote again, his face toward the night sky. Inda had maps and charts spread before him on the table. Lamps swung above, and bent over him was the tall, lean redhead with the Marlovan accent. Near them lounged the thin fellow with a wide forehead and a sharp-cut face that tapered down to a pointed chin, the one they called Rat. Thog lurked under a bulkhead, Uslar and Mutt sitting at her feet.

  Jeje joined them, refusing to formulate her fears into words. But she was honest enough to recognize that they were there.

  Inda had bathed, his wet hair hanging down his back. On the deck behind his chair he’d laid a long, luxuriously fluffy towel to catch the drips. Inda wore a new shirt someone had given him, with the loose sleeves he preferred, to hide his knives in their sheaths. The neck of the shirt was, as usual, carelessly half-laced.

  Jeje glimpsed the bath in the small cabin behind Inda— and goggled at its size. Three people could comfortably sit in that thing!

  Inda saw the direction of her glance, and grinned. “I told the crew everyone gets a turn, soon’s we’re done talking. That should keep ’em from mutiny, at least for a day.”

  Dasta slipped in; at a gesture from Inda he closed the cabin door and stood against it, arms crossed.

  A secret conference? Jeje’s heart thumped and she saw in Tau’s stillness that he shared the same apprehension.

  Inda lit a lamp, leaving the glass top off so the flame was naked. He set it in the middle of the table, on top of his charts, with the deliberation of ritual, then stepped back, the warm golden light showing the contours of his face; in that light his skin was smooth and unscarred.

  “I wanted to hold a memorial,” he said in a tentative voice so different than what they’d heard on deck that long bloody day and night. The contrast was startling. He bent his head, gazing at the candle as if emotion were an uncertain thing. “Kodl. Dun. Niz—all of them.” He glanced over his shoulder, not meeting Fox’s or Barend’s eyes. “You can join if you want. Add in anyone you missed from your days with Walic.”

  No one spoke or moved, though Barend shifted; the candle flames glowed, twin flames, in Thog’s wide black eyes.

  Inda drew in a deep breath—they all heard the hiss— then lifted the candleholder and passed it in a circle, his eyes closed. They didn’t hear all the words, for he mumbled, his voice monotone, but he obviously had thought during that long day: he spoke almost without hesitation, naming every one of the dead from their old crew. Missing no one, not even the very new hires.

  Then he sat down, head still bent.

  For a long, painful moment no one moved—not because they did not want to, but because yet another shock on top of so many was overwhelming.

  So Tau rose from the bench, came forward, and spoke to the flame, his voice clear, pitched exactly right, the words sympathetic and appropriate: the only one there who recognized the words of an ancient play was Fox. But he said nothing.

  After that it was easier for Inda’s old crew. They all spoke, one after another, even the two boys, Uslar whispering, Mutt muttering so low they couldn’t hear him, until he stopped, wiped his eyes with his knuckles, then limped back to Thog’s side.

  Last was Thog, who passed her hands over the candle, then just stood, unspeaking, so still it was obvious to all her testimony was entirely inward.

  When she finished, Inda turned Fox’s and Barend’s way. Fox gestured, palm down; Barend’s sharp cheekbones were ridged with red. He stayed where he was.

  Inda moved to the door, opened it, and there was the cook, waiting. Inda stood back, waving him in.

  The cook paused just outside the door, looking around uneasily.

  “Come in, Cook,” Inda said. “Or would you rather take back your name? We’re here to discuss changes. That could be one.”

  “M’name is Lorm, Jarad Filic Lorm, if ye want ’em all, but Lorm’s good as any, shared wi’ m’dad and brother.”

  “Then Lorm it is. This here is Barend, and you can call me Inda. We’re through with Walic’s cursed tags.” Inda turned to face the redhead, as if an idea had occurred to him. “Are you—”

  “Fox will do,” said he, in Iascan. “It was a private nickname in the family. Walic got it from me inadvertently, when I was too dazed to think, but I believe it can be maintained. ”

  Inda hesitated, lips parted, and Tau and Jeje saw that Fox’s words held meaning for the three Marlovans that bypassed everyone else. Then Inda carefully touched the slash on the side of his jaw, made by an ax wielded by one of the second mate’s men. “We’re here because I think we’d better understand one another now. Then settle on what comes next, before we get a snooze-watch. When the others wake up they’ll be rested enough to start thinking. If we don’t have a united force, then we’ll be fighting again—on a ship that’s going to broach to if we’re hit with any more storms.”

  Fox crossed the cabin, leaned on the opposite wall. “And so?”

  Inda sat back. “So tell me what you see us doing.” He gestured broadly. “All of you.”

  Surprise was the main reaction: Tau saw it in quick exchanges of questioning looks, shiftings, a couple of inarticulate mutters.

  “I want to fight pirates,” Thog stated.

  Inda flicked a glance Lorm’s way. “You?”

  Lorm shook his big head. “I got what I wanted when I slit Gaffer’s throat. He—” The man dropped his gaze and shook his head again harder, as if to dislodge unwelcome memories.

  Inda put his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands, careful not to touch the red ax slash. “Go on, Lorm.”

  The cook looked upward, the liquid gathering in his eyes spilling down his furrowed cheeks. “It’s just . . . I used to cook for a fine eatery. Sarendan coast. Famed for me sauces. Coco’s House was down the street. We used to send meals there for a price.” He looked around, then finished in a rush. “Coco joined up with him. Part of her price was me. They crashed in one night. I refused—didn’t want to go to sea, much less with pirates—so quick as death Walic killed my wife. My oldest child. Coco laughing. Clapping her hands when they . . . when they . . .” His hand arced out and away, as if he could thrust memory out of his mind.

  Tau had drifted unnoticed near the table. “You don’t have to go on,” he said kindly. “Unless it will help.”

  Lorm faced him, saw the compassion there, and drew in a shuddering breath. “I told Walic I’d join. So I could at least save the little one. But he killed her anyway, sayin’ that now I’d got nothing to come back for. Then he had them mates fire the house. Her giggling the whole time.”

  The others shuffled, made sympathetic murmurs, faces expressive of vicarious anger, all except for Fox, who gazed at him with narrowed eyes.

  Fox was unsettled—no, he felt that he’d failed himself, or the cook, or someone. He had traveled so long with this man but had never heard a whisper of that—nor had he thought to ask. In a couple of months Inda had figured it out. Either he or Tau, but it was to Inda that Tau would speak.

  “So what do you want to do now?” Inda asked, his hoarse voice cracking on the last word, but no one smiled.

  “Walic was right. Nothin’ to go back for. I’ll cook for you, but willing, now.” Lorm’s hands trembled, and he longed for a drink to steady them. “And fight, if need be.”

  “Fair enough. We need you. Barend?”

  Fox struggled against anger as well as tiredness, wondering what else was he going to learn that he should have known.

  The possibility of taking command now had narrowed to stabbing Inda
in the back. Just as Barend had implied up on the yard.

  He didn’t hear Barend’s I’m with you, but he already knew where Barend’s loyalties would turn. Had turned.

  “Fox?”

  “I see us going after wealth,” Fox stated, smiling. Right now he was, perforce, a follower; if he went after Inda (which he was not inclined to do) he would be alone. And even the bawdy-boy could fight.

  So he would follow. But he would never be submissive— or serious. “Wealth and fighting, for sport.”

  “Jeje?”

  A shrug. “Hadn’t thought past finding you.” She spoke in a gruff voice, eyes lowered, and Inda wondered with an inward pang if she’d come for Tau, and not all of them as he’d thought. No, that wasn’t Jeje’s way. She would have come even if Tau, and not Testhy, had been on the Vixen. There was some other question in her mind but if she wasn’t ready to speak, it was useless to press her.

  “Tau?”

  “I would like a life of quiet ease, of course. What else?”

  Quiet ease. Tau was being indirect again, not meeting Inda’s eyes.

  A deep breath and coldness in his veins. Inda had it: Tau—and probably Jeje, too—expected him to turn pirate. That’s probably what they’d been talking about on the mast.

  No. Do them justice. They were afraid he would turn pirate. After all, he was here, wasn’t he? And again Rig’s contempt scorched across his inner eye.

  He forced the image away. “Dasta?”

  “Stay with you. Whatever you think we should do.”

  “Me too,” Mutt said, from the floor by Thog’s feet.

  “And me,” Tcholan spoke up, from the opposite corner, his Khanerenth accent clear.

  “And me,” chimed in Uslar.

  Despite his intent to keep emotion from decision, their trust seared Inda. Not Fox, of course, standing there lean and still as a knife, his manner wary and sardonic, but the rest, he knew they were waiting for him to choose what they should do.

  His fingers drummed lightly on the edge of one of the charts as he counted up his options: they could do anything— sell the ship, part, run, hide. They could even, as Tau seemed to fear, set up as pirates. But Inda knew what Tdor, the net maker, would say to that: If you don’t make the net, you tear it.

  He answered Tdor’s steady thirteen-year-old eyes, so clear in his mind: If I’m not allowed to be a maker, at least I can rid the world of the tearers, can’t I?

  He leaned back in his chair. “So who is the worst pirate in the eastern waters, now that Walic is gone?”

  “Boruin,” Fox and Tau said at once, echoed a moment later by Lorm, who added, gruffly, “Much worse than Walic. She’s not only cruel like him, but crazy and strong. Majarian, her mate, is even stronger. He don’t plan, he’s the muscle. Plans are hers. Walic talked about her a lot, when he had me serving in the cabin.”

  Fox added, “Walic’s mates talked about them as well. It’s as C—Lorm says.”

  “Good,” Inda said.

  Because he was still sorting things out in his tired, aching head, he missed the flickers of surprise around him. But no one spoke. They watched and waited.

  He opened his eyes, knowing he’d decided. Now to sound assured, if he could. “Tau, you’re the only one who won’t get his wish if you accept my plan.”

  Accept. All of them heard that word and again, life sustained a change.

  “I’m desolated.” Tau made an airy gesture, causing laughter, a noise of release more than genuine humor.

  Inda lifted his head. “Dasta, any mates you can trust on the Sea-King? We could sail back, use Barend’s ruse again.”

  Dasta pursed his lips, then slowly shook his head.

  “I don’t know. Maybe a few might be right for us. But you can’t be sure because Walic had the ship full of spies. We never dared talk much.”

  “Then they’re on their own,” Inda said. “And so are we. We have a damaged ship that’s slow with an unseasoned mast. We have pirates as well as privateers for a crew. Some we can probably trust, some not. I have a price on my head, no matter why, and the Venn are looking for me. None of us westerners can go home until the blockade is lifted. If that happens in our lifetime.”

  He paused. They were listening. “Meanwhile, here’s Walic’s chart. His goal was to join the Brotherhood of Blood. He has all their ships listed, at least the ones usually found in eastern waters, and he’s got their last known positions charted. We can keep adding to that, if we like.”

  “To avoid ’em?” Jeje asked, her straight brows furrowed.

  “No.” Inda opened his hands.

  “To join them?” Fox asked lazily.

  “No.” Inda did not miss the subtle signs of relief: lowered shoulders, hands loosening, deep breaths.

  He went on as though he hadn’t noticed. “We have plenty of money in the chests down in the hold. Hire new crew at Freeport, train and test ’em. Training in hand-to-hand fighting, boarding at sea, boarding at anchor, giving chase. Then, when we’re ready, we pick something from this list—” He touched Walic’s cherished chart with its chalk marks in red for Brotherhood ship positions. “We find something fast and taut. And take it.”

  “And?” Jeje asked.

  “And make ourselves rich by hunting the pirates who have the most of everything—fast ships, gold, costly goods, all of it stolen at the price of blood and death.”

  Barend whistled. “You mean what I think?”

  Inda touched his jaw and winced. “That hurts more than slices usually do. Ax must’ve been used to hack away at some poison bush.” He put his hand down. “If you stay with me, the plan is this,” he said not to the people in the cabin, but to Rig glaring back from memory in silent accusation. “We’re gonna make our first big strike at Boruin and Majarian, and then we’re going to war against the Brotherhood of Blood.”

  Chapter Ten

  "THE Venn and their allies will come by night, soon as the winds change.”

  Harbormaster Sholf—newly in charge of the harbor at the Nob at the tip of the Olaran peninsula—frowned at the weather-seamed old Delf woman.

  Everyone in his new office stared at her. Delfin Islanders looked like birds, ungainly birds, but when they spoke, anyone who had anything to do with the sea listened.

  Harbormaster Sholf, who took over after the slaughter of his old uncle when the pirates burned down the Nob, could count the times a Delf had offered information: three times in his fifty years. And this was one of those three rare times.

  His staff was appalled. Only Mardric, the tall young man lounging near the doorway, seemed amused.

  “So what do we do, stop rebuilding?” asked Sholf’s chief scribe, a hard-working young woman who had lost half her family in the pirate attack.

  Sholf wanted to say, “Good question,” except he couldn’t. He had to seem calm and decisive—a leader—because he knew he did not look like one. His uncle had said, When you’re almost always the shortest man in the room, not to mention the stoutest, people tend to look to you for meals, not for decisions.

  “Even if we all fight, we can’t win,” protested the new guild master, hitching up his worn sash under his massive belly.

  At least he’s fatter than me, Sholf thought, distracted by the movement. If much taller.

  They all had lost people during the killing spree before the pirates looted the city—a day-long orgy of drinking, singing, fighting, and rutting by the light of the fire—then departed on the morning tide, leaving the devastation to be found by those who had survived by hiding in the ancient caves below the southern cliffs.

  I will be expected to stand there with a sword in hand if the pirates come again, he thought now. And die like my uncle.

  There was one alternative, but the others would hate it so much that he had to let them find it on their own or they would argue against it all night.

  And so he waited while they suggested everyone hide and brick up the ancient tunnel entrance. No, that’s a stupid idea, let’s all t
ake to the sea. And what if the Venn are there, behind the pirates, like everyone says they are? We’ll fight. We can’t fight. Hide. No. Then we may as well give up the city altogether. Some kind of plan? Oh, yes, a plan against how many pirates?

  It was Mardric, the lounger—leader of the Resistance to the Marlovan conquerors—who spoke up at last, saying unexpectedly, “Tell the Marlovans.”

  Everyone fell silent.

  Mardric chuckled as he fingered back a lock of wavy black hair that had fallen across his brow. “Come now,” he chided, waving a hand to and fro. “Would you not like to see pirates take arms against the Marlovans? I know I would.”

  That caused another hubbub, everyone trying to speak down the others. Yes, watch them get slaughtered. They think they are so superior. How would they measure against pirates? Taken by surprise. Can they be taken by surprise? But it was his chief scribe who gave Mardric a contemptuous toss of the head before saying, “If they fight, it’s for us.”

  Gradually the voices died away, some looking at her, and she raised her chin and stated more firmly, “They’d be fighting for us.”

  “But that’s supposedly in the treaty they forced on us,” the guild master pointed out, hitching up his sash again.

  “Yes,” the scribe said. “Exactly. They did take on the cost of the rebuilding. Just as they promised. So if they take on the pirates . . .” She groped, as if the right words hovered in the air in front of her.

  “If they defend our city against the pirates,” Sholf said, “then we have accepted their treaty.”

  “So you’ve decided?” Mardric asked, inspecting the clean, short nails on one shapely hand.

  A few beginning protests, one snort, but most indicated agreement, however reluctant.

  Mardric stared across the room, eyes narrowed, then said, “So you expect us to accept their yoke, like obedient oxen?”