Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Intrigue

“I -” said the guard in a deep throaty rumble, but then he broke into a spasm of coughing. The sound of the cough was even deeper than the voice, and more forceful: Shaa felt himself rattled as if by a close peal of thunder. The cough, though, was also damp, if not out-and-out wet.

Shaa took another look at him. “Are you well?” he asked solicitously. “In my travels, I have been fortunate enough to acquire a smattering of medical wisdom which I would be pleased to place at your disposal.”

“Thank -”

“Stop that!” The official was now waving the unrolled sheet of parchment, revealing it to be indeed at least as overwrought as he himself. He had also, somewhat surprisingly, taken to yelling, himself, to boot.

“This man could use with some attention,” Shaa told him. “It is less than one would expect of a city such as Oolsmouth, a great city the likes of this, to fasten for its support and succor on the infirm, no matter their, shall we say, undeniable stature. I feel that -”

“Now you listen to me!” The official snapped his parchment in the air. “I am the duly constituted and jurisdictional representative of the Municipal Authority of Oolsmouth. This document impels and requires -”

“Did you say the ‘Municipal Authority’ of Oolsmouth?” asked Shaa.

“I most certainly did,” the official preened. “Do not interrupt –”

“Not the Authority of Ports and Tariffs?”

“I said, do not interrupt me wh -”

“That’s interesting,” Shaa said loudly but conversationally, again overriding the official’s momentum. “I was not aware that the Municipal Authority had any hint of magisterial prerogative over affairs of the harbor and its traffic. Now, if you had identified yourself as a direct functionary of the High Commissioner of Rates and Tithes, say, here on an excise matter or a question of customs duty, or indeed a delegated diplomat of the Oolsmouth Representative Council, your presence might be more amenable to straightforward understanding. Under the situation, though, I fail to see what significance your appearance here would present to anyone of us, or indeed the reason for your detaining us in our own prosecution of business. Accordingly -”

“Your ship and goods are hereby impounded under peremptory decree!”

“No, no, no,” said Shaa. “You surely have this all wrong. Orders of fiat are clearly proscribed by the Waterborne Edict of Pollison, at least without the Seal of Imperial Cognizance to override the routine procedures. Please show your -”

“Here is my writ, here is my warrant,” snarled the official, again waving the document out of reach.

Shaa ostentatiously cocked an eye in his attempt to follow the moving sheet. “I see no seal here,” he stated. Shaa had always been confident that his time on the Roosing Oolvaya docks as Waterfront Health Commissioner would come in handy again someday, not that he’d had the slightest idea how this was to come about. It was all becoming clear now, though. “This document, whatever it might charitably be called, plainly contains no Writ of Judicial Attainder, either. The value of your attempt at preemption is thus nil and moot. Even if it was validly executed, this ship is covered by the Concordat of Water-borne Enterprise, not by some extraordinary regional declaration. According to the River Commerce Measure of ‘93, as promulgated by O’Rinn and Finebold during the reign of -”

“All issues of river commerce are overridden while in port by the jurisdiction of the local municipality!”

“But clear precedent, for example that of Wisenfeller, Groth, and Knee-mare in the case of Craven Shipping Associates, states that a ship is not considering to be ‘in port’ until it has officially docked at a designated moorage site and has registered with the appropriate harbor authorities -”

“Established Oolsmouth practice is that all vessels within the greater Oolsmouth harbor zone are considered to be ‘in port’,” the dockmaster inserted mildly. “Furthermore – “

“I will concede that much temporarily, for the sake of argument,” said Shaa with a small bow toward the dockmaster, “and in recognition of your own stature and erudition, sir. Nevertheless, as captain of this ship -”

“You’re not the captain of this ship!” the official shouted.

“Don’t be absurd. Certainly I am.”

“Is this ship not the Not Unreasonable Profit , registered to Haalsen Traders and the property of Haalsen Groot?”

“Not the last time I checked,” Shaa said blandly. “What name did you see painted on the stern, at the area with the various identifications and symbols?”

The dockmaster, standing behind the official and out of his line of sight, had been eyeing the mate. Each time he did so, a grin appeared about to break out on his face, and his mouth contorted into a grimace as he tried to keep himself from an involuntary vocalization. Now he looked away from the mate again and said, in a voice that sounded as though someone was choking him gently about the throat. “The name I saw was Perfidious Stranger .”

“ Nor Unseasonable Profit , did you say?” Shaa responded. “I believe we did pass her upriver, now that you mention it; they were putting about and heading back to Roosing Oolvaya by the looks of the situation. We hailed them in case we could offer some assistance, but her master, a stout fellow by the cast of him, said all was well, they’d only just discovered they’d forgotten something important back in the last port.”

“No,” the official said, glaring at the dockmaster, and then whipping about to accuse Shaa again, “no! You’re all in league together, that much is obvious. I will hereby take possession of this vessel and throw the lot of you in -”

“Fetch our papers,” Shaa told the mate. The mate bent, opened a small sea chest at his feet, and withdrew an oilskin-wrapped parcel, which he handed to Shaa.

“Capital!” said Shaa, busying himself with untangling the contents. “First-rate crew, don’t you know, fully prepared for every eventuality, anything from a standard port call or a mere routine inspection – ah, here we have it. Them.” He held out a battered logbook and a small seal-spattered parchment.

The official grabbed the items out of Shaa’s hands and gazed at the parchment in disbelief. “Lies, more lies!” His tone, though, was a bit less sure of itself. Was he starting to hedge, perhaps even to doubt? “According to this scrap, this ship is, is -”

“You see?” Shaa said, leaning over to indicate one section with his finger. “ Perfidious Stranger , as this good man stated.”

“Yes!” the official said. “No!” He stared at his own parchment in sudden distress. “The description is exact, the cargo manifest complete, the -”

“What cargo manifest?” asked Shaa. “How would anyone know what cargo we’ve aboard? Excepting myself, of course. We concluded our own contracts upriver, a few particularly good sessions of dealing if you must know, and I don’t mind if you do, and what with an extra spot of trading on the dock no one could possibly predict the contents of our hold. This is all very irregular.”

Shaa suspected the official knew he had overstepped in his eagerness. He was, though, an obvious bureaucrat, and was clearly not about to let a small matter like an untrue fact put him at a disadvantage. The man swung on the dockmaster. “You are here to assist me in impounding this ship and its passengers. Now issue your orders! Is that clear?”

“May I see those?” said the dockmaster, indicating Shaa’s documents. The official thrust them at him. Chewing idly on his lip, he looked closely at the parchment of registration, then thumbed through the smudged, splattered, and sea-stained book. Shaa continued his pose of nonchalance, hoping nevertheless that the man wouldn’t decided to rub at the gold leaf of the seals; the black ink he knew was dry, and of course the signatures, but the decoration-work had not had quite enough time to fully set. However, it was apparent that the dockmaster recognized the newly-demoted mate, or thought he did, and found at least that part of the matter seriously amusing, and when that was coupled with his obvious distaste for the official and the whole nature of the proceedings, there was a reasonable chance that even if he found some irregularity he would be inclined to overlook it.