Jay Lake - Endurance

“Sir?” I asked quietly. This man and I had our differences, but we’d always shared respect. Unlike some people I knew, he’d be unlikely to shove stinging nettles or a bag of scorpions upon me.

“You are back in Copper Downs, without patronage,” Nast said in that thin, pinched voice. “The clerks have collected a purse to ensure you may live decently.”

He was right, so far as it went. My bonds were still held by Nast on my behalf, but they were hardly spending money. I could buy passage across the sea, but not pay for a basket of rolls with them. I allowed my doubt to sharpen my tone. “Is this your way of reducing the terror that I will doubtless once more wreak upon your city, or do your people actually care so for me?”

“A tool can serve two purposes. You will not go hungry, and a few less windows may be broken. We shall all rejoice on both counts.” His face pinched into what might have been a smile. “The more, ah, impulsive… among my staff also hold you in high regard. They seem to credit you with much to their benefit.”

“Thank you,” I said simply, and glanced about at the clerks and their assistants crowding the halls, oh-so-carefully not watching me in return.

Gossip eddied in currents behind me as I left them all behind. A small smile lingered on my face.

My experiences in the teahouse left me very much wanting a decent, protected place to sleep. The weather was already too close and miserable to curl up on a rooftop or find a reasonable straw heap. I could not risk the sort of cough I’d catch in the chilled damp of winter’s encroachment. The Tavernkeep’s establishment was impossible, of course, with this new embassy in the city and looking for me there. I did not feel ready to approach Endurance in his temple. Which left me with remarkably few options, short of simply renting a room like any traveler who ever came to any city on the plate of the world.

Even with some funds now beyond the few silver and copper taels I’d carried with me from Ilona’s house, that did not appeal. Too much like an animal going to ground in an unfamiliar burrow.

So I did what I’d so often done in my later days in Kalimpura. I headed for the docks and found a winesink where I could occupy a bench in a dark corner. Along the way, I bargained a patched blue and green robe from a ragpicker for half a copper tael-I refused him a kiss-to wear over the silly leathers. For the moment, I stayed with the black for my evening’s excursion. There are some places where appearance matters.

At random I chose a tavern called the Bilge Pump. Low ceilings, scattered tables battered by years of rough use and daily fights. A fireplace sat cold, though coals were heaped on the grate for later in the evening. The place smelled of bar fug-spilled beer, the old salt of sweat and bad food, and something rotting amid the cracks in the floorboards.

In other words, a typical sailors’ bar, filled with the chatter of a dozen languages, and men of all sizes who shared a common look in their eyes and set to their stance. Working a deck with wide horizons will do that to a person.

No women but the serving girls. Ordinary enough for a waterfront bar. In my leathers with my ragged hair, so long as I kept my face tucked down, I could still pass for a boy. The scars helped that.

Not much longer would I remain a lad, not as the baby grew, but for tonight the disguise would hold.

I kicked a drunk off a bench and placed my back to the wall, my little bundle beside me. Ordering a plate of pickled eggs and a tankard of their darkest ale, I set myself to the old game from Kalimpura. I simply listened.

In those days, as in my years since, I was hot for news of the child trade. While that evil had never been struck from my list of worries about the world, now I listened simply for the sake of hearing someone else’s troubles. So many voices, so many faces, so many races. No wonder I’d always liked the waterfront.

The Petraean was easiest for me to pick out.

“… docked me three weeks’ wages, all for a lousy joke…”

“… in truth? Bloody odd doings on the posh deck, if you ask…”

In Smagadine, which I could barely follow: “… cheese sellers. I cut them…”

In Hanchu: “… you count, you count more, still they cheat you…”

Back to Petraean: “… raising the port fees again. Then demurrage atop that. The poor bastard was…”

In Seliu: “… not in the city, they say. But there was that fuss today…”

My eyes popped open, though I kept my head still so as not to betray my interest. I knew that voice. I certainly knew that language.

I took my time, trying to pick out the stream of Seliu again, but they had fallen silent. Or possibly changed languages. The voice didn’t pluck at my ear in Petraean, though. Behind my tankard, I discreetly scanned the room.

Two men were leaving. Dark-haired, perhaps dark-skinned as I was, though that was hard to tell as they were backlit by the late daylight in the doorway. One turned and my heart went cold.

Little Baji. Sailor off Chittachai, and onetime crewmate of Chowdry.

That coastal trader couldn’t have crossed the Storm Sea on a bet, not even with the hands of a god behind it. He had to have come with the Prince of the City’s embassy.

Did that mean that Captain Utavi was here, too? Now there was a right bastard.

I considered quickly whether Chowdry’s entire trip with me from our hasty departure from the trader off the Bhopuri coast had been a setup. Was the man a spy, trailing me from the beginning by the simple expedient of placing himself under my wing?

That was difficult to credit. Chowdry, even the new Chowdry the high priest of Endurance, was never a deep man. Such a game would be beyond his reckoning or his desires, either one.

But Little Baji could perhaps turn his old crewmate through old loyalty, or the threats of familiarity. Chowdry had said that there was an inrush of Selistani over the past few months. That seemed swift to me, for word of Endurance’s theogeny could barely have crossed the Storm Sea and back in the time since.

Little Baji was no immigrant, though, or ship jumper. Not if I understood his words correctly.

I considered leaving, finding another place to spend the evening and possibly the night. But here I could watch the door, and was surrounded by dozens of men with no interest at all in either me or the people who seemed to be hunting me.

Soon enough the baby let it be known that she did not like pickled eggs, not the slightest bit. I held my gut behind my teeth and cleared my throat with more of the ale. The stuff grew less foul as I drank deeper and deeper of my allotment. For this I was glad. The drink seemed to carry some of my worries away with it, as well.

Some lessons in this life are difficult to learn, even upon repeated application. Then as now, I have discovered a certain, all too common foolishness at the bottom of a tankard. Morning found me with my cheek stuck to the table. The Bilge Pump was nearly empty. A tired slattern waved a mop at the floor. Several men snored about the room, while a handful of very dedicated drinkers continued to keep the bar from tipping over. A window I hadn’t realized existed was thrown open, dawn’s light lancing in from the left edge to lacerate my eyeballs.

I pried myself from the wood and found somewhat to my surprise that I hadn’t been robbed. A long night of steady drinking with a bare blade clutched in hand seemed to have done the trick.

Precisely what trick I could not say.

The baby was not happy either. I stood to find a place to wash, and to my surprise spewed the remains of last night’s eggs and ale. The poor woman with the mop gave me a long, despairing stare. Guilty, I fished a silver tael out of my new purse and gave it to her. The coin left a surprising number of its fellows behind for my future use. That amount would be a week’s wages in this place, and could have rented me a rather decent room last night with a warm bath. This morning the coin purchased merely my conscience for the vileness I’d left on her floor.