Jess Lebow - The Colors of Magic Anthology

They sat like porcelain dolls all around him, poised on the iron settees he had bolted to the ship's deck. Most were enduring the week-long sea journey with Argivian aplomb-which meant complaints about cabin size, food quality, chantey lyrics, salt spray, fish smells, strong winds, daytime glare, nighttime murk, and full-time nausea. On this particular voyage, the high priestess of dissatisfaction was Madame Gheiri, more implacable and discontent than the sea itself. She took up a whole settee, around her arrayed the accoutrements of her discomfort-book, bumbershoot, shawl, crackers, and tepid tea. Her white silk camise and gray cashmere gown were complemented by a pudgy face in light green.

Crucias approached. "Are you feeling better today, my dear?"

"Must the ship bounce and sway so much?" she asked testily, her eyes like twin red daggers in the morning sun.

Crucias gave an apologetic smile and gestured expansively to the bright ocean all around. "The sea has waves, Madame Gheiri… "

"I'm not talking about the sea, " she gasped, clutching an ill-used handkerchief to her lips before drawing the strength to continue. "I'm talking about the ship. Can't you control your own ship? You have all these ropes and sails and anchors and things. Surely you could use them to smooth the ride. "

"We'll be reaching Argoth this afternoon, Madame. Then we'll anchor for the show, and your stomach will have a chance to settle, " Crucias said soothingly.

"My niece Elgia is so ill, she couldn't get up from her bunk this morning. She was hoping to meet a husband on this-this displeasure excursion!" she snapped. "But no young men… seven days of monotony… seven nights of seasickness! I tell you, there had better be some impressive explosions and definite signs of death and mayhem on the island, or I'll make my own cataclysmic battle right here!"

Crucias managed a rueful smile. "I assure you, Madame, when Mishra and Urza battle, there is plenty of death and mayhem for all." He took the better part of valor and moved on.

Yes, they would reach Argoth soon, and would anchor opposite the plains where the two brothers fought- where the whole world fought. There, Crucias and his roster of rich, arrogant nobles would drink wine and eat steaks and watch young men and women die. "Expeditions to the End of the World," he had dubbed them. It was Crucias's fourth such journey, and he hated them- war profiteering at its worst. He made a living exploiting human bloodlust and misery.

"Blast," Crucias muttered beneath his breath as he dutifully polished a dull patch of brass railing. "Privateering was better."

He lamented most of all the abuse of his beautiful ship. For twelve restless months after his daughter's death, Crucias had designed the corsair. He had sketched her out all day long and in his sleep. For the next ten years, he and his crew had built her by hand. It was a kind of practical mourning, an apology in wood and pitch for the life he had been unable to give his daughter. He personally had carved the figurehead into her likeness, had even granted the ship her name-Nunieve-and had sailed her into the wide ocean. She proceeded him always, a sweet child gazing bravely over the dark billows to bright and unimagined shores. Nunieve was a dream made real, designed to discover new lands for Kroog.

And then Kroog ceased to exist. Mishra's army swallowed it like a hunk of hardtack. No longer were there government commissions. No longer were there joint-stock companies. The winds of finance and politics died.

Dead calm. Captain Crucias and his newly built Nunieve were adrift.

He eventually took on Argivian cargoes, but Nunieve's hold was not designed to hold vast stores. She had been built for speed. The cargoes reached their ports, but Crucias lost coin with every crate unloaded, a monetary shipwreck. Desperate, he'd hired a crew of harpooners and laid in a store of hooks, lines, nets, and carving tools, hoping to pay for it all with spermaceti. They'd tracked and slain one whale, but the mess of dead meat hanging to port, the constant cloud of seagulls and sharks, the horrid inert bulk of something that had once moved with terrific and majestic grace through the water… Crucias would have sooner harpooned himself than another whale.

But Argivian nobles? Indolent, wealthy, bloodthirsty nobles? He had no qualms about harpooning them. As repellent as they were, they paid well, and they stood in long lines for the chance to see the world-ending conflict of Argoth. Another trip, and Crucias's debts would be paid off. Two or three more, and he and Nunieve could sail away to distant shores, never again to see Terisiare. Until then, he only hoped the war lasted.

"Let's pray there is enough mayhem and death for everybody."

On the night he'd first seen Nunieve, there had been mayhem aplenty.

Drunk, with blood on his knuckles and in his teeth,

Captain Crucias staggered back through the cobbled streets of Sumifa. He made his way down dark canyons of shops and houses, their shutters bleeding golden illumination into the night. The light painted him tigerlike. He liked the connotation. Gold and blood and man-eating cats: it summed up his life.

He'd wanted things to be different, had hoped to distinguish himself aboard a Yotian war galley, but a liaison with an admiral's daughter in this very city had ended any hopes of that. He still saw the girl every year or so, but for five years he hadn't seen the inside of any ship but a rover or a brigantine. In that time, he had risen to his own captaincy-as a privateer. Knuckles and teeth had won him his ship, Backstab, and persistent work with the cutlass had won him a small fortune in gold. Tonight's fight had been another battle in defense of that fortune. The thief who thought he ought to have some of Crucias's gold now lay bloodied and bruised in a tavern alley.

Mayhem had not been the life he'd planned, but it was the one given to him, and it suited him well enough. At the very least, he would not get bored. He'd be fighting and drinking and wenching until the day one of his vices killed him. The life of a privateer was blessedly short.

Captain Crucias neared Backstab, dark in its moorings. His head reeled from drink and fisticuffs, and from- "What is that hellish noise?" It was a high keen, like the wail of a cat being crushed in a vise. Crucias shook his head, wondering what poor sod was getting it from what other poor sod. He plodded up Backstab's, gangplank, and the sound grew only louder.

"Blast."

Crucias stepped onto the deck, gritty and in need of holystoning. Several figures slouched in rope coils or on folded sails along the dark rail, most of them drunk and sleeping. One was awake.

"Oye, Biggs. What's that ruckus?" Crucias growled.

The man shrugged. "Woman came by. Said she had something to give you. I let her in your cabin. She left. Half an hour later, there's this bellowing."

Crucias reflexively raised hands to shield his ears. "How long has this been going on?"

"Hour, maybe. Hard to say. No moon tonight."

"Worthless-" Crucias hissed at Biggs.

Clenching his bloody fists, Crucias stomped unsteadily toward his cabin. He flung back the door. The wails paused for only a moment and then continued with renewed vigor. He had known it would be a baby, known even who the mother must have been, but to enter his inner sanctum and find it violated by an-an invader! The child's screams raked across his drink-jangled nerves.

"Blast it, child! Hush!"

Grabbing a jackstraw, Crucias lit a hand lantern and stalked into the room. He cringed under the auditory assault and crouched as he walked, as though expecting attack. This was supposed to be his private cabin-heavy furnishings, padlocked trunks, blunderbusses, cutlasses, rum casks, cigars-a man-place. But all of its grim grandeur was despoiled by that delicately woven basket and its pink bundle of blankets and the tiny hands waving like tender anemones in the air.