Scott Lynch - Red Seas Under Red Skies

"Gentlemen," yelled the woman, "what's this? I expected to see some sabres, and instead you bring out your stilettos!"

The crew behind her roared with laughter. Crooked Warden! Locke realized others had come up along the larboard rail. There were more sailors just standing there pointing and howling at him and Jean than there were in the entire crew of the Red Messenger.

"What's the matter, boys? Thoughts of rescue not enticing enough? What's it take to get a rise out of you down there?"

Locke responded with a two-handed gesture he'd learned as a boy, one guaranteed to start fights in any city-state in the Therin world. The crowd of pirates returned it, with many creative variations.

"Right, then," cried the woman. "Stand on one leg. Both of you! Up on one!" "What?" Locke put his hands on his hips. "Which one?" "Just pick one of two, like your friend's doing," she replied.

Locke lifted his left foot just above the rowing bench, putting his arms out for balance, which was becoming steadily harder to keep. Jean did the same thing beside him, and Locke was absolutely sure that from any distance they looked a perfect pair of idiots. "Higher," said the woman. "That's sad. You can do better than that!"

Locke hitched his knee up half a foot more, staring defiantly up at her. He could feel the vibrations of fatigue and the unstable boat alike in his right leg; he and Jean were seconds away from capping embarrassment with embarrassment. "Fine work," the woman shouted. "Make "em dance!"

Locke saw the dark blurs of the arrows flash across his vision before he heard the flat snaps of their release. He dived to his right as they thudded into the middle of the boat, realizing half a second too late that thed'r not been aimed at flesh and blood. The sea swallowed him in an instant; he hit unprepared and upside-down, and when he kicked back to the surface he gasped and sputtered at the unpleasant sensation of salt water up his nose.

Locke heard rather than saw Jean spit a gout of water as he came up on the other side of the boat. The pirates were roaring now, falling over themselves, holding their sides. The short woman kicked something and a knotted rope fell through an entry port in the ship's rail. "Swim over," she yelled, "and pull the boat with you."

By clinging to the gunwales and paddling awkwardly, Locke and Jean managed to push the little boat over to the ship, where they fell into shadow beneath her side. The end of the knotted rope floated there, and Jean gave Locke a firm shove toward it, as though afraid they might yank it up at any second.

Locke hauled himself up against the fine-grained black wood of the hull, wet and naked and fuming. Rough hands grasped him at the rail and heaved him aboard. He found himself looking at a pair of weathered leather boots, and he sat up. "I hope that was amusing," he said, "because I'm going to—"

One of those boots struck him in the chest and shoved him back down to the deck. Wincing, he thought better of standing and instead studied the boot's owner. The woman was not merely short — she was petite, even from the perspective of someone literally beneath her heel. She wore a frayed sky-blue tunic over a loose black leather vest decorated with slashes that had more to do with near-misses than high fashion. Her dark hair, which piled curl upon curl, was tightly bound behind her neck, and the belt at her waist carried a minor arsenal of fighting knives and sabres. There was obvious muscle on her shoulders and arms, an impression of strength that made Locke quickly stifle his anger. "Going to what}" "Lie here on the deck," he said, "and enjoy the fine afternoon sun."

The woman laughed; a second later Jean was pulled up over the side and thrown down beside Locke. His black hair was plastered to his skull and water streamed from the bristles of his beard.

"Oh my," said the woman. "Big one and a little one. Big one looks like he can handle himself a bit. You must be Master Valora." "If you say so, madam, I suppose I must be."

"Madam? Madam's a shore word. Out here to the likes of you, it's lieutenant." "You're not the captain of this ship, then?"

The woman eased her boot off Locke's chest and allowed him to sit. "Not even hardly," she said.

"Ezri's my first," said a voice behind Locke. He turned, slowly and carefully, to regard the speaker.

This woman was taller than the one called Ezri, and broader across her shoulders. She was dark, with skin just a few shades lighter than the hull of her ship, and she was striking, but not young. There were lines about her eyes and mouth that proclaimed her somewhere near forty. Those eyes were cold and that mouth was hard — clearly she didn't share Ezri's sense of mischief about the two unclothed prisoners dripping water on her deck.

Her night-coloured braids, threaded with red and silver ribbons, hung in a mane beneath a wide four-cornered cap, and despite the heat she wore a weather-stained brown frock coat, lined along the insides with brilliant gold silk. Most astonishingly, an Elderglass mosaic vest hung unbuckled beneath her coat. That sort of armour was rarely seen outside of royal hands — each little slat of Elderglass had to be joined by a latticework of metal, since humans knew no arts to meld the glass to itself. The vest glittered with reflected sunlight, more intricate than a stained-glass window — a thousand fingernail-sized chips of gleaming glory outlined in silver. "Orrin Ravelle," she said. "I" ve never heard of you."

"Nor should you have," said Locke. "May we have the pleasure of your acquaintance?"

"Del," she said, turning away from Locke and Jean to look at Ezri, "get that boat in. Give their clothes the eye, take anything interesting and get them dressed again."

"Your will, Captain." Ezri turned and began giving instructions to the sailors around her.

"As for you two," the captain said, returning her gaze to the two drenched thieves, "my name is Zamira Drakasha. My ship's the Poison Orchid. And once you're dressed, someone will be along to haul you below and throw you in the bilge hold."

Their prison was at the very bottom of the Poison Orchid, on what was ironically the tallest deck on the ship, a good ten feet from lower deck to ceiling. However, the pile of barrels and oilcloth sacks crammed into the compartment left nothing but a coffin-dark crawlspace above their uneven surface. Locke and Jean sat atop this uncomfortable mass of goods with their heads against the ceiling. The lightless room stank of muck-soaked orlop ropes, of mouldering canvas, of stale food and ineffective alchemical preservatives.

This was technically the forward cargo stowage; the bilge proper was sealed behind a bulkhead roughly ten feet to their left. Not twenty feet in the opposite direction, the curved black bow of the ship met wind and water. The soft waves they could hear were lapping against the ship's sides three or four feet above their heads.

"Nothing but the friendliest people and the finest accommodations on the Sea of Brass," said Locke.

"At least I don't feel too disadvantaged by the darkness," said Jean. "Lost my bloody optics when I took that tumble into the water."

"Thusfar today we've lost a ship, a small fortune, your hatchets, and now your optics."

"At least our setbacks are getting progressively smaller."Jean cracked his knuckles and the sound echoed strangely in the darkness. "How long do you suppose we've been down here?"

"Hour, maybe?" Locke sighed, pushed himself away from the starboard bulkhead and began the laborious process of finding a vaguely comfortable niche to slide into, amidst barrel-tops and sacks of hard, lumpy objects. If he was going to be bored, he might as well be bored lying down. "But I'd be surprised if they mean to keep us here for good. I think they're just… marinating us. For whatever comes next." "You making yourself comfortable?"