Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

Red Rodney nodded. "That's what they told me, by God." Finding out what was going on up in the north was worth getting out of bed, even if Jenny didn't think so. "What did you see up there?"

"Dutchmens," Aldo Cucari said solemnly. "Three big Dutchmens, ships of the line. Six smaller Dutchmens, like to the ships that sail out of Avalon. They go east."

"Bloody hell. Of course they do." Three men-of-war, half a dozen brigantines or the equivalent. Six more men-of-war from London, with a like number of smaller supporters. However many merchantmen William clipped-e Radcliff could scrape together at Stuart, plus their auxiliaries. The merchantmen wouldn't have the speed or the firepower of a first-rate ship of the line, but they'd be bad enough. Red Rodney glowered down at the small, swarthy Italian. "You swear this is the truth?"

"By the cross, signore." Aldo Cucari crossed himself. You could be a Papist in Avalon, or a Protestant, or a Mahometan, or even a Jew. No one cared enough to kill you for it, which wasn't true all over Atlantis. Aldo went on, "By my mother's honor, signore."

People laughed at Aldo for working hard, but no one had ever called him a coward. And if you challenged his mother's honor-if you challenged the honor of any man's mother-he was bound to kill you if he could. "All right, then," Radcliffe said. "You've told me what I need to know, and I'm grateful."

The fisherman bowed again. "It is my honor, too, Signore Rodney."

"Honor's all very well, but you can't eat it. See what you can buy with these." Red Rodney pressed two gleaming gold sovereigns into Aldo's callused hand.

One more bow. "You is a man of great heart, signore, and a man of open hands as well. I hoped for one sovereign-I thought my news is worth one. But two? Two! Only a man of great heart would give two." He stepped forward, embraced the pirate captain, and bussed him first on the right cheek, then on the left.

Frenchmen and Spaniards would do the same thing sometimes. Red Rodney clapped Aldo on the back and made a joke of it: "You aren't pretty enough for that."

"Ah, well." The fisherman grinned and fired back: "If I is doing it for looks, you isn't pretty enough, neither."

He came very close to dying then, even with Rodney's gold coins in his hand. Only blood washed away insults in Avalon-if you decided they were insults. If you laughed them off, though…Rodney did. "I may be ugly, but I have fun. How about you?"

"Every so often I find a girl who-how you say?-she no see so good. Or maybe is too dark to see good. Who knows? Who cares? I has fun, too."

Rodney shouted for more wine. The servant who brought it was a copperskinned Terranovan native. Everybody called him Old Abe; he'd been in Avalon almost as long as Rodney had been alive. Smallpox scars slagged his face, but he'd lived through the disease and never needed to worry about it again. A lot of copperskins turned up their toes in a hurry after they met Europeans or Atlanteans. That was one reason white settlement was spreading on the western mainland, though not so fast as it was in previously uninhabited Atlantis.

"Here's to fun!" Rodney said, and Aldo Cucari drank with him. But even as the rough red wine slid down his throat, he was weighing the odds. Nine ships of the line? People farther east had hated Avalon for a long time. They'd always said they had, anyhow. Never till now, though, had they seemed serious. It was hard to get much more serious than nine ships of the line and assorted auxiliaries.

Well, they might be-they were bound to be-gathering at Stuart. But from Stuart to Avalon was a long way: long in terms of sailing, even longer in terms of the spirit that animated each town. Aldo, anyone might think, would have fit better in Stuart. But he'd lived there for a little while, and didn't care for the dull, stolid burghers who ran the place. Whatever else Avalon was, dull and stolid it wasn't.

The pirate captain poured wine with the same lavish hand he'd used to pass out money. Raising his cup, he shouted, "Here's to frying my God-cursed cousin!" Aldo drank with him-why not? And Rodney Radcliffe laughed and laughed. "Yes, here's to frying him, in his own damned pan!"

W illiam Radcliff's secretary was a plump, nearsighted man named Shadrach Spencer. William was making a complicated calculation about just how much to charge for Terranovan pipeweed in London when Spencer stuck his head into the office and said, "I beg your pardon, sir, but there is a…gentleman here whom I think you should see."

He didn't casually say such things: one reason he'd worked for William for more than fifteen years. "Well, send him in, then," William said, setting down his quill. "Let's find out what he has to say."

As Radcliff expected from his secretary's tone, the individual in question was no gentleman, but a backwoods ruffian who put him in mind of his distant cousin, Marcus. The man carried a parcel wrapped in cloth. He wore a wool shirt and suede breeches with fringes; no razor had sullied his cheek for several days. All the more reason to receive him as if he were the heir to a duchy. "Good day, sir. I am William Radcliff," William said, bowing. "I fear you have the advantage of me."

"My name is Dill, Hiram Dill." The backwoodsman shook hands politely enough, then remarked, "Thirsty work, riding in from past the edge of town."

"Shadrach, tend to that, would you?" Radcliff said.

"Certainly, sir." His secretary bustled off, returning a moment later with a flagon of fine-or at least strong-gin from Nieuw Haarlem and two glasses. He poured for William and his guest.

"Your health, sir," William said to Hiram Dill, raising his glass.

Dill drank. His eyes got wide. "I'm bound to be healthy if I pour this stuff down," he said. "It'd poison anything that tried to sicken me, and that's the Lord's truth."

Courteously, Radcliff poured him a refill. As Dill drank it down with as much alacrity as he'd shown for the first sample, William asked, "And what was it impelled you to ride in to Stuart from, as you say, past the edge of town?"

"Well, I was hunting for the pot last night, and I let fly with my shotgun at a pigeon flying by, and I bagged me…this here." Hiram Dill had a sense of the dramatic, whatever his other shortcomings might have been. He undid the cloth around his loosely wrapped parcel.

It was a pigeon, as ordinary a pigeon as ever hatched. Atlantis boasted several varieties of extraordinary pigeons. One was cream-colored, with bright red eyes. One, too big and heavy to fly, had a feathery crest that looked like curly hair. One was a dark green bird that disappeared completely against the needle-filled branches of redwoods and pines.

But this was a plain English pigeon, like the ones that cooed and strutted in the streets of Stuart hoping for handouts. Its head was green, its body shades of gray and white. The only unusual thing about it was a bit of parchment tied around its right leg.

"A message?" William asked. Hiram Dill nodded. William asked another question: "You've read it?"

"Well, sure," Dill answered. "Couldn't very well know you needed to see it if I hadn't, now could I?"

"No, indeed," Radcliff said gravely. "And what does it say?"

"See for yourself," the backwoodsman replied. His scarred and callused fingers surprisingly deft, he undid the message from the bird's leg and handed it to William.

The fine, tiny, spidery hand defeated William's sight, which was beginning to lengthen. He called in Shadrach Spencer. "Read this out for me, if you would be so kind."

"Of course, sir." His secretary held the parchment so close to his eyes, it all but bumped his nose. "It says, 'In Stuart harbor nine ships of the line, twelve armed merchantmen, fifteen lesser ships. Sailing soon against Avalon.'"