Corsair (3 page)

“While you live in this house, I’ll never allow you such suffering.”

And so Gareth joined the household. There were a dozen servants, and everyone rose at dawn. Gareth noted that, even though Pol and his wife went regularly to the Merchant’s Temple, having their own box seat high on the walls, they didn’t spend time praying when alone.

That suited Gareth well. He’d decided if there were any gods, they were uncaring, or maybe malignant, and most likely nothing but stone statues, mewling priests, and self-righteous canons.

After rising and washing, the household ate heartily, if simply, for Pol believed a man worked best on a full stomach.

Gareth had a tutor come in for an hour each day, for Pol thought his lack of knowledge, particularly of figures, deplorable. Once a week another man came in and talked of music, art, books, for Pol said a good merchant must be able to talk about anything to his clients.

After that, Gareth made his way to Pol’s factory along the riverfront, which had offices and clerks’ warrens in front, and huge warehouses behind.

That was pure torture for the boy, for the ships of a hundred nations docked along the water, their masts standing close to the upper stories of the Merchant Princes’ buildings, bowsprits sometimes nearly blocking the path of the wagons clattering back and forth. Ships that he’d never be allowed to sign on to, ships that would visit strange and wonderful parts of the world he’d never see.

Even worse was when his uncle called a sorcerer in to cast the spell that’d give Gareth the traders’ patois. Why, he asked Pol, was he doing this, if he had no intent of letting Gareth go to sea? “We deal with merchants from many lands,” Radnor said briskly, “who come to my office frequently. You can generally strike a better bargain if you have a tongue in common with the other party.”

At least once a month Gareth asked if he could be loaned to another magnate with a recommendation he be allowed to sign aboard a ship, for seasoning, “for surely, Uncle, how can a man be a good merchant if he has no knowledge of his distant clients and their lands?”

“By reading and correspondence,” Pol might reply, “which you’ve been most slight about. All things can be learned in books, and there’s no need to be tossed about in a leaking hulk eating wormy beef and drinking small beer if you can sit in comfort, now is there?”

“But — ”

“But me no buts,” Pol would say, not unkindly. “Now, to your accounts, and pay more attention there than you have been. Your chief has found, he told me, some twenty errors in your last accounting alone.

“That’s not good, Gareth. That’s not what can make me proud of you, proud of yourself, now is it?”

Not being able to find a reply, Gareth would slink back to his canted desk, which grew larger and higher from the ground every day, more and more covered with scribbles on paper, his stool taller and taller, stretching toward heavens as dull as the wintry Sarosian skies, when he longed for tropic sunshine and warm blue waters splashing on sandy beaches.

The clerks around him were all older, and all seemed to have found a home, and delighted in telling stories of how they almost sent a cargo of oranges to the tropics, or how they’d gotten lucky, and found an erroneous entry, and saved
Hern
Radnor so many gold coins.

There wasn’t even any point in pranking them, for all that happened the two or three times he tried something was a long look and a tired sigh.

At dusk, or after twelve turnings of the glass during the short winter days, the office was closed.

The evening meal was heavy, Pol giving himself two glasses of the finest ale before dinner, three glasses of wine with the sumptuous feast — food from many lands that Pol traded with — and two brandies before bed as he read and responded to his agents’ correspondence.

Gareth got drunk once on the ale, didn’t like the sickness it brought nor the way he felt the next day, and forever after remained a non-toper, never really minding, unlike most of his countrymen, if he were forced to drink small beer, very watered wine, or even simple water itself.

After the evening meal, no one cared what Gareth did, so long as he was back inside the compound by two turnings before middle-night.

When he discovered the small ladder in a shed, his path was open, and he’d retire early and slide out across the roofs. No one seemed to check on him, and he suspected they would not care much if they did find his bed empty.

Ticao was a magical city to explore.

It had been built long ages past, first as an upriver trading village, sensibly ten leagues from the sea, to guard against raiders. Its river, the Nalta, was wide enough for a ship to tack up, especially after dredges had begun deepening the main channel over the past one hundred years. It continued north into the farming heartland of Saros, and canals had been built from east and west, so most of the goods Saros traded in came through Ticao.

On the northeast bank of the river was the trading heart of Ticao, around and in the old walled city. Beyond that rose the heights, where the king’s castle and other noble buildings sat. Pol said that while he certainly wanted to be a Merchant Prince, he would never build on the king’s mountain, since one requirement was that in time of war, if the capital were threatened, all these homes would be razed to give clear fields of fire to the cannon in the Royal castle.

Ticao had spread across the river, where working quarters and slums sprawled, just as the city had reached north, beyond the King’s mountain, through greater and smaller country homes into the rolling countryside.

Streets, alleys, wound through the city, and it seemed impossible to ever know Ticao completely, for there was always a new shop, tea-bar, or tavern being opened. Here and there through Ticao were parks, spreading tree-spattered grasslands, and it was a royal edict that they be open to any citizen.

And so he explored the avenues and alleys of Ticao, never clambering back into his bedroom before midnight, sometimes not until dawn, after which he would spend a yawning day at his desk, trying to ignore the frowns from the chief clerk.

Ticao was thronged with seamen and traders from foreign parts, including men from Linyati. The first time he saw one of the olive-complected, blank-faced sailors, he asked a beggar who the man was.

“Slavers,” the man spat, hand still out for a coin.

“The ones who raid our villages?”

“Th’ same.”

“Why are they allowed ashore?” Gareth asked in shock.

“ ‘Cause our nimby-namby king doesn’t want war with anybody, wants the seaways to be open to all, so Saros can bring home the most gold.

“Damned fool, with all respect. There’s some who know the way to deal with scum like the Slavers is at sword point. ‘At’s how I got all crippled up, lad, in a grand battle ashore with a bunch of them. I fought my best, kept my mate alive, but took a terrible wound. Here, for a copper or two I’ll show you, right — ”

Gareth dropped a coin, hurried away.

He saw them again, seldom singly, mostly in groups of half a dozen, to prevent the mutterers who trailed them from becoming bolder and hurling cobbles or filth. The things the Slavers bought made no sense. Sometimes it would be a sweetmeat, sometimes a jewel. Anything edible or drinkable was immediately gulped down, as if they were small boys sneaking behind their parents’ back.

Gareth trailed them often, trying to figure out what they were, following them back to their strange ships, ships whose portholes were alight from within from dusk to dawn, as if the Slavers never slept.

He asked what they came to Ticao to trade, since slavery had been outlawed for generations in Saros. A clerk from another factory made a face, said the slaves they took, generally from the savage continent of Kashi, separated from the continent of Linyati by a long isthmus, were sold elsewhere, to other countries who still held bondage legal. Those trade goods were perfectly legitimate to bring into Saros.

“Damned shame, too,” the young man added. “Our factor’s lost three ships in five years, and one or another of our seamen managed to make his way home later to tell us they’d not been wrecked by storms, but seized by the Slavers.

“Good King Alfieri ought to fit out a fleet, and drive them back to their own lands. No one needs dealing with murderous bastards like them.”

Twice Gareth hurled a stone at a knot of Linyati, and was breathlessly pursued down alleys, the Slavers waving daggers or the thin-bladed swords they preferred. Their language was a series of coughs, like one of the lions Gareth saw in the King’s Menagerie.

Once he lurked on a rooftop, waited until four of the Slavers passed underneath, and tipped a full chamberpot over.

But this was very small beer, he knew, and wanted greater revenge, revenge with a pistol or sword.

His uncle Pol told him he shouldn’t bear hatred, for it kept the memory of that murderous day alive. That was fine with Gareth. He wanted not one, not ten, but a hundred dead Slavers for his mother and father, even more for the others of his village who now wore chains on some unknown shore.

But Gareth did not let himself become a dark brooder, like fishermen he’d known who’d lost a son or a brother at sea. He loved pranking, jesting against those he thought were pompous, foolish, or malicious, whether rich merchants, cheating shopkeepers, or pompous citizens, once even a fraud claiming to be a magician, who persuaded an entire street of credulous whores of his talents with love potions.

He made two friends in his ramblings, then a third.

The first was the enormous Labala, whom he rescued from being rolled by cutpurses when drunk. Labala’s family came from a distant tropical island, but none of them knew precisely where it was. Labala, like his father, worked as a stevedore on Ticao’s docks, augmenting his income by what he could steal.

In return for Gareth’s favor, he promised that neither he, nor any of his family, nor any of his cousins, would ever thieve from a Radnor cargo, no matter the temptation.

Labala was two years — or so he thought — older than Gareth, but appeared in his twenties at least. Some made the mistake of not taking him seriously, or thinking him stupid, because of his bulk, the rolls of fat he was quite proud of, and the constant beam on his round face.

The grin concealed quite a nasty temper, as quite a few discovered after the smile suddenly vanished and Labala growled, “Now I’m going to sit on you.” Which he would do, after his huge fists had hammered the person’s body for a while. Labala was also very fast. Gareth saw a man pull two knives on him one night, lose them both in an armblock and two crashing blows, and then get hurled into the river.

Labala loved pranking as well, without much regard for the target or outcome.

Fox was the second. He never said what he did during the day. Gareth thought he was a cutpurse or perhaps pickpocket, the way his eyes followed money around. He was very small, skinny to the point of emaciation, and his eyes darted about under a mop of unruly hair. Gareth knew little of his family, except he had a mother whom he revered, two twin brothers — “the greatest of heartless villains,” he said proudly — and a seemingly endless array of uncles. He never mentioned his father.

Fox’s taste in japery ran toward the well dressed and those with purses he might be able to end up with during the hubbub.

The last was Cosyra. She stood just to Gareth’s chin, was slender, small-breasted, wore her brown hair very short, dressed like a boy. Her face was heart-shaped, with perfect teeth and a grin almost as frequent as Labala’s.

Like the other three, she wore commoner’s clothes of leather, wool, or coarse cotton. There was one thing unusual about her appearance: on a silver chain she wore a small icon of a sea eagle.

Cosyra spoke, unlike Fox and Labala, in an educated tongue, though the cant of thieves and the streets came easily to her.

She never spoke of a family or friends. One of her favorite quick pranks was, when someone realized she was a woman and showed lustful signs, enticing them for a bit, then telling them she was the daughter of a shopkeeper, and would love to tryst later, at a certain address. Since the address she gave was that of the temple of Houf, Goddess of Eunuchs and the Celibate, Gareth wondered if she was a young harlot, sold to one of the many bordellos of Ticao.

None of the three young men ever tried to bed her. For some unknown reason, they all felt that might spoil things.

And so, every second or third night, they’d creep out, either looking for a target, or else putting a plan in motion.

The pranked were generally picked by either Cosyra or Gareth, the other two seeming content to be lieutenants in the schemes.

Gareth thought his japery might be the only thing that kept him from going mad.

I have it,” Labala gurgled from the darkness. “Let’s paint the statue of the king in Centersquare.”

“We did that three months ago,” Cosyra said patiently.

“Yes … yes … but this time, we’ll paint his butt blue, instead of pink,” Labala said, and almost fell against the stone wall in his mirth.

“Well,” Gareth said diplomatically, “we’ll consider that as a second option.” None of them wanted to get Labala unhappy, for obvious reasons.

“You have somethin’ in th’ way of a scheme,” Fox said, not a question.

“Maybe,” Gareth said. “Do any of you know Lord Quindolphin?”

“I do. I mean, I’ve heard of him,” Cosyra said.

Gareth waited.

“Not supposed to be a very nice sort,” she said.

“Had a mate of my uncle’s drawn an’ quartered,” Fox said. “Just for borrowin’ one of them gilt eagles off his mansion’s gates.”

“That ain’t right,” Labala said indignantly. “Let’s do him. Forget about the king’s stony arse.”

“His daughter’s getting married four nights from now,” Gareth went on. “There’ll be a big party afterwards.”

“Of course,” Cosyra said. “But his mansion’s got big, high walls.”

“He’s not having it there,” Gareth went on. “For some reason, he’s putting it on at the Banker’s Guildhall.”

“Prob’ly owes ‘em money,” Fox said.