The Gospel According to Verdu (a Steampunk Novel) (The Brofman Series) (14 page)

Captain Endicott leaned over and brushed his lips against Candice’s blond hair as he spoke. “You are my friend, love, and there’s nothing that would ever keep me from finding you if trouble had you.”

In a rare moment where she had nothing to say, Candice scrunched closer to the captain’s side and rested her head on his chest. For the first time in weeks, Candice let go of her questioning thoughts. As her mind slowed, she was left with only one notion: no amount of scribbling on a pros-and-cons list would ever sway her heart from Maxwell Endicott.

A week after he had finished writing the account of his adventure with the Pramuc, Verdu found himself in an entirely new world yet again. Almost immediately after meeting with Nameer Xa-Ven, and learning about the vast dissemination of his short text, he had been moved within the palace. His time in his little cell, cramped and tiny as it was, had caused his wounded leg to become even more useless to him. He could no longer walk on it at all. Two guards, each taking one of Verdu’s arms, carried him down the winding stone steps as he struggled to maintain his balance while his eyes roamed. He noted every branching passageway, each door and window, and numerous items that could be useful as weapons, tools, or resources. His mind searched for means of escape, but his heart simply had no steam.

Sitting in his new quarters, he had more time to reflect. Verdu had been brought to a room in the palace devoid of windows, but much less penal than his former accommodations. The room was long and thin, with a series of small holes cut into the stone ceiling. He could see up into polished metal tubes that apparently led outside somewhere, as natural light would shine along the pipes and into his room. The light reflecting in let him know if it was day or night, cloudy or sunny. It was like having a skylight, but no sky. He supposed his captors did not want him pass any more communications to the outside world. Little did they guess that he had nothing left to say.

The room was also more lavishly furnished and, to his eyes, rather girly. The bed, complete with ornate headboard and a fountain of gossamer netting flowing down the walls and onto the floor, was appointed with silky baby-pink sheets and stacks of matching pillows. The carpets were a palette of lavenders and blushing floral contrasts. There was a low table in the center of the room surrounded by firm upholstered cushions, all in the latest Tugrulian style. Against the wall, flanking each side of the single door, were two solidly built armchairs. The walls were covered in mosaics of women pleasuring men in various ways, varying from erotic to domestic. It was like a visual instruction manual on how to be a good—meaning servile—feminine flower of the empire.

If he had been pressed to guess, he would have supposed this room was for the wives, or perhaps mistresses, to entertain themselves before they entertained the emperor. At least he hoped so. He hated to think that his final lodging was the consummation chamber of his captor.

Regardless, the room was, in some respects, head and shoulders above the cell he had been in. The presence of clean and plentiful water in the form of a tap on the wall made his situation considerably better in Verdu’s opinion. The rest of the decor, he could take or leave. A cage was a cage, and he rather missed the entertainment that the window in his old cell provided, crude as it was to just watch the weather roll by.

In his new chamber, Verdu marked the passing of time by the routine opening of his door. The delivery of food and linens by servants under heavy guard was as regular as clockwork. After several days, he could anticipate the arrival of meals and maids. At midday, a fussy clerk would arrive, pen in hand, to discuss any needs that
His Highness
had.

“I want to leave,” Verdu would say.

It delighted him to watch the clerk, Bateem, squirm as he replied, “Of course Your Highness.” He would bow and make a note. “I will with the swiftness of a salmone lizard aspiring to catch a melchiz spider in the heat of the afternoon send word to my superiors of your query. When an answer to your request issues forth from His Most Glorious Imperial Majesty, the Divine One, the Keeper and Protector of all”—and the bookish civil servant would go on with title after well-rehearsed appellation for minutes on end, finally landing on, “may the One True God guide his blessed hand in this as in all things.”

After several days of this, Verdu skipped it and started asking for absurd things just to pass the time. When roasted rabbit turned out to be both an easy request and a tasty one, he tried harder: the entirety of written Tugrulian law (which required six guards to carry in); a pot of mulberry ink (which he used to childishly draw obscene bits on the mosaics in his room); pumice, vinegar, and lamb’s wool (which he used to clean the walls the next day—he decided not to risk having his last action in life be childish and destructively vindictive); and every manner of iced treat he could think of. Each request for items forbidden, impossible, or inconvenient was greeted unflinchingly by Bateem, who seemed pleased to no longer have to deny the incarcerated prince his true desire—freedom. Bateem simply bowed and made notes, and, a few hours later, the whim would arrive.

Without ever wanting to be, and desperate to no longer remain so, Verdu knew that he was in a position that was truly awkward for the palace servants. As a prince of the blood, especially one just a few heartbeats away from the throne, he very well could be the leader of Tugrulia sometime soon. Assuming that he survived the charges against him, the unshaven, limping man currently sequestered in the consorts’ chamber could be crowned Emperor Kotal II. Stranger things had happened. Royal brothers had been known to fight among themselves to the point of complete fratricide. Knives, poison, strangulation, staged accidents of every stripe, defenestration, and even the odd trained-animal attack had taken the lives of many a front-running son. From the perspective of Bateem and his fellow clerks, Verdu, held under lock and key, was in rather a safe place. He was out of the reach of the other heirs.

Despite the brief entertainments of the various visitors, Verdu felt horribly alone. Also, he had never in his life been absent from the sky for so long.

He spent much of his time in the new room with his eyes closed in an effort to shut out the mocking walls, the bubbly pink furnishings and piped-in sunshine. The whole farce quietly enraged him, especially the servile flatterers who treated him as if he was a prince, as if everything was normal when it was all so wrong.

If Verdu were a more ambitious man, more Tugrulian, he might have tried to climb out of the trouble he was in and take control of the empire, but he had given up on the gods-forsaken land just as much as he had given up on his own life. He had done his part, and he left the rest to the Pramuc. It was her responsibility. After a week or two entertaining himself with requests to the servants—and no word from Nameer Xa-Ven—he gave up and asked for nothing. He crawled between the pink sheets, closed his eyes, and dreamed of the sky.

Chenda settled herself in the bow of the Mae-Lyn ship and watched the sea as the
Tao-Tallis
sliced through the waves. She huddled there, alone in the spray, for two reasons. Fenimore loved to stand watch at the bow of the
Brofman
, and being in the same position on this sailing ship made her feel more connected to her husband. Secondly, with nothing but open ocean in front of her, it was easier to ignore the dozens of pairs of eyeballs trained on her back.

All the Mae-Lyn on the
Tao-Tallis
treated her with reverence. They waved little books at her, and one even kissed the hem of her flight coat. She thought that it all had gotten a little out of hand— the bowing and the averting of eyes. To these people, Chenda was not a young woman looking for her husband. She was nearly a god herself, imbued with powers, one who had walked among the gods and talked with them, their hand-chosen messenger.

Chenda borrowed one of the little books from Rainor, and she leafed through the pages as he explained how he had been given a copy when he made port in Nivarta two weeks earlier. The buzz among the dockworkers was that the prophecies were coming true, and the Gospel of the Pramuc was being passed around, and would he take several copies westward to the islands nearby? Rainor had been frightened to take the books, but the dockman had such light in his eyes, he could not resist reading a copy. Verdu’s impassioned words had filled Rainor with hope; how could he not do as the pranav said—make a copy by hand and pass it on.

“I made five,” Rainor told Chenda proudly. “I hope it pleases the gods that I have done so?” he asked, eyeing her for approval.

Chenda blushed. “I can’t say what the gods want from us in this matter, Rainor, but I am absolutely sure that you will have made Pranav Erato deliriously happy.” Her reply seemed to please Rainor.

Chenda read and reread Verdu’s story, and she had no doubt the words came from his own hand. It was all so . . . Verduish. It was accurate, every detail of every step they took in their adventure through Tugrulia, the experience in the Dia Orella, the heat of the desert, the quake of the earth at the sunken garden. And yet, the way he wrote it, it seemed embellished in some way. The adventure did not seem to be as riveting as they lived it. To be sure, he took no liberties with the facts, but the phrasing he used, and the clarity of his perspective sounded less fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants and more hand-of-the-godsish.

She was pleased to see the introduction by Pranav Erato. He was alive and had escaped the guards at the warehouse pier. She finally had a bit of good news, even if it was old news. The more she read Verdu’s words, the more she felt that he had left something out. His facts were all there, and his reverence for her was plain, but where was his friendship? Where was his affection? That personal element between them, that bond, had been stripped from their story, and it bothered her more than a little. Verdu had not been some impartial observer and neutral participant. He had followed his heart.

In parting all those months ago at Ma-Took’s warehouse, they had both discovered that the connection between them was not the stuff of passionate romance; they tested that thoroughly enough with a kiss to be sure. Perhaps, if Chenda had not been promised the love of a lifetime, a passion that she eventually found with Fenimore, she likely would have been tempted to spend her life with Verdu. He had proven himself to be compassionate, protective, and loyal—the kind of man a woman could love and respect for a lifetime, the kind of man her first husband had been. Now, having tasted the passion of a soul mate, Chenda could never settle for anything less. Sadly, the storybooks never mentioned the downside of finding a soul mate: once found, a person cannot live well without the better part of their soul.

She read once again the last page of the little book:

A tear rolled down Chenda’s cheek, as a sad smile crossed her face. Verdu’s words sounded more elegant than “we made a pickle-tub submarine and escaped.” The people who had lived this time with her were far away, and she missed them. She felt like parts of her soul had broken off and she would never be whole until they were all together again.

“
Excuse me, Pramuc, I hate to interrupt your reading,” Rainor said as he approached. He glanced down at the book. “The translation is good, yes? I know it doesn’t hold a candle to the poetry of the original Tugrulian, but it carries the message well, I think. . . .”

“
How can I help you, Rainor?” Chenda asked as she wiped the tears away.

“
Ah, well, I have to ask you to move to midship, Pramuc. We need to fish, and a school of targa are about—we will feast tonight! It will not delay us long, but we need to divide the ship and bait the share.”

Chenda had no clue what Rainor was talking about, other than that she was in the way at the moment. But she would not deny the ones who’d saved her from the sea any request. The
Tao-Tallis
crew had happily diverted from their course and practically jumped at the chance to take her wherever she wanted to go—even through the patrol line of the empire. She promised to pay them, eventually, and they all looked away as if embarrassed. Rainor later explained to her what Mae-Lyn hospitality was all about: if you were allowed aboard, you were family until you left.

“
Of course,” she said now. “Where exactly would you like me to go?”

“
To the mainmast at center ship,” he said jerking a thumb over his shoulder, “to where Afham is.” She could see where Rainor’s son sat, arms crossed and pouting. Rainor apologized for Afham’s sour disposition: “The boy is a bit put out that his father has told him yet again he is too small and inexperienced to hunt targa. I doubt he will be very good company, but he is all I have to offer while we hunt. All aboard the
Tao-Tallis
have to work the nets and so forth. You understand, of course.”

“
Of course,” she lied as she headed toward Rainor’s son. She had no clue what hunting targa was all about, but gathered—family or not—she was the village idiot at the moment, and was less harm to everyone involved if she just stayed out of the way. As much as she felt like she ought to help, she did not have the first clue as to how.

What she did know was that many of the finest garments in Coal City often featured the shiny, iridescent targa buttons, so she knew that this breed of fish was not just for eating. Judging by the cost of any garment with those buttons, the chance to catch a targa was perhaps too valuable an opportunity to pass up—even with promises made to the resident holy woman.