The Lawkeeper of Samara (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 2) (20 page)

Two of the sailors brought the other passenger in. He was a young man, hair tousled, half dressed, with a coat tied around him to preserve his modesty. He walked between his escorts with considerable dignity, despite his appearance. He stopped a few paces short of Gilan and Diara.

“Lieutenant Gilan,” he said. “Well, this is a surprise.”

Diara looked at them both. “Do you know him?”

It was difficult. Beneath the scruffy, pale young man before them there was something distinctly familiar. It was the voice mostly.

“Corban Saine?”

“The same,” the young man replied. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for a killer,” Gilan replied.

“A killer?”

“Aye, a killer. One of my men was murdered today, aboard this vessel. And I’m no longer a lieutenant, I’m a lawkeeper.”

“Surely you don’t think I did it?” Corban asked.

Gilan didn’t hesitate. “Not for a minute,” he replied. “But would you mind taking your shirt off?”

“It’s damned cold,” Corban said.

“Not so much.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you, Gilan?”

“Yes, I am. Please take your shirt off.”

“Why?”

Gilan leaned forward. “Frankly I don’t suspect you in the least, but I’m a lawkeeper, and I have to go by the rules. What I think doesn’t matter. I have to have proof. There are a lot of people on this ship and I have to examine them one by one, and the easiest way I can clear you is to see you without your shirt on. If you refuse I can’t force you, but then I have to keep you in mind, and I’d rather not.”

Corban looked for a moment as though he might refuse, but shrugged and undid his coat. Underneath it he was wearing a nightshirt of sorts which he pulled off, revealing that he was naked underneath. Diara didn’t blink.

“Turn around,” Gilan said. He was looking for the tattoo, gambling that they would all have it. The one that had got up and walked away had been tattooed and so had the corpse they’d brought in after the chief had taken his head. Corban Saine’s skin was unmarked.

“Satisfied?” he asked.

“Completely. I’m sorry to have inconvenienced you,” Gilan said. Corban put his shirt back on, slipped the coat over his shoulders and fastened it again.

Gilan had met Corban perhaps a dozen times. In the past the house of Saine had provided Ocean’s Gate with food rather than have them raid the city for it, and a few times Gilan had been on the detail that went to collect it, but it was a popular duty, and he hadn’t been chosen often. He’d seen Ella once, too, but she had been a girl then, only fifteen or so years. Corban, her brother, was clever. They’d all agreed on that. Clever and subtle.

“I wonder if you’d mind giving us a hand?” he asked.

Corban stopped fastening his coat. He put a hand on his belly. “I’m not a lawkeeper,” he said. “And honestly I’m not sure how long I can go without throwing up again. I hate the sea.”

“Ginger tea,” Diara said.

“What?” Gilan stared at her.

“Ginger tea settles the stomach. I know people who swear by it.”

Gilan looked at the mate. “Do you have such a thing as ginger tea?” he asked.

“Aye, we do. And your friend’s right. It’s a help, but no cure.”

“Will you have some brought?”

“And do you think I could go and dress?” Corban asked.

“Of course, Trader Saine.”

Five minutes of waiting and tea was brought at about the same time Corban reappeared, dressed in a smart green jacket, black boots and pale trousers. He pulled up a seat.

“I hope this tea of yours works,” he said to Diara. He sipped it and pulled a face. “It seems very spicy,” he said.

“It works,” Diara said.

“Why are you on this ship, Trader Saine?” Gilan asked.

“Business,” the young man replied. “Trade. My father wants various things from Pek. I can show you the list if you like.”

“You have a cargo on board?”

“Aye. Some things that the Pekkans might want. There’s wine from Blaye, steel blanks for their smiths, some northern fabrics that don’t come down the east coast. It all sells well over there.”

Gilan nodded. “And this was loaded yesterday?”

“The day before. The sailing was delayed, apparently.”

Gilan glanced up at the mate, who nodded. So that cleared Corban twice. There was no way that anyone could have predicted they’d be on this ship before Gilan had talked to Zumaran, and the trader had started loading before that meeting.

“Well, then, I’d better explain where we are,” Gilan said. “Your sister will have told you something of our troubles in Samara?”

“Aye, over breakfast yesterday, and every day for a week.” He grinned. “She does so love to talk.”

“I’ll start from the beginning,” Gilan said, and he did, from the day Hekman found the body on the mud in Gulltown all the way through their investigation until they boarded the ship just a few hours ago. He noted that Corban was getting his colour back. The ginger tea seemed to be working.

“You think that one of the six is on this ship?” Corban asked when he finished.

“I do. Nothing else explains Ifan’s murder.”

“Well, then, let us begin, but I suggest that your archer here sit some way behind us and have an arrow on her string, for if we find this killer he will doubtless be taken with some difficulty.”

Diara didn’t wait for Gilan. She went to the back of the cabin and sat in one of the windows, bow held loosely, arrow set. It made sense.

The mate brought the first man. He was a sailor, pure and simple, one of the men who ran up the ratlines to set and bind the sails. He was Pekkan himself, and showed not a whit of intelligence. Indeed he seemed so limited that Gilan wondered if he was putting it on. Eventually he decided that the man was just what he seemed, a sailor and the son of a sailor, just transferred to the Red Fox to make his way home.

The second man was a watch leader who’d served on the ship before, an older man who certainly had his wits about him. He was a country boy from the plains north of Darna who’d gone to sea as a young man, and he happily stripped off his shirt to show a torso ridged with muscle and tattooed with an assortment of nautical sigils and good luck charms, but nothing resembling the broken line tattoo.

So it went on.

It was dusk by the time they came to the end of Gilan’s list of new arrivals aboard. There only remained the lawkeepers themselves. Gilan looked across at Diara.

“Well, unless it’s me it’s you,” he said.

“Don’t joke about it,” Diara replied.

“So much for the list,” Corban sat back in his chair. “What now?”

Diara stood from her window seat and walked across the back of the cabin to where the captain had been sitting before. She stopped and picked something up.

“It must be someone who came on the ship earlier,” Gilan said. “A coincidence. Or perhaps someone was paid to kill Ifan.”

“Then it could be anyone,” Corban said.

Diara muttered something.

“There’s one other who came aboard last night,” the mate said.

“Not on the list?” Gilan asked.

“Captain’s never on the list,” the mate said.

Diara leaned forward and put an arrow on the table. It was a black arrow with red fletching. “This looks like one of Arla’s,” she said.

Gilan stared at the arrow. It did. Arla was the only one he knew with red fletched black arrows. She’d brought them back when she got her new bow. They were quite distinctive. He remembered, too, that Arla had shot at the crossbowman who’d tried to kill her the previous night. She was sure she’d hit him.

The cabin door opened and the captain stepped through it. “Time for dinner,” he said. He stopped when he saw the way they were looking at him. For a moment he stood there, and then he smiled.

“Some luck in your search, I take it,” he said.

In a blur he was gone, the door slamming behind him and Diara’s arrow hammering into it a moment later.

“Get after him,” the mate said. “If he raises the crew they’ll have you over the side before you can explain yourself.”

“I thought you said they hardly knew him,” Gilan protested.

“He’s the captain. That’s all he needs.”

Diara hadn’t waited. She was through the door after the captain before it had stopped moving. Gilan followed her. He was out the door just in time to see her feet on the open stair that led up to the deck, and above him he could hear chaos erupting, men shouting, feet running. He scrambled up the stairs.

He burst up into a brewing storm. One glance told him that the captain was down. Diara had proven her skill as an archer and put a shaft between his shoulder blades, but the crew were pouring onto the deck from the forward hatch and down from the tall masts, and they looked angry. Many of them were carrying knives or wicked-looking metal spikes.

Diara was backed against the quarter deck and had another arrow on the string. It was probably the only thing keeping them at bay. Gilan raised his hands in the air and tried to talk to them. He had to shout.

“Hold!”

Most of them paused, all of them looked at him, and in that pause the mate came up on deck.

“She killed the captain!” one of the sailors shouted, and the rest chorused agreement.

“He’s not dead,” Diara said. Nobody but Gilan heard her.

“Stand easy,” the mate shouted. “This is a matter of law.”

“Only one law on a ship,” one of the men said. Nobody disputed it.

“Aye,” the mate said. “One law, and the captain’s word, and who’s captain now?”

The same man eyed the mate with a rebellious look in his eye, but it passed and he shrugged. “You are,” he said.

“I am,” the mate said. “And my word is that we see the evidence, hear the words that these lawkeepers speak, and then I’ll make my judgement.”

“We’ll have nothing hidden,” the man said, but he put away his knife and many of the others followed suit, tension on the deck easing a step.

“We will not,” the mate said. “We’ll hear their words here and now before you all, but the watch must go back to duty, for the safety of the ship comes before all.”

The ringleader nodded. This was clearly a maritime precept, Gilan thought. He wished he knew more about how sailors conducted their affairs. He felt a little lost in all this talk of law and the captain’s word. Clearly there was a whole world of jurisprudence here that he had not guessed at. The mate turned to him.

“Will you speak?” he asked.

“I’m a landsman,” Gilan said. “I don’t know your ways aboard ship.”

“They’re simple enough. Someone kills aboard ship and they die, unless they have good cause. All else is held over until land, and the evidence is spoken in front of the ship, and the captain decides.”

“And if the captain is accused?”

“He can be deposed if the evidence demands it,” the mate said.

“Then I shall put the evidence before you,” Gilan said. He turned, deliberately facing the crew. If it came to a fight he knew that he and Diara would lose. He would happily have taken on any three of these men, but fifty? It was impossible. He was very aware of their precarious position here. His eloquence, which he doubted in every respect, was his only weapon.

Gilan told them everything. He told them in plain language about the dead children, the tortured bodies thrown away. He told them about the other murders. He was no orator, but he could see that he’d won over a good share of his audience. He just wasn’t sure how many he needed – what came next was the mate’s decision.

He sent Corban Saine down to the cabin to fetch Arla’s arrow and showed that to them.

“It’s a good story,” the sailor who had spoken before said. “But it’s a thin tale to kill a man.”

“He’s not dead,” Diara said, and this time they all heard her.

The sailor nudged the captain’s body with a foot. “He hasn’t drawn breath since your man started talking,” he said. “He looks dead to me.”

“It’s magic,” Gilan said. “In a few hours he’ll wake again. We need to secure him, for he’ll be a danger to us all.”

“How can you be sure he’s one of the men you seek?”

Gilan decided to gamble. “If he is he’ll have a mark on his body. I’ll draw it, and you can look for it.” For all he’d said before he still wasn’t certain that the captain was one of the killers. He could have been a hired man, and even if he was one of those they sought he might not have the mark.

Saine brought him paper and a pen and he carefully drew the pattern of broken lines. He remembered them well enough, having seen the second body and studied Hekman’s sketch. He gave the drawing back to the trader and he carried it across to the sailor.

“It’s no charm that I know,” the man said. He showed the paper to his fellows, made sure that they all had a good sight of it. That done he crouched by the captain’s body and with very little ceremony pulled the arrow from his erstwhile commander’s back and ripped off his shirt. He rolled the captain over.