10. The Stage


  

  The navigator and all the senior crew agreed that there could be no worse option than the island of Nemedos. Naturally, this immediately became Marco's preferred destination. Every time they said, "People don't come back from Nemedos," it sounded like a further recommendation. The Navigator, a man called Dario who had worked for his family for fifteen years, tried to explain better.

  "Sire, you have to understand," he said, pointing at the map in the captain's cabin, "it does not say 'here be dragons,' we know what is there."

  "Which is?" Marco asked, leaning over the chart table.

  "Pirates. Three great island families have sent fleets to dislodge them, and they cling on like barnacles."

  "So neither my father nor Duke Lorenzo would come looking here lightly?"

  "Sire, with all due respect, you should be more concerned with what happens to us when we enter that bay. They will not welcome us."

  "You think they will not welcome one of the most advanced ships in the known world?"

  "Oh no, sire. They will love the ship. They will want the ship. We will be in their way."

  Dario's point was a valid one. Bringing a ship like the Aurora to known criminals didn't seem like the wisest move. Ultimately, he didn't need to bring the ship to harbour. He just needed to get off there.

  On the other hand, if he got off without the crew there was a very real risk they would immediately sail home. This would be an acceptable outcome if it did not mean there would be a group of people who could report his location.

  He would have said it was a bad plan all round, but that would suggest there had been any kind of plan at all. Marco had been flying with the wind and was now about to be thrown against a hard, pirate-infested cliff face.

  "Pirates steal from merchants," he reasoned, tapping a finger on the chart. "But we are not merchants. We will arrive as fellow pirates."

  "Sire, do you think they will believe you are a pirate?" Dario asked, the doubt plain in his voice.

  "Why not? I've stolen a ship, have I not? My qualifications are self-evident."

  While Dario shook his head, he offered no more argument. That was the trick, Marco decided. It didn't matter if he didn't have a plan as long as everyone around him believed he had one.

  He took this confidence in mind when he stood on the deck to address the crew. They were a mixed lot. Some of them didn't care where they went or who they followed, as long as they got paid. These ones were useful.

  Then there were others who were going along with this only because they absolutely had to, and should any opportunity present itself to change course, they would take it in a heartbeat. They were his opposition.

  Finally, there were those who were not committed either way and were waiting to see which way the wind blew. These were his audience.

  "I intend to go ashore on Nemedos." They said nothing.

  "And I understand many of you are thinking 'good riddance to the noble fool'." There were a few small laughs. "And no doubt some of you are thinking 'fantastic, let us leave him here to rot and sail home for Livonia City.' But this would be a mistake."

  He strode from one side of the ship to the other like a player working the stage.

  "This is thinking about the present, but that is not what we should be thinking about. I want you to think of the past and the future." Murmurs went around. No one interrupted.

  "Think of the past. Think of every voyage you have sailed for my father. And think of the vast wealth this brought him."

  He furrowed his brow and tilted his head. "Do you remember how much you were paid? Was that equal to the risks you took or the toil you endured? Did it recognise your skill and character as you deserved?"

  Grumbles sounded and there were sardonic laughs as they all remembered times they nearly died for barely two coins.

  "Now think about the future. What do you think happens when you arrive in Livonia having left the Duke's son stranded on an island of pirates? Does the Duke change his whole character and find himself overcome with generosity?" The laughs were louder now.

  "Or does he instead torture you until he has every part of the tale from your broken body? And give his final thanks with the headsman's axe?" The mirth dissipated as the ring of truth was felt.

  "I can see a different, better future. One where rewards are fair. Will I ask you to risk your lives? Yes. Will I ask you to face peril and hardship I do not face myself? Never. From here on we share risks and rewards."

  They were not completely convinced. They were, however, beginning to doubt the alternative choice. "Or you can go to my father and trust in his mercy."

  The doubt was there. That was enough for now.

  The party to go ashore was carefully chosen. He took Dario and all their maps. The Bosun, Milos, would go also. This left the ship blind and without the person who knew how to repair it. The Quartermaster went too. If he was to promise them a deal he had to look like he was going to get the numbers right.

  The Aurora arrived in the harbour of Nemedos and took anchor. Ahead of them, the port spilled out over the bay. He could chart its development just by looking at it.

  Near the shore, the buildings were constructed from the boughs of shipwrecks, market stalls stood sheltered by sailcloth. Further in, shacks of more conventional housing took hold.

  Finally, where the shoreline hit the jungle descending from the overhanging hills, there were a few grander stone buildings, imitations of merchant houses as might be seen on Livonia or Annativo.

  The docks spread into the water like busy fingers gripping at the waves. Here, ships of every size were present with sails of white and grey and flags of black. None of them had cannons like the Aurora. This was a vital source of leverage.

  The small rowing boat hit an outstretched jetty and they climbed onto the wooden planking that creaked where they stepped. Pirates watched them with interest as they came forward. Marco led, with Milos and the Quartermaster, Genitivi, at his side. Both armed with short swords. Dario followed behind carrying their maps in his satchel.

  A strange thing happened as they moved closer to shore. Rather than gathering around at their entrance the pirates strolled away, no longer curious.

  "Why is no one greeting us?" Marco asked, one eyebrow raised.

  Milos let out a cynical laugh. "That would suggest someone was in charge."

  Marco hummed. Frustratingly, Milos was correct. He was acting like he'd turned up at a nobleman's gates. This was not that world.

  "What do people do when they arrive in a new port?" Marco asked, letting go of his aristocratic assumptions.

  He didn't need to explain that when he said 'people' he meant 'people who are not nobles or elite merchants'.

  Milos shrugged. "Get a drink. Get a girl, if you can. See who is offering work?"

  "Then that's our plan," Marco decided, adopting the new logic instantly.

  The streets were heat and sweat and noise. The smell of salt, unwashed bodies, and cheap spirits hung heavy in the humid air.

  Strangely, the crowds were more polite than in other ports he'd visited. Perhaps because every person they saw carried at least a knife, a worn cutlass, or a heavy club. Giving personal space was a sensible survival strategy.

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  First step. Getting a drink. There were numerous taverns to choose from, but his eyes went at once to the large building on the hill with a brass mermaid swinging from its signpost. The metal was tarnished green and black from salt and years of weather, but the figure still commanded attention.

  They moved upwards through the town, dodging the dogs and people sleeping in the spots of shade that smelled faintly of brine and spilled ale.

  "A bit different for you, Sire?" Milos asked, his tone laced with a knowing irony as he gestured toward a woman aggressively haggling over a piece of dried fish.

  "Yes. It's alive," Marco replied, taking in the frenetic, desperate energy of the port.

  "Like an ants' nest," Dario suggested.

  Marco laughed; a genuine, unforced sound. They would not understand. It was natural for them to assume the pampered Duke's son would desire only comfort.

  He breathed in the air, a complex, heavy mix that smelt distinctly of piss and vomit and dried salt. And he'd take it happily over the cloying, sweet scents of the sweetest roasting quail at a suffocatingly polite table with Duke Lorenzo and his daughter.

  Sweat poured from his brow by the time he stood beneath that smiling mermaid sighing on the pole with the sea breeze rocking it gently. There was another sign above the door: 'The Mermaid', in case the figure wasn't clear enough.

  The rush of smells, rum and heat of bodies, engulfed them at once as they stepped over the threshold. Light cut across the tables from within the shadowy interior.

  It soon became clear that the building was massive, connecting to a number of its neighbours and enclosing open courtyards of palms and wild grass bathed in an unbearably bright white sun.

  Vibrantly coloured birds squawked from the higher branches and monkeys scrambled, trying to steal treats dangled by patrons on the upper gallery.

  Smoke drifted across the air. It wasn't the scent he was expecting, somehow sweeter, fuller in flavour, than simple tobacco.

  The people were just as interesting as the architecture and wildlife. They looked like they could have been from anywhere in the continent. No. They looked like they were from everywhere.

  As many as there were who could have been from island states, there were shades of darker flesh from the jungles and deserts further east and paler figures who could have been from the lakes or even the cold north.

  Marco wound his way through the patrons to where a broad man with tentacle tattoos snaking up his thick forearms was moving bottles behind a counter. The air was thick with wood smoke and the humid vapour of sweating bodies.

  "What have you got?" Marco asked, resting his hands on the rough wood of the bar; it felt slick with old spirits and grease.

  "Table." The man didn't even look up, his voice a low, gravelly sound, like stones shifting in a dry creek bed.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Get a table. Wait for a wench." The man finally glanced up, his eyes dark and utterly indifferent, before returning to slamming a cork into a bottle with practiced violence.

  Marco nodded as if he had half expected this outcome, acutely aware that more and more pairs of eyes were now tracking him, measuring his reaction to the slight. The silence felt loud and expectant. He swept the room with his gaze for the sight of anywhere to sit.

  Two men departed from a table, leaving behind a sticky puddle of spilled ale that shimmered faintly in the dim light, and he used the footwork primed in years of fencing to pick his way past the outstretched boots and swinging elbows to seize it before anyone else could have the same idea.

  They settled around the thick oaken table, its surface scarred with decades of knife cuts and sticky with spilled drink, and waited.

  The low, continuous roar of the tavern made the silence at their table feel like an unnatural exposure. Marco momentarily feared that they would be left sitting around like idiots for hours on end.

  Then, a wench did indeed arrive, gliding through the tight cluster of bodies with practiced grace, a slight wisp of sweet tobacco smoke trailing her. He looked her over. Her hair was dark and fell in crinkled waves, catching the dim, oil-lamp light. Her skin was deep olive, rich and warm; she could easily have been from Annativo.

  She was considerably better looking than Fernanda, a fact that struck Marco with sharp, petty injustice. It seemed almost unfair. Why did such vivacious beauty serve in this sweaty den? Why was it wasted here when gold and jewels and quail for dinner were given to the most tedious person ever to cross his path?

  She leaned in, her voice low to cut through the surrounding din. "What would you like, sirs?"

  "What is good?" Marco replied, meeting her steady gaze.

  "Rum is what is good," she smiled, a quick flash of white teeth. "It's also what is bad too."

  "It sounds perfect. Bring a bottle and four cups."

  "My pleasure." She turned and vanished back into the crush of bodies.

  This was going well. The drink had been achieved. Marco searched the room again. All the wenches here seemed pretty, surprisingly so, carrying a certain weathered sharpness common to island ports. Perhaps the second objective, a brief, vital taste of freedom, was within reach too.

  The girl returned and laid down their drinks with a smile and a wink.

  The four heavy earthenware mugs thudded onto the scarred oaken table, followed by a dark glass bottle of viscous, potent rum. The spirit in the bottle looked like melted amber, thick and slow.

  Marco knew there was no sense in rushing. The immediate, sharp craving for a physical release was intense, but he was acutely aware that there was another, far more important game taking place here.

  Though they pretended not to, Marco noted the other patrons. Faces partially hidden by the gloom of the tavern's interior and the pervasive haze of smoke, were constantly shifting, tracking the new arrivals.

  The low, indistinct murmur of voices seemed to deliberately exclude their table. He realised this table was not a quiet place to sit; it was a stage, and the silent, watchful audience was following their performance with keen interest, waiting for them to make a mistake.

  Two men wandered towards them eventually, their progress wobbly on the uneven floor.

  "This is our table." One of them, a thick-set man with a shaggy beard that looked like tangled wire below his chin and a shiny scalp above, stated flatly. He leaned his knuckles on the table, making the four heavy earthenware mugs rattle slightly.

  Marco looked them over. They were, in fact, the same pair who had departed moments before. "You left. We arrived," he explained evenly, his tone precise and calm, a stark contrast to the low, humid snarl of the tavern.

  "And now we are back. And we want our table." The second man, ginger and long-haired, insisted, his breath smelling of fermented fruit. He shifted his weight, and the worn leather of his belt creaked.

  Marco almost smiled. The room was like a living thing, and these two were its crude, opportunistic feelers, testing the newcomer's mettle.

  A cluster of card players at the next table had stopped their game, their silence drawing the attention of patrons in the upper gallery, who now leaned over the railing. The pressure of the collective gaze intensified the heat in the air. It was up to Marco to show them.

  "There are other tables."

  "We don't want another table. We want this one."

  "Then we are at an impasse."

  "What's an impasse?" the bald one asked, the sheer ignorance in his tone almost insulting.

  Marco looked at him dead in the eye. "It's the point you realise you need to go home."

  The two men drew their short swords in a grinding scrape of metal against leather. Milos and Genitivi started forward, but Marco cut them off with a quick, flat gesture and stepped into the space, the low, rhythmic roar of the tavern seeming to hold its breath.

  "You wanna try it, pretty boy?" the long-haired, ginger one challenged, his voice thin with false bravado.

  "Do you?" Marco replied.

  They moved, clumsy and heavy. Marco drew his rapier, the thin blade hissing out of the scabbard, and parried the two simultaneous, predictable attacks with two sharp clangs. The pirates drew back, their eyes wide and alarmed at the impossible speed.

  He took the offensive, moving with the practiced grace of a dance. As he slashed, the bald man stumbled over his own feet. Marco didn't hesitate, delivering a short, brutal jab: the heavy, solid brass crossguard of his rapier struck the bridge of the pirate's nose with a sickening thud.

  The man didn't cry out; he simply stared at Marco in dazed disbelief for half a second, his face instantly erupting in a sheet of crimson, before his heavy body crashed unceremoniously to the floor.

  The red-haired one tried to attack from the blind side, roaring in a desperate, guttural sound. Marco locked blades and twisted the pirate's hands onto the scarred table.

  Before the man could react, Marco pulled out the stiletto. The blade plunged into the centre of the palm, driving deep into the wood with a dull, sickening shuck. The pirate's scream was immediate, high-pitched, and filled with agony.

  Marco spun, his rapier still held high and steady, and faced the rest of the room. The silence was crushing, broken only by the whimpering of the pinned pirate.

  A few men clapped, the sound sharp and solitary. Others laughed and raised their cups in a silent toast. Then, as if a spell had been broken, the low, familiar roar of the tavern resumed, the clatter of mugs, the shouting of commands, the heavy background din. Marco had passed the test. They were no longer imposing on his space.

  In the shadows, men with clubs and dark jerkins eyed his attackers. The room had made its judgement. Marco drew out the stiletto, there was a fresh whimper, and the two men ran for the door.

  The serving wench returned carrying a coarse, salt-stained towel that she immediately threw over the blood with disturbingly practiced ease. The heavy cloth landed with a wet slap, drinking the red into itself until only a darker, spreading stain remained.

  "Many apologies," she said, voice low, almost amused. "The owner would like to offer you an alternative table. Would you like that?"

  "We would be most grateful."

  "Forgive me, just you."

  The words hung in the thick air like a hook. Marco looked around at his companions. Was he being lured away from them or they from him? The tavern’s roar had dropped to a watchful hush; even the dice had stopped rolling.

  He clenched his jaw. His whole gambit relied on him proving he could lead this crew and give them access they couldn’t have without him. When someone wanted to see him alone, he had to take that chance.

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