doors of an elaborately carved cabinet he had carried aboard, to display several racks of tiny stoppered bottles. Brashen did not know if they were samples of liquors and wine or oils and perfumes. The third son had spread a white cloth over Captain Finney's bunk and was setting out a hodge-podge of weaponry, table cutlery, books, scrolls and other items. Even this was not done randomly. The knives were arranged in a fan of blades and hilts, the scrolls and books fixed open to illustrations, and every other item displayed in a way calculated to invite the eye and intrigue the buyer.
This third boy was the one Brashen watched most closely. He doubted they were anything other than diligent and enthusiastic merchants, but he had resolved to be more suspicious since the unfortunate incident ten days ago. It had taken the ship's boy the better part of a day to holystone that rogue's bloodstain from the Springeve's deck. Brashen was still unable to decide how he felt about what he had done. The man had forced him to act; he could not have simply stood by and let him rob the ship, could he? Yet, Brashen could not shake the uneasy notion that he should never have taken this berth. If he had not been here, he would not have had to shed blood.
Where would he have been? He had not known where this job was leading. Nominally, he had been hired on simply as the first mate. The Springeve was a lively little ship, shallow draft and skittish in high winds, but wonderful for negotiating the waterways to the lagoon towns and river settlements she frequented. Nominally, the Springeve was a tramp freighter and trader, hauling and bargaining whatever goods came her way.
The reality was grimmer. Brashen was whatever Captain Finney told him he was: mate, bodyguard, translator or longshoreman. As for Finney himself, Brashen still could not fathom the man. He wasn't sure if Finney had decided to trust him, or was testing him. The man's disarming frankness was a guise used to gull the mostly disreputable merchants who traded with him. The stout man could never have survived all his years in this trade if he were actually as trusting and open as he appeared to be. He was a capable man on board his ship, and adept at charming people. However, Brashen suspected that he was capable of near anything for self-survival. At some time, a knife had left a long mark across his belly; the ridged scar was at odds with the man's seemingly affable nature. Ever since Brashen had seen it, he had found himself watching his captain as closely as he did those whom came aboard to trade.
Now he watched Finney lean forward casually to tap, in swift succession, twelve different pieces of jewelry. 'These I wish included in our trade. Take the others away. I have no interest in street vendors' wares.' The captain never lost his easy smile, but the swiftly tapping ringer had unerringly chosen what Brashen also considered the better pieces in Faldin's collection. Faldin smiled back at him, but Brashen's eyes caught a flash of unease on the merchant's face. Brashen's face remained neutral. Repeatedly, he had seen Finney do this. The man would be as soft and easy as a fat purring cat, but when it came to the bargaining, this Faldin would be lucky to walk off with the shirt still on his back. Brashen himself did not see the advantage to such a tactic. When he had worked for Ephron Vestrit, his captain had told him, 'Always leave enough meat on the bones that the other man is also satisfied. Otherwise, you'll soon have no one willing to trade with you.' Then again, Captain Vestrit had not been trading with pirates and those who disposed of stolen goods for pirates. The rules were bound to be different.
Since they had left Candletown, the Springeve had made a very leisurely trip up the coast of the Cursed Shores. The little craft had nosed up sluggish rivers and tacked into lagoons that were on no charts Brashen had ever seen. The whole section of 'coast' known as the Pirate Isles was constantly in flux. Some claimed that the multitude of rivers and streams that dumped into the Inside Passage around the Pirate Isles were actually one great river, eternally shifting in its many-channeled bed. Brashen didn't much care if the steaming waters that emptied out into the channel were from one river or many. The facts were that although the warm water mellowed the climate of the Pirate Isles, it also stank, fouled boat bottoms at a prodigious rate, weakened ropes and lines and created billowing fogs in every season of the year.
Other ships did not willingly linger there. The air was humid, and what 'fresh' water they took on turned green almost overnight. If the Springeve anchored close to shore, insects swarmed to feast on the crew. Strange lights danced often on these waters and sound traveled deceptively. Islands and channels shifted and disappeared as the wandering rivers dumped their silt and sand only to have a storm, rain flood or tide gulp away in a single night all that had been deposited during a month.
Brashen had only hazy memories of this area from the days when he had unwillingly sailed as a pirate. As a ship's boy, he had been little better than a slave. Weasel, they had called him when he crewed aboard the Hope. He had paid little attention to anything save scrabbling fast to stay ahead of a rope's end. He recalled the villages as tiny clusters of decaying huts. The only residents had been desperate men who had nowhere else to go. They had not been swaggering pirates, but little more than castaways who lived off whatever trade the true pirates brought to their tiny settlements.
Brashen winced at those memories. Now he had come full circle and could only marvel at how a few clusters of outlaw settlements had apparently grown into a network of towns. When he had been mate on the Vivacia, Brashen had listened skeptically to tales of permanent pirate settlements built on pilings or far up the brackish rivers and lagoons. Since he had begun sailing on the Springeve, he had gradually formed a different picture of these shifting islands and the bustling settlements that clung to their unreliable shores. Some were still little more than places where two ships might stop to trade goods, but others boasted houses with paint on their boards, and little shops along their muddy streets. The slave trade had swelled the population, and widened its variety. Artisans and educated slaves who had escaped Jamaillian owners rubbed elbows with criminals who had fled the Satrap's justice. Some residents had families. Women and children now formed a minor part of the population. Many of the escaped slaves were obviously trying to re-establish the lives stolen from them. They added a note of desperate civilization to the renegade towns.
Captain Finney seemed to rely solely on his memory to navigate the treacherous channels, tides and currents that brought them to each hamlet. Unerringly he guided the Springeve from town to town. Brashen suspected that he had private charts he consulted, but so far, he had not seen fit to give his mate so much as a glimpse of them. Such a lack of trust, Brashen reflected, as he watched the merchant's sons through narrowed eyes, almost demanded treachery in return. At least, he suspected that Finney would see the careful inking of shorelines and soundings that Brashen had marked onto the canvas scraps under his bunk as treachery. A good part of Finney's value as captain depended on his arcane knowledge of the Pirate Isles. He would see Brashen's careful hoard as a theft of his hard-won knowledge. Brashen saw it as the only long-term benefit he might carry away from this voyage. Money and cindin were all very well, but they were too soon gone. If fortune forced him into this trade, he would not sail as a mate forever.
'Hey. Brash. Over here. What do you think of this?'
He glanced away from the boys to the new selection of merchandise Finney was considering. Finney was holding up an illustrated scroll. Brashen recognized it as a copy of the Contradictions of Sa. The qualities of the parchment made him suspect it was a good one. Too familiar a knowledge of such things might indicate to Finney that he was not illiterate. He gave a shrug. 'Lots of pretty colors and fancy birds.'
'What do you think it's worth?'
Brashen shrugged. 'To whom?'
Finney narrowed his eyes. 'In a Bingtown shop, say.'
'I've seen them there. Never wanted to buy one, myself.'
Sincure Faldin rolled his eyes at the sailor's ignorance.
'I might take it.' Finney began to rummage through the rest of the goods. 'Set it aside for now. What is this?' There was a trace of amused annoyance in Finney's voice. 'It's broken. You know I trade only in the finest merchandise. Take it away.'
'Only the frame is damaged, no doubt in the haste of, er, salvaging it. The canvas is intact and quite valuable, I am told. It appears to be the work of a noted Bingtown artist. But that is not the only thing that makes it exceedingly valuable.' His voice hinted of a great secret to share.
Finney pretended disinterest. 'Oh, very well, I shall look at it. A ship. Now that's original. A ship under sail on a pretty day. Take it away, Sincure Faldin.'
The merchant continued to hold the painting proudly. 'I think you shall regret it if you let this get by you, Captain Finney. It was painted by Pappas. I am told he accepts few commissions, and that all of his canvases go dearly. However, as I told you, this is even more unique. It is a portrait of a liveship. It was taken from a liveship.'
