Pirvan was no stranger to hammocks, but if someone was going to yield the bunk without a word, no thief ever refused what was freely given. (Honest men were much the same, too.) He stretched out, more to give the boy room to work than because he was tired.
Intentions were one thing, the state of his body another. He must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew, the boy was standing by the bunk, wrestling the trunk on to a rack and lashing it in place with a complicated harness of brass chain and leather thongs. It looked enough to drive an embroiderer to drink, but the boy made quick work of it.
Pirvan pulled out a copper ten-piece and tossed it to the boy. He snatched it out of the air, gaped, bit it, then grinned as his teeth told him he’d been offered genuine coin.
“Well, Master, that’s a good sign for our voyage together. We’ll be upanchoring before you need the head again, so snug yourself down and be easy.”
He was gone without another word, though he had said enough. More than enough to make Pirvan concerned that Grimsoar One-Eye might not have made it aboard, and that he would be sailing on this voyage with no friends and indeed no one aboard who would not toss him to the fish the moment his work was done. Of all the places on Krynn where it was easy to make murder look like an accident, a ship was notoriously the best.
Snugging himself down was impossible, with that on his mind. Wandering around the ship without being noticed would be as difficult as ever. The cabin had no portholes to give Pirvan a view, either.
What it did have, he discovered quickly, was a small grating in the ceiling-no doubt the deck above. There were also places where a man as agile as Pirvan could arrange himself, to listen to anything that came through the grating.
He quickly memorized the best position, then blew out the hanging lamp to give a stronger impression of sleep. A moment later, he was half hanging, half standing, with a bit of crouch thrown in, bracing himself so that his ear was against the grating.
It was a while before he heard anything but ship’s work, a confused and confusing din of shouts, grunts, creaks and groans, thumps of wood and squalling of metal, and numerous mostly irreverent remarks about gods, women, and shipmates. After one particularly loud outburst, which seemed to be connected with emptying a boat and getting it aboard, Pirvan heard that which made him listen with more attention.
“Wrung the wine out of everybody?” That was a male voice with authority in it.
“Almost everybody.” That was the voice of the big man who’d met Pirvan at the gangway.
“Almost may not be good enough.”
“Oh, don’t fret, Captain. The lad’s found a new hand, worth two of the old ones. He’s that big.”
“We’ve orders about new hands. Has he his papers?”
“Signed by Berishar, or I’ve forgotten my own name.”
A moment’s silence, then the sound of numerous booted feet, diminishing as they headed forward.
“That him, the big one?”
“Aye, Captain. The one with the red cap and the red trim on his jacket. And-you can’t see it from here, but he’s got the lucky eyes.”
“One blue and one green?”
“The blue eye’s more brown, but close enough.”
“It’ll be enough if he’s not unlucky, for himself or for us. This is a canny enough voyage, with so many women passengers aboard.”
“Should I make an extra offering at the temple of Habbakuk in Karthay?”
“You should get out of my sight and start lashing things down. Including your tongue, if you can’t make it wag sense!”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
Pirvan stifled laughter and let himself down on to the bunk, reassured. Grimsoar normally wore a patch over his ruined eye, but had a selection of glass and crystal ones to give him the appearance of two eyes. Also, his good eye was an unusual shade of blue with tinges of brown (or brown with tinges of blue), and he’d said that he would be wearing red headgear.
Altogether, Pirvan felt that he could sleep in peace, knowing he was not alone. That knowledge and scant sleep in the two days since he had signed on for this voyage took him down almost before he could hang up his outer clothes.
* * * * *
Pirvan awoke to the knowledge that Golden Cup was at sea, or at least no longer at anchor. All the movements and sounds had changed.
Less expected and much less welcome was the fact that he was no longer alone in the cabin. A man was sitting on the deck, back against the door, head sunk on his chest. It was a bald head, but the face below looked no older than Pirvan’s, and the body in the sailor’s clothes looked both well fed and well muscled.
Pirvan counted to ten, holding his breath while he drew his dagger from under the straw-stuffed pillow. Then he looked at the hammock above and said, very slowly:
“I seem to be in the habit lately of waking in strange places and in strange company. That you may cease to be strange, please tell me who you are and what you are doing in my cabin.” Without my having to ask twice, either, or I will try the pommel of my dagger across the bridge of your nose as the next question.
The man gave a whuff like a dwarf with a hangover and straightened. Dark eyes opened in an amiable, round face, framed from ear to ear in a close-cut dark beard. Cautiously, as if he had sensed Pirvan’s dagger and readiness to use it, he drew from the neck of his shirt a medallion.
It was hammered red metal, with silver-filled signs etched into it. The front was the mark of the Towers of High Sorcery, the rear the open book of Gilean.
Pirvan put his feet on the deck without taking his hand off the dagger. “Ah, the mage-”
“Neutral, my friend. Neutral, in spite of what the Black and White Robes may say, does not mean renegade.”
The man sounded as though he were wearily correcting a common mistake, rather than looking for an excuse for a fight. Since Pirvan had used much the same tone on certain persons ill-informed about the thieves, he found himself both eased and amused.
“I apologize for that error. May I ask one from you, for slipping into my cabin like-shall we say, a thief?”
The man choked down laughter. “I crave your pardon. But I am aboard this ship as a stowaway. I thought you might be the least inclined to turn me over to the captain.”
“That will depend on why you are here. Please don’t expect to subdue me by magic, either. I can probably knock you senseless before you can complete a major spell. Even if I couldn’t, using magic would be about as prudent as setting the ship on fire. You would be lucky to be thrown overboard in one piece.”
The man stood up and looked down at Pirvan. “Gilean forbid I should do any such thing,” he said. “For these moments I trained by handling drunks in my father’s tavern. I trained well, too, little as I knew it at the time.”
Pirvan looked up at the wizard. He did resemble a smaller edition of Grimsoar One-Eye, and might be enough faster to take advantage of being a smaller target. A brawl with this man might be one-sided for a good many, even without spells thrown in.
“Very well. We neither of us throw the other overboard. With that settled, who are you?”
“Tarothin, Red Robe Wizard,” the man said, and sat back down. “Stowaway aboard Golden Cup, as I told you. Why I am here is a long story.”
“So tell it. I haven’t heard the dawn whistle yet.”
“You won’t for quite a while. It’s still dark outside, though we’ve been under way for several hours.”
“Then we have time for a very long story.”
“As it may please your lordship,” Tarothin said, but his grin took the edge off the words.
Tarothin must have been accustomed to remarkably laconic people, because his “long story” took less than the time from one bell to another. Luckily, Tarothin had resisted the temptation to make it complex. Pirvan began to suspect that he and Tarothin might well get along splendidly, for that virtue if none other.