The walls held no decor except stains from drink, oily hair, and blood. Sawdust covered the heavy walkways and looked like it should have been changed days ago. The tavern's three serving girls had already been by and offered themselves-for a price. He'd politely declined, and his thoughts had wandered inadvertently back to Yeill, wondering how someone so beautiful could look at life the way she did. For the tavern girls, it was just another means to make a couple silvers, and though he couldn't condone it, he at least did understand.
How was it that having wealth and not having wealth so often put the people who had and didn't have it in the same camp? he wondered. He realized it wasn't so much like a camp as it was like the table in front of him. People had to fill the seats on both sides, one giving and the other taking, each in turn, to fulfill the business between them.
In its basest terms, he supposed it was business, like Finaren sitting across from merchants who needed goods shipped to and fro.
It was still no way to live life. Coins were a means, not tools of war and not some counting system in a game. What mattered about life was the way a man lived it.
There were those, he knew, who would never get the chance to live a decent life at all no matter what was in their hearts. He felt immediately guilty at that, thinking of the time Madame litaar and Malorrie had spent with him these past years. Closing his eyes, he lowered his head and folded his hands, praying to Ilmater that he have the strength not to find fault with others for his own troubles and that he wouldn't slight what he had been given.
When he blinked his eyes open, he found Finaren standing there. The captain had his hat in his hands as he waited quietly.
"I didn't mean to intrude on your prayers, lad," the older man said in his deep voice.
Jherek pushed himself from his chair and turned up a hand to offer the seat across from him. "You're not intruding, sir."
"I'm not one to get between a man and his god," Finaren said, easing himself into the chair.
Jherek gave him a small smile and took his own seat. "Did you get the repairs set up for Butterfly!"
"Aye, and rogues that they are, they're going to charge a man an arm and a leg to have them done." Finaren waved to one of the serving girls and called, "Wench, you've got a restless man here dying of thirst. Bring me a bottle of your harshest who-hit-Nate and be damned quick about it."
Jherek was surprised at how demanding the captain was. As rough and prickly as he was at sea, he remained the epitome of good manners around children and women.
Finaren looked at him, then sighed. His shoulders slumped. "Being hard on the lass, aren't I?"
The young sailor shrugged, feeling even more nervous than he had when Finaren first sat down. The captain could bluster and yell louder than any man Jherek had ever known, but only in its proper time and place.
"I am and I know it, lad," the captain added. "There's no excuse. Rest assured that she'll see a healthy stipend for any troubles I might offer."
The serving girl brought a bottle and thick glass and put them before Finaren.
The captain thanked her and pulled the cork from the bottle. "Care for a libation, lad? Trust me, I think we're both going to need it."
Jherek's stomach flip-flopped, and he had to force the words out. He'd often seen Finaren take a drink and knew the man kept a ship's keg tapped, but he'd never seen the captain in a drunken stupor. He noticed for the first time the stink of liquor already on Finaren's breath and said, "No, thank you."
Finaren filled the glass in front of him and put the bottle away unstoppered. "Me, I'm going to get royally pissed back at Butterfly, lad." He drained off half the contents of the glass, then had a coughing fit that ended with, "I've damn sure earned it."
Jherek said nothing, already not liking the turn the conversation was taking.
"Valkur's brass buttons, lad, would that you were not who you are." Finaren met his level gaze, and Jherek saw the pain in the older man's eyes.
"But I am," Jherek whispered, barely able to get the words out.
"It's one thing for me to tell my crew a white lie for a good reason," Finaren said.
"I never asked that," Jherek said.
"I know that, lad. Hell, I'm not blaming you for me putting me own head in a noose on that one. You came to me and told me about that tattoo, same as you told Shipwright Makim who you were, and it was my choice not to tell the crew about it."
Jherek remembered that decision. Even though Finaren had made the choice, he'd hated living that lie around men who on occasion trusted him with their lives.
"They wouldn't have stood for it," Finaren said. "Me, I don't know how I'd agreed to let you ship with me."
Jherek opened his mouth to speak, not sure what he was going to say.
"You just shush, lad," the captain cautioned. "I'm here to make my peace, and I'll not have you taking blame on yourself where there's none. I could have done it another way, but I knew there'd be some of them men wouldn't stand for having you aboard. Selune grant me some good fortune here that they never find out who you truly are."
Shards of hot tears stung the backs of Jherek's eyes but he wouldn't let them fall. He grew angry at himself, knowing how the conversation was going to end, and frustrated with himself that he could have believed even for a moment that it was going to go any other way.
There was no way to escape his heritage. The flaming skull tattoo marking him as one of Falkane's pirate crew had been magically administered, put on by Falkane himself. Falkane hand picked his crew, taking the hardest men a reaver's life could turn out, and he tied them to him for the rest of their lives by the tattoo. Nothing could erase that tattoo once it had been inscribed. Jherek had tried everything. Even before Madame litaar had attempted to remove it with her magic, he'd even tried to cut it from his flesh, leaving the scars that marked it.
"Lad, one of the most unfair things in life is the fact that a man can't pick the man who fathered him." Finaren's voice took on an unaccustomed thickness. "That day you came to me, why that's as clear in my mind as if it were yesterday. You were only a lad. Hell, you still are, but then you didn't have all the muscle and height you've picked up these past few years. You were just a spindly boy, not even shaving."
Jherek remembered, too. He'd thought Madame litaar was punishing him for wanting to go to sea and had set his interview up with the crustiest captain that operated out of Velen to discourage him. Finaren's demeanor had been hard to take.
"I thought I'd have you out away from the city a half day's journey and you'd be crying for your ma," Finaren went on. Even though he knew Madame litaar wasn't Jherek's natural mother, he'd always referred to her that way, 'Taut I saw that look in your eyes when you talked about the sea, and I knew it came from the fire in your belly a man always has when he's fallen in love with the briny blue."
"There's no other place I'd rather be," Jherek said.
"I know, lad, and a man with that kind of passion, he's going to find the way of it. That's why, even after you told me who you are, and showed me the tattoo when I doubted, that I let you sail old Butterfly. I turned down growed-up men to put you on her deck."
Jherek knew it was true. Malorrie maintained contacts among the docks and had relayed the stories to him.
"Damn your father's eyes, lad," Finaren said, "I can't be taking you with me any more. We've had a good run of luck these past few years. I tell you now, I've never had a finer man crewing aboard Butterfly. Umberlee take me now if I'm lying."