“That would certainly be pleasant.”
“And the plague ship, Master Lamora!” Ibelius spoke up eagerly. “A singular vessel. Jean has neglected to speak of it so far.”
“Plague ship?”
“A black-hulled vessel from Emberlain; a sleek little piece of business. Beautiful as all hell, and you know I barely know which part of a ship goes in the water.” Jean scratched his stubble-shadowed chin before continuing. “It pulled into plague anchorage the very night that Capa Raza gave Capa Barsavi his own teeth lessons.”
“That’s a very interesting coincidence.”
“Isn’t it? The gods do love their omens. Supposedly, there’s twenty or thirty dead already. But here’s the very odd part. Capa Raza has assumed responsibility for the charitable provisioning.”
“What?”
“Yes. His men escort the proceedings down to the docks; he’s giving coin to the Order of Sendovani for bread and meat. They’re filling in for the Order of Perelandro since, well, you know.”
“Why the hell would his men escort food and water down to the docks?”
“I was curious about that myself,” said Jean. “So last night I tried to poke around a bit, in my official priestly capacity, you see. It’s not just food and water they’re sending out.”
4
THE SOFTEST rain was falling, little more than a warm wet kiss from the sky, on the night of Throne’s Day-the night following the ascension of Capa Raza. An unusually stocky priest of Aza Guilla, with his wet robes fluttering in the breeze, stood staring out at the plague ship moored in Camorr Bay. By the yellow glow of the ship’s lamps, it seemed that the priest’s mask glowed golden bronze.
A decrepit little boat was bobbing in the gentle water beside the very longest dock that jutted out from the Dregs; the boat, in turn, had a rope leading out to the plague ship. The Satisfaction, anchored out at the edge of bow-shot, was looking strangely skeletal with its sails tightly furled. A few shadowy men could be seen here and there on the ship’s deck.
On the dock, a small team of burly stevedores was unloading the contents of a donkey-cart into the little boat, under the watch of half a dozen cloaked men and women, obviously armed. No doubt the entire operation could be seen by looking-glass from any of the guard stations surrounding Old Harbor. While most of those stations were still manned (and would stay that way, as long as the plague ship remained), not one of them would much care what was sent out to the ship, provided nothing at all was sent back.
Jean, on the other hand, was very curious about Capa Raza’s sudden interest in the welfare of the poor seafarers from Emberlain.
“Look, best just turn right around and get your ass back…oh. Ah, beg pardon, Your Holiness.”
Jean took a moment to savor the obvious disquiet on the faces of the men and women who turned at his approach; they seemed like tough lads and lasses, proper bruisers, seasoned in giving and taking pain. Yet the sight of his Sorrowful Visage made them look as guilty as children caught hovering too close to the honey crock.
He didn’t recognize any of them; that meant they were almost certainly part of Raza’s private gang. He tried to size them up with a glance, looking for anything incongruous or unusual that might shed light on their point of origin, but there was very little. They wore a great deal of jewelry; earrings, mostly-seven or eight of them per ear in one young woman’s case. That was a fashion more nautical than criminal, but it still might not mean anything.
“I merely came to pray,” said Jean, “for the intercession of the Lady Most Kind with those unfortunates out there on the water. Pay me no heed, and do continue with your labors.”
Jean encouraged them by putting his back mostly to the gang of laborers; he stood staring out at the ship, listening very carefully to the sounds of the work going on beside him. There were grunts of lifting and the tread of footfalls; the creaking of weathered, water-eaten boards. The donkey-cart had looked to be full of little sacks, each about the size of a one-gallon wineskin. For the most part, the crew handled them gingerly, but after a few minutes-
“Gods damn it, Mazzik!” There was a strange clattering, clinking noise as one of the sacks hit the dock. The overseer of the labor gang immediately wrung his hands and looked over at Jean. “I, uh, begging your pardon, Your Holiness. We, uh, we swore…we promised we would, uh, see these supplies safely to the plague ship.”
Jean turned slowly and let the man have the full, drawn-out effect of his faceless regard. Then he nodded, ever so slightly. “It is a penitent thing you do. Your master is most charitable to undertake the work that would ordinarily fall to the Order of Perelandro.”
“Yeah, uh…that really was too bad. Quite the, uh, tragedy.”
“The Lady Most Kind tends the mortal garden as she will,” said Jean, “and plucks what blossoms she will. Don’t be angry with your man. It’s only natural, to be discomfited in the presence of something…so unusual.”
“Oh, the plague ship,” said the man. “Yeah, it, uh, gives us all the creeps.”
“I shall leave you to your work,” said Jean. “Call for us at the House of Aza Guilla if the men aboard that ship should chance to need us.”
“Uh…sure. Th-thank you, Your Holiness.”
As Jean walked slowly along the dock, back toward shore, the crew finished loading the small boat, which was then unlashed from its mooring.
“Haul away,” bellowed one of the men at the end of the dock.
Slowly, the rope tautened, and then as the little black silhouettes aboard the Satisfaction picked up the rhythm of their work, the boat began to draw across Old Harbor toward the frigate at good speed, leaving a wavering silver wake on the dark water.
Jean strolled north into the Dregs, using the dignified pace of a priest to give himself time to roll one question over and over in his mind.
What could a ship full of dead and dying men reasonably do with bags of coins?
5
“BAGS OF coins? You’re absolutely sure?”
“It was cold spending metal, Locke. You may recall we had a whole vault full of it, until recently. I’d say we both have a pretty keen ear for the sound of coins on coins.”
“Hmmm. So unless the duke’s started minting full crowns in bread since I fell ill, those provisions are as charitable as my gods-damned mood.”
“I’ll keep nosing about and see if I can turn anything else up.”
“Good, good. Now we need to haul me out of this bed and get me working on something.”
“Master Lamora,” cried Ibelius, “you are in no shape to be out of bed, and moving around under your own volition! It is your own volition that has brought you to this enervated state.”
“Master Ibelius, with all due respect, now that I am conscious, if I have to crawl about the city on my hands and my knees to do something useful against Capa Raza, I will. I start my war from here.”
He heaved himself up off the sleeping pallet and tried to stand; once again, his head swam, his knees buckled, and he toppled to the ground.
“From there?” said Jean. “Looks damned uncomfortable.”
“Ibelius,” said Locke, “this is intolerable. I must be able to move about. I require my strength back.”
“My dear Master Lamora,” said Ibelius, reaching down to help pick Locke up. Jean took Locke’s other side, and the two of them soon had him back atop the sleeping pallet. “You are learning that what you require and what your frame may endure can be two very different things. If only I could have a solon for every patient who came to me speaking as you do! ‘Ibelius, I have smoked Jeremite powders for twenty years and now my throat bleeds, make me well!’ ‘Ibelius, I have been drunk and brawling all night, and now my eye has been cut out! Restore my vision, damn you.’ Why, let us not speak of solons, let us instead say a copper baron per such outburst…I could still retire to Lashain a gentleman!”