There were enough other distractions. He cast a “Pardon me, please,” over his shoulder at the girls, and turned to hunch over the latrine corner. Some seepage at the hold’s seams had reduced the liquid level, which was why the pitching of the ship hadn’t spread it all over the floor, but still, ugh. Let’s do something about this mess. What’s underneath?
…Bilges and ballast.
Too bad it wasn’t pirate hammocks. Open us some drainage. Quietly.
Des applied some chaos, Penric supplied some order, or at least aim, and a ragged hole in the deck dropped out. Aware of his audience, he relieved himself as discreetly as he could.
Sanitation improved, he supposed the next problem he could actually address was clean drinking water. Which was a trivial task, except for the lack of a cup. With the air so damp he could spin water off his fingers, catching the trickle in his mouth or other receptacle, but that created the problem of concealing his magic from his hold-mates. He had no idea what wild tales they had imbibed about sorcerers in Quadrene lands, when Quintarians weren’t much better informed, but there was a decided possibility that their first response to his gifts would be panic.
Are there other prisoners aboard? he asked Des.
The dizzying doubled vision of her demonic perceptions came to him as though they were his own, and Pen wondered if he would someday no longer be able tell them apart. The boundary between his will and her magic was already invisible whenever he was in too much of a hurry to take care to distinguish.
Another hold, aft, held half-a-dozen distressed people, some injured. Not from Pen’s ship; aside from him, the captured crew had been kept aboard their own vessel. The pirate ship’s own crew was scarcely more numerous than their prisoners at this point, though they must have started out with a crowd of rowdies to be sure of outnumbering their targets. His coaster would appear to have been the second ship seized on this venture, stretching the brigands’ reserves.
“How long have you two been in here?” Pen asked the Corva sisters. “What ship were you on, and where was it taken? It couldn’t have been a large one.” Lions might bring down great oxen, but feral dogs had to scrape a living from rabbits, mice, and carrion.
Lencia shook her head. “Taspeig set us on a big ship at Agenno, that was supposed to go all the way to Lodi, but it had to put in at another port on account of woodworm. So we found a littler ship that was supposed to be going that way, that would take us on the promise that Papa would pay. Except some other passenger paid them to go north to some island first, and that’s where the pirates came.”
Opportunistic chance, or might that rich-seeming passenger have been a stalking horse, selecting a bite-sized target and leading it into ambush? If so, that was one clever son of a bitch Pen might attend to later himself, if he could.
“The captain fought, but he was killed”—Seuka shivered, looking sickened—“and the rest surrendered pretty quick.”
“That was… six days ago?” said Lencia uncertainly, swallowing. “And then there was the storm. I don’t know where we are now.”
“You two have been having quite an adventure,” said Pen, trying to sound friendly without encouraging the teary breakdown that evoking these memories threatened.
Lencia scowled. “I don’t think I like adventure.”
“I have to agree,” said Pen, offering a wry grin. He rubbed his nape under his queue, rose, and stepped into the stretched blocks of sunlight now angling through the grid. The clouds were clearing, or else they had sailed out of their cover. The sisters both stared up at him, lips parting.
The easterly slant of the light shafts was obvious at this hour; the ship was therefore heading roughly north, allowances made for tacking against the wind or currents. Not a surprise. Pen tried shouting upward in common Adriac, “Hoi! We need some drinking water down here! And food!” As long as he was at it. “Hoi!” He would rather drink the remarkably pure water Des produced than anything that came out of a ship’s cask, but it might come with a cup he could purloin, to share.
Pen hastily tucked his hands behind his back, as if still bound, when a face loomed at the grating. Its stubble might be on either a Carpagamon with a recent beard-trim or a Roknari who’d missed his chance to shave. The conundrum wasn’t solved when the fellow merely grunted, but in a little while a stick of hard bread was dropped down through the grating, followed by a leather water bottle with, blessing, a wooden cup tied to it by a rawhide cord.
This was evidently the routine method for sustaining the prisoners, for neither girl looked startled, but Lencia pounced on the bread as it bounced off the deck, then glared up at Pen in fright as if she imagined him snatching it from her. He secured the water bottle instead, to her clear dismay.
“You two can share the bread,” he said with an easy smile. “I daresay I’ve eaten more recently than you.” This wouldn’t be a charity he could afford for long, given Des’s drain on his body, but it served to set the tone. He sat down across from them with the water bottle, freed the cup, popped the cork, and tested a taste. Every bit as murky and vile as he’d posited, ugh. Knees bent up for a shield, he set about some slight-of hand, concealing the trickle into the cup from the air. Seuka watched him, licking dry lips. Her eyes widened in surprise when he handed the first cupful across to her. She guzzled hastily, then hesitated partway down and glanced at Lencia.
“You can drink up. There’s more,” said Pen, and she promptly did. He alternated handing the cup across to each sister till they stopped reaching, hoping that they wouldn’t notice they’d each drunk more than the bottle could hold. Overheating from the exertion, he finished with a cupful for himself and laid the leather skin aside. Maybe he could use its noxious contents later for flushing the latrine corner.
A sound of gnawing, like rats at a wainscoting, filled the hold for a while as the two girls divided the dry bread. While they were working at it, he leaned his head back against the bulkhead, closed his eyes, and took a quick survey of the number of actual rats lurking aboard. Hm, only a few. Destroying vermin was an allowable and efficient sink for Des’s chaos when uphill magic, creating order, produced, as always, a greater amount of disorder to dump. Somewhere. Or he could pass out from the fever generated, usually not helpful. Downhill destructive magic was less costly. …Albeit not on a ship in the middle of a trackless sea. Pen opened his eyes to find both girls staring at him again, though no longer in fear. More like fascination.
Seuka pointed to the patches of light falling on the deck, squaring up as the sun climbed toward noon and the sky turned blue. “Sit over there,” she commanded him.
“I’m not cold,” he said, a trifle confused.
“No, it’s…” She waved her hands around her head, and pointed to his. “Do it again.”
His brief bafflement was alleviated when Des chuckled, It’s your hair, Pen. Works on females of all ages.
Nikys likewise, he was reminded, who’d made him grow out his queue to twice its former length, so it wasn’t as if he could complain at this attention. He scooted over to a sun patch and sat cross-legged, wryly angling for the best backlight. It’s not magic, curse it.
Hey, it enchanted us, the first time we ever looked up at you on that dismal roadside in the cantons. Where Ruchia, Des’s latest prior possessor, had lain dying.
I thought it was mainly the decided lack of other volunteers, he grumbled. I was a skinny, spotty, awkward youth.