Li twisted around and glared at her as Staso repeated his babbling. "What's he saying?"
She swallowed and said, "You don't need magic. I'll tell you what you want to know." Staso smiled. "But if you love your brother, you won't like it."
"I don't like you, Staso" Li spat. He settled into a crouch on the carpeted floor. The sword didn't waver. "Try to surprise me. I know that Yu Mao betrayed his ship to the Sow and murdered the Shou with him. I know that he was your sorceress-captain's lover. Tell me more."
The scarred man's eyes hardened. "How about that he was a merciless savage?" He watched Li intently as if looking for a reaction. Li didn't give him one. After a moment, Staso continued. "Yu Mao was a vicious man, more cruel than any of us-except possibly Brin. The two of them got along well, but the rest of the crew came to fear Yu Mao. He was as likely to put steel into one of Sow's crew as into any enemy we fought. We went to the captain with our concerns, but she was too lust-sotted with her exotic Shou man to listen. That was her error. Yu Mao tired of her before she tired of him. He'd been with us barely a year before he and Brin hatched a plan for mutiny."
"On the eve of Highharvestide in the Year of the Unstrung Harp, after one of the best seasons of plunder we'd ever seen, Yu Mao woke the captain with one of his great chopping swords to her neck in the bed that they shared. He and Brin hauled her out and tied her to the mainmast. Then they called all of the crew out on deck. They had the support of some mutineers already, but not enough. So they offered us a choice: join them or leave Sow, alive but surrendering their share of the booty we'd gathered. Anybody who wanted to fight was welcome to try that, too, but they'd be in for a world of hurt." Staso drew a deep breath. "And to show how serious they were, Yu Mao took the captain's arms, stretched them out above her head, and drove a spike through her hands and into the mast!"
His broken voice dropped low and his interpreter's with it. "There're some in every crew that put themselves and their gold first above all else, and they had an easy choice. But some of us know a good captain is worth more than gold and we knew then that if we left Sow, our captain was going to die a mean death. As soon as we saw the captain stretched out along the mast like a fish for the gutting, the moon rising full behind her, something in us broke." Staso's eyes were bright and wild, and as he spoke his voice rose with fiery passion. "Lord of All Thieves, we put up a fight! There wasn't a man or woman among the mutineers who didn't cross steel or knock heads with us. It was all for naught, though-there were twice as many as cared for gold and blood as cared for shipmates' loyalty, and numbers held the deck. I got closer than anyone to the captain, so close I could see her eyes rolled back and her mouth moving in pain as the blood ran from her hands down her arms. I couldn't get close enough, though. Yu Mao himself stopped my charge."
Staso sneered at Li. "You aren't half the swordsman he was. He fought me all the way back to the ship's rail, knocked my sword from my hand, and would have done me in right then if the captain hadn't opened her eyes and screamed out." He leaned forward, almost spitting himself on Li's blade. "All that muttering and mouthing wasn't pain-madness, it was magic-the last of the captain's magic, all poured out at once."
"Her voice swept down the deck like a cold wind in the moonlight as she turned her soul to working a curse. Everyone stopped and listened-everyone except those of us who had fought for her and lived. We knew a break when we saw it, and we ran for the ship's boats. I gave Yu Mao a good one in the gut and grabbed his swords before I went. While the captain called out her curse, we piled into one of the boats and got ourselves off Sow faster than spawning sea-devils."
"What was this curse?" breathed Tycho.
"It was three-fold," Staso hissed, sitting back. "On the crew that had turned against her, a promise of a cold grave, that the Sow wouldn't sail into spring. On Brin, the mate who had betrayed her, a wish that the sea take him like the pig he was and that he squeal his last in Umber-lee's arms."
"And on Yu Mao?" Li asked. Staso met his eyes.
"An oath on her blood that he would not live to forget Sow" His breath grated. "Those were the last words that she spoke-Brin put his dagger in her throat before she could say anything more."
"And?"
Staso's ruined face went still. After a moment, he said softly, "And the ship went mad. From our boat on the water, we heard Yu Mao first, laughing at the captain's curse, telling everyone it was nothing but a madwoman's words, a spell broken before it was complete. Brin joined in, and the mutineers did too. There was a commotion, and we saw them carry something to the ship's rail. It took us a moment before we realized that it was the captain's body-Bitch Queen's mercy, she was so shriveled she might have died in a desert instead of at sea! They threw her overboard and the water took her without so much as a splash. That might have scared a few of them, but then Yu Mao called for a bow. We rowed like demons, but when Yu Mao had his bow, he nocked an arrow and took aim at us."
"He personally picked off four of us in the boat before the other mutineers took up the same game and began showering us with arrows." Staso touched his cheeks. "But this was one of Yu Mao's. I know it. It knocked me into the bottom of the boat and that was the only reason I survived. When I woke, I was lying under dead men. Sow was gone. Brin and Yu Mao had left us for the birds."
Tycho's eyes were drawn tight and focused on Staso. Li had a feeling he was committing the whole story to memory, the better for a retelling later. "What did you do?" asked the bard.
"What any man with the will to survive would do," said Staso. "I broke the shaft of Yu Mao's arrow and pulled the pieces out of my cheeks. I pushed the dead weight of my former mates overboard. And I rowed. I rowed until my hands were blistered, then I bound them up, and I rowed some more. Sharks followed my boat for a day and I thank Umberlee that nothing worse found me. Maybe the captain's spirit was watching over me, too, because I hit the coast of Altumbel the next day. As soon as I set foot on dry land, I swore that I would never take to the sea again. But a man's got to eat, and thieving's the only trade I know. The Stitched Man was too well known, though. And whether the captain's curse was real or not, I didn't want word that I was alive getting back to Sow." His eyes drifted, and he shuddered. "I may not fear death now, but when I came ashore, I feared Yu Mao more than anything in this world or the next."
"So you took the identity of the Hooded," guessed Li. "And Yu Mao's swords?"
"Sold them to that idiot Jacerryl Dantakain for enough gold to get me started. When word spread at the end of the winter that Sow hadn't been sighted in several ten-days, I was happier than a clam. I even started to wonder if the captain's curse really had come to pass-until Brin walked into town with his herd of pigs."
Li tilted his head. "He'd escaped the curse?" Staso just shrugged.
"I don't even know if there was a curse. Yu Mao might have been right. Brin's dagger might have killed the captain before her magic was finished. Ships vanish frequently enough without being cursed."
"Maybe there was a curse, maybe there wasn't," suggested Tycho. "Tales I've heard always make curses out to be fickle things and someone who is frightened enough of a curse might just take it seriously. The captain of Sow wished that the sea take Brin like the pig he is." He gave his crooked smile. "Brin's never far from at least one pig. Whether the curse is real or not, Brin thinks he's found a way around it-surround himself with pigs and the sea won't find him. Whatever happened to Sow, Brin survived. Maybe there were pigs around when he did."