The Price of Redemption, page 14
“We are standing sharply in, but not rashly, I assure you. Admiral Weymouth, the lord and master of all Albion’s warships afloat in the Merentian Sea, may watch from up there.” Nath pointed to a white-faced building high on the side of the mountain that formed most of Gisbon’s landmass. “Master Harde will want to bring her in smartly, but not precipitously. The eyes of a higher power are a fine inspiration and for those of us in the Service there are few powers higher than an admiral of a sea.”
Enid gazed skeptically at the white face of the Admiralty building, a structure that appeared monolithically forbidding from a distance.
“I wonder if you jest with a landsman, sir. What sort of ‘higher power’ has the leisure to stand by his window and observe every ship that chances to sail in?”
“You’d be surprised,” Nath drawled amiably. “And recall that higher powers are not limited to their own eyes for observation. Every ship in the harbor will attend our approach quite closely, as will the admiral’s creatures ashore. If we miss stays or otherwise present a lubberly spectacle, you can bet your last ha’penny that Admiral Weymouth will hear about it before I’m halfway up the hill.”
“Then I would think you would wish to take personal command of the evolutions that bring the ship into harbor.” She was painfully aware of Dunaughy’s injunction against interfering with Nath where naval matters were concerned, but trusting an avowed enemy to perform a duty that might bring disgrace to his command seemed to be just the sort of thing the wraith had enjoined her to endeavor to prevent. “Is it wise to trust your reputation to—”
Nath silenced her with a wave of his hand and the sort of affectionate smile the wise offer to imbeciles. In a voice quiet enough to stay between them, he reassured her that Harde was too proud of his own sailing ability to make a fool of himself bringing the Alarum in.
“That pride, while in no small way contributing to our disagreeable relation, is also my best assurance that he will perform this maneuver to my highest expectation.”
“I’m sure you know best.” She had her doubts, but his reasoning seemed sound. “So will the admiral send for you once his ‘creatures’ have informed him of our arrival?”
“Oh, no. There’s no need for him to. It is my duty to report to him immediately, bearing with me my journal and any other pertinent documents or charts.”
Nath snapped his cuffs nonchalantly, but he was clearly a little nervous at the prospect.
“This will be the first time I have presented myself to an admiral. I’m told it can be quite an ordeal. They are quite interested in uncovering the smallest piece of valuable intelligence their officers may have observed and can be relentless in their interviews to uncover it. They are also very busy men and have no patience for fools that waste their time.”
“I’m sure that will not be an issue in your case. You are certainly no fool.” Enid recalled his manner in conducting business with Master Arnaud of the Marie and had no doubt he could be quite businesslike when circumstance decreed.
“Thank you for your confidence.” Nath offered her a slight bow and a strained smile. “And may it be well-founded, please the gods. Annoying an admiral, especially one with as deep an interest and long a reach as the admiral of the Merentian Sea, may put a permanent halt to an officer’s ambitions. It is never a light undertaking to go before beings of such power, especially when they have a reputation such as Weymouth’s!”
“He is known for his ferocity, then?”
“He is a fire-eater, as we say in the Service. ‘Ferocious’ applies wondrous well to him, both in action against the enemy and in his dealings with ineffectual underlings. It is widely held that Weymouth’s enmity keeps Lord Grove, one of His Majesty’s favored nephews, languishing in the worst vessels in the fleet. Something about him being reluctant to bring his ship too close in among the perilously shifting shallows off Filsterhead.”
“Filsterhead? Weymouth was there? It was a battle of some note, I take it?” In her mind she could see the commemorative “Filsterhead Remembered” in Dunaughy’s journal.
Nath’s face revealed as much pure astonishment as if she had denied any knowledge of the sun.
“You surprise me, Magister! I thought the fame of Filsterhead was universal, and Weymouth’s with it. You may recall, perhaps, that Albion and Nordmarche were at war for a short time over the Great Scarp fisheries and the possession of some islands in the Western Ocean, specifically the islands known as the Three Sisters?”
Enid nodded noncommittally. She vaguely recalled some such unpleasantness, but the details were inconsequential to her at the time and so nonexistent to her now.
“Well, that war owes its brevity to Weymouth’s action off Filsterhead: He was there with thirteen of the line when Admiral Gunerwald came out of Exen with his fifteen of the line and attempted to force a passage to the Great Scarp, there to drive our fishers from the area and destroy any other Albion shipping he chanced upon. They played cat-and-mouse among Nordmarche’s perilous shallows for several days until Weymouth could finally close sufficiently to force an action.”
“Despite the shallows? He was not daunted by the prospect of running his fleet aground?”
“Not in the least, Redeemer bless him!” Nath exclaimed with genuine admiration. “He had a Nord master’s mate aboard who knew the shallows like the back of his hand. All that nonsense about frigates going in and sounding before the action is quite exploded, I assure you!”
“And the admiral trusted this master’s mate? He was a man of gentle birth, I take it?”
Nath chuckled and shook his head. “No, not in the least. As common as sand on the beach.”
Enid’s expression of incredulity elicited a second, deeper chuckle.
“No, my dear lady, it is not such an enormity as all that. The Sea Service makes the most of its people. Common folk are not dismissed as mere muscle and grist for the great guns. A good officer will make full use of their experience and wisdom, which often exceeds that of their supposed betters.”
“In much the same way that my father relied on the advice of his hunt master, I suppose.”
Enid drew a pair of cigarillos from her coat pocket and offered one to Nath, who accepted it gratefully. As she and Nath lit their smokes from a small ball of flame hovering above her palm, she reflected again on the differences between common folk she knew from her father’s holdings and those she’d observed aboard the Alarum.
“Actually,” she continued in a ruminative tone, “it is probably very little like the relationship between my father and his hunt master, whose name I’m ashamed to say I cannot recall despite an association that began in my early childhood and continued well into my adult years. My father respected his hunt master for a single facet of expertise and then only when that expertise was of use to him. Outside of the hunt and its various preparations and evolutions, I can safely assume that the hunt master never entered my father’s thoughts. No matter how warmly he regarded him during the limited times that his skills and lore were of value, the hunt master occupied no more of my father’s mind at other times than, say, an itch experienced sometime in the distant past. He was used and then forgotten—and I can say that without fear of subjective bias: I was there when the hunt master’s son took over his father’s duty, the older man having fallen to a flux of the lungs at winter’s height, and my father took no notice of it. He behaved as if it were the same man, or, more accurately, the same animal. He took less heed of it than if one hired mount had been replaced with another.”
Her diatribe gathered heat and volume as she plunged ahead, and Nath felt obliged to place a hand on her shoulder and mutter some placating words. The unexpected, and yes, unwonted, display of passion made him quite uncomfortable and for a moment he wondered if he had inadvertently introduced some sort of radical into the ship’s carefully conservative society. Her words sounded very much like the sort of “leveling” cant that most people blamed for the bloody horrors unfolding in Ardainne, not to mention the growing unrest in Middlesea’s own crowded streets. Enid seemed to grasp the loose reins of her decorum at his touch, though, and treated him to an even less expected flush. She colored prettily, he thought, and lost for a moment in the depths of that observation, missed the first few words of her apology.
“… but that is neither here nor there. I simply must apologize for flying out so. I really have no excuse that seems adequate.”
“Well,” Nath said in a low, humane voice, “I’m sure that if there were anything to apologize for, and I must assure you to my mind there is not, the strain of your recent illness coupled with the stress of your recent travails could crack the most courteous of demeanors.”
“You are kind, sir.”
Enid turned her eyes back toward the rapidly approaching Fist. The truth, however, was that even a short time aboard the Alarum had brought home for her the true cause of the horrors consuming her homeland. Little as she wished to admit it, she knew that the atrocities suffered by her class were not solely the result of the ambitions of a few radical clerics or the animalistic urges of commoners who wished to reduce the glories of Ardainne to a sad, dingy shambles. Ardainne’s aristocracy and their stubborn devotion to traditional privileges had helped fuel the flames that consumed them. It was a bitter thought to harbor and, for the moment at least, she eagerly sought some other subject to occupy her mind.
“Will the crew spend the night ashore? Is that the custom when coming to land after such a long cruise?”
“No, it is not,” Nath answered with an amiable chuckle. “In fact, it is never customary for the entire crew to spend the night on shore.”
“Never? Not even when their vessel is being repaired?”
“If she were careened, perhaps. But in most other circumstances, absolutely not. A ship is not something to be left unattended, after all. They are too prone to go to rack and ruin at the first hint of inattention. Rot and fire are always waiting in the wings to swoop down on a ship and have their way with her.” He rubbed the smooth rail under his hand affectionately. “No, she must always be chaperoned, our Alarum.”
Nath stood there for a moment with the live deck beneath his feet and the fair breeze on his face. He wore the most contented smile Enid had seen on a man’s face outside a boudoir, and she could not help but smile a little with him.
“There is also the matter of the crew’s behavior ashore, of course,” he continued absently, still caught in the moment. “They must be chaperoned, too, you see, and their own ship is the best matron of all to look after them.”
Enid glanced around at the sailors working on the deck. They seemed excited, she decided, noting that they moved with an extra spring to their steps and called out their arcane communications to one another in a heartier tone than seemed the norm. One or two of the rascals even dared to smile and wink at her as they caught her glance. She turned coolly back to Nath and observed that the thought of shore had an evidently invigorating effect on his crew. The captain visibly snapped out of his reverie and turned to her with a somewhat rueful grin.
“Oh, they’re full of vinegar and…” He coughed into his hand. “Quite full of vinegar. They’ll each be issued a bit of the prize money owed them before going ashore and some of them are likely to cut it up to a sorrowful degree. It is not uncommon for entire watches to be brought back from leave too drunk to walk, carried aboard by the Harbor Watch. Put extra money in their pockets and they will raise dissolution to a harrowing level of perfection.”
Enid frowned at the sailors laboring on the deck as if they were already drunken and self-befouled lunatics.
“I’m surprised you let them ashore at all if they make a habit of such debauchery,” she said, sniffing.
“Often we do not,” Nath answered lightly. “Although not on account of debauchery, of course. People who risk their lives for king and country have every right to the occasional tear. No, no, it is the running that keeps us from being more liberal with their leave. Not much of a worry here at Gisbon, though. No place to run, you see.”
“Does this reluctance to grant leave extend to a ship’s officers and…” She fumbled for the word warrants, but it would not answer her call, so she continued, “And other persons of responsibility?”
“Certainly not,” Nath assured her. “Although as many must stay aboard as is required by good discipline, of course, and the responsible lady or gentleman is usually loath to take liberty when those around them are constrained to remain aboard.”
Enid nodded. “So, it would not be precipitate of me to pack a few things for the night? A bed planted firmly on unmoving earth seems a vision of heaven to me at the moment.”
“Well, I should wait if I were you. Unless you have decided to resign your warrant and take passage to Albion from the Fist? If so, I can—”
“No, no, no,” Enid interrupted, touched by the sudden, raw emotion in Nath’s voice. “I have decided to extend my warrant for the duration of the Alarum’s—tour? Campaign? What is the word you use?”
“Cruise,” Nath answered with a broad smile.
“For the duration of the Alarum’s cruise, then, if that is acceptable.”
Nath took her hand and gave it an affectionate squeeze. Her impulse was to extricate it from his grasp immediately, for she had no love for such displays of intimacy, but she resisted the urge. His smile was so warm and genuine that she dreaded dampening it with her prickly eccentricities.
“I could not be happier to hear it, milady! If I may ask, what led you to this portentous decision?”
“It is hard to say. The truth is, I made the decision just now, as the words left my mouth. I suppose the scale was tipped by a number of considerations, not the least of which is my own stubborn refusal to abandon any pursuit until I have excelled at it.”
“This is not a choice to be entered into precipitously, Enid,” Nath said, his tone transforming from celebration to concern.
“I am precipitous by nature,” Enid assured him. “But there are other factors, I assure you. Your arguments on the satisfaction of naval service weighed against service ashore were persuasive, and, despite its rigors, I find life at sea agrees with me. I find that I function better in a smaller community—there are fewer social forces intent on raising my ire.”
She left unspoken the growing obligation she felt to Dunaughy’s revenant. Despite how his presence grated on her patience at times, he was generous with his aid and his genuine regard for Nath was contagious. She found, like him, that she truly enjoyed Nath’s company and found his devotion to his ship’s people refreshing and worthy of respect.
She gently freed her hand and steered the conversation to less personal terrain.
“So there will be no furlough ashore for any of us?”
“Not immediately,” Nath said. “No one will be given liberty to go ashore until I have delivered my compliments to Admiral Weymouth and received his leave to stay awhile. No, no—there is no cause to look so concerned, Magister! With the state of our stores, I don’t doubt we will spend enough time here for you to turn your vision of heaven into a reality! Now, I must beg your pardon and see to the salutes and dress appropriately to be received by Admiral Weymouth.”
* * *
Harde brought the Alarum in as sharply as Nath could have wished, and the gun crew fired off the salute with equal smartness. These were small but clear indications to the other ships anchored in Gisbon Reach that the Alarum was a taut ship with taut officers. Small as she may be, as old and under-gunned for her class, she was handled as briskly as any ship in His Majesty’s fleet. No mean feat considering the condition she and her crew came to him in. These thoughts filled him with pride and confidence as he set in the stern sheets of his gig, swiftly propelled toward Admiralty Steps by the strong strokes of his immaculately turned-out boat crew. Still, a kernel of icy dread lay heavily in his stomach and made occasional hot forays up into his throat.
He had no reason to expect rough treatment at Admiral Weymouth’s hands, but he had no cause to expect a warm greeting, either. Weymouth was from a Westlands family and had thrown his support behind the Earl of Dunbow’s appointment as sea lord, but he was notorious for his stubborn independence. Nath sighed and shrugged to himself. Weymouth was like a strange sail on the horizon—he’d only discover his true nature by standing on to face it.
* * *
He smoothed the front of his best coat with one hand. At least he had no worries about his appearance. His uniform was impeccably tailored, but not ostentatious. He didn’t look the pauper, as many commanders did, but there was nothing flash about his appearance, either. He was the very image of a solid, well-set sea officer.
The logbook and manifest clutched beside his left elbow told a different story. His men were already on reduced rations after the short cruise from Albion to Gisbon. Most of his shot and powder were spent. Spars and sails needed replacement. His stomach knotted tighter as he thought of the list of deficiencies that must be resolved before the Alarum would ever be granted new orders, let alone allowed out of anchorage. How could he ever hope to accomplish so much within the meager limits of the Admiralty’s beneficence and his own credit? The Nath family name would only go so far for an as yet unproven scion.
With such concerns crushing his spirits, he was only tangentially aware of Mid Cullen’s anxious, inquisitive expression as he stepped onto the worn, sea-slick stone steps of the landing.
“Yes, Cullen?” His voice sounded harsh and inhuman to his own ears.
“Will you be staying ashore tonight, sir, or shall I return to take you up later?”
“Keep a watch on the Steps. I’ll wave my hat when I am ready for a boat.”
With that, he straightened his hat on his head, snapped his cuffs into place, and stalked darkly up the stairs toward a volley of shouted invitations to part with his silver for some service or another.
