BVC Announces The Fox by Sherwood Smith
The Fox
Book 2 of the Inda series
by Sherwood Smith
Inda the mercenary captain dreaded by every pirate on the sea…
Acclaimed Inda series within Sherwood Smith’s epic fantasy Sartorias-deles universe.
Military fantasy woven with courtly politics, vast worldbuilding, and diverse characters.
As the second son of the Prince and Princess of Choraed Elgaer, Inda was supposed to protect the realm his older brother would inherit. Forced to flee his homeland before his thirteenth birthday, he finds himself on the perilous decks of a pirate ship, forcing himself never to think of all he has lost.
But four years later, his military skills and inborn natural leadership ability hurl him at the head of his own mercenary marine company, with a reputation for protecting merchant vessels against the marauding bands of pirates that plunder the waters.
Meanwhile, in the country of his youth, everything is changing—without his being aware. Including his own family.
Book 2 of the Inda series
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Sherwood Smith writes fantasy and science fiction.
One
In Sartorias-deles’s long history, only once have we seen pirates enjoy the protection of the strongest naval power in the world. That summer in the year 3910, some of the most notorious pirates made increasingly daring raids—such as Gaffer Walic’s attack on a trade convoy not two days outside of Khanerenth, a kingdom that had once possessed the leading pirate-fighting navy in the southern seas. But civil war had halved their resources.
The pirates won after an extremely hard night of fighting, and thus were more angry than triumphant, more weary than celebrative as they transferred their (few) prisoners and what cargo hadn’t been destroyed in the long battle.
On Walic’s flagship Coco, one of the prisoners woke to a crashing headache that caused his empty stomach to heave, and bile scalded the back of his throat. He whispered the Waste Spell, and the burn vanished.
He let out a slow, shuddering breath as sweat cooled on his forehead.
The relief lasted three heartbeats. Someone was whispering into his ear. “Wake up, wake up. Inda, listen. You have to wake up.”
Marlovan! The language of home.
“Inda. You must act stupid. The Gaffer will be calling for you soon. Hear me? Act stupid.”
Inda opened his eyes. His headache crashed again. He could barely see. A shaft of slanting sunlight filtering through shrouds outlined in ruddy morning color the contours of sharp-cut cheekbones and jaw-line, a straight shoulder, an arm. Green eyes. Familiar green eyes.
“Who are you?” he mumbled through bruised lips.
“Fox.”
“I know you,” Inda observed. Memory images cut through the pain-haze like shards of glass: the fight on the deck of the trade ship he’d been hired to protect, surrounded by the fallen; more and more pirates swarming on board.
Those derisive green eyes—the last thing he saw before being struck unconscious with the hilt of a knife.
Struck, not killed.
And wasn’t there an older memory? He could not think.
“We met at my home,” Fox whispered in an urgent undervoice. “Before you started the academy. But you must not know me here. Nor use your name. Or Marlovan. Gaffer Walic came after you—you call yourself Inda Elgar, right? He wanted to sell you to the Venn. He thinks you died on the trade ship.”
“Gaffer . . .?” Inda began, but talking hurt.
“Walic. Captain. He wants more hands, but not leaders, understand? Indevan Algara-Vayir is dead. You are not from Iasca Leror. You did not lead the marine defense company.”
Inda stared, in far too much pain to catch the sense of that swift run of words. “Marines. Some live?”
“A handful. Look at me. Listen. We need you,” Fox whispered, fighting impatience and desperation. He had to make Inda understand the danger he was in—they all were in—but Walic would be sending someone to fetch them soon.
He was right.
Up on the captain’s deck, Walic stirred, his mood of irritation twisting inexorably into anger. He said to his first mate, “Where are my prisoners?”
Footsteps thumped on the captain’s deck above; Fox put his lips to Inda’s ears, forcing himself to speak distinctly. “We need you. To take this ship.”
A command snapped from the gangway forced Inda’s awareness outward: he’d been dumped into the waist of the pirate ship.
Fox’s breath was warm on his ear. “Remember. No Marlovan, or even Iascan. Just Dock Talk. And stupid.”
Hands hauled him to his feet. Worms of white-hot agony shot through his arms and his bad wrist; his hands were bound behind his back.
He was pushed toward a ladder, and up, the thrusting hand steadying him on the climb.
He shuffled onto the captain’s deck. Sunlight struck through Inda’s eyes like heated needles. He closed his eyes. Mistake. He stumbled over a coiled rope. Guffaws were the first sign of trouble; this , a sign that this interview with the captain was meant as entertainment.
“Well now!” Gaffer Walic’s voice was a clear tenor, almost as melodic as Tau’s. Had Tau survived?
The pirate captain addressed someone in an undertone. Then in Melaeri-accented Sartoran, employing the drawling accents of an aristocrat, he added, “My first mate insists we’ve uncovered the mastermind behind our late adversaries.”
Laughter.
A woman answered in far less refined Sartoran, “No wonder we gutted ‘em. Watch! He’s gonna trip over the bucket!”
Inda glanced down, realized he wasn’t supposed to understand, and so he forced himself to trip over the bucket. Only those long lessons in falling kept him from breaking an arm, but even so the strain when he was yanked to his feet made him bleat in pain.
The captain switched back to Dock Talk. “Well, Fox. You fetched him. What do you say?”
“Stupid as a post, but fights well. Useful as a hand.”
Another voice, lower, angry, cut in. “That’s the one I saw commanding the action. I know it.”
Inda stood with his eyes closed; his stomach lurched.
Fox spoke again, in harsh Dock Talk but with a Marlovan precision to his consonants that chilled Inda’s nerves. “He was relayin’ orders. You was seein’ him doin’ it, Varodif, through yer glass. But we was seein’ the tall yellow-haired turd speakin’ orders, before he was cut down.”
“Yellow-haired turd?” the captain drawled. “Might that be the Marlovan prince we made this entirely too expensive journey to find? Who cut him down?” His voice was light, almost sweet, which did not account for the sudden silence, so complete that Inda was for the first time aware of the song of wind through sails, the whine of rope and wood, the wash-lap-lap of the sea down the hull.
Yellow-haired turd—memories flitted like angry bats. Kodl, their leader (though not their commander, hard as he tried), falling. Dun the Carpenter, who had always fought shield arm position at Inda’s left trying to protect Inda to his last breath, with a sword stuck through his chest. Both had been yellow-haired.
Dizzy with pain, with guilt and sorrow, Inda opened his eyes again.
The pirates stood in a circle facing the captain, who lounged in an armchair on his deck. The sun shone behind him, a halo of glare outlining the silhouette of a short, burly man.
“I’ll find out who, my children,” the captain said. “We missed quite a price for him. It comes out of your share, if you had a reason, and out of your skin, if you were clumsy.”
Again the silence, so the captain said, “Stupid will do for us, even if he don’t command ships full of warriors. Put him over there with the new recruits. Let’s have the next.”
Inda was guided to one side, and the bindings on his wrists loosened so his numb hands fell useless to his sides. Without having said a word of agreement, Inda became a pirate.
At first it seemed easy.
That changed fast.
From the forward hatchway Rig, one of the marine defense band, was brought up. His hair was matted with sticky blood, dull red in the bright sun, his face bruised. Two fingers bent in a way that made Inda’s guts heave yet again.
“We like,” the captain drawled, “the young ones who can be trained, who take orders. Join or die.”
Inda tensed. He could not say, Join! There’s a secret plan— what could he say?
“Quiet.” Fox whispered. “Do. Not. Give us away.”
Inda groaned, his body trembling. A finger-press at his elbow sent white lightning through him, and when he could see again, it was to meet Rig’s bleak gaze, a look he would interpret and reinterpret for the rest of his life.
Rig spat on the deck. “You shit-stinking soul-eaters killed my brother—”
That was as far as he got. A pirate ripped a blade across his neck. Inda closed his eyes, but was not spared the sickening sound, or the thud when Rig fell dead to the deck.
Walic sighed. “Why, Nizhac? He would’ve added splendidly to the meager number reserved for my evening’s entertainment.”
The pirate pointed at the wad of spit on the deck, and the captain tsked. “Too reckless, my friend. Silent, and I like that, but far too reckless. We would have begun by making him lick it up.” Inda could see the captain’s profile now. The man seemed about forty, fleshy face, hair cut close to his head, a style that looked peculiar to Inda, but was the current aristocratic fashion in Colend. He wore a long brocaded coat embroidered with gold thread that gleamed in the sun, and he sported a huge gold hoop at one ear. “Next.”
Inda finally comprehended that he was not the first to join. A few steps away one of his newest recruits trembled, huge shoulders hunched, black hair hanging tangled over a face drawn in misery and shame. He’d joined to save his own life.
Pirates shoved forward three more of Inda’s marine defenders. The first two did not look his way but the last stared at him, a white-lipped, narrow-eyed glare of contempt that was all the stronger because it was provoked by fear.
“Well?” the captain asked. “We have much to do. I need crew, and I need entertainment after a night of exertion. Which are you to be?”
They didn’t answer. Some of the crew shifted stances, looking seaward or avoiding others’ eyes; though Inda thought he was alone in shameful guilt, in fact there were other reluctant pirates who had joined merely to stay alive.
“Any others?” Gaffer Walic asked.
“Four,” someone called.
Gaffer sighed, waving a hand to and fro. “Bring ‘em.”
Guiding Thog, Uslar, and Dasta, and half-carrying Mutt— who’d suffered a broken ankle in his fall off a mast—was a thin young man whose facial contours released another squealing bat of memory. That sharp chin, the defined cheekbones below a wide flat forehead, the mouth like the upper angle of a triangle, revealing prominent front teeth—that rat face had to belong to a Cassad. The former ruling family of Iasca Leror! There couldn’t be anyone so like them wandering the world. Inda remembered this face hovering past Fox’s shoulder right before Fox brained him.
The Cassad did not look Inda’s way as he led the last of Inda’s band up behind the three who had refused to join the pirates.
Who the captain had been considering. All three tall, muscular, and few as they were, this band of the dead Marlovan’s had taken far too many of his own crew. He glanced up at the fire damage, the many arrows bristling over his ship. Yes, they were good indeed. “You know you can change your mind,” the captain addressed the three.
“I hate pirates,” the third said, as he had when first hired by Inda and Kodl. ”Fight them, yes. Join them, be damned first.”
“Not before we get a night’s fun out of hearing you change your mind, over and over,” the captain retorted, thinking, so much for mercy. He twitched his gaze to small, frail-looking Thog. “Well? Join or die. I hear you’re wonderful with a bow. I can use such talent.”
The Chwahir girl hated pirates, that much Inda knew about her. He held his breath, waiting for the inevitable, as her black, enigmatic eyes flicked Inda’s way. He saw in that glance both accusation and question, a question Inda could not answer: even if it was habit for his band to turn to him for commands, he could no longer command.
But he could beg. “Please.” He shaped the word with his puffy lips, not sure if she understood; he remembered that cry of hers as Tau pulled her from the wreckage of the mast, “Let me die!” He shaped the word again, Please, though he expected her to turn away in scorn.
All she saw was the movement of his bruised lips, and the agonized squint of his eyes. Was there meaning in the way he stared at her?
Memory wheeled through her mind, distant as seabirds against the vast sky. Her heartbeat thrummed in her temples. Pirates, loathed pirates, but not the Brotherhood—and not them, the ones she hated even worse than the Brotherhood. She longed to have Jeje there, to hear her sensible voice, and then she remembered Jeje saying one night, “How strange it is that we can’t get our own hearts and brains to agree, so why should others agree with us? This wants Tau— “smacking her chest “—but this—” smacking her forehead “— chooses Inda.”
Thog glanced down, straight into Uslar’s frightened black eyes. She knew that he, and maybe Mutt, waited for her to choose for them. They were too young, too bewildered, and Mutt too hurt, to do anything but follow her lead. She did not have the right to choose death for them.
She said to Uslar and Mutt, “For now.”
“What’s that?” the captain drawled. “Speak up.”
Thog faced him, squaring her bony shoulders. “I won’t shoot at anyone from home.”
The captain gave one mirthless guffaw. “The Chwahir runt is the only one with the guts to put conditions. I don’t intend any raids on Chwahirsland anyway, platter-face, that’s Brotherhood cruising ground these days.” He looked up at Dasta. “And you?”
Dasta had understood Inda’s single word. If Inda went, there had to be a reason, and even if there weren’t, it was better to be with friends. Nothing else in the world made sense any more. Maybe with friends, life with pirates would be bearable. “I’m in,” he said.
“Then let’s get ready for the fun,” the captain said, gesturing toward those who had refused, and every one of the new pirates braced against the anguish of conscience.
But then respite appeared, a sight so unexpected, so astonishing, the newcomers stared. It was a small, round, fair-haired woman wearing what looked like a formal court gown—loops and loops of lace, ribbons, on fabulous brocade—something you never expected to see on a pirate ship. None of them knew the gown was three years out of Colendi fashion, and even in fashion would never have been worn by its dead owner during the day, outside. The jewels around the low-cut neck glittered with painful brightness.
“Coco has a new toy,” she said, laughing as she swept aft through hastily deferring pirates. ”Pretty-boy says Coco can have him if there’s no torture of his mates.” She pouted, then crooned, “Coco wants her pretty-pretty.”
And there was Tau, following in her wake, clean and dressed in a new shirt and trousers, a bandage around his head like a headband, over which was combed his freshly-washed golden hair—now worn loose, a gleaming hip-length cape fluttering gently in the breeze. The expression on his extraordinarily handsome face was tight with self-mockery.
The captain slapped his knee. “What? Traders carry their own bawdy-boys? Never knew them for merry wights. Well, then, a promise is a promise, my sweet.”
A casual flick of his fingers, and three pirates turned on the three who had refused and slit their throats.
Pirates tossed the bodies overboard, fetched buckets, and sloshed the deck free of blood. And so, without any words of memorial, Inda’s mates were gone.
“Clean these up and feed them,” Captain Walic said with a weary wave of his hand at his new crew. “Put them in watches. Any extra can go over to the Sea-King. They need a top-hand or two. Come, Coco, let’s see what your new toy can do for us.” He got to his feet and strode down the deck, his crew and the newcomers motionless around him.
He, the startling female, and Tau, vanished into the cabin and shut the door.
The pirates turned wearily to repairing damage and restowing the taken cargo.
Inda was still gripped by Fox Montredavan-An, who stared at the captain’s door, his mouth tight with distaste. “He one of yours? Or, was?”
“One of us. Tau got trained in his mother’s pleasure house,” Inda croaked.
Fox’s eyes were a rare shade of green—not the usual hazel mixture of gray and brown and bits of spring green, but an aggressive summer green, glinting with pinpoints of light reflecting off the sun-splashed water running alongside the ship. “He’s a bawdy-house boy, like Coco was a bawdy-house girl,” Fox retorted softly, in Iascan. “He moves like one, he sounds like one, that means he thinks like one. They sell themselves, they’ll sell anything.”
Inda was too exhausted, hungry, and pain-hazed to argue. Tau was alive, Tcholan, Thog, Dasta, and the two scrubs—Mutt and Uslar—were alive.
Right now that was all that mattered.
Fox’s sarcastic expression changed to a narrow-eyed assessment. “Come along. Can’t have you dying on your feet.”
Inda obeyed, glad to be following someone from home, someone he could trust. His wounds and bruises hurt too much for him to want to talk. Peripherally he noticed things. Outside of the damage that he and his band had done, the ship was clean. Many of the pirates moving about were stiff, others with bandage-wrapped arms, legs, heads.
Inda was pushed down onto a pile of winter sail that had been brought up to the weather deck so the hold could be restowed. He tried to listen while the pirate with the tinkling chimes braided in his hair barked words at him. But the slamming pain radiating from the lump in back of his ear where Fox had struck him had increased to deafening effect.
Larboard watch . . . mizzenmast sails and cut-boom crew . . . rope repair when not tending sail or working the boom . . . front of the fighting when they fought . . . “You listenin’, Stupid?”
Inda made an effort to concentrate. “Yes.”
It took him so long to get that word out, the second mate decided he really was stupid. All the better. He wanted no trouble on his watch. “You newcomers are expendable. If you’re good, you live. If not, we’ll watch you die.”
His loud laugh rang through Inda’s skull.
“If you mind orders, you might even work up to a cut of the loot. Cap’n pays well when you’re loyal and don’t cross him.” Another even louder laugh. “Cross him, and you’re entertainment.”
Inda closed his eyes when, at last, the harsh voice went away. A cup of soup was pushed into his hands. He drank it, then let the cup fall to his lap. Nothing mattered except one breath, in, out. Another, in, out. For a precious suspension of time the world was content to move around him, leaving him a mote caught in meaningless motion.
It did not last.
“Come on.”
He was pulled to his feet. The headache crashed, but not as resoundingly; a soft blanket dropped between him and the worst of the pain. Without surprise or curiosity he recognized the herbal tranquility of expensive green kinthus: a heavy dose.
“We’ll begin with repair aloft.” Fox lifted a hand toward the mizzen mast as the Cassad closed in behind them.
Inda fumbled at the shrouds. Brisk hands pulled and tugged him until the three of them sat on the masthead, the enormous gaff sail snapping in a long curve below as they began to pull arrows out of the mast.
The kinthus had muted most of the pain by now, but Inda had trouble grasping with his fingers. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered—an effect of green kinthus, which smothered emotion as well as pain. “I didn’t know pirates used kinthus,” he observed, as the rat-face dropped to his knees beside him, working at an arrow below the masthead.
Fox uttered a short laugh at the mild inquiry in Inda’s face, his heavy-lidded brown eyes. “They don’t. You repair yourself, or your mate, or die. It’s mine. My mother having taught me something of herbs, and a few healer-spells.” He spoke in Marlovan again, soothing to Inda’s spirit.
“Marlovan,” Inda murmured. To Fox’s silent companion, “You’re a Cassad.”
A snort. “Montrei-Vayir. My mother was a Cassad.”
Inda squinted, trying to bring into clearer focus that broad, high forehead, cheeks tapering over bones even sharper cut than Fox’s. Thin sun-bleached hair pulled back into a sailor’s tail. “You’re Barend,” Inda discovered. “Aren’t you? Sponge’s cousin? He talked a lot about you.”
“Sponge?” Fox repeated, brows aslant.
Inda was surprised. “King’s second son—”
“I thought his name was Evred.”
“We call him Sponge,” Barend said, and Inda was again surprised; if he’d found another Marlovan, he knew he would have talked about home all the time. But apparently these two did not. Oh yes. It was Barend’s royal ancestors who exiled Fox’s royal ancestors. Were they friends? No matter now . . . What mattered was, “When did you see Sponge last? Was he well? Still in the academy, of course—”
“I haven’t been home for, oh, three years,” Barend said, chuckling under his breath. “Seems like thirty. Been even longer for Fox,” Barend added, jerking a thumb toward the redhead before he reached overhead for another arrow.
“Yes, and you’re going to tell us what happened at home,” Fox said, leaning forward. “As soon as we lifted the information about a reward for ‘Honor Indevan from Iasca Leror, son of the Prince of Choraed Elgaer’ we saw to it Gaffer Shitbrain got the bright idea of taking you to sell to the Venn.” He yanked free five arrows, one after the other, with surprising strength.
“Then we had to find you,” Barend said. “That was some chase.” He dumped his arrows onto Inda’s lap.
“But we did.” Fox tossed another arrow down. “And here you are. So, now you talk. We still don’t know what happened at home to set the Venn on the homeland.”
“I don’t know, either.” Inda tentatively felt the scabbed lump behind his ear, then let his hand drop. ”Only that there’s war, in the north. Found out when the Venn stopped our old trader in the strait. Yapped out threats against Marlovans. We lost the trader not long after. Started the marines.”
“That’s how we tracked you,” Barend said. “You were getting quite a rep.”
Inda shook his head slowly. ‘Tracked you.’ How many of the marines he’d trained, ate with, slept beside, fought beside, were now dead?
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes as if to press away the memories, but it hurt his face, and he dropped his hands. “I haven’t been home since I got sent away. When I was eleven, almost twelve.”
Fox’s face changed from interest to mockery as he leaned back against the mast, his long fingers absently tapping out one of the old drum tattoos against the wood. His profile was expressionless, only the narrowing of his eyes betraying his disappointment—and self-mockery.
Barend sighed, knowing that Fox was angry with himself for hoping there would be news about home. For caring.
Barend did care, and he wasn’t angry at dashed hopes, merely resigned. On his last visit home he’d heard about Inda’s dishonor and disappearance—not from his cousin Evred, but from his own mother. Seemed the ‘dishonor’ had been thorough, to be expected if his father had anything to do with it, though Barend could not imagine why. Evred had not made Inda sound like the sort of boy to earn dishonor, but more like a hero from the old ballads.
Barend opened his hand toward Fox. “Anyway it was his idea. Pick a likely yellow-head and make sure he died. Say that was the Marlovan noble and rescue you. You made it easy, leading us to you with the Marlovan fox yip. Then we saw not one but two tow-heads near you, both of ‘em good fighters.” He stood up to yank a couple more arrows.
Fox studied Inda in his filthy shirt and deck trousers, his face bruised, his sun-bleached brown hair tangled with dried blood and sweat. Inda was short, broadening through the shoulders and arms, still knobby in the awkward way of adolescents. Fox calculated rapidly as he worked two arrows free of the spanker gaff. Inda couldn’t be more than sixteen.
Whistling soundlessly, he thought back to that battle to take the traders. Good fighter, and—though he’d continue to lie through his teeth—the first mate was right. Inda had also been in command. At sixteen?
Inda was also thinking about the fight, but from the other side. Underneath the soft cloud of kinthus lay the pain of sorrow—he knew that, like wounds sustained during a fight, it only hurt a little now, but later it would be terrible. “My mates,” he said hoarsely. “You killed Kodl and Dun.”
Fox and Barend heard the emphasis on the ‘you.’ Barend looked at the arrow in his hand—probably made by one of those mates. “Didn’t know they were your mates,” he muttered.
Fox jerked his chin over his shoulder. “If it wasn’t us, it would have been someone else. Maybe Brotherhood. How many of you would have survived that? Or,” he leaned closer, eyes narrowed, “if offered the chance to join Gaffer Walic’s merry crew, would they have? Would you, if I hadn’t warned you?” He threw his two arrows down onto Inda’s lap.
Emotion seeped up through the kinthus. “I don’t know,” Inda said, staring down at the arrows—top one made by Dun. He recognized the beautiful smoothing. His mind wailed in anguish: Why? Had Jeje, at least, escaped with the scout craft?
Before he could voice his question, Fox spoke again. “You probably would have done what we did,” Fox said. “Survived. And then, if you heard about someone from home, you would do anything to—” He stopped, unwilling to reveal himself by saying the words, “Hear about home.”
But Inda, extraordinarily sensitive due to the influence of kinthus, heard it anyway.
To Barend, things were simple: three Marlovans against the rest of the world.
Fox sensed Inda’s ambivalence. Time for a deflection. “How did you manage to get a Delf to join your band, anyway? Far as I can see, the Delfin Islanders are as notorious for avoiding outsiders as they are for their clan feuds.”
Barend chuckled. “I keep hearing, the only time you can get Delfs to agree on one thing is when outsiders try to interfere with ‘em. Then they all band together long enough to scrag you.”
“Ours was on my first trader,” Inda said, thinking sadly of tough, scrawny, bird-nosed Niz. “He went right along with the marine defenders idea when we lost the ship. Since we couldn’t get hired in any kingdom port.”
Fox flicked a glance Barend’s way. “Seems your father got his wish—and his war.”
Barend snorted, not quite a laugh. ”If Iasca Leror really did conquer Idayago, then my father finally became Harskialdna, instead of a mere Sierandael.”
Sierandael: the Marlovan title for the peacetime royal Shield Arm, as Harskialdna was the coveted title for wartime Shield Arm.
“Harskialdna,” Barend repeated. “What he wanted. He always gets what he wants. Except for me.” He grinned.
Inda drew in a slow breath. “Why is the captain called Gaffer?”
Fox send a look of hatred down toward the deck. “Because he took a ship when he was a mid. Mutiny. You don’t want to know what he did to the captain, but it involved a gaff. That’s why he only wants stupid hands who can fight. He lives in fear of another mutiny. If you’re seen talking to anyone by his favorites and they suspect conspiracy—and they are always looking for conspiracy—you’ll get the rope’s end, if not a torture party all for you. So guard your tongue waking and sleeping.” Fox’s teeth showed briefly. His fingers drummed faster. “Let’s finish. We’ve got all the arrows—you can sleep while we plug up the holes. Questions?”
“How did you survive?” Inda asked. “You’re not stupid.”
Fox looked away. “The pirates attacking our ship wanted crew. I was younger than you, but I could fight. I went along to stay alive, then jumped ship when I saw a chance—” He hesitated, then jerked his chin again, a dismissive gesture. “It’s a long, boring story, but I ended up on a privateer attacked by Gaffer Walic. I was in even worse shape than you, but I’d killed some dozen of them first. The first mate hammered me from behind with a sword hilt. For a couple days I couldn’t see out of one eye, or hear from one ear. It took me a long time to comprehend even simple words. Walic assumed I was stupid but handy in battle, so I lived. We were part of the fleet that burned Barend’s trader convoy half a year later.”
“Fox recognized my handsome Cassad features,” Barend said with a twisted grin.
Fox snorted. “Once you’ve even seen a drawing of a Cassad—or someone descended from a Cassad—” He jerked a thumb at Barend. “—you can always recognize them. I lied my way onto the sorting crew under the second mate. Told Barend to be stupid.”
“How does one be stupid?” Inda’s voice was fading.
“By never speaking. By being slow with words when you do have to speak. By serving as the butt of jokes, and pretending you don’t realize it. By obeying Walic and the first and second mates, who are his shield arms, to use our own terms. And doing it without reaction.” The last, uttered in soft tones of such suppressed rage, of loathing, tightened the back of Inda’s neck.
Fox rose abruptly, picking up the arrows from Inda’s lap. Inda returned to what mattered to him most. These were Marlovans, one Sponge’s cousin. The other had been kind to him once. “You said. When you woke me. About taking the ship.”
Fox’s brows slanted sharply. “That’s the thought that’s kept me alive these past couple of years. With you, and your followers, and the best of the forced hands, maybe we can do it. There are enough forced hands who hate the Gaffer as much as we do. It’s finding the time and place to get together and plan that’s the trick.”
Inda experienced a tectonic shift in his thoughts as pieces of his fractured worldview settled again into a semblance of a whole. These fellow Marlovans had joined to survive, not to become pirates. They wanted to band together . . . and they wanted— “To go back home,” he said out loud, savoring the words. The prospect of happiness, of meaning. “And fight the Venn.” He got slowly to his feet.
Fox’s soft gust of laughter was a lightning-strike to Inda’s new, fragile sense of purpose, after four long years of trying to find a semblance of one.
“Fight the Venn!” Fox mocked, his sea-green eyes wide with derision. “Fight the Venn? We’re supposed to act stupid, not be stupid. I want this ship for myself.” He poked his bundle of arrows into Inda’s chest. “And you’re going to help me take it.”