to fight pirates when we aren’t bailing leaks or trimming the jib. I hope they bring your rain boots. At least then your feet can stay dry.”
“Ha. This is a gambling boat, no? It’ll be a palace with a hull. Surely there will be bathrooms.”
“If not, I’ll commandeer you one. I am a Captain, after all. Which means I can stride manfully across the poop deck and shout out orders to the common seamen.”
She leaned against me and sighed.
“I don’t want to live on a boat, you know. Even if it has proper bathrooms.”
“We’ll be home before you know it, Darla. I promise. We’ll sort all this out, and we’ll go home and put up a new door and get a new rug and live happily ever after.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
I closed the door on the silent hall and we sat on the bed until they came to fetch us.
Darla need not have been concerned about the sophistication of the Queen’s facilities.
The toilets flushed. The his-and-hers lavatories ran with hot and cold water. The bathtub was a marble and copper edifice to the fine art of bathing, complete with scented bath oils, fluffy white towels, and a wall with a recess in which a dozen fat candles were merrily burning. Darla’s make-up and hair articles were already on her vanity, arranged just as they’d been at home.
There were closets—one for us each. Our clothes were there, pressed and hung. All three pairs of my shoes were shined and ready for duty. Toadsticker had been honed and polished, my hats were all hanging on fine silver hooks, and I was more than ready to trade my life as a landlubbing finder for a permanent post here on the raging high seas.
Our room was actually three rooms. There was a small sitting room into which the suite’s only door opened. That led into the bedroom, and off that was the bathroom—or as Darla called it, ‘my own copper Heaven.’
And it wasn’t just our stateroom awash in polished cherry-wood opulence. Every inch of the Brown River Queen was either gilded in gold or trimmed with hand-carved oak.
There was a lot of Queen to gild, too. She was more than four hundred feet long, from the big red paddle at the back to the blunt nose at her fore, and a hundred feet across her shallow, flat hull. Four decks rose above all that—the first deck being the casino and stage, the next being the staterooms, the next smaller rooms for the middling rich, and finally the top deck with its guards at the stair landings, where the Regent and his retinue would be housed.
We were hustled up to our room without a grand tour. But I’d caught a glimpse of the casino deck, and despite the haphazard presence of ladders and scaffolds and shouting carpenters, I’d been awed.
It was cavernous. The ceilings were high and trimmed out in dark oak. The windows were glass—but stained glass, artfully designed to bathe the entire vast casino deck in a soothing mix of greens and blues.
Four enormous hanging lights, things of crystal and sparkles that must have been forged with a deep and potent sorcery, glittered and shone in the colored daylight. Whether oil or gas or candle, they weren’t lit, but I could imagine that when they were the whole room would take on the same silver glow cast by a bright full moon.
The floor was a dark crimson carpet. Gaming tables and devices, covered by clean white sheets, awaited the eager rush of gamblers and vampires and criminals that was soon to come.
There was a stage at the far end of the place, hidden by blood-red curtains emblazoned with Avalante’s roses-and-lances crest.
Twin staircases, one port and one starboard, graced the aft end of the casino deck. Each swooped up into the dark, and we followed the wide carpeted treads up to the staterooms.
Our room was designated 111 by the shiny brass plate upon the door. Like all the other doors on the hall, ours was flanked by a pair of grinning silver gargoyles who held small but brilliant magelamps in each gnarly little hand. Our door
“Ha. This is a gambling boat, no? It’ll be a palace with a hull. Surely there will be bathrooms.”
“If not, I’ll commandeer you one. I am a Captain, after all. Which means I can stride manfully across the poop deck and shout out orders to the common seamen.”
She leaned against me and sighed.
“I don’t want to live on a boat, you know. Even if it has proper bathrooms.”
“We’ll be home before you know it, Darla. I promise. We’ll sort all this out, and we’ll go home and put up a new door and get a new rug and live happily ever after.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
I closed the door on the silent hall and we sat on the bed until they came to fetch us.
Darla need not have been concerned about the sophistication of the Queen’s facilities.
The toilets flushed. The his-and-hers lavatories ran with hot and cold water. The bathtub was a marble and copper edifice to the fine art of bathing, complete with scented bath oils, fluffy white towels, and a wall with a recess in which a dozen fat candles were merrily burning. Darla’s make-up and hair articles were already on her vanity, arranged just as they’d been at home.
There were closets—one for us each. Our clothes were there, pressed and hung. All three pairs of my shoes were shined and ready for duty. Toadsticker had been honed and polished, my hats were all hanging on fine silver hooks, and I was more than ready to trade my life as a landlubbing finder for a permanent post here on the raging high seas.
Our room was actually three rooms. There was a small sitting room into which the suite’s only door opened. That led into the bedroom, and off that was the bathroom—or as Darla called it, ‘my own copper Heaven.’
And it wasn’t just our stateroom awash in polished cherry-wood opulence. Every inch of the Brown River Queen was either gilded in gold or trimmed with hand-carved oak.
There was a lot of Queen to gild, too. She was more than four hundred feet long, from the big red paddle at the back to the blunt nose at her fore, and a hundred feet across her shallow, flat hull. Four decks rose above all that—the first deck being the casino and stage, the next being the staterooms, the next smaller rooms for the middling rich, and finally the top deck with its guards at the stair landings, where the Regent and his retinue would be housed.
We were hustled up to our room without a grand tour. But I’d caught a glimpse of the casino deck, and despite the haphazard presence of ladders and scaffolds and shouting carpenters, I’d been awed.
It was cavernous. The ceilings were high and trimmed out in dark oak. The windows were glass—but stained glass, artfully designed to bathe the entire vast casino deck in a soothing mix of greens and blues.
Four enormous hanging lights, things of crystal and sparkles that must have been forged with a deep and potent sorcery, glittered and shone in the colored daylight. Whether oil or gas or candle, they weren’t lit, but I could imagine that when they were the whole room would take on the same silver glow cast by a bright full moon.
The floor was a dark crimson carpet. Gaming tables and devices, covered by clean white sheets, awaited the eager rush of gamblers and vampires and criminals that was soon to come.
There was a stage at the far end of the place, hidden by blood-red curtains emblazoned with Avalante’s roses-and-lances crest.
Twin staircases, one port and one starboard, graced the aft end of the casino deck. Each swooped up into the dark, and we followed the wide carpeted treads up to the staterooms.
Our room was designated 111 by the shiny brass plate upon the door. Like all the other doors on the hall, ours was flanked by a pair of grinning silver gargoyles who held small but brilliant magelamps in each gnarly little hand. Our door
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