The Fox by Sherwood Smith Page A

They took opposite points of view and never joined against Walic.
    The second spat over the rail—not quite in the first’s direction. “Captain o’ the schooner even said so, before I killt him. And the big Sartoran silk merchants have yet to come north. If we go south and squat on a point off Lands End, we’re sure to catch something good from either direction.”
    “And the Khanerenth navy? They’ll be playing cards, no doubt.”
    Walic liked them to seem on the verge of fighting.
    The second mate appealed to Walic, hands open. “We can take ’em, they’re spread so thin, long ’s they don’t have time to pull together.”
    Walic shook his head. “They’ve got more scouts than we do, after Stupid and Prettyboy’s Marlovan burned so many of ours. Northeast. Inglenook Islands lie there. We’ve all seen the nut trees growing wild.”
    The mates flicked their fingers to their foreheads— Walic liked the niceties of naval salutes to captains—and because the captain was watching, First Mate gave Second Mate a sneer, and Second smirked, rocking on his heels, his hair-chimes jingling. No conspiracy here, captain!
    They tacked for five days north by east through fitful seas until they sighted the islands bumping up on the horizon.
    The heat had mounted steadily, intensified by the fretful winds that too often died away in the middle of the day, leaving them to wallow and roll, sails sagging, until even the hardiest was feeling sick.
    “Everyone wants a squall,” Thog whispered to Mutt after she clambered down from helping set staysails once again. “Everyone wants one so much I am afeared they’ll knife Sails if she says she feels it coming once more.”
    The Sails aboard this pirate vessel had been taken off a capital ship years ago, and was quite kind to the young ones, giving Mutt easy chores when Cook didn’t want his unpracticed hands in the kitchen. Uslar had been learning from Rig, which meant he was in the kitchen for full watches, making pastry. Cook and Sails made certain that both boys were seen to be useful.
    Thog promised herself she would remember that.
    They returned to working on the stiff storm-sails, dyed bloodred, that Captain Walic wanted ready for the day he would be invited into the Brotherhood. The red canvas usually upset Thog, but today she refused to think about what she would do that day. Her head ached enough.
    “We’ll be doing sails, same ’s always,” Mutt said. “But maybe you won’t be pulled up during your off-watch to sew ribbons for her .”
    “That won’t change,” Thog retorted. She added in Chwahir—which Mutt had begun to understand—“I’ll be sewing her ribbons back on her clothes even if a gale blows every sail out to sea.”
    She and Mutt smothered their laughter.
    On deck, the first mate sat under the awning the hands had rigged on the captain’s deck, wearing only a vest and a pair of cotton deck trousers, and rapped out orders.
    The two mates had been relentless in trimming the ship instantly to catch the fickle breezes, which meant the hands had spent more than their watches hauling rope and tending sail in the miserable heat.
    At sunset the second mate appeared, his hair-chimes faintly ringing as he yawned.
    “Who do we send? Feegy wants to go, and that means his cousin. Says he knows nut trees.”
    The first mate snorted as he propped a broad bare foot on a barrel. “And you believed him? He just wants to get out of the sail-making party.”
    The other shrugged. “Said it’s those lines o’ trees out behind the big ruin. Makes sense to me.”
    Both pirates were sea-bred, and though they knew nuts came from trees, neither of them could tell you which trees made what kind of nuts. Or how you could tell the difference.
    The first mate ran his hands over his thinning hair, which was already damp from sweat. “We’ll send ’em. They either come back with full baskets or get the rope’s end. But I don’t think two’s enough. Let’s send