Page 27 of The Devils

Greed

Alex made the final letter, nice and neat, then looked up doubtfully at Brother Diaz.

‘Troy?’ she asked him.

‘Undeniably,’ he said, smiling. First time she met the man she’d reckoned him a pompous prig whose approval was worth about as much as a paper bag of piss. Time hadn’t much changed her opinion of the pompous prig bit, but his approval was starting to make her feel oddly proud of herself. It was a feeling she didn’t get very often. In fact, it was hard to remember the last time. She found, to her surprise, she quite liked it.

‘The Empress of Troy,’ she said, running her fingertip over the letters. She smudged one, but her hands were always inky these days. ‘I can write it, at least.’

‘Huh,’ grunted Jakob. He stood with scarred fists on the rail of the aftcastle, frowning into the wind. Frowning towards the coast. Frowning hardest of all at any other ships.

‘You still worried?’ asked Alex, putting down the paper to lean beside him.

Now he frowned at her. ‘It’s my job to be worried.’

‘Lucky you. Your job and your hobby are the same!’ And she bumped him playfully on the shoulder with her fist, which she got the feeling neither of them enjoyed, since her knuckles were still sore from punching Balthazar in the face. Which was another thing she felt quite proud of, come to think of it. ‘What country’s that?’ she asked.

Jakob nodded off to the right, the hazy rumour of a far-off coast under an iron-grey sky. ‘That … is the Kingdom of Naples.’

Alex winced. ‘Enough said.’

‘This …’ and Jakob nodded to the coastline sliding past on the left, rugged and rocky, ‘was Troy, until the Trojans retreated, then Bulgaria, until the Bulgars were forced back, then part of Venice, until the Venetians lost interest, then the Princedom of Serbia, until the Long Pox came.’

‘And now?’

‘Splintered pieces of a land without law or leader, blasted by war, ravaged by plague, riddled by bandits.’

‘Well, who hasn’t been riddled by a bandit or two?’ Alex turned to rest her elbows on the rail and let the salt breeze tug at her hair, the seabirds circling carefree in their wake, the problems of land feeling far away. Everything’s better at sea. ‘We’re four days on the water without a whiff of trouble.’

Jakob narrowed his eyes. ‘It’s when there’s no sign of trouble you most need to watch for it.’

‘But … it’s not, though, is it? That’s just one of those things folk say that sounds good but when you think about it doesn’t really mean anything.’

Jakob frowned. What else would he do?

‘Oh, come on.’ Alex thought about bumping his shoulder again and decided against. ‘I haven’t seen anyone killed in weeks . I’ve a feeling we might actually get to Troy.’ She somehow didn’t want to say it out loud, so she leaned close to mutter out of the corner of her mouth. ‘Never mind writing it, I’m starting to think I could actually be an Empress.’

Baron Rikard heard her, of course. Baron Rikard heard everything. ‘Anyone can be an Empress, given the right parents and a crown.’ He smirked knowingly at the handle of his cane. ‘It’s whether you’re any good at it that’s the question.’ The vampire was looking younger than ever the last few days. He only seemed to carry the cane now so he could smirk knowingly at it.

‘Well, I know how to read and write.’ Alex pushed herself from the rail and swaggered towards the mainmast, leading with her throat the way the vampire had taught her, like she was a throat salesman and hers was a perfect sample she was showing off. ‘I know how to walk. I know how to hide a dagger. I know the history of ancient Carthage, Venice, and Troy. I already knew how to spot a liar. What else does the Empress of the East really need to know?’

‘You’re across the essentials,’ murmured Vigga. She was sitting back on the deck, hands propped behind her, tattooed, sunburned shoulders hunched around her tattooed, sunburned ears and her eyes fixed on a couple of sailors busy in the rigging above. ‘Look at ’em climb. Wonder if they could swarm up me so nimbly.’

‘It’s a crew,’ grunted Baron Rikard. ‘Not a menu.’

‘You can fucking talk,’ grumbled Vigga. ‘There are fangholes all over half these lads already. How you get people to agree to being chewed on is beyond me.’

‘I listen, I understand, I sympathise. I act, in short, with simple grace and good manners, and so people are drawn to me, rather than repulsed, as they are by you.’

‘Oh, you’d be surprised.’

‘Horrified, perhaps. It amazes me how many men willingly choose to bed a werewolf.’

‘Well, most men will bed anything, and I don’t usually lead with the werewolf thing.’

‘What do you lead with?’ asked Alex.

Vigga slid one foot across the deck until her legs were wide open, displaying the slightly stained crotch of her trousers.

‘ That ,’ she said.

‘Sweet Saint Beatrix …’ murmured Brother Diaz, though Alex noticed he’d glanced up from his letter to look and hadn’t looked away.

‘If there’s a secret …’ mused Vigga, who’d either forgotten she still had her legs wide open or didn’t care, ‘it’s to never be shy about asking the question, and never fear what the answer will be, and waste no tears over the refusals, and clutch with both hands at any flicker of warmth that can be clawed from the uncaring darkness of existence.’

Alex slowly nodded. ‘Only that, eh?’

Balthazar lay in the darkness, listening to the creaking of the ship’s timbers, and feeling profoundly sick.

He could not have said whether his constant nausea arose from his attempt to break the binding, his disgust at his chastening failure, or simple seasickness. How could one even tell? And what difference would it make? He loathed boats. He detested bindings. He abhorred cunning cardinals, infant popes, grim knights, supercilious vampires, and oversexed werewolves. He hated the fists of princesses. He despised everything.

He heard the door creak open and, with great reluctance, twisted around to look. Baptiste stood in the doorway, regarding him in the manner with which one might regard a blocked latrine.

That he , Balthazar Sham Ivam Draxi, the man who had occasionally referred to himself as the Terror of Damietta, should be treated with such scorn. His life had become one endless, excruciating downfall.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘It’s you.’

She raised her brows. ‘Always nice to get a warm welcome.’

‘I daresay there are people I would less like to see.’ He faced the wall again, embracing his pillow. ‘But no names immediately occur.’ Though he stopped short of telling her to leave. He was trapped between his desire to wallow alone in clammy despond and his desire to complain bitterly about it. ‘I suppose you are here to gloat over my misfortunes.’

‘To change your dressing.’ He heard her step into the cabin. The click of the door shutting. ‘But maybe I can squeeze in some light gloating while I’m at it.’

‘Then do your worst. On both counts.’ He thrust his bandaged left arm out behind him.

The bed creaked as she sat. He felt her slip the pin from his dressing and winced as she began to unwrap it.

‘Ow,’ he muttered, without much conviction. ‘Is this what I have come to? Medical attention from an ex-pirate?’

‘I was a butcher’s girl for a while, too, if that’s any comfort.’

‘I daresay they are all enjoying a chuckle at my expense.’ He glared up towards the planked ceiling. ‘Up there . On deck .’

‘It may amaze you to learn … that not everything … is about you .’

‘Not even worthy of discussion! As though my abject failure in breaking the binding was not humiliation enough.’

‘You impressed me.’

He could not help glancing over his shoulder. ‘Really?’

‘Don’t think we’ve ever had a sorcerer who got as far as badly burning themselves then being punched in the nose by a seventeen-year-old girl.’

He had not even the strength to point out that he was a magician. After the scale of his failure could he truly claim the title? He turned to face the wall again. He allowed himself to be handled as though he were indeed a side of meat. He would never have admitted it, of course, but there was something soothing in submitting to that businesslike treatment. In being … taken care of.

‘Could be worse,’ said Baptiste, after a while. ‘We had one sorcerer … what was his name? Been doing this too long. But he took his hand off to be free of it. Well, ice was his thing—’

‘Cryomancy.’

‘—so he froze his hand then smashed it off with a brick.’

Balthazar should probably have been horrified. But it rather blended into the high background level of horror he was experiencing lately. After a brief pause, his curiosity won out. ‘Did it work?’ he asked, twisting over to look up at Baptiste.

‘No. You magical types are so used to bending the world to your will you never see the value in just … letting things happen. Giving in to something bigger than yourself. There.’

He held his arm up to such light as there was and worked his fingers. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘Pardon?’ She stuck a finger behind her ear and bent it towards him. ‘Couldn’t quite make that out over the thunder of self-pity.’

‘It is a serviceable bandage. Competent , even. Your time with the butcher was well spent.’

‘High praise indeed.’

‘I have never found it … easy … to acknowledge the talents of others.’ Quite against the prevailing circumstances Balthazar found he was smiling, ever so slightly. ‘I have not the practice.’

It could not be gainsaid that Baptiste had considerable defects of character. But who is pure in that regard? He was forced to concede that even he might be concealing a few trifling flaws. And it was pointless to deny that there was something … attractive about her. That aggressive confidence. That self-possessed swagger. That scar on her lips, which had initially struck him as so unsightly, seemed on reflection to add … a dash, a danger, a fascinating air of … what could only be called experience .

Some people impress one instantly. Others are only appreciated with time and prolonged exposure. Like a vintage cheese, perhaps. And, in the long haul, it is often the acquired tastes that one comes most to savour—

‘What?’ she muttered, suspiciously narrowing her eyes.

He opened his mouth to reply.

Which was when, with an explosive cracking of wood and a cloud of stinging splinters, a spearhead big as a spade came crashing through the ceiling.

It was a warship. Even a man as ignorant of both war and ships as Brother Diaz could have been in no doubt.

A great galley in the Trojan style, long and deadly and fast as a spear, rich gilding glinting on its rails and timbers, bristling with two tiers of fast-dipping oars. A stylised lighthouse glittered in gold thread on each of its three great triangular sails and a massive bronze ram, carved like a hawk’s head, skimmed the waves at the prow to throw up clouds of glittering spray. It might have been a glorious sight. Had the ram not been aimed right at them.

‘Sweet Saint Beatrix,’ breathed Brother Diaz, staring at the ballista bolt that had arced gracefully over the few hundred strides of water between the two ships to bury itself in the deck mere inches from where he had been sitting, composing his latest unsent letter to Mother.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Vigga, clapping him on the shoulder and making him stagger. ‘It was just a warning shot.’

‘What if it had hit me?’

‘Then … I guess … it’d just be a shot?’

‘We can’t outrun them!’ the ship’s captain was screeching. ‘We’re no warship! We have to surrender!’

‘Can’t surrender,’ grunted Jakob.

‘Papal binding,’ said Baron Rikard, apologetically displaying the streak on his wrist.

‘And I swore some oaths.’

‘Oh God,’ Alex was saying, clumps of hair sprouting from between her white fingers as she clutched her head. She’d gone from being pleasingly pleased with herself over her improving writing to wholehearted terror in an instant.

‘I suggest you take your men and abandon ship.’ Baron Rikard gave the captain a reassuring pat on the shoulder. ‘I strongly suspect things are going to get … ugly .’

‘Abandon ship?’ The captain threw an arm towards the sea on every side. ‘And go where?’

‘I always enjoyed the south of France at this time of year. You have something …’ Rikard reached up with a handkerchief and dabbed at the captain’s neck, where one of a pair of pinprick holes was leaking a red streak. ‘ Just there. Much better.’

‘ What is happening?’ Balthazar was scrambling up the steps from deck to aftcastle, Baptiste behind him, pointing with an outraged finger towards the giant ballista bolt buried in the planking. ‘That thing nearly killed me!’

‘A shame,’ observed the baron. ‘We can only hope their next is more accurate.’

Balthazar pointed past the bolt now, to the towering galley beyond. ‘Who the hell are they ?’

‘Yet to formally introduce themselves.’

‘They were hiding in an inlet,’ said Jakob.

‘Waiting for us?’ snapped Baptiste.

‘Well, they’re not ramming anyone else. You think Frigo betrayed us?’

‘I’d be shocked if he didn’t.’

‘You said you knew people in Venice!’ whined Brother Diaz.

‘I never said they were trustworthy!’

The galley was still bearing down on them. Given its sheer mass it would doubtless have kept bearing down on them even if its crew had stopped rowing entirely. If anything, they were rowing harder than ever.

‘We’re trapped!’ squawked Alex. ‘It’s just like the inn!’

‘No, no,’ said Vigga. ‘The inn was on land. You could run away from it. The inn wouldn’t sink .’

Alex stared at her. ‘So it’s worse than the inn?’

‘Oh, it’s way worse.’ And Vigga grinned as the ship hit a wave and they were all showered with spray.

Jakob had found a shield, was dragging its straps tight about his forearm. ‘We’ll have to fight our way out.’

‘Sweet Saint Beatrix,’ murmured Brother Diaz, ‘sweet Saint Beatrix , sweet Saint Beatrix,’ as if the key to their deliverance was finding precisely the right emphasis on that phrase.

‘Bring up some straw!’ Jakob roared at the captain. ‘Wet it and set a fire on the deck.’

‘Fire?’ muttered Alex. ‘On a ship?’

‘It’s the smoke we want,’ said Baptiste.

‘It’s the chaos we want,’ said Jakob, glaring towards the rapidly closing galley. ‘When you’re outnumbered and outclassed, chaos is your best chance.’

Another great bolt whizzed past maybe forty strides away, but Brother Diaz still found himself ducking. A second warning shot, perhaps. He wondered if he could possibly have felt more warned than he did already.

‘Turn!’ the captain was shrieking. ‘Turn!’ He flung his weight against the tiller beside the helmsman, the ship tipping as it shifted towards the coast. Brother Diaz had to catch the mast to keep from falling, seeing one of his pens roll away across the leaning deck. He could hear the galley’s great drum calling the rhythm as it bore down on them. Could see the oars dipping smoothly, gilded decorations flashing in the sun, the great ram coming ever closer. The stretch of waves between the two vessels dwindled with an awful inevitability. The closer it came, the bigger it looked, towering over their toy ship, its great triangular sails blotting out the sun.

‘ Sweet Saint Beatrix ,’ he breathed, clutching for the blessed vial.

The ram caught their boat around the waterline and there was a screaming of tortured timbers as it crashed through the hull and carried them sideways like a harpooned fish. The deck lurched, tilted, a great curtain of spray going up on the far side. A sailor toppled shrieking from the rigging, hit the ship’s rail with a sick crunch, and flopped into the sea.

Brother Diaz clutched the mast with both arms, shut his eyes, and prayed.

‘Ahoy there!’

Jakob looked up. A man stood on an arrow-shaped platform at the prow of the galley, leaning out to wave wildly, as if trying to catch a friend’s attention in a public square. He had a soft, round face, a lot of flashing jewellery including a dangling diamond earring, and a floppy shock of curly golden hair. ‘I can only apologise for the whole ramming thing, but I find negotiations run smoothest following a strong statement of intent, don’t you?’ He placed a limp hand on the front of a scarlet jacket heavy with gilded honours. ‘I am Duke Constans, et cetera, et cetera, and so on, no need to kneel.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Alex snarled, ‘you’re one of Eudoxia’s sons.’

‘Her third, as it happens, though I like to think of myself as her sole heir. And you must be my cousin, the famed princess …’ He slid something from inside his jacket and began to unroll it. ‘What was it, now …’ A scroll with a heavy seal. Jakob gritted his teeth. A copy of the Papal bull. The one nobody was meant to know about until they arrived in Troy. ‘The famed Princess Alexia Pyrogennetos,’ read Constans, ‘endorsed by paired Oracles of the Celestial Choir, no less!’ He peered down at her, wrinkling his nose. ‘Bit of a mousy little thing, isn’t she?’

‘I’m working on my deportment!’ she snapped back.

‘Really? I expect you can stop now.’ Constans tossed the scroll over his shoulder. ‘Doubt you’ll be needing it where you’re going. But I must say it’s marvellous of you to bring her straight to me like this. Now be a good sport and hand her over or I’ll have to take her.’

‘Your brother Marcian tried the same thing,’ said Jakob.

‘Oh, I am so sorry.’ Constans looked as if he tasted something sour. ‘The boy was always prone to tantrums. I used to think to myself, how exhausting it must be, to be so constantly angry . But then we had different fathers. His was an absolute arse. Mine, too, as it goes. Mother had terrible taste in men, she really was married to her arcane experiments but that’s …’ he waved it away, ‘honestly, straying rather from the matter. Where is Marcian now, might I ask?’

‘Oh, you know. Bit here, bit there.’

‘He’s dead?’

‘As fuck,’ growled Vigga.

The duke’s look of shock resolved, ever so gradually, into a beaming smile. ‘So there’s another job you’ve saved me! For enemies you really are wonderfully obliging!’

‘All my life I wanted a family,’ muttered Alex. ‘Now I’ve got one they turn out a real stack of turds.’

‘I sympathise,’ murmured Baron Rikard.

‘Judging from your formidably scarred aspect and whole,’ Constans waved a chubby finger with an enormous ring vaguely towards Jakob, ‘ mood I get the sense you’ve seen some battlefield action?’ And he prodded at the air, lace cuff flapping, in a manner presumably meant to represent military manoeuvres but which looked more like pointing out his favourite cake.

‘Couple of scrapes,’ grunted Jakob.

‘Then I’m sure you have enough tactical acumen to recognise when you are at a considerable disadvantage.’

Jakob made himself not flinch when he felt Sunny pressed against his back for a breath. ‘Five archers on the platform with him,’ came her whisper. ‘Maybe ten more up on the masts.’ And she was gone.

‘It’s far from my first time,’ he growled up at Constans.

‘Let’s not make it your last. You can all see this is a thoroughly lost cause.’

‘I know they’re bad for me,’ said Jakob, ‘but I can’t stop taking ’em.’

‘They’re the only kind’ll have us,’ said Vigga.

‘Oooh.’ Constans gave a little shiver of excitement. ‘You’re some of those grimly heroic types.’ He thumped one of his archers on the shoulder and roared up towards the rigging. ‘They’re grimly heroic types!’

His soldiers did not reply.

Jakob worked his aching fingers. He hated fighting at sea. No soil to rub between his palms. No solid ground to plant his boots on. Everything shifting on the unquiet water.

Reminded him of that time they tried to cross the Danube before dawn on those little boats, the arrows flitting down. Had half of them made it to the far bank? Or that skirmish on the beach, charging up through the sea spray, bodies bobbing on the tide. Or that battle off the coast of Malta. The stink of smoke. The flap of sailcloth. Men throwing themselves from the burning hulks. He didn’t know if that stretch of water even had a name. But you don’t need to know the name of a place to die there.

‘How many, on a ship like that?’ he heard Alex mutter.

‘Enough,’ said Jakob. All the advantages stood with Constans. The height. The numbers. The arms. The fact his ship wasn’t holed and flooding with water. But you don’t always get to choose where you fight. Sometimes the fight finds you, and you have to meet it as you are. At least the straw on the deck was alight now, acrid smoke billowing up to cast a hazy pall over both ships.

‘You sure about this?’ muttered Baptiste.

‘I’m open to better ideas.’

To say the crew were in disarray was doing them too much credit. A couple were arming themselves with boathooks and axes but more were diving over the sides to take their chances with the Adriatic. Less comfortable with lost causes than Jakob, maybe.

It made no difference to him. Ten to one. A hundred to one. A thousand to one. He’d be fighting to the death and beyond, as always. He had his oaths to consider.

He took a long breath, stifled a cough, and slowly drew his sword. ‘At least there are no bloody goat-men this time.’

‘No,’ murmured Baptiste, tapping him on the arm, ‘but … er …’

Jakob never liked turning his head, but on this occasion he thought he’d better. He took in Brother Diaz, eyes wide. He took in Princess Alexia, teeth bared. He took in the captain, stepping away from the tiller with his hands dangling. They were all looking the same way. Towards the back rail.

Someone was slithering over it. A woman in an extravagant uniform like the one Constans wore, albeit soaked with seawater, dripping braid flapping, and some sort of helmet – or no. That was her head, silvery, like the scales of a fish, and coming strangely to a point.

She stared at Jakob with huge, wet, fishy eyes, and the gills on her neck fluttered and opened wide as she gave a shrill scream, showing two rows of skewer-like teeth.

Jakob sighed. ‘Fucking marvellous.’