Winsen went on as if Ferkudi hadn’t spoken. “Pash Vecchio’s a vulture. What do you think he’s gonna do?”
“Hold us for ransom?” Ben-hadad said hopefully.
“A vulture with a grudge,” Dazen said as the other ships of Vecchio’s fleet continued to fan out. He was reminded how slow naval combat could be before its sudden sharp end. “It’s a big mistake to think people will always act according to their best interests rather than according to your worst. How’s the light for you all?”
“Not enough to do anything against that many guns,” Big Leo said.
“Why haven’t they fired yet?” Karris asked.
“We’ll get mockery first, I think,” Dazen said. “Pash will want to make sure I know who’s killing me.”
“Maybe he’ll only kill you,” Winsen said, switching places in line to be farther away from Dazen.
A big man stepped out into view on the deck, a big man in ruffles and brocade and more jewels than a beach has sand. He wore a waistcoat under his coat, but no tunic, showing dark-olive skin under many gold chains. He looked something like a huge, obscenely rich version of Gunner.
“And there he is,” Dazen said. “Sometimes I hate being right.”
“Huh, where’d you pick up that keen understanding of what a super-arrogant guy will do?” Winsen asked.
“Win, shut it,” Big Leo said.
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Dying makes me grumpy, sir.”
“Gavin Guile!” the pirate boomed between ranks and ranks of men with muskets all pointed at Dazen. Vecchio was broad and happy and intense and spoke in the tone of a man who wouldn’t be ignored. The man was also holding two exquisite flintlock pistols, entirely plated in gold.
“Pash Vecchio? Your Majesty,” Dazen said.
“I see my reputation precedes me!” Vecchio said. “Or did you recognize the ship?”
Even as he smiled, Dazen swore under his breath.
“Do you know? Someone sank its twin!” Pash Vecchio said. He spun his gold pistols around his fingers, not precisely pointing them at Dazen and not precisely not. “All hands on deck, too. Terrible loss.”
“Terrible loss,” Dazen agreed, pained. Please, let this not be out of the frying pan, into another frying pan closer to the fire.
“There’s a battle on, Guile. And is that High Lady Guile with you there? Who would believe my luck? You’re even more lovely than I’d heard. And, given the soot and blood you’re covered with, as formidable too.”
“Thank you?” Karris said.
“Why don’t you both hop aboard my newest little treasure?”
‘Treasure.’ That didn’t bode well. Not that there was any option to disobey. The ship had hundreds of well-armed pirates on it, in addition to the sailors. Imprisonment was better than death, but Dazen had had quite enough of imprisonment.
He gritted his teeth and refrained from doing anything stupid, climbing up the extra-long gangplank to get onto the ship.
The Blackguards and the Mighty lined up on the deck with Dazen. No one had moved to disarm them without the Pash’s order, but no one had stopped aiming their muskets at them, either.
“Here’s the thing, Lord Guile,” Pash Vecchio continued, “O sinker of a ship I adored, a ship that cost me a hundred million danars—”
“That much?” Dazen said. “You should really talk to the shipwright about that. The powder magazine would be considerably more secure if—”
“Silence!” Pash Vecchio said. He licked his lips. “We talked. It was rather . . . more direct than peregrinational.”
Pirates. Did they all try to impress with their verbal gymnastics, or was that an Ilytian trait?
But Pash continued, “What I was trying to say—and there’s a battle waiting here, so let’s not drag this out—is that you, Gavin Guile—”
“—Dazen Guile—”
“—you sank a ship I loved. I was very, very . . . very, very, very perturbed about that. Disturbed even. Mad even. Mad. But it turns out there’s one thing I love more than my flagship. And you managed to find it.”
Oh, nine hells. Seriously? What did I do now?
“My daughter. Behold, the pirate queen!”
A girl jumped out of the door to the captain’s cabin. Dazen recognized her. Orholam’s balls. It was his mother’s room slave.
“High Lord Guile,” Fiammetta said. She bowed instead of curtsying, as she was wearing short trousers, a vest, and somewhat fewer gold chains than her father. She had a beatific smile, and had grown out her bright hair in curls. She was either adopted, or took quite a lot after her mother.
This was the slave girl he’d sent home, practically on a whim, guarded by the Cloven Shield mercenary band. She hadn’t said she was even from Ilyta; she’d said she was from Wiwurgh, in Paria.
But of course she had.
Because what do you do if you’re the intelligent daughter of an incredibly wealthy pirate king? You pretend that you’re just a lowly slave unless things get really terrible, because you know he’s going to save you and you’d like him to be able to ransom you cheaply, and you don’t want to stir up his enemies who might kill or buy you to get back at him.
“Dazen?” Karris asked.
“My mother’s former room slave, whom she’d ordered freed . . . but my father hadn’t quite gotten around to freeing yet,” Dazen said.
“Nor had any plans to,” Fiammetta said.
“You never mentioned that,” Karris said.
“Turns out,” Fiammetta said, “Gavin Guile did those kinds of things quite frequently. Swooped in, saved people, left. Protecting his people, risking his life as if that was just what he did. There must be a hundred villages that have stories of the Prism himself coming and saving them from a rampaging wight, or bandits, or a rapacious local governor. He never cared what it would cost to make things right. And only Gavin Guile could track down an illegal slave ship, board it alone rather than sink it from afar, and free everyone aboard with no loss of life. He ended the Blood Wars. He saved an entire swath of Atash when the Blue-Eyed Demons decided they wanted their own kingdom to despoil and he put them down.”
“Wait,” Karris said, “that was you? We thought they’d turned on each other.”
Dazen shrugged apologetically.
“You went alone?” she asked, and he wasn’t sure if her outrage was that of a wife or of a Blackguard.
“The way I hear it,” Fiammetta said, “he couldn’t help himself. Traveled the empire and fixed problems wherever he went. Ships saved from storms. Cures brought from afar. The ruthless brought to justice. Practically invisible, yet bringing light wherever he went. People love a man like that. People follow a man like that.”
“They did,” Dazen said. Once. He tried to say it without bitterness. For good and ill, a Guile might never forget what he’d done, but other people certainly did.
“They do still,” a woman’s voice said from the recesses of the captain’s cabin. “I traveled all over the Seven Satrapies, and everywhere I went, they told me tales of their Gavin Guile, who came and stood for them, who fought for them.”