He knocked on the sheet metal covering the door, and an old woman pushed the heavy portal aside and let him enter.
“How is he?” Brandon asked, glancing around the huge room. The baron was holding court over some people from another island who were trying to buy more black powder.
“Bad, sir,” the woman muttered softly. “Wife nineteen gave him another girl.”
“Black dust! Did he let this one live?”
She shook her head. “Threw it into the sea himself.”
Brandon heard the shift from a person to a thing. He couldn’t blame her. The woman was trained to deliver children, not murder newborns. But the baron was set on getting a son to replace him when death finally came, or claimed that he would take them all to hell when he died. Nobody doubted the threat.
On a raised wooden platform, an obscene pile of flesh sat in an armless throne, wads of mottled flesh hanging over either side of the chair. Slaves stood attendant on both sides, with armed sec men in the corners, and a large crowd of people standing patiently before the pulsating mound of fat as he nosily guzzled from a cup of wine made from a spent 120 mm artillery round.
Baron Maxwell Kinnison was beyond repulsive.
His hard piggy eyes were sunk deep in a pool of fat, and a tremendous belly flopped over his gunbelt and quivered upon his unseen lap. His clothing was a mixture of Navy uniforms and bedsheets, and the checkered grips of predark revolvers jutted from his clothing in several locations. Hair grew in irregular tufts in his otherwise bald head, his face was a mass of open sores and the fingers of both hands were wrapped in strips of cloth stained black and yellow from the dried blood and pus.
His disease was called the red death. Some old healer once called it by the fancy name of leprosy. Kinnison was dying by pieces, and only massive amounts of jolt and alcohol helped him dull the pain enough to stay coherent. Any remaining sanity had disappeared years earlier. However, he was still the only person alive who knew the secret formula for making black powder, which was the very heart of their power over the lesser islands. No matter how many people wanted him aced, that secret had to be pried from the bloated whale first, no matter what the cost.
Snorting for air through his tiny nose, the baron took a whole chicken from the bowl of roasted birds alongside his throne and started to rip the skin off the white meat with jagged yellow teeth.
“My lord,” Brandon said, advancing and snapping off a salute.
“Report,” the baron mumbled, his mouth overflowing with food. Bits of bird fell to add to the vast collection of stains on his embroidered tunic.
“Pirates attacked another convoy headed for the western islands. I sank two, but couldn’t find their hidden docks.”
“Some escaped?” Kinnison shouted, bits of food spraying from his mouth. “Unsatisfactory, Lieutenant!”
“Indeed it is, my baron. Also the payment ship from Cold Harbor ville is extremely late. Almost two weeks behind schedule. I checked with their baron, and it seems that ship did sail on time. I found no evidence of trickery on their part.”
“Better not,” the baron muttered, tearing off another mouthful.
“My lord, there was a bad storm,” a slim man suggested. “Mebbe a sea mutie got them. It has happened before.”
Brandon scowled at the man, but kept his peace. Griffin was the baron’s personal healer. He was always scrubbed clean, from his pointed beard to his soft leather moccasins. His clothing was plain, almost nondescript, and if he was armed, the blaster was nowhere in sight.
Swallowing the partially chewed meat, Baron Kinnison tossed away the half-eaten bird and picked up a fresh one. “That is a possibility, Griffin,” he said, nibbling on the capon. “Or they may only be damaged and trying to make repairs on some uninhabited island along the route. How many do they normally pass, Lieutenant?”
“Twenty-four,” Brandon replied, “if they follow the undersea rivers to make good speed.”
“Too many to check.” Kinnison frowned, then winced as if in pain. Reaching quickly into a pocket, he withdrew a vial and sprinkled a pinch of white powder into his brass mug of wine. He drained the container, the excess flowing over the rim and down his wattled cheeks.