THE SEA HAG by David Drake

Dennis knocked diffidently on the jamb.

“Many the ships that sail right in—”

He knocked louder, on the door itself. The lustrous panel quivered a little farther open.

“—and they never sail out a’tall!”

“Uncle Ramos?” Dennis called. “May I come in? It’s Dennis.”

“What’s stopping you?” the voice demanded. Glass shattered within the room, then tinkled as the larger pieces fell to the floor and broke further.

Dennis opened the door wide with his arm before he stepped through it.

Chester said, “It is the great glory of the wise man to be controlled in the manner of his life.”

The windows of the tower room looked out over the harbor and sea in three-quarters of a circle. The water glowed with tiny life. Froth lifted by the breezes traced ghostly arcs above the surface.

The purity and vibrant motion of the water beyond was in shocking contrast to the squalor of Ramos’ room.

A lamp hung from the bracket just inside the door. Its wick was turned low. The rush mats that softened the floor hadn’t been changed in months, perhaps years. Scavenging insects, startled by the newcomers, sank within the woven rushes like oil being absorbed in filthy sand.

Plates—fine porcelain decorated with gilded rims and the palace crest—were scattered on the floor. On some of them, the food appeared not to have been touched.

“Uncle Ramos…?” whispered Dennis. The stench of the room made him jump as though he’d been slapped in the face.

“What’s the matter, kid?” Ramos said with heavy irony. “You don’t like my singing?”

He hawked and spat. “For many the ships—” he repeated, but his voice broke in a fit of coughing.

Ramos was a big man, tall where Dennis’ father was broad. He was shockingly gaunt now, but even so his heavy bones made him look a giant as he sprawled on the bed. He was wearing his state robes, scarlet and cloth-of-gold; but they were as stained and foul as the floor mats.

There were plates on the bed; but mostly there were bottles, squat green quarts of fortified wine from Bredabrug far down the south coast. The mats beneath the open windows sparkled with bottles that had smashed on the casements instead of flying out of the room.

“Hob-nobbing with the common folk, are you, kid?” Ramos asked.

He’d turned his head to the door when Dennis entered, but now he let his eyes rock back to an empty window—or to nothing. Glass clinked as Ramos rummaged with one arm among the bottles beside him.

Dennis swallowed hard. “Uncle Ramos,” he said as he walked toward the bed, pretending he didn’t feel the way the rushes wriggled beneath his boots. “Are you sick? And why haven’t the servants…? Why have they—”

Ramos had found a full bottle among the empties quivering as the bed moved. “Have a drink with nobody, your Royal Crown-Princeness, sir,” he said, still lying flat on the bed.

He had a folding sailor’s knife in his right hand. The knot-breaking marlinspike blade was open. He began worrying at the cork—without effect, because he was using the wrong end of the knife.

Dennis forgot his horror. When he was a child, Ramos had carried him perched on one shoulder like a pet lizard. He’d felt taller than the ships’ masts then—and perfectly safe, because Ramos steadied him with a hand as solid as carven stone.

Dennis swept bottles away and sat down on the bed. The mattress squelched; more debris rolled down the coverlet in response to his weight. Dennis took the bottle and knife from Ramos whose fingers didn’t resist.

“I’ll get some servants up here at once,” the boy said quietly.

“No guts, these servants, you know that?” Ramos said, glaring truculently for a moment before closing his eyes and letting his body settle back onto the mattress. “No sporting instinct. They stick their heads in, and if they don’t have more wine, I throw empties at ’em. That’s sporting enough, ain’t it, Royal Crown Princeling?”

“What’s the matter, Uncle Ramos?” Dennis asked softly. The horn-scaled knife clicked against the bottle when he switched both objects to his right hand. He twined the fingers of his free hand with those of Ramos, marveling at how near to a size he was with the man he remembered as a giant.

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