He turned away and studied the workshop. There was nothing to see, really, other than a small door on the side and two great swinging waterdoors in the middle which opened directly on an inlet to the riverside. There were plenty of windows, but all of them began ten feet off the ground—above eye level, except for someone with a ladder.
And there wouldn’t be anything to see, anyway, even if someone did use a ladder. Demansk noted, with approval, the frosty glass which filled all the windows. His son Trae was absent-minded, in some ways, but there was nothing at all wrong with his brains. The interior of the workshop would be better lit than most buildings, during daytime at least, but would be impossible to spy on easily.
He went over to the small door and gave it a tug. Locked, as he’d expected—and hoped. He gave the door a vigorous pounding with his fist.
* * *
The man who opened the door was the one Demansk had come to see. The other one, rather, in addition to his son.
The foreign face was blank with astonishment. “Justiciar!” the man exclaimed. “We hadn’t expected—”
“Good,” grunted Demansk, passing through the door. When he entered the workshop, his eyes fell on the object at its center. Impossible to look anywhere else, really. Even floating in its berth, the thing filled most of the building’s interior.
It was the steam ram which Adrian Gellert had designed for the King of the Isles. The device had caused much grief to the Confederates in the first period of the siege of Preble, before Demansk had managed to capture the bizarre thing.
Capture it from—
His eyes moved away from the ship and fell on the man who had opened the door. Sharlz Thicelt, he noted, had given up his turban and was now wearing the garb of a Confederate freeman instead of an Islesman. But the tall former captain of the steam ram still had his head shaved, and still had heavy gold hoops dangling from his ears.
Demansk decided he approved of that small display of stubbornness. In an odd way, it spoke to a certain integrity in the former Islander naval captain.
That integrity would be needed. “Islander naval captain” was a term whose distinction from “pirate chieftain” could only be parsed by an Emerald philosopher. Demansk was now facing the old quandary: How do you know that the bandit you’re hiring is an honest man?
Something of his thoughts must have shown. Thicelt’s thick lips twisted, and he held up his wrists. “Your son will speak well of me, I think. At least, he removed the manacles weeks ago.”
Trae had come up by then, a tool of some kind in his hand. A tool! Demansk noted. Good thing no one knows, or the whole family would be disgraced in Vanbert’s upper crust.
“He’s not a bad pirate, as these things go,” said Demansk’s youngest offspring cheerfully.
Demansk saw no reason to dilly-dally around the business. “But will he stay bought?” he demanded.
Sharlz Thicelt’s expressive lips shifted into a different kind of smile. Still wry; but also, somehow, philosophical.
“Depends on the price,” he said, just as bluntly. “If it’s a fair one, yes; try and chisel me, you’ll live to regret it.” He shrugged. “Not a polite way of putting it, of course. But . . . there it is.”
Demansk bestowed upon him the carnivore smile. “I dare say you’ll have no complaint about the price. Though you might find the risk involved a bit on the steep side.”
Thicelt’s whole face was expressive. The smile vanished, the brows lowered, the cheeks thinned. The man was on the verge of taking insult. Whatever else anyone said about the pirates of the Isles, no one accused them of cowardice.
Demansk headed it off. “I’m not talking about simple risks, Sharlz Thicelt.” He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Boarding operations, battle—that sort of thing. I’m talking about the kind of risks that might leave you, someday, immured in a dark cellar. Dying slowly on a stake, with no one knowing you are even there except your executioners.”