“You did well. But then you English always do, don’t you?”
Sir George turned from the light sculpture. He hadn’t heard the hatch open, but one rarely did aboard this ship. The main hatches, big enough for a score of mounted men abreast, yes. Not even their masters seemed able to make something that large move without even a whisper of sound, but the smaller hatches within the ship proper were another matter.
Not that most of his men would know that from personal experience. Only he, Sir Richard Maynton, and—on very rare occasions—Matilda had ever been permitted inside the portion of the vast ship reserved for their masters and their masters’ nonhuman henchmen. Even then, they must come totally unarmed and submit to the humiliation of a search before they passed the glowing wall between their section of the ship and the rest of its interior.
Now he cocked his head, gazing at the Commander, and tried to gauge the other’s mood. Despite the years of his servitude, he still found the task all but hopeless. That was immensely frustrating, and it was also dangerous. But the Commander’s piping voice remained a dead, expressionless thing, and the three-eyed face remained so utterly alien as to make reading its expression utterly impossible. Certainly Sir George had never seen anything he could classify as a smile or a frown. And the fact that the Commander didn’t truly speak English (or Latin, or French) complicated things still further. Father Timothy and Dickon Yardley, Sir George’s senior surgeon, had concluded that the upper of the Commander’s two mouths was exclusively a breathing and speaking orifice, but as Sir George had noticed the very first day, that mouth didn’t move in time with the words the Commander “spoke.” Instead, the Commander spoke in his own tongue—whatever that was—and one of the many mechanisms of the ship translated that into a language Sir George could understand and made it appear to be coming from the Commander.
Sir George had often wondered whether that artificiality was the true reason the voice sounded so expressionless. He couldn’t be certain, but he had concluded that the Commander’s failure—or refusal—to learn the language of his captive troops was another indication of his sense of utter superiority to them. It was, however, a foolish decision, unless whatever translated his words into English did a far better job of communicating nuance and emotion when it translated English into his own language.
But however ridiculous the demon-jester might still look, and despite the foolishness of any decisions the Commander might make, Sir George would never underestimate him. He dared not, for his own life, but even more for the lives of the men and women for whom he was responsible, and that was the true reason he found his inability to read the Commander’s mood so maddening. He must watch his words with this creature far more closely than he’d ever watched them with any other commander, yet he was never quite free of the fear that he would choose the wrong one simply because he’d misunderstood or misinterpreted the Commander.
Still, he knew he’d made some progress, and at least the Commander appeared to choose his words with care, as if seeking to make his meaning completely clear through what he said since he couldn’t communicate fine shades of meaning by how he said it.
And, of course, there’s also the fact that we’re valuable to him and to his “trading guild.” Very valuable, if he’s to be believed. And I rather think he is, given the lengths they went to to steal us all away.
Sir George would never be so stupid as to assume that that value would preserve any human foolish enough to anger or appear to threaten their masters. Sir John Denmore’s fate on that very first day would have been enough to prevent that, but there had been a handful of other deaths over the years. Two men who’d attempted to desert on a beautiful world of blue skies and deep green seas, another who’d simply refused one day to leave the ship, the six executed for the wart-face’s death, another who’d gone berserk and attacked the dragon-men and the Commander himself with naked steel . . . All had been slaughtered as easily as Sir John, and with as little apparent emotion. Yet the Commander’s actions and normal attitude (as well as Sir George could read the latter) were those of a being well pleased with his investment . . . and aware that his own masters were equally pleased. He would shed no tears (or whatever his kind did to express sorrow) over the death of any single human, but he valued them as a group and so took pains to avoid misunderstandings which might require him to destroy any of them.