The Long Road Back: A Jarthen-centric Interquel (pt. 8)

“Hey, Shakhar,” Nossi said, slinging himself around the corner and sticking his head into the hold, glancing around from hammock to hammock to see where I was. I hunkered down a bit more, tired and sore and bitter that he was busting in on what had been a rare quiet moment to myself. “There you are.”

“Aye, I’m right here.”

Nossi came over and nudged me, sending the hammock swinging to and fro. “Seasick again? I thought you got over that.”

“I did. Man still needs his sleep, though,” I said, making a great show of settling in and yawning.

“Sure, sure. You can sleep all you want, but first I got news for you.”

“No you don’t, there’s never news fer me. There’s orders now and again, there’s loads of questions that don’t got answers, but there’s never news fer me.”

He nudged me again just as the ship hit a break in the waves that knocked it to the side, and fer a minute there, I wondered if the seasickness was coming back. It, thankfully, passed. “Well, if you really don’t want it, I’ll just go tell the captain that skinny, useless fella we picked up in Opleneer don’t care about any messages he feels like passing on.”

I opened an eye and looked at him. Nossi was standing there, leaning against the wall, grinning at me from ear to ear that same way he did when he had a winning hand and took the last of someone’s cigarettes. “The news is from the captain?”

He made a pretense of shrugging and studying his fingernails. “Well, seeing as there’s never news for you, technically it isn’t from anyone, is it? But if there was news for you, if such a strange thing was possible, I’d say it was from the captain.” He smiled a little wider and pulled himself off the wall, stepping away from me. “Course, like you said, you get no news. I’ll go let him know he must’ve meant for me to pass it along to someone else.”

I lurched forward and caught his wrist as he passed by, coming perilously close to tangling myself up and falling out of the hammock in the process. “Whoa, there. No reason to do that.”

“You sure? ‘Cause -- ”

“I’m sure. What’s this about?”

“We’re porting in the Haven for a week, everyone’s getting shore leave, including you.”

By that point, we’d put into a handful of ports already – never for longer than a day or two and me and most of the crew were told to stay put. I sort of suspected the reason fer it was that they’d thought I might make a break fer it given the chance and I have to confess that in that moment where I’d just been told I might be able to stand on dry land again it felt like nothing in the world could force me back onto the ship. “Really?”

“Yep.”

“That’s – wait, where are we putting into port?”

He smiled a little wider and shook his head at me. “The Haven.”

“Where is that again?”

Nossi’s smile turned into a smirk. “Oh, nowhere you want to be. It’s the main spot in the pirate isles, which means we’re on my home turf now and far, far away from yours, Shakhar. But the Haven’s a helluva a town. I know it like the back of my hand, Captain wants me to keep an eye on you and make sure you don’t get yourself in trouble while we’re there.”

I frowned and lay back in the hammock. “No need fer that.”

“The hell there isn’t. What, you think everyone speaks Common? You think they’ll even admit to speaking Common once they figure out you don’t speak anything else?”

“Hey, I’m picking up Felin.”

“Sort of.”

“I am.” But the honest truth was I doubted I could really make much of a go with it if I had to. And when he pointed it out, I wasn’t so sure I really wanted to go gallivanting around a pirate port after all. I mean, considering the way trouble found me in a decent lawful spot like Opleneer it struck me as courting fate to wander around such a place and in my experience fate don’t need much courting to pop by and throw everything into shambles. “What’s Haven like? Why are we stopping there so long?”

“The Haven.”

“What?”

He shot me an exasperated look and perched himself on a nearby barrel, looking deceptively gangly and frail. “It’s called the Haven, not Haven. Biggest pirate port this side of the archipelago. The captain has contacts there – hell, everyone has contacts there – contacts he might be able to parlay into a fleet if things work out his way. Besides, we need supplies and you can’t get better prices than there. And, you know, we got to clean up whatever messes the changing of hands here on board might’ve caused.”

This sounded like another reason to stay put. “Messes?”

“Nothing you need to worry about. Look, just stick close to me and I’ll make sure you get back here in one piece again. Or go off on your own and get yourself drugged or killed or sold off, if you’d rather.”

Didn’t really strike me as much a choice, honestly, and in any case Nossi had sort of grown on me. I figured if I had to stick close to somebody (and it did seem like I had to stick close to somebody since I knew just enough to know that pirates have all sorts of rules and customs and just enough to know I had no real idea what half of them were) that it was best if I stuck close to somebody I didn’t mind all that much and who didn’t seem to mind me much in return. So, that’s what I did and about a week later I found myself standing next to him on an unfamiliar dock staring out at a hundred unfamiliar faces that seemed to be staring right back. “Nossi?”

“Yeah?” he was rooting around in his pack fer summat or other and generally appeared to be wholly untroubled by the amount of attention I seemed to be gathering.

“Feels like they’re staring at me.”

He glanced up and around, sweeping across the crowd in one quick glance, and went back to his pack. “Shakhar, don’t get me wrong, you’re a nice-looking fella, but it’s not you they’re looking at it. Well, maybe it is, generally the only humans here in the isles are T’Langans and you’re no T’Langan. They’re looking at the ship.”

“Oh.”

“Guess the news got here already. That was fast. Told him not to port in Shilladah but he didn’t listen.”

“What?”

Nossi waved at me, rolling his eyes yet again at the things I never caught and he never bothered explaining. He always seemed caught between finding my lack of knowledge about him and his endearing and annoying. “Hey, you hungry?”

“I could eat.”

“Bet you could. Hell, you out eat half the damn crew. Growing boy, I guess. Ever had Droma food?”

The Droma are the gold elves, that much I had managed to pick up by then. “No.”

“Well, you’re going to. Follow me,” he said, starting off down the dock. I scrambled after him, hovering a bit closer than I suppose was strictly necessary, eyeing every single big brute we walked past and then going bright red and jittery and looking away whenever one of the big brutes caught me looking. And let me tell you, the docks were just crawling with big brutes. Big T’Langan brutes, dark as night with worn, calloused hands big and strong enough that I bet half of them could’ve cracked my skull just by squeezing it. Big Felin brutes, their faces half-hidden by their robes, huddled together and pointing at our ship. Big brutes that looked like they might be a little bit of everything but were pretty clearly all pirate when it came down to it. The docks of the Haven are a huge sprawling place, a maze of wooden trails breaking out across the water, dotted with ships here and there, but it was packed. Honestly, I was a little shocked. I’d underestimated the pirates, I didn’t think there were enough of them out there on the seas to fill up a place as big as the docks, much less the rest of the city itself. Or all the other pirate cities. If I had to guess, I’d say that pirates might outnumber Elothninians, a fact which seemed utterly absurd to me until I was faced with all those big brutes watching me walk away from the Sinn.

Anyway, Nossi just started down the dock unperturbed by all the hubbub and I scrambled after him as he wound his way onto the island. It was a confusing route, I felt like we were going around in circles, but he walked on with that sort of distracted confidence you only get when you know your way around someplace so well you don’t actually have to pay attention to where you are, so I just stuck near him. The city itself was more confusing than the docks – as I said, the docks are a sort of odd maze floating on the water, but at least there you can see everything around you and work out a path to where you want to get to. The city proper, though, is something else again. It’s a dark place, full of shadows even at noon thanks to these narrow little streets hemmed in by tall buildings. Buildings four and five and six stories tall built so close together that the streets feel more like back alleys. The windows of the places next to the docks all had signs in their windows with symbols painted on them. I recognized a couple as some of the symbols strewn across Muladah’s chest. I pointed to one that I’d seen tucked up under the captain’s collarbone, a set of thick vines wound around each other like a wreath. “What’s that mean?”

“Don’t mean nothing to you,” Nossi said, smirking at me. He was always smirking at me.

“Just tell me.”

“Asking nice like that, how could I say no? That’s the Oeselia agent’s shop. That’s where you’d go if you want to join up with Misa and his crew, but trust me, you don’t.”

“Why not? Who’s Misa?”

“You don’t ‘cause you already got a crew. And you don’t want to join Oeselia ‘cause they’re all blue and from what I can tell I don’t think you and the blues would get along all that well.”

“I’ve had my fill of Norsans. All these are agents? These are all different fleets?”

“Yeah. I mean, you’re not all that much of a fleet worth being in if you don’t even have an agent in the Haven, are you?”

“Guess not. Take your word fer it.”

“Course you will. No better word than mine. This way,” he said, darting off down a somehow narrower little side street. I could hear the crowds ahead getting louder, more raucous, and wondered where exactly Nossi was dragging me off to. We turned the corner onto a widish (for the Haven) boulevard packed with throngs of people. Elves, felintarks, humans of all different stripes thrown together, packed in so tight that the air there was denser, hotter, a bit more pungent if you catch my drift. Hawkers called out over the crowds, clutches of drunk pirates swung and swayed together, carrying on in a host of languages that blurred together around me. It took some doing not to lose Nossi in the crowd, small and thin and fast moving as he was. He glanced over his shoulder after a ways and pointed to the left, towards a crowded looking tavern called the Black and Gold and I followed him in. The tavern itself was full enough but not bursting at the seams like the street outside, and I was grateful for the brief moment to relax in space of my own again. Nossi went up to the counter and was greeted warmly by a tall, narrow fellow with dark skin and big yellow eyes like a gold elf’s. “Ah, I heard the Sinn was back in town. Heard you moved up the ladder, is that true?”

“Maybe. But I still got no money. You ought to know me well enough to know that.”

Then man laughed and cocked an eyebrow. “I know you well enough to know that by this time tomorrow you’ll have tripled it and half of the Row will be bled dry. How long you in town?”

“A week.”

The bartender nodded and handed Nossi a key, and Nossi handed him a few coins in return. “Oh, hey, this one got two beds? ‘Cause that pasty git I dragged in here isn’t going to want to share.” He glanced at me over his shoulder and grinned. “Right, Shakhar?”

“I mean, if it’s no trouble a bed of my own would be a nice change of pace,” I said, doing my best to ignore the way that tall fella was looking me over.

“Who’s he?” he asked, and I did my best to ignore that he’d spoken.

“New crew. Very new crew, straight out of Opleneer. So? Two beds?”

He took the key and handed Nossi another one. “Two beds, and ‘cause I like you and we go way back I won’t even charge you for the second one.”

“Much appreciated. C’mon, Shakhar, let’s drop these bags and I’ll get us a decent meal,” he said, already heading up the stairs and not even bothering to make sure I followed. I scarcely had a chance to drop my things in the room before he was out of it again and leading me further away from the docks, up into the city. After awhile, the buildings got a bit shorter and the crowds thinned out. Laundry lines appeared with shirts strung across them, drying in the salty air, window boxes peeped out with bright bits of green in them. And I could hear the sound of children running and screeching down a nearby alley, which was, frankly, not a sound I’d been expecting to hear in a place like that. I guess I’d not been expecting the Haven to be a real city, a place where folks lived their lives and went about their business, but it was. A ball bounced out into the street ahead of us, rolling and tumbling over my foot, and a stream of boys came barreling after it. They were a scrawny, motley bunch, all pointed ears and wild hair and gangly limbs, chattering away like there was no tomorra. But they were bright-eyed and scrubbed too clean to be out there making their way on their own.

Nossi grabbed the ball and called out to them in the pirate’s patois, an odd mix of Felin and Common and T’Langan that I could sort of half follow, and the gaggle of boys turned in unison and started babbling back, laughing and pointing and all talking over each other at once. A tallish boy waved at them ‘til they quieted down again and shot Nossi a sheepish look. Nossi shrugged and tossed the ball back, and it went sailing over their heads and bouncing into a side street and the boys were gone again.

“Those kids live here?” I asked, watching the last of them go stumbling around a corner.

“Hell, I don’t know. They’re not my kids. Some of them are probably stuck on ships half the time but some of them probably aren’t,” he said, starting off down the street again.

“You think they’ll grow up to pirates?” Try as might, I couldn’t see them going that way. They all looked too happy, too childlike. They looked like I did ten years back. They were all some blend of human and Felin and elf, down to the last, but they didn’t seem all that different from the fellas I grew up with back in West Fethil.

Nossi laughed and shook his head at me. “Maybe, I don’t know. Not my kids. If they do, though, at least they’ll come by it honest and be able to make a decent go of it. Unlike you.”

“Hey, I didn’t -- ”

“You didn’t ask for it, I know, I know. Shakhar, you should really lighten up. The life’s not half as bad as you make it out to be.”

As far as I’m concerned -- then and now – the life is exactly as bad as I was making it out to be. I couldn’t take it all in stride like he could. Maybe ‘cause he’d been born to it. Maybe ‘cause he was half crazy. Maybe both. In any case, I did not lighten up. “Thought you said we were getting summat to eat.”

“We are. We’re close. A little patience won’t kill you.”

“Neither will a little food.” I glanced around, looking fer a tavern or café or summat, but all I saw were more little homes stacked on top of each other. “You sure we’re in the right neighborhood?”
Nossi shot me a withering look. “Yes. I told you, I grew up here.”

“Thought you grew up on the ships.”

“The ships stop here a lot. What, you think you know your way around better?”

I held up my hands and shook my head. “No, no, course not. Lead the way.”

And lead the way he did, deeper into that quaint little neighborhood that felt like it couldn’t possibly have nothing to do with the rowdy pirates a mile or so to the east of us. Or any of those big mean-looking brutes hovering around the docks. He led me right up to a little house with whitewashed walls and a blue door with a line of bells strung on it. He knocked on the door, and a few seconds later the bells chimed as the door cracked open and a pale gold eye stared out at us. The eye went big and round and the door swung all the way open and in the space of a second a tiny little woman with an impressive amount of yellow hair was scooping Nossi up into a hug. And then, a second later, she pulled back and swatted him on the shoulders, across the side of the head, thumped his chest, all the while frowning and sniping at him in a shrill voice in what I assumed was the language of the gold elves. The two of them stood there arguing about whatever they were arguing about in Droma for a minute or so (although, frankly, I’m not really sure if it could really be called an argument, since Nossi mostly just stood there looking sheepish and every time he tried to say something back he got a fresh round of swats and the woman started going on about whatever she was going on about a little louder and a little faster) until she looked over at me. Her eyebrows shot up and she leaned across him and asked me summat in the patois.

“Ma’am, I’m real sorry fer the inconvenience but I’m no good with tongues,” said I, casting a curious look at Nossi.

She frowned at me and jerked the collar of my shirt down and peered at the marks Muladah had given me after the mutiny. She had to stand on her toes to do it, small as she was, and afterward her eyebrows went up a little more and she ducked close to Nossi, pestering him about me now but still not in any language I could make a lick of sense of.

After a little while, Nossi sighed and shot me an apologetic look. “Ma, c’mon, I told you he only speaks Common.”

“She’s your ma?” Nossi nodded. “Huh, well, I guess you do look sort of alike.”

“No we don’t, not really. Not besides the hair and even it’s the wrong color.”

“Well, you’re both short.”

He frowned at me. “I’m not short. You’re just tall.” His ma crossed her arms and said summat under her breath that set him shaking his head again, looking a little annoyed and henpecked. “Ma -- ”

She kept going, ducking close to him and pointing at me now and again.

“Ma! Look, I got orders, I got to drag him with -- ”

She let out a fresh round of chatter, frowning at me in the process. And, you know, given the beating Tawiri handed me I probably shouldn’t’ve underestimated her but she looked harmless enough. And so I just stood there, sort of amused by it and the way Nossi looked less and less like a pirate while she laid into him.

He let out an irritated noise and covered his face with his hands. “It wasn’t my idea! I told you, Mul promoted him, not me!” I laughed in spite of myself and he shoved me. I figured I probably deserved it and took it as just punishment.

The mention of Muladah spurred his mother to start smacking him again, yelling at him just like she had when we first came by. But this time, he ducked behind me and used me as a shield. “Look, if you’re going to keep on about things no one can change the least you could do is feed me.”

She sighed and made a couple of last attempts to get at him, but Nossi did a fine job of pushing me in the way and after awhile she gave up. She shook her head, pointed to him and the door and started back inside.

“I got orders, Ma.”

I glanced over my shoulder. “Hey, I’ll just find a spot myself, no reason to --”

“You’ll get lost and wind up dead in an alley without me, and you don’t have enough cash on you to get anything from anyone. No one here takes Elothninian crowns,” he said, brushing past her.

His ma watched me fer a minute, studying me and getting a bit more annoyed looking as the time ticked by. Finally, she drew herself up tall (well, what passed fer tall with her, anyway), and put her hands on her hips. “You want to come in my house and eat my food you got to stop blocking me. Understand?”

“Oh. Well, ma’am, thing is, I’m not trying to. Honest. I’m Jarthen, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said, holding out my hand.

She didn’t take it. She frowned at me a little more. “Thought you said his name was Shakhar, Avomilai,” she called over her shoulder.

Nossi stuck his head back through the door. “Don’t call me that.”

“That’s your name.”

He cut his eyes at me and sighed. “Well, it isn’t on the ships. And his name isn’t Jarthen on the ships, it’s Shakhar. And he really can’t help it about the blocking, so just let him in.”

“Avo, don’t take that tone with me.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please let him in.”

She smiled and patted him on the arm. “Alright. Alright, fine, I’ll feed you and your friend, too.”