Dansby checked fore and aft again to ensure he was unobserved, then slipped into the side space full of stacked crates to either side.

  The crates weren’t labeled here — this was more miscellaneous storage for the purser and his assistants. No one from the crew would be sent to retrieve something unattended. This would be where Fell, and his mates if he allowed them, would carry their own cargoes. A bit of better food or drink they could sell to the crew on the side, small luxuries and bits that weren’t officially part of the ship’s offerings, or even a bit of something to trade between Tyche’s stops, though even the most liberal interpretation of those unwritten rules of how a purser might profit from his warrant surely didn’t include trade in illegal drugs.

  Dansby examined the crates here.

  They were all much of a type — banged up, dented, scraped, and gouged by years of service on thrice as many ships. These contents weren’t new from some manufactory or Naval yard, they were tossed haphazardly into whatever container happened to be about the chandlery.

  He thought back to crates he’d been pushing. If there were more addle, then there had to be some way to identify those crates. Fell would want them left well alone.

  He edged his way farther back into the stacks, almost to Tyche’s hull, and there he saw what must be the mark — a blaze of paint just near the handle facing out into the aisle. The crates he’d moved had just such a marking — new-made and not as worn as the others.

  The latch gave way easily and he lifted the lid to reach inside, feeling the same foil packets he’d expected. One came out, briefly, just to confirm it was addle.

  It was, and, that crate safely latched again, a cursory look found three others with similar blazes.

  It was not only Ravenstone, then. There were more stations and more worlds being supplied the addle by Tyche.

  Dansby made his way back to the space between the vats where he’d left the stolen addle. He needed some time alone to think on what to do.

  He sat back down and drew his knees up to his chest, then crossed his arms over them and rested his chin there. His thoughts had a weight he could feel and it was more than his neck alone could support, it seemed.

  The Navy was supposed to protect the colonies from things like this, not engage in it. Dansby didn’t object to mind-altering substances on any sort of moral level — the Dark knew he’d engage in any amount of sense-dulling alterations he could manage via a portside pub — but addle wasn’t something a man took by choice. The stuff took away all choice, and that, a bit to his surprise and no small amount of consternation, made him angry.

  Which made him angrier still.

  “It’s none of my concern,” he muttered. “Really. When one gets right down to it. Not a bit.”

  An all too familiar voice sounded in his head and he nearly looked around to see how Kaycie had made her way aboard Tyche to play conscience in his deliberations.

  Well, nor were Wilmott back on Keldworth Heath and his plans for those mining charges.

  “That was different.”

  How so?

  “Wilmott made me a party to it — well, Carlton did, giving me the job and all.”

  You unloaded the crates.

  “You know, it’s a bit unfair of you to be here lighting me up about it when you didn’t bother to get me off this bloody ship in the first place.”

  You’re ignoring the issue. They got you unloading the crate — doesn’t that involve you?

  Dansby frowned. “No … not the same. Not a bit of concern here.”

  Those men and women are trapped on Ravenstone. The addle will keep them about their business there with no chance to say “no”.

  “The Fringe is a hard place, with every world having it’s down-trodden folk. There’s little I can do to save myself and those I care for, much less complete strangers.”

  Do you think the addle’s limited to the miners? What about the girls in the houses?

  “I couldn’t say — I wasn’t allowed off-ship and didn’t frequent such places. I certainly wouldn’t partake if I suspected, but it’s not my business to go about the universe saving them all.”

  You could save these, or at least try. Just a word to the authorities is all it takes — not like you’d have to blow up a planet.

  “I didn’t blow up Keldworth Heath. Only a bit of it. Have my own problems, anyway. Stuck in the Navy, if you’ll recall, and no ship or other resources to go about saving bloody planets.”

  Hmph.

  “You’re not even here, so it’s not as though that should work, you know.”

  Silence.

  “The silent treatment from an imaginary voice is not, on the whole, an effective tactic. And I’m not even sure Kaycie would want me to get involved at all, little mind the voice. She’d want me to get home safe, anyway, not go about trying to rescue some world I’d never have heard of, save for being accidentally pressed into the bloody Navy.”

  Silence.

  Then, sounding in his mind in a tone Dansby knew only too well — the tone that fairly dripped with the tangible disappointment of every woman who’d ever breathed, as though they bundled all that up in one package and passed it about for when one of them needed it:

  Fine.

  “Oh … bugger it.”

  “A G9?” Fell asked.

  Dansby nodded.

  “That’s a mighty tablet,” Fell said. “Most calls for that come from the lieutenants — captains, even.”

  “Is it not allowed?” Dansby asked. “For a common spacer to have one, I mean.”

  Fell pursed his lips. “Can’t say as there’s any regulation, I suppose.”

  “And you do have one?”

  “It’s not stock — little call for it, as I said. I do have the plans, though — take only a bit to print it. What you want it for?”

  Dansby shrugged. “I’ve heard it’s the best for entertainments and we’ve had some long tacks of late, and not been allowed liberty while in port.”

  Fell nodded. “Keep to yourself, I’ve seen.” He sighed. “There’s the cost, though, lad.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve little else to spend my pay on, have I?”

  “Well, payments, yes,” Fell said, his nose twitching, “but there’s the upfront, you see? And your pay’s still in arrears.”

  “The upfront?”

  “It’s not stock, as I said. Not on a shelf just taking up space, you see? Printing new?” He shook his head. “Well, that’s stores could be used for something else. Have to pay for that.”

  “How much?”

  Fell tapped at his own tablet for a moment. “You’re surely in a heat for such a thing, but it’s fif — sixty pounds,” Fell said, cutting his eyes from his tablet to Dansby. Those eyes narrowed. “I’d need ten up front, no doubt, and the rest would carry on the books. Half your pay and no further credit from me, mind you.” He sighed and shook his head. “Still can’t do it until you’re off arrears — two months.”

  Dansby winced. Fell’s price was nearly five times what the thing should cost. It wasn’t the coin, nor even half his miserly Naval pay in installments that bothered him — he didn’t plan to be aboard Tyche long enough for it to make a difference — but he didn’t have the ten pounds up front Fell wanted, nor did he have the two months the man wanted him to wait. He’d like to throw a wrench of some sort into Tyche’s smuggling, then be off and reunite with Elizabeth within their next stop or two.

  “I can let you have a Europa Six,” Fell said. “Good tablet, let a man watch what entertainments he will, with no stuttering about, even on the gundeck …” The purser gave Dansby a knowing look. “Or in the hold, if privacy’s a concern. Ten pounds even, and a bargain.”

  Dansby had to stop himself from snorting derision. The Europa was what he’d played with as a child and the company had been out of business for nearly half the time since then.

  And overpriced at ten pounds new — to have one now it would have to be a dead man’s.

  He wondered how many times the purser might have sold that particular Europa to some spacer, payments over time, and then taken it back into stock when the ship saw an action that left the fellow dead. Which, in the end, didn’t really matter, since the Europa wouldn’t do the job he needed done.

  Dansby shook his head. “No, that won’t work for me.”

  He thought furiously. He needed that tablet for any sort of plan to work. Yet, without a bit of coin to his name and, so far as Fell could know, only his Naval pay to draw on, cash was not a thing he could offer.

  Information, though, might be a thing. If Fell were in on the smuggling with Beardsley, then he might bite at a contact for some other cargoes, the names of which Dansby had in abundance, thanks to Eades and Her Majesty’s Foreign Office — all the fixers for this whole sector of space, come to that. At least the ones a viper like Eades felt was of more use out and about than locked up.

  The names themselves were all aboard Elizabeth, but Dansby could remember a few.

  He’d only need to feel the purser out a bit and see if he was a part of the ring, open to negotiations.

  He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the counter and looked Fell in the eye. “Surely, Mister Fell, there’s an arrangement could be made?” He smiled, being sure to keep it friendly and charming — the sort he might use in a pub to set the serving girl to seeing his table a bit more than was strictly needful. “I wasn’t always a Navy man, you know? I’ve been out and about in the world — turned my hand to more than one thing to earn my way. I’ve surely learned a thing or two a man like yourself might find of more use than a few coins.” Dansby winked. “What do you say?”

  “But I’m not —”

  “Look,” Heritage, the marine guard, said from outside Dansby’s tiny cell in Tyche’s tiny brig. “I’ll not judge. What a man’s particular preference is —”

  “But I’m —”

  “Is no business of mine,” Heritage went on over Dansby’s protestations. “And how a man chooses to earn his way is no more my business than what else butters his turnips as they say —”

  “That wasn’t what I was suggesting!”

  “And Captain Stansfield’s no Tartar, nor shrieking monk, neither. It’s only discipline aboard ship he’ll be concerned with.”

  “Look,” Dansby said, then paused. Just how was he to convince the guard that his proposition to Fell hadn’t been what Fell assumed it was?

  “It’s only,” Heritage said, “that if what happens the other side of the ship’s hatch is to stay the other side of the ship’s hatch, as they say, that it has to, well, stay the other side of the ship’s hatch, right? Whatever you used to do, and there’s not a thing wrong with that, mind you, can’t have you setting up shop in the hold and a line of fellows up the ladders come each Banyan Day.”

  “I —”

  Bloody hell — if I’m to convince him against what Fell thought, then I’ve to convince him of what I actually was offering, and that’s bloody worse.

  He wasn’t sure what punishment he’d be assessed for Fell’s accusation, but offering the man smuggling contacts would surely garner more.

  “I mean to say,” Heritage said, “I’ve been known to visit a house of that sort — well, my sort, and not your sort, if you take my meaning — a time or two in port, myself.” He stared off into the distance and a soft smile touched his lips. “Thrice in one night that time in Ruthersford.” He sighed. “But I was a younger man then.”

  Dansby made to speak, but Heritage cut him off. “With the ladies, mind you, if I wasn’t clear, so I’ll have no offers from you to get special treatment, understand?”

  Dansby sighed. “I understand.”

  Heritage nodded. “Right, then. Lieutenant Morefield’s on his way down to see to you.”

  “No need to name Dansby, is there?” Prat laughed, setting the last of the three plates he’d brought to the table before Kel.

  The others seemed amused to have Dansby back to his mess by supper, after being seen by Lieutenant Morefield in Tyche’s brig. He’d found that the Navy’s ability to spread a tale far, wide, and nearly instantly was on fine display.

  He’d no sooner stepped onto the gundeck than he’d been met with so much in the way of hoots, hollers, and more than one demand for his price.

  “No need,” Dansby agreed, scowling at his plate.

  A stale heel of bread stared back at him from next to a cup of ship’s water unadulterated by any bit of rum or other spirit that might have cut the flavor of untold times through both recycler and crew.

  Lieutenant Morefield had given him a choice: a summary punishment of the lieutenant’s choice or Captain’s Mast on the charge of “attempted bribery of a ship’s warrant officer in contravention to the good order and proper working of the crew at large” as well as the more serious charge of “commerce of a carnal nature, in detriment to the orderly working of Her Majesty’s Ship”.

  As Captain’s Mast could very well get him flogged, Dansby’d gone with the former — very nearly changing his mind as Morefield launched into a long-winded lecture about the dangers to a ship’s discipline wrought by Dansby’s sort of enterprise and peppered with very nearly as many protestations of Morefield not caring what Dansby might choose to do when eventually — someday, if he were quite lucky and kept his commercial proclivities to himself — he was allowed off Tyche.

  “Now, mind you,” Morefield said, “you’ll not be doing any earnings yourself. The houses in most ports take a dim view of independent operators flitting in off ships, and the Navy itself, nor your shipmates, won’t like it. You’re representing Tyche now, and we’ll not have it said this ship sells her stern to any other crew, you understand?”

  Dansby sighed. He found himself doing that quite a bit of late. “Yes, sir.”

  Morefield nodded. “Good. You take your own ease in port like everyone else aboard. You’re a Navy man now and get the Navy’s pay — and you’ll have not a farthing come from any other way.”

  Sigh. “Aye, sir.”

  “Then it’s bread and water for a fortnight, but you’ll eat with your own mess.”

  Lieutenant Morefield had stared at him for a moment, as though judging whether he should assess more or whether Dansby would take the lesson to heart. Eventually he’d nodded to Heritage and left.

  Now Dansby was left to face a fortnight of stale bread and staler water, while the purser still charged the ship for his portion of beef and spirits to line his own pockets.

  The others at the mess table tucked into their own portions.

  Dansby worked a bite of bread between his jaws. The dry stuff soaked up all the moisture and wanted more, cutting his gums with its gritty bits. Reluctantly he reached for his cup.

  Jordan, their gun captain and ostensible leader of the mess, watched him take a drink, then sighed. He took his own cup of weak beer in one hand and dashed Dansby’s water to the deck with the other, then poured a third of his own into Dansby’s cup.

  “Thank you,” Dansby said. He’d not expected that, even though it was a mercy made possible by Morefield’s order he eat with his own mess. Kept separate, his mates would have been unable to help him, though they weren’t obligated to, and Dansby hadn’t been certain any would.

  Jordan grunted. “Never mind, lad, you’re a good mate.” He paused. “Mind you, I’m not one to —”

  “Look, I don’t —” Dansby tried to say. If there were any hope to stop the whole ship from thinking his buttocks were up for auction, he’d have to start with convincing his own mates.

  “Did you ever work a house?” Prat asked, transferring a bit of his own beef to Dansby’s plate and pouring drink into his cup, though not so much as Jordan had.

  “I’m not —”

  “Were it a mixed house?” Kel asked, adding a bit of his own beef and drink to Dansby’s. “Did you ever work a mixed house?” His eyes stared off into the distance for a moment. “Not that it’d be of benefit to you, but living in a house full of ladies all running about in their all-togethers …”

  “I —”

  Dansby broke off his own protestations to watch the expressions on his mates’ faces change in quite an odd way. They were all staring at him, first with open curiosity, then their brows furrowed, first one, then the others, as though coming to the same question in their own time — then brows raised and lips pursed, as though pondering the implications of that question.

  “Or …” Kel began, raising a hand to point at Dansby. “… were it of benefit, so to speak, in that a man might partake of …” Kel’s hands worked as though he might pluck the words he was searching for from the air. “… certain delights with … less than … typical discernment as to …”

  “Bloody hell, Kel,” Prat said, smacking the other man’s shoulder before leaning toward Dansby. “It don’t matter a whit if the lad’s one to ram a ewe so much as tack to windward. Who bloody cares?”

  Dansby took a deep breath, ready to scream it to the bulkheads if he had to that this was all a sort of misunderstanding and …

  “That’s right, lads,” Jordan said, leaning in as much as Prat was. “It’s what our young Dansby’s learned in those houses that’s important. The girls talk, lads, and they’ll talk to a friendly bugger as well as to one of their own kind. Or —”

  “The secrets of the houses,” Kel whispered, eyes going wide.

  “But —”

  “Do you get a discount?” Kel asked.

  “I —”

  “How do they know you should get the discount?” Prat asked.

  “No, I —”

  “Are there code words?” Jordan demanded. “You’ll share with your mates, aye?”

  “Look —”

  “Is it true they’ll give a man back his coin if he …” The speaker, behind Dansby at the next mess table, cleared his throat. “… performs to a, ah, certain specification?”

  Dansby turned to find that the mess behind him was staring with as much intensity as his own mates — as were those others nearby, and there were whispered words traveling from those to messes farther away, so that even as he watched new faces turned to stare at him.

 

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