In Which the Tables are Turned Rather Neatly

From the diary of Dulcie, Crown Princess of Bentlefay:

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Lynde and I had both frozen at the same time and now turned slowly around in mechanical unison. The ship’s complement was assembled in a travesty of its earlier military order. The crew stood in rows with their hands bound before them and gags in their mouths, overseen by a complement of large blank-faced men with fair hair and northern features.

The four men of our bodyguard had evidently been plucked silently and hit on the head one by one as they reached the top of the ladder, and now lay in a limp pile – breathing, I was relieved to see, but unmistakably unconscious.

The captain had been bound and gagged similarly to his men, but had been honored with a guard of his own: a strapping young godling, his chest almost as broad across as Long Bob’s, and with the beauty of one born at the morning of the world. He held a wicked long dagger to the captain’s throat, and the cockiness of his grin was in direct proportion to the outrage that bubbled up through the captain’s gag.

All this was assessable at a glance, and then a short, slight figure of a man stumped forward followed by a cloak that was slightly too long for it. His shoulders were narrow, his middle swelled out in a modest paunch, and he had knock knees, but as much as I wanted to find him ridiculous, his very frailties made the scene seem more grotesque. The slight flickering lamplight turned his knobby features and greasy scant hair into a mask, from the midst of which his eyes glittered with the madness of hate and triumph.

I had never seen him before, but I knew who he was before he said his name.

“Mortimer Bleake, your majesty.” He sketched an ironic bow. “I would add that I am at your service, but as you can see, you are rather unmistakably at mine.”

He glanced at Lynde. “Mistress Falconer, I presume. I would congratulate you on foiling my plans for the Marshweather annexation, but the credit is all Hugo’s, I’m sorry to say – now, now, gently, all of you.”

Lynde had made a sudden movement but found herself checked by a couple of burly Norhammers who had materialized at her elbows.

“You disappoint me, Mistress Falconer – surely you didn’t expect me to be taken by surprise again.”

My lips were dry and my heart pounding, but something in me stuck at showing Bleake any emotion.

“I believe I would wait the extra couple of days next time, and take the trouble to get a cloak specially made for you,” I said meditatively. “Looking as though you borrowed your older brother’s rather spoils the effect.”

Bleake did not respond directly to this dig, but his momentary immobility showed me the shot had hit home.

“Very amusing, your majesty – yes, very good,” he said smoothly. “But I would treat the situation with a bit more seriousness if I were you. You see,” he gestured around him, “your protectors are helpless; your conveyance is entirely in my control; and I am now in a position to bargain with Bentlefay for whatever I wish to ask of it…”

He flicked his eyes down to my feet and allowed them to travel slowly back up to my face again.

“…in exchange for your person.”

I could not repress a grue, but managed to turn it into a shrug, which I hoped looked nonchalant. “Surely you are forgetting something, Master Bleake,” I said, thinking of the cannon. “You ought know to your cost that the Porteous is not so ill defended as you seem to think.”

But he only chuckled. “Oh, you mean your relations? They are very well prepared, certainly. I intended to sacrifice the Soenhast, but I grant you that it happened much more quickly than I expected. However, if you look behind you, you will see that now your audience has concluded, they are already on their way.”

I whirled around to see the Blood Wind disappearing into the night, the Gull moving ponderously in the same direction, and the Sad Sarah’s sails flapping into place in preparation for doing the same.

“I should warn you, by the way,” Bleake went on pleasantly, “that if you do anything to attract their attention, your captain will die in a pool of his own blood a moment later.”

“Noted,” I replied through dry lips, and did not trust myself to say any more.

“Now.” Bleake turned to lead the way towards the captain’s cabin, with a slight delay occasioned by his cloak. “I am sure you would like to get some rest after your long ordeal, and to contemplate your position in decent privacy. You will be locked in, of course, but will remain otherwise unmolested. At least until tomorrow morning,” he amended. “Then I will see you again, and we can have a conversation.

“No, no,” he warned as Lynde began to follow me and was caught back again by her two guardians. “I would be fool indeed to allow the two of you an uninterrupted night of planning, and I am sure you will admit that whatever I am, I am no fool. No, Mistress Falconer will come with me. Sleep well, your majesty. We will meet again tomorrow.”

The door closed behind them all and a moment later I heard the clank of a chain and padlock.

I used to think that there was nothing I liked better than being alone, but I see now that such a feeling is completely dependent upon circumstances. Without Lynde in calling distance, without Mother and Father down the hall and a barracks full of guardsmen between me and a stout stone wall, I feel dreadfully, wrenchingly alone.

Well, loath as I am to take any suggestion Bleake might make, it is true that this situation is the occasion for some hard thinking. I dragged a chair and a chamber pot in front of the door to provide me warning if anyone should attempt entrance, and got into bed with my diary. What on earth is going to happen now, I can’t for the life of me imagine.

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