“The younger one . . . was she Alyssum, or Lily?” Sorcor asked cautiously.

“Don't worry about it,” Kennit suggested callously. “I am sure that if you don't fancy her name, Faldin will allow you to change it. Here.” He handed Sorcor the tally sticks they had negotiated so easily. “I'll trust these to you. Don't let them deliver less coin than was promised before you allow him to unload. You'll take the ship's watch tonight?”

“Of course,” the burly pirate replied distractedly.

Kennit did not know whether to frown or smile. So easily could the man be bought with the offer of unsullied flesh. Kennit scratched his chin. He watched Sorcor turn towards the docks and swagger off into the gathering autumn twilight. He gave his head a minute shake. “Whores,” he congratulated himself quietly. “Whores make it all so much simpler.” A wind had come up. Winter was no farther away than a new moon, or a few day's sail to the north. “I've never cared for the cold,” he said softly to himself.

“No one does,” a small voice commiserated. “Not even whores.”

Slowly, as if the token were an insect that might take flight if startled, Kennit raised his wrist. He glanced about the street, then feigned refastening a cuff-link. “And why do you speak to me this time?” he demanded softly.

“Your pardon.” The tiny smile was mocking as his own. “I thought you had spoken to me first. I was just agreeing.”

“There is no strange weight, then, to be put on your words?”

The tiny wizardwood charm pursed its lips as if considering. “No more than I might put to yours,” the face suggested. He gave his master a pitying look. “I know no more than you know, sirrah. The only difference between us is that I admit more easily what I know. Try it yourself. Say this aloud: But in the long run, a whore can cost one more than the most wastrel wife.”

“What?”

“Eh?” An old man passing in the street turned back to him. “You spoke to me?”

“No. Nothing.”

The old man peered at him closer. “You're Captain Kennit, h'ain't you? From the Marietta} Goes around freeing slaves and telling them to be pirates?” His coat was fraying at the cuffs, and one boot was split along the seam. But he carried himself as if he were a man of consequence.

Kennit had nodded twice. To the last he replied, “Well, so some say of me.”

The old man coughed wheezily, and then spat to one side. “Well, some also say they don't like the idea. They say you're getting too full of yourself. Too many pirates means the pickings get slimmer. And too many pirates preying on slaveships can irritate the Satrap to where he sends his galleys up our way. Knocking off fat merchant ships, well, that's one thing, laddie. But the Satrap gets a cut of those slave sales. We don't want to be digging in the pockets of the man what funds the warships, if you get my drift.”

“I do,” Kennit said stiffly. He considered killing the old man.

The geezer wheezed and then spat again. “But what I say,” he continued in a creakier voice. “Is more power to you. You put it to him, laddie, and give him a couple thrusts for me as well. Time someone showed him that blue ink on a man's face don't mean he's not a man any more. Not that I'd say that to just anyone around here. There's some as would think I needed shutting up, if they heard me speak so. But, seeing as how it was you, I thought I'd tell you this: not everyone that keeps silent is against you. That's all. That's all.” He went off into his wheezing cough again. It sounded painful.

Kennit was amused to find himself rummaging in his pocket. He came up with a silver coin and passed it to the man. “Try a bit of brandy for that cough, sir. And good evening to you.”

The old man looked at the coin in amazement. Then he held it up and shook it after Kennit as he strode away. “I'll drink your health, sir, that I will!”

“To my health,” Kennit muttered to himself. Having begun talking to himself, it now seemed he could not stop. Perhaps it was a side effect of random philanthropy. Did not most madnesses occur in pairs? He pushed the thought aside. Too much thinking only led to bleakness and despair. Better not to think, better to be a man like Sorcor, who was probably even now imagining a blushing virgin in his bed. He'd be better off simply buying a woman who could blush and squeak convincingly, if that was what appealed to him.

He was still distracted when he strode up to Bettel's bagnio. For such a chill evening, there were more idlers outside her door than he would have expected. Two of them were her regular toughs, cocky and grinning as usual. Someday, he promised himself, he'd do something permanent to their smirks. “Evening, Captain Kennit,” one dared to address him lazily.