The trader quirked his eyebrows and grinned broadly. Finney laughed aloud in delight.

The trader had a knack for tales. To hear him tell it, every piece on the table had a history at once romantic and fascinating. Never before had Brashen seen stolen goods so elaborately displayed. Resolutely alert, the mate drew his attention away from the brightly attired Sincure Faldin to keep an eye on his sons who were still bringing aboard and displaying other wares. The whole family seemed to share the father's flair for showmanship. Each of the three boys was dressed as opulently as his father, in garments fashioned from the same fabrics that one boy was now arranging in a rainbow of swaths unrolled from fat bolts of cloth. An older son had opened the doors of an elaborately carved cabinet he had carried aboard, to display several racks of tiny stoppered bottles. Brashen did not know if they were samples of liquors and wine or oils and perfumes. The third son had spread a white cloth over Captain Finney's bunk and was setting out a hodge-podge of weaponry, table cutlery, books, scrolls and other items. Even this was not done randomly. The knives were arranged in a fan of blades and hilts, the scrolls and books fixed open to illustrations, and every other item displayed in a way calculated to invite the eye and intrigue the buyer.

This third boy was the one Brashen watched most closely. He doubted they were anything other than diligent and enthusiastic merchants, but he had resolved to be more suspicious since the unfortunate incident ten days ago. It had taken the ship's boy the better part of a day to holystone that rogue's bloodstain from the Springeve's deck. Brashen was still unable to decide how he felt about what he had done. The man had forced him to act; he could not have simply stood by and let him rob the ship, could he? Yet, Brashen could not shake the uneasy notion that he should never have taken this berth. If he had not been here, he would not have had to shed blood.

Where would he have been? He had not known where this job was leading. Nominally, he had been hired on simply as the first mate. The Springeve was a lively little ship, shallow draft and skittish in high winds, but wonderful for negotiating the waterways to the lagoon towns and river settlements she frequented. Nominally, the Springeve was a tramp freighter and trader, hauling and bargaining whatever goods came her way.

The reality was grimmer. Brashen was whatever Captain Finney told him he was: mate, bodyguard, translator or longshoreman. As for Finney himself, Brashen still could not fathom the man. He wasn't sure if Finney had decided to trust him, or was testing him. The man's disarming frankness was a guise used to gull the mostly disreputable merchants who traded with him. The stout man could never have survived all his years in this trade if he were actually as trusting and open as he appeared to be. He was a capable man on board his ship, and adept at charming people. However, Brashen suspected that he was capable of near anything for self-survival. At some time, a knife had left a long mark across his belly; the ridged scar was at odds with the man's seemingly affable nature. Ever since Brashen had seen it, he had found himself watching his captain as closely as he did those whom came aboard to trade.

Now he watched Finney lean forward casually to tap, in swift succession, twelve different pieces of jewelry. “These I wish included in our trade. Take the others away. I have no interest in street vendors' wares.” The captain never lost his easy smile, but the swiftly tapping ringer had unerringly chosen what Brashen also considered the better pieces in Faldin's collection. Faldin smiled back at him, but Brashen's eyes caught a flash of unease on the merchant's face. Brashen's face remained neutral. Repeatedly, he had seen Finney do this. The man would be as soft and easy as a fat purring cat, but when it came to the bargaining, this Faldin would be lucky to walk off with the shirt still on his back. Brashen himself did not see the advantage to such a tactic. When he had worked for Ephron Vestrit, his captain had told him, “Always leave enough meat on the bones that the other man is also satisfied. Otherwise, you'll soon have no one willing to trade with you.” Then again, Captain Vestrit had not been trading with pirates and those who disposed of stolen goods for pirates. The rules were bound to be different.

Since they had left Candletown, the Springeve had made a very leisurely trip up the coast of the Cursed Shores. The little craft had nosed up sluggish rivers and tacked into lagoons that were on no charts Brashen had ever seen. The whole section of “coast” known as the Pirate Isles was constantly in flux. Some claimed that the multitude of rivers and streams that dumped into the Inside Passage around the Pirate Isles were actually one great river, eternally shifting in its many-channeled bed. Brashen didn't much care if the steaming waters that emptied out into the channel were from one river or many. The facts were that although the warm water mellowed the climate of the Pirate Isles, it also stank, fouled boat bottoms at a prodigious rate, weakened ropes and lines and created billowing fogs in every season of the year.