“Aye, and gotten full measure for it.”
“Oh, not quite yet—for there’s more than one reason I brought you out of bondage, and we’ve yet t’negotiate those terms. Now tell me: Can you raise storms?”
Parry sighed, turning over, and studied the cabin’s roof-beams awhile before answering. “Apparently yes,” he replied, at last, “since that’s what the finders charged me with, after those Navy sheep branded me a Jonah. It’s instinct—easy enough, even without ritual.”
“Hmm. And a ship—could you raise such as that?”
“One wrecked already, you mean? Perhaps, if you gave me her name, or something from a survivor—I haven’t tried, certainly. But—” He pondered, seemingly glad to have something to consider besides the ways in which he’d just been so thoroughly outraged. “—it seems likely, with preparation enough.”
“A man from the dead, then. Could ye raise him?”
“Not for long, for none can; never permanently, if that’s your aim. Death is the great leveller, the one boundary all magicals fear to cross.”
“Then I know aught you don’t, for I’ve seen whole factories full of men brought back upright and set t’work, mouths sewn shut lest they taste salt, and wake.”
“Yes, well: Those men aren’t actually dead to begin with, in the main . . . ”
Rusk gave a wolf’s smile. “What a treasure y’are,” he said, “well worth the finding, and cheap at twice the price.”
Some more sport ensued, to which Parry—perhaps not seeing the point, given how intent Rusk was on ignoring his protests—raised little immediate objection. After, however, he demanded fresh raiment, then complained (once supplied with the only clothes available, scaled for Rusk’s own long body) that they didn’t fit.
But: “We’re aboard-ship,” Rusk pointed out, blithely, “and even I cannot conjure things entire from the air whilst in transit—not like some.”
It was enough. The next time he saw him, Parry was making ginger little steps ‘cross-deck, arrayed head-to-toe in the neat, well-tailored black he’d once aspired to wear for slightly less nefarious purposes. The breeze lifted his brown hair, untied and disordered; his eyes, narrowed against the horizon, cast back its light like a cat’s. Rusk all but wanted to take him again there and then, right on the fo’c’sle, in full view of any who might aspire to liberate him from their current arrangement.
Yet when he hove in for only the briefest embrace, Parry showed himself unamused.
“No.”
“Come, don’t be foolish; you liked it well enough last night, same as I.”
“Convinced yourself, have you? And still I say no, nevertheless: you’ve had all you will from me, in that respect—consider my price of passage paid. So I’ll keep my own place from now on, if you’ll be so good as to allow me the privilege.”
“Ship-mates only, eh? And that’ll last, ye reckon? Very well, then, Jerusha, don’t take on so. I’ll require no more . . . liberties, not without invitation.”
“Which you will not gain, sir, know that now.”
“Ah, brave words. For all things change at sea, Master Parry, as She herself be wont to; the sea is deep, after all, and little-known. You’ll learn.”
***
Bitch of Hell put in at Porte Macoute, to re-stock and recreate. Parry would have refused to go ashore entirely, but that Rusk promised to introduce him to a practicing sorceress of his acquaintance. This was his “cousin,” Tante Ankolee, who’d helped her maman nurse Rusk up along with his elder siblings, before eventually buying her way free of the whole familial mess; she and Parry sat and talked, quietly, Parry minding his manners far more with her than he’d ever bothered to with Rusk, regardless of the bone through her blue-lined lower lip and the bells in her stiff-locked hair.
When they were done, she sent Parry off with a serving wench to pick and choose amongst her wide collection of fetish-objects for seeds to grow his own personal hex-bag from, then poured Rusk a shot of rum, lit it, and watched him sip it down, tenting her clawed fingers. “What-all you know of that man in there, Solomon Rusk, save for he make your trousers tight? That’s some trouble you done brung on, little half-me-blood; may have saved him the rope, sure, but I bet he ain’t thank you for it.”
Rusk shrugged. “There you’d be wrong, big sis—for ‘tis my experience thus far Jerusalem Parry always recalls his courtesies, whether he means ‘em or no.”
“Oh, eh? Well, he a pure devil in the makin’, set t’grow up tree-high once he come into his full power, no mistake—but better yet, he hate you bad, now an’ forever. You show him what him nah want t’know, an’ he don’t find you charmin’ for it.”
“Ah, he’ll forgive me soon enough, once he finds there’s no other way; poor creature was raised Christian, after all.”
“You think?”
“‘Tis a certainty.”
“Nah, I don’t believe ‘tis. ‘Cause that a man of pride you got yourself there, chuck—the sort holds grudges and plots on ‘em too, remorseless, no matter what the way him feel in your bed make you want t’believe.”
“Let him plot! ‘Tis my ship we sail on, no way ‘round that.”