The Yellow Silk - Don Bassingthwaite [90]
"I fear nothing. Death has already touched me." Staso's scar-stretched lips curled back even further. He held up his chin and turned his head to display his scarred cheeks. "Yu Mao did this." Li's jaw clenched. Tycho caught his eye and gestured, miming a spell. Behind them both, Staso's young woman gasped and called a warning. Staso just laughed, a horrid gobbling sound. He babbled something. The young woman didn't translate it.
Li twisted around and glared at her as Staso repeated his babbling. "What's he saying?"
She swallowed and said, "You don't need magic. I'll tell you what you want to know." Staso smiled. "But if you love your brother, you won't like it."
"I don't like you, Staso" Li spat. He settled into a crouch on the carpeted floor. The sword didn't waver. "Try to surprise me. I know that Yu Mao betrayed his ship to the Sow and murdered the Shou with him. I know that he was your sorceress-captain's lover. Tell me more."
The scarred man's eyes hardened. "How about that he was a merciless savage?" He watched Li intently as if looking for a reaction. Li didn't give him one. After a moment, Staso continued. "Yu Mao was a vicious man, more cruel than any of us-except possibly Brin. The two of them got along well, but the rest of the crew came to fear Yu Mao. He was as likely to put steel into one of Sow's crew as into any enemy we fought. We went to the captain with our concerns, but she was too lust-sotted with her exotic Shou man to listen. That was her error. Yu Mao tired of her before she tired of him. He'd been with us barely a year before he and Brin hatched a plan for mutiny."
"On the eve of Highharvestide in the Year of the Unstrung Harp, after one of the best seasons of plunder we'd ever seen, Yu Mao woke the captain with one of his great chopping swords to her neck in the bed that they shared. He and Brin hauled her out and tied her to the mainmast. Then they called all of the crew out on deck. They had the support of some mutineers already, but not enough. So they offered us a choice: join them or leave Sow, alive but surrendering their share of the booty we'd gathered. Anybody who wanted to fight was welcome to try that, too, but they'd be in for a world of hurt." Staso drew a deep breath. "And to show how serious they were, Yu Mao took the captain's arms, stretched them out above her head, and drove a spike through her hands and into the mast!"
His broken voice dropped low and his interpreter's with it. "There're some in every crew that put themselves and their gold first above all else, and they had an easy choice. But some of us know a good captain is worth more than gold and we knew then that if we left Sow, our captain was going to die a mean death. As soon as we saw the captain stretched out along the mast like a fish for the gutting, the moon rising full behind her, something in us broke." Staso's eyes were bright and wild, and as he spoke his voice rose with fiery passion. "Lord of All Thieves, we put up a fight! There wasn't a man or woman among the mutineers who didn't cross steel or knock heads with us. It was all for naught, though-there were twice as many as cared for gold and blood as cared for shipmates' loyalty, and numbers held the deck. I got closer than anyone to the captain, so close I could see her eyes rolled back and her mouth moving in pain as the blood ran from her hands down her arms. I couldn't get close enough, though. Yu Mao himself stopped my charge."
Staso sneered at Li. "You aren't half the swordsman he was. He fought me all the way back to the ship's rail, knocked my sword from my hand, and would have done me in right then if the captain hadn't opened her eyes and screamed out." He leaned forward, almost spitting himself on Li's blade. "All that muttering and mouthing wasn't pain-madness, it was magic-the last of the captain's magic, all poured out at once."
"Her voice swept down the deck like a cold wind in the moonlight as she turned her soul to working a curse. Everyone stopped and listened-everyone except those of