“Sure you are,” said Father Ubb.
“I certainly hope there shall be no bickering after sunset,” Cloth-of-Gold declared. “I sleep lightly, and I didn’t pay good coin for my repose to be disrupted by quibblers in the night. Well, I don’t need to tell you all—I can only imagine what a hardship it was to afford this cruise for anyone not possessed of my wealth.” He brushed back a lock of hair that gleamed red in the sunset.
“Lords Above and Below!” boomed Father Ubb. “Your rings!”
Cloth-of-Gold startled, then stuck out his hands with fingers spread and considered the rings glittering there. There were seven of them, one in each color of the rainbow, fitting three fingers on each hand and the thumb of his left. “These old things? A family heirloom, nothing more. My grandmother came by them by disreputable means, I am told, but that’s no sin of mine.”
“A family heirloom?” said Ubb. His face was the color of brick. “Those, my man, are the Seven Eyes of the Sea King! My church has sought them for five—six—centuries! To see them treated as common trinkets—stuck upon your fingers when they should be blazing in the golden face of Pantelever himself! I demand you surrender them this instant.”
“Ye Lords, the volume of you,” grumbled Bishop Draskis. He opened a leather pouch on his belt and stuffed his ear trumpet inside, looking relieved to be silencing Ubb.
“The Sea King?” said Chiss with a cough of laughter. “I don’t believe in him. A fairy tale dreamed up to frighten sailors’ sons, nothing more.” She glanced at Father Ubb. “I don’t mean to offend you, of course.”
Ubb pulled himself up to his full, and considerable, height. “Your bluntness mars a lovely sunset, lass. I regret to inform the rest of you—not you, Draskis—nor you, Cloth-of-Gold—I regret to inform you two young ladies that I shall dine alone in my cabin. Good night.”
As Father Ubb stormed away, Captain Axe approached the group anxiously. “No trouble, I hope?” he grunted. “Good, good. Well, hope you liked the sunset. Supper’s on.”
Supper was a good one, much better than the usual fare Alix associated with sea travel. Having split a plateful of grouse and more than one bottle of wine, Alix and Gally staggered the few yards from the master’s cabin to their own. It was, mercifully, filled by a large bed that swung gently to the motion of the ship on ropes as thick as Gally’s arm. Alix flopped in gratefully without bothering to undress. Her eyes fluttered shut. The slosh of waves against the hull commingled with the pattering of sailors’ feet on the quarterdeck above their heads and a soft call of “Five bells! Five bells in the first watch!” The soothing blur of noise soon had her deep asleep.
She woke suddenly to shouting, sat up in alarm, and clocked her head on a beam so badly she saw stars.
“Something is happening,” said Gally. She was already out of bed and half into her usual cable-knit sweater and denim trousers.
“I think my skull’s caved in,” Alix said, rubbing her forehead.
“That’s just the wine, cavalier. Come on!”
Alix would rather have forfeited consciousness, but being called cavalier—an old word Gally said meant a swashbuckling knight—always woke her willing spirit. She slipped from the bed, laced up her breeches, and was trying to decide whether to change into the blue blouse with the ruffles when Gally opened the cabin door and slipped through. Alix shrugged and followed, tugging her current white shirt into place as she went. Only Gally could override a debate so crucial as what to wear.
In the narrow hall beneath the quarterdeck, the other passengers had clustered by the door of Cloth-of-Gold’s cabin, which was closest to Captain Axe’s at the stern of the brig. The elf, draped in a nightgown of luxurious purple silk, had Father Ubb by the collar of his robe and was shaking him agitatedly.
“Where are my rings, you lout? Hand them over or I’ll see you pitched into the ocean you love so much!”
Father Ubb’s face, far from its usual red, had gone a sort of green-white under its expression of alarm. “I told you, I don’t have them! Unhand me!”
“Shake him harder,” said Bishop Draskis, who stood barefoot in a single-breasted gown of sand-colored silk that barely reached his knees. He shook his ear trumpet at Ubb. “The stolen jewels might fall out.”
Chiss, leaning against the bulkhead in the same roguish black leathers as the night before, yawned. “You won’t find them on his person. They’ll be stashed somewhere about the ship.”
“Is that so?” asked Cloth-of-Gold. “Where did you hide them, sea-priest? There’s no use prevaricating. You were in my room just now, you can’t deny that, and my rings are missing.”
“How dare you accuse me of theft!” Father Ubb pushed the elf away with a meaty hand, finally breaking the grip on his collar. “It was attempted theft. I’ll admit it: I snuck into your cabin this morning to take back what belongs to my god. But you woke up the moment I set foot over the threshold, you sharp-eared nuisance. If the Sea King’s Seven Eyes are missing, someone beat me to them.”
“That’s the sorriest excuse I’ve ever heard,” said Chiss. “He’s stowed them somewhere, mark my words. Why’d you do it, Father? The Wet Faith not pay as well as it used to?”
“Accusing me of avarice, eh?” Father Ubb turned on her. Now his face was reddening. “Nothing so base drives me. In fact, I was attempting to save the lives of everyone aboard this ship!”
“Mariamber ain’t a ship,” said Alix, but was ignored by everyone save Gally, who squeezed her hand.
“What in the names of all the Lords Below is going on here?” roared Captain Axe from the deck end of the passageway. He was tidily dressed in his blue-and-white uniform and looked surprisingly put together, except only the left half of his beard was braided.
“Cloth-of-Gold has accused Father Ubb of theft,” said Gally, her eyes glittering with an energy that made Alix’s heart leap. “He woke up to find Ubb in his cabin and his jeweled rings missing, but Ubb claims he was only planning to steal them, and someone else got there first.”
“You were planning to steal ’em?” Captain Axe fixed Ubb with a squint-eyed seaman’s glare.
“Yes,” said Father Ubb tightly. “Will you all stop squawking and allow me to explain why?”
Gally pushed her spectacles up her nose, looking for all the world like she was running the circus. “Certainly.”
“When the Seven Eyes of the Sea King were taken,” Ubb said in pious tones, “Pantelever was furious. The Ruby Sea stormed ceaselessly until seven ships had sunk, one for each stolen jewel. The sailors who survived told terrible stories of great tentacles like the arms of a kraken, seen only in lightning-flashes—the Sea King’s fingers, reaching up from the deep to pull them below.”
“I told you!” cried Bishop Draskis. He had been listening keenly through his ear trumpet. “Your Pantelever’s no Lord Above, he’s a demon from Below and nothing more.”
“He’s not real,” said Chiss in a tone of boredom.
“It doesn’t matter!” said Captain Axe. “Where’s the jewels, Father?”
“It matters a great deal,” Ubb said. “For even if I had stolen the Seven Eyes, they wouldn’t be upon my person. My plan was to return them to the Sea King.”
“You intended to throw them in the ocean?” asked Gally.
“Yes. Otherwise this ship is in grave danger. If his jewels are not returned, the Sea King will rise up and take them.”
“Meaning he’ll give us the tentacles like you said?” asked Alix, who was beginning to think there might be something interesting about religion after all.
“Pantelever would break this ship in half if it got him his eyes back.” Ubb sniffed. “I merely planned to make the process easier on all of us.”
