Free Corsair by Richard Baker Page B

thought it might be best to let them oversee themselves for an hour or two.”
    “So you decided to trouble me instead?” Mirya snorted. “Well, you’ll be glad to hear that I’ve almost all of your ship’s goods laid aside in the storehouse. Provisions, canvas, plenty of line, bedding, lumber, casks of ale, spars, hand tools, oakum, pitch—here, come around the counter, and I’ll show you.”
    Geran and Hamil stepped around the long counter and followed Mirya into the storehouse that adjoined her shop. Large doors stood open to the street outside, allowing the afternoon light to stream in. Barrels and wooden crates lay stacked up in orderly rows on the dusty old floorboards. “I fear the harmach’s to pay dearly for all of this,” Mirya said. “To fill Seadrake’s hold in the time you gave me I had to pay half again what I should have. It was no help that all of Hulburg knew that I had to have your provisions as soon as they could be found.”
    “My uncle knows you wouldn’t cheat him,” Geran said. He paced down one of the aisles, glancing over the assembled material. It filled a substantial part of the Erstenwold storehouse, and Mirya’s clerks were wheeling in more tubs and barrels as he watched. It seemed hard to believe that it would all fit below the decks of the ship down by the old Veruna docks, but he knew from experience that ships could carry a lot more than one might expect. “I’m amazed you found this much in Hulburg in just the last two days. Is there anything important you couldn’t find?”
    “I’ve only half the canvas here that you should carry,” Mirya said. “I’ve sent word to provisioners in Thentia and Mulmaster—quietly, of course— to see if I can get my hands on more, but I doubt I’ll have it before you mean to set out. You’ll want to be careful of your sails.”
    “I hope your new sailing master knows his business,” Hamil said.
    Geran nodded. “The winter storms are still two months off. With good fortune, we won’t see any bad gales until after we’ve had a chance to fill the sail locker.” He looked over to Mirya. “I’ll have my crew send up a working party first thing in the morning. We’ll have most of this cleared out of your storehouse by suppertime tomorrow.”
    “We’ll be ready.” Mirya looked over the provisions and shook her head a little. “Strange to do business with you, Geran. All the years I’ve known you, and I have never thought of you as the sort of man who’d take an interest in it. You always seemed to be cut from a different sort of cloth.”
    “The indolent nobility? The brooding romantic?” Hamil asked. “I certainly don’t trust him with anything important for the Red Sails.”
    Geran laughed. It was true enough. “My thanks, Hamil.”
    “I didn’t mean I thought him too lazy for it,” Mirya said. “Too impatient, perhaps. Too anxious to be off to the next thing, whatever that happened to be. He used to be a hard one to keep anchored for long.”
    “Four years in Myth Drannor taught me a few things,” Geran said. He glanced down at the rose-shaped pommel and mithral wire of the sword hilt at his belt. He’d won it in the service of the coronal. Somehow he doubted that many of Ilsevele Miritar’s armathors had spent much time in storehouses such as Erstenwold’s. “I suppose I’m not the man I used to be.”
    “No, you’re not. You’re a better man.” Mirya gave him a lopsided smile. “Selsha and I mean to see you off when you set sail. Take care of yourself while you’re chasing after pirates, Geran Hulmaster. I’m becoming used to having you around again.”
    “I will,” he promised her.

FIVE
    19 Eleint, The Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR)
    Seadrake sailed on the morning tide three days after Geran’s visit to the Erstenwold storehouse. As promised, Mirya and her daughter, Selsha, came down to the wharves to see them off, along with a couple hundred prominent Hulburgans and curious onlookers,