Sorcor had been dumbfounded when he had first entered. Kennit had always had a taste for quality, but in the past he had restrained it save for pragmatic areas. He had far rather wear small earrings of gold with flawless gemstones than ornate brass gauded with glass. The quality had been in the cut and fabric of his clothing, rather than in a vast amount of ostentatious garments. Not so now. The simplicity of his cabin had given way to glitter and splendor as he had spent every last coin of his last trip's share in Divvytown. Some of the items were not of the very finest quality, but they were the best Divvytown had to offer. And they had had the desired effect upon Sorcor. Beneath the awe in the mate's eyes were the beginnings of a gleam of avarice. Sorcor needed but to be shown to desire.

“To better things,” Sorcor echoed him in his bass voice, and they drank together.

“And soon. Very soon,” Kennit added as he leaned back against the cushions of his austerely carved oak chair.

Sorcor set down his glass and regarded his captain attentively. “You have something specific in mind,” he guessed.

“Only the ends. The means are still to be considered. That's why I invited you to dine with me. That we might consider our next voyage, and what we desire from it.”

Sorcor pursed his lips and sucked his teeth speculatively. “I desire what I've always desired from a voyage. Rich booty, and plenty of it. What else is there for a man to want?”

“A lot, dear Sorcor. A very great deal. There is power, and fame. Security in one's riches. Comfort. Homes and families safe from the slaver's whip.” The last item had no place at all in Kennit's personal list of desires, but well he knew it was the fantasy of many a sailor. A fantasy he suspected they would find stifling were it ever granted to them. It didn't matter. What he was offering the man was what Sorcor thought he wanted. Kennit would have offered him sugared lice if he had believed they'd be a better bait.

Sorcor affected a clumsy nonchalance. “A man can want such things, of course. But he's only going to have them if he's born to them. A noble or lord or some such. It's never going to be for me, nor even for you, begging your pardon for saying so.”

“Ah, but it will be. It will be if we have the spine to reach out and take those things for ourselves. Lords and nobles, you say, and a man has to be born to it, you say. But somewhere, there had to be the first lord. Somewhere back there, there had to be some common man who reached out and took what he wanted, and kept it, too.”

Sorcor took another drink of his wine, slugging it down like beer. “I suppose,” he conceded. “I suppose those things all had to get started somehow.” He set his wine back down on the table and considered his captain. “How?” he finally asked, as if fearing he wouldn't like the answer.

Kennit rolled his shoulders, in a movement gentler than a shrug. “As I have told you. We reach out and take it.”

“How?” Sorcor repeated stubbornly.

“How did we get this ship, and this crew? How did I get the ring on my finger, or you the earrings you wear? What we'll be doing is no different than anything we've done before. Except in scale. We'll be setting our goals a bit higher.”

Sorcor shifted nervously. When he spoke, his deep voice had gone almost dangerously soft. “What do you have in mind?”

Kennit smiled at him. “It's very simple. All we must do is dare to do something no one has dared do before.”

Sorcor frowned. Kennit suspected the wine was reaching his wits. “This is that ‘king’ stuff you were talking before, isn't it?” Before Kennit could answer, the mate shook his heavy head slowly. “It won't work, Cap'n. Pirates don't want a king.”

Kennit forced his smile to remain. He shook his own head in response to his mate's charge. As he did so, he felt the blistered flesh under the linen bandage break anew. The nape of his neck grew wet with fluid. Fitting. Fitting. “No. My dear Sorcor, you took my earlier words much too literally. What do you suppose, that I see myself sitting on a throne, wearing a gold crown covered with jewels while the pirates of Divvytown bend a knee to me? Folly! Sheerest folly! No man could look at Divvytown and imagine such a thing. No. What I see is what I have told you. A man living like a lord, with a fine house and fine things, and knowing he will keep his fine house and fine things, yes and knowing his wife may sleep safely at his side, and his kiddies in their beds as well.” He took a measured sip of his wine and replaced the glass on the table. “That is kingdom enough for you and me, eh, Sorcor?”

“Me? Me, too?”

There. It was reaching him at last. Kennit was proposing that Sorcor himself could have these things, not just Kennit. Kennit's smile broadened. “Of course. Of course you, why not you?” He permitted himself a deprecating laugh. “Sorcor, do you think I'd ask you to throw in with me as we have done before, would I ask you to risk everything alongside me, if all I had in mind were improving my own fortunes? Of course not! You're not such a fool. No. What I have in mind is that together we shall reach for this fortune. And not just for ourselves, no. When we are done, all our crew will have benefitted. And if Divvytown and the other pirate isles choose to follow us, they will benefit as well. But no man will be forced to throw in his hand with ours. No. It will be a free alliance of free men. So.” He leaned forward across the table to his mate. “What say you?”

Sorcor blinked his eyes and looked aside from his captain's gaze. But when he did so, he must look about the finely appointed room, on the carefully arrayed wealth Kennit had set out just for that reason. There was no spot in the room where the man's eyes could rest without avarice awaking in his heart.

But in the depths of his soul, Sorcor was a more cautious sort than Kennit had given him credit. His dark eyes came back to lock gazes with Kennit's pale ones. “You speak well. And I cannot think of a reason not to say yes. But I know that does not mean there isn't a reason.” He put his elbows on the table and leaned on his arms heavily. “Speak plainly. What must we do to bring these things about?”

“Dare,” said Kennit briefly. The licking flame of triumph he felt would not let him sit still. He had the man, even if Sorcor himself did not know it yet. He rose to pace the small cabin, wine glass in his hand. “First, we capture their imaginations and their admiration by what we dare to do. We amass wealth, yes, but we do it as no one has before. Look you, Sorcor. I need not show you a chart. All trade that comes from Jamaillia and the Southlands must pass us before it can reach Bingtown, or Chalced and the lands beyond. This is so?”

“Of course.” The mate's brow furrowed in his effort to see where this obvious fact might lead. “A ship can't get from Jamaillia to Bingtown, save that they pass the pirate isles. Unless they're fool enough to go Outside and dare the Wild Sea.”

Kennit nodded agreement. “So ships and captains have but two choices. They can take the Outside Passage, where storms off the Wild Sea are fiercest and serpents thickest and the way is longest. Or they can risk the Inside Passage, with the tricky channels and currents and us pirates. Correct?”

“Serpents, too,” Sorcor insisted on pointing out. “Almost as many serpents haunt the Inside Passage as the Outside now.”

“True. That's true. Serpents, too,” Kennit acceded easily. “Now. Imagine yourself a merchant skipper facing that choice. And a man comes to you and says, ‘Sir, for a fee, I can see you safely through the Inside Passage. I've a pilot who knows the channels and the currents like the back of his hand, and not a pirate will molest you on your way.’ What would you say?”

“What about the serpents?” Sorcor demanded.

“ ‘And the serpents are no worse within the sheltered water of the passage than without, and a ship stands a better chance within them than if she's on the Outside, battling both serpents and storms at once. And perhaps we'll even have an escort ship for you, one full of skilled archers and laden with Baley's Fire, and if serpents attack you, the escort will take them on while you escape.’ What would you say, merchant skipper?”