The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,84

beating. If I do tell them, though, they tend to try it again to see if I simply guessed correctly once, or twice, or three times. Not a fun game for me.”

“Good news, then,” Gunner said, seeming to have regained his footing. “There’ll be no games.”

“I wasn’t implying—”

“When’d you take that oath?” Gunner asked.

“I said—”

“You shut up! You’re a liar,” Gunner said.

“I never lied to—”

“Not another word!” Gunner said. He thrust out his hand toward one of the sailors. “Linstock!”

“No, wait!” Orholam shouted. “ Please—”

Gunner punched him in the face so fast the older man didn’t even see it coming. His face snapped back so hard Gavin worried his neck was broken, and blood sprayed into the air, and then down his mouth and chin as his broken nose gushed blood.

“Prophets are hard to ken, but Gunner is not,” Gunner said.

That actually was not at all true.

“Interplat me this, prophet,” Gunner said. “What do you think I said when I meant not another word?”

Orholam opened his mouth to speak, then stopped, confused.

The sailors looked the same. One of them held out the linstock with a match cord affixed in it to the captain, but the captain didn’t even seem aware of him now.

“What do you thean I mink!” Gunner bellowed, drawing back his fist again.

Gavin darted between them. “He’s respecting you, Captain. Obeying you. If he answers, he’d be disobeying your order to be silent. See?”

“Ahhh! Stickin’ up for your whoremate. But . . . that’s true, ain’t it?” Gunner said, stepping back. He twisted a bit of his beard and chewed on it. “My order to him did set the sails against the rowers, eh? ’Tain’t fair, that. And I do believe in a fair taint.”

“Then it’s no wonder you enjoyed your time with Pansy’s mother so much, Captain,” Gavin said, deadpan.

Gunner guffawed as the sailors nearby chuckled or laughed aloud, though Pansy did not. Then Gunner stopped abruptly.

“You’re a crafty little cunt, ain’tcha, Guile?”

Gavin said, “Once upon a time, I was actually reckoned a big cunt.”

Gunner was not amused. “Don’t get above your station, wee little man, or we’ll make your lady parts more gapey than you’d wish, like Orh’lam’s are about to be.”

Orholam mumbled a protest but didn’t speak. Gavin gulped. If every attempt at humor was a risk, attempts at humor with a happily homicidal madman were perhaps a risk not wisely taken.

“Gapey Guile, they’ll call ya, eh, eh?” the captain asked.

The sailors chuckled dutifully, and then Gunner dismissed them to their work. They left the forecastle like it was an order. As they went, Gunner waggled his eyebrows at Gavin, grinning, suddenly convivial again.

Aha, Gavin had been speaking out of turn, so Gunner had merely been showing them who was in charge.

Gavin had gotten off lightly for such an offense. He wasn’t even bloody.

My lucky day.

Now Gunner gazed at the horizon. “No one hates the sea like a sailor,” he said.

He patted the big cannon that dominated the forecastle. The damned thing—now with bonus prophet adorning the muzzle—was steel. Steel, not brass. Gavin had never seen such a thing, always heard that steel couldn’t be cast reliably this large. Either the Ilytians were making rapid advances in their metallurgy or every shot with this thing was risking a shrapnel-filled death for everyone on the forecastle.

Gunner hopped up on the cannon, his sentiment passing as quick as a whitecap. “Queer, eh? Boomer this big, out front? Should be too heavy so high up, made o’ steel. Should make the ship squirrely as all hell, foulin’ her center of weight.”

“But it doesn’t?” Gavin guessed. He had no delusions that Gunner had forgotten about Orholam, and whatever it was he had against the old man.

“Lighter than possible,” Gunner said.

Well, obviously not, Gavin thought.

“Shoots true, too,” Gunner said. “Accurate within your arm’s stretch at a thousand paces. Greatest random is near thrice that.”

“You name her?” Gavin asked, trying to anchor himself back on Gunner’s good side.

Gunner had walked down the barrel until he was looming over Orholam. He stood on one foot, and with his opposite big toe lifted Orholam’s chin to look at him. But Gavin’s words distracted him. “Her? Her?! What the—how dumb are ya, Guile? Her! Him. C’mon. Cannons’re always he’s. Even you with your inky fingers gorta know that!” He did hip thrusts out over the empty air. “Boom! Boom!”

“Ah. Of course,” Gavin said.

Gunner held on to nothing. He stared at the sky, he stared at the sea, he stared at his crew. He squatted