The Confusion

“That is good, because it was an absurd request. And if you did not have the wit to recognize it as such, it would mean you had turned into some sort of addle-pated Oriental despot.”

“Enoch. Do you, or do you not, have certain large metal items for me?”

“The items you refer to are not free for the taking. One does not acquire such goods without accepting certain obligations.”

“You’re saying you’ve found us an investor? That is acceptable. What are his terms?”

“You should rather say, her terms.”

Jack levitated. Enoch clapped a hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eye. Enoch was facing toward the fire and the light glinted weirdly in the dilated pupils of his eyes: a pair of red moons in the night. “Jack, it is not her. She has done well for herself, it’s true-but not so well that she can dispatch an arsenal halfway around the world, simply because a Vagabond writes her a letter.”

“What woman can?”

“A woman you saw once, from a steeple in Hanover.”

“Stab me!”

“And now you appreciate, I trust, how deep the matter is.”

“But I should not have addressed the letter to Enoch Root, if I did not want it to become deep. What are her terms?”

The red moons were eclipsed for a little while. Enoch sighed. His breath on Jack’s face was hot and warm like a Malabar breeze, and laced-or so Jack imagined-with queer mineral fragrances.

“Investors who dictate terms are common as the air, Jack,” Enoch said. “This is a different matter altogether. You are not borrowing capital from an investor in exchange for specific terms. You are entering into a relationship with a woman. Certain things will simply be expected of you. I cannot even begin to guess what. If you and your partners fail to act as gentlemen should, you will incur the lady’s displeasure. Is that specific enough? Is it clear?”

“It is neither.”

“Good! Then this has been a successful conversation,” Enoch said. “Now I must convey the same maddening ambiguity to your partners. That being accomplished, I must show due diligence, and-”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Certain items are conspicuously absent-such as masts and sails. Cordage. A crew. I cannot release the weapons until I have seen these. Also, her position on the beach is vulnerable.”

“We will float her soon, and complete her on the water-as is traditional. If she had a few cannons on board she would be a difficult prize to take from land.”

“Agreed. Have you made plans for her maiden voyage?”

“We were thinking perhaps of running saltpeter to Batavia, and then bringing spices back to one of the Great Mogul’s ports-for Hindoostan consumes more spices than all Europe combined, and they have no lack of silver with which to pay for it.”

“It is not a bad plan. But you may have a different plan tomorrow, Jack.”

THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON FOUND THEM in dangerous territory south of the Black Vale of Vhanatiya. The Carnaya miner had given Enoch deliberately misleading directions that would have led him directly into a Maratha trap. But Enoch had anticipated this, and tracked the miner through the hills like a hunter stalking wild game.

They passed for some hours through a high terrain overgrown with vicious scrub. All of the large trees seemed to have been cut down long ago and never grown back. Just when Jack was convinced that they were utterly lost in the most God-forsaken part of the world, he smelled camels, and they stumbled upon a caravan of Persians headed the same direction. This was a bit like running into a clan of kilted Scotsmen in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

The way became broad and trampled; Enoch no longer had to use his tracking skills. Finally even the scrub and thorn plants vanished. Like a few pebbles rattling down into a stoneware bowl, they descended into a rocky crater, maculated with schlock-heaps and filled with a perpetual miasma of wood-smoke.

“Even if your taste is abominable, I must grant you credit for consistency,” Jack muttered. “How is it you always end up in the same sort of place?”

“By following the spoors of men such as the Carnaya,” said Enoch, speaking in a hush, like a Papist who’s just entered a basilica. “Now you see why I insisted that we come here alone-if we’d brought an escort of rowzinders, imagine how this place would have been upset.”

“Isn’t it already?” Jack asked. “What the hell are they up to? And why are those Persians here? And do my smoke-burnt eyes deceive me, or is that a contingent of Armenian long-range traders?”

Enoch said only: “Watch.” So Jack followed Enoch and watched Enoch watch.