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"Coestured to Quentin to precede his, Quentin," Julia said, as he climbed on board after her "You spend too et out on the open water, but there wasn’t an to sed from belowdecks, where he must have been asleep He was a sun- and windburnedobviously on underneath thenize He didn’t seem at all put out or even surprised to discover that his boat had been commandeered by two monarchs and an admiral
As for Lacker, he looked unfairly comfortable in the heat in his full dress uniforreater variety of inappropriate vessels Most of them were out there because their drafts were too deep to anchor any farther in: a great bruiser of a ship of the line, some nobleman’s bloated party yacht, a fat, butter-colored merchant tub
"What about that one?" Quentin said He pointed
"I beg your indulgence, Your Highness, reat nation You do not h with the period drama "That one There"
A flat sandbar projected froreat bay A ship lay near it in a few feet of water The low tide had laid it gently down on one side on the sandy bottom, its underbelly exposed like a beached whale
"That ship, Your Highness, has not left the bay for a very long tihness, partly out of a perverse desire to pay the ad, a little bit of a cock The owner of the s look with Admiral Lacker: this man, the look said, lubs his land
"Let us return to the Morgan Downs"
"And ill," Julia said "But King Quentin wishes to see that ship first"
It took tenas the fisheramely worked his way upwind Quentin re for this after They circled the wreck listlessly in the shalloater Its hull had been painted white, but the paint had been weathered and blasted down to the gray wood There was so curiously swoopy about the slender bowsprit that had been snapped off halfway
He liked it It was neither harsh and blocky like a warship, nor soft and too pretty like a yacht It was elegant, but it meant business Too bad it was a carcass and not a ship Maybe if he’d gotten here fifty years earlier
"What do you think?"
The smack’s keel scraped the sandy bottoarded the horizon line He cleared his throat
"I think," he said, "that that ship has seen better days"
"What do you think it was?"
"Workhorse," the smack’s owner piped up huskily "Deer Class Ran the route between here and Longfall"
Quentin hadn’t even realized he spoke English
"It looks nice," Quentin said "Or it looked nice"
"That was," Admiral Lacker said solemnly, "one of the most beautiful ships that was everor not Except that it was pretty obvious that he never joked
"Really?" Quentin said
"Nothing moved like the Deer Class," Lacker said "They were built to carry bergspar froh You could ride them to hell and back"
"Huh So why aren’t there spar," the fisher them coldspice That was the end of the Deer Class Most were broken up for the clockwood in them, sold for scrap It was the Lorians built theht in Fillory tried to copy them, but there was a trick to it Trick’s been lost"
"My first command," Lacker said, "was a Very Fast Picket out of Hartheiht us, but I saw a Deer Class blow bysails set on both sides Made us look like ere standing still"
Quentin nodded He stood up in the boat A halo of little birds lifted off from the ship’s blasted hull, stalled for a ain The smack had come around to the far side, and they could see the deck, which was stove in in at least two places The ship’s name was painted across the stern: MUNTJAC
This wasn’t a Fillory novel If it were, this was the kind of boat he’d have
"Well, I think that settles it," he said "Take us back to the Morgan Downs, please"
"The Morgan Downs, Highness"
"And e get there tell the captain of the Morgan Downs to get his floating rattrap over here and haul that thing"--he pointed at the Muntjac--"into dry dock We’re taking it"
That felt good So the Muntjac--it turned out to be the na like seaworthy condition was going to take a couple of weeks, even if Quentin exercised his royal prerogatives and press-ganged all the best shipwrights in the city, which he did But that was fine It gave hi on his nervous energy for so long, it was good to have so how much of it he had He could have powered a small city with it The next day Quentin had an announce to hold a tournaue idea of how tournaments worked, or even what they were, except that they were sos used to do at some point bethen Jesus was alive and when Shakespeare was alive, which was as close as Quentin could get to placing when the Middle Ages had actually happened He knew that tourna, and he also knew that he wasn’t interested in jousting Too weird and phallic, plus it was hard on the horses
Sword fighting, though, that was interesting Not fencing, or not just fencing--he didn’t want anything that forHe wanted to knoho the best swordsman in the realm was: the no-buts, fuck-you, all-Fillory cha So he put the word out: a week froht he could handle a blade should turn up at Castle Whitespire and start whacking till there was no one left to whack Winner gets a small but very choice castle in the Fillorian boondocks and the honor of guarding the king’s royal person on his upco journey to an undisclosed location
Eliot walked in while Quentin was clearing the grand banquet hall A colu a chair each