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.There was something about the particular way that the rolling of the shipfelt from the quarterdeck that was as much a drug for him as opium would havebeen for a weaker man.He forced himself not to give a last, longing look at the wheel, but lethimself walk down the steps, make his way aft, and down to the captain'squarters, past the two Marines who came to attention, but quite properlydidn't open the door for him.Nothing had changed, of course.The last mail call had been in Pironesia, and while they'd flagged downtheCowperstown just as much for resupply as for the possibility that it wascarrying a copy of the scattershot dispatches that chased theLord Faunchereverywhere it sailed, the only dispatches has been duplicates of the ones thathad been picked up in Pironesia, and didn't even require decoding,just careful disposal.He put the duplicates into the wooden box that Emmons more reliable thanScratch would take up to the deck to burn, and then stir the ashes beforethrowing them overboard.The chances of some useful fragment washing up on thewrong shore were small, and the chances of them falling into the hands ofsomebody who could make sense of the code was even smaller, but what of that?He uncovered the map that he had hung on the captain's wall, after quicklychecking that the wax seals were still in place before breaking them.The map covered the Med, from Gibraltar to Seeproosh, and a bit beyond.Yes,the source of the new live swords could in theory have been anywhere, butthere was plenty of evidence that it was somewhere east of Pironesia, and westof Syryah, and at least so he hoped and thought north of the Med, rather thanin the Dar itself.For all he knew as opposed to concluded the wizard who hadfigured out how to create live swords with the souls of infants could havebeen quietly ensconced in a flat in East Londinium, or somewhere in NewEngland, or Darmosh Kowayes, or Inja or any other godforsaken place, but therewere hints to the contrary.Page 62 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlMany hints.The race of the girl, Nadide, whose soul had been imprisoned inthe sword that that Hellenic boy carried; the words of al-Bakalani's servant,who had been placed as a spy, giving a lie to the cleverness of al-Bakalani;the location of the one lost sword that had been brought to shore by afisherman in that offshore Pironesian island, the one marked with a redpin none of it was proof, but all of it were clues.And not the only clues, at that.When given this assignment by HM, DuPuy hadas quickly as he could seconded every available beached officer on half pay,had Dougherty put them on full pay, and sent them across the northern arc ofthe Med to try to investigate, doing the best he could to have them assumelocal garb and disguise, although a scant tenth of them, if that, spoke any ofthe local languages.It wouldn't have been what he would have wanted to do, but in this life, aman made do with what he had.He would have preferred to have a thousandspies, each well-trained in the local usages, speaking a dozen locallanguages, each with a well-developed background say, as merchant traderseamen that would have given them some protection from being identified aswhat they indeed were, as many had.Some had managed to make it back to a Crown port; many hadn't.The blue pins on the map showed where men had been sent to.Whenever a newbatch of dispatches showed a report of one of his spies coming back, they werereplaced by green pins.When a report was more than a month overdue, the bluepin was replaced by a yellow one, and a month after that, by a red.What did it all mean? It meant that DuPuy had sent men ill-equipped for anytask but to be stalking horses to their deaths, but that wasn't important.They were, to use the technical term, expendable, and DuPuy had expended them.DuPuy had, in his lifetime, expended many more men than that.Seaman able andordinary officers, supplies, rigging, launches, and even ships themselves wereall expendable.The Crown was not.But that the men had died was not important; it was where the deaths occurredthat was perhaps indicative.The black pins were even more interesting
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