by J. P. Sheen
The Palean Sea…
Even now, Eselder felt a twinge of excitement.
The Palean Sea was a region of the lately discovered New World, a huge blue basin with dozens of emerald isles, each one home to plants and animals the likes of which Eselder had never seen. It was a tropical paradise brimming with gold and silver, tobacco and cotton, sugarcane and coffee. The Palean Sea attracted mercenaries and merchants, felons and fortune-seekers, but above all, it was notorious for its roving bands of treasure-hungry pirates. These preyed upon the merchant ships carrying New World treasures back to the Continent. Oh, the times Eselder had dreamed of voyaging to the Palean Sea and seeing her exotic sights! It seemed he would be getting his wish after all.
An envious Eselder watched Mr. Evil Brigand take his turn at the bulwarks. Most of the crew had cleared off by now. The wind blew salty and strong, and Mr. Evil Brigand pushed back his hair, grinning like it was teasing him. His smile wasn’t cruel like it had been at breakfast.
Eselder’s work brought him tantalizingly close to the bulwarks. So near and yet so far…just his luck! The most exciting event this whole confounded voyage, and he was going to miss out on it entirely! An exotic tropical island was within sight, and all he could see was Mr. Evil Brigand’s smelly feet!
Eselder glanced furtively up with his eyes, not daring to lift his head. The sun was a smoky jewel hanging low in the sky, and in its ruddy light, Mr. Evil Brigand didn’t look so deathly pale. The wind tugged at his shirt, and Mr. Evil Brigand shook his head, shifting. Then, before Eselder’s astonished eyes, something white fell right out of the man’s baggy trousers. It looked like a wadded up handkerchief tied with twine. Eselder wrinkled his nose…and blinked.
Mr. Evil Brigand’s handkerchief appeared to be glowing.
Eselder rubbed his eyes, wondering whether he was developing his father’s poor eyesight. He might be, but that didn’t alter the fact that Mr. Evil Brigand’s hankie was faintly agleam.
Mr. Evil Brigand got bored with the island and walked off, oblivious to his fallen handkerchief. Eselder longed to speak up as he passed by, but he didn’t dare. Instead, he snatched up the handkerchief, untied its strings and, bending low, unfolded it until he was staring in awe at a blue pearl, glowing like a tiny moon.
Hastily, Eselder crumpled up the handkerchief and stuffed it in his pocket. No doubt Mr. Evil Brigand was hiding his enchanted treasure from Thug Kurzon, and Eselder would never forgive himself if he lost it to the boatswain’s greedy hands.
Eselder was so caught up in his thoughts that he barely moved his sandstone block. He felt Mr. Evil Brigand’s luminous secret pressing against his thigh, and tales of magic and mystery flooded his mind. Mr. Evil Brigand transformed quickly from a sorcerer of black magic, to the thief of some magical jewel, to the disgraced ruler of a magical kingdom.
Gradually, the sky darkened, and the first isle of the Palean Sea faded from sight. Eselder hadn’t even had a chance to see it. But he didn’t bemoan his misfortune because, for once, there was something else on his mind.
11
The Legend Of The Sea Kings
Before his father could punish him further, Jaimes ran away into the forest. When Drake Ransom found out the following evening, he laughed, “Let the prig run!”
But at sunrise, armed with salve and bandages, Blake went looking for Jaimes and got lost. After hours of cussing and wandering about, he managed to retrace his steps and dumped his load by a giant banyan tree, one of their most common haunts, in the hopes that Jaimes would find it. When he finally returned to the village, a furious Drake Ransom forbade him to go searching for Jaimes again. He kept a close eye on Blake after that.
The following morning, the pirate captain laughed as Blake struggled to keep up with his long strides. They walked through the forest, and while Blake swatted at mosquitos, he kept a sharp lookout for Jaimes. He was very worried. His prat of a brother was probably trapped in a snake pit somewhere, his legs broken and his spectacles cracked.
They reached a small inlet. Green slopes enclosed a turquoise bay and snowy white shores. The sea sparkled gaily, but for once, Blake didn’t run to it. He felt instinctively that it would reject him. He wanted to ask his father if they could practice elsewhere, but he didn’t dare.
Today, the bay looked clean and pure, but Blake knew that it wasn’t and never would be again. The tide whispered of foul deeds done under a full moon, and in punishment for his part in them, Blake relived the morning he had watched the Navy captain’s body sink beneath the water.
That morning, the bay had been defiled with a dead man’s blood.
How could he explain this to Drake Ransom, the man who had done the deed? He couldn’t, so he endured the ocean’s accusations until, finally, he shut them out.
The noise helped. The air rang with pistol shots, the clash of steel, and Drake Ransom bellowing instructions and commands.
Blake was, it turned out, a gifted swordsman and a natural shot. His father’s obvious pride quieted Blake’s secret fears. Maybe he wasn’t a freak after all. Maybe Jaimes was the real freak! Blake grinned, delighted at the thought. Could it be that his sea longing was a pull toward the Black King’s Crown, the ocean’s greatest secret?
“It’s your destiny, Blake!” Drake Ransom barked, one sunny afternoon. Blake beamed, smoke still coiling from his pistol’s muzzle.
“You want to know how I know?”
Blake nodded, perhaps a little too eagerly, for Drake Ransom noticed and laughed meanly, “Well, someday, I’ll tell you!”
He turned away, still chuckling. A sudden rage rooted Blake to the spot, and before he could stop himself, he declared petulantly, “I want to know now!”
Drake Ransom spun around and viciously backhanded Blake across his face.
“Who do you think you are, speaking to me like that?” he screamed as Blake tumbled backward into the sand. The pirate loomed over his prostrate form, and Blake didn’t move a muscle. His heart thudded, and he hung his head in a manner of abject submission. Gradually, Drake Ransom’s pants grew softer and slower. The pirate growled, “Get up.”
Blake obeyed at once. His father held out a flintlock. He meekly took it. Where, he wondered, was Jaimes right now?
“Again,” said Drake Ransom, and their lesson resumed. The pirate captain stood there, his crimson sash flapping in the cool ocean breeze, clutching his never-empty rum bottle as he roared instructions at his younger son.
“What did I tell you about envisioning where your target’s headed; now you wasted a bullet, you little idiot!…Good, boy, good!...What, thirsty? You ain’t earned your drink yet; let’s see it again…Lunge! Forward, now lunge! And don’t give me that look, dumbsquat, or I’ll come and wipe it off your damn face…Hell’s gates, boy, your brain’s thick as mortar, do I got to show you again…Aye, that’s the way, lad; that’s the way!”
The sunlight on the water gradually faded from bright yellow to dim bronze, and the forest’s shadows crept toward the pair on the lonely beach.
“Ha!” crowed Drake Ransom at the end of the day, “That’s my boy!”
He strutted across the white sand like a conceited rooster, and when he grabbed his son and pulled him into a burly side hug, Blake proudly smiled and was only a little bit afraid.
Those days didn’t last long enough.
Soon Drake Ransom grew bored of life on Moanamiri, and his crew prepared the Devil’s Blessing for another long voyage. Blake begged his father to let him come along, but Drake Ransom just laughed in his face and promised that he could come next time.
“Whip your brother for me when he comes crawling back,” the pirate captain said, before clapping Blake’s shoulder and bounding up the gangplank. Blake smiled because his father had, but his smile faded as Drake Ransom’s crew pulled up the gangplank. He watched the Devil’s Blessing until it disappeared beyond the blue horizon.
Jaimes mysteriously returned home a day later, looking like every mosquito and mud hole on Moan
amiri had targeted him. Their mother fussed over him, cleaning the ugly scabs on his cheek and shoulders, but Blake ignored him. In fact, he wanted nothing to do with Jaimes. He decided that he would practice with his sword and pistol every day until his father returned. When he saw how Blake had improved, he’d be so proud that he wouldn’t care whether or not Jaimes joined his crew. He’d take Blake with him instead, and then Jaimes could be happy and Blake could get away from his insufferable prig of a brother.
For his part, Jaimes went quietly back to his ordinary chores and lessons. The two brothers hardly spoke to each other at all. Could it be that Jaimes detected his anger? Blake couldn’t tell, since Jaimes wore that stupid poker face all the time now. Both brothers, however, seemed to sense that their relationship was no longer the same.
Not like Blake cared.
Blake sat at his lonely mess, gazing through the porthole upon foreign waters, his pork and peas untouched.
Why had he been so stupid in Brackenpool? If he hadn’t taken that dare, he could have been in Yaletown by now, perhaps even reunited with Tolger, figuring out where Hawkeye had concealed the Black King’s Crown. He’d been so close to regaining everything he’d lost. Instead, he was as trapped aboard the Swift as he had been aboard the Polaris, only now he was heaving ho for the Royal Navy…the enemy. That meant, by extension, for His Royal Majesty, King Jaimes the Fourth.
Blake’s knuckles cracked on the wooden mess, and he throttled his fork like it was King Jaimes’s neck. The bloody fartbuckles had intoxicated him, dragged him aboard their ship, stolen his coat and boots, and shipped him across the Midlantic to this—
“I beg your pardon?”
The timid voice scared Blake out of his wits, but he miraculously kept his composure and looked sideways. It was that confounded boy again. Did he want a bash upside the noggin?
“I beg—”
“Stop saying that! And make yourself scarce!”
Blake turned back to the porthole to sulk.
“You don’t own this table, you know.”
Blake swiveled back around, his yellow teeth bared like a wolf’s. The pudgy youth stepped back. Pressganged at Kingston, he had said? Blake could well believe it. Unfortunately for the lad, he wanted nothing to do with Kingston.
“I said, get the hell away!”
Blake swiftly rose. The boy gasped, set a white lump down on the table, and scurried off. Breathing heavily, Blake sank back down. Good. That was taken care of. The boy wouldn’t come dragging his oversized arse over here anymore, Blake guaranteed it…
His eyes fell on the clump of linen. Was that his hankie?
Well, unless someone’s boogers glowed a lovely ocean-blue, it seemed unlikely to be anyone else’s…
Blake unwrapped the linen cloth. His mouth slightly agape, he looked quickly up, but he couldn’t see the boy from his vantage point. Sighing, he shoved his kerchief deep into his pocket, got up, and stomped down the deck toward the cabin boys’ mess. The little thief was hovering next to the table, enduring Cheddar’s gleeful abuse. When the cabin boys noticed him, they all froze. Cheddar went silent, looking scared. Blake was pleased.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said. Tipping an imaginary hat, he harshly grabbed the back of the boy’s neck and steered him toward the stern.
“Let go of me!” spat his abductee, but Blake didn’t release him until they were back at his mess. He politely waved at the table.
“Have a seat,” he said pleasantly.
The boy replied coldly, “I don’t have to—”
“I said, sit down!” Blake snarled. Stiffly, the boy complied. Blake had forgotten that he was a member of the gentry. Probably accustomed to yelling at his own servants. Blake would have to show the twit who was boss. He looked at the boy, his black eyes gleaming a challenge. A pair of brown eyes glared accusingly back at him. That caught Blake off-guard, and in the end, it was he who looked away.
“I beg your pardon.”
Blake’s head shot up. Was the boy trying to be funny? Clearly not, since he quickly winced.
“I beg your pardon, I didn’t mean to say—”
“I beg your pah-don?” Blake mimicked. The cabin boy flushed, and Blake’s wicked soul rejoiced. Very good! Now he was getting the upper hand!
“Why d-does your pearl glow like that?”
“Huzzah!” Blake slammed his fist on the table. His bowl rattled. “You spoke intelligently! I mean, uh, intelligibly.”
He snickered until he comprehended what the boy had said.
“Say what?” he asked stupidly.
“Your pearl,” the boy repeated determinedly, “It glows.”
“Ah!” Blake leaned forward. “Now we come to it! When did you steal my things, you little thief?”
“I’m not a thief!”
“Oh? Do explain,” insisted Blake in syrupy tones. He kept up his impersonation of a ruffle-necked fop as it clearly infuriated the young swabbie. Also, it was fun.
“With pleasure,” the boy coolly replied. His tone was maddening. “This afternoon. As we past the island. Your handkerchief, sir, fell right out of your trousers. I saw it happen.”
Blake saw the tables turning and couldn’t stop a dark flush from creeping up his neck.
“Oh? How very…unsettling. And you just happened to be staring at my trousers because…?”
“It’s difficult to see aught else when you’re scouring the deck. Believe me, I would certainly have preferred to see that island over everyone’s smelly trousers!”
Blake’s lips twitched in a traitorous manner. Thinking fast, he spat, “Children should be seen and not heard! Actually, they shouldn’t be seen either if it can be helped!”
“I didn’t steal your pearl,” the boy repeated firmly, “I picked it up to save it from Thug Kurzon…and to return it to you as soon as I got the chance! But if you’d rather not tell me about it, I won’t press the matter further.”
Blake’s heart softened at the boy’s concession. Perhaps he wasn’t such an arrogant twit after all.
“Well, in that case, I suppose I owe you,” he sighed, masking his change of heart with a sneer. “What do you want to know about it then?”
The boy looked astonished. “W-well, if you d-don’t mind…would you t-tell me where it came from?”
Blake’s smirk slid off his face. In his mind’s eye, he beheld the Polaris’s sunken deck. He remembered the monsters and the shadows…the sleeplessness and hunger, the constant fear…
His countenance hardened. The boy would never believe him.
You want to know where it’s from? I’ll tell you, but when you call me a liar, I’ll tell you no more.
“The bottom of the ocean. The deepest, darkest depths of the sea,” Blake said absently. He waited for the boy’s scorn. His disbelief.
It never happened, Blake Ransom. It wasn’t real!
But it had happened! That those years had gone by silent and unseen did not make them any less real!
“Really?”
Startled, Blake looked up into a pair of hungry brown eyes. How well he understood that hunger! A child’s fantasy…that’s what Jaimes had called his sea longing. But because Jaimes had refused to embrace the ocean’s mystery, he had never seen its wonders. Blake, on the other hand, had voyaged far and wide over the years, and feasted his eyes on sights that far exceeded the magnificence of Kingston Court.
Though, it all led you here in the end.
Blake frowned. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to tell the boy a little. Just a little. It might give him something pleasant to daydream about during his wretched life aboard the HMS Swift. He racked his brains. How had that old crone begun the legend of the Sea Kings?
“In the beginning, there was one King and one Crown.”
The boy’s eyebrows shot up with surprise. Ignoring him, Blake continued, “The Crown was a relic of a bygone people, filled with the magic of their mysterious gods. It gave its wearer power over fire and water…and with them, over the lives of men.�
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“What does that have to do with—”
“I’m getting to that, so shut up! Or do you not want to hear this?”
With delightful subjection, the boy pressed his lips shut. Gratified, Blake resumed his tale.
“Now, the first King was a tyrant who did all sorts of tyrannical things, like enslaving the spirits of the dead and shutting them up in a dark underground cavern, from which there was no escape—”
“All caverns are underground.”
“What?”
“You said an underground cavern, when you could have simply said a cavern. All caverns are subterranean. That’s what makes them caverns.”
It was a blast from the distant past. Blake half-expected to look over and find a young Jaimes Ransom eyeing him arrogantly from behind round spectacles. He flushed.
“Did I ask for a grammar lesson, Tub O’ Lard?” he sneered, and the boy turned bright red. Served the twit right, lecturing Blake like he was a schoolboy! Probably learned his letters at Cribbshire Abbey too.
“Two brave men decided to make a stand against the King.”
Blake decided to keep going with his story. Why not? The boy wouldn’t dare get up and leave, and if he had any more smart remarks, Blake could easily put him in his place with a well-aimed taunt, right where it hurt the most.
“They fought him and defeated him. The Crown was broken and forged into two Crowns, so no one man could ever again wield such devastating power.”
One of those men had been Blake’s ancestor. Centuries later, his heir had inherited his fighting talents…and his penchant for harassing tyrannical kings. Blake smirked, his confidence reviving.
“One victor became the Blood King, and the other became the Black King.”
“Did they name themselves?” the boy asked, still sulking over Blake’s insult. His dry tone reminded Blake so strongly of Jaimes that he momentarily forgot to play the bully.