The Best of Kage Baker

by Kage Baker

  “Well. So I learned all there was to know about dragons, see? Discovered a secret, and I didn’t learn it from any priests or mages either, I worked it out for myself. There’s something dragons need in their diets—and I’m not telling you what it is, but it’s either animal, vegetable or mineral, ha ha—and if they don’t get it, they don’t grow. That’s why they’re so puny, here by the sea. Lots of fish, but no Mystery Ingredient. So I worked out a special food formula for dragons, right? A little of this, a little of that, a lot of the Mystery Ingredient, and that’s my bait.

  “Not even the boy knows the recipe. I make it up myself, in a locked room. And the little bastards love it! Can’t get enough of it. Have to be careful doling it out to them, because they do get bigger when they eat it, and you can spend a fortune on cages. But oh, how they come to the bait!”

  “So…you travel around with this stuff, cleaning out wyrmin colonies, and collecting all the gold they’ve stolen and hoarded,” said Smith. “You must have earned a fortune by now! But if it’s that dangerous, why don’t you retire?”

  “Haven’t made enough yet,” said Crankhandle, pouring himself some more liqueur. “I’m saving it up. You might say I’ve got a hoard of my own. Besides, this isn’t where the real money is!”

  “Oh no?”

  “No indeed. Rings and pins and bracelets…ha. That’s the petty stuff the little ones bring in. They’re not strong enough to lift anything bigger. You don’t get a real payoff until you’ve got the big ones troving for you.”

  “Troving?”

  “Going out looking for gold. It’s instinctive. The big dragons where I grew up, they could tell where there was old gold. Tombs, mounds, other dragons’ hoards. You should see their nests! I told you how I got this, didn’t I?” He rolled up his oilskin sleeve to reveal a brawny arm, tattooed with swirling patterns, and a distinct U-shape of white scarred toothmarks.

  “You did. Stealing a cup.”

  “Right, well, I learned that what you do is, you get ’em when they’re little enough to be easily managed, and you train ’em, see? You get ’em used to you. You get ’em so they believe they’d better do what you want ’em to do, to get those lovely wyrmin treats. And then you feed ’em so they get of a bigness to raid tombs and such, and you take ’em back into the inlands where the old places are and you let ’em go.

  “Then it’s just a matter of making a chart of where they build their nests and going around every now and then to see what they’ve collected for you. They remember me, old Uncle Treats, and I dump out a great sack of special formula for ’em and while they’re busy gobbling it down, I can take what I like out of the hoard. Works every time!”

  “You ought to be stinking rich pretty soon, all the same,” said Smith in awe. “Going to retire and pass your secret on to the boy?”

  Crankhandle made a face. He drained his glass and shook his head. “No. He’s a bit of a fool, really. Good enough for pulling the cart, but he’s too soft for the work. He loves dragons, like they were people. And, you know, you really can’t love, in this business.” He reached for the emptied bottle and tilted it, sticking his tongue up the neck to get the last drops.

  “You’re a lot like a dragon, yourself,” said Smith.

  Crankhandle belched and grinned, and his gold teeth glinted in the candlelight. “Why, thank you,” he said.

  ***

  That night Smith put his stickpin away in a drawer. It had occurred to him that there was another thing Crankhandle might have trained his wyrmin to do, and that was to fly through open windows and rob houses. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered whether the sudden infestation at the Grandview had happened entirely by chance.

  But the dragons did not return, at least. When next Milady from the pink palace stopped in as one of a party ordering lunch on the terrace, she asked, with an unpleasant smile, whether she was likely to be attacked by an animal again. Smith assured her that all the dragons had been exterminated, which seemed to please her.

  ***

  Six months later, Smith had business down in Rakut Square. He glanced at the base of the monument as he walked by, and saw no cart. He thought to himself that Crankhandle must have moved on to another city.

  He was a little surprised, therefore, as he walked back toward the Grandview, to find the boy Arvin mending a fishing net. The little dragon was still perched on his shoulder, sleepily basking in the sunlight. She opened one slit-pupiled eye to regard Smith and then closed it, dismissing him as not worth her attention.

  “Hello!” said Smith. “Where’s your master these days?”

  Arvin looked up at him. He shook his head sadly. “Dead,” he replied.

  “Dead! How?”

  “He t-told you about the b-bait we used, how it m-makes dragons bigger?”

  “Right, he did.”

  “It makes them s-smarter, too.”

  I Begyn as I Meane to Go On

  They’d been five days adrift when they saw the sail on the horizon.

  “Oughtn’t we to try and signal?” said young John, and rose in the canoe and was going to pluck off his red neckerchief and wave it, only he overbalanced and nearly capsized them again. Dooley cursed him, and Jessup took their one oar and hit him with it.

  “Sit down, you mooncalf!”

  It wasn’t an especially seaworthy canoe. They had made it themselves out of a fallen tree trunk, slipping out at night to work on it, with the idea that they might escape from Barbados and live as free men on some other island. The first time it had rolled over in the water, they’d lost all the victuals and drink they’d brought with them. The second time, they’d lost the other oar. So they were in a bad way now, and not disposed to be charitable.

  John looked around at Jessup, rubbing the back of his head. “But it’s a ship,” he said. “How else will they see us?”

  “They’re too far away to see the likes of us,” said Jessup. His voice was husky from thirst. “They’ll sail this way, or they won’t. It’s all down to luck.”

  “We might pray to the Almighty,” said John.

  “I’m done praying to the Almighty!” Dooley sat bolt upright and glared at them both. “Forty years I’ve prayed to Jesus! ‘Sweet Jesus, don’t let me be caught! Sweet Jesus, don’t let me be transported! Sweet Jesus, let that fucking overseer drop dead where he’s standing!’ When has He ever answered me, I’d like to know?”

  He had the red light in his eyes again, and John swallowed hard, but Jessup (perhaps because he had firm hold of the oar) said: “Belay that, you stupid bastard. Blaspheming don’t help at all.”

  “Oh no?” screamed Dooley. He threw back his head. “You hear me, up there? You can kiss my red arse! Baisy-me-cu, Sir Almighty God, mercy beaucoups! I’m praying to the Devil from this day forward, You hear me? I be Satan’s very own! Huzzay, Satan! Praise Satan!”

  Such was the force with which he threw himself about in this rant, that he lurched clean over the side and went in with scarcely a splash, and vanished. A moment later he came up again, a little way away on the other side of the canoe, spluttering and blowing. One big fin cut smooth through the limpid blue sea, and Dooley went down again with a shriek cut off in the middle. The rest was bubbles and bloody water.

  The other two sat very still, as you might guess.

  ***

  It was a long while before Jessup felt safe enough to start paddling again, but he did, ever so cautious, while John bailed with his cupped hands. In a couple more hours the sail tacked and made toward them, and John was quite careful to thank the Almighty.

  Their rescuer was a brigantine with her aft decks cut down flush to the waist, long and low, and she had a dirty ragged look to her. She flew no colors. A few men leaned at the rail, watching incuriously as the canoe came alongside.

  “What ship’s this?” called Jessup.

  “The Martin Luther,” was the reply.

  “Where d’you hail from?”

  “From the sea.”

>   “Ah, Christ,” said Jessup quietly, and John looked at him, wondering what he meant. Jessup shrugged. “Well, needs must,” he said, and reached up for the line when it was thrown down to him.

  The canoe rolled over one last time as he scrambled from it, as though out of spite, but John vaulted up and caught the rail. There he hung, draped down the tumblehome, until a couple of laughing men took his hands and hauled him aboard.

  When John had his feet under him on deck he looked around, hoping to see a water butt. He’d never been on any ship except the one that had transported him to Barbados. The fact that the Martin Luther bristled with mismatched cannon, and that her rigging was in trim despite her dirtiness, told him nothing. A man came up on deck, and from the fanciness of his coat relative to the other men’s John assumed he was someone in authority.

  “What’re these?” said the man.

  “Shipwrecked mariners, Captain,” said one of the crew. The captain glanced over the rail at the canoe, which was already bobbing away in the wake. He laughed and spat.

  “Mariners! In a piece of shite like that? Not likely; they’re redleg bond slaves. Escaped. Ain’t you?” He turned and looked hard at John and Jessup.

  “Please, sir, we are,” said Jessup.

  The captain walked round Jessup and John, looking them over as though they were horses he had a mind to buy. “Been out long?”

  “Two years, sir,” said Jessup.

  “And lived this long. Had the fever?”

  “Yes, sir,” they said together, and John added, “Please, may we have some water?”

  The captain grinned. He held out his hand; one of the crew went and fetched a mug of water, and gave it to him. He held the mug up before John.

  “The water’s for the crew. We’re on the account; no purchase, no pay. You’ll sign articles and serve before the mast, and take your share, or you’ll go back in the sea. Which is it to be?”

  John didn’t know what he meant, but Jessup said, “We’ll serve, sir,” and John nodded, thinking only of the water. So the captain laughed and gave him the mug, and he drank deep, and everyone became friendly after that.

  ***

  There were articles to sign, which were read aloud to them. Jessup made his mark. John signed his name, which drew a whistle of admiration from the ship’s clerk. They were taken below and it was filthy there, but very free and easy; they were given clothing to replace the bleached and salt-caked rags they wore, and given sea-chests and hammocks of their own, which John thought was most generous. Later he found out they’d belonged to men who’d died of the fever, but it made no odds.

  He felt some qualms at the prospect of being a pirate, wondering what his mother would have said. But if John was clumsy at first learning the ropes, and sick scared the first time he had to go aloft, why, it was better than cutting cane in the stinking heat of the fields, with the flies biting him, and the salt sweat running into his eyes. He liked the blue water. He liked the rum and tobacco and the sea air. He liked the freedom.

  Though he learned, pretty quick, that freedom and dead men’s gear were all there was in abundance on the Martin Luther.

  “It’s Captain Stalwin’s luck,” said Perkin, in a low voice. He spat wide, and some of it hissed and sputtered on the hood of the lamp. “No purchase, no pay indeed. We been out these two years, and all we took in that time is one cargo of sugar, and some slaves once, but they was mostly dead, and one ship with chinaware.”

  “There was that one with the chest of plate,” Cullman reminded him.

  “One chest of plate,” Perkin admitted, “As didn’t amount to much when it was divided up in shares, and mine was gone before the week was out once we went ashore in Port Royal.”

  “There was the Brandywine,” said Cooper. There were growls and mutters.

  “What was on the Brandywine?” asked John.

  “She had a hold full of dried pease,” said Perkin.

  “Time was when you’d been grateful for a handful of dried pease, George Perkin,” said Cooper. “And there was two sheep on board her, you’re forgetting.”

  “Well, what I say is, if his luck doesn’t change soon, Captain Stalwin’s looking at being deposed,” said Perkin.

  ***

  Captain Stalwin knew the peril in which his office stood, and stalked the deck with keen hunger, and scanned the horizon with a sunken eye. He could never keep to one course for long; for if they made south a week steady without sighting any vessel, there was sure to be complaint from the crew, and so to oblige them he’d give new orders and away they’d go to the west.

  It was nothing like the iron discipline on the ship that had brought John out to Barbados, where a man must leap to obey the officers and keep his opinions to himself. It beat anything John had ever seen for pointlessness. And yet it pleased him, to see plain hands like himself having a say in their own affairs.

  ***

  On the day they sighted the ship, Captain Stalwin saw it before the lookouts. John, who was idling at the rail, heard the glass being snapped shut a second before the cries sounded: “Sail ho! Two points off larboard bow!”

  Now, they were lying off the False Cape, hoping some cargoes out of the Lake of Maracaibo or Rio de la Hacha might come within easy reach, to either side. And there, creeping into sight off Bahia Honda, was a galleon, as it might be a merchant, and she was flying Spanish colors. Captain Stalwin waited, and watched, though the crew were roaring in impatience to take her; and when he saw she wasn’t part of any fleet, he grinned and gave chase. A blood-red flag was brought out and run up, streaming out in the breeze.

  The galleon, when she sighted them, was beating hard to windward; but she spread her sails and fled north, and aboard the Martin Luther men elbowed one another in glee.

  “I reckon she’s out of Rio de la Hacha,” said Cooper, with a cackling laugh.

  “Is that good?” said John.

  “There’s pearl fisheries there!”

  “Might be she’s only full of salt,” said Perkin, and everyone told him to hold his sorry tongue.

  John was kept busy the next hour, running eager up the shrouds as though they were a flight of easy stairs now, letting out all the canvas the Martin Luther carried. She bowed and flew, with the white water hissing along her hull, and the white wake foaming behind.

  Happy men primed her guns. Cutlasses and boarding axes were handed round. Some men ran to the galley and blacked their faces with soot and grease, to look the more fearsome. The galleon ran, but she was broad and ponderous, like a hen fluttering her wings as she went, and the Martin Luther closed on her, and closed on her, like a hawk stooping.

  Soon the galleon was near enough to see the painted figure on her stern castle. It was the Virgin Mary in red and blue and gold, her eyes wide and staring, her one hand raised to bless, her other hand cradling a wee Christ who stared and blessed too. It gave John a qualm, at first; but then he recollected the things the Papists were said to do to captive English, which put a different color on the matter. He wondered, too, whether the haloes on the figures were only gold paint or set with disks of real gold.

  In ten more minutes they were near enough to chance a shot, and Captain Stalwin ordered the bow guns loaded. Beason, the gunner, got the two shots off: larboard and starboard barked out smart and the one ball went high and fell short, in a spurt of white foam, while the other hit the galleon at the waterline, close in to her keel, and stuck there like a boss on a shield.

  “Again!” cried Captain Stalwin, and Cooper and Jessup loaded and primed. Beason adjusted the range with a handspike. They could hear the crack-crack-crack of musket shots from the galleon now—she had no stern guns, evidently—but the musket balls fell short, and long before the gap had closed Beason had the range right. Fire kissed powder and the larboard shot struck something, to judge from the shatter and shudder that echoed over the water. The starboard shot did worse, to judge from the screams.

  When the smoke cleared they saw that the galleon�
��s rudder was broke, in big splinters, though not shot away clean. Her tillerman was desperately trying to bring her about to broadside, with the little she was answering. Cooper and Jessup worked like madmen and Beason fired again, just the larboard gun this time, but that was enough; over the grinding of the rudder’s hinge they heard the shot strike, and the fragments showering into the water. The galleon was wallowing when they saw her again, in the red sunlight through the smoke.

  But not helpless: she had made it around far enough for her larboard guns to begin firing with some hope of hurt, and what was more her musketmen were now within range. As the Martin Luther rose on the swell, a flight of musket balls peppered the men on her forward deck. John started as Cullman dropped beside him howling. To this moment he’d been smiling like a fool at a play, cheering each shot; now he woke sober and dropped flat on the deck, as an eight-pound ball whistled above his head and punched through the forecourse before sailing on out to drop in the sea.

  “Keep her astern!” yelled Captain Stalwin, but the tillerman was already sending the Martin Luther slinking around under the galleon’s stern again. Close to now they could see what they hadn’t noticed before, that two of her stern cabin windows had been beaten into one jagged-edged hole by one of their shots. John thought they could look straight into her when they rose on the next swell, which they did. What came popping up to the window then but a Spaniard with a pistol? He was white and bloody as a ghost, with staring blank eyes. He aimed the pistol full into Captain Stalwin’s face, and fired.

  There was a click, but neither flash nor ball. The next moment the Martin Luther had dropped away and past, grinding into the other vessel, and her crew were yelling and swarming up the side. John looked curiously at Captain Stalwin, who had sagged against the foremast and was trembling. Then the jolt of the swell striking the two hulls together threw John to his knees. He remembered where he was and thought of the gold haloes on the images. Scrambling up he grabbed a cutlass and pulled himself aboard the galleon.