Salamaine's Curse

by V. L. Burgess

  Tom braced himself for the impact of artillery. But the ship held its fire. Instead of shooting at them, it hoisted a large black flag with a single red palm print in the center of the cloth off the stern.

  Although he had no idea what the flag signaled, Umbrey’s men obviously did. The presence of the flag drew a harsh and immediate response. All around him, the crew erupted, swearing and shouting, and violently shaking their fists at the other vessel.

  “No sacrifice!”

  “We’ll take ‘em down with us!”

  “Rather dead than bled!”

  Rather dead than bled? Tom shot a glance at Willa and Mudge, who gripped the ship’s rail so tightly their knuckles went white. Beside them, Porter surveyed the flag with a look of dread.

  “What is it?” Tom asked

  “They’ve raised a flag of sacrifice. Penalty for trespassing on these waters.” Porter swallowed hard, then gestured to the other ship. “They’ll allow us to pass, but only for a fee.”

  “What sort of fee?”

  Porter gestured to the red palm print. “The four fingers on that flag means he’s asking for four sacrifices. It’s called bleeding the crew. He wants Umbrey to give up four crewmen as fee for our passage through these waters.”

  Tom looked at the sleek red vessel. He definitely didn’t want to ask the next question, but he did anyway. “What happens to the four crewmen who are sent over?”

  Willa turned toward Tom. Normally, in the bright light of day, her hazel eyes danced with shades of gold and green. Now that light was extinguished.

  “That’s a slaver,” she said, nodding toward the red ship. “Any crewmen Umbrey sacrifices will be sold at the next port and spend the rest of their lives as slaves.”

  “What?” Tom tried to digest the horror of Willa’s words, but before he could fully come to terms with them, a single blast rang out. A cannonball landed in the water just a few yards shy of the hull. “What was that?” he said.

  “They’re marking time,” Porter answered. “A minute has passed since the slaver raised his flag. Umbrey has four more minutes to decide who he’ll sacrifice.”

  “And if he refuses?”

  “Then they’ll start firing for real,” Porter replied. “They won’t stop until they’ve blown us out of the water. Most everyone will be killed. Any who survive will be taken prisoner and sold as slaves. If Umbrey can’t make a choice, the choice will be made for him.”

  Mudge lifted the Sword of Five Kingdoms and rested it lightly against the rail. His expression troubled, he traced his finger lightly over the blade and murmured softly, “The sacrifice of a few innocents, for the lives of many.”

  Tom froze. He looked at Mudge, at the sword, at the red ship…. The glimmer of an idea shot through his mind, but he wasn’t fast enough to grasp it. There was a solution there, right there, if he could just think.

  The sacrifice of a few innocents, for the lives of many.

  Wasn’t that the lesson in the tale of Salamaine’s curse? The sacrifice of innocents hadn’t worked for Salamaine, so it wouldn’t work for them.

  A second cannonball exploded through the air.

  Three more minutes.

  “They’re waiting for an answer,” said the crewman to Umbrey’s right. “Should I give the word to open fire, cap’n?”

  Umbrey lowered his spyglass. He gave a small shake of his head. “He’s carrying cargo.”

  Tom squinted across the water. Human cargo. The lower deck was crowded with men, women, and children—some of them so young they had to be held up to see over the edge of the ship’s rail.

  Umbrey’s lips formed a thin, tight line. “I’ve never fired on a ship carrying women and children, and I’m not about to start now.”

  “Can we outrun them?” Willa asked.

  “A ship like that?” Umbrey said, giving a harsh laugh. “No. That vessel was built for speed—speed and treacherous seas. We don’t stand a chance against it.”

  A third cannonball rocketed through the air.

  Two more minutes.

  “Fire the engines!” Umbrey roared to his crew. He drew himself up, squared his shoulders, and gave a decisive nod. “Right. So that’s it then. No sacrifices. I won’t bleed my crew. I won’t fire upon a slaver carrying cargo. And we can’t outrun them—but we’ll try. We may not get far, but at least we’ll give them a run for their money.”

  “Wait!” Tom shouted. “That’s it!” He couldn’t grasp it before, but suddenly everything was perfectly clear. “We can’t run from the ship, so we’ve got to run toward it. We’ll go! The four of us!”

  “What?” Porter stared at him in horror. “What are you talking about?”

  “That ship! Don’t you see? It’s perfect. That’s the ship we need to make it through the Coral Canyon.”

  Willa’s jaw dropped open. She whipped around and looked at the ship, then she looked back at Tom. “You think …”

  “Absolutely. We go, but not as sacrifices. We get aboard and take the ship,” Tom said. “That’s our only solution.”

  “Take the ship?” Porter gave a hollow laugh. “And how are we supposed to do that?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he admitted. “We’ll have to figure it out.”

  “Right. We’ll just figure out how to overtake the highly-trained, heavily-armed crew of a slave ship and seize the vessel.”

  “He didn’t say it would be easy,” Mudge pointed out.

  The forth and final cannonball shot through the air.

  Sixty seconds left.

  “The Black Book of Pernicus,” Tom said. “We can find it. We’ve got the sword, the map, and that’s the ship we need to get through the channel. It’s right there.” Sensing he was gaining, he pressed, “We can’t just sit here and wait to be blown apart. We have to do it. If you have a better idea, tell me now. No, tell me ten seconds ago, because that’s when I needed to hear it.”

  Porter ground his teeth, clenching his fists at his side. He let out a deep growl of frustration and glared at Tom. “You realize what will happen if we fail.”

  “Who said anything about failing?”

  “Now there’s the spirit!” Umbrey cried. “The game’s not over yet!” He turned and roared across the deck, “Kill the engines and ready the dinghy! Four going over!”

  They raced across the deck and leapt into a wooden lifeboat hanging off the outer side of the hull. Umbrey watched them settle in. “You know what they say, lads. A bold beginning is half the battle.”

  “Perfect,” Porter bit out. “Another idiotic scheme. We’ve got no chance.”

  “No chance?” Umbrey echoed, appalled. “Are you daft, lad? You’re still alive! That’s a raging success in my book. Better than how things stood thirty seconds ago. By my way of looking at it, your future’s already brighter.”

  Umbrey signaled to his crewman. The man released the ropes which held the dinghy aloft. It plummeted straight down, hitting the water with a splash. The instant the boat settled, Umbrey sent them a thumbs-up and a beaming smile. “Victory, lads! Victory!”

  Tom tried to smile back, but couldn’t quite manage it. He looked from Porter to Willa to Mudge, all of whom stared back at him with varying expressions of terror, doubt, and (in Porter’s case) outright hostility.

  There was no turning back now. Tom picked up the oars and began rowing toward the slave ship.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CRIMSON BELLE

  They weren’t alone in the water. At first Tom thought the boat had landed in a thick nest of drifting kelp. Then he sensed a subtle vibration within the water, a deliberate thrashing movement that could not be attributed to the current. He stilled his oars and peered over the side.

  Swimming and swirling all around them were dozens of long, wiry, amphibian-looking creatures. Their skin was mottled green, as slick and slimy as seaweed, with occasional patches of bumpy warts. Their limbs were bent, their hands and feet webbed, and a scaly crown was affixed to their skulls in place of hair. But t
he most disturbing thing about them was their nearly human faces. They stared up at Tom with dark bulgy eyes, their broad mouths curved in leering grins.

  “What are those things?” he asked, barely managing to repress a shudder.

  “Undertoads,” replied Mudge.

  Willa elaborated, “This isn’t their natural territory. Usually they’re found near beaches, just beyond the wave break, waiting to catch swimmers who venture too far from shore.”

  “What do you mean by catch swimmers?”

  “That’s how they feed,” she said. “They have suction cups attached to their hands and feet. Once you’re caught, there’s no escaping them. Even the most powerful swimmer will be pulled under and drown.”

  Porter drew up one knee and rested his arm across it. “So if part of your plan was for us to leap overboard and swim to safety if things go badly, forget it. Slave ship captains feed scraps to the undertoads every night to make sure they follow their ships. No better way to keep the slaves, and their crews, on board and following orders. But then you knew that already, didn’t you?”

  Tom didn’t miss the haughty challenge in his brother’s voice, but he refused to be baited into an argument. “No, I didn’t,” he said simply. “And I don’t have a plan. Not yet.”

  Porter cut a glance at the red sailing vessel that loomed ominously closer with each stroke of the oars. “Well, this might be a good time to think of one.”

  “All right.” Tom let the oars fall in his lap, allowing the current to direct their boat. “First thing we need to do is figure out what we’re up against. How many crew members do you think there are? What kind of weapons they have? I figure there’ll be too many of them for us to handle, so we’ll need help.”

  “The slaves,” Willa said, nodding thoughtfully.

  “Exactly,” Tom said. “Once the crew is taken out, the slaves can man the vessel. At least a few of them should have sailing experience, right?”

  “Wrong,” Porter returned flatly. “The slaves come from Divino. Flatlanders. You’ll find no sailors among them. They’re criminals mostly.”

  Tom frowned.

  “What sort of criminals?” he asked.

  “Men convicted of petty theft, smuggling, or forgery. Farmers too poor to pay their debts. Drunks who fall asleep on public benches. Women caught stealing food from their neighbors’ gardens.” Porter shrugged. “Almost anything.”

  “But there were children there,” Tom countered. “Young children. What sort of crime could they have committed?”

  Porter looked at him as though he were painfully slow. “You saw the courthouse where Keegan was held. Beneath it was a single room for holding prisoners during trial. That’s all. No prisons, no jails. Once convicted, prisoners are shipped out, handed over to slavers from Aquat. Their families are sent with them. That’s how it works.”

  “So you’re telling me if a man is caught stealing a loaf of bread,” Tom said, “his entire family risks being shipped off into slavery?”

  “It’s meant to keep others from commiting crimes,” Willa said softly.

  “Keegan’s system,” Mudge said. His gaze turned toward the red vessel. “But it will end. I will see to it once we return to Divino.”

  “If we make it back,” Porter countered grimly. “No one who’s ever shipped out on a slaver has ever been seen or heard from again.”

  Tom swallowed hard. The magnitude of what they’d undertaken —no, what he’d encouraged them to undertake—pressed upon him like a great, invisible weight. Maybe Porter was right. Maybe his plan had been a little brash. Supposing for a minute they could overpower the crew (a feat that was looking less likely with every passing second), how exactly were they supposed to navigate their way through the Coral Canyon, then sail across the Cursed Souls Sea?

  Tom considered the depth of his own sailing experience. Not exactly promising. The rowboat he’d taken into the Forbidden Lake had sunk. This morning aboard the Purgatory he’d barely been able to figure out how the bathroom worked. The dinghy in which they currently sat was still afloat, but that didn’t mean much. The sea was so thick with undertoads, he wouldn’t be surprised if their suction cup fingers were accidentally plugging up any holes he might have knocked in the bottom.

  Obviously they would need a plan.

  “Obviously we’ll need a plan,” Porter said.

  Startled, Tom looked at Porter. He’d heard twins could do that—read each other’s thoughts without communicating—but he wasn’t sure he liked it. Frankly, he wasn’t sure he even liked Porter. The only time he felt at all connected to his brother was when they brought maps to life.

  “My plan,” Porter said, leveling his pale gaze directly at Tom. “Not some idiotic, shoot-off-my-mouth-so-I-can-look-like-a-hero plan that only puts us in more danger than we were in five minutes ago. Let’s try something intelligent for a change, shall we?”

  Actually, Tom was pretty convinced he didn’t like Porter at all.

  “Fine,” he shot back, meeting his brother’s frigid glare. “You want to be in charge, you figure it all out. You let me know when you do.”

  “Right. How very predictable. You get us into this mess, then leave it to me to figure out how to get us out.”

  “What are you talking about? If I hadn’t—”

  “Stop it, both of you!” Willa cut in. “We don’t have time for this!”

  Their lifeboat bumped up against the slave ship’s hull. A rope ladder sailed over the rail and splashed into the water beside them, a silent invitation to climb aboard.

  For a moment, no one spoke. No one moved. Then Porter let out a deep breath. “I guess it’s a little too late to turn back now, isn’t it?”

  One of Professor Lost’s lectures echoed back to Tom. Courage did not mean being unafraid. Courage meant being terrified, but going forward anyway.

  Moving carefully so he wouldn’t tip their boat, he eased himself into a standing position and grabbed the rope ladder. He swung his legs onto the bottom rung.

  “Wait,” Porter said.

  Tom turned. “What?”

  Porter hesitated for a moment, a muscle working in his cheek. Finally he gave a curt nod and said, “Good luck.”

  Tom nodded back. He looked at Porter, then at Willa and Mudge. “We’ll be fine. All of us. We’ve been in worse spots before.”

  As he climbed up the rope ladder he wondered if that was true. There was no time to mull it over. The moment he reached the ship’s rail two burley crewmen grabbed his upper arms and dragged him off the ladder. They tossed him on the deck as though he weighed little more than a sack of potatoes. He stumbled backward but caught himself before he fell. Willa came next, then Mudge and Porter, who were all pitched aboard in the same rough way Tom had been.

  Tom had thought Umbrey’s crew was a rough-looking bunch. He revised that impression. They were as threatening as Santa’s elves compared to the men who surrounded him now.

  These were enormous, barrel-chested men, a good head-and-a-half taller than he was, with thighs as solid as the ship’s mast and bulging biceps that glistened with sweat. He immediately discarded any idiotic fantasy that he might be able to physically overpower the crew. Porter hesitated for a moment, chewing the inside of his jaw.

  He studied their faces as they patted him down—searching for weapons, he assumed—but saw nothing in their glacial stares that might suggest pity for his plight. In fact, just the opposite was true. They were entirely indifferent. The moment he stepped aboard he became cargo. Nothing more, nothing less.

  “Hey! That’s mine!”

  Tom’s gaze shot to Porter. His brother lunged for the rolled parchment that had been found within his coat. As one crewman opened the map of the Cursed Souls Sea and studied it curiously, another shoved Porter back, the crewman’s broad hand splayed open against Porter’s chest.

  “Give it here,” said a deep voice from behind them.

  A man strode into the fray. For a long moment, Tom could do nothing but look
at him, so striking was his appearance. Physically, he was as enormous as the rest of the crewmen, but that was where his resemblance to anyone else on board stopped.

  The man reminded Tom of an Arabian sultan. Rather than outfitting himself in working attire, he wore a pair of bright purple, pantaloon-style silk pants and pointy red slippers, with a tiny bell affixed to the toe of each slipper. An emerald green, fringed belt wrapped around his waist, into which he’d tucked an enormous curved blade. His chest was bare, showing a broad expanse of mahogany skin and bulging muscles. A thick gold chain draped around his neck, from which was suspended an ornate golden orb roughly half the size of Tom’s fist. On his shoulder rode a large, deep crimson bird. When it ruffled its feathers, it shimmered like a living flame.

  The man positioned himself in front of them with the map of the Cursed Souls Sea curled in his fist. He studied them with dark, cold eyes.

  “Listen well, for I will only say this once. You are now aboard the Crimson Belle. I am Salvador Zaputo, captain of this ship and ruler of Aquat. Disobey my orders, and you will die. Strike one of my crewmen, and you will die. Try to escape, and you will die. Is this clear?”

  Not a lot of room for interpretation there.

  Tom swallowed hard and nodded, as did Porter, Willa, and Mudge.

  Satisfied, Zaputo transferred his attention to the rolled parchment. “The Cursed Souls Sea,” he said, his dark gaze moving across the map. He scowled at Porter. “Why do you have this?”

  Porter froze. Tom could see his brother thinking, assessing their situation. Apparently determining to stick as close to the truth as possible, he said, “We need to travel there. There’s something we must find and return to Divino.”

  The man’s gaze narrowed. “Something? What do you search for?”

  Again, Porter hesitated. Again, he determined to stick to the truth. “A book.”

  For a long moment, Zaputo just stared at him. Then his lips split into a broad grin. He let out a shout of laughter, but his eyes were serious. “I hope it was a good book, for you and your friends have just traded your lives for it.”