Wake of the Bloody Angel el-4

by Alex Bledsoe

  “The point is, he could’ve done it at any time,” Jane added. “He just picked that day, and that guard. He never said why. So now no one ever sees him. They just send up his food.”

  “Then how do you know he’s even still up there?”

  “The basket always comes down empty.” He paused, stepped even closer to me, and said in a grim whisper, “Hawk’s been called many things over the years, but you know what captures him best, in my opinion? That he’s simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up. If you still wish to see him, then I won’t stop you.”

  I looked into the mist. I wondered if Hawk could hear us discussing his exploits. More important, how would I convince him to help me if he didn’t want to? What could I possibly offer him? I hadn’t put any thought into that.

  “You could keep a bigger basket around, you know,” I pointed out as I unbuckled my sword belt. “For special occasions.”

  “I’ll mention that at the next budget meeting,” the warden said. Louie returned with the requested men, all of whom looked at me with a mix of respect and suspicion. They were big men, with the scars of former battles on their bare arms and faces. I suspected they were also one moral slip away from becoming inmates themselves. Luckily, all I needed them to do was have firm grips and strong backs.

  “Yank the rope twice when you’re ready to come down,” the warden said.

  As I started to step into the basket, Jane said, “The knife in your boot, too.”

  I glared at her. That knife had saved my life more than any other weapon I owned. But as I withdrew it, I suddenly knew what I could offer Hawk that might make him cooperate.

  “Ow!” Jane cried. “What was that for?”

  “Something to keep my courage up,” I said. She took my knife and tucked it into her belt. I enjoyed her annoyed scowl.

  I put one foot in the basket, then the other. The ropes from each corner joined at a waist-high iron ring, and above that a single rope led to the top of the tower. I grabbed that rope for dear life, the guards pulled, and I began to rise.

  Immediately, I nearly fell back and the whole contraption spun as I fought to regain my balance. Jane laughed uproariously.

  I rose into the mist. Jane and the guards disappeared below me, and for a few moments I was isolated in the haze, nothing visible above or below. There was absolutely no wind, and the faceless side of the tower made it hard to mark my progress. Only the squeak of the pulley above me, growing louder, assured me I was rising.

  I passed a chink in the stonework where a huge black crow, the one I must’ve heard earlier, sat preening her feathers. She cawed once and regarded me with the same vague suspicion as the guard below. Even the wildlife knew I was doing something stupid.

  Eventually the pulley stopped, and I hung in place outside a wide rectangular window. Vertical bars blocked it, and a heavy fishing net hung just inside them, making a double barrier. The room was painted bright white, even down to the window bars. Nothing moved, and of course in a round room, there were no corners to hide in. The combined net and mist made it difficult to see the dim interior, but I stared until I made out a cot, a chamber pot, and something on the floor.

  I risked one hand on the bars to steady myself and called out, “Hey! Rody Hawk!”

  There was no reply.

  I pulled myself closer to the bars. The basket creaked and tilted as my weight shifted.

  The sun chose that moment to flicker through the mist and flood the cell with light. The shape on the floor instantly resolved itself.

  It was a body.

  The man was sprawled on his back. He was tall and slender, with long dark hair, a long beard, and a black eyepatch. He wore white trousers and a loose tunic, with no shoes.

  The sun glinted off his exposed eye. It was wide open, and stared at nothing. I’d seen enough lifeless eyes to recognize this one at once.

  “Son of a bitch,” I muttered. Rody Hawk was dead.

  Then a sepulchral voice commanded, “Don’t talk about my mother.”

  Chapter Six

  I was so startled that I lost my balance and pivoted wildly in the basket. I saw hazy sky, the barred window, then hazy sky again. I grabbed another bar and steadied myself. I looked around the room carefully, but saw no one except the corpse on the floor. There was also no place for anyone to hide. Where the hell had that voice come from?

  I risked a look up into the clearing sky. Was someone on the roof? Had it been a ghost? A god? At that moment, as the chill sweat ran down my back, anything seemed plausible.

  Then the corpse of Rody Hawk sat up and looked right at me with its dead, milk-white eye.

  Before I could do anything undignified like scream, the corpse shifted the eyepatch to the other side, uncovering a perfectly good eye and reseating the patch over the useless one. Then he yawned.

  I looked down. Thankfully, the mist was still thick enough to hide me from view. If Jane had seen this, I’d never have lived it down.

  Rody Hawk shifted into a cross-legged position and looked straight at me. Even with only one eye, it was like he saw right through to the back of my skull. The hairs on my neck tingled. He said, “I don’t know you.”

  “No,” I agreed, trying to steady the basket with my trembling legs.

  His voice had no identifiable accent. “You’re too scruffy to be a new guard. Warden Delvie is a stickler for appearance. And it’s not time for my lunch.” His eye narrowed and he cocked his head. Hawk was a small, neat man; even his untrimmed hair and beard looked tended. “Are you from the Society of Scribes, then? No, you’ve brought nothing with which to write. So who are you, my man?”

  “Eddie LaCrosse.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “No reason it should.”

  “So you must want something.”

  “I want a lot of things.” I managed to find a balanced position with one hand on a bar and the other gripping the rope for dear life. As long as I kept my knees locked, I stayed reasonably still. It did not, however, convey nonchalance. “Not falling out of this basket is at the top of the list.”

  Hawk smiled. He had small white teeth. “You’re not afraid of me.”

  “Sure I am. You’re Rody Hawk. I’d be stupid not to be afraid of you.”

  He arched his back and threaded his fingers together behind his head. “I apologize for the fright,” he said as he stretched. “Sleeping on that saggy cot has begun to trouble my back. I find alternating with the floor minimizes the discomfort. So what is it that brings you up this high?”

  “I’m looking for a pirate.”

  “You found one. The best, or worst, depending on your perspective. And if my current accommodations are any indication, perhaps I’m both.”

  “I’m looking for a particular pirate.”

  “I’ve been known to be very particular.”

  “Not to burst your bubble, but I’m looking for one named Black Edward Tew. An old girlfriend wants to know what happened to him.”

  “And why are you the one doing the looking?”

  “I’ve been hired to.”

  “A sword jockey?”

  I nodded.

  “He hasn’t been around for years. I’ve heard he was dead. Why does your client wish to find him now?”

  “She’s waited as long as she can.”

  “That’s a woman’s reason, all right.” Hawk closed his eye in apparent thought. At last he said, “I assume you know the story.”

  “Not really. I’ve just heard contradictory hints.”

  “And so you thought of me?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t want to mention Jane, or my bribe for him, unless I had to. “You’re the first guy lots of people think of when they hear the word pirate.”

  “How flattering. Well, I get so few visitors, I suppose it would be rude of me to send you packing. So you want the story of Black Edward Tew, eh? Here’s the tale as I know it. Edward Tew was a common sailor on merchant vessels, content with his lot, until one day he met
a girl in a tavern. I don’t know the particulars, and I’ve heard it told both ways: either she turned him pirate to keep her in jewels, or he turned pirate on his own to impress her. I suppose ultimately only the two of them know what really passed between them. At any rate, shortly thereafter, he signed onto a new ship, and while it was at sea, he led a mutiny. The captain was killed, the loyalists set adrift, and the ship rechristened the Bloody Angel. Always liked that name. And young Edward Tew became Black Edward, novice scourge of the waterways.”

  I was aware of Hawk’s horrible deeds, his fearsome reputation, and the fact that if he really applied himself, he could probably kill me before I saw it coming. Yet it was hard not to smile. He had an easygoing air that implied his prison stay was little more than a weekend inconvenience. Don’t forget what he is, LaCrosse, I told myself, or what he’s capable of.

  “Up to that point, it could have been the story of a thousand pirates, including myself,” Hawk continued. “But now comes the miraculous part. King Clovis of Witigan built a new castle far from his old one, and the quickest way to move his treasure to it was by sea. Only the good king outsmarted himself. He put together an intimidating fleet, all right: a dozen Witiganian warships guarded the single massive vessel on which everyone assumed he’d put his treasure. But in reality, he put it on a plain merchant ship leaving three days later, which is what Black Edward unknowingly captured as his first victim. Imagine his surprise when he saw the biggest single treasure in recorded history lying before him.”

  “I bet he smiled.”

  “I’d have pissed myself. So Edward immediately headed back for his woman. But a storm came up and sank his ship within sight of his destination. All hands lost, save one to tell the tale. As luck would have it, there’s a huge trench there, far too deep for any diver, and there lies Black Edward’s treasure, intact but untouchable. They say.”

  “In my experience, ‘they’ aren’t always that reliable. Convenient there was one survivor. Who was he?”

  “The quartermaster. A thoroughly unscrupulous worm of a man.”

  “You knew him?”

  “He tried to sign aboard the Poison, but he was more trouble than he was worth. He told me that the tale of Black Edward’s demise was a lie, that in fact the treasure was hidden on an island and the whole sinking of the Bloody Angel was a ruse.”

  “You didn’t believe him?”

  “I wouldn’t believe him if he said the sun rose in the east.”

  “So you never checked his story.”

  “No.”

  “What was his name?”

  He smiled. “You’re the kind of man I could drink with, Mr. LaCrosse. If they let me have drinks here, that is. You assume that since I’m sitting up here desperate for company, that I might break my oath to the Brotherhood of the Surf. Grand Article Number Four: ‘No brother will ever betray another to the forces of law and order.’ ”

  “No, I don’t think you’re desperate. And I’d never ask for information without offering to pay.”

  Now he laughed. “Mr. LaCrosse, look around. Even if you were planning to share Black Edward’s lost treasure, it would do me no good. So what can you possibly have to trade that I could use?”

  Before I could reply, Hawk looked up sharply. He said, “Wait a moment. You didn’t know that the Bloody Angel ’s quartermaster crossed my path, did you? No, you didn’t. So why did you come to me, Mr. LaCrosse? Not just because I’m old enough that I might remember.” I could almost hear the gears in his brain clicking as he puzzled it through. “You came to see me because…” His smile grew broad. “Jane. You’re here with Jane.”

  He stood, a liquid motion that seemed almost inhumanly swift. I jumped. He came toward me, and despite the net and bars between us, I said, “Like I said, Hawk, I’m scared of you. Stay right there or I’ll leave.”

  He stopped and held up his hands. “Of course. So is Jane down below? Hiding beneath the fog?”

  “Jane doesn’t do much hiding. She’s working for me on this, so I wanted to do the asking.”

  “And now you want the name. But there’s still the question about why I would do that. Money doesn’t do me much good here.” He scratched at his beard. “So what can you possibly have to trade to make me betray a fellow brother of the surf?”

  I reached into my pocket, careful to make no sudden moves; I didn’t want to startle Hawk, or send myself into another uncontrolled spin. I removed the thing I had claimed below, just before I handed over my boot knife.

  He made no move to take it, but his eye never left it. “Is that-?”

  “It is.”

  He extended his hand.

  I pulled mine back. “First the name.”

  He was silent for a long moment. I felt the first stirrings of wind, and the crow below me cawed as if to welcome it. “All right. His name was Marteen, I believe. Wendell Marteen. The last I heard of him, he tried to captain a ship of his own off the Fussell Islands, but he was considered bad luck for surviving the Bloody Angel ’s sinking.”

  The initials, at least, matched those of the sole survivor mentioned in the official Watchorn records. “Bad luck for surviving?”

  “Sailors are a superstitious lot, and their superstitions don’t always make sense. I assumed that was why he made up the tale that the Bloody Angel had been deliberately scuttled. Time, I think, has given the lie to that story. After all, if Black Edward were still alive, could he truly sit on a treasure of that magnitude for twenty years?”

  “Where can I find Marteen?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not in the loop, as they say. No doubt many things have changed since my incarceration. For all I know, he rots in one of the cells below us. That would be ironic, wouldn’t it? If that’s not the case, I would look in the Southern Ocean, where the pirates are common. He never struck me as the type to explore new horizons.”

  “All right. Thanks.” Then I held out the treasure that had made him cooperate: a lock of Jane Argo’s hair.

  The net caught his fingers as he slowly reached through the bars. He took the curl from my outstretched hand. He stepped back, carefully maneuvered the lock through the netting, and held it close to his good eye. “Well, I’ll be damned. Thank you, Mr. LaCrosse.”

  “My pleasure. And actually, I do have one more question.”

  He continued to gaze at the lock of hair. “And it is-?”

  “They say you killed a guard for no reason. Is that true?”

  He broke his attention away from the curl. “What? No, not at all. I had a reason.”

  “What was it?”

  “He talked about my mother.” Then he smiled.

  I had to fight surprisingly hard not to as well. “Any message for Jane?”

  He looked at me with that one crystal-clear eye, and for an instant I glimpsed the ice-cold consciousness behind it. I was really glad I didn’t have to face him across swords. I wondered how Jane had managed to do it.

  “Yes,” he said at last. “Tell her… ‘Someday.’ ”

  “ ‘Someday.’ A threat?”

  “A date.”

  I nodded, and yanked the rope twice. Hawk said, “Fair wind and following seas to you,” and turned away from the window before I lowered out of sight.

  Descending through the mist was like leaving some alien place where evil gods lived and returning to the normal world. I stepped out of the basket and leaned against the wall. My heart felt like it was searching for a space between my ribs big enough to jump through.

  Jane said, “So did he tell us-?”

  Without looking, I held up my hand. I wasn’t up to the challenge of Jane’s jocularity.

  “Sorry,” she said. “When you’re ready.”

  At last my brain stopped swimming, and the clammy feeling faded. I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, then faced everyone. The guards who’d been on basket-lifting detail didn’t meet my eyes. The warden’s expression was unreadable, but Jane gave me a surprisingly sympathetic smile. “You look like
you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “No,” I said, “just a monster.”

  “So did he help you?”

  “Yeah. We have a name. Wendell Marteen. Hawk says he was Edward Tew’s quartermaster, and survived the sinking of the Bloody Angel, ” I said. “If he’s still around-”

  “He is,” the warden said.

  “Don’t tell me he’s here,” I said.

  “No, but it’s funny you should mention that. He just returned to the active list about a year ago.”

  “Queen Remy has a list of wanted pirates,” Jane explained. “They consider it a badge of honor to be on it. Probably not the effect Remy had in mind.”

  “Probably not.” I turned to the warden. “You said he’s ‘just returned’?”

  “Yes. Nobody had heard a peep out of him for over a decade, and now suddenly he’s back. Took at least three cargo ships in the Southern Ocean off Fussell.”

  The watery feeling finally left my legs, and I could breathe normally. “Then I guess we’ll have to go find him, right?”

  “You’re the boss, boss,” Jane said.

  We thanked the warden, and I retrieved my sword and boot knife. We untied our horses outside the prison gate and remounted them. The sun and breeze had eliminated the mist, and I could see the white window bars at the top of Rody Hawk’s tower. I wondered if he was watching. Just the possibility made the hairs on my neck rise again.

  As we rode I said, “I want a drink. I don’t care what kind. Just as long as there’s a lot of it.”

  “Wow, I’ve never seen you like this,” Jane said. “Was it really that bad?”

  I desperately wanted to ask her how she’d managed to catch him, let alone take him alive. I suspected, though, that I didn’t really want to hear the answer. The way he’d taken the lock of her hair told me a lot of vague things I didn’t want made into specifics. “Nah,” I said with forced levity. “It was mainly the height.”

  “I’m a little pissed at you giving him a lock of my hair without asking me. I suppose you traded that for information?”