Wake of the Bloody Angel el-4

by Alex Bledsoe

  Clift was taller than Jane, slender, and deeply tanned, with a thin mustache along his upper lip. He was as likely to leap into the crow’s nest himself as send one of the crew to do it, and much like Jane, he tended to laugh a lot. He knew every crewman’s name, usually his background, and instinctively handled them in the most efficient way, goading with some, no-nonsense with others. He was the reason we-well, really Jane-had chosen the Red Cow. He’d served as Jane’s quartermaster during her pirate days, and followed her into pirate hunting. Several of the crew had also put in time under “Cap’n Jane” on both sides of the law. The rest had heard enough about her to be properly respectful, and they treated me well because I was with her. Jane’s exaggerated hints about my past helped, too.

  “Interesting to see the two of them together again,” Seaton said.

  “Did you serve under Jane?”

  He nodded. “Aye, on her last two voyages.”

  “When she captured Rody Hawk?”

  Seaton’s expression hardened. “We don’t mention that name, Mr. LaCrosse. He’s bad luck. And no, that was before my time. In fact, no one who was on that voyage, except Cap’n Clift, still follows the sea.”

  “My apologies,” I said. At least I wasn’t the only one leery of saying Hawk’s name aloud. “Lots of new rules to remember.”

  He smiled. “Aye, it’s true. But as the man who’s paying our way, I suppose you can follow or not any rules you please.”

  “I’ll still try to be less disruptive.”

  Seaton saluted me. “Aye, sir, it’d be much appreciated.”

  The conversation had caused a lot of my anger to burn away, but it grew hot again when I heard Jane’s laugh on the wind. I went along the rail past the windlass and joined the two captains at the bowsprit.

  Clift turned to greet me. “Good morning, Mr. LaCrosse,” he said. His dark tan made his white teeth startling.

  “Morning, Captain Clift. Any imminent action?”

  “Not yet. Possibly tomorrow at the earliest. We’re still not in the real shipping lanes, so unless we come across a pirate skulking out of his hiding place, we have the luxury of peace and quiet.”

  “I guess I can stand the wait.”

  “You seem to be able to stand anything that’s necessary, Mr. LaCrosse.”

  “I imagine my job is kind of like yours. Days of boredom punctuated by moments of total panic.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “That’s it exactly.”

  I turned to Jane. Smiling, I said, “May I speak with you for a moment? In private?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Excuse us, Dylan.”

  “Certainly,” Clift said. And once again, I caught the moment that I’d seen now at least once a day since we left port. Clift smiled at Jane, then looked quickly away. He seemed to be changing clothes internally, putting on a different face for Jane than for everyone else. The “Jane face” wasn’t that different from his regular demeanor, and if I hadn’t caught on to the moment he switched, I might never have noticed. I had asked neither of them about it, because I could interpret it for myself: Captain Clift had it bad for ex-Captain Argo.

  I pulled Jane across the deck to the starboard bow rail. She twisted out of my grip and said, “Hey, what’s the matter with you?”

  I said quietly, “It took me a while, but I finally realized you lied to me.”

  She looked outraged. “The hell I did.”

  “You knew exactly who Black Edward Tew was the first time I mentioned his name.”

  She started to protest some more, but bit it back. She knew I had her.

  “When I asked you if you’d heard of him, you deliberately said something like, ‘There’s a lot of pirates in the world,’ which is not an answer. You were hiding that you knew about him without having to actually lie about it. And it was only after that that you started asking about his treasure. I thought you were just joking, but you knew there might be a treasure involved. At that point, even I didn’t know that.”

  She said nothing.

  “Now tell me why you did it,” I finished.

  She started to speak, then stopped, then looked out at the water. I waited. A few sailors passed us, regarded us oddly, but said nothing.

  At last Jane said softly, “Okay, you got me. I knew about Edward Tew. I should’ve told you. But I didn’t lie to you.”

  “Don’t split hairs with me. Tell me why.”

  “Why do you think? Miles. That stupid son of a bitch. Ever since I’ve known him, he’s been after the big score. I thought about telling you, but I know how good you are at this kind of thing, Eddie; if you started looking from scratch, without any hints from me, you might turn up a clue everyone else missed, and we might actually find Black Edward’s treasure. Even if I only got a cut of it, it’d be a fortune. Maybe then…”

  She trailed off and looked away, but I heard the words anyway. Maybe then Miles will stop gambling and whoring.

  “I’m not interested in Black Edward’s treasure, Jane. I’m really not.”

  “I know that. I didn’t believe it at first, but I do now.” She looked contritely down, and then slowly her smile returned and she cut her eyes up at me. “Still, if we happen to, you know, stumble across it…”

  I threw up my hands. “If we come across it, I don’t care who takes it. To be honest with you, the last thing I want is a pile of ill-gotten blood money.”

  She grinned knowingly. “You’re piling it on thick, Eddie. I’m starting to not believe you again.”

  I poked her in the hollow of her throat. “This is your warning shot, Jane. If you lie to me again-and just so we’re clear, just like I told Angelina, keeping things from me counts as lying-I’m leaving you at the next port we come to.”

  “Okay,” she said seriously. “I’m sorry, Eddie. I should’ve trusted you.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “But I didn’t lie to you. I wouldn’t.” She poked me in the chest. “And you know damn well if you’d been really paying attention, you’d have caught me. So it’s really your fault for being sloppy.”

  She said this playfully, but the seriousness beneath it was clear. And damn it, she was right. She smiled, which was bearable; if she’d laughed, we might’ve fought right there on the deck. But she didn’t.

  I turned and walked away. As I did, I spotted Clift watching with the same mixture of curiosity and faint jealousy I’d noticed before.

  The Red Cow was not a big ship to begin with. I wondered just how much smaller it would get before this trip was over.

  Chapter Nine

  The lookout, a gangly girl named Estella who stood on the foremast crosstree, called, “Sail ho! Right ahead.”

  It was the first change in routine since we left port, and I expected a major reaction. What I got was a collective, ship- wide shrug. The crew did not rush; they sauntered into action. Half the men continued to lounge around the deck, while the other half waited to see if this was anything more than a passing vessel minding its own business.

  You couldn’t miss one change, though. Suhonen emerged from the hold, clad only in knee-length pants and a sword belt holding a cutlass. Around his thick neck stretched a tattooed line of dancing human skeletons. Men scrambled to get out of his way as he went to the rail and stood casually, as if waiting for a carriage. But his eyes never left the horizon directly ahead, where the mysterious ship now appeared as an unmistakable silhouette.

  Clift yelled to a man halfway up the mainmast shrouds. “Greaves, you old seagull, what do you see from your perch up there?”

  Greaves, the sailing master, was a solid man in every sense: thickly muscled, unflappable, and with a manner that ensured he never had to give an order twice. He kept a short unlit pipe perpetually clamped between his teeth. “It appears t’be a Langlade merchant vessel,” he said. “But she’s flying the flags in the right order.”

  Murmurs traveled through the crew around me. More men stopped what they were doing and came to the rails to watch. Clift
said, “Verify that with the lookout.”

  “Verify!” Greaves called up.

  “Confirmin’ the mate’s statement!” Estella called down. Jane and I joined Clift at the port bow. The ship ahead flew several flags and banners, so I wasn’t sure which ones conveyed the information they all recognized.

  “This is damned peculiar,” Clift said, wiping sweat from his chin. “A Langlade merchant ship.”

  “Maybe she was taken before the pirates could refurbish her,” Jane said. To me she added, “Pirates don’t build their own ships, they just take existing ones and modify them. Usually they pick something with a little more muscle, though. A Langlade merchant ship is just a raft with ambition.”

  “Why would a Langlade merchant ship be flying the pirate- hunter safety signals, then?” I asked. “For that matter, what exactly are the pirate-hunter safety signals?”

  “It’s a way to let other pirate hunters know a ship has already been taken,” Clift said. “There’s a code in the way the flags are flown, which masts they’re attached to, which ones are higher or lower. Otherwise, we might start fighting before either side recognized the other.”

  “Could it be a trick to lure us in close?” I asked. I felt tingles of excitement at the thought of a break in the monotony, even if that break might mean bloodshed.

  “Maybe,” Clift said thoughtfully. “If someone bought the code, which gets changed every six months, and used it correctly. It’s not a simple thing. Still, that doesn’t explain why a ship like that would be sailing under such a banner.” He looked back at the quartermaster and called, “Call the watch below, Mr. Seaton. The men can use the practice.”

  “Aye, Cap’n,” he said, then repeated the order in a roar that rippled the canvas.

  Turns out “call the watch below” meant, essentially, what we were already doing: watching as the new ship grew closer. Jane’s description of it was accurate. It had a single mast, a low waterline, and a deck that was flush from bow to stern. The big, crude tiller seemed wholly inadequate to open ocean travel. In the middle of the deck, just forward of the lone mast, stood a pyramid of wooden crates held in place by a net and ropes.

  There seemed to be about half a dozen men aboard her, no more frantic than our own. At last Greaves bellowed, “That’s Fernelli, first mate on the Randagore. They’re for real.”

  “The Randagore is another pirate hunter,” Jane explained to me.

  “So everything makes sense now?”

  “Fuck no. Not a lick.”

  The man Greaves had indicated waved from the other ship’s deck. “Hello, Red Cow! Do I smell rum from your ship?”

  “You smell it from your own foul breath!” Clift yelled back good- naturedly. “But come aboard anyway!”

  The ships pulled abreast, and a boat lowered from the other ship. A few minutes later, Fernelli, bald and with a bushy beard decorated with ribbons and little bells, leaped aboard the Red Cow. His two oarsmen followed with much less flair.

  He gave Clift a hearty kiss on each cheek, then froze when he saw Jane. “By the giant stingrays of Bola Bola, it’s Jane Argo!” he cried. He wrapped her in a hug and spun her around as if she weighed nothing. Jane laughed with delight and, when he put her down, kissed him on the mouth.

  “Fernelli, I’m glad to see you saw the light and joined the right side,” she said.

  “The light had nothing to do with it. I got tired of lice in my beard and no gold in my pocket. At my age, regular wages plus bonuses sounds mighty good.” To Clift, he added, “What are you doing in the Randagore ’s part of the ocean? She’s only a day behind us. Did they redraw the patrol districts again?”

  “We’re chartered,” Clift said.

  Fernelli’s eyebrows rose. “A private charter? You got permission for that?”

  “Of course not. It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission,” Clift said with a grin. “We’re looking for Black Edward Tew’s old quartermaster.”

  “Marteen?”

  “Aye. He’s back on the account.”

  “So I’ve heard.” He looked at Jane. “You back hopping waves as well?”

  She shook her head and nodded at me. “I’m hired muscle. He’s the gold.”

  Fernelli gave me a once-over. “And why would a land- bound gentleman such as yourself be wanting to find Wendell Marteen?”

  “I just want to talk to him,” I said.

  “About Black Edward’s lost treasure?”

  “Just about Black Edward.”

  “Right,” he said with a knowing wink. “Find the man, find the money. I never put no stock in the tales of his sinking, either. Always assumed he changed his name and retired, like old Captain Lowther. They hung him when he was eighty- five, did you know that? After forty years as a law-abiding citizen. All because of a few massacres when he was a young man. I guess Marteen didn’t want to sit around waiting for the hangman to catch up to him.”

  “I’ll ask him when I see him,” I said noncommittally.

  “Well, you should also ask him if he knows anything about these damned ghost ships, because no one else does.”

  “Ghost ships?” Clift repeated.

  Fernelli jerked his thumb at the ship he’d just left. “Found this one five days ago. Still under full sail, just like you saw her now. A few odds and ends gone, but most everything still there. Certainly all the cargo crates are still full. No sign of anyone aboard her, or where they might’ve gone. And you can save your lips the effort, we’ve looked into every possibility, and there’s nothing. It’s like they just vanished right off the ship in the middle of whatever they were doing.”

  I looked at Jane. “Does that happen a lot?”

  “No. I mean, sometimes, sure, but usually if you look hard enough, there’s an explanation.”

  “You said ‘ships,’ ” I pointed out to Fernelli. “Plural.”

  Fernelli scowled. “What’s that word mean?”

  “More than one,” Jane said.

  “Oh, aye, this is the fourth one I know of. The Vile Howl found one; the Sea Dagger found two. Might be more. They’re all locked up in Blefuscola, which is where we’re heading with this beauty. It’s not a prize if it ain’t officially tallied, now, is it?”

  Clift noticed that the crew were all looking at us, hanging on Fernelli’s every word. Their growing apprehension at this talk of “ghost ships” was palpable. I recalled Rody Hawk’s comment about their superstitious nature and wondered if Hawk had gained such a fearsome reputation in part because he’d learned to exploit this gullibility. He lost a lot of his mystique with that realization.

  “Gentlemen,” Clift said, “I think we should adjourn to my cabin and discuss this in private.” More loudly he added, “Because we wouldn’t any gossip to get started before we knew any of the facts, would we? That would make us a bunch of cowardly harbor hogs, and we sure ain’t that, are we, lads?”

  The crew’s halfhearted murmurs of assent were not reassuring.

  “Not sure I’d trust Fernelli’s word on this,” a new voice boomed.

  Suhonen strode through the crew, which moved aside quickly. His bare chest gleamed with sweat, and he looked down on the little bald man with contempt. Suddenly we could hear the creaking of the yardarms above us.

  Fernelli wasn’t intimidated. “Aye, if it ain’t the walking sword arm. Still wearing short pants, I see.”

  “And you’re still blaming everyone else for your own misdeeds. Ghosts now, is it?”

  “I’ve told the plain truth, you festering tar stain. And anything I did before was wiped clean by my pardon. Ain’t that right, Captain Clift?”

  “That’s the law,” Clift agreed neutrally.

  “And what about you, you overgrown canvas crab?” Fernelli stepped right up to Suhonen as if he might strike him. “You were the parson’s daughter, I assume? So sweet, bees looked for pollen in your arse?”

  “What I did, I did looking right at them,” Suhonen said. “No man had to fear turning his back on me.
”

  Finally Clift stepped in. “Stand down, sailors. We have a common enemy out hiding in the wave troughs, not striding the decks beside us. Come on, Fernelli.” He gestured toward the hatch. Fernelli and Suhonen kept their gazes locked for a moment longer; then the smaller man walked past Clift and took the steps down into the darkness, his back straight and shoulders back. As we followed, Clift said, “They’re cousins. Sometimes it’s a small ocean.”

  We followed Clift down the steps into the hold. As we did, Dorsal the cabin boy jumped aside to let us pass. I winked at him and he grinned shyly back at me, hands clasped behind him in a childish approximation of military at-ease. The others paid him no mind.

  Below the deck, everyone was on their feet, and while they didn’t salute the way a naval crew would, there was a sense of respect in their casual nods toward Clift. With ex-pirates, I suppose you take what you get. We went through the crew space into the captain’s dayroom, where he closed the door. With his open cabin to port, there was a nice cross breeze through the portholes. RHIP was all a matter of what you compared it to.

  In the cabin we sat on the benches on either side of the short table. Clift retrieved a jug and a handful of heavy wooden tankards, the kind that wouldn’t slide at the slightest swell or shatter if they hit the floor. He poured us each a large portion, then put the jug back in its padded cloth box.

  He raised his tankard. “To justice on the high seas,” he said, the official motto of the Anti-Freebootery Guild. We touched our drinks together and repeated the phrase. Clift said, “All right, Fernelli, tell me more about these abandoned ships.”

  “I only know firsthand about the one over there,” he said. “We found her adrift off Swedborg Reef, near the great trench where the ocean is fathomless.”

  “Who is she?” Jane asked.

  “The Mellow Wine, a cargo ship out of Langlade.”

  “What’s her cargo?” I asked.

  Fernelli looked at Clift, who nodded that it was okay to answer me. Fernelli said, “Bolts of cloth, mostly. Some personal items being shipped. Nothing easily sold.”