by Alex Bledsoe
“What about Black Edward?”
“I didn’t have time to ask.”
She nodded at my shoulder. “You’re cut.”
“I’ve had worse. I’ve had worse on that shoulder, even.”
“Uh-huh. Tomorrow I’m going to remind you that you said that.”
“Ahoy, below!” Estella cried. “She’s trimming sail!” The Bloody Angel didn’t look any different to me, but her words prompted the crew to leap into renewed action and Clift to order, “Right, lads! Run out the flying jib and cut loose the drag!”
He grinned devilishly at us. “I’d hang on to something if I were you, friends.”
Jane laughed, backed up to the mainsail shrouds, and threaded her arm through the netting. I did likewise.
There was a slight jolt as a flying jib billowed out onto the bowsprit. Since both the sail and the bowsprit were extra long, the ship strained even harder against the barrels holding it back. Then I heard a pair of sharp thwock s as someone cut through the rope that bound the barrels to the ship.
Freed of the drag, we surged forward. The change knocked me back against Jane. As she pushed me upright, she said, “Careful, or I’ll tell that redhead of yours that you were all over me.” When I got my balance and could again look ahead, the Bloody Angel was twice as close as she’d been before. We were slicing through the waves, and she didn’t seem to notice.
“Boarding party, ready weapons!” Greaves called. He handed me a sword. “Care to join us, Mr. LaCrosse?”
“I think I can clear my calendar,” I said. I looked back at Jane. “You’ll be okay?”
“Don’t make me smack you,” she fired back.
“Remember, take the captain alive!” Clift yelled to the massing fighters. “If you don’t, I’ll see to it no one gets a shred of prize money for this whole voyage. That’s no bilgewater, lads, see if I don’t!”
It seemed to take no time for the Red Cow to overtake the Bloody Angel. Marteen’s ship frantically tried to get back under way, but the crew wasn’t nearly so sharp or well-trained as ours, and so it became a confused mess of people running through the riggings and scuttling up and down shrouds. The Cow ’s ballistae had been returned to their slots on deck, and we fired grapples as we slowed and pulled alongside. The crews wound the lines, and once again our hulls crunched together. We vaulted the rail and started hacking.
This time it was a rout. Marteen’s crew was panicked, terrified, and exhausted. They barely put up a fight despite his exhortations and threats from the quarterdeck. They no longer seemed like pirates, but tired old men and women exhausted by the day’s battle. If this was the limit of their endurance, it explained why he needed his elaborate ghostship trap.
At last, Marteen gave up and ducked down the passageway toward his cabin. I pursued him, kicked in the door, and found him about to crawl out the stern window, although where he thought he’d go from there, I couldn’t imagine. I leveled my sword at him despite my hurt shoulder and said, “Right there, Marteen. Your crew is worn out and needs a nap. You got nowhere to go.”
He froze, halfway in and out. He looked at the sea below, where some of his men already floated facedown, then back at me. The fight continued on deck, but it was all one-sided and he knew it.
“You’ll get more mercy from me than from the sharks,” I said. “But not if you keep me waiting.”
He pulled in his leg, tossed his sword on the floor at my feet, and said, “I saw you go over the side back there. How did you survive?”
“I can fly. Now, put your hands on your head and sit down.”
He did so, in the chair behind the captain’s desk. I knew that, like me, he probably had a weapon or two hidden on him, but at the moment they did him no good. We could search him more thoroughly once we had him bound and secured on the Cow.
“So Edward Tew’s Bloody Angel didn’t sink after all,” I said.
He laughed. The genuine kind, both mocking and amused. “I didn’t think you had the look of the sea about you, and now I know it for sure. Do you not think more than one ship might bear the same name? Especially if that name is so well known, men still tremble at its mention?”
“Then you were the lone survivor of the original Bloody Angel ’s sinking.”
Again, he threw back his head and laughed.
Through clenched teeth, I said, “I’m trying to find Black Edward for an old girlfriend. She just wants to know what really happened to him. If he’s dead, just tell me.”
Before he could answer, if he was even going to, Clift and three more sailors burst breathlessly through the door. One of them was Duncan Tew, bedraggled but apparently unhurt. They stopped when they saw me and Marteen. Clift put away his sword, smiled, and said, “So this is the fool who thought he could outrun the Red Cow. ”
“I could’ve if you’d played fair,” Marteen said.
“To play fair with your crew, I’d have to wait until I was thirty years older,” Clift said, then saw something. “Now, what in the wide ocean do you need all these for?”
I followed his gaze. Along the wall rose a waist-high stack of small crates and boxes, all of varying sizes but unmistakably of the same purpose: medical kits stolen from the various ghost ships.
“Those?” Marteen sneered. “We fuck so many women, we’re worried our dicks will fall off.”
“If your bunch can get two hard-ons among the lot of them, I’d be surprised,” Clift said. The noise of battle on deck had faded to random sword clashes and groans. “Gentleman, please thoroughly bind Captain Marteen and make sure he doesn’t have anything sharp and nasty hidden about his person. Then take him to my dayroom and secure him to something solid. We’ll be along to question him shortly.”
Duncan and the other two sailors moved to obey. Marteen put up no resistance, but he said, “I don’t care what you do to me, I’ll never give up Black Edward’s treasure. You’re wasting your time and mine.”
“Perhaps my ship’s surgeon just intends to use you for dissection,” Clift said. “Ponder on that.” Marteen was frog-marched out of his cabin. Clift turned to me and said quietly, “Again with the treasure you keep denying you’re after.”
I sighed. I was suddenly so tired, I didn’t care if he believed me or not. “Look, if you want my help with the interrogation, we better get to it before I pass out.”
“Oh, I think I’ll be wanting to keep an even closer eye on you,” he said, then turned and strode from the cabin. It took all my strength to follow.
Chapter Twenty-four
I supervised as Marteen was tied to a chair in Clift’s dayroom. The chair wasn’t nailed down, so strategic knockovers were an option. He said nothing, staring into space as if we didn’t exist.
Up close, he was downright repulsive. He had a sore-scarred nose and bald ringed patches in his hair from parasites. He smelled like a chamber pot, and I wondered if he’d deliberately wet himself. Beneath his red velvet coat, his clothes were tattered and often badly repaired. The sole of one boot revealed his toes through a split. He was older than me, probably close to fifty, but not so old as some of his crew. Still, even if we hadn’t caught him, it seemed unlikely he’d make it to sixty in this level of decrepitude.
“Guess piracy isn’t as lucrative as it was in our day,” one of his jailers taunted. Marteen did not react.
When Marteen was secured, Duncan Tew put a cloth hood over the pirate’s head. It wasn’t airtight, but it certainly wasn’t comfortable. I assigned one sailor to guard him, but made him promise to do so in absolute silence.
I retrieved a clean tunic from my cabin, where Suhonen still slept. My current shirt had grown stiff with dried blood and sweat, though thankfully most of the former was not my own. I almost made it on deck before Skurnick accosted me. Fifteen men rested in their hammocks, bandaged and stitched. Most were asleep, but a couple moaned in pain, and one whimpered for his mother. I spotted Dorsal gently touching an unconscious man’s dangling hand. He caught my eye and looked at me with too
much sadness for such a young boy. I wondered how many friends he’d lost in his brief life. The doctor said, “Let me take a look at that shoulder.”
“It’s nothing.”
“I saw you fighting left-handed, so it must be something.”
“I was making it a fair fight.”
“Uh-huh. Off with your shirt.”
The difficulty of obeying that command convinced me that Skurnick might be right. He efficiently cleaned, sewed, and dressed the three-inch cut with a surprisingly light touch that did absolutely nothing to keep the needle from stinging like a bastard. When he was done, he gave me a sling to wear so I wouldn’t accidentally rip open the wound.
“How long until I can use my arm again?” I asked.
“Try moving it around in a couple of days. If it starts bleeding, then it’s too soon.”
I went on deck and found it was sunset. The Bloody Angel ’s deck was empty save for three of our men readying it for the trip to Blefuscola. Hopefully the capture of that ship, as well as the account of its defeat at our hands, would lift the self- imposed embargo cluttering the harbor.
Clift and Jane stood over a body on deck. When I got close, I saw it was Quartermaster Seaton. He was wounded in three visible places; the deep furrow bisecting his skull looked to have been the fatal blow.
“What happened?” I said.
“He got killed,” Clift said simply. “He knew the risks when he volunteered.”
“Yeah, why did he do that?”
Clift shook his head. “He was a good quartermaster, for sure. He sailed with me for ten years. I think he found the life of a pirate hunter too tedious. You saw that play he wrote about Black Edward? I believe deep down that’s the kind of end he secretly wanted, but that he could never get on this side of the law.”
“That’s a shame.”
Clift nodded. “He had a job. He did it the best he could. He chose the method of his passing.”
It struck me that such an epitaph would suit me as well. I’d have to remember to write it down and give it to Liz.
Clift draped a large piece of sailcloth over the body. He said, “Sew him up, gentlemen,” and two sailors who specialized in mending sails bent down to enclose Seaton in his burial shroud. The captain turned to me and said, “How’s our prisoner?”
“Stewing in his own juices. And I mean that literally.”
“Well, he’ll not smell any better if we wait,” Clift said. “Mr. Greaves, continue repairs and make sure we haven’t left any of our wounded on the Angel. ”
“When they’re wounded and unconscious, pirates and hunters tend to look a lot alike,” Jane explained.
“And bring me every scrap of paper from the captain’s cabin-logbooks, maps, notes, everything,” Clift added.
“Aye, Captain,” Greaves said, and rushed off to his duties.
“Mr. Dancer!” Clift called, and the gunnery master appeared before him. “We’ll be sinking that ship with the monster beneath it. Ready your men to fire flaming bolts.”
“Aye, sir,” Dancer acknowledged.
We followed Clift down into the hold. He paused to speak to the wounded who were conscious, thanking them for their work and promising they’d be compensated for any lost extremities. Then we stopped to draw a bucket from the piss barrel. It said something that the odor of blood, death, and sweat meant the smell from the bucket didn’t bother me at all.
Clift walked into the dayroom and threw the bucket’s contents into Marteen’s covered face. He yelled, sputtered, and madly tossed his head to dislodge the clinging wet burlap.
Clift yanked off the hood. Marteen spit, looked around, and realized his situation. His brow knitted and he fell silent.
“You’re a prisoner of Captain Dylan Clift, representative of the Anti-Freebootery Guild,” the captain said. “You and your crew will be taken to Shawano for trial and hanging. Do you understand this?”
“What’s the point of the trial if you already know the verdict?” Marteen snarled. “Does that help your head rest better on your soft lace pillow?”
“You have one chance to avoid that fate,” Clift continued. “I might intercede and recommend a life sentence in the Mosinee Prison if you help out my friend here.”
“That’s some trade,” Marteen sneered. “Death either way, one fast and one slow. Why don’t you pick for me so I’ll be surprised?”
Jane, who had remained by the door, now stepped forward. “Do you know who I am, Marteen?”
“Some whore passed around by these scurvy trolls?” he said, and smacked his lips at her. “You been spreading your legs so much, you need that cane to walk with ’em closed, eh? They must like ’em tall on the Cow. Do you diaper them like little babies, too? I’ve known some men who paid well for that.”
“My name is Jane Argo.”
Marteen’s smile, and attitude, faded at once. Even his face turned pale beneath his tan. “Captain Argo,” he whispered. “I heard you left the sea.”
She backhanded him so hard, I worried she’d broken his neck. Her rings left cuts along his jaw. He sat there for a moment, recovering, and when he turned to us again, his teeth were coated with blood from his ruptured lips.
“As you can see, I’m back on the waves,” Jane said. “Now, Captain Clift has made you a generous offer. I’m here to sweeten it. If you answer my friend’s questions, I won’t spend ten minutes alone with you.” She returned his blown kiss.
He spit blood, but was careful not to get any of it on Jane. Then he looked at me. “Since you haven’t done or said anything, I assume you’re the friend with the questions.”
I nodded. “It’s the same one I asked you earlier. What happened to Edward Tew?”
He frowned in apparent concentration. “Tew?”
“Yes.”
Then he grinned. “Why, one and one equals two.”
His laughter rang out in the little room. When he finished, I said, “Let’s try again. What happened to Edward Tew?”
“I’d sooner hang than give up my comrades,” he hissed. To Clift, he said, “How does it feel to betray your friends and your oaths, joining up with Queen Remy against your brothers?” He looked at Jane. “And you? Are you his whore now? Queen Remy know she’s supporting a floating brothel?”
Jane smiled. If Marteen had any sense at all, he would’ve started begging for mercy right then, but he didn’t. She said, “Marteen, I’ve got a hole in my leg thanks to your little pet, and it pisses me off. Eddie and Dylan here have this thing, what’s it called? Oh, yeah. A conscience. They have one of those. I don’t.” And with that, she drew a dagger and stabbed it into Marteen’s left thigh.
His howl could’ve summoned wolves, had we been on dry land. It grew even louder when Jane pulled the dagger out, wiped it on Marteen’s shirt and put it back in her belt. I winced in sympathy; even Clift seemed a little startled. Blood surged up from the wound.
“Fuck!” Marteen said, his voice raw.
“You’ve got a lot of other things we can stab,” I pointed out. “Now, what happened to Edward Tew?”
Marteen’s eyes dripped tears of pain, but he said, “You might as well kill me. I’m not going to tell you anything, and there’s nothing you can do to make me. Keep torturing me if you think you have to, but you’ll just be breaking a sweat for nothing. I’m not afraid to sail with the White Captain off the edge of the world. Once I’m dead, I’ll be far beyond your grasp.”
I’d seen men scared of torture try to bluff their way through before, but there was something calm in Marteen when he said this that made me believe him. As a last resort, I said, “Would it help if I said please?”
Marteen looked up at me in astonishment, then began to laugh.
I nodded toward the door. It was time to regroup.
Clift put the wet burlap sack over Marteen’s laughing face and cinched it tight around his neck. Blood from his thigh wound had soaked his pants and started pooling at his feet. Clift brought a belt from his cabin and tied it tight
around Marteen’s leg.
We stepped out into the hall and closed the door. I spoke softly so Marteen couldn’t overhear. “Any other ideas?”
“I haven’t even gotten warmed up on him yet,” Jane said. “Wait until that thigh starts throbbing like mine did.”
“I could threaten to hang him right here, before we even get back to Shawano,” Clift said. “We could string up a couple of his dead shipmates, make it look like we’d executed them.”
“That’s an old one, he’d never fall for that,” Jane said. “Now, some pliers to his testicles-”
“If we hurt him too much, he’ll just tell us what we want to hear,” I pointed out. “He’s our only source. If we can’t get real information out of him, we’re at a dead end. Or at least I am.”
I looked around in the shadowy corners to make sure Dorsal wasn’t lurking there. I didn’t want him to overhear anything too brutal.
“What’re you looking for?” Jane asked.
“Making sure the cabin boy’s not here.”
Clift asked, “What cabin boy?”
“Dorsal. You know. His real name’s Finn.”
In utter disbelief, Clift whispered, “You’ve seen Dorsal Finn?”
“Yeah. Why?”
Even Jane asked, “Dylan, what’s wrong?”
Clift could barely speak. “Dorsal Finn died of a fever over a year ago. I was holding his hand when he passed. We buried him at sea five hundred miles from here.”
And despite the heat of the tropical night and the stuffy warmth of the ship’s hold, a shiver went through me.
Chapter Twenty-five
It was near midnight. I lay on Jane’s bunk and stared at the wooden ceiling. The swaying lamp made shadows seem to crawl across the grain. After three days of enforced rest, Jane was far too fidgety to sleep anytime soon, so she was on deck with Clift. With Suhonen still slumbering away in my cabin, hers was the only refuge I had. And I needed it.
We’d ignored Marteen since our earlier session. He sat in the chair in the captain’s cabin, the wet bag still over his head, his injured leg still untended. A guard stood, or rather sat and slept, outside the door. I didn’t blame him; it had been a hell of a day.