by Rob May
Lula hadn’t seen her mother in five years. She was a wealthy merchant who travelled the world, and had little time for the children she left with their fathers in her numerous ports of call. But on that last visit, she had given Lula a triangular beaver-fur hat, and Lula was wearing it now. She wanted to be sure her mother recognised her daughter when she surprised her at the top of the mountain.
The summit of the Purple Mountain wasn’t a sharp peak, but rather an uneven plateau of fern-covered gullies. The view from the edge was incredible: Lula could see all the way to Port Black, and she could even pick out the half-built fort out on its island in the bay. Further along the coast she could also see the seashell quarries and bare patches of tree stumps, where the island’s natural resources had been plundered by its Republic overlords.
But what did a ten-year-old care about such things? Right now, all Lula thought about was the thrill of stalking her mother. Perhaps her mother would come and visit more often if Lula impressed her today. Or maybe she’d even take Lula away to sea with her, and teach her how to be merchant, and get rich travelling the world buying and selling exotic goods.
Lula turned into the interior of the summit. The trail was easy to follow; at this altitude it was cool and humid, and there were damp footprints in the lush grass. It wasn’t long before Lula was creeping through the ferns towards the sound of voices in a secluded grove. Over the babble of the voices was another sound: squelch, slap, squelch, slap …
Lula crept as close as she dared. Peering out from between the fronds, she could see her mother and the other man (her mother’s first mate, she reckoned) standing around a hole in the ground. Lula’s friend Otis was waist deep in the hole, digging out clods of dark, fertile earth with a shovel.
When he was done and had climbed out, Lula’s mother and her mate dragged the chest to the lip of the hole, and shoved it in.
They were burying Inzek treasure! This was bad news. If the Islanders ever found any Inzek gold, they were sure to donate it to the temples of Vuda. To secretly bury it was sure to incur the god’s wrath.
But if her mother’s actions so far didn’t completely shock or surprise Lula, then what happened next turned her world completely upside down …
Lula’s mother stepped towards Otis as if to thank him, but her hand suddenly flicked upwards, and there was a bright flash of metal. Otis was left standing there, a vivid red horizontal line drawn across his throat. As he seemed to struggle for some words, the other man, the first mate, started cursing at Lula’s mother. The tall blond woman put her hand on the man’s shoulder to calm him, but then he dropped to his knees clutching his stomach as if taken by some sudden illness. Lula’s mother helped Otis gently down into the pit he had just dug, and then she gave her first mate a friendly pat on the back, sending him tipping forward to join the village boy.
It was only when her mother took up the spade and started to shovel earth back over the bodies, that the full realisation of what had just happened hit Lula, and she gasped out loud.
Her mother was with her in an instant, holding her close and whispering platitudes, explanations and soft words of affection. ‘I had to do it, Lula darling, don’t you see? Or they would have done the same to me. Gold turns people against each other. That’s its curse.’ Lula was sobbing, and her mother’s patience was thin; the tenderness didn’t last long. ‘If I could only give you one piece of advice, Lula,’ she said in a serious tone, ‘then it would be this: always look out for yourself, and never mind anybody else.’
She gripped Lula’s head in her hands and looked her daughter in the eye. ‘Now run back home,’ she said with a twisted attempt at a smile, ‘before I have to kill you, too.’
* * *
Lula never saw her mother again after that day. A few years later, Analine Marley was captured at sea by General Cassava of the Republic fleet. She was hung as a pirate from the yardarm of her own ship. Lula learned her lesson, though; she never told anyone else about the hidden gold.
And six years later, when village life was closing in on her and threatening to bind her to the slopes of the Purple Mountain for the rest of her life, the advice came in useful. To the surprise of her father, stepmother and stepbrothers, Lula Pearl somehow found the means to buy, equip and crew a small ship. Then she sailed away from her old life and never looked back.
III.ii
Marooned
Lula squinted in the harsh sunlight. She could see a blob of green floating in front of the sun, underlined by a white stripe and surrounded by blue sea and sky. A small island! She looked up: the sky was clear and cloudless. She looked down: the sea was clear and teeming with shiny mackerel. She turned around …
Amaro Azul was standing at the other end of the plank, toting one of his pistols. The rest of his crew were gathered around him, enjoying the spectacle.
‘Go on, girl,’ Azul said. ‘One more step!’
Lula could barely feel her limbs, let alone move them. She had spent the last three days chained to Azul’s bed. Fortunately, the captain himself had spent the nights sleeping in the forecastle with his crew. But during the day he had sat at his desk and, while Lula squirmed in frustration, her muscles cramping in agony, he had chatted away as he worked on his ledgers and logs.
Azul had fondly reminisced about growing up in Eldragoro with his brother, Gaspar. Lula had no choice but to listen to all the charming tales of brotherly adventure: Azul and Gaspar’s first voyage, where they had sailed a two-man yacht between the Straight of Swords; their first trip to a brothel, where they had shared the cost of the most expensive whore; and their first kill—the owner of the brothel, who had tried to charge the brothers twice the whore’s usual price, even though they had finished up with her in half the allotted time, and hadn’t bruised her too badly.
And as he talked, Azul fingered the brass telescope that had once belonged to Gaspar; the accursed trinket that had proved too tempting for Lula to resist, and inevitably had given her away.
She had put up with three torturous days of this physical and emotional torment, and then this morning they had keelhauled her.
A long rope had been tied around her ankles, then Azul’s giant bearded first mate had dropped her over the side at the bow and dragged her along the side of the ship, all the way to the stern. He did this six times, yanking her up for air each time he turned. Too slow, and Lula would have been drowned; too fast, and she would have been ripped apart by the sharp barnacles that covered the Drago Azul’s hull. The first mate found a happy medium that left Lula gasping for air and covered in cuts.
And now here she was, the final humiliation: standing at the end of a plank, dressed only in her beaver-fur tricorn hat and a tattered shirt that flapped around her hips in the sea breeze.
‘Why are you doing this?’ Lula asked her captor. ‘Why don’t you just kill me?’
Azul made a face like he was shocked. ‘Do you take me for a monster!’ he protested. ‘I am a fair and honest man. You condemned my brother to his death by handing him to the governor of Port Black, but you did not kill him yourself. And so, following the pirate code, I too condemn you to death, but I will not strike the finishing blow.’
He looked at the pistol in his hand. ‘Here, I have a parting gift for you.’ He jumped up onto the plank, reached forward and laid the pistol within Lula’s reach, along with a small bag. ‘There’s a ball and enough powder for one shot,’ he said. ‘So make it count!’
Lula grabbed the gifts. She wasn’t too proud to refuse.
She looked over her shoulder at the lonely island: her new home, and probably her grave. ‘Where are we?’
Azul shrugged. ‘Just some remote little island we once used as a hideout some years back. The chart we made is probably the only one in existence. We won’t be coming back, though—there’s no shelter on the beaches, and the jungle is full of some of the biggest insects I have ever seen. Now go, Lula. Go and inspect your new kingdom!’
Lula could only think of one last pla
y. ‘If you’re going after the governor next, I can help you get to him! We’ll make a plan together—I can take you in as if to hand you over for the bounty, then you can surprise him …’
Azul laughed, and Lula trailed off. ‘I wouldn’t trust you even if I did need help,’ Azul said. ‘But I don’t need it. My good friend the King of Eldragoro has been looking for an excuse to take over Port Black for years, and Gaspar’s cruel death has given him one. The Armada is already halfway here, and I have examined the town’s defences at first hand. Port Black will fall, Lula. Just be glad you will not be around to see it—there will be blood on the streets, and it’s so hard to tell who is and who isn’t a zombie these days.’
Lula’s anger rose, and she started back down the plank to the ship. Azul, still laughing, stamped his foot hard on the wood, and the plank started to wobble. Lula’s arms flailed desperately.
‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ Azul said, reaching into his coat pocket. ‘This belongs to you. I won’t have this filth polluting my ship.’ He tossed a small packet to Lula. Her last remaining Sirensbane! She grabbed for it, and as her fingers closed around it, she toppled off the plank and fell head first into the sea.
The water was warm and almost comforting. The salt stung her cuts, but it jolted her weary body awake. For a brief moment, she felt free and safe. When she surfaced, though, she got a mouthful of bilge water and rotten fruit peelings: the crew were dumping the garbage overboard. Lula loosed a colourful curse at Amaro Azul.
He waved as his ship’s sails caught the wind. ‘Goodbye, Lula Pearl! You were a good lay, but I have another woman to chase now. If I deliver Port Black to my king, then he may reward me with his sixteen-year-old daughter! She is as shy and as meek as a mouse, but I will think of you when I screw her. It will make it twice as exciting, but be only half the trouble of the real thing!’
Azul’s laughter rang in Lula’s ears as the ship drifted away.
* * *
The garbage would attract sharks, so Lula immediately made for shore. Both survival instincts and anger powered her limbs as she fought her way through the riptides. It was only a mile to the beach, but Lula’s leg and arms were aching before she was even halfway. At one point, she was certain that she wasn’t even going to have the luxury of contemplating her own death on a soft sandy shore; she was going to sink beneath the waves and get ripped apart by sharks before she even hit the bottom.
These grim thoughts were what inspired her to make the extra effort. Her brain focused on the white line of the beach, and her legs found their own kick-reflex, operating independently of her will. She was still kicking when a surging wave deposited her face down in soft wet sand. It took her some moments to realise she was safe.
She crawled up the beach on all fours. Her hand came down on a large bright red scallop shell. Lula recognised it from her childhood; it was an extremely rare dragon’s paw shell. Her father once had one hung above the door of his hut, until it was stolen one night. Lula stopped crawling and look around. There were thousands of the shells scattered all over the beach. I’m safe and rich, she thought.
And dead. There would be no escape from this island.
The beach was a thin strip of shimmering silvery-white sand that stretched off to the left and right, and vanished around the curve of the headland. The sun was so hot, Lula was dry almost as soon as she stood up, but as she made her way to the shade of the jungle, a horrific screeching wail made her pause. Insects? Just how big are they exactly?
Lula checked her gun and powder. The flint sparked when she pulled the trigger, and the powder was bone dry in its pouch, so she filled the pistol and rolled the shot down the barrel, jamming it home with a thin branch. One shot. Make it count, Azul had said, but Lula was sure he wasn’t thinking about using it on the wildlife.
She screwed her hat down tightly so that the brim was just above her eyes, and set off on a walk around the island. The creepy jungle could wait until later. And who knew—maybe there was a convenient boat moored on the opposite shore.
There wasn’t, of course. The far beach was just as empty and remote as the side she had washed up on. As she trudged through the sand, Lula cast her mind back over the sequence of events that had led her here. The seeds of her destruction were planted a decade ago, she ruminated, when she had left home and sailed the world. Lula had taken jobs where she could find them: in bars, on ships, in docks and on plantations. But the pattern was always the same—once she had worked hard enough to gain her employer’s trust, she disappeared in the dead of night with all the money she could lay her hands on. And who could blame her? There was no legitimate job in the world that wasn’t too much work for too little reward.
As she gained skill and experience, Lula turned to more dangerous pursuits. Her exploits could fill a hundred books, but she spent the money almost as fast as she made it. Unlike Kal, Lula wasn’t a disciplined gambler, and she was prey to most of the world’s vices. But still, she kept on reaching for bigger and bigger prizes.
The capture of Gaspar Azul almost cost Lula her life. Even when suddenly awakened from a drunken stupor, Gaspar had proved a fearsome swordsman. They had fought in a tent in the middle of the Nubaran desert (Lula had blagged her way into Gaspar’s company on a tomb-raiding expedition) and Gaspar had only fallen when he had accidently sliced through the tent’s guy ropes with his sword, and brought the canvas down upon his head. Gaspar’s bounty would make Lula rich, and allow her to finally stop moving and settle down somewhere.
Or so she had hoped. But the governor of Port Black had not been able to pay the ransom. And in the bleak dark emptiness of her disappointment, a new temptation had materialised to take advantage of her …
Sirensbane.
Lula had started working for the Magician, smuggling the drug into Amaranthium. It was a well-paid job, the best Lula had ever found, but Sirensbane was an expensive habit, and no amount of runs across the Silver Sea could ever free her from the Magician’s power. She would have to work years to drag herself out of debt.
At least money was now the least of her problems.
Lula found herself looking down at her own footprints in the sand. She had walked all around the island in a couple of hours, and now she was back where she had started. She sighed and collapsed down onto the beach. Maybe it was just as well Azul had caught up with her. What else would she have done? The zombie curse had swept through the Islands, and Lula had been stricken down like her friends and thousands of others. She had been getting increasingly desperate, and had pinned her hopes on the one person she trusted in the world: Kal Moonheart. Poor old Kal, who most likely had been ripped apart by zombies at the Blue Mahoe, had been Lula’s last chance. All Lula had done was bring Kal to her doom.
Tears came suddenly. Lula reached for her pistol. One shot. She raised the barrel and stared down it.
No, she thought.
At least not while I’m sober.
She unwrapped the packet of Sirensbane. The drug had been crushed into tiny glossy black flakes. Lula picked one between her fingers and went to lay it on her tongue.
And then she noticed something out on the beach …
Two sets of footprints emerged from the sea and up the sand. Lula stood and walked up to them: the second pair disappeared after hers around the island. That meant someone had been following her, and if so …
She whirled around, and came face-to-face with—
III.iii
Crocodile Tears
—‘Kal?’
Kalina Moonheart was standing in front of the sun. Her whole body was lit from behind; the tangled reddish-brown hair that escaped her black hat was burning like fire, and her sunburned skin shone with an opalescent sheen like a marble statue. Kal’s red and white shirt was torn and tied up around her waist, revealing a wide, flat belly with abdominals jutting out like islands in a sea. Her feet were bare, and her velvet trousers were shredded almost up to the crotch. Lula could see Kal’s new tattoo for the first time: a black d
ragon that wound around and up her left thigh, it’s tail disappearing between her legs.
‘Kal,’ Lula repeated, sinking to her knees in the sand as if grovelling before a god. ‘How did you … how did you get here?’
‘Well, that’s a long story,’ Kal said. ‘But the gist of it is that I escaped Port Black, chased down Azul’s ship, sneaked aboard and then hid in the bilge compartment for three days. Let me tell you, I’d have swapped places with you in a heartbeat. Down there, underwater for hours, breathing through a bamboo shoot … I passed the time dreaming of being chained to a bed.’
The bilge compartment! The lowest part of the ship, where there was only an inch of space between the the stagnant water and the deck above. Just the thought of it made Lula feel queasy. She stumbled forward and hugged Kal’s Legs.
Kal hoisted Lula to her feet. ‘You look terrible, Lu,’ she said. ‘You’ve got heat stroke, and you must be starving. Did they feed you?’
Lula couldn’t find her voice. She was delirious, alright: deliriously happy. She moved to kiss Kal on the mouth, but her rescuer pulled away.
‘I’m still mad at you,’ Kal said. ‘We could have been far away from here if we had just fled the mansion when we had the chance. But, oh no—you had to run back in to save your friends. Well, it’s a good job I reminded them of that fact, otherwise they wouldn’t have been so keen to help me find you now.’
A wave of despair passed over Lula. ‘It’s no good,’ she managed to say, after a few deep breaths. ‘You wasted your time coming after me, Kal. Only Azul knows where we are. No one’s ever going to come and rescue us now.’
But Kal only smiled: the genuine confident smile that had drawn Lula to her the day they met. It had been at a wrestling match of all places, held in a dockside warehouse in Amaranthium. Kal had been so sure that her guy was going to win, she had persuaded Lula to bet everything she had on him, too. But the match had been fixed, and they both lost a lot of money. Lula stayed over on the floor of Kal’s flat that night, and the next day Kal had taken her to the Snake Pit, where she had taught Lula how to play cards. Between them they won back more than double what they had lost.