Ebba-Viva Fairisles: Immortal Plunder (Pirates of Felicity Book 1)

by Kelly St Clare

  That wasn’t strictly true. The tiny glowing creatures had brought her some grog.

  A tear dripped down her face, rolling down her neck. Grubby caught it on his finger and kissed her cheek.

  “Where’s Stubby?” she asked.

  Plank avoided her eyes. “Stubby’s. . . .”

  “He’s okay?” she blurted.

  “Aye, Ebba. He’s fine and well.”

  She crumpled in relief.

  “Considerin’ the bruises on his noggin’,” Plank finished. “He’s makin’ repairs on the ship. Ye know him. He’s in a tizz because Felicity be banged up.”

  She grimaced. “How much damage?”

  “Gouges down the starboard side.” Peg-leg ticked off on his hand. “Few minor leaks in the hull. Torn sails and riggin’. The helm will need to be replaced. And the bowsprit looks like it ripped right off.”

  “That happened when we fell down the waterfall,” Ebba forced herself to admit as her mind catapulted back to the dark free fall.

  Cosmo broke the stunned silence. “A waterfall?”

  Ebba looked at him squarely, noting the cut on his chin. “The ship hit the water straight on her head,” she whispered. “The whole ship went under for a few seconds.”

  “Lass,” Stubby said quietly. “Many a ship has sailed through Syraness. And none have ever mentioned a waterfall.”

  “Did they mention a siren?” Plank countered.

  A shiver wracked through her and Ebba jerked her head to Barrels’ shoulder. “That’s how ye got that cut on yer shoulder. Ye weren’t breathin’ after we hit the bottom of the waterfall; neither was Stubby.” Her voice stuttered to a halt.

  Peg-leg sniffed again behind her.

  Locks lay a heavy hand on her shoulder and she looked into his eye. Without a word, he lifted the bottom of his shirt to reveal the worst rope burn Ebba had ever seen. The skin was beyond rubbed raw; it appeared as though blood had poured freely from the wound encircling his waist, and likely his back. Not only that, ugly purple bruises spanned a hand-width either side of where the rope had sat.

  He dropped his shirt. “I can’t imagine what kind o’ animals we turned into, lass. Ye faced the darkness in Syraness, and ye brought us through the other side. None o’ us can imagine what ye went through, but ye have our gratitude, Ebba-Viva, for not givin’ in to the evil singing bitch.”

  Ebba attempted a smile, but winced as her top lip cracked.

  Locks dashed a finger under his blazing eye. “Don’t speak o’ it until ye be well and ready. We’ll be here when ye wish to. If ye wish to. Ye know we won’t make a fuss.” He squeezed her wrist just above the bandages and muttered something about going to help Stubby.

  The others moved away, each adding a stroke of the hair and kiss of the forehead or cheek. By the end, Ebba’s eyes burned with suppressed tears.

  “Little nymph?” Plank called back.

  She lolled her head to the side to see him.

  “Stubby be feelin’ pretty guilty right now. Didn’t take much to put two and two together, with yer black eye and him stripped o’ weapons and trussed up like a pork roast. We don’t expect ye out on deck until ye’re ready, but a kind word when he makes it down to see ye wouldn’t go amiss.”

  Ebba stared after him as he climbed the ladder.

  One person remained.

  He spoke softly from her other side, “I can leave you alone to rest, if you wish.”

  Fear, still ice-cold, stirred deep within her. “Alone?” she asked. “Nay, I don’t wish to be alone, Cosmo.”

  “Thank goodness, because I really do flop around like a fish on deck.”

  His comment startled a laugh from her. She clutched at her ribs in agony and turned to face him.

  Cosmo grimaced, appearing stricken. “I take it I shouldn’t attempt to make you laugh.”

  Ebba breathed through the cloud of pain. “Nay, thank ye. Not for another week at least.” She smiled to take the sting from her words.

  Cosmo shifted his stool closer to the post by her feet, and leaned back against the post, watching her. “To tell you the truth, I have learned several things in the last few days. Though I highly doubt your fathers would have asked for my help had you been fit and . . . well, conscious.”

  She blinked sleepily. “Poor Cosmo. What did they make ye do?”

  “They gave me a few things to choose from. After seeing you scuttle up the ropes with such ease, I elected to climb the riggings.”

  She snorted softly.

  “I quickly came to understand that I have a crippling—and previously untested—fear of climbing ropes while at sea. The ropes cut into my feet for starters. I fear you may be correct about my softness. The farther up I got, the harder it was to hold my body to the ropes. Not to mention the pitch of the ship. I went up about two yards and came back down, swearing I’d never be so foolish again.”

  Ebba chuckled under her breath, painfully.

  “After that, I attempted to help repair the sail and was banished by Grubby himself.”

  “Grubby couldn’t banish plankton,” she said, disbelieving.

  Cosmo shrugged, a small smile playing on his lips. “Yes, well. He did so with many a pat on the shoulder, but banish me he did.”

  Ebba pressed a hand to her side and gave in to laughter. Nothing had ever hurt so much, nor felt so good. She gasped as the amusement shaking her body dissipated. “We might make a pirate o’ ye yet.”

  A shadow flickered through his amber eyes. “If we had more time, perhaps you could, but even with two days lost to patch Felicity up, we’ll reach the treasure not long after. Then it won’t be long until your crew deposit me at Kentro.”

  “So ye’ll return to Exosia and find more slave-lubber work? Ye could always stay here with us.”

  He stared past her to the inside of the ship’s hull and sighed heavily. “Unfortunately, I must return.”

  “Ye have family?”

  “Two sisters, and a father who needs me, though he’ll never admit it.”

  Disappointment twanged within her, yet she couldn’t argue with Cosmo’s decision. Family came first. “I’m sure he misses ye.”

  Cosmo drew to his feet and leaned over to right her tattered woolen blanket. “Perhaps, though he has not wielded truth in his hands for a long time. I’ll leave you to rest, Ebba-Viva. And not stir you up with any more laughter, or use you as an excuse to avoid your terrifying fathers.”

  Locks must have put something into the grog she drank. Suddenly, she was extremely comfortable.

  Ebba snuggled deeper into the hammock. “They ain’t terrifying, Cosmo. It’s naught but smoke and airs.” She sighed. “Just smoke and airs.”

  “Sleep well, Mistress Fairisles,” he said.

  Warm lips pressed against her forehead as she surrendered to sleep.

  Ebba pulled herself up, using the side of the hammock as leverage. Her battered body ached, made worse for all the lying about, she was sure. She’d slept for two days after they pried her from the helm, and another day must have passed since she woke yesterday.

  In slow movements—because she couldn’t manage anything else—Ebba changed into her last set of clean clothes. She reached behind to run a hand down the strands of beads in her dreads, lingering on them with an odd heaviness in her chest. Her fingers trailed over the new strand containing two beads, and she twisted them both.

  Ebba still had her fathers. She still had her beads. Felicity still had her figurehead. Everything else would be okay.

  She released a shaky breath, listening to the shouts and calls of her fathers above.

  Hobbling to the hold, she chewed carefully on some slices of mango Peg-leg had arranged in a smiley face for her as though she was five years old. The gesture brought a small smile to her face, though, so maybe part of her was five and always would be five. The rest of her felt unaccountably old after Syraness.

  Ebba downed three goblets of the watered-down grog to take the edge off her thirst.

&n
bsp; Making it up the ladder took longer than she liked, but eventually Ebba pushed open the bilge door and blinked into the stark brightness of the cloudless sky. Her heart squeezed tight at the sight of the sun.

  “I forgot to tell ye,” Plank called from the bulwark. “We passed some wind sprites the day after Syraness.”

  Ebba crossed the deck to him. The sea’s calm had returned, as had the tropical, aqua blue she was accustomed to.

  “What’re wind sprites?” she asked.

  “Little white, winged creatures they were. Flittered around the bilge door for an age. We didn’t dare to draw close to them, though they seemed harmless enough.”

  Her tiny helpers had a name. “What be the legends o’ them, Plank?”

  Plank pressed his lips together for a moment. “All I know is they haunt places where the sea has claimed many lives.”

  Ebba frowned. That didn’t seem to fit with the creatures she’d seen. They’d saved Felicity.

  “I don’t think that be true,” she said. “I think they linger in those places in the hopes they can be helpin’ people against dark creatures.”

  Plank glanced at her. “Aye, little nymph. Ye may be right at that. Ye may be right.”

  Though the thought of peering out across an endless, rock-less sea beckoned her to the crow’s nest, the rigging was out of the question with her injuries. Ebba held up a hand to her eyes and scanned the sparkling ocean from the deck instead.

  A darting movement caught her eye, and she watched as Stubby ducked behind the helm.

  Plank shook his head before busying himself.

  Crossing the deck, Ebba stared down at Stubby’s light-gray curls. He was focused intently on the hammer in his hand, studiously ignoring her. Without a word, she bent and wrapped both her arms around his stomach, careful to avoid the rope burn and bruises she knew would be there.

  “I love ye, Stubby,” she said.

  A choking noise passed over her head, and his arms rose to encircle her. “I love ye, too, my Ebba-Viva. And I’m so stinkin’ sorry to have hurt ye.”

  A lump rose in her throat. “Ye didn’t hurt me, Stubby,” she lied glibly. “As soon as yer eyes went black, I took yer weapons and wrapped ye in rope, knowin’ ye weren’t in yer right mind.”

  The form in her arms stilled. “Did ye? But what about yer eye?”

  She pulled her head back and looked into his soft eyes. His eyes—no black remained. The monster in the siren’s nest was a person possessed by a twisted creature. Stubby couldn’t be blamed for his actions then. The fact he’d hurt her would eat away at him inside. Her decision to tell her fathers about Pockmark’s plunder had caused enough harm without adding that to the list.

  “It happened when we fell over the waterfall and hit the water.” She shifted her eyes to an oar leaning against the stern. “The butt of an oar whacked me one, I think. Hard to know, it all happened so quick-like.”

  Stubby lifted an arm and rubbed his face. “I think it caught me, too.” He rubbed the back of his head. “And somethin’ else, by the feel.”

  She kissed his cheek. “Aye, the boom sprang free. So stop tryin’ to hide from me; this ship be far too small for that.”

  Stubby shooed her away, eyes glistening.

  Cosmo swabbed the deck alongside Grubby, and Ebba settled atop a barrel, watching everyone go about their work. A part of her couldn’t believe they were all here, alive and in one piece. She just had to keep it that way.

  “Plank,” she called. “How far is Malice behind us now?” They’d anchored for two days to make repairs, after all.

  “Two days, if we be lucky,” he replied after a moment.

  Ebba’s chest tightened. “And if we ain’t?”

  “If they’ve had a fair wind, Malice could only be a day away.”

  Eighteen

  “Portum ahoy,” she yelled from the crow’s nest, clutching her side. Climbing up here had taken a while, but the pain was worth the few hours of solitude as the final repairs were made and they set sail again.

  She waited for a tendril of excitement to find her as it had in the past, but if the emotion was there, the fog of foreboding surrounding her was too thick to penetrate.

  Ebba edged over the side of the crow’s nest, feet searching for the rigging below. Locks said the pain in her ribs would take a few weeks to go away. Certainly felt like it. She reached the bottom, and relief flooded through her torso as she lowered her arms.

  “Do ye need somethin’, Ebba?” Stubby asked.

  Peg-leg popped his head around the mast. “I can get it.”

  “I’m headed down to the hold.” Plank patted the air above her head, not quite touching her as he passed. “I’ll get ye a snack.”

  Peg-leg and Stubby scowled at him and turned back to their work.

  Ebba sighed, catching Cosmo’s eye as he sat reading a book on deck, an unconcealed grin on his face.

  “I think they’ll be doing that for a while yet,” he said, warm eyes glinting.

  Ebba groaned, cutting off the sound when Stubby threw her a concerned glance.

  “A tad overprotective, aren’t they?” Cosmo observed.

  Aye. Far more than the average seventeen-year-old, but maybe Sherry was right and they were just six times as protective as one father would be. She shrugged. “Dunno. I guess. That’s just how parents are s’posed to be, mayhaps.”

  A tinge of hurt entered Cosmo’s amber eyes. He stared down at his book—one of Barrels’, she assumed. A curious smile lifted the corner of his mouth, and he raised his head to look at her. “You know, Ebba-Viva, just when I decide you’re the most light-hearted, carefree pirate in the Free Seas, you come out with a bit of age-old wisdom.”

  She snorted, though the compliment sent a foreign spark through her chest. “What seaweed are ye smokin’, Cosmo?” She heckled Plank, who’d returned from the bilge, “Oi, Plank, Cosmo was just callin’ me wise!”

  Plank’s eyes narrowed on Cosmo. “Did he?”

  Cosmo stuttered, “Yes. Your crew have taught her much about the seas and sailing, that I-I. . . .”

  Ebba cast him a curious glance. “That ain’t what we were talkin’ o’.”

  Plank didn’t take his eyes off the younger man. Without another word, Cosmo became suddenly occupied by his book and wandered away.

  Ebba followed Plank. “Why are ye scarin’ him off?” she asked. “I’ve never had a friend afore.” She liked Cosmo. In fact, she could still feel exactly where he’d pressed a kiss to her forehead the other day. Ebba wasn’t quite sure what to do with that knowledge.

  “We’re yer friends,” he answered.

  “One my age.”

  “Aye, Ebba. Except ye’re a beautiful young wom—uh, pirate.”

  The woman-female subject was cropping up far too much of late. Fear twisted her gut. Should she be worried? “What’s yer point, matey?”

  Plank met her gaze and then quailed. “No point.”

  Silently, Ebba could acknowledge what he was trying to say. Plank meant that Cosmo might want more than friendship. Ebba wasn’t clueless. They’d left her at a brothel when they abandoned her—some things couldn’t be unseen or forgotten.

  Sure, Cosmo was attractive; she liked his amber eyes, and enjoyed spending time with him. But he couldn’t take anything more than she was willing to give, and Ebba wasn’t willing to return a deeper regard. She loved being a pirate and sailing the seas. She didn’t just do those things out of fear her fathers would leave again. Ebba was too busy for things like regard. And even after recent happenings, and especially after the uncomfortable regularity of the current subject, she couldn’t see her status changing.

  Ebba watched Plank curiously.

  When they docked, multitudes of women threw themselves at him and got no response. It wasn’t that Plank didn’t like the female attention; it was more that he didn’t see them at all. Ladon’s words on the mountain of Neos came back to her, the ones about the pirate murdering Plank’s wife. For the first t
ime, Ebba wondered if his avoidance of women was more purposeful than she’d realized.

  Their days after defeating Ladon hadn’t exactly allowed time for Ebba to ask who Mutinous Cannon was, and what he meant to her fathers. She’d never seen her fathers so vacant as when they heard Ladon’s final, cruel riddle. Not even when they’d heard the siren’s song. The siren turned them into monsters, but when Ladon had taunted them, it was like they’d each had to fight a demon only they could see.

  Honestly, fear stopped her. Fear over what they’d tell her. And fear because if she defied the second ship law to ask her fathers why, then that opened the door for them to ask her questions. Ebba was realizing there were a whole heap of questions about herself that she didn’t have answers to. One day she’d ask her fathers about Mutinous Cannon, but not today. At least not until Syraness was a bad memory—which it didn’t seem in a hurry to be.

  The distance between Felicity and Portum narrowed, and soon Felicity was carrying them around the shores of the long, flat island.

  Stubby directed them into a shallow cove at the northern end. “We’ll be screened from other ships here,” he said.

  No one answered, knowing he referred to Malice.

  Ebba crossed to the rowboat to help lower it, but Grubby rushed in front of her and took her usual place with a smile and a pat.

  Glaring Cosmo’s way at his obvious amusement, she sat out of the way and waited for the boat to lower.

  “Ye sure ye’d not prefer to stay aboard?” Locks asked gently.

  “Nay,” she answered. They’d nearly died enough times getting to this treasure. A sea of manta rays couldn’t keep her from it now, even though they were fierce bad luck.

  Locks backed away, arms raised defensively.

  After a small debate, the whole crew decided to go. Only Pockmark and his crew would be in this part of the Free Seas, and Malice was two days behind them.

  “Damn rays.” Locks pushed a manta ray away with the end of the oar as they settled into the rowboat.