Ebba jerked at the suddenness of it and Cosmo bucked from the pain, but remained unconscious.
“Better out than in,” Locks said pleasantly.
She swallowed back bile at the blood and tissue hanging from the wedge and made no answer.
Locks pressed three of the cravat rags against the wound for a full five minutes. “Brandy,” he said.
She passed it to him.
“Dreadful waste o’ brandy,” he whispered to himself, before lifting the rags and pouring a stream of the alcohol into the gaping wound.
Locks pressed the rags down again. “Pass that needle now, lass.”
She held out the threaded needle to him and took over pressing on the rags to stop the bleeding.
“Up with the rags,” her father instructed.
She lifted the rags away and watched in morbid fascination as Locks dug the needle into Cosmo’s skin. Wooziness struck her and Ebba drew in shallow breaths through her thinned nostrils. Watching wasn’t such a good idea. She turned away, peeking over the bulwark.
Malice had already fallen far behind, along with that flaming sod, Jagger. She wondered if her bullet hit him.
“Where will we go now?” she asked no one in particular.
Peg-leg replied from the mast, “Felicity be in bad shape. We’ll stop at Kentro to make repairs.”
Ebba looked at him. “Isn’t that where Malice will expect us to go?” she asked.
“Aye. But there’s nothin’ for it. Grubby’s, uh, selkie kin have told him of a spot they visit on Kentro shores. They said the cove is deserted, but for the occasional human female wishin’ to be . . . well. . . . Anyway, the cove is hidden from the sea. And Malice will be too big to get into it.”
Ebba sighed in relief. In a few hours they’d make it to Kentro and all of this would be over. They’d make repairs, sell the dynami, and head back to Zol to retire. Nothing had ever sounded better. Especially now she knew her fears about her fathers being past the age of excitement were completely unfounded. They were pirates through and through. And so was she.
Locks tied the end of his stitching off. She glanced at his work, grimacing. Cosmo would have a meaty scar. But that wasn’t the worst that could happen. “Will he keep it?” Ebba asked.
Locks gathered up the bloodied rags. “Only time will tell, lass. I’ve seen pirates lose their limbs from less than this.” He looked at Peg-leg.
Ebba blinked. “But he’ll live, won’t he?” she blurted.
Locks handed her the brandy, avoiding her eyes, and made for the bilge. She stared down at Cosmo—her friend, even if they’d only known each other a short time. Sweat beaded on his high-boned brow. She brushed back the russet hair stuck to his forehead and had a sudden, fervent wish to see his amber eyes staring at her in his intense, fascinated way.
She recalled her scathing remarks to Malice’s captain an hour before with a sinking heart.
It looked like Ebba celebrated too early.
She cracked her eyelids open, hearing the lap of gentle water against Felicity’s side.
They were drifting on anchor by the feel.
Jaw cracking, she raised her arms overhead and stretched with a loud, satisfying groan within her hammock. She guessed they’d made it to the Selkie’s Cove in Kentro. Last thing she remembered, Grubby was disappearing over the side ahead of Felicity to guide them into the hidden space. Sometime after, she’d stumbled below deck and taken the hammock next to Cosmo to better keep an eye on him through the night.
She turned her head, only half awake, to find amber eyes staring at her.
“Sink me, Cosmo.” She yawned again. “Ye creepy bugger. How long’ve ye stared at me for?”
Cosmo’s neck reddened. Actually, his entire face seemed rather red. She’d get Locks to check if it was fever.
She swung her feet to the ground. “How do ye feel?”
He put a careful hand over the bandaged wound. “Like there’s a hole in my shoulder, funnily enough.” The russet-haired man gave a small laugh and winced as it jolted his injury.
“I’ll get ye somethin’ for the pain,” she said. Where did she put that bottle of brandy? She needed to fill it with grog so Stubby didn’t notice it was gone.
“Mistress Fairisles?” Cosmo said. She turned, eyebrow cocked. He blushed. “Thank you.”
“What for, ye dolt?”
His eyes riveted on her face, he looked her over. What was he thinking when he stared like that, she wondered?
A soft smile curved his lips. “For an adventure.”
Ebba returned his smile, uncertainly. He spoke as if he were dying. Unsure what to say, because Ebba was now of the opinion the adventure hadn’t been worth the treasure at all, she gave him a nod and headed for the deck.
Her fathers and Pillage lay about, lazing in the morning sun.
“What are ye all doin’?” she demanded.
“Look who’s talkin’. Ye’ve been asleep more than twelve hours,” Plank drawled. He rubbed his lower back with both hands. “My entire body aches.”
Peg-leg answered his groan with one of his own. “We’re getting too old for this, lads.”
Peg-leg glanced away. “Aye,” he replied after a beat. “My poor body can’t hack it.”
“I thought ye were all amazin’,” she said honestly. “I never knew any of ye could sail like that.”
Her fathers smiled quietly.
She stared at them. She’d been wrong about everything—her father’s capabilities, and the grandeur of an adventure. She’d thought glory was important and had risked all their lives chasing it.
“It’s not yer first adventure, is it?” Ebba asked them. She’d been content to be coddled, but now, after everything, after the mansion and Ladon and Syraness, Ebba found that had changed, too.
Stubby cleared his throat.
“Can ye. . . ?” She swallowed. “Did ye have adventures with the captain ye don’t like to speak of? The one Ladon mentioned?”
Plank hung his head. “Mutinous Cannon,” he said bitterly.
Locks whacked him.
“What?” Plank exploded. “We already broke our vow on Neos. No point keepin’ it now.”
Locks glared back at him. “There’s always a reason to keep it.” He looked pointedly at her.
“I didn’t mean for ye to argue.” She reached back and fiddled with her beads.
Stubby sighed heavily. “It’s not yer fault. Talkin’ o’ him swabs us the wrong way, is all.”
Ebba glanced around. “But why?”
“Because when we worked under him, it were a di’ferent time. And we,” Stubby rubbed his chest, “we were di’ferent people. It does no good to dwell on the past.” He interrupted her as she opened her mouth to ask another question. “Mutinous Cannon be dead and gone, and we be changed men. We’d all but forgotten who he was.”
Peg-leg stared absently at his hands. Plank’s jaw was clenched. Grubby had his eyes closed, head leaning back against the mast.
Didn’t look like any of them had forgotten a single second of it.
She took Stubby’s hint, however, and kept her mouth shut. They’d respected that she hadn’t been ready to talk about Syraness, and it didn’t look like her fathers were ready to talk about this man.
Stubby stared up at the mast, his mouth pulled down. “My ship, tattered and torn. I’ve got a list o’ repairs the size o’ the Caspian Sea.”
She listened to the boatswain babble on for a while. He’d fret and yell until Felicity was one hundred percent ship-shape again.
“She ain’t that bunged up,” Peg-leg grumbled. He whacked the end of the boom to prove his point.
With an almighty crack, it splintered. A searing tingled her stomach, and Ebba lurched to catch the smaller end of the boom and held it steady so the heavy beam didn’t land on Grubby’s head.
Grubby scrambled out of the way.
She lowered the heavy slab of wood to the ground.
“What was that?” Locks said in wonder. �
�How are ye doin’ these things? Ye ain’t somethin’ magic, too, are ye? I ain’t ready for ye to turn into a seal.”
Good, because she wasn’t ready to be one. Ebba stared at the boom. The dynami was doing something to her, all right.
“It’s like in the whirlpool. She hoisted the sail with the strength o’ ten pirates,” Plank interrupted.
Barrels added, “And pulled the wheel with the strength of twenty.”
Glancing down, her eyes landed on the dynami. She touched it; it was warm—nearly too warm to leave her finger there.
Their eyes fell to her belt.
She glanced up at her fathers. “The dynami. It be warm. And it tingles my skin whenever I get strong. Kahree said that the meaning of dynami was in the name, but I ain’t sure what he meant.”
“Barrels,” Plank said slowly. “What does ‘dynami’ mean?”
Barrels raised his brows. “Why, I would have to find a reference—I have no idea.”
Ebba freed the cylinder from her belt and passed it to Plank.
He tossed it hand to hand. “It’s warm.”
Her six fathers passed it between them, each staring at it for a long while.
Felicity’s crew eyed the silver cylinder.
Barrels cleared his throat. “Kahree did say he hoped the dynami would lend us its namesake, too. It must have something to do with strength.”
“That’s why that scurvy turd, Pockmark, was after it,” Locks said, hotly. “He wants to be strong.”
Stubby said, “All I be knowin’ is I need a long slug o’ my best brandy for me aching bones. I’ve been savin’ a bottle and now seems as good a time as any to crack it open.” Humming to himself, he bustled away below deck.
Unease settled heavy in her stomach as she watched him go. “Locks? Does he mean. . . ?”
“Aye, lass. I expect so.”
Stubby roared a moment later. The sound echoed up from the hold. Ebba winced.
“That was the brandy we poured over Cosmo’s shoulder yesterday,” she said sheepishly.
The deck erupted into hoots as a purple-faced Stubby reappeared, swinging a near-empty bottle in the air.
Smiling his toothy grin, Grubby unhooked his flute from his belt and began to play. Her father was always happy, but something seemed different about him, as though a tension she hadn’t seen there had disappeared. Deep down, had he worried over his differences to everyone else? She hoped he’d found some measure of peace from discovering his selkie heritage.
Ebba stomped her feet as he played. Peg-leg attempted to join in and stopped immediately with a pained expression.
The rest of her fathers clapped along.
“All right,” Barrels announced, “I’ve got something.” He clapped with the beat of Grubby’s tune, and then nodded, repeating, “I’ve got something. I think it’s good.”
Peg-leg snorted. “Let’s hear it then.”
Barrels grinned and then sang:
There once was a lad who swam rather well
And no one thought much of it.
In a race against a shark, he won every time,
Yet no one thought much of it.
He did not rise up for a breath;
He flopped on deck, did not suspect
He was a selkie
A selkie.
Ebba threw her head back and laughed with the rest of her crew. Grubby’s face colored pink as Barrels continued:
There once was a lad who knew just where to go
By dipping his toe in the water.
Prior to this, he neglected to say
He’d been hearing voices.
When young he was hit by the boom;
It’s the only way he can’t have known
He was a selkie
A selkie.
Twenty-Three
Ebba picked up a handful of Kentro sand and let the soft white grains trickle through her fingers. She’d never felt anything like it. It was so smooth when it was wet, almost like velvet. The cove here was one of the prettiest she’d ever seen. Exotic red flowers peeked out from the edges of the luscious forest at their backs, and it had a romantic, untouched feeling to it.
Felicity bobbed in shallow water to her right, wedged in a rocky indent in the cliff. A curtain of vines hung over the space. If Malice ever did come looking, Felicity’s crew would be trapped well and good, but Pockmark and his gang had passed by three days before and hadn’t returned. Not by sea, anyhow.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Cosmo said, sitting beside her, using his good arm to guide himself down. His injured arm hung in a sling around his neck.
The last edges of the sun did their best to peek above the horizon. The moon already hung high in the sky, its light catching at the calm and midnight-blue waters.
The gentle rush of the ebbing waves lulled her into a relaxed state. “Aye,” she said in a hushed voice. “It is at that.”
She rested her chin atop her drawn-up knees. “What will ye do now, Cosmo?” she asked.
His eyes shifted to the trees behind them. Beyond the trees. Did he stare toward Exosia?
“. . . Do ye miss home?” she asked.
He faced the ocean with a frown, toying with his sling. “Not nearly as much as I should.”
She tried to stay quiet, but couldn’t quite manage it. “Ye could stay with us, ye know.” She flushed. “If ye ain’t ready to go back.”
Amber eyes fixed on her face with their unsettling vibrancy.
A scuffle in the trees alerted her to the presence of others. She drew her cutlass from her side and rose to her feet, standing in front of Cosmo.
Locks and Peg-leg exited the tree line.
Peg-leg pushed a vine off his shoulder and pulled up short when he spotted them on the beach. “What’re the two o’ ye up to?” he asked suspiciously.
“Nothing,” Cosmo said quickly.
“Did ye get the supplies?” she asked, sheathing her cutlass.
Peg-leg turned slightly—though the action was unnecessary—to show her the huge pack upon his back. Locks had one just as large.
Ebba pushed through the sand to them. “Did ye get me more clothes?” More importantly, had they gotten her a new bead?
“Ye’ll have to wait and see, won’t ye?” Peg-leg said, then peered over her shoulder. “Uh-oh.”
She turned to look. Plank and Grubby were approaching from the opposite end of the beach where Felicity was anchored. Nothing else appeared out of place. “Uh-oh, what?”
Grubby stormed over to Locks and held out his hand. “Where is it?” he snarled.
Ebba startled at his tone and shared an awed look with Cosmo.
Grubby was angry.
“Now, see here.” Locks took a step back as Peg-leg extracted the dynami from inside his jerkin. “We just wanted to see how much it were worth.”
Grubby snatched the dynami from Peg-leg’s hand.
Ebba watched the part-selkie’s hands as they shook with the force of his fury. Without another word, he stalked off down the beach back to the ship.
“Ye peeved off Grubby,” she said in wonder. “He didn’t even pat ye.”
Locks stared after their selkie crew member. “Aye, that would make his tally twice in twenty years by my count. That be right?” he asked Plank.
Plank nodded mutely.
“I be thinkin’ Grubby’s takin’ his selkie guardian duty of the dynami pretty serious-like,” said Peg-leg.
Cosmo got to his feet with a grimace. “Did you really ask around to see how much the dynami was worth? Aren’t we in hiding? You don’t think Pockmark will ask around the market for our whereabouts?”
Peg-leg and Locks shared a look, before Locks sighed. “We weren’t about to shout out our location, lad. We decided it worth the risk since we’ll be in hidin’ in our home waters for a wee while now. Went to two o’ our usual merchants. A waste a time, or so it turned out. They weren’t knowin’ what it was either. They both said about the same thing.”
Ebba leaned
forward.
“It’s worthless. Mayhaps only worth a couple o’ silver coins.”
“That’s it?” she croaked. Two silver coins?
Locks added, “We took it to a blacksmith right at the end and tried to get it boiled down. He worked the forge until it were white-hot. But the dynami just sat there in the middle—didn’t melt, didn’t change, or nothin’.”
“Ye tried to melt it?” Plank asked incredulously. “Ye better hope Grubs doesn’t hear that.”
Peg-leg shrugged. “Mighta got carried away after the two silver coins news.”
Ebba clenched her jaw. “We did all that stuff for nothin’?” It wasn’t enough that she regretted starting this whole thing—now the treasure was worthless and they still wouldn’t be able to retire and be safe from Malice?
“It wasn’t for nothin’, little nymph. We found out that magic will be returnin’, after all,” Plank said gently. Then he scowled. “But not why.”
She didn’t care about sodding magic. It could go to Davy Jones. Ebba ignored the reaching hands of the others and stalked off after Grubby.
They shouted after her, but disappointment rested heavy in her bones.
Grubby had stopped ahead, likely alerted to her mood by the shouts. He passed her the dynami when she reached his side.
She stared down at the hunk of junk, and sniffed long and hard. “I just feel respons’ble for all the trouble, is all.”
Grubby wrapped an arm around her, smiling his toothless grin. She wiped a hand over her face and leaned her head against his shoulder. Grubby always made her feel better. He never judged her, or told her off.
“We’ll be okay, Ebba,” he said. “We have the dynami.”
“But Grubs,” she said. “Super strength won’t help us any. The dynami ain’t worth nothin’. We can’t retire to Zol with what we have.” Never had the isolated and safe shores of their Zol hideaway seemed so inviting as they did now. For all her professions to the opposite, now she felt that she could stay there forever, tucked away.
“Malice will be huntin’ us. All our plans are ruined because o’ me,” she whispered.
Ebba-Viva Fairisles: Immortal Plunder (Pirates of Felicity Book 1) Page 22