In the sickbay Tyrell had opened his eyes but didn’t act like he knew where he was. Rochester fussed over his patient, probing and tapping. He declared that the Redeemer would make a full recovery but that it might take longer than first thought. I tried to talk to Tyrell some but it felt like chatting with your senile great-grandpa. Not a lot seemed to get through. Alcibiades seemed a different story. The Norn horse behaved like he was on a long-overdue vacation. Frisky in his stall down below, Al ate everything in sight and acted as if the splint on his wing had been installed as a mere decoration.
Training continued. Gracchus marched his Marines up and down, moved them about in complicated formations, and made slackers do punishment drills. Mabel’s gulls flew around the ship in their own special patterns, when they weren't patrolling far and wide to keep Pitcairn alerted to any possible dangers. Bob’s pelicans perched on the rail, when they weren’t diving for fish. Every now and then they’d practice scooping up rats and delivering them wherever Gracchus wanted. Ernie’s training seemed to consist in raiding the food stores, burping, and telling the rats they were getting soft.
The whaler hadn’t gone away, even though the crew kept bragging about the speed of the Penelope’s Kiss. Not only weren’t we pulling away with the wind to our back, we were getting reeled in. Spyglass to his eye, Pitcairn kept muttering to himself and shaking his head. Our pursuer had no steam engine that we could see, just sails like us. Roberta said it looked to be a lumbering old Britannic craft that had no business thinking it could catch us. I asked about magick propulsion and the sailors assured me that there was no such thing so far as they knew.
Sha’ira eased about the ship like a seasoned deck hand. Most of the time Romulus walked with her. The two of them laughed and whispered. My witched ears could’ve eavesdropped and heard what they discussed, but I didn’t want to be rude. Besides, my sea legs were as wobbly as rubber. Listening in on my friends’ conversations seemed less a priority than upchucking over the rail. This was a type of misery I’d only read about. The reality exceeded my imagination of it. My Legacy Stone seemed helpless to make me better. Even shape-shifting would’ve felt better than being seasick. What’s the world record for the heroine throwin’ up while on her great world-savin’ quest? How do people survive this?
“How do people survive this?” My head echoed with the sentence I’d just thought of. Huh?
“Just throw yourself overboard and end this now,” Jasper went on in an awful croaky voice. “Forget savin’ the world from omnipresent villainy. Rescue me from mal-de-mer.”
Wiping my mouth on the sleeve of the blue cotton crewman’s shirt I’d been given, I smiled to myself while I gulped salt air. That’s a relief. “Hey, boyo. Where’ve you been?”
“Well, I figured you didn’t need a lot of sorcery assistance in your two-day coma, so I took a nap of my own. If I’d known you planned to come down with the Maritime Belly of Doom I’d have stayed away.”
“You think I planned this? I’d rather be fightin’ giant ticks with a hickory switch.”
He sounded hopeful. “Can we? Please?”
“Sorry, O Cleaver of Despair. We’re stuck till this goes away.” With that I lurched over the side again and bid good-bye to my lunch. The whiny voice in my thoughts didn’t improve things.
A couple of hours later I felt a hundred times better. Sha’ira took me to the stern and taught me a meditation technique she’d learned in the Far East, in Cathay. She said it would help me in all times of great physical and mental stress. Pain, hunger, fear, and illness could all be lessened by simple chanting and concentrating in the manner she demonstrated. It took some doing on my part, though the dreamwriter made it look simple. That was the problem. Its simplicity made me suspect that there was really nothing to it. The harder you tried, the less effective it turned out to be. After a while I got good enough at it to rid myself of the worst of the seasickness. I promised myself, and Jasper, to practice every day with Sha’ira. This would be something that’d come in real handy, no doubt of it.
On my way down the steps to the main deck amidships I got knocked flat on my face by a tiny screeching demon that launched itself onto me from behind. Without thinking I rolled into a crouch, spun back to face my attacker, and pulled the tin cup from my belt. A split-second from bringing Morphageus to life and slashing the foe, I reeled in the thought of command. Instead of giving myself away with the Stone-Warden’s runed blade, I sat back on the teak deck planking and raised an eyebrow at my dread enemy.
“Aargh!” the pint-sized pirate scowled, waving a miniature wooden cutlass at me. She sported an eye patch, red-and-white striped shirt, and three-quarter length trousers. A black bandana covered her head, but red hair that went with her freckles poked out from beneath it. I’d been driven to my knees by a five year-old who looked just like I had at that age.
“Oh, look,” Jasper said, “somebody made a Verity marionette. No strings, though. Must be magick.”
“Surrender!” the itty-bitty buccaneer commanded, aiming the point of her toy sword at me. “Or I’ll slit yer belly and spill yer guts.”
A corner of my mouth went up. This is about the cutest thing ever. “Won’t that make a great big mess? Who’ll clean it up?”
She scrunched up her face and thought about that for a second. “I’ll make ye swab the deck afterwards!”
“That’s pretty hard-nosed, even for a pirate as fierce as you.”
Roberta’s voice rang out from the bow. “Freya! Be nice and don’t slay our guest, please. That’s a good girl.”
Freya stuck out her lower lip and pulled off the eye patch. Underneath blinked a perfectly beautiful blue eye. “Aw, can’t I slay her just a little bit? Fergus is too busy.”
The first mate’s shadow appeared over my shoulder. “Well, if Miss Verity says it’s all right.”
My wee adversary looked at me as if I held a giant bag of candy that she wanted. “Can I, then? Can I massa-cree you and throw yer bones to the sharks?”
“Ah-ah-ah,” Roberta warned her, “what do you say?”
Doubt clouded the girl’s face for a second, then she brightened and blurted out, “Please!”
“Why, I’d be honored,” I told her.
With that she grinned, then put her patch back where it belonged. With another guttural “Aargh!” she slid her wooden blade between my arm and ribs. I staggered around, clutching my mortal wound, gagging and coughing. Freya clapped her hands, squealing with glee as I flopped about on the deck like a speared fish and expired in an awfully-acted way that would’ve appalled Mr. Ford.
“I like her! She dies good!”
Jasper’s voice stung my brain. “Hope that doesn’t turn out to be your epitaph.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said to him as I bowed, accepting Freya’s and Roberta’s applause.
“We’re rearin’ Freya for the Guild,” Pitcairn’s lady told me while we watched the pint-sized pirate scamper off to threaten somebody else. “What they pay us covers the whole crew’s wages.”
I gasped. “She’s a Shade in trainin’? You’re turnin’ that little girl into a cold-blooded assassin?”
“Don’t look at me in that tone of voice,” Roberta chided with a smirk. “Shade recruits enter the Academy at age thirteen only of their own free will. Freya can say no and walk away clean if she so chooses. Happens all the time. Guild don’t want no recruits who might turn squeamish on ‘em later. Better to pay for a few prospects who don’t pan out than have ‘em cut and run on an assignment.”
“Like Sha’ira.”
The pirate queen nodded. “Like Sha’ira.” She smiled as Freya whacked at Pitcairn, who tucked one leg under his coat tails and hopped about moaning. “Trust me, shrimp, this old gal’ll make darned sure our little hellion chooses freedom when the time comes.”
We stopped next to the ship’s captain, who resumed standing on both booted feet and kissed his lady’s hand. “Miss Verity, lovely to see that pretty face an
d not just your backside at the rail. So you’ve decided to stop feeding the fish?”
“Food’s too precious a commodity to waste, sir,” I told him. “Besides, it tastes awful the second time.”
“That it does.” He poked Freya’s belly with one long finger. Roberta had picked her up and held her in front of him. “And you, terror of the waves…run down to the galley and inspect the candy locker. You might just find it open for business.”
“Yay!” the dinky sea scourge cried. As soon as Roberta set her down those short legs sent her streaking toward the hatch.
“You have a candy locker on a pirate ship?” I asked.
“Not really,” chuckled Roberta, arm around her man. “Just a drawer where Herman stows treats for her.”
Fergus waddled toward us, spyglass in hand. “She’s just about the most adorable thing around,” I went on, wondering what was up.
“Hey!” Jasper complained. “I thoughtI was the most adorable thing.”
“Well, you’re a thing, that’s for sure,” I thought back at him.
He sobbed with fake feeling. “Sure, cut my heart out with your cruel wit. Nobody cares about the disembodied spirit. He’s just a tool for you to use.”
“And I’ll use him to stir old fish guts if he don’t knock it off.” I wanted to hear what Fergus said.
“No explainin’ it, Cap’n,” he muttered, staring behind us at the pursuing ship. “Us crowdin’ on all sail, cleanest lines in the sea, and that old barge is catchin’ us like we’re draggin’ anchor.”
Squinting into his glass, Pitcairn sighed. “Mortifying is what it is. There’s more here than meets the eye.” He shouted up to the top of the mainmast, where a young wiry lookout scanned the horizon. “Sancho! What do you see? Anything unusual?”
The portly shirtless sailor called back in an Iberion accent, “You mean besides that great wallowing barn knifing through the water like a canoe? Yes, sir. It’s being towed.”
“Towed?!” the commander exclaimed. “Rub the foolishness out of your eyes and look again, son. Towed by what?”
“Can’t tell. Something below the waterline. But I’m not seeing things. She has four hawsers on the bow, all straight as arrows and all going to the same spot maybe a hundred feet in front of her. Must be making twenty knots.”
Pitcairn took off his tricorn and rubbed the top of his head. “Twenty knots! Jesu Maria! At that speed she’ll be in gun range in less than hour. This must be some new Merchantry devilry. No other explanation.”
“Orders, sweetness?” Roberta asked.
“Let them get up close, then whirl and feed them grapeshot. See if they get indigestion.”
“Leave it to me. I’ll cook ‘em a dinner they won’t soon forget.” With that the first mate spun away and began barking orders. “Down chests! Up hammocks! It’s a fight we’re to have, me hearties!” The Kiss started to resemble a nest of angry hornets as the crew all scattered to their posts. Small teams scurried up the masts like monkeys to secure the yardarms with chains. Fergus explained that this would help prevent them from being easily shot away and falling onto the deck to crush somebody. Several sails were furled, to make the ship manageable with fewer men. They laid out extra gear so quick repairs could be made during the fight. Another team hauled up muskets, pistols, and blunderbusses, as well as cutlasses, in case we had to repel boarders. To help with that, they also raised nets above the rail to catch anybody who tried to jump from the other ship. Buckets of sand were strewn across the decks to make them less slippery if blood began flowing. Big barrels full of water, already tied down along the length of the ship, had their lids removed. If fires broke out these would be used to fight them. On the gun deck this had also been done, Fergus told me, along with a host of other measures to ready the cannon for action. Down there Nickleby would be checking to make sure things ran according to his usual drill, all the tools of a gunner’s trade laid out in their proper places: powder, shot, rammers, sponges, linstocks with slow matches. Also somewhere down below the carpenter prepared plugs for sealing any holes from enemy cannonballs, and the surgeon readied his medical instruments. The precision of it all amazed me. McClellan’s army had nothing on Pitcairn’s men.
More than half an hour had passed and the Kiss stood ready for action. Good thing, too, because our pursuer had closed to within a few hundred yards. After a while Romulus dragged me out of the way, because I kept getting run into or stomped on as I tried to take everything in from amidships. We moved back to the stern, where the commander stood, keeping careful watch on his crew’s preparations. Pitcairn had shed his heavy purple coat, vest, and tricorn. Now he looked like a real fighting pirate in black blousy shirt and gray silken headscarf. Pulling on small tight riding gloves, he rested one hand on the hilt of his sword. I saw that two pistols and a heavy dagger had been added to his belt. Close by, where he could reach it without moving a step, lay an old oak belaying pin. One end of it had been carved with ridges to make it less likely to slip out his grip. The other end bore the scars of many a fight, where blades, flames, and heads had impacted it.
“Miss Verity, I need you to go below and aid Doctor Rochester, please,” Pitcairn ordered. “Take Marshal Romulus with you. Freya will be down there. Look after her. She tends to want to come up on deck and help us fight. We don’t want her hurt.”
Don’t want me hurt is what you mean. Nice try. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather stay up here. You may need me.”
The captain did a good job of controlling his face, which looked like it wanted to laugh. I saw him meet Romulus’ eyes. That might’ve stopped him. “I’ve been apprised of your combat abilities and partially believe that they may indeed exceed your outward demeanor. But trust me, we have this well in hand. Besides, I’ve been contracted to get you to your destination, and that is more vital to the world than this particular engagement.”
Romulus spoke up. “Cap’n’s right. Let’s go down like he says.” The giant Marshal leaned in close and whispered, “Don’t you fret. If we has to fight, I’ll sho nuff get you back up here.”
Giving in, we got to the ladder and headed down. Before we arrived at the surgeon’s quarters we ran into Sha’ira, who had donned all of her battle gear. This ain’t fair. She gets to go whup up on bad guys and I have to sit at the kids’ table. The dreamwriter gave me a little apologetic smile.
“Commander Pitcairn has asked me to assist, as a last resort. I hope it will not come to that.”
“Does he know you’ve made a pact with yourself to take no more lives?” I asked her.
Her beautiful eyes widened. “You are a perceptive girl.”
I shrugged. “You had plenty of chances to kill some of those Shades on the beach. But all you did was block their attacks. Don’t take a lot o’ perception.”
“You are right, of course. My mentor, she who opened my eyes to what the Guild truly represented, and what I had become, made me see that blood does not wash off with even more blood.” Sha’ira squeezed past me to the foot of the ladder. “But if I have no choice, a little judicious wounding will do no harm.” With a tight smile she vanished up onto the main deck.
We stood near our quarters, so I ducked in to grab some water from my canteen. While there I peeped out of the port to see how things stood. The other ship wasn’t visible on that side. Using my witched ears I listened instead. Filtering out the unfamiliar sailors’ lingo, cursing, and general chatter, I heard two things that made me catch my breath. One was Sancho hollering, “They’ve lassoed a whale! A white whale! He’s pullin’ ‘em to us!”
The other was old Fergus wondering aloud, “Who’d name their bloody ship the Crouton? Is they a bunch o’ chefs?”
My canteen crashed to the floor, along with my jaw. I’m stupid as a donkey. Thinkin’ it could only be a place. I pushed the startled Romulus aside and leaped at the ladder Sha’ira had just climbed. Please, please let me be in time.
“Miss Verity, what the---?” Romulus stammered.
“Why?”
“Because my ma’s on it!”
39/ Slave to the Croatan
“This ship is crewed by monsters.”
“So,” Jasper snickered as I hauled myself up the ladder, “you don’t think you just insulted all the donkeys of the world?”
“Oh, hush!” I yelled out loud.
“Didn’t say nothin’,” Romulus protested from just below me.
“Sorry, not talkin’ to you,” I told him without looking down. “I’m bein’ ridiculed by my magick sword.”
“Ooh, such a pointed remark!” sneered Jasper as my head poked through the deck hatch. “You cut me to the quick.”
Jiminy, is that what passes for wit in the spirit world? “Shut up or I’ll use you to trim my toenails.” My feet hit the main deck at a run. Looking all around for Pitcairn or somebody else in charge, all I saw was a blur of sweaty bodies scampering about. Some yanked on ropes, some loaded muskets, others climbed into the rigging. All of them hollered as loud and as fast as lungs could go. Sails snapped and popped as they fought the wind, in harmony with the creaking and humming of taut lines. I stumbled across the pitching deck, walking just like I had when Jasper’d made me drink that horrid whiskey. Nowhere did I see the commander, Roberta, or any of the mates. What I did see was the pursuing ship, big as a mountain and just two hundred yards behind us on the starboard side.
Every bit of her canvas bulged like a geezer’s pot belly, filled with the stiff following breeze. Much wider and higher than the Penelope’s Kiss, she didn’t knife through the water like we did but seemed to plow into the waves with brute force. I was no expert on ships but I could tell this one had no business running with the sleek buccaneer frigate. Her crew, visible to my spyglass-eyes, had the hard look of men who’d gone a long time without any law. Where our sailors, scruffy as they seemed, at least carried themselves like proud professionals, the other ship’s hands had a hollow cast to their eyes that told me they’d long ago given up any hope of acceptance by civilized folk. As if to announce that to the world, their carved ebony figurehead was a dead and decayed Injun chief, holding its own rotting skull out in one skeletal hand. On the bow of the ship, in yellow letters that stood out against the moldy green paint of the hull, was its name: Croatan. A haunted place where people had vanished as if swallowed up by the underworld. The perfect name for this unsettling sight.
Brimstone and Lily (Legacy Stone Adventures) Page 40