“I don’t want no trouble,” he told the piranha in a tone meant to calm them. “I’m comin’ fer a drink, nothin’ more.” He untied the blue bandana from around his neck as he spoke and opened it up. “I’m parched, ye see?” It occurred to him that fish probably knew very little about being thirsty, but he could think of no way to address the issue with them, so he remained quiet about it.
He gave the cloth a little shake, and then immediately wished he hadn’t. The fish grew agitated at the motion and gathered closer to the post to investigate. Several even surfaced. “I ain’t food, I tell ye,” Delaney said, irritated with them. “Dumb little Chompers.” He shook his head at their ignorance as he tucked the bandana into the rope that served as his belt.
Once the fish seemed to have settled again, he slowly unknotted his ankles from behind the post. Surprised and a little worried by how stiff his legs had become, he stretched his bare feet out in front of him and wiggled his toes, keeping his balance by holding the post under his buttocks in both hands. Feeling a little more confident, he put the soles of his bare feet against the wooden sides of the post, then lifted up his right buttock and slid his right hand, palm down, onto the cross-cut surface under him. He shifted over so that he sat with his right buttock on just the edge of the post. Pushing up with his feet and legs as well as his hand, he raised himself enough to reach his left hand over in front of him and place it palm down beside his right hand.
“Here’s the tricky part,” he said aloud, less to the fish than to himself. The pole shook and trembled, but with agility gained in flinging himself around the rigging of tall ships, he loosed his feet and turned himself around to face the post, his feet quickly but carefully finding the post again, inside arches pressing tightly to the rounded sides. He lowered himself until he was hugging the post in a shinny. There he waited once again for the hungry fish to calm themselves.
“I’m tellin’ you boys, leave it be.”
Slowly, inch by gradual inch, he shinnied down until his toes were about two feet from the surface of the water. The Chompers seemed highly interested, but not highly agitated. He paused again to remove the bandana from his belt, which he did quite slowly. By now, his mouth felt dry as dirt, his throat hurt him just to think of swallowing. The worst part, though, was that he could smell the water now; he could feel its coolness rising upward. The thought came to his mind that he could just let go and plunge in, drinking in all the cool water in the world before the inevitable, before it was all just over and done, but he shook that thought away with a start. It was the sort of strange imagining that dying men did.
He looked down again, saw the silvery blue fish moving from sunlight to shadow, shadow to sunlight, circling, bobbing up to the surface for a better view, waiting. Taking the bandana in his right hand, hooking the post in the crook of his left arm, he squatted down on his haunches so he was sitting on his own heels. Then he began, ever so carefully, to lean down, down toward the water, his left arm unwrapping itself until he clung with his two feet and his left hand, reaching out to dip the bandana in with his right. All he needed was to get it wet, and then he could suck its moisture into his mouth. It was a plan that couldn’t fail, he thought. He had seen how high the Chompers could jump when they took Lemmer’s hand. His bandana was a good twelve inches long, and none of those fish ever got more than six or eight inches from the surface unless they were pulled up out of the water, with jaws clamped on—
“Don’t think on that,” Delaney whispered to himself.
As he lowered the bandana, the fish grew agitated again, sure now that here at last was a morsel on which they could feed. They swarmed so thick under the cloth that Delaney suddenly wondered if there was any water between them at all. Then he worried that so many of them would try to take the bandana, it would be shredded before they could determine it was naught but cotton.
But as he held the bandana poised above their heads, a strange thing happened.
The piranha disappeared. They turned in an instant and were gone, fleeing in all directions. Delaney looked at the bandana for a moment, wondering how it might have scared them. Then he realized this was his chance, whatever the cause, and he plopped the cloth into the water. It was a bit of a greasy thing, and floated on the surface at first. So he waved it a few times through the water to be sure it had soaked up some moisture. Then he pulled it up and put it in his mouth. He closed his eyes and felt the cool liquid pour down his throat. No ale ever tasted better.
Suddenly the post lurched, as though something had slammed into it hard under the surface. Delaney lost his grip and fell sideways with an awkward splash, into the lagoon.
Panicked and under the surface, he turned back toward the post and kicked hard with his feet, pulled with his hands, coughing out a great bubble, willing himself back to the post the way a man in different straits would have shot upward for air. His head still underwater, he felt the post with his hands, pulled it toward him…
And then he saw it.
It was right below him. The face, doughy and puckered, blind white eyes, bared teeth, hugging tight to the post not eight feet under him.
Scrambling upward with strength and speed born of terror, Delaney shot out of the water up the post, slipping as he went, sliding back down the wet surface, twice as far as he climbed it seemed. But he reached the top alive, and was instantly seated again on its upmost end. He peered down into the darkened water, dripping wet, heart battering his ribs like a flurry of cannonballs hitting a hull broadside. He pulled his feet up under him as far from the surface, as far from that thing, as he could possibly get them.
The dark water was silent. And then the Jom Perhoo came back, arriving lazily, unconcerned. As though nothing had happened.
But nothing had not happened. It was not nothing that had happened. It was something. He had seen that something, and that something was the Onka Din Botlay, Ripper of the Bone. Sure he had—he hadn’t imagined it. He was no good at imagining. Besides, he was wet; his clothing was soaked. He had fallen in and he hadn’t been eaten by Chompers. So it had happened.
He had seen its face.
That was going to stay with him a very long time, he knew. That is, if he in fact had a very long time, which now that he’d seen the face, he realized he undoubtedly didn’t. That face had howled at him, Delaney was sure. But he was also sure it had made no noise. It was shrieking like the monkeys of the forest, with mouth wide, eyes blind in anger, a vicious cry. But it was silent. Its claws were dug into the post. Long fingers, just as the Hants had said, that came to points like carpenter’s nails. It was whiter, pastier, older, uglier than he had known how to envision. Hollow cheeks, sunken like it was starved. Eyes deep and piercing. Like there was hatred in them.
Delaney’s breaths came a little easier now, now that it seemed the thing wouldn’t follow him up the post. And the Chompers were back, which he was very glad to see. They suddenly seemed like old friends. “Good little fishies,” he told them, hoping they’d stay around. So long as the piranha surrounded him, he was safe.
The lagoon had grown placid again. The mermonkey was gone.
Onka Din Botlay. Why hadn’t it ripped out his bones? Why had it showed up at all? They come out only at night, is what the Hants said, under blackest moon. But it was day. And the thing was definitely out.
No, that’s not what the Hants had said. He remembered it now. The fire was burning, casting its flickering light on the faces of those seated around it.
“Onka Din Botlay attack only under the black moon,” the leader had said, the one with his face tattooed black-and-white in the shape and figure of a skull. He was their chieftain, or their priest, it was hard to know which. He said it, then he let the sickly old man translate, then he took a great tug on the long hoobatoon pipe. He blew the swath around him in an odd, ceremonial fashion and handed the pipe to Belisar the Whale. The pirate took it, nodded, and did the same.
They attack only under the black moon. That’s what the man ha
d said.
Delaney took a deep breath now and exhaled. He had gotten his water, but so far it had grown no idea tomatoes in his head. In fact, it had pretty much run everything out of his head but mermonkeys. Mermonkeys that would come in the dark, and climb the post, and eat his bones.
It would have been better to die that day in Mumtown, like Avery Wittle did. That would have saved him this horrible end. And saved the world a load of piracy. Avery hadn’t turned. Avery had made his stand there, in Castle Mum. And though Delaney didn’t want it to come back, didn’t like to think on it, there it came, a memory from four years back that seemed so lifelike, it seemed it was happening all over again.
“I need your hands,” the Horkan man said, picking bits of beef breakfast from his teeth with a twisted splinter of wood. “You first.”
The Horkan man wanted to bind them all, and he wanted to bind Delaney first. His head still pounding, Delaney stood to face the challenge, then glanced over his shoulder at his fellow captives. They were all watching to see what he’d do. He swallowed once, filled his lungs, then did the only thing he could think to do. He extended grim fists between the bars, just as the jailor demanded. He had no other ideas.
The big man tied Delaney’s protruding hands at the wrist with a thin leather thong. The sailor admired the handiwork in spite of himself, the firmness of the wrap, the quick, careful frap that drew it tight, the easy, firm double half-hitch over his right fist to secure the end. Here was a man who knew his business.
“You next,” the Horkan man said, attempting to pull Sleeve from the corner with a bent finger. Sleeve swore at him, but didn’t budge.
“No trial for you, then.” He pulled a pistol from where he kept it in his belt at his back and aimed it between the bars. “And I’ll kill two others here, just for spite.” He pointed it at the Trum boys.
“Whoa now!” Delaney offered. “Let’s not be hasty. Sleeve moves slow, is all. But he’s movin’. Ain’t ye, Sleeve?”
Sleeve snarled his displeasure, but the encouragement of cellmates convinced him to follow Delaney’s example. After Sleeve, the jailor bound Mutter Cabe, and then big Nil Corver. Delaney furrowed his brow. Something about the order in which his fellow captives were summoned struck him as odd. Then he knew what it was. The Cabeeb jailor had somehow assessed the danger his captives posed and was securing them in order, from best fighter to worst. Information bought with Captain Stube’s gold, no doubt.
Least and therefore last was young Dallis Trum, eyes wide and unseeing, lower lip trembling as though saying as many prayers as he knew, as fast as possible.
“It’s all right, young pup,” Delaney tried to assure him. “It’s just a bit of a pinch, that’s all. Pinches come and go.” He winked in what he hoped was a knowing sort of way, but there was a sting like a particle of dust in his eye, and all he could think was that he wished he hadn’t taken the two boys under his wing quite so thoroughly.
Dallis put his pudgy hands through the bars next to his brother without being requested, having seen all the others do the same.
“Oh, not you,” the jailor told him. “You will be the first to die.”
“Whoa, wait!” Nil trembled. “What about the trial?” The corners of his mouth drew downward, pulling his eyes into a blank stare. “You said.”
Sleeve harrumphed. “Ain’t gonna be no trial, ye blame fools.” He rattled the bars vigorously and vainly, using all of his strength and most of his vocabulary. The others just watched.
“Trial, yes,” the jailor told them once Sleeve’s bile was spent. He stared deep into Sleeve’s eyes from the free side of the bars. “Yes, we must do things in the proper order. My mistake. First, the trial. Then, you die. Sometimes I forget and do it backward.” But the humor was now gone from the Horkan man, replaced by flat, dry death.
Sleeve reached out to grab the jailor by the throat, but the big man stepped back easily, out of reach.
Now the jailor turned to the wall behind him, which was fashioned from rough boards tied together with lengths of hemp, and to the surprise of his prisoners he slid it aside as though he were opening a curtain at some theatrical show. When their eyes adjusted to the sudden stream of blinding sunlight, the doomed men saw an empty dirt courtyard fenced around by stone walls, darkened from decades, maybe centuries, of dirt and smoke. The sunlight that fell here seemed only to make the grime more dismal.
In the center of the little space was a platform, the broad remains of a huge cedar or some other gnarled tree, its long-dead roots twisting up here and there from the sandy earth like gray snakes that had died sunning their bellies. The platform this trunk created was six feet across and a foot or two high.
The jailor unlocked the iron padlock with a rusted key and went into the cell, binding Dallis Trum’s hands behind him. Then he walked the boy out and stood him in the center of the stump, turned him to face the crewmen.
“Witnesses,” the jailor said. Delaney thought he was addressing the sailors until two men stepped toward the stump into view. One was of no particular distinction, average in height and weight, middle-aged, no beard, dressed like any merchant of Nearing Vast.
The other man, however, was a sight to behold. He overshadowed his partner in every way. This one was tall and broad-shouldered and was dressed in a cream-colored silk shirt, silvery satin breeches, and white silk stockings to his knees. His calves bulged; his knotted muscles almost made the jailor’s proportions seem small. He wore no hat, and his light brown and sun-streaked hair fell in glorious curls to his shoulders.
His face was leathered and tanned by the elements, and it was broader from ear to ear than it was from hairline to smooth chin. It was not a handsome face. His mouth was wide and his eyes were narrow. His moustache was long and waxed, points stretching outward. None of his facial features were attractive, but somehow they combined to make him striking, even arresting. Maybe it was his demeanor more than his look; he was a powerful presence. He was self-consciously sure of himself, even vain in that assurance.
Then Delaney heard the words that escaped Sleeve’s lips, whispered with equal parts certainty and dread:
“Conch Imbry.”
The pirate captain heard and turned toward Sleeve, touching what would have been his hat, had he been wearing one. Delaney’s mouth went dry as dust, and his knees trembled.
CHAPTER FIVE
AVERY’S END
“CONCH IMBRY AND his pirates,” Delaney said to the fish. “Now there’s piranha for ye. Put you little boys all to shame.”
The fish reacted to this news with dull stares and lazily flapping fins.
Delaney tried to think about something else. He did not want his mind to go back there, did not want to think about what had happened next. So he thought of a big glass of ale, and when that got him remembering the Cabeeb pub where the shooting had happened, he switched to thinking about a jug of cool water. That made him think about the water in the lagoon, which he’d just tasted, so he looked at the fish and tried to think about fish that weren’t piranha but were regular fish that men killed and ate, instead of the other way around. Grouper and tuna and blackfish.
For a while he succeeded, remembering his favorite dinner. A great steaming plate of grilled seafood. But then he thought of a big hunk of boiled shark meat, which he’d eaten once and was strong and tasty. Then when he’d thought about shark meat, the old legends about Firefish rose in his head, those sea monsters that could eat a whole ship but whose meat could double a man’s strength, if only one could be caught and killed. But they couldn’t be caught or killed, because only if a man could eat Firefish meat, they said, could he become strong enough to kill a Firefish. But he wasn’t strong enough otherwise, so until he did it, he could never do it. And that was a puzzle Delaney couldn’t piece together.
But after he’d thought about Firefish eating sailors for a while, wondering what that might look like, whether those sailors would die like fighting men aboard ship, which he’d seen a lot of, or like
Lemmer Harps getting his hand eaten, which he’d seen only once, he ended up thinking about piranha again. They weren’t as dangerous as bigger predators, because they were just little fish, really, and hungry. Not greedy to kill men, like Firefish. Or sharks. Or bears, or lions. And once he got to thinking about the worst kind of predators, he thought again about pirates. And then he thought about the worst pirate he’d ever met so far, which was Conch Imbry.
And so after only a few moments his mind flowed back to Conch and the Cabeebs. And there he was, watching the poor Trum boy once again.
Dallis was on his knees now on the stump facing the jail, his hands bound behind him. The jailor stood over the boy, to his left. Conch Imbry stood to the boy’s right. Standing beside Conch was the unimpressive man, who now pulled a pistol from his waistband, checked its load, then held it down at his side. Delaney felt a sudden awe. This unimposing man was the executioner, then. Would he take the life of so young a boy, just like that, right before their eyes? Delaney couldn’t imagine he would, but then he could see no reason why he wouldn’t, him being a pirate.
“What’s yer name and what’s yer rank, sailor?” Imbry asked. His voice was a croak on top of a rumble, nothing at all like the pure baritone note of the seashell trumpet for which he was nicknamed.
The wide-eyed youngster looked up from between the twin mountains, the pirate and the jailor. His eyes were round in fear. He was younger than almost thirteen. He was barely twelve.
“Ye have a name, do ye?” Conch asked again.
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