Blaggard's Moon

by George Bryan Polivka

  “Yes, sir. I mean, aye, sir,” he offered in a squeak.

  Conch waited. The Cabeeb jailor kicked Dallis in the thigh, and the boy yelped.

  “Just say your name, son,” Delaney suggested firmly, to push Dallis into obedience, but gently, so as not to rile the pirates further.

  “Dallis Trum, sir,” came the boy’s thin reply. Then, taking strength from Delaney’s intervention, he straightened himself up, put his chin in the air and announced, “I’m a tried hand, sir, and a seasoned sailor.” He made a very brief effort to salute before the cords that bound his wrists stopped him.

  Delaney grinned in spite of himself. The boy had grit.

  Conch seemed thoroughly unimpressed. “Yer accused a’ murder,” he offered, as though that fact might be unknown. “What’s the penalty, Horkan Meeb, for murder in Mumtown?”

  “Death, Captain,” Meeb replied. “Death to the lot of ’em.”

  At this cue the unimpressive man stepped forward and put the pistol barrel to the back of Dallis’s head. He had to lean over to do it, and when he did, Delaney saw that the back of the man’s shirt had blood seeping through it in long stripes, as though he was wounded. As though he’d been whipped. But he didn’t act wounded or whipped. He acted as though he was just fine. Which was not at all unimpressive. “Now, sir?” he asked evenly.

  Conch did not reply but watched the young sailor carefully. Dallis’s eyes wandered from the executioner to Conch to Meeb to the executioner again, then to the crewmen, and finally found Delaney.

  It was a look Delaney could not forget, a worse one, even, than that which was far more recently branded into his brain when Lemmer’s hand was eaten. This boy’s momentary surge of pride was gone. He was not a bright lad, not by any means, and Delaney could see he had not quite grasped the finality of these proceedings until the cold steel of the pistol was pressed to the back of his skull. His look was pleading. It was anxious. It was confused. But worst of all, it was trusting. He expected his protector to protect him.

  At that moment Delaney wished for all he was worth that he’d never laid an eye on the boy.

  “Jes’ kids,” Delaney said aloud to the fish. Then he clucked and shook his head. “Never should a’ come aboard.” It was his downfall, he realized gloomily, to pay so much mind to the young ones. Growing up in the rough and tumble of his father’s drunken poverty had hardened him to many things, but not to the plight of youngsters. Especially when they seemed lost and afraid and out of their element. He heaved a great sigh. “Should never a’ been aboard.”

  Dallis and Kreg Trum had been taken aboard by accident. As the lines were being cast off, one of Captain June Stube’s longtime hands had inexplicably fallen from atop the mainsail yard to the deck, and had to be left ashore in a rather grotesque display of broken bones. The boys had simply appeared at that moment, Delaney recalled, as though delivered from on high, with their bedrolls at their feet. Their faces were grubby and their clothes were filthy, but they swore they were sailors, experienced hands despite their age. Stube doubted, and asked a few pointed questions. To everyone’s surprise, Kreg answered them all quite satisfactorily. The captain studied their palms, approved of the thick calluses. He hesitated yet, but then the boys offered to split a share—two crewmen for the price of one. Stube took them aboard and hastily cast off.

  They were anything but seasoned hands.

  Turned out they were chandlers, the sons of a candle-maker and merchant in some remote village on the Nearing Plains. Their hands were accustomed to hard work and hot wax, but their hearts had led their feet to run from both. They had listened too long and too carefully to an uncle’s rum-soaked tales of life at sea, and they had determined to join the Vast Navy. Without papers or commendations, too young and too green, their quest had ended under the wharves at the docks of Mann, where they fought seagulls for scraps, begging every sailor who would listen to help them get on crew.

  No one would have them, and now Captain Stube understood why. The boys were aggressively ignorant, showing confidence at all the wrong moments, their judgment in error almost unerringly. Which one of them was worse depended on which one was nearer. They were continually tying off what they should be loosing, coiling what they should be uncoiling, carrying what they should be throwing and throwing what they should be holding onto for dear life. After a cargo pulley missed a crewman’s head by inches and crashed through a rum barrel, splaying out its staves like a crunched spider, Stube threw them both into the brig. Bad enough that they had lied, worse that they had bungled, but unforgiveable that they had lowered every man’s share of rum.

  Delaney had vouched for them, though. Couldn’t stand to think of them behind bars. But they’d have been safe there, and if he’d let them be they wouldn’t be ashore now. They wouldn’t be facing prison, or pirates, or pirate’s pistols.

  “A seasoned sailor, is it?” Conch Imbry growled. “Now why do that seem so unlikely to me?” He glanced over at the rest of the condemned lot, and Delaney thought he saw a wink. His spirits crept upward.

  Conch turned back to speak to the boy, leaning in. His raspy voice softened. “But tell ye what, I’ll believe ye, at least till ye prove me otherwise.”

  Now hope flashed through Delaney.

  “And to give ye a fightin’ chance to prove yer mettle, I’ll ransom yer worthless soul. And here’s how. In exchange fer stayin’ alive, fair is fair, ye’ll have a duty to do me. And it’s this. Ye’ll swear allegiance to me. Ye’ll swear ye’ll follow me, like I was yer daddy and mama both. Like yer god in a’mighty heaven. Then, ’stead a’ bein’ dead, ye’ll be alive. And ye’ll have all the money ye can spend. Ye’ll have trinkets and muskets and women, when ye grow up enough fer ’em, and ye’ll have all ye can eat and all ye can drink fer as long as ye live. Ye’ll even have fame, fer ye’ll be sailin’ wif the Conch. But hear me now. Ye’ll kill who I say kill. And ye’ll die when I say die. So. What say ye, son? Is it a bargain?”

  Delaney could see a problem here. Not with the bargain itself, which would save a young man’s life and so seemed a fresh wind of mercy. Rather, it was the way Conch had framed it. Captain Imbry had used too many words. He had made a simple choice too complex for the brain of this young runaway. So as the brutal and dashing pirate stood still, waiting for his words to play deep into the mind and heart of the least of these crewmen, it became gradually more obvious to all that the boy was not about to speak.

  The executioner clicked back the hammer of his pistol. Conch Imbry’s jaw tightened.

  “ ’Scuse me, sir,” Delaney heard himself say.

  Now all eyes swung to him.

  Delaney spoke as though in a fog, his mouth moving around words that seemed to form themselves and escape before his mind had a chance to rein them back. “That is to say, beggin’ yer humble pardon, I do believe the boy don’t understand the offer.”

  Conch looked dumbfounded. He looked at the boy. He looked back at Delaney. He narrowed his already narrow eyes. “He’s what, a idiot?”

  “Oh no. Well, at least not so much that he can’t work out the meaning. But if ye don’t mind, begging yer pardon again, I’ll help explain it.”

  Imbry waved a big hand. “Help away.”

  Delaney spoke directly to the boy. “Dallis, son, this here’s Conch Imbry, and he’s a great pirate captain. Says he’ll save ye from the Cabeebs if ye’ll turn pirate right now. Otherwise—see that man with the gun there? Well, he’s gonna shoot ye dead. So now, son, ye got to decide whether to live a pirate or die right now, being a…” the right word did not come to him, “…whatever you now are,” he concluded.

  The boy’s mouth dropped open as his eyes drifted on their own accord to Conch Imbry.

  “I believe he’s got it now, Cap’n,” Delaney said with a confident nod.

  Then the boy did something that surprised them all. He leaped to his feet and ran to his brother.

  “Hey!” the Cabeeb jailor shouted, reaching for his own pistol.


  “Let ’im,” Conch said.

  Dallis stopped, his hands still tied behind him, looking directly into his older brother’s grim eyes. “What should I do, Kreg?”

  “I don’t know,” Kreg answered earnestly, the predicament too big for him as well. “We din’t run off to become no pirates.”

  “What if Ma finds out?”

  Kreg nodded once in earnest. “She’d be real sore if we came home pirates.”

  After a thoughtful pause, Delaney ventured to speak again. “On the opposite hand, I reckon she might also be a tad put out if you was to come home dead.”

  The boys looked at him, then looked at one another as they thought that through, their puzzlement complete. “Real put out,” Kreg confirmed.

  It seemed an impossible knot to untie.

  Delaney spoke to the pirate captain, his mouth again running ahead of his brain. “Why start with the boys? Let the men decide, and leave the boys to follow after.”

  Conch Imbry walked with surprising grace of movement toward Delaney. It reminded him of a cat moving in on a mouse. Conch Imbry’s every step seemed to speak aloud, and the words they seemed to speak were, “I’m tired of you, sir, and so now you’ll die.” And as if to emphasize this silent point, the pirate pulled his pistol and patiently, almost passively pressed its cold, round muzzle into Delaney’s forehead. “Yer a talkative one,” he croaked. He pulled the hammer back until it clicked. “Talkin’ leads to trouble.”

  Delaney’s heart seized up. He thought at that moment that those cold, slitted eyes would be the last things he would ever see.

  “Don’t shoot him, please!” Dallis yelped, and for the first time in all this, tears appeared in his eyes.

  Conch looked over at him, a sudden spark in his own eyes. “I will kill ’im, though, ye little bawler. I’ll kill ’em all dead unless ye turn pirate and sail with me for all yer days.” He did not move the pistol, held in his left hand, from Delaney’s forehead.

  Dallis’s round head bobbed like a cork on the sea. “All right, then. I will. Aye, sir.” He looked at his brother Kreg. “For Mr. Delaney.”

  Kreg nodded. “We’re pirates now,” he confirmed. “Jus’ don’t shoot Mr. Delaney. He’s a good man.”

  “A good man, is he?” The right side of Conch’s long mouth rose up into something between a smile and a sneer. He reached out his free hand in a flash, and grabbed Dallis Trum by the back of the neck. Then he swung the pistol around and pressed it to Dallis’s temple. His grip was firm, too firm to be anything but painful. The boy closed his eyes and grimaced, but said nothing. He’d sworn to die whenever Conch said so. He seemed bound to keep his word.

  “And how about you, Mr. Delaney?” Conch asked. “Yer a too-much talker. Will ye save this lad?”

  “If I can,” Delaney answered firmly.

  “Swear it, then. Swear ye’ll kill who I say kill, die when I say die, and follow me all yer days.”

  Delaney had no worries about what his parents might think. Yer Poor Ma was dead and Pap, if not dead by now, was surely dead drunk. “Times bein’ what they are, sir,” he answered, “it seems a fair bargain.”

  “Swear it.”

  A lump rose in his throat. He knew there was no turning back, not from an oath to a pirate. “I swear to follow you sir, live or die, all my days.”

  Conch nodded. He lowered the pistol. He turned back to the boys. “What’s yer name, son?” he asked the older boy.

  “Kreg Trum. Dallis here’s my kid brother.”

  “Kreg and Dallis.”

  The unimpressive man spoke. “More like dregs and ballast, if you ask me.”

  Conch laughed, which sounded a bit like a bullfrog with the croup. “Aye. That’s what they are, no doubt. Dregs and Ballast.” And no one called them anything else from that moment on, for as long as they sailed with Conch Imbry.

  “How about the rest of you men?” Conch then asked around. “What say ye? Death, or piracy?” He said it with a surge of energy, as though offering a wondrous choice, perhaps selling some healing potion or leading a prayer meeting.

  The men spoke all at once, racing one another for the privilege of being first. “Aye, we’ll be pirates!” and “Yes, sir!” and “Yers to the bitter end, Cap’n!” and “I’m in, ye can count on me!”

  “Swear it!” Conch ordered.

  “I swear it!” his new crewmen answered in healthy unison.

  All but one.

  The good cheer receded as Conch walked calmly over to Avery Wittle. “I din’t hear ye swear, sailor.”

  Avery was short and soft and round and unassuming. If it was possible for a man to have an opposite, Avery was the Conch’s. He lowered his eyes. Conch looked down at the pistol in his own left hand. He gripped an iron bar with his right hand, then pointed the barrel at the ground.

  “What about it, now?” he said in a low rumble. “Speak up, sailor. No sense dyin’ like a hog trussed fer slaughter.”

  Avery Wittle shook like the last leaf on a bare branch in winter’s first storm. But he remained silent.

  On his post, Delaney squirmed. Usually he didn’t remember all this, this far into the story. He’d kept it far away since the days right after it had happened. Whenever that memory came around, his mind always went off somewhere else, often following his legs to a pint of ale or a card table, or even a deck that needed a swabbing. Anything to avoid what had happened next.

  But there was nowhere for his legs to take him now. Squirm or stretch, it didn’t matter. The scene went right on.

  Avery just looked up at the pirate captain with that same childishly sincere look he’d given Delaney, just hours before when, hat in hand, he’d helped Delaney remember the events of the previous night.

  Conch sighed. “What’s yer name, sailor?”

  “Avery Wittle, sir. Able-bodied seaman, and a true hand.”

  “A true hand, is it? Well, true as yer hand may be, ye know what I got to do, don’t ye, Mr. Wittle? What would it look like to these men here if, after all my talk, I let ye loose alive and no pirate?”

  Avery’s breaths came in sharp, quick bursts.

  Conch watched him a moment, then asked quietly, almost gently, “Not got the stuffin’s for a little buccaneerin,’ is that all it is?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, struggling to look the Conch in the eye.

  “It ain’t that hard,” Conch assured him. “We’re just takin’ gold from the very men who’ve taken it from us, and kept it fer themselves. See, these merchants and shipmen, they make the rules, and they make ’em so’s men like you and me cain’t ever win. But me…I just make diff’rent rules. Ye play by my rules, Mr. Wittle, ye win. You and yer mates. Then we’re the ones end up with the gold. That’s all it is.”

  Avery’s voice quavered and his chin trembled, but he spoke plainly enough. “I can’t tell you how truly sorry I am for this. But I…I can’t rightly serve a pirate in this world and be prepared to meet my Maker in the next. And I say that meanin’ no offense.”

  Now Conch’s gentleness faded away. His voice was cold and distant. “Ah, a man wif a principle. Well, no offense taken, Mr. Wittle. We all makes our choices. And when a man makes up his mind to die, well, likely he’s goin’ to die.”

  And with a single gunshot, that’s what Avery Wittle did.

  Monkeys screeched and birds flapped upward, and Delaney shivered. Everything had changed. The pond was darker; he was colder. He looked up and found that the sun had now moved in its arc past the opening in the canopy above, and he was in shadow.

  Why would Avery do such a thing? Why not pretend to turn, then run the next chance he got? At least that way he’d have lived a while longer. No sense having a principle and then being dead and unable to use it. Who knew, maybe he’d have gotten lucky and made a clean break, disappearing from sea life, and gone on to plow corn the rest of his days far from the reach of pirates.

  Fear is all it was, Delaney thought. Avery was just a coward, through and through.


  Or at least, that’s what Delaney had told himself ever since it happened. But now he was remembering it, it didn’t seem that way. It seemed…it almost seemed that something else was happening. Avery was fearful; he was trembling. True enough. But something about what he’d done was haunting. Kind of like that little girl’s strange and beautiful song was haunting. It was almost like—in some way that Delaney couldn’t get his mind around—rather than being pure afraid, Avery was only afraid just on the surface. Like his fear was just the ripple on top of a deep pond. Underneath, it was like Avery was doing something he knew he must do, even though he didn’t want to do it. It almost seemed, somehow, when you looked at it that way, brave.

  And then the song came back to Delaney’s mind, and the young girl’s pure voice singing it. And though it still made no sense, it seemed now to be a song about Avery, or if not about him, about the sort of man he was. Or maybe, about the sort of thing he did.

  A true lang time and we shall meet

  On the silver path to the rushing sea

  Where moons hang golden under boughs of green,

  A lang true la ’tis true…

  That little girl had something of the next world in her, Delaney concluded. And it made sense, her being the daughter of Jenta Stillmithers. There was so much of this world’s strife bound up in the union that created her, so much of longing for something better and running up against the harsh brambles, so much of the dark in pursuit of the light, that it was only natural the result would be a child connected to this world by a thread.

  In her first two weeks in Skaelington, Jenta Flug, now Jenta Stillmithers, was invited to two fine events. The first was a small, private party for a few of Runsford’s many business associates, but the second was the city’s most splendid dance of the year, the annual Summer’s Eve Ball, celebrating the summer solstice. It was the climactic end of the social calendar. Everyone who mattered was there, along with a great many who wished to matter more than they did.

  Jenta immediately attracted a flock of admiring young men—and some not so young—all of whom were astounded that such beauty could have been among them and remained hidden. Whispered conversations filled the splendidly decorated room, which she made drab by comparison. She wore a brocaded gown tailored for the occasion, cream with scarlet trim, cut tastefully and elegantly. Her hair was done up and wrapped, leaving one curl of tresses to fall to a bare shoulder. Eyes drifted toward her, then drifted away, or else drifted and stayed.