“I made sure they worked.” He turned back to his cauldron.
But before Damrick could ask more, the faint but frantic clamor of a fire bell rose up from below. He looked over the edge again and traced it to its source, maybe two miles to the north. He could see black smoke rising. Fire in the city. He could see people and horses suddenly in action, moving quickly toward the bell, a surge of energy engulfing them. More bells clanged, closer now. Men, women, and children began pouring into the streets, many carrying buckets. Damrick had been part of this before, but from above it was extraordinary, an entire city set in motion in an instant, reacting to a danger that threatened them all. He looked back to the source of the smoke. That was a part of town with which he was very familiar. It was near Fellows Dry-Goods store. Damrick felt a moment’s thankfulness that his father had closed that shop and sold off most of the goods already. His parents, though, still lived above it.
Suddenly a thrill of fear went through him. “I’ll come back,” he said, his foot already on the top stair.
“I’ll be here,” Muzzleman answered.
The dark of the stairs left Damrick utterly blinded. He kept both hands on the wall, and moved his feet carefully down one step at a time, cursing his eyes for their inability to adjust more quickly. His mind whirled. He had taken great precautions to protect the Calliope, stationing his new recruits around it day and night. But he had not done the same with his father’s store, his parents’ home—and now he berated himself for it. He had set himself up against pirates and their partners, without protecting his parents. If anything happened to them…
“Wait, Mr. Hambone,” Dallis Trum interrupted. “I don’t get it. Ain’t you going to tell what Damrick’s idea is?”
“Aye,” another chimed in. “He’s testin’ out guns and ammunition and all-like, but even with iron shot, how’s he supposin’ he’ll take on cannons? He’s just got them piles a’ pistols and rifles.”
“And them two swivel cannon,” a third added.
After a few more similar questions, the storyteller let the dust settle. “First, Mr. Trum, my name is Drumbone. Ham Drumbone. Please do not truncate it into ‘Hambone.’ I heard enough of that when I was a boy.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“Apology accepted. And second, do any of you men remember when the Gatemen first took to the seas?”
There was silence. “Sure,” said a voice.
“They was like ghosts,” said another.
“That’s right,” Ham answered. “Pirate ships would just vanish without a trace. Some said it was magic. Some said the Firefish ate ’em. Some said it was the devil. Others said miracles of God. Some even did say it was ghosts that traveled the seas in the form of men. But I’m telling the story so you’ll know that it weren’t any of those.”
“Then what was it?” Dallis asked. “What was it Damrick done?”
“I’m building up to that, young sir.”
“You boys ain’t figured it out already?” asked a crotchety voice. It was Sleeve. “Add it up. Iron musket balls. Problems with the waddin’. Furnaces ever’ which where. Think back to that first fight Ham told, when the Defender attacked the Savage Grace. He’s given ye about a thousand hints.”
There was silence. Then another said, “But it ain’t fair talkin’ all around it, and not just sayin’ when he knows exactly.”
“Fair?” Ham asked. “What’s fair got to do with it? It’s a story, gents, not a contest.”
“And that’s all it is,” Mutter Cabe now contributed, his baritone ominous. “Nothin’ but guessin’. No one knows what happened to all them ships, and no one’s left who’ll tell. It’s the Firefish got ’em.”
“Yer a crazy old fool, Mutter,” Sleeve countered. “Damrick Fellows got ’em. He’s a smart man and was a hero fer a while, until people figured out he was no better than a murderer, a man who found out he liked killin’ and went and found a way to get paid to do it. And who paid him the most, that’s who he killed for. And that’s why he ended up pirate, and no one sings songs to him no more.”
In the silence, eyes and ears sought Ham’s thoughts on the matter.
Ham just sighed. “I can see you’re all gettin’ riled. That’s all for tonight, gents. More tomorrow, if I’ve a mind and you’ve the time.”
On this night, no one complained.
Delaney remembered it as he sat there above his lagoon. When Hell’s Gatemen started sailing the seas, everything changed. There was a different spirit around, and while many ashore cheered and made out like the Gatemen were just local boys who’d had enough and stepped up to the challenge of pirates, there was a darkness that grew up around the whole venture. Many of the men who joined up were known criminals, or bounty hunters, or mercenaries—even assassins who would make little distinction between shooting one man or shooting another, so long as the result was gold.
Maybe Ham had the story right, and maybe he didn’t, Delaney thought. But whether Ham made it up or Damrick actually thought the idea up and used it, there could be no doubt that someone had had an idea that could put a heavy cargo ship with a merchant crew and a couple of small cannon on an even footing with pirates.
Delaney swatted lazily at a swarm of insects that suddenly surrounded him.
Everybody seemed to have ideas. Everyone but Delaney.
Something bit him on the forearm. He whacked it. It was a tiny thing, but it left a big splot of blood where he’d mashed it. Then they were everywhere, a swarm of the bloodsucking bugs on his arms, his face, his shoulders, his back, biting like tiny little Chompers of the air. He breathed them in, coughed once, then turned in anger on the cloud and swatted and waved and whacked and blew until finally they moved off, leaving him covered with little red spots that quickly became welts. But at least they didn’t itch.
Suddenly, as soon as he’d had the thought, he had an itch in the center of his back, a bad itch, a deep, biting itch just where he couldn’t reach it. He dug his fingernails into his spine above the itch, then into his shoulder blade beside it, then scratched his thumbnail along his spine just below it. That only made it worse. He stripped off his shirt and batted himself on the back with it a few times, to no effect. Finally he tied a knot into the worn garment and, using it like a towel, he rubbed the center of his back vigorously.
“Now that’s nearly worth the whole agony that went before,” he announced, with a contented sigh. He wiped the traces of blood from his arms and face with his shirt. He glanced down at the pond, saw that his audience had returned. The Chompers were agitated again, rippling the surface of the pond. He watched for a while longer. Then he said, “Don’t suppose you lot ever get an itch ye can’t scratch?”
They didn’t answer. And as they didn’t, the image of a fish trying to scratch itself flitted into his head. He saw in his mind a saltwater swigget rubbing its inadequate little dorsal fin on a piece of colored coral, under the clear waters near the shores of some island in the Warm Climes. He laughed at the picture—a little fish just sawing away, stern expression on its little face giving way to a great, happy sigh.
Suddenly he sobered. His eyes went wide. “Wait, wait!” He swallowed hard, very serious now. That picture, that image, that idea…he had never seen it before. He had never even heard of anything like it. That was his mind wandering off on its own. It was like…like a play-pretend. An imagination.
An idea!
He looked at the knotted shirt in his hand with fear and wonder, as though it might somehow have caused this hallucination. But no. It had come from within him. From inside his own head. Excited now, he hunkered down to the task at hand. Lowering his head, he closed his eyes and puckered his brow into a deep furrow. “Idea, idea, idea,” he repeated, hoping to cash in on the sudden fertility of his mind. When nothing more came, he began banging his forehead with his palm. “Think it up now!” he told himself.
Then he saw tomatoes. Ripe, red, juicy tomatoes. He shook his head…no, he’d already thought of those. He didn’
t need more tomatoes, he needed what was inside the tomatoes, the ideas that would come out of them. He didn’t need regular, real tomatoes.
And then his eyes popped wide open.
Idea tomatoes were imagined, too. Why, an idea tomato…that, too, was an idea! He’d had that idea a while back, and hadn’t even recognized it. Had he been having ideas all along, and not known it? Could that be true? He shook his head. No, no, it wasn’t true. An idea tomato without an idea was just a tomato.
Or was it? He puzzled on that for a while. It was just a tomato, but it wasn’t a real tomato. It was an imagined, play-pretend tomato. A tomato that was only in the mind. But what exactly was a tomato that was only in his mind, if it wasn’t an idea? He closed his eyes again, feeling somehow he was on a path to places he’d never before been, big places, important places. Places he didn’t belong. But he couldn’t help himself, he just kept thinking.
Mind tomatoes.
What were they? Were they real, or were they not? No, they weren’t real. They couldn’t be touched or smelt or tasted. But still, that tomato was there in his head. And his head was real. So something about it was real. He could think up that tomato any time he wanted.
And there it was again. Big, red, bulbous, shiny…
He opened his eyes. It was gone. He felt oddly relieved. If it hadn’t gone away, that would have worried him. If there was a mind tomato he couldn’t make go away, what might it do? It might do anything. Instead of you eating it, it might eat you. At least, in your mind. Like things happen in dreams when you can’t control them.
And now even with his eyes open he could still see it. Sort of. Not as clear. But he knew that the idea of an idea tomato was there in his head, and it would stay. It would never go away, somehow, but would show up whenever he thought about it. Same with the itchy fish.
He now had idea tomatoes and itchy fish inside his head forever, and no man had put them there. They’d grown there.
He struggled to come to grips with this new fact, this somber reality. Here was something he’d thought up, and now it would stay inside his skull for as long as he had a skull. Which meant, at least until nightfall. He looked up to the open circle of sky above him, and a new sense of wonder stole over him. The world was a different place than he had thought it was. It wasn’t just a world of things, and people doing things. It was a world of ideas.
And now, some of those ideas were his.
“You goin’ to tell us the idea tonight, Mr. Drumbone?” Dallis Trum asked.
“The idea?” Ham asked, shaking the flame from a match as the smoke rose from his pipe.
“You know. What Damrick was up to with all the muskets and pistols.”
“Ah, that’s still burning you, is it?”
“Thought about it all day.”
“Couldn’t shut up about it, more like,” Sleeve answered. “You better tell us or the little twerp will drive the whole ship bats.”
“It’s an odd thing how a thought or a question can get inside you and make you miserable. There was much I was going to tell about how Damrick found the burning ruin of his parents’ home and the shop beneath it, how he come too late to help douse the flame but not too late to find the charred remains within it. But we won’t go into that. I will only say that it was the death of his mother and the grief of his father, many folks said, that drove Damrick Fellows from that moment on, turning him from a man with a new business to a man with a mission. A mission of vengeance, for how could he help but think this was more than a coincidence, happening as it did just after he’d announced to the world that he would ‘safeguard the seas’ and protect men, women, and children from the ways of the buccaneer? Others believed, as has been pointed out in these very quarters, that Damrick was no more than a ruthless killer before, so he couldn’t have been much more ruthless after. But we know this. If it was done by those who thought to drive him from his plans by burning his parents’ home to the ground, then they misjudged him by a wide ways.”
“Let’s hear the fight, Mr. Drumbone.” The words silenced the entire forecastle, even as heads turned to the source.
“Aye, Captain,” Ham said easily. “It’s not often we are graced with your presence here in the nether regions of your fine ship.”
Belisar the Whale leaned against the ship’s bulkhead, his own bulk taking up the entire passageway, blocking entrance and exit both. “Just tell on, sir.”
Ham paused but a moment. The men in the forecastle worried for their storyteller. The easy tone of Belisar’s voice, the calm look in his eye, the casual posture, all spoke of coming cruelty. With Belisar, the calmer and more pleasant he became, the more likely it was that someone’s blood would be spilled shortly.
“We were just at a critical juncture in our story,” Ham explained, and now a trace of nervousness hung about his words. “For here is where Hell’s Gatemen first took to the seas.”
“I know all about your juncture, Mr. Drumbone. Word on board is, you’ve got the explanation of a mystery all worked out. I’d like to hear how you manage the tale of Damrick Fellows, our great enemy, and the legends he sparked. I’d like to know how you think he did all that is claimed of him. I’d like to know whether you think he did all that is claimed. Call it a personal interest of mine. Tell on.”
“Aye, sir.” Ham cleared his throat. “Let’s see. Well, the Calliope left harbor on a summer’s morn. Haze hung over the City of Mann. It was one of those hot days where everything not only looked gray, but it felt colorless as well. The heat was already pressing down hard at nine; by noon it would be driving the good citizens to the alehouses for a cider, or to the backyards for a sweet lemonade in a shady spot. Captain Didrick, as they called him, so as not to confuse him with Damrick Fellows his son, had buried his wife but three days before. He’d have set sail immediately, his grief still full, for he had dedicated the voyage to her, but there was nary a breath of wind. On this particular morning there was hardly enough to fill a spritsail, but it was wind, and it was from the south, and so they were bound away.”
“Are you always so long getting to the point?” Belisar asked.
“Aye” and “Always” and “That he is, sir” filled the space. Respectfully.
“Well you see, sir,” Ham explained, “a story is a bit of a delicate thing. Too straight to the point and there’s no, what you might call, building up. Jumping straight to the fight, as the men quite often prefer, is not so fulfilling as they would believe. Rather you need the feel of the times, so to speak, to experience it fully. Knowing what moves the characters, what they have at stake. See, it just takes a bit of setting the stage, as it were—”
“All right, all right,” Belisar interrupted. “The question wasn’t meant to slow things even further. On with it.”
“Aye, sir. The ship Calliope was loaded to the gills and ready to sail. She sat heavy and low, full as she was of a precious cargo. Some of the best ale of the Nearing Plains was being shipped from Mann to Candon, to prepare for the Fall Festival there. Aboard was a crew of twenty souls, plus a full complement of merchant marines, Hell’s Gatemen—another forty souls. These last were girded about in military fashion, with pistols and muskets, and had a straight and level bearing about them. They had everything to make them seem military, save for uniforms. So in place of the regal blue that was worn top to bottom by the Royal Navy, these men wore civilian clothes, but tied a braided leather lash around the arm above the biceps, and stuck a red feather plume in their hats. Any hat would do, or just tuck it behind an ear; it was the bright red feather that made the wearer a Gateman.”
“What kind of bird has a red feather?” Dallis Trum whispered, imagining he wasn’t overheard.
“They dyed it, ye ninny. Shut up.”
“Oh.”
“And above them all flew the banner of the Gatemen, a blood-red standard with crossed swords in a V-shape, tips down. A vision that was soon to signal doom for many pirates up and down the coast.”
An awkward silence
followed, in which eyes cut to the captain and the ship seemed to creak more than usual.
Ham cleared his throat and continued. “It was not long before they met resistance. Early the next morning, not one full day asea, they were overtaken by a vessel flying a crude skull and bones, and boasting the name Tranquility across her stern.”
“Skeel Barris,” said more than one sailor.
“Aye. It was Skeel Barris, the very one. A bawd and a ribald, here was a man who took to piracy for the sheer joy of it. Nothing made him happier than a joke and a pistol duel, preferably at the same time. His very standard was a grinning skull wearing a cocked fool’s cap. But when he came upon the waddling, plodding Calliope, he found her not so comical as he might have hoped. For Damrick Fellows was about to test his new idea.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
TRANQUILITY
WITHIN A DAY, the becalmed haze of the Bay of Mann had given way to strong westerly winds on the open sea. But Calliope seemed to be standing still as the much faster ship came upon her from behind.
“Battle stations, men!” Damrick called. He needn’t have. His troops were already there, ready for any engagement. One of three riflemen who stood at the prow was none other than the muttonchopped Hale Starpus, formerly Damrick’s commanding officer when they both sailed aboard Defender. Hale had meant to make a career of sailoring, but his brief engagement with Sharkbit Sutter, and then news of Damrick’s crusade had changed his mind. Hale had a cutthroat’s eagerness for the fight and felt compelled to go where he was most likely to fire and be fired upon. He requested and received his release. Now, all the Gatemen but Lye Mogene and Damrick himself served under Hale, who brought a coarse but commanding presence to the Gatemen, along with his wild, windblown sideburns.
Three additional riflemen stood at the ship’s stern. Three manned each cannon. Ten more lined each gunwale, port and starboard, long rifles in hand. Amidships, two sweat-drenched men held glowing iron pokers that were thrust into the midst of a small blacksmith’s forge set in the middle of the main deck, glowing red and throwing off heat like it was apprenticed to the sun itself. Five more men stood alongside these two, waiting, their hands covered in the thick leather mittens of the smith’s trade. Lye Mogene stood and sweated beside them, the leader of this makeshift blacksmith brigade.
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