“Conch’s revenge will be cruel. I don’t think you can imagine how cruel.”
“I don’t fear what Captain Imbry will do to me.”
“You should. It may be more terrible than anything you have dreamed.”
“But I do not fear it. What I fear is what he may do to Wentworth without me to intervene. I know a bit about the Captain. I have met him. I have danced with him. I have…” she trailed off, a memory suddenly fresh, him at her side, looking down at her, pressing a ring into her hand. “He has taken an interest in me. I believe that I may be able to mitigate his wrath, should it come to that.”
Windall shook his head. “You’re a brave young lady. Brave, but foolish. He will have no mercy.”
“But the battle is engaged. Whatever the result, I must stay and fight it.”
“And that’s your decision?”
“Yes.”
“Then I wish you all the best.” He stood. He pulled two coins from his pocket. He held them in an open hand. “Take these. Hide them. You may yet need them.”
She accepted them. Then she kissed his cheek. “You have always been good to us. Thank you.”
He smiled sadly. “Let’s pray that we will meet again soon, under happier circumstances.” He could not hide his lack of optimism.
A crowd of cutthroats leaned into the lamppost, pushed on it until it bent, then broke, spilling glass and flaming oil down the alleyway. A few heaves and a twist, and the rusted metal post jerked free of its base. They raised it, held it like a battering ram, and ran it into the small oaken door set in the brown brick wall. It left a puncture mark, but the door held. They rammed it again. Again the door held tight.
“Forget the door, ram the brick!” Mazeley called out.
They did. Five tries later, a hole in the wall was big enough for hands to pull the bricks out. Then big enough for a small man to squeeze through. A moment later, the door was open and they streamed into the priest’s home.
Mazeley posted half a dozen men outside, and then went in himself.
“There’s nothin’ here, sir.”
“Nothing and no one, is that it?” Dust covered the furniture.
“Aye, sir.”
Mazeley walked through the home. In the priest’s bedroom, the faint outline of a cross could be seen on the wall above the bed, where a crucifix had hung for many years. Mazeley’s usual calm began to crack. “Where’s the nearest church?” he growled.
Conch Imbry walked into the sanctuary and looked around. It was a small church, with a few high windows on either side, near the ceiling. Designed for defense, he thought. Or it would be if there was any way to climb up to those windows and shoot down on attackers. Just like churchmen to forget that small detail, and make useless an otherwise highly effective means of defense.
The altar at the front was adorned by a large wooden cross nailed into the wall. The dais, two steps high, was currently patrolled by pirates. One of them was sniffing a loaf of bread he’d found on the altar. He took a bite. Seated at the front of the steps, facing the Conch, was a priest. He was bowed down, hunched forward, and Conch couldn’t see his face. Beside him, squatting with one knee on the first step, was Mart Mazeley. As Conch watched, Mazeley grasped the thin priest’s hair and pulled his head back.
Blood trickled from the man’s mouth and down his chin. A scar from a large burn nearly covered the left side of his face.
Taking another glance around the church, seeing nothing but empty pews, he walked forward. “This our man?” Conch asked.
Mazeley looked up. “Meet Carter Dent, priest of the Most High God. Seems to feel that this robe gives him the right to undermine the institutions God has put in place to rule the earth.”
“Don’t be talkin’ that way,” Conch hissed. “Let’s get him outta here.” He looked up at the cross, clearly uneasy.
Mazeley watched his boss, amused. “I’m only using words he’ll understand.”
“Ain’t this place got a basement or somefin’?”
“Sure, Captain. Of course. We can take him into the basement.”
In the darkness of the cellar, with three lamps burning, Conch was more himself. When Mazeley had tied the priest to a chair, Conch took a good look at him. He examined the prisoner’s face, putting a finger under his chin and raising his head. He waved his other hand in front of Father Dent’s distant, clouded eyes. “He’s blind as a bat.”
“Yes, he is,” Father Dent said thickly, but with obvious practice. “But he can hear quite well.”
Conch scowled. “And can talk, too. And that’s what ye’ll do now for us, won’t ye?”
The priest sighed. “Your man has been beating me for an hour. I won’t tell you anything I haven’t already told him.”
“What’s he told ye?” Conch asked of Mazeley.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Carter Dent asked, surprised. “You want to keep secrets from your boss, that’s your business.”
Now Mazeley looked concerned. “He’s said nothing. He’s bluffing.”
“Tell me what ye told him,” Conch demanded, a knife suddenly at the priest’s throat.
But Carter Dent had said all he was going to say.
Conch looked at Mazeley again. “What did he tell you?”
“Nothing of any value. He used to know Sharkbit Sutter, back in seminary. He met up with him later, here in Skaelington, after he turned pirate. The good father here wanted to turn him back to the light. Sutter gave him those scars for his trouble, and took away his eyesight.”
Conch grinned. “What’d he burn ye wif?”
Father Dent said nothing.
“Lamp oil, I believe it was.”
“That an’ a match’ll do it. That all he said?”
“Well, he did add that he’ll gladly die in the effort to bring you down. But no information at all as to how he planned to do that.”
Conch straightened up. “Torturin’ priests. Nasty business.” Then a thought occurred to him. “We should take him to the Hant.”
Mazeley studied Conch’s face. “You’re serious?”
“Sure, why not? One priest to another.”
Mazeley looked at Carter Dent. He leaned in close. “You might want to reconsider your silence, friend.”
No response.
“All right,” Mazeley sighed. “Have it your way. But I need to warn you, once the Hant gets started, no one can call him off.”
Delaney grew restless. He hadn’t liked this part of the story when Ham told it, and he liked it a lot less now. The Hant was one of the chieftains who came from these very jungles, the same sort Delaney had met just last night, with bones tattooed all over him. Conch’s chieftain had been captured by the pirates and brought to Skaelington, where Conch set him up in the dungeon of a ruined fortress, way back in the wilds. There, the chieftain-priest practiced his dark arts, boiling potions and chanting and burning powders and whatever else, convinced he was moving the powers of earth around, directing wind and rain and tides. The way Ham told it, Conch gave the Hant everything, anything he wanted, except his freedom. Conch did it because he felt the old chieftain was useful in instances just like this.
Delaney looked up at the sky, its bright blue now dimming to gray. He didn’t want the story to keep flowing through his mind, but the images came anyway. He saw the thin, blind priest chained to a wall, naked to the waist, smoke and steam filling the dungeon, pungent aromas that clogged the senses and then filled the mind. The Hant chanting and incanting, working on the poor man with sharp bones and whetted knives and long steel needles. The priest screaming.
Hour after hour.
Until finally all he knew came spilling out. Names, times, places.
Everything.
Delaney blinked away a sting in his right eye. Hants. As much as he didn’t like priests, he’d take a boatload of them over a single chanting Hant.
Now Delaney looked down to the fish. The Chompers were almost invisible in the murk of the lagoon. “Ther
e’s dark powers in the world,” he told them. “Darker and more powerful than you.” He thought of the mermonkeys. “ ’Bout as bad yer little friends under the water there.”
How did people ever stand up to those powers?
“You cold?” Lye asked.
“It’s a bit chilly.” Wentworth Ryland tried to smile. He stood on the docks in the pre-dawn darkness, shivering. It was autumn, but here the winters were much like the summers. The slight chill in the air was not the cause of his trembling, and the Gateman sensed it. “I don’t know why I feel like I’m the outlaw here,” he added, more truthfully.
“I don’t neither,” Lye said. “Maybe it’s that yer not used to what honest feels like,” he suggested helpfully. “You about ready to load up the boys?”
“Mmm.” Wentworth looked at his three ships, saw the sailors aboard, the cargo loaded, everything in place. Or almost everything. He looked behind him at his own carriage. The two horses were impatient. One stamped a hoof on the decking, another snorted and shook its withers. Jenta peered from the window. He couldn’t judge from this distance, but she seemed impatient as well. The old driver, bundled in a heavy jacket, looked like he was sleeping.
Wentworth sighed. “I suppose it’s now or never.”
“If those are yer choices, then I recommend now.”
“Do we have the all-clear from Damrick?”
“We do.”
“All right. Load them up.”
Lye turned and waved a hand. Nothing happened for a moment, and then men began to appear. They were dressed in dark clothing, carrying duffels and long rifles. In another minute a silent flow of merchant marines had covered the docks, ascending the three gangways. Crates appeared, some long and narrow, some square and fat, and were carried up with the flow.
Among these could be seen, if one looked carefully, an older man with white hair, leaning on a cane. He wore a dark suit and a black cloak, and he climbed, with a noticeable limp but no noticeable difficulty, up to the deck of the lead ship.
Also among these men was Damrick Fellows, dressed as the rest, walking with Hale Starpus, careful not to be seen as a commander. He walked past the carriage and caught a whiff of perfume. It was light and airy, and it spoke of honeysuckle. He walked past without looking. After a few more steps, he slowed. He kept walking, but he felt a strange draw, like a memory from long ago. A dance. A young girl looking for a promise. Finally he stopped. He turned back, saw a woman seated at the window. “That carriage has someone inside it,” he told Hale.
“Aye. Many a carriages does.” Then Hale saw Damrick’s expression, his intensity—as though he were studying a portrait, or a battlefield. He saw the woman in the window. “Wentworth’s gal, I’m guessin’?”
Damrick handed his lieutenant his duffel. “She’s done more for us than anyone but maybe Wentworth and Windall Frost, and yet I’ve never met her. Carry this, will you? I’ll catch up.”
“She’s spoke for, Damrick.”
Hale watched him walk away, then easily shouldered the extra load and lumbered along with the others toward the gangway of the lead ship.
Ten yards from the carriage, Damrick stopped short. The hair, the eyes. He had not forgotten. He had put her image out of his mind too many times to forget her. Those were the eyes that had seen too much of the world as she climbed that gangway. Here was the face, the very same look that had stopped his world spinning at the cotillion, had told him plainly that he’d been watching her all evening and she had noticed. This was Wentworth’s fiancée.
And suddenly he knew what she’d done. He knew what had happened to Wentworth Ryland. She had done it. She had inspired him. She’d changed him. All this, everything, had happened because of her.
And when Jenta looked at Damrick, she felt that she had awakened into a dream. She had carried his image also, the dangerous, distant, driven boy at the punch bowl, the young marine just in from the fight, eyes alight with purpose. She had equated him in her mind with her proper station, with no pretense. This was the sort of man she should know, could be with. Might have married. And now here he was, walking toward her. Coming to find her, at last.
Finally, he recovered enough to take ten more steps toward her. He fought a strong, strange impulse to open the carriage door and climb in beside her. But he stopped a safe distance, out of the reach of…what? He didn’t know.
“We seem destined to meet going opposite ways,” she said. Sadness and light.
The words seemed fraught with meaning to him. “Not always, I hope.”
“I’m Jenta Stillmithers.”
“I know who you are. I came to thank you.”
“Thank me? For what?”
He felt adrift in her eyes. “You’ve helped us more than I can say.” Then he said exactly what he was thinking. “You turned Wentworth’s heart.”
She felt a stab through her own. Her eyes widened. “You’re Damrick Fellows.”
“Yes.” He felt inexplicably vulnerable, and glanced around him. The stream of sailors was dwindling. He needed to be aboard. “Thank you,” he said. Then, “I have to go.”
“Of course. But you will come back. Won’t you? And you won’t wait this time, you will come find me?” It was more than a question. She wanted that promise.
“Yes. Yes. Depend on it, Jenta.” He didn’t know why he used her first name. It was improper. But he said it, and waited for her reaction.
It was warm. “I will, Damrick. I will depend on it.”
He intended to turn and walk away from her, but somehow he didn’t. Instead he took several steps backward, still looking at her. His heel hit a warped board, and he stumbled slightly, recovered quickly.
She laughed, remembering the reason why he wouldn’t dance with her. Then she covered her mouth in apology. Then she waved.
Red-faced, he turned away, turned toward the ships and the men and the fight ahead. But his mind was filled with the echo of her laughter, and the image of her moving her hand from mouth to air.
As though blowing him a kiss.
Within five minutes of the time they had appeared, the Gatemen had disappeared once again. The three ships looked precisely as they had: quiet, serene, and ready to sail.
“They’re very good, aren’t they?” Wentworth asked Lye.
“They’ll be all right, once we can drill a bit on the open seas. Some can shoot straight already. With the others, we got plenty a’ ammo this time, thanks to you and yer friend Mr. Frost. And we got Hale Starpus to whip ’em into fightin’ trim.” He inhaled. “Well, Mr. Ryland, give the orders and we’re off.”
“Where’s Damrick? I didn’t see him.”
“You weren’t supposed to. But don’t worry, he’s aboard yer flagship.”
Wentworth scanned his lead ship, the Ayes of Destiny, but saw nothing. Common sailors preparing to set sail, and the captain at the quarterdeck rail, awaiting a signal.
Wentworth waved his hand. The captain moved away from the rail. A bosun piped out orders. Sails dropped. Mooring ropes were loosed. Shoremen on the docks put sounding poles to the ship’s hull, preparing to propel her seaward.
“Good day to ye then,” Lye said, and hustled away, the last man up the flagship’s gangway before it was pulled.
“Good day,” Wentworth said softly. “I hope that it is.” Then he turned quickly and walked back to his carriage.
“Well, it’s done,” he said as he climbed in.
“Yes, I suppose it is.” Jenta had a faraway look in her eyes.
“Something feels very wrong to me,” he said.
This brought her back. “What feels wrong?”
“I don’t know. It’s like…I can’t explain it. I’ve spent my life being bullied by my father. Now that I’ve stood up to him, I can’t shake this feeling…”
“What?”
He knew what the feeling was; it was just hard to say the words. Being honest with himself was still new to him. Being honest with someone else, even newer. “The feeling is…that now
I’ve let myself be bullied by Damrick Fellows.”
She nodded. “He has a powerful presence.”
He squinted at her. “You’ve met him?”
For some reason she didn’t understand, she lied. “No. I’m just saying, he seems to wield a powerful influence.”
“That’s true—he does.” Wentworth knocked on the roof with a gloved hand. Then he looked out the window as the carriage moved off the docks.
She was glad he looked away. She could feel her face flush.
“Now I must tell my father,” he said after a moment. Then he sighed.
“It’s your fleet to manage. Didn’t he say so?”
“Yes, but I’m sure he isn’t expecting me to manage it quite this way.”
“You said he doesn’t want Conch Imbry’s influence.”
“He doesn’t. But he’ll be quite angry that I didn’t consult him. I’ve put him in a very difficult spot.”
Now Jenta put a hand on his sleeve. “Don’t tell him. Not yet.”
“What? But we agreed—”
“Why hurry? Let it play out a while.”
“He’ll find out soon enough, when I don’t pay into Conch’s little Protection Fund. Conch will come looking for him.”
“Just give them a few days. Out at sea. What could it hurt?”
“Jenta, are you worried? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this way.”
She smiled, and she knew it was a cover. She knew she was hiding. “So much is at risk, that’s all.” She turned to look out her own carriage window. The lead ship came back into view as they passed an open street. Its bow was a dozen yards from the dock now. “Just give him a few days to get away from Conch.” The carriage moved on, and a building blocked the ship from her sight.
When the carriage stopped in front of the cottage, Wentworth jumped out and looked around him. The trees overhanging the street kept everything here in dark shadows. Twin lamps burned on either side of the cottage door thirty yards back from the road, and those lamps provided the only light. He turned, and put his hand into the cabin to help Jenta out. He heard a rustle from the woods, but had no time even to turn and look before he was slammed into the carriage, his shins and thighs banging painfully into the step and the lower doorframe. He was immediately manhandled back into the carriage, and two of Conch’s men climbed in behind. Each carried a pistol. Both smelled of rye.
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