by Edward Aubry
Alec's reaction was swift. He rushed the boarding party, sword drawn. His first target was the gray-skinned man, who did not make any attempt to evade him. Alec went straight for his neck. As it hit, his sword ricocheted backwards. The gray-skinned man snatched the sword with one hand, by the blade, and kicked Alec in the stomach. He fell backwards, gasping for breath.
"Be sure to keep that sword safe," Scott yelled. Three more men leapt onto the Ptolemy. "Hello, Harry. I trust you'll allow your people to surrender without further incident?"
They were sitting ducks. The other members of the crew were standing their ground, but no one had done anything rash yet. Claudia had her hand on her sword. Harrison knew that if they tried to scrap their way out of this, they'd all be killed. The fact that Scott was even discussing surrender gave him hope, however. For whatever reason, he needed them alive. He heard a ratchet-like sound from where Alec lay sprawled on deck, and saw that the gray-skinned man was putting him in handcuffs. Harrison thought he might still be able to turn this situation to his advantage. They still had abilities that Scott would know nothing about. They still had Glimmer. If his people surrendered, it might buy them enough time to plan their way out.
"Stand down," he said to his crew. Scott's men began collecting their swords. He saw each one being cuffed. None of them betrayed fear, although they were certainly terrified. Harrison unbuckled his own sword, and handed it over to Scott. Smiling, Scott pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt. He dangled them in front of Harrison's face.
Harrison's heart accelerated. He would have to concentrate to keep the cuffs from springing off his wrists. Perhaps he could force them to lock, as he had done twice now. If he could convince Scott that he was helpless, they would still have a decent chance to escape.
Scott giggled. "I can see the wheels turning, Harry. It's almost cute." He tossed the cuffs to the deck. The clink of chain hitting wood was the sound of Harrison's plan snapping. Scott pulled a reel of fishing line out of his pocket, and handed it to the gray-skinned man. "Bind him," he said. Turning to another of his crew, he added, "Gag the black girl." Harrison had barely enough time to register that his own secret had been spoiled before learning that Claudia's was, too.
Standing this close, Harrison could see the texture of the gray man's skin. It was not skin at all, but stone. This creature was some sort of animated statue. It didn't speak as, with cold fingers, it pulled Harrison's hands behind his back and began winding the nylon cord around them. To Harrison's surprise, it did not bind him in a clumsy or painfully tight manner, just firmly enough that he couldn't move his hands. It leaned down and Harrison heard a sharp click. He couldn't see it, but he was sure the stone man had bitten through the cord.
A swarm of tiny lights appeared around Scott's head. He was not at all bothered by it. "Bring me the pixie," he told the glowing dots. As one, they darted into the ship.
The blood drained out of Harrison's face. They were avatars, little spies, and every one of them brought to life by snuffing out one of Titania's children. He wept inside.
Harrison and his crew were hauled over the gap between the ships, and passed to more blue-uniformed men on the yacht. No one spoke. Even now, his people displayed no anguish. He could only imagine what it took for Claudia and Jake to keep their cool. From Claudia, he had come to expect superhuman qualities, and Jake had evolved far beyond the awkward kid he had met not so long ago. He hoped that the New Chicago Congress had some equivalent of the Medal of Honor. He would delight in watching it being placed around Jake's neck. A flood of wasted opportunities raced through his mind, of times when he could have validated Jake, but had not. He put his regrets aside, but in escrow, not gone. He had no time now. He would make good on them later.
They were led to the yacht's equivalent of a brig. It was a plain, unfurnished room, but it had been prepared for them. Iron rings had been bolted to the walls, and now each prisoner was cuffed to a ring. With their hands behind their backs, their arms were all pulled slightly upward. It would not be possible for them to sit, and even leaning on the wall would be painful.
Harrison's own restraint was saved for last, and he could see why as soon as he set foot in the room. In a corner, far from the wall where the others were chained, was a cage. In the cage was a chair. He was dragged into the cage, forced into the chair, and bound to it with what was left on the reel of fishing line. It was wound around his ankles, his chest, and his neck, so that the slightest attempt to struggle pinched him to agony. As long as he held still, he felt no pain. Unfortunately, breathing required movement.
He watched statue-boy finish tying off the cord, then bite though it again. In a moment, he saw why some of the cord had been saved. The door to the cage was tied shut in at least a half dozen places. An enormous lock on the door was left unlatched, no doubt to taunt him.
They were left there.
It was a long time before anyone spoke. Harrison suspected that their fear was slowly transforming into anger, and he could guess at whom. As much as that would normally have hurt him, he could not think about that right now. He wanted to talk to Apryl, but did not think it would be appropriate until he was able to talk to all of them at once. Worse, from where he sat, he could not see her face. He could see Alec, who looked awful.
After what Harrison guessed was at least an hour, the door opened. A guard tossed a sphere about the size of a bowling ball into the room. For a horrible moment, Harrison thought it was a human head. It rolled across the floor and hit the edge of his cage with a sharp whack.
It was transparent plastic, and Harrison finally recognized it as an exercise ball for a guinea pig. Inside was the motionless form of a tiny woman in a yellow garden dress, with no shoes.
And no wings.
Chapter Thirty-Nine:
Swap
"Glimmer?"
Harrison coughed. The effort of forming a simple word pulled the cord taut against his throat like a garrote. It didn't matter. "Glimmer? Sweetie? Can you hear me?"
"Mmmmmm."
Tears of relief formed at the outer edges of his eyes. "Glimmer?"
"What?" He couldn't see her face, but she sounded grouchy.
"Are you hurt?" Apryl asked.
Harrison was going to ask that himself. Glimmer rolled over so she could see Apryl. Harrison saw her face as she did so. She did not appear to be injured. Of course, he would have no way of really knowing, but he took solace in whatever tiny increments it presented itself.
"Only when I laugh," she croaked. She did not demonstrate.
"What happens now?" asked Jake. His fear was finally starting to seep through.
"Now we sit tight," said Harrison. Like they had a choice.
"That's it?" said Jake. "Sit tight?"
Harrison understood the boy's panic. Somehow, he himself was not feeling it yet, but he understood it. How to reassure him? Harrison began inventorying their hidden assets. They had Gizmo, currently tooling around the moon, retrievable as soon as his hands became free. He had never gotten that chance to field test its weapons capabilities, but it had plenty of other useful features. Wings or no wings, Glimmer still packed a wallop. Once she was feeling a little more chipper, he was sure, she'd have a lot to contribute. Scott knew about Claudia's power, but Apryl was still a wild card. She had a power, probably an awesome one. If only they knew what it amounted to.
He rubbed the silver ring on his finger. They hadn't taken it. They hadn't even noticed it, he was sure. Not even his own people had ever given it any thought. In his heart, he believed that it must be important. He wished he knew its secrets.
Of course, he couldn't say any of this out loud. The room was certainly being monitored, and every secret they had left was a dear one. He tried to find a way to say that to Jake without saying it straight out.
"Keep it together, Jake," said Jeannette. Her tone was gentle, not scolding, and it worked. Claudia was also trying to make eye contact with him, and when he managed to look in her direction, her smil
e appeared to calm him further. She and Jake had been developing something over the last few weeks, and her face was exactly what he needed to focus on right now. Harrison was not sure if they had some sort of romance kindling, and he had a sense they did not know, either. He hoped they would have years to figure it out.
"It's all right," said Alec. "I still have Bess."
This shocked Harrison for two totally different reasons. First, he flashed back to the brief one-sided battle on deck and realized that the sword Alec had drawn was the decoy. They had taken an ordinary blade from him and left him his secret weapon. His detailed inventory of assets now felt like pathetic wishful thinking. This was incredible news.
The other reason he was shocked was that Alec had just broadcast their only immediate advantage.
"Bess?" said Jake.
Not good, thought Harrison. Jake had never been formally introduced. Now he was drawing attention to Alec's unconscionable blunder.
"The magic sword," said Alec. "It's invisible most of the time. Look at my right hip and blur your eyes. You'll see her."
"Alec?" said Hadley cautiously. "Maybe you should rest for a bit. You're rambling."
It was a nice try. "If I could just get to it, I'd have you all freed in a jiff."
"Baker!" shouted Harrison, and coughed. "Shut the hell up!" This had gone way past a simple blurt, he realized. He knew how he needed to handle it now. "Do you want us to lose the only hope we have of getting out of here alive?"
"If you'd let me use the bloody thing in the first place, we wouldn't be here!"
"Alec!" said Jeannette. "That's enough!" Her tone was firm, but there was an edge of fear to it. None of them had been wholly sure of Alec since he had come out of his bewitchment. He had been behaving normally, but without a lot of his trademark arrogance. Harrison had been pleased that the crew was so ready to accept him back, but now it looked like there was still enough suspicion left to belie that acceptance.
"Codswallop!" Alec said. "We should have had this out well before now." He was the only prisoner with direct line of sight to Harrison, and he looked his captain in the eye. "I've got the most powerful weapon left on Earth strapped to my bleeding thigh, and this cretin tells me to wear a decoy! Now we're all captives of Dread Pirate Scott, probably on our way to torture and death." He glared at Harrison. "But it's all right. Baldrick has a cunning plan. Haven't you, Baldrick?"
Harrison glared back, biting his cheeks. "Do not call me Baldrick," he said evenly.
Their discussion was interrupted by the entrance of three of Scott's men. One of them, a fat little man, approached Alec, and stood before him, looking him over.
Alec spat on him.
This earned him a punch in the stomach. Another of the men came closer and began striking Alec across the face as the first patted him down. Harrison could see Alec's head snap back and forth under the audible slaps. Finally, the fat man drew Bess from her hiding place, and held her out to look at her. He whistled at her beauty.
Then he sliced her clean through the neck of the man beating Alec.
Harrison now knew what a human head rolling across a floor really looked like. A geyser of blood shot straight up and splashed over Alec's face. The remaining guard rushed the first, sword drawn. The man holding Bess was squealing like an injured rabbit. He deflected a blow from the sword of his fellow and severed the man's sword hand with the return stroke. The wounded guard cried out, staring at his stump with horrified disbelief. The fat man took this moment to plunge Bess into his abdomen. He pushed the sword in to the hilt, then pulled it up and sideways, opening a vast hole through which the man's intestines spilled out. Blood spewed out of his mouth as he hit the floor.
"Uh!" said the fat man, staring at his own gory hands. "Uh! Uh!" Tears streamed down his face. Then he threw himself on Harrison's cage and cut every strand of fishing line binding it shut. He pulled the door wide and fell to his knees. While he was down there, he vomited, which did not in any way slow down his progress in slicing through Harrison's restraints. He even managed to turn his head in such a way that none of his puke got on Harrison's pants. At last, he cut through the cord around Harrison's wrists, without so much as scratching him.
Panting, he got to his feet. Then he plunged Bess into his own heart.
Harrison stared at the body lying next to his chair. He stood up. He rubbed his wrists. He turned to look at Alec. His face was bloody, but it was impossible to tell how much of that was his and how much was splash.
"No time to waste, Captain."
Harrison walked briskly out of his cage. Everyone but Alec was wide-eyed, silent. Harrison scooped up the exercise ball, and went straight to Alec's iron ring. "You bastard," he said as he tapped Alec's cuffs. They sprang open. "Baldrick! You almost made me crack up!"
"Sorry." Alec wiped his mouth with one sleeve.
"It's all right. Get the swords."
Harrison tapped each set of cuffs. When he got to Apryl's, he kissed her. "Sorry about all this," he whispered in her ear.
"I'm fine," she said.
Alec took swords from the dead men, handing one to Harrison, one to Jake, and one to Hadley, none of whom looked especially happy about it. Harrison wondered at the choice, but reflected that, given the group at hand, the least likely warriors would be the young girl and the doctor. Alec went into Harrison's cage to retrieve Bess, which he found less easy than he expected. "Bloody hell! She's run straight through his sternum!" Alec put his foot on the man's chest, and rocked the sword back and forth. After a few swings, it produced a wet crack that filled the silence of the room. "There she comes." He wiped the blade on the dead man's uniform. "Thank you, luv," he said, just loud enough for Harrison to hear. Bess went back in her scabbard and vanished from sight.
Harrison unscrewed the two halves of the exercise globe, and gently rolled Glimmer into his palm. "How do you feel?" he asked.
"I feel like a fucking brownie," she said. "How am I supposed to feel?"
Harrison wasn't quite sure what that meant, other than that he supposed brownies didn't have wings. "Jeannette, would you look after our pixie?" He hoped reminding her that she was not really a brownie would help. He passed her to Jeannette's cradled hands.
"I've got you," the doctor said as Glimmer curled up into a ball.
"There's bound to be more of these guys," Harrison said.
Alec shrugged. "Let's go get them."
* * *
There were three more men on the ship. Harrison's party found them on deck. He assumed that they had seen what had gone down in the cell and were either regrouping or retreating. Scott was nowhere to be found, and it was immediately obvious why. The Ptolemy was at least a mile away, sails raised. Harrison couldn't be sure why Scott would have taken off and left them there, unless it was to play with his new toy.
Harrison knew that all he had was bluff. Of his three armed crew, only Alec stood any chance in a fight, and he was in bad shape. Still, they had Scott's men outnumbered. He was trying to formulate a plan wherein he would persuade the three pirates to drop their swords and flee in a lifeboat, when one of them suddenly decided to take his chances. He charged them. Harrison could see Hadley had already frozen, and Alec's response time was off. He was about to find out how much he had truly learned in his aborted fencing instruction, when Jake leapt into the fray.
He swung his cutlass wildly at his opponent. The stroke was easy enough to dodge, and when Jake tried to sweep the sword back, Scott's man sliced the back of his hand. He fell to the deck, bleeding and screaming.
"Jake!" Claudia shrieked. The word hit Harrison like a punch in the face. He saw everyone else shaking their heads or clutching their ears, and wondered if she had done that on purpose. He had never seen her use her ability like that before.
He took advantage of the momentary confusion to rescue Jake. Scott's other two men had held back. Now they looked disoriented. Harrison lunged at the man standing over Jake, intending to draw him away. He held his sword straigh
t out, trying to keep distance between himself and his opponent. They tapped blades twice, then Harrison moved in, feinted to the left, and kicked Jake's attacker in the scrotum.
This maneuver had the desired effect. The man went down, dropping his sword to clutch himself. Harrison hoped this display of dirty fighting would make their bluff more threatening. While he was working this thought through, Alec walked up casually, rolled the downed man over with his foot, kneeled, and slit his throat.
It was Harrison's wake-up call to the true definition of dirty fighting. He did not allow his horror to show. Looking at the remaining two men, he said, "Get off my boat."
They did.
He turned back to his people. Jeannette had passed Glimmer to Hadley and was wrapping Jake's hand. There was quite a lot of blood. Claudia was kissing him. "You dumb shit!" she praised him. He offered a pale smile.
Harrison gave Scott's men enough time to take a lifeboat, which they pointed in the direction of the receding Ptolemy. He doubted they would make it. By now, it was likely that Scott had heard what was transpiring on his ship. The expected response would be to return and retake the ship by force. At the rate the Ptolemy was clipping away from them, it appeared that their adversary had a less courageous strategy in mind. Harrison wondered why.
"Captain," said Jeannette, "I'm taking Jake below to clean this up. It's not deep, but I'd like to dress it properly."
"Good idea," Harrison said. He was still looking at his ship. What could Scott possibly fear from them to flee like that? Did he know about the bomb?
"Oh, fuck!" said Claudia.
"What?" said Harrison, wondering if it was something beyond the obvious.
"I still had an omni left over there," she said. She looked mournful. "Crab and asparagus quiche. I was saving it."