by Lavie Tidhar
It was the end of the writing. There had been more pages, before and after, but they had been removed at some time in the past. Orphan held the journal close to his chest, almost hugging it, and curled up on the narrow bed. He thought of all the people he had lost, from the parents he never knew, to Gilgamesh, to Lucy, and with each one the pain came harsher and more threatening, like tropical lightning. I can't bring back my parents, he thought, and I can't bring back Gilgamesh. But Lucy… and he thought of her laugh, and the way she had looked at him, and he fell asleep at last, still clutching the ancient journal to his chest.
TWENTY-TWO
Pirates
Lastly, the crime of piracy, or robbery and depredation upon the high seas, is an offence against the universal law of society; a pirate being, according to Sir Edward Coke, hostis humani generis. As therefore he has renounced all the benefits of society and government, and has reduced himself afresh to the same state of nature, by declaring war against all mankind, all mankind must declare war against him.
– William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England
It was a full two weeks later when the Nautilus entered the region of water known as the Carib Sea. A storm was building up on the horizon, where the setting sun cast blood-red and stained-yellow hues across a cloudscape of rain. Lightning flashed amidst the distant build-up, sizzling silver spears reaching from the heavens to the sea. The air felt hot and clammy, and the sailors had a tense, almost haunted look in their eyes.
The gunners manned their positions in full shift. The crew was silent, and the vessel had the feel of a ghost ship sailing other, ethereal seas. A single word caught Orphan's attention, pushing away all others, a whisper caught in the stillness of the charged air: pirates!
"What does it mean?" Orphan whispered to Verne.
The Frenchman looked tense. "This storm," he said. He looked like he would have said more, but at that moment a shout rose on the deck, and one of the guns discharged, the ball arcing over the water ahead, landing with an explosion of foam in the dark water below.
"Hold your fire!" came the shouted order of Captain Dakkar, cold and sharp like a sliver of ice. He stood at the prow, looking intently through his eyepiece at the horizon. Verne and Orphan had come and stood behind him. Orphan tried, but could see little in the distance. It was turning dark, the sea illuminated only by the flash of the incessant lightning.
"What is it?" Verne said, softly, to Dakkar, echoing Orphan. The captain folded his eyepiece and turned to him, tension etched into the lines on his face. "Perhaps nothing," he said.
At that moment thunder filled the air, close and unexpected, and seemed to go on forever. Rain burst out of the sky and fell on the Nautilus, making the deck slick and mirror-like. A wind rose and pummelled the ship.
The storm had arrived.
And with it, with a scream that rose from the lookout above and spread like water amongst the crew, were pirates.
Orphan, holding on to a rope to keep himself steady, peered out through raindrops and saw the pirate ship.
It was a dark shadow, moving across a deceptively calm sea towards them, almost gliding, its movement as smooth and uninterrupted as that of a heated knife. It sailed towards them, and its sails were black.
The pirate ship was a thing of darkness and dread. At the prow a giant, chalk-white head looked forward, severed at the neck, its nose a malevolent red. A giant, leering smile was painted on its face.
"The Joker!" called the lookout, and Dakkar had to shout at the crew to be quiet. They were frightened, Orphan thought. They recognised and dreaded the name.
He felt only a ball of excitement, taut and hard, forming in his stomach. Dread, exhilaration – he felt awake, alive, his senses growing to perceive minute details, each crack and line in the clown's wooden face that sailed towards them.
"Hold your fire!"
The men were tense.
"On my command – shoot!"
But the first shot came from the Joker.
Orphan saw the ball before he heard the discharge. The ball whistled as it flew towards them. It smashed into the side of the ship, and Dakkar, momentarily losing his balance, shouted hoarsely for the men to fire.
A volley of shots emerged from the 18-pounders and flew towards the enemy ship. Several hit, and a cheer rose, only to be silenced almost immediately.
The pirate ship was closing in fast.
It was close enough now for Orphan to see her name, tattooed to her side like a scar. The Joker. And the hideous clown face, the ship's mascot, grinned and leered at the Nautilus incessantly as if maddened.
"Fire!"
The guns fired, the Joker was hit, and continued to come. It was firing back, and the balls whispered overhead and sent exploding plumes of water high into the air when they missed, blood and wood where they hit.
"Fire!"
Then the Joker was close, close enough to reach out, almost to touch the dark figures that could now be seen on its deck, moving with silent determination.
The two ships touched, side to side.
The pirates swooped on the Nautilus. They sailed overboard with long thick hemp ropes and landed with cutlasses at the ready. They were an ugly, ferocious bunch, half-savage men with maps of scars over their naked torsos.
Lightning struck, and struck again, and again, and the sky was full of electric light, and illuminated the pirates' savage faces.
The lightning! Orphan thought. It was coming from the pirate ship. Everything was illuminated now, the air humming with electricity, and he could see its source, and his excitement (which had not yet abated) began at last turning into fear.
Rising from the top of the central mast of the Joker, a bright metallic ball shone like a moon as it was hit, over and over again, by lightning.
Then he had to turn his gaze, and draw his gun, because pirates were now swarming the deck. He shot, once, and a man fell down. Then he had to duck, and someone kicked him and connected with the side of his head, and he fell back.
The man was almost on him when Orphan shot him through the chest.
Then he pushed the fallen man off him and stood up. The deck was full of fighting men. Bodies littered the ground and their blood was washed away by the rain and the wind. The deck was red and shone in the light. It was sleek with blood.
He scanned through the faces as the lightning struck ferociously down. He could see no trace of Verne, or Robur. His eyes stopped on the sight of the young ship's cook, who seemed an island of calm in the midst of battle. He was fighting three men at once, and was unarmed, while they had swords, and one was reaching for a gun. The boy's leg shot out and took one pirate in the face, breaking his nose. He whirled round then, snatched the gun from the other pirate, shot the third in the same movement, then returned the gun in an arc that took in the remaining pirate's head and connected with it.
He looked up and saw Orphan. Again, there was that nod of recognition, as if they somehow knew each other. He made a movement with his hand that said, stay low. Then he returned to the fight.
Thunder shook the deck. Orphan ducked against a threatening cutlass, slipped, fell on his back, shot. If he had hit – or who – he didn't know. He remained down and realised no one was paying him much attention. Many other bodies already littered the deck.
Thunder boomed again, the sound seeming to emerge from everywhere at once, a shockwave of noise sweeping the deck, and the lightning struck again. It illuminated the deck of the Joker and, as Orphan raised his head, what he saw made him freeze as if he had been struck.
Standing majestically on the forward-deck of the Joker was a lizard.
It was a royal lizard, a Les Lézard, and for a long moment Orphan couldn't think, could not understand what he was seeing. Then lightning flashed again and he saw the figure in stark relief, and the sailors on the deck, seeing it too, seemed to lose heart in the fight, to be pushed back by the pirates as if the appearance of the lizard signalled the end of the fight, and of the Nauti
lus itself.
Feet passed closed to Orphan and someone kicked him in the ribs and made him shout. A grinning, leering face loomed above him, and with it a gun that was pointed at his heart. He tried to roll, then heard a shot go off.
When he opened his eyes he was still alive, and instead of the pirate the face he saw was that of the boy-cook. "Stay down!" he said, and then he himself crouched down beside Orphan, and pointed ahead. "Wyvern," he said, his voice soft and emotionless.
The lizard had stepped onto the Nautilus' deck. He was tall and dignified-looking. He was white, decorated in pale bands, and one of his eyes was missing. He wore a black eye-patch; his other eye was red, like dying fire. He wore loose, colourful clothes, with a cutlass and a gun on either side of the body, and his tongue darted and tasted the air. He seemed to smile…
He stepped forward and the battle surged away from him. Then Orphan noticed it. The lizard wore large metal gloves, and they were pointed forward now, towards the battle, and his digits were spread evenly, and shone silver.
"Stay down!" the boy-cook hissed.
"Who is that?" Orphan hissed back. The white lizard stepped slowly forward, arms raised, digits pointing.
"Captain Wyvern."
Lightning struck.
It struck the ball on the top of the mast but, this time, did not stop there. Down the lightning went, through wires that fell down the sails and reached the deck, and continued… overboard, over to the Nautilus, where they appeared again and rose into Captain Wyvern's hands.
Lightning flashed.
Bars of hissing, sizzling electricity shot out of Captain Wyvern's hands and hit the men fighting on the deck. Here, he pointed, and here, and here, and with each imperceptible movement lightning fell from the tips of his digits and hit one of the Nautilus' sailors.
Lightning flashed, again and again and again.
The men who were hit screamed, but only briefly.
The air on the deck filled with the smell of cooking meat.
Strangely, horrifyingly, even as he was gagging, Orphan's stomach made a growling noise, his body reacting to the smell the way it would to any cooking meat: with hunger. Then a wave hit the ship and the deck moved, and one of the corpses came rolling down and almost crashed into him and he screamed, and was sick all over himself.
The boiled face of the corpse looked at him with the glazed look of a mounted fish.
It was Robur.
Slowly, with the same serene expression on his face, the young cook stood up with his hands raised. He kicked Orphan, not hard. Orphan rose with his hands up and tried not to retch.
There was movement behind him. He half-turned, saw the face of a pirate, sunburnt skin livid with blood, broken teeth exposed in an animalistic grin, and something raised to strike…
He tried to escape but his movements were slow and sluggish, as if he was drowning in water, and then something connected with the back of his head and pain shot through him and brought with it darkness.
TWENTY-THREE
Mr. Spoons
I steer'd from sound to sound, as I sail'd, as I sail'd,
I steer'd from sound to sound, as I sail'd,
I steer'd from sound to sound and many ships I found
And most of them I burned, as I sail'd.
– Captain Kidd
Orphan came to on the Joker's deck. He was lying on his side, his head resting painfully against the hard boards. His hands were tied behind his back.
Rain was falling, and his clothes were soaked. The rain got into his eyes and ran down his face. He blinked, and the world came into sharp focus and he cried out involuntarily.
Ahead of him, the Nautilus burned.
It was growing smaller in the distance. The Joker must have turned around, he thought. He was lying by the stern. He watched, helpless, as the sails flamed and billowed in the wind of the storm. The flames licked the sides of the ship. The masts burned like beacons.
Orphan turned his head away. Beside him on the deck, he saw, were others, a half-dozen sailors from the Nautilus that he vaguely recognised. Like him, they were tied up. Like him, too, they were still alive.
He saw no sign of Verne or Dakkar. No sign of the cook, either, when he thought about it. He wondered what the pirates had in store for them. The rain worked its way into his clothes and wrapped cold hands around his belly. He shivered and looked back at the burning Nautilus.
The ship was falling into the sea. He wondered what had happened to Verne. Then he thought, Does it matter? He was alone again, and in trouble.
No change there, then.
The lightning, he noticed, had abated. The Joker was sailing away, growing faster, and the storm seemed to be receding, the dark clouds beginning to edge away from each other like a crowd of people at the scene of an accident. He tried to turn, moving his legs, and his hands scraped against the floor. He managed a halfturn. There was a dark pool where his head had been.
"Well, well," a rich, cultured voice said. "Look what the cat dragged in."
It was Captain Wyvern. The pirate stood facing the group of captured sailors, his single eye shining red. His tongue snaked out in a hiss of amusement. He stepped forward. He was no longer wearing the lightning gloves. Beside him stood a bulky, mean-looking pirate: his head was a smooth shaved dome, and a scar ran all the way down his bare chest, as if someone had once tried to cut him open and nearly succeeded. He wore hooped earrings in both ears and held a cutlass in his hand as if it were a toy. His eyes moved slowly over the sailors with a strange, serene smile that scared Orphan more than anything else about the situation.
"Eeny, meeny, miny, moe," Captain Wyvern said, almost singing, raising his pistol and pointing it at each bound sailor in turn, "catch a sailor by the toe." He continued to move the pistol from man to man. Orphan watched the horror on the sailors' faces, and felt fear clawing at his own. The bald pirate continued to smile.
"Please!" one of the sailors, a burly, red-headed man, said.
"If he squeals then let him go," Captain Wyvern said, more softly now, ignoring him. "Eeny, meeny, miny… moe."
The shot was a deafening thunder, a remnant of the storm. The ball from the pirate's pistol hit the sailor closest to Orphan, a short, badly wounded man whose head exploded with the impact, spraying Orphan with blood and brain.
Orphan screamed.
The bald pirate said something quietly to Captain Wyvern. The lizard nodded and seemed to smile. "Gentlemen!" he cried, lifting his hands as though wanting to embrace the bound sailors. "Welcome to the Joker!"
He nodded, as if making a note to himself of their response, and said, "This is Mr. Spoons."
The bald pirate took one step forward. Again, he scanned the row of captive sailors. Again, he wore that strange, detached smile.
"Mr. Spoons is my boatswain," Captain Wyvern said. "I will now leave you in Mr. Spoons' capable hands. He is here to ask you a very simple question, gentlemen. Sink or swim. Live or die. Turn pirate, or turn fish-bait. No," he said, raising his hand to silence one of the sailors, "don't answer me. It is Mr. Spoons that you answer to now. Mr. Spoons – they're yours." And he turned and marched away from them, leaving the men alone with the bald pirate.
"Thank you, captain," Mr. Spoons said. He had a surprisingly high, though rather pleasant, voice. "You," he said, and pointed at a man in the middle of the group. "What is your name?"
"Sizemore, sir. Jason Sizemore."
"And your role on the Nautilus, Mr. Sizemore?" Mr. Spoons said.
"Ship's carpenter, sir."
"Like the good shepherd," Mr. Spoons said, and smiled pleasantly, and shot him in the face. The sailors on either side of him screamed. Orphan, this time, held in his own reaction. "I wonder if, like the good shepherd, you too could come back from the dead."
He turned and scanned their faces. "You," he said, pointing to an Indian-looking man tied up between Orphan and the dead Sizemore. "What's your name?"
"Mohsan Jaffery," the man said. He did not ca
ll Mr. Spoons sir. "Engineer and gunner."
"You've caused us a bit of damage," Mr. Spoons said.
"I hope so," Mohsan Jaffery said.
Mr. Spoons smiled. He approached Jaffery and knelt down beside him. His hand reached to his side and returned with a large, ugly-looking knife. The knife descended. Orphan tensed against his bonds.