by Lavie Tidhar
"Stand up," Mr. Spoons said. He had merely untied Jaffery's knots. "Pick a man."
"Sir?" Jaffery looked at Mr. Spoons' face and looked hurriedly away. Confused, he looked at the captive sailors. They looked back at him, some pleading silently, some stoic, one or two with anger on their faces. "Him," Mohsan Jaffery said, and pointed at a large, short-haired man whose face had suddenly drained of blood.
"Why?"
"He is a good man. He is a gunner too. He speaks three languages fluently. Sir, he is a good sailor."
"What's your name, son?" Mr. Spoons said.
The man looked up at him slowly. "Does it matter?" he said. Mr. Spoons smiled.
"Will you go on the account, or die?"
The man smiled back. It was only a little smile, but it was there when he said, "Only as long as it would take me to kill you."
Mr. Spoons continued to smile, and he nodded, as if he were an MP agreeing with one's colleague in parliament.
Then he said, "Takanobu! Garcia! Come here!"
Two pirates hurried over from where a group was fixing one side of the ship.
"Yes, Mr. Spoons."
"Tie up his legs with rope. A long rope."
"Yes, Mr. Spoons."
They hurried away and returned with a coil of thick rope. They tied one end of the rope in a loop and tightened it around the man's legs.
"Drop him overboard."
"No!"
It was Orphan who shouted, realisation coming a second after the event. He clamped his teeth, expecting at any moment a bullet in the head, or something more dreadful and more prolonged. But Mr. Spoons merely looked at him, his head tilted to one side in what was perhaps amusement, perhaps interest. The pirates, meanwhile, followed Mr. Spoons' orders, and they lifted the struggling man effortlessly, carried him, and threw him overboard.
There was a shout and a loud splash. Mr. Spoons looked away from Orphan, towards the stern. "Take him around to the bow and back. Let him feel the keel. If he's still alive when you haul him up, put him on the account."
"Yes, sir."
The two began to move away, dragging the rope – and the man's body – behind them.
Mr. Spoons slapped Mohsan Jaffery's back. Jaffery looked horrified.
"Störtebeker, Zhi!"
The two pirates who approached swaggered as they walked. They were large, fierce-looking men. Orphan thought he recognised one of them, animalistic face caught at a glance, and a cutlass descending…
"Take Mr. Jaffery here to the hold until we swear them in."
"Yes, Mr. Spoons."
They hurried off, carrying the smaller Jaffery between them.
Mohsan Jaffery didn't look back.
What had saved him – from the keel-hauling and the cat-o'-nine-tails and that final, desperate moment when one of the men, whose name he didn't even know, was forced to walk along a wooden plank that extended over the water, and jump – was the appearance, unexpected and ominous, of the Nautilus' boy-cook.
He was not tied up. He had approached Mr. Spoons calmly and spoke briefly into his ear. Mr. Spoons nodded and then approached Orphan, who he had so far ignored, seemingly intent on leaving him till last, a thought Orphan did not find comforting.
"You," he said. "What will it be? Are you willing to serve under Captain Wyvern? My new friend here tells me you're not much of a sailor, but that you're handy in a fight and good at cards. You go on the account, there'll be plenty of both for you."
Orphan looked at the boy-cook, who nodded to him, briefly. A serene expression. Could he trust him?
Did he have a choice?
"I'll serve," he said.
Mr. Spoons nodded. "I thought so," he said. He knelt down and pulled out his knife.
The knife came very close to Orphan's face. The sharp point of the knife almost touched his eye. Mr. Spoons moved the knife slowly, lowering the flat of the blade so its warm metal touched Orphan's skin. "Next time," Mr. Spoons said, "when I give an order, the only thing you're going to say is 'Yes, Mr. Spoons'."
Orphan tried to breathe as little as he could, and not to move his mouth more than was necessary. The words, therefore, came out of him in a near-whisper.
"Yes, Mr. Spoons."
Mr. Spoons raised the knife (Orphan almost sighed with relief) then lowered it again. Then, with a quick, careful movement, he slashed Orphan's bare left shoulder.
Orphan held on to a scream. He dared do nothing other than blink. His face burned.
"What's your name?" Mr. Spoons said.
"My name is Orphan."
"Remember what I said, Orphan."
"Yes, Mr. Spoons."
The pirate untied him.
Orphan stood up. By the side of the ship Takanobu and Garcia were hauling up the body of the man they had thrown overboard. His face could hardly be recognised, and his clothes were now tattered and bloodied.
"Is he alive?" Mr. Spoons said.
Takanobu checked the body for a pulse and shook his head.
"Then throw him back in and keep the rope."
He turned to the boy-cook. "Aramis, take your friend to the hold to be with the rest of them."
The cook – Aramis? Orphan thought, and realised he hadn't known his name – nodded and said, "Yes, Mr. Spoons," and then motioned for Orphan to follow him.
"Who are you?" Orphan demanded in a whisper as soon as he thought they were out of earshot.
The boy-cook smiled faintly. "A friend? Your only hope? An interested party?" The face never changed.
"Which is it?" Orphan said.
The boy-cook said, "None, or all of the above."
Orphan sighed. He was too tired for riddles, and he felt the last of his energy deserting him. He hardly noticed Aramis helping him stand, supporting him, and leading him at last to the hold, where the few survivors from the Nautilus were sat huddled together in what appeared to be a sort of enormous animal cage.
Orphan was only vaguely aware as Aramis opened the door and led him inside. He collapsed on a pile of straw.
The door closed behind Aramis, and the key turned in the lock.
The straw was soft. The pain in his face became a numbness. It was soft, dry, comfortable. He was the most comfortable he had ever been. His eyes were closed and he was floating in darkness, the motion of unseen waves lulling him to sleep, making him feel safe… He tried to stay awake for just a moment longer, to savour that feeling, to know that he was, for the moment, safe, and allowed the luxury of sleep.
Then sleep came, and he embraced it. For a long time no dreams came. When they did, at last, appear, they were full of Lucy.
TWENTY-FOUR
Wyvern
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd They slept on the abyss without a surge – The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave.
– Lord Byron, "Darkness"
They were sworn in with the coming of night. It was a full day since the Nautilus had been attacked and destroyed. Lying in the cage in the hull of the ship (stinking of a thousand flavours of animal and spilled rum) Orphan thought about Verne and hoped that, somehow, he was still alive. He thought of the fat writer's corpse making its way down to the bottom of the ocean, and thought, He didn't deserve this.
But there were too many other things to occupy Orphan's mind, once sleep had fled and he waited down below with the others. It all came down to survival, now. He was a long way from the bookshop on Cecil Court, a long way from everything he knew. What did he know about ships, beyond their loading? He was surprised Spoons didn't just throw him overboard as he did with some of the others. But he was here. He was alive. Still.
And now, with the coming of night and a multitude of bright hard stars overheard like a pirate's hoard, he stood on the deck with the others, and Captain Wyvern, like a scaly monster from some long-forgotten fairy tale, his one eye glinting like a ruby in the lantern light, read them the pirates' oath.
His voice w
as clear and strong. He stood near the central mast, the boatswain on his right at a respectable distance, and he faced the captives the way a father would stand before his unruly children. The pirates of the Joker surrounded them in a circle. Their eyes glinted in the light. The air smelled of smoke and unwashed bodies.
Captain Wyvern spoke the words, and Orphan and the others repeated them, article by article. This was the pirates' oath:
Article One – Every man shall obey civil command; the captain shall have one full share and a half in all prizes. Each man of the company will have an equal share of all prizes.
Article Two – If any man shall offer to run away, or keep any secret from the company, he shall be marooned with one bottle of powder, one bottle of water, one small arm, and some shot.
Article Three – If any man shall steal any thing in the company, or game, to the value of a piece of eight, he shall be marooned or shot.
Article Four – If at any time we should meet at another marooner (that is, pirate) that man shall sign his articles without consent of our company, shall suffer such punishment as the captain and company shall think fit.
Article Five – That man that shall strike another, whilst these articles are in force, shall receive Moses's Law (that is forty stripes lacking one) on the bare back.
Article Six – That man that shall snap his arms, or smoke tobacco in the hold, without cap to his pipe, or carry a candle lighted without lantern, shall suffer the same punishment as in the former article.
Article Seven – That man that shall not keep his arms clean, fit for an engagement, or neglect his business, shall be cut off from his share, and suffer such other punishment as the captain and company shall think fit.
Article Eight – If any man shall lose a joint in time of engagement, shall have four hundred pieces of eight: if a limb, eight hundred.
Article Nine – If at any time you meet with a prudent woman, that man that offers to meddle with her, without her consent, shall suffer death.
The captain's voice carried the words, hard and clear across the warm night air. Orphan, repeating them, felt himself a member of a religious congregation, a part of a new, strange tribe, a world exclusively of men.
And lizards?
"We are a society without division," Captain Wyvern said when they had finished reciting the oath. "Where who you are, who you have been, no longer matter. It is a harsh society, a difficult, dangerous life – but it is just, too. It is equal. I," he said, and his tongue hissed out and tasted the sea air, "who could have been a governor, perhaps, or an idler in any number of the great cities of the empire, I have chosen this life, amongst you, so I could be free. This is what I offer you now. A freedom. A freedom from oppression, a freedom from the rules that exist to govern a society into civility, which is the ruling class's name for keeping the hordes in their place. I did not want civility. I did not want the glory of running the world, of becoming a bureaucrat, of administering the affairs of men for the benefit of my people. I wanted freedom, as harsh and dangerous and short-lived as it may be. This is the choice I give you today. The choice to be free. Will you take it?"
"Yes," the engineer, Mohsan Jaffery, said. His eyes shone in the lantern light.
"Yes," Orphan said, softly, and with him the rest, their voices coming louder now, surer. There is no other way, Orphan thought. And the thought made him suddenly happy. To abscond responsibility, to forget the affairs of the great, which need not concern him. To sail the sea, living by wits and strength, in a society where all are equal, and all have an equal share…
"Yes!" the sailors of the Nautilus all cried, and the ring of pirates around them grinned and joined the shout, until the whole of the Joker seemed to shake with their cries and the stamping of their feet.
"Then swear!" Captain Wyvern said, and he nodded to the boatswain, who nodded in turn and approached the men, a long, straight knife in his hand.
"Put your right hand forward," Mr. Spoons said.
They did.
He came to them, Orphan first. The knife touched the skin of his open palm with a gentleness that surprised him. Then the knife moved, slashed, and blood flowered in his palm.
Mr. Spoons nodded, and moved to the next man. Silence, expectant and heavy, lay on the ship. Soon, all the survivors had a cut in their palm.
Mr. Spoons barked an order, and two sailors hurried away and came back with a barrel filled with sea water.
He motioned for the men to come close. They gathered around the barrel. Looking into the water, Orphan saw his own reflection, blurred and ghostly. Mr. Spoons put the knife in the palm of his own hand and made a fist. He pulled the knife out, grinning, and plunged his bleeding hand into the barrel.
The others followed him.
The water stung, but not too badly. It was, in fact, almost soothing. Their blood mixed in the water, making their reflection appear as through a dirty lens. Then the captain himself approached, and stood beside his boatswain, and he did something that Orphan had never seen before, and so shocked him that he almost called out loud: Wyvern's eyes blinked and grew small, his face muscles contracted, and suddenly, shockingly, a long squirt of blood erupted from his eyes (the area around them, Orphan later found out) and shot into the barrel of sea water, to mix with all the others.
The pirates cheered, and the silence was broken. Mr. Spoons made a movement with his head, and the two pirates who brought the barrel over now lifted it carefully, carried it to the railing, and emptied its bloodied content overboard. The liquid fell in an arc. There was the sound of it hitting the sea.
"Welcome," Captain Wyvern said, and he raised his hands in the air, "to the Joker!"
And so it was that Orphan went on the account, and became a pirate.
There was a party that night, as the ship drifted across the warm Carib Sea; lanterns were hung high and on the open deck Aramis, formerly the boy-cook, formerly, also, from the Nautilus, was cooking fish on a bed of coals. Orphan sat on a coil of rope and played cards with Takanobu and Jaffery (who still looked a little shocked to be alive). Orphan swigged from a bottle of rum that burned his throat. He passed it back to Takanobu. He had wounds in his hand and on his shoulder, but they were shallow, and would heal. They were bound now, with alcohol-soaked cloth.
Orphan had two pairs, kings high. He raised, and Takanobu, studying him for a long time, finally called. Jaffery had already folded that round.
Takanobu had only one pair, jacks. As was customary on card decks, the aristocracy, jacks and over, were lizards, drawn in profile.
Takanobu shrugged and conceded the hand. Orphan collected his winnings, an assortment of odd coins.
Somewhere near the prow guitar music started, and it was joined moments later by a fiddle. The music rose over the deck. Orphan threw in his hand and stood up.
"Boy," said a voice behind him. He turned and saw Mr. Spoons.
"Sir?"
"Captain wants to see you."
He followed the pirate. Into the hold, through the dark corridor, finally, into the captain's private quarters. As he had left the deck he felt Aramis' gaze follow him. He wondered, then, how the man had managed – so effortlessly, it seemed – to become one of the Joker's crew. From one ship to the other, he moved with the same unchanged expression, the same easy grace. He didn't trust him, but then, he was a pirate now. Trust did not figure into it, not any more.
The captain's room turned out to be wide and spacious. Along one wall ran a long bar of dark mahogany, and two armchairs and a low table – like refugees from a far away private club – stood beside it. In another corner of the room stood a row of machines. Orphan recognised an Edison player and a Tesla set. Clearly, the pirate was not bereft of technology. Orphan wondered which ship had been plundered – and how many people had died – to furnish him with the devices.
Captain Wyvern was standing with his back to him, gazing out through the open porthole onto the dark sea.
Orphan and Mr. Spoons waited. Finally, not tur
ning, the captain said, "Thank you," and Mr. Spoons nodded his head (though the captain couldn't see it) and departed, closing the doors behind him like a majordomo.
Orphan waited. Wyvern's tail was long and thick and muscled, looking more like a weapon than a body part. It looked like a cat-o'-nine-tails.
When he turned to him at last (the tail whooshing to the side) he glared at Orphan with his one eye. He looks like a pirate, Orphan thought, and wondered how he had lost his eye. He was dressed in fresh clothing, rough but clean, thousands of miles away from his elegant cousins back home.