Skulls & Crossbones

by Andi Marquette

  Red stood up just as I asked, "Why are you called Red?"

  She laughed as she crossed over my legs and held on to the side of the truck. "Because I'm not. How's that for an answer?"

  The truck stopped at the bottom of the hill, and I got slowly to my feet, clutching the side for balance. We were in the parking lot of a boating supply store, a few of its sharply pitched spaces still occupied by cars that had never been claimed. The sailboats moored nearest us, still in the water, had had their covers sliced through as if someone had been searching for something on board. I followed Red's gaze and gave a soft gasp at what I saw several hundred yards out beyond the shore.

  Too small to be a ship and too large to be a boat, the flat-hulled vessel was a riot of primary colors in no particular pattern, just huge swaths of blue here, yellow circles there, and bands of red wherever. Its two magnificent, horizontally ribbed sails seemed to overlap like asymmetrical butterfly wings.

  "Is that a sampan?" I asked incredulously.

  "Yep. Beautiful, huh?"

  "Where'd you get it?"

  "New York City, believe it or not. She must have been some kind of promotional item. But she's built solid." Red's attention was caught briefly by three women getting out of a skiff tied to a dock post. She waved at them as they started toward us.

  "But they're not for open waters," I said. "You have to be real careful with that. Stay near the coast as much as you can."

  Red assessed me a moment. "You're right," she said at last. "But this one's fortified, and it can use diesel. You can see it's much bigger than a regular sampan. Shay, you go help load up. We'll have to make several trips."

  Shay muttered something and grabbed one of the sacks Hutchins had been resting against. She dropped to the ground, then pulled the sack off the edge of the truck bed.

  Red leaned against the side, observing the bustle of activity surrounding the truck. Two sturdily built women struggled with three tanks they unearthed from the tarps jumbled against the sides of the truck bed. "Is that all the fuel you have?" Hutchins said. He had risen to his feet and was standing next to us.

  Red shook her head. "Just topping it off ." She yelled out a few orders, then, without looking at either of us, said, "You're not coming, are you?" Hutchins and I glanced at one another.

  "It's all right," she said, still averting her eyes. When her gaze finally swung to me, she added, "I keep my promises. You go. Have a nice life. Just remember when things get tough, I gave you another option." She bent down and fished around in the nearest sack.

  "It's better for you, too, Red," I said as she rose and pushed something into my hand.

  "You guys share these."

  I looked at the three candy bars and two tea bags and my eyes misted. I held the teabags in their stiff little paper covers up to my nose and breathed deeply, secretly hoping Hutchins hated tea. That way I could have a cup when we next found water, maybe, and save the other bag indefinitely just so I could inhale its fragrance, in my fantasies transmuting the scent of Orange Pekoe into any tea I wanted.

  "Wait," she said, stooping down and retrieving a small plastic bottle of water. "Gotta make tea with something. It's not much, I know."

  Hutchins climbed down off the truck, pulling both our rucksacks with him. Just as he was about to help me down, Red called out, "Whoa, wait! You never did tell me what you did with that body."

  I looked helplessly at Hutchins. "I did, though. It disappeared." Her eyes showed a flash of annoyance. "That's bullshit."

  "No. That's what happened."

  "That's why you were asleep when we found you." Her eyes narrowed. "We were exhausted."

  "Dead bodies don't just disappear. We left it there for the same reason you put it by the door. You must have had other visitors in the night."

  "And they would take a dead, frozen, disgustingly dirty corpse?" Hutchins said. "What for?"

  Red arched a brow. "You shouldn't be surprised. Which would you rather believe, anyhow?"

  I took another deep breath and pushed the questions out of my mind, knowing they would resurface. Hutchins and I wove our way up the incline of the parking lot, eating a candy bar each and saving the third to split later. I was missing my steel rod, though some rooting in our bags revealed I still had my knife and Hutchins still had his hatchet. A cold drizzle had begun, and my nose was leaking furiously. At the top of the hill we turned and saw the first skiff load being rowed out to the sampan. Red and the petite woman with the spiky hair had their arms around each other's shoulders as they chatted with a few other women waiting for the next trip.

  I scanned the buildings around us. I hadn't expected to end up by the water, though we had already been so close. I hadn't expected to speak with anyone but Hutch, indefinitely. I certainly had never expected a gift of food. We were in winter, physically and metaphorically, and the world always looked battered in this season. Maybe it still held a surprise or two. All this bestowed on me by a woman who plundered. "It's so cold," Hutchins said.

  I fingered the teabags in my pocket. "Let's find something to boil water in."

  Captain, Hook, and Mr. Shrike

  Cat Conley

  Ice pirates don't give a rat's arse about pirate ghosts, or Davy Jones, or the Flying Dutchman, or any of the other wild-eyed tales that the warmblood pirates of the northern seas seem to enjoy. We have enough to worry about down here in the iceberg fields without having to scare ourselves silly with nonsense. The real, every day dangers like icebergs and frostbite and ships getting locked up in the ice just make the northerners' ghost stories seem ridiculous. So when Jonesy got it in his head that our new Dizzer was some sort of ghost or mermaid or some rubbish like that, I wrote it off to Jonesy going a bit sea-mad. I wish I'd been right.

  We set off from Fulmarus Harbor that summer with a brand new Dizzer, and the damn eejit skipped an ice ball off our mast with his very first practice shot. Tore a big solid piece out of the side, almost toppled the mast right over. That was the end for him. Cap'n didn't have to say anything, just waved her hand, and Jonesy grabbed the Dizzer by his collar and tossed him over the side. We didn't even hear him scream when he hit the water. Jonesy's a big man—he runs the team that breaks up the ice that forms on the deck and hull—so I'm guessing he threw the Dizzer hard enough to break his neck when he hit. Only thing worse than drowning is drowning whilst freezing to death. Jonesy always was a decent fella.

  Meanwhile, Cap'n stomped across the deck and met me up in the bow, where I was manning my harpoon launcher, a great crossbow-style contraption mounted on a 180-degree swiveling post. "Mr. Shrike, as of right now, you don't leave this deck until we reach Fulmarus," she spat. Her dark eyes were roiling, and I'd been her Archer long enough to know when she was in a twist. It's best to just agree with her when her eyes look like that, no matter what she says.

  "Aye, Cap'n," I said, and waited until she had stomped back to her cabin before I sat down again at the launcher. Cap'n's about as sea-mad as a wharf rat, so I watch my back when she's in a twist. Cap'n still makes the right decisions regarding the crew and the ship, though, sea-mad or not. 200

  I didn't fancy the thought of being bound to my post for upwards of a week, but with our Dizzer gone and our centripetal catapult unmanned, I was Manticore's only defense against attacks from other ships.

  So, for the next two weeks I froze my bones in the bow, sharpening my harpoons to needle points and keeping my launcher's lines and levers free from ice as we limped back toward port under oar (the rigging all had to come down to keep the mast from crashing down through our hull and sinking us). Jonesy and some of the other hands I'm friendly with brought me extra layers of coats and food and occasionally relieved me when Cap'n was asleep so I could go below decks to take a piss or bolt down a mug of hot coffee (neither of which is enjoyable to do on deck). Luckily, we saw no other ships on our trip back, and I've never been so eager to leave the ship as I was the day we finally made it back to Fulmarus.

  All of us deckhands
left Cap'n and Mr. Jakes, the first mate, to dicker with the port's shipbuilders about the repairs while we headed down to The Circling Gull and planted ourselves in front of the fire and the taps and the women. We were the only patrons in the place since it was the beginning of the summer shipping season, and despite our mostly empty pockets, Red Jamie, the owner, and his girls descended upon us like sea birds on a stinking whale's carcass. The days passed like minutes, and what little money I had soon left me for the warmth of Jamie's pocket or a pretty girl's bodice. A month later, Red Jamie presented us with a copy of our bill, a copy of the Manticore's roster, and an announcement that Cap'n would be lowering the gangplank to load supplies in less than an hour. We all looked at the tab and groaned, then made our "X" on the roster, which enlisted us for another voyage. Never-ending cycle, ice pirating is—the money's good, but it's gone before it's earned.

  Jonesy and I and some of our other mates stumbled out of the alehouse and into the sunlight for the first time in days. I winced and put up my hand to shield my eyes, which had trouble handling the hangover and the sun all at once. Tension was palpable among the crew on our walk back to the Manticore. We'd ended our last voyage with no Dizzer and we'd had no firm word yet about his replacement. Ice pirates would rather sail without a compass than sail without a Dizzer at their ship's centripetal catapult. A good Archer, like me, can shoot a harpoon into an enemy ship from two hundred meters or so, but a good Dizzer can launch an ice ball from the catapult and hit a ship nearly a kilometer away, given a good tail wind on the throw. That ice ball's moving fast enough to smash a mast, shred sails, or blow a man to bits. Dizzers have to be unbelievably fast to land a shot, and a slow hand on the lever means the ice ball will end up through your mast instead. A good Dizzer can render a trader ship immobile in about six or eight shots, and then it's easy for the pirate ship to slip alongside and board the vessel. The trader ships are too fast to capture intact, so ice pirating without a Dizzer isn't worth the effort. Manticore would have a rough voyage if we didn't manage to get someone to fill our Dizzer's spot, and Cap'n would be in trouble if we couldn't bring in some loot this time out. Another failed voyage like the last one could spark a mutiny.

  "Damn Dizzer!" Jonesy swore suddenly, voicing some of the frustration that everyone felt. "We should have been out at sea for two months already. We'd probably have been back by now with a hold full of supplies. And where the hell are we gonna get a new Dizzer this late in the season? All the other boats are at sea right now, and I didn't hear of anyone in Fulmarus looking for work."

  "I heard Cap'n's gonna be our new Dizzer," slurred one of the older deckhands as we shuffled along the pier. "Red Jamie said she used to be one back in the day. Took out any ship within two kilometers."

  "Two kilometers?" A second hand looked skeptical. "That's daft. Best I've ever heard is one kilometer, and that's with a favorable wind."

  "Easy, boys, all of ya," I said before the other hand could snap back. "Cap'n en't our new Dizzer." I pointed a finger at a small figure walking along the pier in front of us. "She is." To a warmblood, men and women look nearly identical when they're bundled up in their furs, but us coldbloods can spot a lady at a hundred paces and are experts at visualizing what lies beneath her layers of coats.

  The second hand eyed me suspiciously. "How do you know that, Shrike?"

  I rolled my eyes. "We're almost at the end of the pier and we're the only ship in port right now. Where else would she be going?"

  The deckhand scratched his chin. "Good point," he relented, and our group made the rest of the hike back to the Manticore in hungover silence. Sure enough, the small woman slipped aboard the ship as quiet and quick as she could, but she left a vacuum in her wake as all of the crew peered around to look at her. It wasn't even what you might think—of course, any woman is bound to attract attention on a ship with a mostly male (and interested female) crew, but even if she'd been the most unremarkable man we'd ever seen, we'd still have stared. Everyone wanted to see the new Dizzer. For her part, she kept the hood of her furs pulled up tight around her pale face and walked straight over to Cap'n's door, knocked twice, and slipped inside as soon as she heard the answering grunt. The Dizzer's entrance left a wake that rippled through the crew, and murmurs and whispers flew every which way as we went about our tasks.

  Me, I got stuck working the supply line, where near as many rumors were being passed as chests and drums. In the hour I'd been moving supplies, I'd learned that our new Dizzer was an exiled princess, a scholar from one of the warmblood's universities, a pickpocket fled south to escape the hangman's noose, and a whore picked up because Cap'n thought she had a pretty face. "That's quite the list of deeds for one who looks so young," I said to Jonesy, who was in the supply line in front of me. "What a load of rubbish." Jonesy grunted and slid me a cask of rum. "Most of these eejits would freeze to death if they didn't keep their gums flapping."

  I braced my foot against the bottom of the cask and tilted it toward myself until I found the balance point, then palmed the rim as I rolled the cask over to the next man in line. "What's your take, Jonesy?" I called over my shoulder.

  Jonesy had an odd look on his face when I returned to get the next drum. "I heard the last captain she worked for won her in a card game."

  "Indentured?" I was surprised. There were only a couple of indentured Dizzers, and all the ones I knew of were good at their jobs, which made their captains loathe to sell them. Usually the only way an indentured Dizzer left his or her captain was an unlucky hand in cards. Our Cap'n wasn't given to gambling, so I was curious as to how we'd ended up with our new friend. "Aye, indentured," said Jonesy. "I heard Mr. Jakes talking to one of the longshoremen a half hour ago. Our Dizzer's last ship was the Nightwing." My mouth dropped open, sending my breath billowing out in white clouds. "Nightwing went down last summer up in the 'berg fields near the border waters. All hands were lost."

  "Aye," Jonesy said gravely. "All except her, apparently," he said, and glared at Cap'n's door. "No other ships were in that area for at least a week and none of them picked her up. Remember what those crews said in Fulmarus this past winter, about how they found some of the debris but no survivors? I don't doubt their story. Nobody'd make it in this water for an hour, much less a week." Jonesy shivered, and then spat over the railing as if taunting the sea to come up on board and try to freeze his bones, too. "No one knows how she made it back to Fulmarus or when she got there. Mr. Jakes said she just walked up to Cap'n in the shipyard last week and wanted to sign on. He said that Cap'n looked like she'd seen a ghost when the Dizzer walked in. Sounded as if they had sailed together a while ago from the way they were talking." I laughed. I couldn't help it. The word "ghost" did me in. I saw now that Jonesy'd been feeding me another one of his warmblooded nonsense stories and I'd eaten it up hook, line, and sinker.

  "That's an interesting tale, Jonesy. A mysterious woman appears in the shipyard, claiming not only to have survived sailing with our dear Cap'n in her younger, bloodthirstier days, but also managed a six-month winter swim back to port after being shipwrecked in the middle of a deserted 'berg field." I shook my head. "It's better than a princess or a whore, I suppose. Lots more imaginative. So, Mr. Jones, what exactly is our Dizzer then, to have survived such trials—a pirate ghost, a mermaid, or something else entirely?" I elbowed Jonesy in the ribs and smiled. I always kid him a bit for being such a warmblood about ghosts and all of that other nonsense.

  But Jonesy didn't laugh or play along for once. "You laugh, Shrike, but I'm telling you, she's something strange, this one." Then he shoved a chest of furs into my arms, and I staggered across the deck with it. When I turned back, he was barking orders at some of the ship's boys, sending them scuttling across the deck in terrified circles. I shrugged and went up to the bow to look over my harpoon launcher.

  I lay in my hammock that night and let the pitching of the ship lull me into a near-sleep haze. It felt good to be back aboard because I never slept as well on land as I did at
sea. I stretched out and let the glow from my last glass of ale course through me. I half-heard Jonesy telling some of the other hands his story about the Dizzer while they played dice games in the corner. The others seemed to laugh as much as I had. I pulled my bedroll up tighter and rolled over onto my side.

  I was drifting off when I heard a rustling coming from the other side of the wall. Our bunkroom shares a wall with Cap'n's, so I was used to hearing her muttering to herself all night as she step-thumped across her room on her peg leg (too sea-mad to sleep, I guess). The rustling was soon joined by whispers, and I could make out Cap'n's rumbly burr. I didn't recognize the higher pitched voice and assumed that it must be the new Dizzer. I'm normally not one to snoop, but all of Jonesy's prattling had gotten me interested in our newest mate, so I dragged my mind from its almost-sleep and listened intently to see if I could hear their conversation.

  I soon wished that I hadn't roused myself, because the whispering gave way to more rustling, then a steady creaking of hammock ropes, followed by a series of moans and faster creaking. I'd seen and heard my share of lovemaking on board, living in a shared bunkroom and all, but I'd never heard anything coming from Cap'n's room. I'd figured between the sea-madness and the armory of knives she kept on her person at all times, she was celibate. Apparently, the celibacy was based on the available company, not principle. My face burned as the brief southern night wore on. Cap'n and the Dizzer showed no signs of stopping, and I considered getting up to take a walk on the deck, but I was so warm in my bedroll that I couldn't make myself get up.

  The creaking and moaning finally stopped after several hours. I was wide awake by now and I stared at the ceiling, trying to forget what I had heard. I focused on the pitching of the ship again and tried to let it lull me back to sleep. I had almost gotten back to the near-sleep state when the Dizzer's voice woke me up again.