His father reached the footboard of the bed and placed his hand on the wrought iron knob. “Be honest, now. Deep down, your wandering nature has been tugging at you, hasn’t it?”
Pierce snorted. “Perhaps there is some truth to that,” he admitted softly, tossing the bag on the bed. “It doesn’t change the fact that my mates need me. And don’t you try talkin’ me outta it. I’m rather tired of explaining myself.”
“I have no plans to do any such thing, son. I only wanted to tell you to be careful, and that I’m a bit envious, actually.”
“Eh?” Pierce said, glancing up from the coat he was folding.
“You’re not the only Gypsy in this family,” Jasper quipped.
Pierce studied his father. The man, who appeared as an older version of his brother, Joaquin, looked upon him with eyes of longing.
“Convince Mum and you can come with me.”
Jasper snorted. “She’ll be wanting to tag along, too, which would be fine with me, but we’d be of more use here, and you don’t need a couple of old birds like us slowing you down.”
Pierce went over and embraced his father so fiercely, it took the wind out of the old man.
“You take care out there, son.”
* * *
On the day he was prepared to leave, Pierce stood on the beach before his entire family, his rucksack strapped over one shoulder.
“Goodbye, my lovelies,” he said to his three children, who embraced him all at once. “I’ll see you soon enough, eh?”
They hugged and kissed him.
Lydia placed a small seashell she had painted in his hand. “To keep you safe, Daddy.”
He smiled and kissed her on her cheek. “Cheers, Angelfish.”
Although Lydia was sad to see him go, she did not put on a show of anger as her older siblings had. Instead, she seemed to accept the situation as if she realized deep down that he needed to go.
He bid goodbye to his parents and grandmother, then his wife, Taisia.
“Take this,” she offered, handing him her wedding ring.
She had slipped a thin leather cord through a small opening between the black and silver knots.
He admired the ring, sitting in his palm beside the shell.
“Keep it next to your heart,” Taisia told him.
“I will,” he promised, tying the cord around his neck.
They kissed and held each other tightly. For a split second, he changed his mind about leaving.
“Return to us, safely,” she said with a sniff.
Pierce got into the longboat with Nico and a few of his crew who weren’t already on the Collier boat. After rowing through the crashing breakers, Pierce rose and waved goodbye to his family.
* * *
Mother of Craft woke in the middle of the night. Her skin felt warmed as if she had been standing in the sun for several minutes. She smelled like the sea. Sitting up, she threw off the covers and felt her ankles. Grains of sand capped her feet. Mother of Craft laughed.
Pierce Landcross was coming home.
Chapter Nine
‘Dis ’Ere is Nahlans
The voyage across the Pacific proved fair enough. The crew dropped anchor at Costa Rica, where they gathered much-needed supplies and a day’s rest. As dawn broke, they set sail for Panama, and from there, sailed on through the Panama Canal, also known as the Graveyard Channel. The Panama Canal cut straight between Central and South America, leading sailors from one ocean to the other ocean. The narrow channel had started as a small river, but it had been widened over the course of many years by engineers. The Panama Canal provided the perfect shortcut for ships, yet it wasn’t without its perils. Vessels traveling the forty-eight miles between landmasses had gone down due to choppy waters during stormy seasons, pirate attacks, or simply run aground in low tides. Even with the dangers, most opted to travel through the Panama Canal rather than sail completely around South America, which usually proved just as deadly.
The Collier boat sailed through without a hitch. They arrived at Cancún and stayed the night on the beach. The following day, they made their way up the Gulf. They traveled into Lake Borgne and through a second manmade canal that led straight into the Mississippi River. By early evening, they’d reached New Orleans.
After passing by large, strange dome-shaped buildings sitting on the water like boathouses, Pierce spotted the St. Louis Cathedral. He had been keeping track of the days on the calendar he brought with him. They had arrived on the eighth of September.
As Nico and his crew tied off the boat, Pierce went searching down on the pier. The harbor was the same as any other marina he’d ever been to. It had its loudmouthed sailors, its whores, lowly hustlers, street entertainers, and an officer here and there. The only difference was the accent, which was a mixture of French and that young American dialect. The last time Pierce had heard an American accent was from Harvey Nickel, whom Pierce had hunted during his short-lived career as a bounty hunter in Mexico.
He buttoned up his dapper coat, shielding himself against the crisp fall air. The years living in the tropics had lowered his tolerance for the cold. It didn’t help that under his coat he only wore an old linen shirt, his Thai fisherman slacks, and sandals. He wore no boots, for he’d tossed those worn-out things ages ago. At least he had his top hat to keep his head warm.
He slipped his hands into the coat pockets and felt something inside of one. Bringing it out, he discovered the dragonfly key. He’d nearly forgotten he had kept it there. It was something his brother, Joaquin, had given him. He had told Pierce the key unlocked a strongbox containing eight thousand pounds that Joaquin had stolen from a cuckoo clock factory in Birmingham. He’d hidden the strongbox somewhere underneath the Major Oak Tree in Sherwood Forest while the British Guardians were chasing him.
Pierce admired it a moment, feeling a little emotional over his lost brother. He shoved the key back into the pocket.
He searched for anything on the boardwalk that he might recognize from his vision. During the long voyage, he’d hoped beyond hope that the predictions weren’t true, after all. If there was no ship and no other evidence that the Sea Warriors had been arrested, he could dismiss the whole bloody thing and return home. He sorely missed his family and already regretted leaving them.
Pierce stopped short when he crossed a sign that read Sieur de LaSalle Wharf. Granted, they’d made sure they docked at this particular pier, but when he saw the jagged crack running down the middle of the sign, he knew he was staring at the exact one from his vision. He turned his gaze toward the buildings in the distance. Although cloaked in the dimness of twilight, they did appear somewhat familiar against the red glow of the setting sun.
He moved on for several more minutes, and an icy, clammy feeling that wasn’t caused by the muggy Louisiana autumn washed over him when he saw her just beyond a steamship up ahead.
The Ekta.
The Spanish galleon sat anchored at the dock with what looked to be armed guards walking her deck.
“No,” he croaked.
It was true, the whole bloody thing. Seeing the vessel proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Sea Warriors had been arrested and were somewhere in the city. But where?
“Oi!” he called up to a guard on deck. “You there!”
“Yeah,” acknowledged the man in an American accent.
Pierce suspect he was a sea-going vigilante. He wore no uniform, only the red band tied around his arm that Pierce immediately recognized.
“This is an old ship, mate. Where did she originate from?”
“Dunno where it came from, Englishman,” he answered in a testy tone, no doubt prompted by the hatred the Americans held for the British since the War of 1812. “We intercepted her in the Caribbean.”
“Intercepted? What about her crew, then?”
“Those Injun bastards are at the Droit et Justice jail.”
A couple of more gents joined the American, apparently curious about their visitor. They also wore red bands.<
br />
“The Droit et Justice jail, you say?” Pierce repeated. “Where’s that?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” another man growled from above.
“Don’t mean nothing by it. I’ll be pushing on now.”
“Yeah, you do that,” the cocker snarled.
Pierce headed for Nico’s boat, keeping his hand on the handle of his gun along the way.
“It’s true, then?” Nico said when Pierce told him and the rest of the crew.
“Aye,” he confirmed. “It appears so. Are you still willing to do this, lad?”
Nico nodded. “I am with you, cousin.”
Pierce’s sincere expression hid it, but he was very much relieved.
He switched his attention to everyone else. “What say you lot? You in?”
During the passage across the Pacific, Pierce, Nico, and the others had come up with a plan to rescue the Sea Warriors based on what he had observed in his vision. In order for it to work, Pierce needed the entire crew to be involved. At the time, they all seemed willing. However, now that the danger was apparent, would they remain firm?
A Frenchmen named Clement Lane stepped forward. “My great-grandfather fought alongside the Sea Warriors during the Seven Years’ War. It would be an honor to help those whose ancestors fought with him.”
“Oui,” deckhand Guillaume Lachance chimed in. “I’ll stand with you, Landcross.”
One by one, the crew raised their hands, nodded, or verbally declared their willingness to press on with the plan. It seemed that each of them—Asian, French, Hawaiian, and even the gent from India—were staying in play for their own reasons, which mattered little to Pierce so long as they weren’t backing out.
“All right,” Pierce said. “We best get on with it before the stores close for the night.”
Pierce was anxious to get moving. For all he knew the assaults on the Apache women and Chief Sea Wind would happen soon.
Pierce, Nico, and the other Frenchmen ventured into the city in search of a clothing store. They came to the French Quarter. The place was full of dirty cobblestone thoroughfares and Greek architectural structures. It was alive with uncanny sights and sounds. Drunks stumbled about, some singing loud, obnoxious songs. A few fights broke out, one in the center of the street in front of a carriage, preventing it from going on its way. Women, dressed in shabby gowns and standing behind decorative ironwork balconies above, tried luring men up to them. The area was lit by dim, flickering gas streetlamps and any lights coming from within the buildings. Thieves and pimps roamed the streets. Nobody carried flintlocks any longer, only revolvers. If Pierce wasn’t partial to his ol’ six-shooter Oak Leaf pistol, he might have considered an upgrade.
Children, dressed in rags, danced for pennies, while their parents played musical instruments. Wooden street carts selling rancid food or wilting flowers were parked in various places up and down the road. Steam breezed out of the small smokestacks jutting up from the carts that served hot food.
The entire place smelled of rotten sewage, death, and bad dreams.
The French Quarter reminded Pierce of Mary King’s Close. A slice of a city that once stood aboveground, but because of a chain of events, had been covered up and become a cesspit of outcasts and loners.
The group traveled to Canal Street, where finding decent stores was easier. There, they found a men’s specialty shop.
Nico spent half of what he had left on trousers, coats, new shirts, neckties, hats, vests, and boots for Pierce and the two Frenchmen. When no one was looking, Pierce came out of his thief retirement and slipped a pair of black boot covers and a few pairs of undergarments under his coat. After all, Nico shouldn’t have to pay for everything.
They left the clothing store and visited the toyshop that the store manager had directed them to. Pierce couldn’t believe their luck when they found law enforcement badges. Granted, they were created from thin, bendable pieces of tin and were completely blank, but it was better than nothing. He wished he’d thought to bring the badge with him from when he was a temporary lawman. If the badge hadn’t been engraved with the name “Guaymas,” it might have worked.
Onboard Nico’s boat, Pierce and the Frenchmen, Clement and Guillaume, carefully carved the word Georgia into the star-shaped badges, which appeared authentic enough if one didn’t look too closely.
Pierce dressed in black trousers, a gray and black striped vest, and a white shirt. He also took out the feathers in his top hat.
“Ya’ll reckon it’s yonder? I’m fixin’ to get . . . ” he practiced his Southern drawl while tying his necktie.
“Do you think you can fool them?” asked Nico, putting on his new coat. “You still sound British.”
Pierce shrugged. “Granted, I’ve never impersonated a yank before. But I—” He paused in thought. “Wait, no, I think I’ve done it before. Haven’t I? Anyway, I’m confident I’ll be believable enough.”
Pierce owed his thespian talents to his years of being an outlaw. His performance often meant the difference between breathing and not. After successfully posing as a British Royal Guard to rescue his parents from Newgate Prison, waltzing into a little ol’ jailhouse would be a bleedin’ walk in the park for him.
“I think I can manage. No worries,” Pierce added, tightening his necktie. “Just let me do the talkin’, eh?”
They went over the plan once more before leaving. After Nico, Clement, and Guillaume were dressed, had pinned their badges on and had loaded their rifles, they looked like lawmen. Hai Du, who volunteered to pose as their prisoner, checked the chamber of his pistol.
“Are you ready for this?” Pierce asked him.
Hai snorted. “I was once a Cohong, and I imported trade. We were attacked by the pirate Ching Shih herself. She was a vicious woman. She would nail the feet of her enemies to the deck floor and beat them.”
“The Terror of South China,” Pierce recalled. “Aye. I’ve heard of her. So, what happened?”
“We fought her. Many of us died, but, eventually, we fended her off. She was dubbed ‘undefeated,’ but we escaped.”
“Bloody hell, mate,” Pierce said in awe. “What did you do after that?”
“I later joined the Opium War, where I killed scores of Englishmen.”
Pierce’s smile dropped and he swallowed thickly.
Hai slapped him on the arm. “Don’t worry, Landcross. I like you,” he stated before walking off. “And my answer is yes. I am ready.”
“That’s good to know,” Pierce whispered.
The rest of the group loaded up on guns and left for the Ekta to wait for the Pierce and others to return.
It was dark by the time they reached the jailhouse. Pierce had asked several people for directions using his Southern brogue.
The Droit et Justice jail was half a mile inland on Ursulines. It was a plain white building with bars on every window and a sign above the entrance with the name.
“Remember the plan, boys,” Pierce advised before turning the knob and pushing his way in.
The smell of tobacco smoke was noticeable before the man sitting behind the desk came into view. He was stationed against the same wall as the front door. It would take someone unfamiliar with the room’s layout a few ticks to even notice anyone was there.
“Bonswè,” greeted a burly bloke.
Pierce nearly gasped when he saw him. He was none other than the chubby tosser that Chief Sea Wind grabbed and slammed against the bars in Pierce’s vision before the chief’s head was bashed in. The lawman was dressed in a brown leather overcoat with bronze paisley designs on the wide collar. His thick yet surprisingly well trimmed beard and mustache was ginger with a few strands of grey in them. He had bright beady eyes and rosy cheeks. If Pierce hadn’t seen what he’d done to the Sea Warriors, his initial impression of him would have been that he was a jolly soul.
Pierce couldn’t allow himself to be blindsided. He approached the desk and placed the fingertips of his free hand upon it. His other held his r
ifle. “Are you the sheriff?”
“Non. The deputy, like this ’ere badge, says,” he stated, tapping on the badge pinned to his vest.
Pierce forced a smile as if amused. “Well, deputy, I’m Tucker Johnson, a regulator from Atlanta.” He opened his coat to flash his fake badge. “And this is my posse.”
He gestured toward Nico and the other Frenchmen.
“Who’s the chink?” the deputy asked, referring to Hai, who was pretending to have his hands bound behind him as he stood between Clement and Guillaume who were gripping his arms.
“He’s. . . ” explained Pierce, placing his hand on the butt of his rifle resting in the crook of his other arm, “ . . . the reason why we’re in your neck of the woods. Ol’ Chow ’ere is a conman and a smuggler who has done some nasty things in our fair city. We’ve been tracking him for weeks and eventually found ’im ’ere in New Orleans.”
The deputy only stared at him blankly.
“Yep,” Pierce went on, thickening up his accent, “he was as easy to catch as nabbin’ a badger in a foul mood.”
The deputy took a long drag off his cigarette. “If you bougs be looking fer a place to store your prisoner,” he said with smoke breezing out of his mouth like a fat dragon, “I can tell ya’ll we’re pretty tight on space.”
Wonder why, wanker, Pierce thought.
“Ya’ll can try the St. Lois jailhouse up in the Sixth Ward.”
The tricky part was coming up. Pierce drew in a breath. “There be another reason why we stopped in. We heard ya’ll have natives.”
“Heard dat, did ya?”
“Yessir. Apparently, there was a mighty big crowd that saw ’em being takin’ off their ship. Word spreads faster than chicken pox ’round ’ere, eh?”
“Can agree with you on dat,” the deputy said, taking another puff off his cigarette. “Dat still don’t tell me nothin’.”
Pierce reckoned this lummox would be easy enough to fool. He didn’t look like anyone with a slice of sense. He could run circles around this bloke.
“The Ekta is captained by an Injun named Sea Wind,” Pierce elaborated. “Him and his crew have been a thorn in Georgia’s side for years, stealing our rightful slaves an’ such.”
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