“I would think having someone pretend to join them would be a good idea,” I said.
“That was done. He went on a trip with them and never came back. We’re not sure what happened to him.”
He was probably dead. Merko couldn’t let someone leave with knowledge of where the pirates lived. I hoped Jerot’s sponsors would wipe out the pirates. I wanted Merko dead.
CHAPTER 13
“Jerot says we’re less than a day from Lagudia,” Vlid told me one evening. “We can expect to see ships and we won’t run unless they chase us.”
The next day, we did see ships, but they ignored us. Then we overtook a small ship that was similar to the Eagle. After we passed her, I could see the people onboard doing something with the sails. She sped up and came toward us. I wasn’t enhancing, since Jerot didn’t want to call attention to our unusual speed, but with the reaction of the other ship, he put me to work, although the ship seemed innocent enough. He asked I only add a little speed. We soon left the other ship far behind.
The port of Lagudia was visible and we were getting close. “Be sure you take all your possessions if you leave the ship,” Jerot said. “As soon as possible, I want to return the Eagle to its rightful owners, if I can find them.”
“What!” Amapola complained. “She’s ours.” I agreed with the sentiment at first, but quickly realized Amapola and I were wrong. We had no real right to her. It wasn’t fair that we didn’t, but we didn’t.
“We stole her from pirates who stole her from other pirates,” Vlid explained. “I don’t think the Rocky Coast Pirates paid for her.”
Amapola looked at all of us and looked defeated when no one supported her. “Jerot, you have a right to her. You’ve put so much work into her.”
“If I polished your gold coins after I stole them from you, would that make them mine?” he asked her. She angrily turned away.
“You’re coming out of this with money,” I said to Amapola. “More than most people have. Vlid and Milea have nothing, and they’re not trying to take what doesn’t belong to them.” Amapola had a mulish expression on her face after I made that statement. I didn’t think it was practical to return the money to the original owners. Did that make me a hypocrite?
“Vlid,” Milea said, “shouldn’t you change?”
Vlid glanced down at his goat hair shirt and said, “I forgot.” He disappeared below.
A little while later, he came up wearing respectable clothing. He didn’t look rich, but like a skilled craftsman, competent and confident. I realized those must have been the clothes he wore when the pirates came. If it weren’t for the white spot of hair on the back of his head, none of the pirates would have a chance of recognizing him. I got used to his changed appearance, but his clothes made it complete.
We came ashore and Jerot paid the dock fee. While he was doing so, the ship we passed came in next to us.
A young man called to us from it, saying, “So you’re the Eagle. I thought you were the Slippery Shark before I read your name. Who built her?”
“We don’t know,” Vlid said. “We stole her from some pirates and want to find her owners. For all I know, she might be the Slippery Shark. Who owns her?”
“Probably Cranket, now. His father disappeared almost a year ago while onboard her. If pirates took her, Cranket’s father is probably dead.”
“I would think so,” Vlid said. “We were lucky to get out alive. Can you get in touch with the current owner? Cranket? If he can prove he has a right to her, we’ll return it to him.”
Jerot was busy with the dock officials when this conversation took place. When he returned, Amapola pointed to where the other ship was docked and said, “They think they know who owns this ship. We might have to give her up immediately.”
“Then it’s a good thing I only paid for one day,” Jerot said.
Amapola said, “I’m leaving in the morning. I’ll find a room in a respectable house and get a job as a seamstress.”
No one responded to her.
“I’m going to report. Someone from the town council might be available,” Jerot said. He unbuckled his sword belt and gave it to Vlid. “I’ll be less threatening without this.” He left.
Lina and Roddy went ashore and brought back a decent meal. We were sitting on deck, watching the sun go down, when Cranket came, with several men. He was young, probably not twenty, but was overweight and moved clumsily. He was pale as if he spent much of his time indoors. Being used to the weathered faces of men who made their livings outside, he looked odd and vaguely familiar, although I couldn’t place why. After identifying himself, he proceeded to describe what the inside of the Eagle looked like, including a burnt spot in the hold and a knothole on a shelf. “There should be a built-in hinged shelf for an hourglass,” he said. “They’ve probably sold the hourglass, but it’s attached to the wall in such a way that it could be turned over and stay in position even when the ship moved.” I wanted him to be wrong about owning the ship, but his information was too accurate.
He also presented papers and witnesses. The Eagle was his. Cranket didn’t thank us. We retrieved our belongings and stood out on the dock, wondering if we should wait for Jerot. By now, it was almost dark, and we were all wearing our cloaks in the cool of the evening. Milea wore Vlid’s goat hair shirt.
“Sir,” I said as he ordered two of the men with him to untie the lines. “Could you direct us to a respectable inn where we can get lodging for the night?”
He looked down at me. My dress was never fancy and saw too much wear. I gave Milea the better of the two extra dresses I brought for our escape. “A respectable inn wouldn’t take you,” he said. They left, and I stood there with my mouth open at his lack of a polite answer after we returned his ship.
“Merko has more class than Cranket,” Roddy said.
Kalten had more class than Cranket, since he appreciated my saving his life. We stood there, staring at each other, unable or unwilling to leave. If we left, how would Jerot find us?
“I used to live here,” Vlid said. “I think I can find us a place. If we go north on Water Street, there are houses that take boarders.”
The earth shook. All of us felt earthquakes before and this was a mild one.
“I think Jerot’s in trouble,” Vlid said.
“Why?” Amapola asked.
“Lagudia never has earthquakes. If Jerot’s in trouble, that’s the only way he knows to call for help.”
“Can you guess where he’s gone?” I asked.
“Yes.” Vlid said. “The Council building isn’t far from here.” Vlid started inland and I had to run to catch him. “You should go back.”
“You know I can help,” I replied. Despite the anger I felt against Jerot when we first got on the Eagle, I felt responsible for him. It was more than realizing we wouldn’t have escaped without him. Knowing more about him, I came to respect him, and didn’t realize it until he seemed to be threatened.
Roddy caught up with us. “I gave Milea the extra sword. They’ll wait for us,” he said. I hoped they would be safe.
We wound uphill through the narrow cobblestone streets with houses whose overhanging second stories stole some of the limited space and light. My father often visited Lagudia before he retired from the sea. He told me about it, but he spoke of the docks and the taverns, not the houses. It was such a contrast to Ship Town that I was reminded of my home. Ship Town was shrinking, and vacant cottages were ignored when a family would save enough money to move where there were more jobs. I grew up thinking that a normal home had land around it, and the land was cheap. Clearly space was expensive here.
We suddenly came to an open area around a large building with decorative columns. There were lanterns on top of poles spaced around the entrance to the building. A crowd was gathered under the lantern light. A sign carved into the building proclaimed it Lagudia Council.
At first, I couldn’t see what was going on, but as we got closer I saw men were beating Jerot. He was so bloody
that it was hard to recognize him. Some members of the crowd were shouting encouragement. A sudden burst of rain came down on the group. Everyone paused, trying to understand why it rained in a small area, when it rained nowhere else and there were no clouds. Two men were holding Jerot in a standing position, but the rain caused the men to let him go, and he fell to the ground.
One man brought his leg back to kick him. I enhanced the backward motion and he fell. When one leaned over to help him up, I made him fall on top of his comrade.
“Stop it,” I said. “Step away from him.”
“This isn’t your business,” said a spectator. He started toward Jerot.
I needed to do something dramatic and remembered the lanterns. “One more step and I’ll burn you,” I said. I didn’t want to burn anyone. There was nothing to burn nearby that wouldn’t hurt someone. I took my cloak off and twirled it, letting it go. I duplicated the fire from the lantern and burned the cloak. The twirling, burning cloak made a satisfying impression on the men.
“I didn’t have to burn the cloak,” I said. “I can burn you or your building.”
A man started toward me and I burned his shirt. He yelped and stopped, ripping his shirt off.
“I’m an enhancer,” I said. “My god is Ezant, who won’t let me do anything unethical with my enhancing. If what I am doing isn’t right, I couldn’t do it.”
They just stood there.
“Step aside and let us get our friend,” I said.
“He’s a pirate,” one man said, “and we don’t like pirates or their friends.”
“He was asked to find out about the pirates. He did so,” Vlid said. “This is the sword he wore while pretending to be a pirate.” Vlid drew the sword.
One man from the crowd drew his sword. I put the heat of the flame into it, a few inches from his hand. He dropped it, swearing by some god I never heard of.
“Anyone else?” I said.
“Do you really think a pirate would walk into the Lagudia Council building and announce he was a pirate?” Vlid asked. No one answered.
“Step back and let us get our friend,” Roddy said in a reasonable voice. His sword was in his hand but pointing at the cobblestones. “You can’t fight an enhancer.”
The crowd parted. Vlid and Roddy sheathed their swords and walked through the gap. I stayed back, watching for an attack. They helped Jerot to his feet and positioned him between them. Jerot managed a few steps, but Vlid and Roddy helped him move. We walked slowly back to the pier. The crowd didn’t follow us.
Amapola, Lina, Milea and Little Vlid were standing on the dock, holding off three men who were menacing them. Milea had the sword out, but I doubted she was able to use it. I went over to help hold up Jerot while Vlid and Roddy drew their swords. This wasn’t an organized attack, but some opportunists who thought they might have easy pickings. They fled.
Vlid and Roddy took Jerot from me and gently lowered him onto the pier. Vlid said he would look for a place to stay. Roddy and I carefully wrapped Jerot in Roddy’s cloak.
We waited. What else could we do?
Eventually, Vlid appeared, pushing an empty wheelbarrow. Amapola started putting her belongings in it, and I said, “It’s nice of you to give Jerot a comfortable ride, but I think your clothing will get bloody.” She hastily removed the bundle, as Roddy and Vlid lifted Jerot into the wheelbarrow. Roddy put his keg of water next to Jerot. It was only half full, but we might need it.
We walked up a narrow street where houses were built as one building, with the wall of one being the wall of the next. We walked up the steps of a particularly narrow house, and Vlid used a key to enter, explaining that he rented the house.
The house was furnished. There were beds in rooms upstairs. Vlid and Roddy carried Jerot up the narrow stairway and put him on the bed in the smallest room. The rest of us would share the other three bedrooms.
“I’ll stay with him,” I said. Vlid brought me a stool. It was too dark to see much, and all I did was give him a bit of water every so often. In the morning, Milea took over and I slept.
It took us several days to make the house comfortable. I gave money to Vlid, who used it to buy necessities. I cooked and helped Milea and Lina with Jerot. Vlid brought in a doctor, who gave us instructions for Jerot’s care. He had broken ribs and so many bruises that there was no position he could be in without pain. Amapola disappeared for hours each day, but came back dissatisfied, giving no explanation of her absence. She didn’t contribute her money to the running of the house, although Lina contributed some of the money Merko gave her.
Lina and Roddy left the house together every day. On the third day they returned with a bit of money. “We found some temporary work,” Roddy explained. “It isn’t much, but it should help.”
After a week, Amapola asked me to do her a favor by joining her. Curious, I agreed.
She led me to a neighborhood of larger houses, where the streets were cleaner, and the people better dressed, to a house with a sign on the door simply saying Estelle’s. Amapola was wearing one of her less flashy dresses, but it fit her perfectly. A woman in her forties who also wore a perfectly fitting dress met us. She looked the epitome of quiet respectability.
“This is the woman I was telling you about,” Amapola said to the woman. “She would like to get a job in a tavern, but you know they wouldn’t hire her.”
My hair was up in a sloppy bun with an inadequate number of pins. My dress was bloodstained from helping Jerot, and it was in better shape than my other remaining dress. I considered bringing more clothes for our escape, but I wanted room for the holy books of my two religions. I could buy clothes and had the money to do so. I just didn’t have the time. My parents wouldn’t have hired someone looking like me, and the standards of Ship Town were lower than the standards of Lagudia. It didn’t seem to matter before, but combined with Cranket’s words at the ship, I was embarrassed to be seen by this woman who clearly looked down on me. It wasn’t just this woman. I was ashamed at how I looked.
“True,” the woman said. “If you can transform her, you will be a miracle worker.”
I was told to wait, and they went to the back of the shop. I almost didn’t sit on the delicate chairs, but decided standing was silly.
The bell on the door announced customers and another woman came out to greet them. As the customers went to a back room, one of them said, “You’d think someone who could afford Estelle would dress her servants better.” I wanted to leave, but I just sat there, sitting straighter than I normally would, irrationally angry with Amapola for putting me in this situation.
Amapola came out, carrying some folded cloth. “This is for clothes for you,” she said.
“I don’t think I can afford the cloth here,” I replied. I wasn’t trying to imitate the upper classes.
“I’m paying.”
“Why?” I asked. “I’m not happy about being mistaken for a badly dressed servant, but that doesn’t mean you should buy me clothes.”
“This is for me, not for you. I know you would buy cheaper cloth. I want to show her what I can do, and how fast I can do it. We’re supposed to return the day after tomorrow.”
We were leaving the building. I looked at the women on the street and realized none were as poorly dressed as I was. As we made our way to the house we were staying, the neighborhood was rougher and my clothing less noticeable.
Amapola measured me when we returned and spent her time cutting and sewing. There were no mirrors in the house, so I had no idea what I looked like when she tried everything on me for a fitting. She bought blue linen, which she used to make a dress. I expected numerous fittings, but she just did one.
“Although you keep yourself clean, could you wash your hair tomorrow morning?” Amapola said to me.
Her remark that I kept myself clean felt like an insult, but I complied anyway. My hair was still wet when I put it up, and we arrived at Estelle’s early in the morning.
We were taken back into a small room an
d the woman we met previously carefully examined the dress. I was told to try it on and did so. I then was told to sit down. Amapola took my hair down, combed it and braided it in some kind of fancy braid. “My aunt often needed time to make final alterations,” she said as she worked. “We once had a customer who hated waiting. My aunt told me to entertain her, so I asked permission to braid her hair. The customer liked it so much, she came back three more times and paid me to do it. Eventually, she trained her servant to do it, but I often did it with other customers.”
The woman looked me over and said to Amapola, “I don’t expect as dramatic a transformation with most customers.”
That turned out to be the beginning of a negotiation for salary and hours. I noticed that Amapola included getting fabric at cost in her negotiations for her job.
Finally, Amapola took me to a mirror. My jaw dropped. I didn’t recognize the woman in the mirror. I was used to loose clothing, but this molded to my body on top, and came down to a skirt that was wide from mid hip down but hugged my body elsewhere There was a seam outside each breast that wasn’t holding two separate pieces of cloth together. “They’re called darts,” she said as I looked at them. “You have a good figure and I thought I would show it off.”
I decided Amapola had a good idea about getting a job and three days later, I was working at a tavern, the Kettle of Fish. Until a few days before, a man and his wife ran it, but she just had a baby. It was understood the job was temporary, and he didn’t know when his wife would be able to work. I worked from late afternoon to closing. The Kettle of Fish mainly had workers come in for dinner and a few pints of ale. I took over the cooking, usually making fish stew, and served during the dinner rush.
I considered getting work using enhancing but was worried that my enhancing might lead people to Jerot. I wasn’t certain if people were looking for him but didn’t want to risk it.
Before I left for work each day, I helped Milea learn to cook and she helped me do my hair. When I was gone, she worked on making clothing for her son and herself. She also made me a dress and underwear to replace what I gave her. It wasn’t as nice as Amapola could make but was considerably better than the one I gave her, since I was a poor seamstress.
The Pirates of Fainting Goat Island Page 10
