by V. Briceland
“Press gang! Yes! Is thing. Smart boy.” The pirate grinned at him. Unlike the man who had held him captive on the Pride of Muro, at least Maxl’s teeth were all intact. They might not have been pretty, but they were all accounted for. “You being like Maxl, yes? Both very smart.”
Nic thought of the Arturos then, and of Captain Delguardino and all the men of the Pride lost at sea, and felt an angry fire burn within. “No,” he retorted, staring the man square in the eye. “We are not alike.” Even as he said the words, though, he couldn’t help but wonder. Maxl might have been twice Nic’s age, but no matter how different his long black hair was from Nic’s dark, short crop, and no matter how encrusted with blue dye his face was compared to Nic’s sunburnt cheeks, it sounded as if they’d both had less-than-ideal childhoods. Not to mention the fact that they both had been pressed into labor against their wills. Deny it as Nic might, they were somewhat alike. “And I’m not a pirate.”
“No?” Maxl’s eyebrow shot up.
“No!”
As if sensing Nic’s outrage at the accusation, Maxl cocked his head. For the first time, Nic noticed that both of his earlobes sported small loops of gold. “You carry shivarsta.” Nic shook his head. “Shivarsta,” repeated the pirate. “To stick. Big cutting …” Maxl made gnashing motions with his teeth.
“Sword,” Nic said. For the first time he remembered the short sword he’d been carrying before his capture. Where was it? After looking frantically around the cave, he finally saw it plunged into the sand, close to the mouth. Its blade glowed, reflecting the fire just beyond the cave’s entrance. “Pirate sword.”
“Pirate sword, yes, but special,” Maxl agreed. “You kill big, uh, importance man. Take hair. Make pirate sword.”
“No,” Nic said, stiff. “I kill pirate. I mean, I killed the pirate. I took his shivarsta.”
Maxl swallowed and seemed to understand. “You kill pirate?” he asked. “Ugly pirate? Holes in mouth, yes? Much thin?”
“That’s the one.”
“That is Xi! I know him. Terrible man. And you kill him?”
“All by myself.” When Nic shrugged, Maxl seemed to shrink back a little. Fine. If fear inspired the man to shut his mouth for a few minutes, he’d make him scared. “I killed many pirates last night,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “You boarded my ship. You took my friends.”
“Not Maxl! Maxl not part of Xi and them. I leave crew before that. Men you kill, bad men. Maxl not bad!”
“Well, I killed every single bad man I could. I made the ship go boom!” he said, mimicking the noise of the yemeni alum exploding. “So my advice, signor, would be not to anger me too greatly. Understood?”
Whether or not Maxl grasped everything completely, he at least nodded, his eyes wide. He seemed to regard Nic with a newfound respect. “You take hair?” he asked, his voice quiet. “You take dead man hair, pirate-killer? After boom? For Xi’s shivarsta? Make it yours?”
“Maybe later I’ll have yours,” said Nic, growling slightly. That seemed to quiet the man completely.
Once Nic was certain Maxl had snuffed his curiosity to ask any more, he spent a few moments inching forward across the sand until he was at the side of the old man lying on the sacks. He still breathed—there had been a few moments when Nic had worried they were sharing their space with a dead man. The man’s face wore the lines of sixty or more years of everyday living. What was left of his hair was thin and dry, and his long beard was uncombed. His long robes had once perhaps been fine, but sun and sea had reduced them to a bleached mass. A track of dried blood streaked his forehead. “Are you awake?” Nic felt foolish for even asking, when it was perfectly obvious the man was dead to the world.
Or perhaps he wasn’t. At Nic’s question, the man stirred. His hand reached for his face, landing uncertainly on the prominent nose in its center, then batting away something imaginary. His mouth worked. “You’re really awake?” Nic asked, suddenly excited.
The old man sighed. Slowly and with great deliberation, his eyelids flickered open. “Mmm?” he asked, through cracked lips.
“Hallo?” Nic spoke no language other than his own, but he’d heard the merchants calling out to their customers in other tongues before. “Ola? ”
“Oi! ” Maxl spoke up. When Nic turned, startled, he found the pirate watching with interest. “That how we do in Longdoun,” he volunteered.
The old man must have heard Maxl’s outburst. The tip of his tongue shot out to wet his lips. He murmured a few syllables, none of which were recognizable to Nic’s ears.
“He talk in Pays tongue,” Maxl announced with authority. Nic’s mouth twitched. How was he supposed to talk to someone in Azurite? Luckily, Maxl offered a solution. “I talk to him for you. Maxl talk good Pays tongue, just like they talk in Côte Nazze.”
“Is it as good as your Cassafortean?” Nic said with a grimace.
Maxl seemed to take it as a compliment. “Yes! Thank you! Watch.” He cleared his throat, and then in an extremely loud voice, “Allo! Bongzur! Voo avec big pirate killer, comprendvu? ”
“Even I,” Nic turned to announce, unimpressed, “can tell that was not a proper sentence.”
“Do I know you?” The words had sounded like the rustle of autumn leaves across an empty piazza, but they were distinct enough. Nic shifted on his knees to face the old man again. His eyes were focused now, though they blinked with confusion. “You look like someone I know.”
“We’re like you,” Nic told him, inching forward until he was kneeling directly beside the old man. “Prisoners. Wait,” he said, suddenly realizing something. The man had spoken without accent or flaw. “Are you from Cassaforte?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Cassafort City!” exclaimed Maxl, seeming to follow the conversation. “Yes, beautiful! Many beautiful women! All love Maxl. Hah! Hah!”
The pirate barked out his laughter so loudly that it echoed throughout the cavern. It must have been audible from without, for a shadow crossed the sands in front of the entrance. Long and dark it loomed, though its owner did not materialize.
“Is everything all right in there?” It was the girl, Nic knew. She spoke with a strange accent, almost like the languid tones of Pays d’Azur, but yet not quite. “Sssh,” he warned the others. Maxl immediately stifled his amusement.
“Old man?” the girl called, a touch of warning in her voice.
It seemed to take the elderly gentleman an eternity to struggle to a half-sitting position. He was indeed a gentleman, Nic could now tell. The aristocratic nose, the former formality of his beard and robes, the gentility of his words, all bespoke a certain class. If he was not of the Seven and Thirty, he was at least very well connected among their society. “All is well,” he called out. His voice did not sound strong, but it carried like an actor’s. “No need for alarm.”
The three men waited while the shadow seemed to waver with indecision. After a moment, however, it receded. They all seemed to relax. Nic had only caught a glimpse of the girl, shortly before she’d banged the back of his head and rendered him unconscious. “She’s dangerous,” he whispered to the old man. “The girl. She took out both of us on her own.”
“She-tiger,” said Maxl. “Killer of pirate-killers. Almost!” Nic shot him a dirty look.
“Yes, she’s dangerous indeed,” the gentleman agreed. By his sober nod, Nic understood that she had overcome him as well. “I would fear crossing her.”
“What do you know of her?” While the old man thought, Nic rapidly began to theorize. “She’s not part of Maxl’s group of pirates.”
“Maxl pirating no more,” he reminded them. “Never see girl, ever, before here.”
“She must be part of another group of buccaneers,” Nic said. The idea sounded more persuasive as he spoke it. Wasn’t the cavern filled with supplies plundered from cargo ships?
“But is she the leader? Or just one of them?”
The expression on the old man’s face was difficult to pin down. “Surely the girl is too young to lead her own merry pirate band?”
“And that accent,” Nic said. “What is she?”
“Half of her is of Cassaforte,” said the old man, turning his head to look at the cave entrance. He was sitting up straighter now. Though he did not appear to be a strong man at all, his posture had dignity and bearing. “Half of Pays d’Azur.”
Nic nodded. That made sense. In the short time he’d heard her speak, she’d managed to combine the lilt of his own language with the nasality of Azurite. Exotic, it sounded, but familiar. “Why in the world would she attack a half-countryman?”
“Well …”
Nic thought he saw the direction in which his elder’s doubt was heading. “True. She might not have known I was a countryman. Perhaps if I just talk to her …”
Maxl had a definite opinion on that suggestion. “Pirate not care. You say Maxl should not attack Charlemance boat, because he is from Charlemance? Pirate say pooh that.” He struggled forward, jerking back and forth to scoot across the cave floor regardless of his bonds. “When man become pirate, he is becoming free man, man without country.” He wrinkled his nose and tossed back the hair that was tickling it. “Or sometimes woman,” he admitted.
“But that’s insane,” Nic told him. “You don’t lose your heritage because you become a pirate.”
“A pirate is an outlaw. I’m afraid no country is going to set their banners flying with joy at the sight of a pirate frigate. They disrupt the flow of goods and make the seas a place of terror.” Nic nodded at the old man’s words, thinking of the dread he’d felt upon wakening at the mercy of a pirate’s blade, two nights before. Any man who’d say such a thing had to be trustworthy. “No offense, my piratical friend, but that is the way of the world.”
“Maxl no … offense.” The pirate mouthed the word carefully, as though it were the first time he was using it. Cheerfully, he added, “Is true. Pirate answer to no country. Is why Maxl not pirate no more.”
“Signor. What is your name?” Nic asked, on sudden impulse.
“My name?” The man hesitated before answering. “Jacopo. Jacopo Colombo.”
“Signor Colombo, listen to me. My name is Niccolo Dattore. I have lived in Cassaforte all my life. I was on a ship, the Pride of Muro, sailing from Massina to Orsina with my master and his troupe of actors. My master was asked to bring his Theatre of Marvels on tour, in honor of King Alessandro naming Milo Sorranto as heir to the throne,” Nic explained to the old man. He spoke hastily, as if expecting the girl to step in and separate them at any moment. “Maxl’s men boarded our ship. They killed the captain and most of the crew.”
“I am not being in that,” Maxl protested, scraping forward a few more inches. “I am off boat before orders made. Why you make noise?”
“I’m making noise,” Nic said, furiously moderating his tone because he was, indeed, making too much of it, “because you—they—took my master and his lady, and all the troupe! I’m making noise because I’m gods-know-where in the middle of the sea without a chance of getting back home. If I had a home to go back to. Which I no longer do.” He turned to the old man. “For the first time I had a master I was proud to serve.”
“You do revenge on him.” Maxl pointed out. “You kill the pirate killing him. That is honor. Be happy!”
“Stop making it sound like something to be proud of!” If Maxl didn’t pick up on Nic’s every word, his tone got through. The pirate shrank back. “If that’s honor, I want none of it. It didn’t make me happy. One man is dead at my hand. Probably four others as well.” Thinking about the enormity of what he’d done caused a point at the front of his skull to ache. “I had to, though. I had to.”
One of Jacopo’s hands reached out to steady Nic. “It sounds like it was self-defense.”
Nic nodded. “Honor won’t bring back the captain or his men. Honor won’t bring back the Arturos, and now they’ve been sold for … for … for soup! Or for their gold teeth.”
“Sell chicken for soup,” Maxl said, almost attempting to be comforting. “Live folk make better slaves.”
“That’s superb news, Maxl,” Nic snapped. “I thank you for that. Slavery is so much better.” It wasn’t, of course. Nic added it to the list of things he couldn’t bear to think about. “What did I expect, coming from the man who thought stringing a bit of hair from my sword would make everything right?” The old man didn’t seem to understand, but Nic realized that now was not the time for any further explanation. “Listen,” he told Jacopo, trying to turn in place. “She didn’t tie you up. Undo my knots. Let me free. I’ll take care of the girl.” It was a grim thought, attacking someone again, but for the last two days he’d done what he’d had to do to survive, and he was prepared to keep at it for as long as necessary. “Then by the gods, I swear I’ll find a way for the two of us to return to Cassaforte.”
“That would be most gratifying, my friend.” It occurred to Nic then that perhaps Signor Colombo might be thankful enough to offer him a position in his household, if he were to find them a way home. “But as for the girl, I don’t think …”
“Undo Maxl too?” The pirate’s teeth were white in the gloom as he tried to smile at and charm the old man.
“No. He’s one of them. We don’t know what he’ll do.” Nic had never sounded more firm in his life.
“I not know girl!”
“He’s a pirate.”
“How many times am I telling you. I am being … eh … I not have word. Old man, foots up, smoking pipe and whittle on wood, working no more.”
“I believe,” said the old man, his fingers fumbling with the rope around Nic’s wrists, “our friend is saying he has retired from his former profession.”
“Retiring, yes!” Maxl seemed pleased to be understood. “Undo Maxl now?”
“Pirates don’t retire,” Nic growled. Now that the restraints around his wrists were loosened, the blood flowed back to his fingertips with a vengeance. For a moment they felt like fat, prickling sausages, but the pain had subsided by the time the last of the hemp fell from his hands. He attempted to reach back and assist as Jacopo turned his attention to the knots around his feet. “He’s the enemy.”
“Undo Maxl!” the pirate demanded.
“I am releasing Niccolo here,” the man explained. “He appears to be the victim of circumstance. Possibly he may be of aid.”
“Maxl can aid!” The pirate shook his wrists.
One of the clumps of rope next to Nic’s left ankle was proving particularly tricky. Both the old man and Nic picked at it blindly with their fingertips. “Just be quiet,” Nic urged the pirate.
“Undo me. Or Maxl yell for girl.”
It was blackmail, plain and simple. Nic gawped at him. “No!”
“Girl!” Maxl bawled at the top of his lungs, before either Nic or the old man could hush him. “Girl! Allo! Halp! Fire! Murder!”
Nic felt the knot spring free as the mouth of the cave darkened. Against the shadows from the fire and the dark twilight horizon loomed the girl’s shadowy form. The outline of her long, flowing hair was edged with gold, and she appeared to be wearing some kind of boy’s billowing breeches. “What’s going on in here?”
“My dear—” the old man began.
Nic, however, had no time for the man’s diplomacies. It was time for action. The last of the ropes coiled from his ankles as he sprang toward the girl. He was aware of Jacopo’s dismayed cry and of Maxl’s howl behind him, but they were drowned out by the deep, guttural grunt he let out as he lunged at her figure. Only at the last moment did he think of his sword, stuck into the sand.
The girl couldn’t have known that he was free and lunging at her, but some instinct made her leap sideways. Inste
ad of connecting with her midsection as he’d planned, Nic nearly missed her altogether. At the last moment, though, his arm shot out and grabbed the girl, tackling her to the ground. Over and over each other they tumbled until they landed outside the cave on the sand. The girl spat out a mouthful of grit, leapt to her bare feet, and crouched into a fighting posture. Azurite curse words tumbled from her lips.
Nic had landed on his face, his nostrils full of sand. He snorted it out and blinked to clear his eyes, only to see the girl looming above. By the light of the fire, he could see her thick, curly hair hanging around her face, making her look like she wore a head of snakes. “Bâtard! ” she bellowed, and then pounced.
This time it was Nic who propelled himself away, rolling to one side before she could land atop him. He’d underestimated her. Though she was no older than him, and a girl, she was an equal if not more dangerous opponent. Still, Nic hadn’t grown up in the back warrens of Cassaforte among thieves and worse without learning a few tricks of his own. Before he swung his legs into the air and pulled himself to his feet, in his right hand he grabbed a handful of sand. He kept it clenched tight into a fist. “Shame on you!” he growled at the girl. “Your captive is old enough to your grandfather. What honor is there in that?”
“What would you know about honor?” she snarled back. Her curious accent only made the words sound more full of disdain. “Working for them.”
Nic’s temper flared even more hotly. “The Arturos are honorable folk,” he retorted without thinking. “They have always been good to me! I would give my life to save them from someone like you.” His sword was directly behind her, just within the cave’s mouth. If he could edge around her to it, he could get the advantage.
“What?” she asked, not seeming to understand. Then suddenly it didn’t matter. “Stop! Don’t move a hand’s span more,” she warned, arresting Nic in mid-step.
“I’m not,” he assured her, holding out both his free left hand and the clenched right fist.
