by Andre Norton
Persis saw a deathly pallor spread across Lydia’s face.
“To—to—kill—” the younger girl said as if it required all the possible effort left in her to bring out the words.
“Just so,” Ralph Grillon spoke for the second time. He, too, had taken several steps away from the table and with him moved the man who called himself Julio Valdez and three of the others who had remained silent during this exchange. “And since I am now master of the Key—” There was a pistol in his hand now, deadly, and steady. And the others held them also.
Lydia had hidden her face in her hands and was crying—fast becoming hysterical.
“Since I do hold the Key,” Grillon continued, “it would seem that the game is not yet played out.”
There was a queer dizzy feeling in Persis’ head for a moment or two. It was as if she had seen, or been a part of this same scene before. Only for a second rift out of time other faces, hard, brutal, fitted like masks of smoke across the faces of those in this room. She dropped her hand from Crewe’s arm, fumbled with the false fan until its inner deadly steel core appeared. They would be killed—these monsters from the sea–she was—
A sound, strident, carrying, drew her back into herself. She was once more Persis Rooke and not another who had looked upon death as a welcome door to another kind of safety.
Ralph Grillon threw back his head and laughed like a boy.
“Done in, by Neptune himself!”
“Wait and see–”
Persis was sure that Dr. Veering was lending Crewe more support than it looked. Yet his voice remained steady.
“There is nothing to wait for—that’s the Stormy Luck!” Ralph was exultant. “With your men safely housed I’ll have what I came for and be away. Though it was a pity you did not play the part you were set, Captain.” He shook his head, the old reckless mockery plain on his face. “It would have been so much more convenient all around. I could have done very well as master here. Now, m’dear,” he bowed to Lydia, “this time I fear I shall have to say good-bye in earnest. Though I have much to thank you for—”
Her face was blotched, tear-reddened. She looked like a child who had been slapped by a trusted hand.
“But I’m to go–”
“Your big brother is infernally right. Dear Caroline would hardly welcome you; she will only welcome me because I am a source of future wealth for her now—thanks to your clever little fingers and your ability to concoct interesting drinks.”
“Then–then it’s true?”
“That I am married to Caroline Rooke; yes, that is the truth—though I had another claim, y’know. It would not have held in court, of course, but it was enough to send me prying into old secrets. Amos had more than one son on the wrong side of the blanket. Though he was only really sure of James. My father was born out of a shorter entanglement, one he found easy to forget. So dear Caroline was my cousin. Thus we joined forces as soon as we knew there were pickings to be had. Not that I fancied Caroline particularly. She has a hag’s own temper and I can think about her more happily when there’s a goodly portion of the sea between us. But we were both Rookes, you see, and we weren’t going to let Amos’ hoard go to anyone else.
“Now that I can destroy the papers, I am sorry, Cousin Persis,” he made a mock bow in Persis’ direction, “to say that you have had a very fatiguing and fruitless journey—”
For the second time the conch trumpet sounded.
“I would suggest,” Crewe said evenly as the last of that braying, mournful sound echoed around the well-lighted room, “that you do not count on calm seas yet a while.”
“With the Luck coming into the wharf and no one but you to say me ‘no’—?”
But one of the silent men who had backed him had stepped to the window which was open to the night save for the netting which kept the insects out. Ralph Grillon jerked a quick glance in his direction.
“What’s to do, Grimes?”
“There’s trouble—down on the wharf. And your double lantern ain’t ridin’ on the bowsprit neither!”
Ralph backed to the window. “Cover them,” he ordered. Only when the Bahamian saw Crewe caught fully in the sights of his companion’s boarding pistol did he turn his own head to look.
And they could hear now—more than the moan of the conch trumpet heralding the arrival of a sail. There were shouts and the roar of at least one pistol. Grillon’s lips grew thin in a grimace.
“The Luck?” He looked directly at Crewe.
“A prize crew,” the other returned as calmly as ever.
“Damn you to hell! But how–” Then Grillon caught at his self-command with a speed Persis would not have thought native to one of his temperament. “So—and now what do we do?” But he did not lower the pistol and the look in his eyes brought back to the girl a flash of strange and terrible memory—of a mound torch lit and a sacrifice delivered to masked priests. So might those have looked upon their prey.
“We do nothing.” Crewe moved forward to the nearest chair and lowered himself into it, keeping his bandaged shoulder well from the back so that he leaned forward as if about to pour himself a glass of wine. “It is what you will do, Grillon. By rights I could have you before the courts for conspiracy, attempted murder, perhaps even piracy—and certainly for theft.”
“But you have an alternative, of course. A desperate man might even take a few desperate measures, were he driven too far,” Grillon cut in. His pistol’s deadly mouth was again held steadily level, and now it seemed to Persis to be sighted on Crewe’s head.
“I have an alternative. But not for any fear of that armament you are so keenly trusting to. You are a liar, a cheat, and a would-be murderer,” Crewe spoke with the deliberation of a justice pronouncing sentence. “However, you will return what you have stolen and you will sail from here—with your men. Mainly because my sister is a fool. I will not have her stand in any court to be smeared as you would gladly smear her to save your own skin.”
Ralph Grillon suddenly laughed, and then dropping his pistol to his side, he gave Lydia a deep bow.
“By all means—a lady’s name is above—”
“Close your mouth!” For the first time Crewe raised his voice, and Persis saw the anger which must have seethed within him for hours rise to the surface. “Do not try my patience too far.”
As the pistol disappeared beneath his coat, Ralph Grillon gave him a half salute.
“You are really the fool, you know,” he said frankly. “To let me go so.”
“Yes, I should have you killed, should I not?” Once more Crewe had obtained command of himself. “But I hunt my own snakes, Grillon; I give no orders to another to do that. Now you will tell Dr. Veering exactly where you put the gold and papers taken from my strongbox, plus those which belong to Miss Rooke. When those papers are returned, you shall be free to go–”
There was a sound at the door behind them. Persis glanced around. Mr. Harvery stood there, and behind him crowded the bosun of the Nonpareil, two of her crew.
Again Grillon bowed. “Your forces have arrived, I see. Very well, Veering. You will find what the Captain wishes in a rock crevice just above tide level out on the point. The rock which guards it is the highest one in sight.”
The doctor left the room, taking from the bosun as he passed a lantern the man carried in one hand, as a balance perhaps for the unsheathed cutlass in the other.
Persis came to the table, pulled to her an empty glass and splashed into it, with no regard for the drops which flew out to stain the napery further, a good portion of wine. She pushed it into Crewe’s hand. Almost absentmindedly he raised it to his lips and drank. She watched that pinched look about his lips. How long could he hold out? He should be in his bed right now, not trying his fading strength further and further. Yet she knew instinctively that no one would ever stop him until he was ready.
Lydia’s loud sobs had died away to sniffles. Her face was blotched and she kept her eyes down, huddling into the chair where she
had sat earlier with such an assumption of pride of place.
“Cousin,” Grillon broke the short silence, “if I have you to thank for taking a hand in this matter—”
But it was not Crewe who interrupted him, but Lydia. She pulled herself erect and pointed with a shaking hand.
“Don’t you see it!” her voice near shrilled into another scream. “Look at what she holds! She—the Lady–”
Persis had near forgotten the blade. Now she stared down at it and allowed it to fall from her hand onto the table where its black hilt was dull, but where the narrowed jeweled eyes of the watching cats glittering in the light, coldly, removed from all which was real and of this time and place.
“It—it was in a fan—a false fan which would not open,” she said. “Yet the fan looked the same.”
“Even the ghosts,” Lydia wailed, “don’t you see–even the ghosts were against us!”
Persis expected either Grillon or Crewe to refute such folly. But when she looked from the face of one man to the other, she saw that instead their attention was riveted upon the fan as if it were some strange and unexplainable omen.
“The ghosts—” Grillon’s voice was lower, far less assured now than he had ever heard it before. “Maybe you are right, m’dear—” Then he turned to Crewe:
“The greatest folly of all–”
“And that being?” Crewe asked as if Grillon’s half sentence made some sense to him.
“That of always choosing the wrong woman. Dona Isabelle had that in her which put an end to her worst enemy—is that not so, Valdez—?”
Now the dark man who had claimed the Key, was staring also wide-eyed at the false fan. He gave a visible shudder.
“They told tales of her once,” he said. “She knew too much, they claimed, of things better forgotten. The fan was part of her dowry; she was never without it about her. But that there were two fans—that there is no history of. Only—it was also said that she had such courage as a man might envy.”
“She was not alone in that,” Crewe returned. He reached over the sharp blade which the false fan had hidden, and before Persis knew what he was about his fingers caught and held hers in a warming, demanding hold against which she discovered she had no will nor need to struggle.
“As I said,” Grillon seemed determined to have the last word, “always the wrong woman, Leverett. Your infernal luck has not failed you yet.”
“And it never will,” Crewe answered with the same firmness as the grip of that hand holding hers. For once in her life Persis Rooke found she could believe anything at all—provided a wrecker captain chose to say it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
One of the best-loved and most famous science fiction and fantasy authors of all time, Andre Norton was named Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America and was awarded a Life Achievement Award by the World Fantasy Convention. She wrote over a hundred novels which have sold millions of copies worldwide, including her Witch World, Beast Master, Solar Queen, and Time Traders series, among others. She passed away in 2005. More can be learned at www.andre-norton-books.com.
Table of Contents
Dedication Page
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
