The Secret's Keeper and the Heir

by Jackie McCarthy

  “Yeah,” Rose said, trying to sound tough. “This one time I grabbed a big stone and—”

  “Aw, that don’t count!” Cricket cried. “A stone? That’s practically girl fighting. No! You want bone on bone, wit on wit, man on man.”

  “Maybe you want man on man,” Rose said under her breath, upset to have her own experience belittled. Tappan smiled in return, his expression guilty.

  “Hey! You think I’m joking? You won’t last a year on this ship if you can’t fight,” Cricket shouted. A smile blossomed on his face and he began to saunter in front of them. “Matter of fact, I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t do something about it right now.” Without warning, he grabbed Ikpek and put the silent boy in a chokehold. “Alright, which one of you sissies wants the first go at my new punching bag?”

  “Let him go, Cricket,” Tappan said quietly. “We don’t want to hit our friend.”

  “That’s your first problem: savages ain’t friends,” Cricket said. “But if you’re gonna be like that about it, how about this: if you don’t punch him, I will, and I aim for the balls.”

  “Just let him go, Cricket,” Rose said, irritated. “We’re supposed to be working.”

  “We’ll get in trouble,” Tappan agreed.

  “You want to know trouble?” Cricket laughed meanly. “Just try crossing me. I dare you. Just try it!”

  “Let him go!” Rose demanded.

  “On the count of five, I’m gonna do it,” Cricket said, jerking the ever-silent Ikpek by the neck. “One of you sissies gonna to do it first?”

  “Let him go,” Tappan warned, “or I’ll get Auk.”

  “Get Auk and I’ll beat this slave filth bloody right now. There’ll be no count,” Cricket advised, his smile growing broader. “Five!”

  “Just back off, okay?” Rose begged nervously, eyes on Ikpek’s frightened face.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Tappan added.

  “Pretty sure I want to,” Cricket corrected. “Four!”

  Tappan walked away suddenly. He passed by Rose and paced behind her, seeming tormented.

  “Three!” Cricket continued. “Come on, what are you, mice?”

  “Cricket…come on…” Rose pleaded. Ikpek’s eyes were screwed shut.

  “Two!”

  From behind her, Rose felt a rush of air. She saw Tappan run forward and punch Ikpek painfully across the face. He paused after the deed was done, watching as Ikpek fell to the deck, unconscious. Then he ran. 

  Cricket, also looking down at the unconscious boy, became pale. He too turned to run in the opposite direction. He bumped into Auk on his way, but bolted past the Second without a word.

  Rose opened and closed her mouth like a fish as Auk surveyed the scene. She wanted to explain that it had been Cricket’s fault, not the others, even if Tappan had done the deed. Auk seemed to already know this, however. He lowered himself to the Tikaani’s side.

  Cradling Ikpek’s head, Auk patted it gently, cooing, “come on ‘round, boy.”  With a soft groan, the Tikaani opened his right eye, the left already swollen. Auk turned his head to take in Rose, who watched them anxiously. “Were ye a part of this hubloo?”

  “We…we tried to stop him…” Rose said haltingly.

  Auk sniffed angrily and spat against the rail. Glancing back at where Cricket had disappeared, he heaved a sigh and motioned for Rose to leave. “Go on, I’ll see the boy’s alright.”

  Rose nodded, grateful for the dismissal.

  * * * * *

  Captain Kaille held out a hand of greeting to his inmate before remembering that the shackled man would be unable to reach. He dropped his arm quickly, scanning the recently awoken Whyl Winesmith with a critical eye. He was younger than the Captain, if only by a few years, and boasted thick sandy-brown hair and brown eyes. Kaille took careful note of the man’s soiled uniform, mismatched leather boots, and bandaged head.

  They exchanged civil introductions, and Kaille took a seat beside the supine figure. Jas stood opposite him.

  “It’s a great relief to wake elsewhere from a sinking ship, Captain,” Whyl said, grinning feebly. “I know I’ve woken a few times now, but it was always hazy before. Until this moment I was inclined to believe myself dead and on the way to the underworld.”

  “No, just below the decks of my ship,” Kaille said with a shake of his head, feeling unease at the prisoner’s lack of tact. “Though I can see how you might make that mistake.”

  “What ship did you say it was?” Whyl asked, leading.

  “The Turnagain,” Jas Hawkesbury offered when Kaille remained stolidly silent.

  “Oh,” Whyl sighed, searching his memory. “I don’t know that I’ve heard of—”

  “A humble merchant vessel,” Kaille explained. “Nothing worthy of notice or song.”

  Whyl inclined his head, and he and the Captain studied one another uncertainly. Whyl was the first to look away.

  “We’ve come to ask clarification,” Jas prompted. “There was something you said when first you woke. Do you recall it?”

  “Recall it?” Whyl snorted, turning his eyes gratefully up to the amber-haired Jas. “What minute have I spent in the last months that was free of those fears?”

  “And of the object of said nightmares?” Jas pressed. “What say you of him?”

  “You wish to speak of the scribe Fenric,” Whyl stated. He looked upset at the idea.

  “On the contrary,” Kaille announced, lacking humor, “it was you who broached the subject.”

  “Yes,” Whyl said, sneering at Kaille’s rude reply, “I suppose in a frenzy of fever I may very well have expressed the wish to be made safe from a murderer.”

  “You do, then, accuse him of this great evil?” Jas breathed, eyes wide.

  “I would call out a monster, yes,” Whyl said, looking pleadingly at Jas.

  “Fenric is as odd a fellow as I’ve met, but he’s shown no signs of being violent,” Kaille groaned, rubbing his forehead and adjusting in his seat. “In fact, he seems to avoid violence with preemptive bribes of immense wealth.”

  “Yes, he is known for his generosity,” Whyl explained, “as well as his ability to act any part. That he’s convinced you there’s nothing to be wary of is a testament to his skill.”

  “Or to his benignity,” Kaille corrected. “You could apply such logic to any mild-mannered gentleman whom you wished to bring down in the estimation of his peers—”

  “Fenric has no peers,” Whyl scoffed at the Captain’s words.

  “You’ve reached the end of my patience, Winesmith,” Kaille said, feeling his ire rise. “Either tell me what reason you have for thinking the Scribe a murderer or return to your months-long stupor. At least I couldn’t fault an unconscious man for being less than forthcoming.”

  Whyl pursed his lips at the harshness behind Kaille’s words. He growled in a low voice, “I think I shall stay awake this time, Captain, thank you.”

  “He doesn’t mean to be short—” Jas began. Kaille raised an argumentative eyebrow, but the shiphand continued, “He, like all of us, just want to hear your side of the story.”

  “Relive a nightmare, you mean?” Whyl smiled sadly. “Do you know what you ask?” He looked imploringly at the Captain, but met no compassion in the icy blue eyes. His jaw tightened in resolve. “I was running below decks as the ship sank, pursued by the Scribe and thinking myself to be a dead man. And yet…here I am. Perhaps it’s I who should be asking you: what happened?”

  Kaille stood quickly, feeling fury he didn’t fully understand. He towered over the reposing Whyl, who couldn’t help but cower.

  “If you’re seeking to garner our pity by refusing to answer our questions, you’re sorely mistaken,” Kaille said crisply. “Now tell me what reason you have for calling a man a murderer.”

  “Is the bloodshed you encountered on the Illiamnaut not proof enough?” Whyl cried resentfully.

  Jas held up a hand to the Captain, who had clenched his jaw. “Are you sayi
ng that Fenric killed all those men?”

  “Well, it wasn’t a clan of mermen,” Whyl snapped.

  Kaille squinted, but held himself back. He said only, “I think a sane person would assume that the violence we saw was done by the same pirates who attacked my crew.”

  “You saw him do it?” Jas asked, trying to return to the point. “Kill all those men?”

  “Didn’t have to,” Whyl said, clutching at his bandaged head, “I saw enough firsthand when the spy tried to kill me first.”

  Without a word, Captain Kaille rose from his seat and hurried from the room. Reluctantly, Jas followed.

  * * * * *

  Rose glanced into each corner and crevice of the vast wooden ship as she searched below decks. Finally, she spotted Tappan sitting in a dark corner, cradling his bloodied hand.

  He tensed when he heard footsteps, but upon seeing his fellow shipboy, he relaxed. “Just taking a break,” he said with a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. At Rose’s silence, his features fell into a look of shame. “My hand hurts. I’ve never punched anyone before.”

  “Is that why you did it?” Rose asked. “Because it was time?”

  “Nah, I just wanted Cricket to shut up about it,” Tappan said with a laugh. “He said he’d go after Ikpek if I didn’t, so I thought maybe I could lighten the blow. Like I said, though, I’ve never done it before.” He showed her his bruised knuckles. “If it hurts me like this it must have hurt him more. I mean, I’ve been on the receiving end plenty of times, so I know it must have. How can I ask forgiveness from a guy who doesn’t understand a word I say?”

  Rose shrugged. She frowned and asked, “Who hit you?”

  “Oh, just my pop,” said Tappan with a shrug. “The normal type of thing, you know.”

  Rose shook her head. She’d roughhoused with her brothers plenty of times, but they’d never hit one another with the sole purpose of causing pain.

  “No kidding, your pop never hit you?” Tappan asked incredulously. Trying to imagine how this could be, he asked, “Was he dead?”

  “No, he just…” Rose began. If she thought about it, her father had occasionally hit her oldest brothers, Tad and Meson. She wondered if her father had treated her differently because she was a girl. She couldn’t remember Benson ever talking about being hit, however, and that she would have remembered. Rose answered with a shrug, “No, he just used up all his discipline on my older brothers. Wasn’t any left by the time he got to us.”

  “Us?” Tappan echoed. “You have a lot of siblings, then?”

  “’Us’ means my twin sister and me,” said Rose after a moment, trying to make up a compelling story that was as true as it could be.

  “Twin sister,” Tappan repeated with an impressed whistle. “Well ain’t that something? Does she look just like you?”

  “Nah, she’s shorter,” Rose said with a laugh, remembering how she had compared herself to Benson on their last day together. “Less muscles, if you can imagine.”

  Tappan squeezed her arm, amused tears in his eyes. “I can’t!” he barked.

  “Better facial hair, though,” Rose said through a smile, “not sure what’s going on there.”

  Tappan threw back his head in a laugh and Rose was delighted to see how Fenric’s advice had been implemented. Her fellow shipboy didn’t look at her as though she was inadequate as a result of her self-deprecating words. He looked at her as though she was a friend.

  “What happened to her?” Tappan asked after he’d caught his breath. He wiped at his eyes.

  “She’s…” Rose considered. She hadn’t been prepared for that question. It wouldn’t do to say that a girl was a prisoner on a pirate ship…they would never believe such a story. “She’s gone now.”

  “That’s gotta be hard,” Tappan said sympathetically, not asking for details. “I had a few siblings too.”

  “In Baxley?” Rose asked, lowering herself to sit beside him.

  “Sure enough,” Tappan said. “Pop was a stone cutter, same as everyone, only he drank too much to get very far in the trade.” He bowed his head, a haunted look coming over his eyes. “Always took it out on us.”

  “What’d you do?” Rose prompted after several moments had gone by.

  Tappan looked up, “I stood up to him one day…and he beat me within an inch of my life. Gave me this,” he lifted his shirt and pointed to a scar along the length of his back. “And then he kicked me out,” the shipboy continued. “I wanted my Ma and family to come with me, but they didn’t think I could take care of myself, let alone a family.” Tappan grinned wryly, “Turns out I can’t, neither. Got some quick work on a fishing boat, earned my way to Portridge. Hoped to find some employment there…but couldn’t find nothing but a gutter to sleep in, and not really much of that either.” With a vengeful tone, he muttered, “It’s a terrible place, Portridge.”

  “It really is!” Rose cried. She couldn’t have agreed more. For a moment she felt the gnawing regret that her own family was still in that terrible place, but she shook off the feeling. “So then you joined the crew,” she prompted, keen to complete the story.

  “Aye, with you,” Tappan said with a nod of his head. “So far so good, except Cricket seems like a right old bully. I don’t got a great record with bullies.”

  Rose looked ahead thoughtfully. Cricket was a bully indeed, and it was becoming clear that if they weren’t prepared to worship him, they had better take steps to neutralize the boy instead. Rose didn’t know what this might mean, but there was only one thing she was any good at anyway. “Maybe we just have to beat him at his own game.”

  Tappan turned his head. “I like the sound of that. How can I help?”

  “Tell me what you know about him,” Rose asked, the somewhat rusty cogs in her brain creaking into reluctant motion. She needed to think.

  * * * * *

  “I don’t believe him,” Kaille said simply when he and Jas had regained the decks.

  “I could tell,” Jas scowled disapprovingly, disappointed to have been taken away from his murder mystery. “And why is that?”

  “The color of his hair,” Kaille offered vaguely. “The timbre of his voice.”

  “You’d throw out his testimony because of the color of his hair?” Jas asked, appalled.

  “And his voice,” Kaille reminded.

  “How can you distrust Whyl based on so little information?” Jas gaped.

  “You dislike coming to conclusions based on a shortage of fact?” the Captain asked, brow raised. “Tell me then, how can we possibly judge his testimony on so little information?”

  “He’s frightened, Kaille,” Jas explained. “He thinks there’s a murderer aboard.”

  “I saved his life once,” the Captain pointed out. “And I’ve kept him alive. What reason has he to be circumspect with me?”

  “Perhaps they’re reasons of a private nature,” Jas defended. “And though you kept him alive, you’ve kept him in chains. Think how that looks.”

  “I have two men aboard whose characters and intentions are unknown to me. On my life, I’ll keep them separate by any means possible,” Kaille said. “If Whyl wants us to take away the threat of the Scribe, then why not paint as black an image as possible? Why hold back?”

  “Fear, Eli,” Jas explained. “Maybe he knows something that Fenric is after. That would explain the Scribe’s insistence that we take Whyl with us and why he hasn’t tried to kill the man in his fever.”

  “I see you’re already convinced of Fenric’s guilt,” the Captain observed.

  “Nay,” Jas insisted, “but I do like to be able to understand things from every angle. Now really, you don’t believe a word of what he said? How can that be?”

  “He doesn’t carry his name,” Kaille said, explaining the steady shaking of his head.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Jas said, expecting a much better answer to his query.

  “He looks nothing like a Whyl Winesmith—”

  Jas interrupted im
mediately, “Is this more of your Tavern Tey madness?”

  “Can a thing be called ‘mad’ if it turns out to be entirely correct?” Kaille teased, shaking off the ill feeling that had settled upon him below decks.

  “A lucky guess,” Jas explained, “and not entirely correct. You’ll recall that we ended up on the floor of that nasty place. I had dirt in my nostrils for weeks. What does it matter, anyhow? You’re blinded by your preference for the Scribe. That a man does not ‘carry his name’ isn’t a thing you can judge him on.”

  “Can’t I?” Kaille wondered. “Fenric doesn’t carry his name either. What say you of my partiality now?”

  “You don’t think Fenric is the Scribe’s true name?” Jas gasped. “Why haven’t you said something before? What’s wrong with you?”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Kaille laughed, maddened. “All I’ve done is say the same of both men. You, I contend, are the one who is biased.”

  Jas laughed sardonically, throwing his chin skywards and examining the obscured stars of late afternoon. Unsure of where to look, the Captain joined him in his examining, wondering for the hundredth time just what kind of trouble the two of them had gotten involved with. The crescent moon had risen early to watch their drama unfold, faint by the light of waning day.

  * * * * *

  The tall boy with gray eyes and lustrous brown hair strutted through the sleepy Tanager town. If he hadn’t seen some of the rest of this island province he would have thought himself in the shabbiest of its cities, but that was not the case. Every building, person, and artifact on the entire Isle was, at a minimum, the tiniest bit moldy, as though they were all slowly being eaten away. It didn’t matter to the boy on the bright autumn evening, however, since the sun shone down upon him all the same. Except for a few stolen moments on the roof days ago, it had been two years since he’d felt the sun on his face.

  It had also been two years since he’d been able to run an errand for himself. Two years was the last time he and his gray guardian had moved from a quaint farming village in Hartshire. Things had been better there, the boy recalled. He hadn’t been confined, and had even helped bring in a harvest or two. When he’d been found out, however, they’d been forced to run for their lives.

  The tall boy shook the memory of this flight from his head. No one knew to look for him here on these decaying shores, after all, and there was no point in denying himself the pleasure of yet another sunny afternoon.