by Alex Bledsoe
“Yeah!” he snarled through the dirt.
Jane stepped back and, still holding her sword ready, said, “Get up.”
He did so slowly, head down, spitting dirt from his lips. He brushed the front of his tunic. He glared at me and said, “Your wife’s a bitch.”
“Why does everyone think we’re married?” Jane asked, and winked at me.
Tew stumbled to the well, drew up the bucket, and poured it over his head. He sputtered as it washed away the dirt. Without looking at us, he said, “Just so you know, my real mother died when I was born, and I never knew my real father. So you got me muddy for nothing, and you wasted your own time.”
“Who told you your mother died?” I asked as I climbed down from my horse.
“What the fuck difference does it make?”
“Manners, hot stuff,” Jane said warningly.
He sighed and nodded. “The dog under the porch, who do you think? The folks who raised me.”
“What did they tell you about your father?”
He turned the bucket over, sat on it, and glared up at us from under wet strands of hair. “Why do you care?”
“We’re looking for someone.”
“My dad?”
“Maybe.”
“He was a pirate who fucked my mom and left her to deal with the consequences. Or, if you take the other side, she was a witch who made a nice young sailor turn to piracy to keep her in gold and jewels. It’s for damn sure everyone in Watchorn believes one story or the other. Doesn’t make a difference to me.”
“Yeah, you’re a no-good bastard either way,” the girl said, and slammed the door.
Tew laughed harshly. “Guess that makes it unanimous.” I held out a coin. “If you know anything else, I’m willing to pay for it.”
Jane shook her head at me. “Where do you keep getting those? Do you pull them out of your ass?”
I ignored her and waited for Tew’s reaction. He stared at the coin like a bird hypnotized by a snake, seeing the possibilities in it. He said, “They tell me my father was Black Edward Tew. People who knew him say I look just like him. It doesn’t make it easy around here.”
Jane asked, “Why do you stay?”
“I got my reasons,” he muttered.
“Do you have any idea,” I asked, “where your father is?” Before he could answer, a small boy emerged from the back of the house, brandishing a sharpened stick. He was barefoot, dressed in tattered clothes, and looked maybe five years old.
“Twouble, Dad?” he said, staring fearlessly at us.
Immediately Tew’s whole demeanor changed. He sat up straight and said calmly, “No, son, just visitors. C’mere.” The boy eased over, keeping the sharp end of his stick pointed our way. “This is my son, Sido. Say hello, son.”
“Hi,” the boy said flatly.
Tew kissed the boy’s dirty cheek. “I’ll be done here in a minute. Go back inside and finish your lunch, okay?”
“You sure you don’t need me?” Sido asked seriously. Tew smiled. “I probably do, but you need your lunch more so you can be big and strong. I’ll be along, don’t worry.” The boy went back inside through the front door, giving us his best tough-guy look the whole way. When he was gone, Tew said, “No need for him to see you kill me, is there?”
“We’re not here to kill you,” Jane said.
“Then what do you want?”
“Anything you know about your father,” I said, and waved the coin for emphasis. “Like we keep saying.”
“And his treasure,” Jane added. I stared javelins at her. “I don’t suppose he ever stops by for a father-son chat when he’s in port?” I asked.
Tew laughed. “Yeah, sure. He brings me presents from all over the world. One day I’ll sail as his first mate.”
I fought not to smile. His sarcasm sounded just like his mother. “What about the Dirnay family? Do you know them?”
“Is this a trick question?” he snapped. When I didn’t answer, he said, “They’re the jerks who raised me. Look, I got nothing to add. Neither one of my parents stuck around to change my diapers or watch my first steps or teach me a goddamn thing.” He stood, adjusted his clothes, and with as much dignity as he could muster, said, “And you can shove that money back where she said you found it.”
With that, he went inside and slammed the door. The bar slid into its slot across it.
Jane chuckled. “That was pointless.”
“No, it wasn’t.” I put the coin on the middle of the top step, careful to avoid the smeared manure. “We know what Edward Tew looks like now.”
“We do?”
“Junior in there didn’t get that cleft chin and blue eyes from Angelina.”
“Wonder what he did get?”
“Definitely the warmth,” I said as I got back on my horse. Jane laughed as she did the same. “So now what, boss?”
“Your friend Racko sounded pretty sure Black Edward was dead. He implied it was a well-known story.”
“Some of the other guys disagreed.”
“Yeah. I think we need to find a more reliable source.” She chuckled. “A more reliable source for pirate gossip?”
“Pirate history. I want to know what happened to Black Edward and why some people think he’s dead. There must be a better authority than some drunks in a tavern. Maybe the Society of Scribes, or some royal archivist somewhere.”
Jane looked down thoughtfully. “There is. It’s a bit of a ride, but we don’t seem to be in a hurry.”
“Who?”
She said in a whisper, “The Sea Hawk.”
I repeated, “Who?”
She snorted at my lack of knowledge. “You land crabs. I mean Rody Hawk. Captain Hawk of the Poison. ”
I knew that name, all right, and it sent a rush of apprehension up my spine. I’d heard all the stories about this particular scourge of the seas, and if only a fraction of them were true, Hawk was the worst of the worst. “I thought he was dead, too.”
“See? You can’t trust any stories about a pirate’s death. Rody Hawk has enough treasure hidden to buy Langlade and most of Algoma for dessert. He’s in prison in Shawano until he tells where it is, or dies, whichever comes first.”
“How do you know so much about him?”
She grinned triumphantly. “Because I’m the one who caught him.”
Chapter Five
Shawano was six days’ ride from Watchorn. For a guy looking for a pirate, I was spending an awful lot of time in the saddle.
Two nights we stayed at inns, but the rest we camped along the way. The third night I spotted another fire behind us, and crept back to check it out. Granted, it could have been anyone who happened to be going the same way, but the hackles on my neck told me otherwise. By the time I got there, the fire was out and the camp abandoned. Whoever it was didn’t show themselves again.
The prison outside Mosinee, capital city of Shawano, was known as “the pirates’ graveyard,” because if a pirate was captured and not executed, he ended up here. After a few weeks in this facility, most pirates would welcome being hanged, their tarred corpses displayed as a warning. The prison was smack in the middle of a stretch of desert, isolated by a range of low mountains. On the other side of these slopes stretched miles of verdant countryside leading down to Mosinee and the ocean. Here, though, there was nothing but heat, dryness, and death. For a man of the sea, there could be no closer approximation to hell.
Only one road led to the pirates’ graveyard, and it ran straight across the open desert. This made sense tactically, since no one could approach without being seen. I’d picked up a wide-brimmed straw hat for the occasion, but this early in the morning, it wasn’t needed. Some weird weather inversion had drawn moisture across the mountains and bathed the area in a heavy mist. It wouldn’t last, but while it did, the temperature was almost pleasant.
Queen Remy of Mosinee led the international co alition that supported and funded the Anti-Freebootery Guild. Her goal was to make it more lucrative for th
ese sea bandits to turn honest than to keep raiding ships, and it worked for a lot of them. I didn’t know the exact circumstances that turned Jane from pirate to pirate hunter, but she became as legendary fighting on the right side as she had on the wrong. I also didn’t know what had caused her to leave the sea entirely and turn land- bound sword jockey, but I could accept that none of it was my business. She never asked where I’d come from, either.
The prison walls were twenty feet high, with guards stationed at each corner. The only thing that rose higher was a single round tower, stretching into the mist so that we couldn’t see the top. Jane looked up at the tower and sighed wistfully.
“Sentimental about prison?” I teased.
“About my old job. Rody Hawk was the toughest son of a bitch I ever crossed blades with. When they sent me out to find him, I almost peed my pants, both because I was excited and because it scared me to death. For the first three weeks I hunted him, I was afraid he might be a ghost, the way he’d appear and disappear, like he was taunting me. Which he was.”
She’d shared many stories of the man known as “the Sea Hawk” on our ride. By the time she finished, I was really glad they were about a man who was locked up. “He knew you were after him?”
“He knew everything about me,” she said distantly, then came back to the moment. “He was a mean bastard anyway, but he got much worse when he heard I was after him. Like he was trying to pack in all the evil he could while he still had time.”
“Really?” I said. Jane wasn’t above a little self-aggrandizement, but something in her tone told me she wasn’t doing that here. Her intensity sounded almost religious.
“Yeah. I found one ship he’d hit, a little merchant vessel carrying settlers along with a cargo of rum. He killed the crew, then tied all the civilian men together around the mast. He hung the women and children by their ankles and drilled tiny little holes in their foreheads, so they’d rain blood down on their husbands and fathers. We heard the screams across the water before we even sighted the sails.” She shook her head. “Not many of the hanging ones lived. And a lot of the men forced to watch died by their own hand before we reached port.”
“I’m glad you finally caught him,” I agreed. We were close enough now to see the archers along the wall, and the long curves of their bows. They watched us with the silent composure of men secure in their profession.
Jane said, “Do you know what the hardest thing about catching him was, though?”
“What?”
“Leaving him alive when I had him under my sword.” I knew that feeling for sure. The fact that she did leave him alive reinforced my opinion of her. “And now where do they keep him?”
She pointed at the tower. “Up there. Permanently. No way in, no way out, and no visitors until he tells where his treasure’s hidden, or dies.”
“Then how do we talk to him?”
“Don’t worry,” she said. But she didn’t explain. We tied our horses to the empty hitching post outside the gate. Behind us, only our tracks disturbed the sand. I couldn’t imagine they got many visitors. A guard in leather armor watched us through the gate’s thick iron bars.
“Hey, Louie,” Jane said as she shook dirt and sand from her cape. “How’s tricks?”
“Same as always, Captain Argo,” Louie the guard said. He spoke to her but kept his eyes on me.
“I’m not a captain anymore, Louie, just a plain Jane. But we are here to see the Hawk.”
Louie pondered this. “I’ll have to get the warden.”
“You do that,” she said.
The whole area was silent, except for a lone crow cawing somewhere in the mist overhead. Given the absence of trees, it must nest somewhere on the grounds. I asked quietly, “You ever been in prison?”
“Nope. If I get arrested, I try not to stick around for the trial.”
“Me, neither.” I’d been in jail on occasion, but never served a real sentence. Standing here in this ghostly silence, I suddenly wondered if I’d be man enough to handle it. I hoped never to find out.
Louie returned with another man, this one in an official uniform. “Good morning, Captain Argo,” the newcomer said. “I hadn’t heard you were coming.”
“There wasn’t time to send a message ahead. Hope that’s okay.”
“Well, we do have protocols for visiting the prisoners, especially him. ”
“I know. I came up with them, remember?”
“I do, but it puts me in an awkward position.”
Jane leaned casually on the iron bars. “Warden, really. You think I’m here to bust him out?”
“I think we have rules for a reason, Captain.”
“She’s not a captain anymore, sir,” Louie said helpfully.
“That’s true,” Jane agreed. “I’m just here to visit a friend.”
The warden smiled a little. “So he’s your friend now, is he?”
Jane laughed. “Warden, in some ways I’m closer to Rody Hawk than to just about anybody else in the world.”
The warden nodded at me. “Including him?”
I stepped forward. “Eddie LaCrosse. I’m a business associate of ex-Captain Argo.”
“Warden Jim Delvie,” he said as we shook hands through the bars. It was firm enough, but the skin was smooth. The warden had been pushing a quill so long that any sword calluses had faded.
“Warden, either let us in or send us on our way,” Jane said impatiently. “Which in my case will be straight to the court of Queen Remy to get permission to visit the Hawk. You know she’ll give it to me. And you know what she’ll say when I explain why I have to bother her with it.”
The warden thought this over, then turned to Louie. “Open up.”
“Yes, sir,” Louie said.
Through the gate there was nothing but more open space around the main jail building and celebrity tower. The ground was hard and cracked, with no grass anywhere. The building rose only one floor above the ground, well below the top edge of the outer walls. Most of its cells were deep under the hard- packed earth.
Jane turned to me. “So who talks to him, me or you?”
“We can’t both do it?”
“No. Only one of us. Less risk that way.”
“Risk of what?”
“He has this knack of turning people against each other.”
I looked up at the tower, or at least the part of it not hidden in the mist. “I suppose I should do it. It’s my case, after all.”
“Are you sure? I know him.”
“I’m sure.”
She grinned. “You want to be able to tell Liz that you met Rody Hawk, is that it?”
I ignored the dig and looked at Delvie. The warden asked, “So who’s it going to be?”
“Me,” I said.
Delvie and Jane exchanged a look I couldn’t interpret. He asked her, “Are you all right with this?”
She shrugged. “He’s paying me, so he’s the boss.” The warden turned to me. “Have you had any prior dealings with Captain Hawk?”
“No.”
That seemed to satisfy him, if barely. “Follow me, please.”
He led us to the base of the tower. As we crossed the courtyard, a door opened in the main building and six pale, grimy men chained together at the neck were marched out by an equal number of guards. The prisoners were naked, but their bodies were so filthy, I first thought they wore black pajamas. Their smell stayed behind long after they’d disappeared around the corner.
“Monthly cell block washdown,” the warden explained. “They get rinsed off, then they clean their own cells.”
One of the prisoners turned and looked at us. His face was long and thin, and one eye socket was puckered shut. There seemed very little humanity left in his gaze, just the numb survival instinct of a clever animal.
When we reached the base of the tower, Delvie gestured at something on the ground. “Well, here we are. Your chariot to the clouds.”
A wooden basket about three feet across rested there, a
ttached by a rope to a pulley mounted, I assumed, at the edge of the tower’s roof. I looked at it, then at the warden, then at Jane. She bit her lip and looked down to keep from laughing.
“This is how we get his food up to him,” the warden said. “If you want to talk to him, it’s the only way up.” He turned to Louie. “Go get some men to help lift this. A dozen would be good. Check the break room.”
“Yes, sir,” Louie said, and went into the main building.
I continued to look at Jane. “You’ve got to be kidding. It’s a picnic basket.”
With mock camaraderie, Jane punched me in the arm and said, “Come on, Eddie, you’re not afraid of heights, are you?”
“No, but I’m a lot bigger than a loaf of bread.”
“It’ll hold you.”
“Says you.”
“No, she’s right,” Delvie assured me. “The balance is a little tricky, but it should bear your weight just fine.”
“Do I sit in it?”
“You’re better off standing.”
“Fine,” I said, making no effort to hide my annoyance. Jane could’ve mentioned this earlier.
“You sure you don’t want me to do it?” she said.
“No, damn it,” I muttered.
“I’ll need your sword,” the warden said. “And all your other weapons. And anything that might remotely be used as a weapon.”
“I’m not going to hurt him,” I said.
Delvie stepped close. I could smell his morning tea on his breath. He said, “We used to send a guard up with the food, in case he cracked and started blabbering. This was back when we seriously thought he might tell us where his treasure was hidden. For a year, nothing happened. Then one day Hawk yanked him out of the basket and held him against the window bars. He threw the guard’s sword down, impaling another guard, then killed another with the first guard’s crossbow. One-handed, mind you, while still supporting the guard’s weight with the other arm. Then he dropped the man to his death.” He pointed at a spot on the hard-packed ground that was darker than the surrounding dirt. “He landed right there. You can see that the stain still hasn’t worn off.”
