Pillars of Six

by St Clare, Kelly

  “Any treatment,” Barrels burst out, his salt-and-pepper hair escaping from its leather thong.

  Locks’ shoulders shook uncontrollably. “A pirate must do what a pirate must do. I nearly lost it when ye said that, Plank.”

  They held on to one another for support, continuing to howl in booming waves.

  “Do ye . . . know what’s happenin’?” Ebba asked Caspian, watching her fathers. “Are their mangoes be spillin’ out?”

  She glanced up at the prince’s face and saw his lips were pressed together, his brows furrowed. “I can guess,” he replied. Louder, he said, “You have known the truth for some time.”

  Stubby came over and clapped him on the back. “I ain’t never seen a servant stand so straight. Were ye born with a rod up yer nether parts? We could barely keep straight faces when ye told us what ye were. Just a tip for next time, don’t be goin’ around providin’ Latin interpr’tations, lad.”

  “Ye knew the whole time?” Ebba said, her stomach tightening. “Why didn’t ye tell me?”

  Plank wrapped an arm around her. “Ye can’t keep secrets very well, little nymph.”

  She felt Caspian’s eyes on her, and her cheeks warmed. “Aye, maybe.”

  “I don’t understand why you didn’t just leave me there,” the prince said with a vague wave. “Or worse.”

  Peg-leg grinned at him, wiping his eyes. “Ye saved us from the gaol, lad. Plus, ye were without help and around our daughter’s age. We weren’t goin’ to leave ye to die. Immediate-like, anyhow. Then we kind o’ liked ye.”

  The prince looked at each of them in turn, blinking slowly. He peered at Ebba last as her fathers began to exchange gold. “I can’t believe they knew this entire time,” he said, still blinking. “Do you know how terrified I was of them for the first few weeks?”

  Aye. “Ye ain’t scared o’ them any longer?” Ebba asked. “Since when?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure. It happened gradually, I suppose. I feel . . . foolish now. This whole time I believed myself so clever.”

  “Aye,” she said darkly. “I can’t believe they’ve known for months, and I only found out on Pleo. But I guess they’ve met Exosians afore.” Ebba nudged him. “Sorry for callin’ ye Caspian.” She was angry at herself for doing so. That was how the whole shite storm with Malice had started—she hadn’t guarded her tongue.

  Sink her, maybe Ebba should start thinking before she spoke. That was a scary thought.

  “It’s all right,” Caspian said. “I was planning to tell them before I left anyway. They’re right. You’re not the secret-keeping sort. Too . . . free-spirited.”

  Ebba smiled sheepishly, listening to the clink of coin and her fathers’ jubilant talk. Her eyes rested on Locks, who was collecting money from a dazed Grubby. He caught her eye and quickly looked away.

  If Locks thought he was getting out of telling her that easily, he had another thing coming.

  Four

  “Where’s Locks?” Ebba asked Stubby the next morning after climbing the shrouds to monitor the ocean surrounding Felicity. Last night, her talk with Locks had been swept out to sea. She hadn’t had the heart to pull their attention back to her questions with the way Caspian’s eyes lit up over tales of the last few months when her fathers had pretended not to know who he was.

  Today, though. . . .

  Stubby swung the wheel to the right. “He be pluggin’ up a leak in the hold.”

  “Thank ye kindly.”

  Ebba skimmed to the bilge and slid down the ladder. She ran down the cramped passage past Barrels’ office, leaping over Pillage’s extended paw where he lurked in the shadows like the furred sod he was.

  “The dynami be shinin’ on yer back,” she sang over her shoulder.

  A deep grinding noise slowed her steps. Ebba turned and peered back through the shadows toward the cat.

  Her jaw dropped. Shite.

  “Bad Pillage,” she scolded in a low voice, lest the others hear. Trailing back down the passage, she studied the eight gouges in Felicity’s deck from where Pillage had just scratched. Sharks’ teeth, the dynami had given him super strength. The gouges were deep—permanent. Stubby would have a fit. Besides that, no cat should have that kind of power; they were all bastards.

  Cooing, Ebba crouched before the cat. “Here, Pillage boy. Come here calm-like now.”

  He paused in the act of licking a furry black paw, regarding her with narrowed eyes.

  “Give me the tube back, ye furry rat,” she hissed, darting a look at the closed door of Barrels’ office. When Stubby found those scratches, he’d hit the roof. She couldn’t be anywhere near the scene of the crime.

  Ebba lunged for the dynami, and Pillage yowled in fright, jumping out of the way and kicking off her shoulder in a bid to escape her clutches. The force of his kick was akin to being kicked by a horse. Pain ripped through her shoulder as she was shoved back from the cat by the power of the dynami. She hit the other side of the narrow passage with a loud thwack and rolled onto her back with a hearty groan.

  “Ouch,” she wheezed, massaging the spot where he’d connected.

  Footsteps sounded from Barrels’ office, and Ebba scrambled to her feet, running on tip-toes down the passage. Glancing back, she caught Pillage’s eye, the dynami still gleaming on his back. Sodding cur.

  He turned his back on her, tail high in the air as he slunk away.

  So tying the cylinder to his back hadn’t been the best idea. But this wasn’t over.

  Entering the hold, Ebba slowed, waiting until Barrels had opened and closed his door before calling out, “Locks, where are ye?”

  She heard a muted thud, cursing, and then the hold fell silent. Ebba sighed loudly, stalking between the barrels and listening hard. “Ye said ye’d tell me, ye spineless jellyfish.”

  Someone groaned, and Ebba set off after the sound. Her feet slowed as she saw it was only Sally waking up. “How ye doin’, Sal? Seen Locks?”

  Sally held her arms aloft, and Ebba smiled, picking her up. She placed the wind sprite over her heart underneath the black jerkin she wore.

  “I know ye’re down here, Locks,” Ebba sang out. “If ye don’t talk to me, I’ll put a slit in yer hammock.”

  There wasn’t an answer.

  “I’ll throw yer tools overboard.” He was down to his last set after she’d tossed his tools in Pleo. There was a small shuffling noise halfway up the hold. She wandered in that direction on quiet feet. Choking on a breath, she screwed up her face and raised her voice, going for the throat. “Why won’t ye talk to me? Don’t ye love me?”

  Locks popped up from behind a barrel, his aghast expression turning to irritation as she smoothed her face into a grin.

  “Got ye,” she crowed.

  He scratched his stubble, emerald eye blazing. “Aye, can’t be too mad at ye for that.”

  Ebba threw a barrel open and cupped grog into her hands, slurping down some of the watered-down rum and nutmeg mixture. She wiped her hands on her slops. “Talk. This is as good as it’ll get.”

  Locks sighed and lowered his head to the barrel to slurp a mouthful. He straightened, casting her a surreptitious peek before leaning back against the inner wall of the hull. “I don’t right know where to start, lass. I guess I’ll be startin’ with my childhood. Ye know I was born on Febribus?”

  “Aye,” she said warily. He wouldn’t be slipping anything past her. She was determined to wring everything out of his gob.

  He nodded. “I grew up with just my father, who was a carpenter like me. My mother left my father shortly after I was born, and I’m hardly recallin’ her now. Just her laugh. Febribus were different back then— like Kentro, or Maltu. The odd pirate ship would come and go, but the township was small and the people poor. The pirates didn’t bother us overmuch.”

  Febribus was the most notorious pirate island nowadays. Ebba had only been there once, but it was hard to imagine it as a quiet place after what she’d seen. “What was yer father’s name?”
>
  “Trent,” Locks said with a smile. “Had a different woman on his arm each week, he did. Said Mum leavin’ him was the best thing to ever happen.”

  Ebba wrinkled her nose. That explained a lot. “Did he teach ye to be a carpenter?”

  “Aye, he did. But he died afore I was fully taught. There was another carpenter on Febribus who had more experience than I. People started goin’ to him. Wasn’t long afore the pickings were slim. . . . That was when a pirate ship came into our harbor, looking for a carpenter.” He shook his head, staring into the back of the hold. “Seemed too good to be true. And what do I always say about that, Ebba-Viva?”

  “If it look too good to be true, it probably is.”

  “Aye. Well, I was only about yer age then and as stupid as most are. . . .” He trailed off with a hasty glance at her. “Anyway, the quartermaster, Barrels, seemed nice enough—as fancy as they came but a good sort.”

  Barrels? Ebba jerked but didn’t interrupt him again.

  “And so, I packed a rucksack and left Febribus on the pirate ship Eternal to sail under Captain Cannon, as he were known then.”

  She’d always assumed Cannon, Pockmark’s grandfather, must have captained Malice. But she supposed the king’s navy ships would have sunk Eternal in the final clash in the Battle for the Seas—Cannon was the last pirate left standing against King Montcroix.

  “Ye didn’t meet Mutinous afore ye agreed to work for him?” she asked.

  Locks flinched. “Nay, lass. But I should’ve. My life would’ve been a lot di’ferent if I had. I got on board, and the ship set sail immediately.” He frowned. “Sumpin’ wasn’t right about it. The men didn’t laugh and joke. If anything, I got the feel one o’ them would stab me in the back rather than help me. There were only a handful o’ men there who were more friendly-like. I weren’t on that ship one hour afore I saw it had been a mistake, and by that time, it was too late. Febribus was a blip in the distance.”

  Her father fell silent, his face working. Ebba took a breath. “What did ye do on the ship, Locks?”

  Locks closed his single eye. “Ye know a carpenter often doubles as the surgeon on a ship.”

  Ebba nodded, and he continued. “I didn’t. Not afore they strapped a man with gangrene in front o’ me and told me to cut off his leg with the same saw I’d used on a plank.” A shudder ran through him. “I couldn’t do it, lass. The sight o’ the blood, it made the world spin. I couldn’t handle the screamin’, the rusty smell.”

  “Ye do okay with it now,” Ebba said, remembering many instances where he’d patched her up.

  He smiled tightly. “I was made to conquer it, lass. In horrible ways I don’t want yer young ears to hear.”

  Ebba gritted her teeth against the urge to go along with his comment. “Locks, I want to be hearin’ everythin’.” How else could she understand why they’d lied to her? How else would she be able to feel able to resume the life they’d all had together before?

  He searched her face, his color fading. “Ye’re sure, lass?”

  “Aye, ye promised me all.”

  Locks nodded sadly. “That I did. It just, they be my most painful memories. The thing I used to hate, though, the thing that haunts me most, was when Mutinous would rub my face in the blood like I was a dog who’d soiled a rug. He’d drag my face across the deck. It used to take me hours to get all the splinters out.”

  Ebba froze and stared at the thin scars on his cheeks with new eyes. She’d always thought he must’ve had bad skin in his youth. “H-he did that to ye? Gave ye the scars on yer face?” By dragging his face over the deck through another’s blood. She expected cold-blooded murders, theft, lies, betrayal. Not. . . .

  “Aye, Ebba. Mutinous’ fav’rite tool was ridicule. The crew would watch as he did it, and they’d laugh until they were howlin’. Some o’ them laughed because they enjoyed the sight, but the rest only laughed because it weren’t them being hum’liated for a change. It’s how I lost my eye, too,” he added.

  Her gaze shifted to his black patch. “Ye told me ye lost it to infection.”

  He studied her with his emerald eye. Normally, Locks’ eye blazed, but right now, the vibrant color was lackluster. “Aye, I didn’t want ye to know.”

  “I wish ye’d just said ye’d tell me when I was older or sumpin’. I feel like a fool for goin’ around repeatin’ yer lies, even if I knew some o’ them were fibs.”

  He avoided her gaze. “We know. We just wanted you to be proud o’ us, lass.”

  “I was. How could ye think that me knowin’ any o’ this would change that? Now I can’t get past that ye’ve all been talking behind my back. I don’t feel like part o’ the crew anymore.”

  He opened his mouth, but Ebba shook her head. “No, we ain’t talkin’ o’ me; we be talkin’ o’ ye. Keep goin’.”

  Locks closed his eye. “I can’t tell ye anymore.”

  “Ye promised.”

  “I know what I promised,” he choked. “But young as ye are, ye can’t understand, and I hope ye never have cause to. When ye’re forced to do the things I was, that we all were back then, ye lose trust in yerself. Ye wonder if there was always a darkness in ye that was never tested, and ye begin to believe ye failed some big life test because ye ain’t the person ye thought.” He cut off, chest heaving. “Lass, I never want ye to understand that.”

  She didn’t understand because she was young? Ebba hated when they said that. “I do understand,” she replied.

  Locks shook his head. “Resp’ctfully, ye don’t. Ye’ve been through some right bad stuff in the last two months. But ye’ve never been broken. And that’s what Mutinous did to me . . . to all o’ yer fathers.”

  Heat crept up Ebba’s neck. “So ye’re not goin’ to tell me the rest?”

  He surged to his feet. “What do ye want to know? That Mutinous used to capture men and women from the towns we pillaged and had me work on them though they weren’t injured? While they screamed for me to stop? While they begged me for the end?”

  Ebba blinked, rearing back. She stared at him.

  “Do ye want to know that I didn’t stop? That I don’t know why I didn’t or couldn’t? That for some reason, after months on that ship, I began to think they deserved it?”

  Her breath came fast as her chest tightened. “What are ye sayin’? Ye tortured people and liked it?”

  Locks turned away, his shoulders hunched as though he’d been socked in the gut. “I’m sayin’ he broke me, lass. He broke us all. I’ve never been able to figure out if the cracks he hammered at were already there or if he was makin’ them himself. If he made them, wouldn’t I have known the di’ference? Wouldn’t I have stopped the madness, even if it was meanin’ my death?”

  She didn’t reply, sensing he was speaking to himself.

  He shook his head, not turning back. “Nearly fifteen years I sailed on Eternal, and now, eighteen years after we all escaped, not a day goes by when I don’t remember the first step I took onto that nightmare. Please, lass, I don’t want to be sayin’ no more.”

  Why hadn’t he gotten over it by now? That was what Ebba struggled to understand. He’d been hurt, horribly so, but the better part of two decades had passed. . . . Ebba was torn up about a lot of things right now, but she knew everything would sort itself out in time, and with a whole heap more thought than she was used to. To her, it seemed as though Locks and her fathers hadn’t bothered to try. But she’d also never seen Locks so out of control as now. Not even when he sprouted lies about hating Verity.

  “Barrels hired ye,” Ebba said, changing the subject. “How could he do that to ye?”

  Locks shrugged. “I don’t carry a grudge against him. That ship and the people on it had a way o’ creepin’ inside o’ ye. Bad acts became normal acts, and then worse acts became normal, until ye didn’t blink an eye at anythin’.” His hands trembled.

  But how was that possible? Ebba couldn’t connect that mindless depravity to her fathers. They weren’t evil.

&nbs
p; They fell into silence, Ebba’s mind working overtime. Pockmark, the captain of Malice, was bad, but his grandfather Mutinous sounded one hundred times worse. Her stomach roiled at the thought of anyone dragging someone’s face across a bloody deck until they lost an eye.

  The heat in her cheeks reached boiling point. “If that man were here,” she spat out, “I’d run him through.” Not just for Locks, but because she strongly suspected the boom that struck Grubby in the back of the head hadn’t been an accident, and she now wondered if Peg-leg’s missing leg was even from an unlucky injury.

  “He’s gone, thank the powers o’ oblivion for that. But rest assured, if I saw him again, I hope I’d try to kill him, too. Such a man should never exist in the world, lass.”

  “But his grandson be black-hearted, too, and ye won’t fight him,” Ebba said.

  Malice and Felicity were locked in a battle over the two magic cylinders. The soothsayer had said the war wouldn’t end in their lifetime if they sat around and did nothing about it.

  Locks’ eye blazed across the space between them. “Aye, Pockmark be cruel, but nowhere near as smart as his grandfather. Mutinous had a hold over piratekind that I could never fathom. He had a plan for a plan for a plan.”

  “Caspian said he’s goin’ to get his father to hunt Mercer Pockmark down.”

  “Well, King Montcroix always did hate pirates. And he hates Cannon’s line the most, with Mutinous killin’ his father and all. Let’s hope that be the end o’ Malice and that slime o’ a captain, Pockmark.”

  Ebba hopped off the barrel, and they both took another long drink, sipping in quiet.

  The prince said her fathers’ secrecy over their pasts was simply a matter of them not wanting to confess their every mistake to their child. But their avoidance of speaking about anything prior to her arrival in their lives didn’t seem so clear cut to her. It was as though they’d been irreversibly damaged by whatever happened to them on Mutinous Cannon’s ship, and they now had no desire or strength to fix themselves. Their only effort to heal was to steal her from the tribe and change their ways. Even that effort was drenched in the blood of slaughtered tribespeople and deep-rooted lies. Ebba couldn’t correlate what she’d heard with the fathers she knew and loved.