Pillars of Six

by St Clare, Kelly

  “Lad,” Peg-leg called to Jagger. “Ye need to get in there with Ebba, too.”

  Jagger glanced at her, then to the crow’s nest. Shaking his head, he began climbing back down to the deck. “Nay.”

  Her fathers frowned at him.

  She leaned over to watch as he landed at the bottom. He shrugged in response to her fathers’ scrutiny.

  “Nay,” he repeated.

  What was he planning? It didn’t seem within his character to make a stand; he was too much a pirate. He switched sides as easy as a cannonball on a pitching ship.

  Her fathers’ gazes trailed after the pirate before they too shrugged and went about setting their array of weaponry on the ground.

  “Drop anchor,” Locks called.

  Soon, Felicity bobbed in the light swell, a sitting duck. What happened next was inevitable. The navy drew alongside them a short while later. Ebba crouched in the crow’s nest, heart thudding and ears strained for any sound. Below, her fathers didn’t stir from their passive position near the mast.

  Ebba could hear the foreign snap of sails on either side of Felicity. They were sandwiched between two ships now. She could all but feel the navy men’s hands closing around her arms and shoving her into a cage.

  Her hand tightened in the space where her pistol usually sat—the pistol tucked away in her trunk in the hold with her cutlass and daggers. Perhaps it was a good thing she hadn’t thought to grab her weapons. Taking action right now was more likely to get her fathers killed than anything else.

  A booming call crossed the small gap between the starboard ship and Felicity. “Hear ye, corrupted men and half-beings—”

  Ebba rose her brows at Sally, who appeared amused by the greeting.

  “—The royal navy hereby accepts your surrender on behalf of the esteemed King Montcroix. Lay down your arms and accept your impeding trial with whatever dignity, if any at all, still resides in your blackened hearts and rotten souls.”

  They weren’t trying to make friends; that was for sure.

  Holding her breath, she attempted to keep as motionless as possible, listening to the bustle of the navy men boarding their ship. They did so with much yelling and stamping—unnecessarily, in her opinion; must’ve been part of their training. She winced at her fathers’ grunts and yells, listening to the clang of the chains no doubt being fastened around their ankles.

  “Commodore Tinkleman,” one called out. “Look what I found hidden on this misbegotten creature. It appears to be a tube of some fashion, but see the pearly movement beneath the surface. Have you ever encountered such a thing?”

  The dynami. Ebba’s eyes widened. They’d taken the dynami from Grubby!

  There was a pause, and the man Ebba assumed was the unfortunate possessor of the name Tinkleman replied, “We will seize this for King Montcroix’s perusal, Weatherby. Smashing job.”

  Frantically, Ebba felt along her belt and found the purgium still in place.

  Now she had to free her fathers and get the dynami back. Ebba swallowed. Preferably all that would be possible before her fathers reached the king, who hated piratekind.

  “Clear the crow’s nest,” the captain boomed. “Search the hold.”

  Ebba tensed and felt Sal retreat once more to burrow into her dreads.

  A lazy voice called out, “Pointless to; I just came down from hoistin’ the sur’ender flag.”

  Jagger. She placed a hand against the inside of the crow’s nest, listening hard for the captain’s answer.

  “I did see him coming down from the shrouds through the scope, captain,” a navy man called.

  Tinkleman sniffed after a moment. “Nevertheless, a navy man always dots his i’s and crosses his t’s. Search everything.”

  “Sal,” Ebba whispered. “Don’t come out from my hair for nothin’. Ye understand?”

  Sally patted her neck as the creaking rigging announced more than one sailor ascending. Being caught like a cowering rat didn’t appeal. Ebba extracted the purgium from her belt and after a quick debate, shoved the cylinder down the middle of her chest, into the valley there caused by her skin-tight jerkin. Who knew breasts could be useful?

  As the sailors neared, Ebba slowly stood with her arms raised. “No need for a fuss now, lads.”

  One of the sailors screamed, and just caught hold of the rigging in the nick of time. The other fumbled for his pistol, and by the time he’d retrieved the weapon, Ebba had swung over the side and was making her way down.

  She landed on light feet and straightened. Shite. The navy ships either side were huge. The port side vessel around three times the size of their ship. The starboard vessel, larger still.

  “Oh!” Barrels said in a strangled voice. “You have found our prisoner, Lady Maybell’s companion.”

  Lady Maybell’s what now? Ebba wrinkled her brow. Lady Maybell was the Maltu governor’s wife. Ebba wasn’t her companion.

  Stubby stared at Barrels for a long moment before his brow cleared. “Aye, ye scallywags have found the wench we were set to ransom. Curse ye all.”

  Ebba shifted her eyes to the captain. He was older than his high-pitched voice suggested, and appeared to have a rod located somewhere uncomfortable.

  He surveyed her in doubt. “You . . . are Lady Maybell’s companion.”

  Locks trod on her foot, and Ebba cleared her throat. “Aye, I be Lady Maybell’s esteemed-like matey.”

  A low groan came from Peg-leg’s direction.

  The captain held a hand to his chest. “I rather do doubt that considering the lowliness of your speech.”

  Ebba narrowed her eyes. “I be crossin’ my i’s and dotting my t’s just like ye.”

  “We took her from the tribes on Pleo,” Jagger said. “Made her our servin’ wench.” He smirked at her as he said wench.

  Flaming sod would’ve enjoyed that. She scowled darkly at him.

  The captain arched an eyebrow at Jagger. “A rather long time ago, judging by her be-pirated appearance. Search her.”

  A pimply-faced sailor neared and patted her down as she bore holes into his face with her eyes. Inwardly, Ebba was focused on where Sally hung in the middle of her dreads, and where the purgium was lodged under her jerkin. The sailor’s face burned bright red as he felt up her torso, arriving at her chest.

  Ebba breathed again when he abandoned the search and stood back. Interesting. . . it was as if he’d been mortified by the idea of feeling her chest. Good to know.

  “Sir! We found a real lady in the sleeping quarters. Unconscious.”

  A large sailor exited the bilge door with Verity over his shoulder. He placed her on the ground near the captain. Plank shot Locks a warning look, extending a hand out to hold her father back. Ebba didn’t blame him; Locks looked murderous.

  “I do say,” the captain said. “This is most assuredly a real lady.”

  The sailor sucked his finger, wincing. “There’s a demon cat down there, too, Captain. Couldn’t get hold of him.”

  “A cat doesn’t concern me,” the captain sniffed.

  A wise choice. Woe to any man who chose to remove Pillage from his ship. He wouldn’t even leave to follow Barrels. She’d certainly learned her lesson not to attempt it at a young age.

  “I’ve thwarted your attempt to catch me in your web of half-truths, scallywags.” The captain adjusted his ridiculous feathered hat. “This is Lady Maybell’s companion, I am certain. Let it not be said that Captain Tinkleman is a fool. I would know a real lady anywhere.” He glanced at Ebba and sniffed in disdain.

  What did they mean real lady? Not that Ebba was a female, but if she wanted to be, she’d damn well be a real one. She may not have luscious blonde hair to her waist, but she was woman enough to make a sailor red-faced as he searched her. And that was without trying. Jagger was smirking her way again, and she shoved down her rising temper, seeing that Tinkleman’s assumption might save Verity’s life.

  Ebba followed her fathers’ attempts to appear cowed, slumping her shoulders and wi
dening her eyes fearfully. Grubby was the only one who managed to pull the look off. The rest of her fathers appeared crazed, and Barrels looked like he’d been reading all night.

  “Weatherby, take the lady to our guest quarters and fetch her some smelling salts. Place the rest in the holds—behind bars, of course.” The captain smiled at them, covering the curve of his lips with his hand again as though smiling was against the law. “You will face trial at noon tomorrow, miscreants.”

  “I s’pose the trial will be fair-like?” Stubby asked drily.

  “As fair as you deserve,” the captain answered, mounting the plank extended between the navy ship and Felicity. “Do not expect to see out the week.”

  Thirteen

  “This be a right pickle,” Peg-leg observed aloud, his face resting between two bars of their prison.

  One sailor stood guard in the area they were locked—a square space with vertical bars for walls that extended from floor to ceiling. The space was just large enough to fit the eight of them shoulder-to-shoulder. Which was the only thing holding Jagger up. He’d promptly fallen asleep, or lost consciousness again judging by the lolling of his head.

  The navy sailor glanced over at Peg-leg’s comment, but quickly found something else interesting as Peg-leg glanced right back.

  Plank lowered his voice. “We’ve gotten out o’ worse scrapes than this. And remember our royal friend.”

  Ebba straightened. She’d forgotten about Caspian. He could get them out of this. He was a royal-lubber.

  “I’m not sure what good that will do us,” Barrels said, pale-faced. “On Exosia, people of importance do not attend trials. We won’t see the king, or go anywhere near the castle, before our sentence is carried out. But the common folk and middle class will see us. They all come to watch.” He swallowed.

  “Wind sprite,” she reminded them.

  Her fathers stared at her. Ebba jerked a finger to her hair, where she could feel Sally slumbering. Six grins flashed her way.

  “Handy-like for carryin’ words once we know where we’ll be caulkin’, am I right, lads?” Locks said.

  Aye, they’d send Sally to the prince with a message and location when they reached the land prison.

  The sailor approached. “Enough talk.”

  Grubby gave him a toothy smile, and the man blinked and stepped back from their cage.

  Taking her father’s hand, Ebba said in an undertone, “They took yer dynami, Grubs.”

  Grubby nodded sadly and slumped where he sat, hands twisting. It’d be tearing him up inside that he’d lost the cylinder after promising his selkie kin so faithfully to keep the thing safe.

  “We’ll get it back, Grubs,” she said quietly in his ear. Not just for Grubby, but to protect the realm as she knew it. “Don’t ye worry.” None of them would be worrying much over anything unless they found some way to get away from Exosia and the pirate-hater, King Montcroix.

  Conversation was spotty after that. Most of her fathers fell asleep. Barrels was the only other person awake before long. Even the sailor was slumbering, snoring in the far corner of the room.

  The journey to the mainland should only take half a day at the most. The strip of sea between Kentro and Exosia wasn’t large. She jerked as Jagger stirred, uttering a string of crazed, nonsensical mutterings. She could only make out ‘deck’ and ‘rigging.’ She felt sorry for what he’d been through. Part of her even felt sorry for Swindles and Riot, but her words to Locks were true: Ebba would keep an eye on Jagger and decide if he was too tainted to be safe.

  “I always wanted to see Exosia,” she muttered to Barrels. Despite what might be their imminent death, Ebba was intrigued to see the king’s lands, a place she’d never expected to visit. She wondered if the navy men would march them past the castle. She wouldn’t mind a wee tour.

  Barrels didn’t answer, and she turned to him. His eyes were fixed on his clasped hands. He was barely blinking.

  “What are ye thinkin’ about, Barrels?” she asked. His peppered hair had fallen down about his face, and his cravat was crumpled, yet he hadn’t moved to fix either. Something was wrong.

  He lifted his head and watched her, eyes distant. “I am from Exosia. Was,” he corrected himself, “long, long ago.”

  Ebba knew that. There was no way to miss it with the way he spoke and dressed. And read. “How long?”

  “Nearly forty years have passed since I last set foot there. I can scarcely believe it.”

  Barrels was the oldest of her fathers at fifty-eight. “Ye’ve been off longer than ye’ve been on.”

  He crooked a humorless smile. “Yes, I suppose that’s true. Yet, I can still see how it all was in my mind. I still recall the smells and the feel, the music and the etiquette. Or just that there was etiquette.”

  Ebba wasn’t sure she liked the wistful undercurrent of his tone.

  He smiled. “I was son to a baron, did you know? A lesser noble in the king’s court.”

  “Ye knew King Montcroix?”

  “His father, yes.”

  “I forget how ancient ye be at times,” Ebba remarked with an impish grin.

  Her cheekiness didn’t make him smile as she’d intended. “His father was a beloved and just king,” Barrels said. “Nothing like Montcroix. I was a second son and had no aspirations to become an officer in his navy. So, I apprenticed to his quartermaster, to the shock of the court, being rather learned and interested in numbers. It was quite the scandal,” he chuckled briefly, trailing off when he caught sight of her baffled expression.

  The only scandalous thing about his interest in numbers was that he was interested in numbers.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “a year into my apprenticeship, my master commissioned me to travel to Maltu in the king’s name and audit the governor’s reports, many of whom he suspected of dodging their duty to the king. Maltu was the only governed island at the time.”

  Ebba leaned forward, belatedly realizing Barrels was telling her his story. She’d said she wouldn’t ask them to speak of their pasts, and though she was now healed, Ebba still meant it. But if her father wanted to talk, Ebba wouldn’t stop him. She wanted her fathers to heal as she had. If they couldn’t touch the purgium, talking seemed the next best thing. “Then what?”

  “I noticed a discrepancy in the ledgers. I queried the governor of the island at the time about the discrepancy to allow a full report to my superiors, but I’m afraid mentioning my findings was a grievous error. The navy ship I traveled on had not sailed one hour before we were boarded by pirates.”

  “Mutinous Cannon?” she guessed.

  Barrels flinched. “Yes, Ebba. It was he. I later learned he was paid by the Maltu governor to get rid of me. The governor was skimming money for his own coffers.”

  She gasped. “So the Maltu governor set Mutinous on ye?”

  Her father grimaced. “Mutinous wouldn’t have lowered himself to paid work of that kind without reason of his own. I expect he knew from the governor I was an apprentice quartermaster. As you know, we are highly valued by pirates. He merely took advantage of the situation to secure me as a bonus. He killed the crew and kept me alive, and so I became enslaved on his ship for twenty-two years.”

  Twenty-two years. Ebba couldn’t fathom such a number. That was longer than she’d been alive. She’d been a prisoner for ten days, a mere blip on Barrels’ experience. “Ye must be fierce-strong to have lasted that long.”

  Barrels glanced up, brow raised. “Strong?”

  “Aye, strong,” she said with a firm nod. Ebba hesitated before asking, “Locks said ye tricked him onto the ship, but he didn’t blame ye.” That there might be a festering grudge between two of her parents didn’t sit right with her. Stubby and Peg-leg had a mostly competitive-sometimes angry relationship, but nothing spiteful.

  “I did many things I’m not proud of, my dear. Through me, Mutinous grew rich, and his power grew with it. He used my unthreatening person and youth to con many young men onto the ship. If I had b
ut hidden some opportunities from his notice, or worked the numbers to ruin him, he might not have been allowed to do what he did. But the figures before me became an obsession until I would have done anything for one more dollar. And I did do many terrible things. I don’t know how the numbers came to be so important to me, more important than my morals. Only that they did.” A ripple of shame ran through his face.

  “Whatever ye did wasn’t yer fault,” Ebba said, gritting her teeth. “The ugliness makin’ ye do that didn’t come from within ye, and it wasn’t there afore. The taint entered ye until it took yer mind and told ye what to do. I understand, Barrels, I really do, and ye need to know none o’ that time was yer doin’. Ye’re kind-hearted and a smart thinker, and I love ye.”

  He surveyed her. “You do understand, don’t you? I’m sorrier about that fact than I am for every misdeed or harm I’ve ever caused. I wish you could’ve been spared from the horrors you underwent.”

  As the memory of black slime coating her arms flashed across her mind, a lump rose in her throat, and she forced it down with considerable effort. “Aye, but if there be anythin’ good that’s come o’ it, it’s that I know why ye did the things ye did back then.” Ebba cleared her throat and plowed on. “So, then ye stole me and raised me. . . .”

  “We did.” Barrels quirked a brow. “Have you really forgiven us, just like that?”

  She shrugged. “The lyin’ is what bothered me most-like about the whole s’tuation. I didn’t believe there could be a good enough reason for ye to conceal such things, but there was in the end—the taint. Part o’ me be glad for that. Though—” She paused, and decided to let Barrels in further than she’d let in any of her fathers since Pleo. “I’m still stuck about who I am after findin’ out where I came from. It kind o’ . . . opened my eyes, and I can’t seem to close them again.”

  Barrels smiled. “Maybe opening your eyes isn’t a bad thing?”