Gradually, the earthquake-like shakes diminished. Shivering like a sick man, he left his stoop and went inside and came to stand across the room from his wife. Gina was blank-eyed and mute as a hunk of stove wood. “I have to go,” he told her, in a strangled voice. “They want me again.” Gina didn’t try to stop him when he left five minutes later, and Eddie didn’t know what to think about that.
His mind was in a fog when he passed the Governor. He didn’t say hello or smile that lie of his. She didn’t notice because Deanna Grey was in just as deep a fog as he was. In a blink he was at the docks, fumbling over his words, asking for a boat and not able to give a reason why; he had forgotten his pack and bow at home.
“Scouting,” Eddie was eventually able to come up with. Danny McGuinness didn’t care. He was almost at the end of his shift and he liked having as many boats out as possible when his replacement came on duty. It made the change-over quicker.
Eddie was gone so quickly that the gate barely had time to open before he slid through. There was no messing around this time. He didn’t piddle about with any false moves, but instead went straight for the church, thinking that if he saw the strange hump-backed man he would give him a piece of his mind.
“It’s over!” he growled as he strode into the church. It was empty as always, or at least it seemed that way. “I said, it’s over!” His voice echoed around the empty building. Furious, he went to the usual hiding spot, pulled out the note and saw that it wasn’t over. Along with the note was a picture of his baby boy. There was no threat; the picture, the very recent picture said enough.
Eddie began crying as he read what they had planned for him next.
Chapter 25
In the dark, each of the boats in the Corsair squadron appeared immense. The tips of their billowing sails looked like they were cutting the bottom out of the clouds and the huge black flags streaming behind them made them seem twice as long as the crippled Wind Ripper.
With her mainsail taped to hide the gaping holes, she was struggling along with only her two small jib sails. Her speed was no match for the squadron which came rushing up, white foam at their prows. Mike Gunter could only turn parallel to their course to keep the Wind Ripper from being run down and cut in two.
“Do something!” Stu rumbled to Mike.
“Like what?” Mike answered. With angry ships to the south searching for “the bugger that tore up my boat!” and the misting clouds dissipating in a growing breeze, they had nowhere to run. And no time, either.
The new squadron turned slightly towards them and the distance closed rapidly. “Keep that guy quiet,” Stu ordered, meaning Rob LaBar, “And act natural.”
Jenn had no idea how to act natural while straddling a man and holding a knife to his throat.
Rob had no intention of acting natural. He knew that going to Bainbridge would result in him dying one way or the other. Either his infected leg would kill him, or they would execute him for being a bloodthirsty Corsair. No, he had to get away now, while he had the chance. The girl was small and weak. Even with his leg numb and useless, and his strength nowhere close to what it used to be, she couldn’t hold him down and she wouldn’t be strong enough to clamp a hand over his mouth.
She knew this as well as he did. All she had was the knife. “I’ll use it,” she whispered.
“You won’t,” he told her, betting his life on the timidity he saw in her blue eyes. Even in the dark, the doubt was obvious; she didn’t want to kill him.
“Who is that?” a voice came hissing from the third boat in line as it slipped by. Jenn leaned closer to Rob so that their shadows merged. As she did, Rob made a grab for the knife.
The two began to squirm and grunt in a desperate, near-silent struggle. Mike couldn’t leave the wheel, or the boat would flounder, and Stu was on Mike’s other side, too far away from them to do anything. He worried that if he even looked in their direction it would alert the Corsairs that their enemy was just within reach. The only thing Stu could do was growl out: “Wind Ripper,” in the same sort of angry voice that Cannan had used in the hope that the man’s fearsome reputation would be enough to have people looking away.
“Tell them our main went by the board,” Mike said, speaking in urgent whispers directly into Stu’s ear. He waited until Stu had repeated this before adding, “Tell them we caught a rogue and it just tore us up. Say it like that.”
The Corsair snorted laughter and told his shipmates, who also found this funny, though why, Stu couldn’t understand. Seconds later, the ship was past. Their relief, if it could be called that, was over before it began as the next ship came gliding up. The man at the wheel leaned over to look down at them. In the dark it was hard to tell, but it looked to him like two of the men on board were wrestling.
“What ship?” he asked.
Stu had taken only a single step toward Jenn and Rob. He stopped, saying, “Wind Ripper,” and made the same excuses he had a few seconds earlier. Next to him, Mike turned the wheel ever so slightly to put more distance between the two ships.
Just like the last Corsair, this one laughed. “It won’t matter what your excuse is, Cannan. The Captain will have your ass if he finds y’all out of line. You can snug in behind us for a price. That blonde you been keepin’ for yourself sound ‘bout right. Just for a few nights is all.”
At that moment, LaBar gained the upper-hand on Jenn Lockhart. He outweighed her by eighty pounds and with a twist of his sinuous body, the two switched places; now he was on top, the weight of his upper body bearing down on her knife hand, pinning it in place. She tried to grab the knife with her other hand, but he shoved that beneath his leg.
“I don’t think so,” he growled into her face.
The barely seen Corsair high up on his big boat was confused, thinking it was “Cannan” who had spoken. “I won’t hurt her none. You know me, Cannan. ‘Sides, it don’t look like you got any choice.” They were ranged up almost parallel to the Corsair ship and if Mike was going to slip into line, it was now or never. They couldn’t dangle at the end of the line and allow the next squadron to catch up.
“Fine,” Stu said in that harsh growl. “Just don’t dirty her up too bad.” He glanced over at Mike and shrugged, not knowing what else to say. Mike shrugged back and then began the laborious process of trying to get The Wind Ripper in line; steering while only under the jib took a lot of embarrassing and unseamanly back and forth, first overcorrecting in one direction before overcorrecting in the other.
Only feet away, hidden by the useless mainsail, Jenn and LaBar continued their near silent duel—she had basically lost. Rob could yell out at any time, but he wanted more. If he yelled, he would have to be “rescued.” It was going to be bad enough that he would have to admit being captured in the first place. There would be jeers and endless snide remarks, but if he could “take back” The Wind Ripper from a team of assassins who were planning on killing the Black Captain, why then he’d be a hero.
The three of them would have to die of course—dead men tell no tales, after all. Rob planned on shooting the three and then emptying the magazine around the boat to add to the image of a life and death struggle. He even considered winging himself.
First, he had to get the knife from the girl. Had he been at full strength, it wouldn’t have been an issue at all. As it was, his head was swimming and his muscles shook; bad things to be sure, and yet he had one hand free and she did not. He grabbed her by the throat and leaned his weight forward.
She immediately started to gag. Stu edged closer and Mike abandoned the wheel.
“Not so fast,” Rob whispered. “Unless you want her dead.” Both stopped in their tracks. “I can kill her with just a squeeze of my hand. Got it? Get us in line, Mikey. And Stu, I’m going to need a gun. Don’t even think about trying anything. If you shoot, they’ll be all over you. You guys can’t escape.”
Rob was right. They all knew it. Even without a gun, Rob was in a position to scream and yell. And with a gun…Stu didn�
�t want to think about that. He didn’t know what to do, especially as Mike was no help. The Wind Ripper was in danger of crashing yet again as another Corsair boat was coming up strong, its sailors hissing curses and demanding they fall off.
Only Jenn really had a chance to do anything. Rob had leaned back to keep her from making too much noise as the Corsair ship passed so close she thought she could stretch out and touch the farthest reach of its boom. Rather than doing that, she slid her hand up around Rob’s thigh and grabbed his wound as hard as she could.
“Son of a bitch!” Rob cried as he jerked away from the pain. In that brief second, Jenn squirmed beneath him and freed her knife hand. It flashed up to his neck.
In the shadow of the Corsair ship, the two locked eyes over the shining blade. Jenn pressed the knife into LaBar’s flesh until he ground his teeth. “I dare you,” he growled. He knew the girl was spineless; she wouldn’t kill him, she’d only threaten. She’d had every opportunity to kill him before and hadn’t been able to summon the courage or dispel her morals long enough to do the act; and nothing had changed.
“What are you waiting for?” Rob whispered. The knife dipped, dropping away from his throat. He smirked. “That’s what I thought. One shout on my part and they’ll be all over you. Your only chance is to trust me.”
Trust a Corsair? Jenn had never heard of such a thing, and yet, what choice did she have?
You could kill him. A cold wave washed down Jenn’s back. It hadn’t been a crazy voice, it was a calmly sinister, murderous one, and it had not been a voice from nowhere. It had been her own voice and it had originated right there among all the rest of her thoughts.
Is this how Jillybean started? she wondered. Had there been one stray thought that just hadn’t fit? Had it just seemed louder than the rest? More urgent? Had she listened to it, and had that egged it on? Or had she tried to ignore it only to hear it get louder and louder?
You could kill him. There it was again, even louder. You should kill him. You can’t trust a Corsair.
Jenn jumped as something thumped into the side of The Wind Ripper. Someone from the other boat had stabbed out at the side of The Wind Ripper with a boat hook, marring the paint and thrusting her away.
“Say a word and you die,” Rob warned.
This had Jenn’s head spinning. Why would he want her to keep quiet? What game is he playing? She had no idea, she only knew that she couldn’t trust a Corsair. Ever.
No one seemed to move as the Corsair boat slipped by with more curses being tossed across at them. The tension was so thick Stu held his breath until the boat was gone.
They all let out a breath, except for Rob. His diaphragm was paralyzed by the knife sticking out of it. Jenn had slid it up through his abdomen, beneath the notch in his chest and into the very tip of his heart.
There was an adage that she’d heard time and again for the last ten years: The only good Corsair was a dead Corsair.
Rob took three minutes to die. Stu held him down while he convulsed, and his feet kicked out spastically. Jenn could only watch for so long before she fled below and hid in the dark. A part of her expected to hear voices either congratulating her on yet one more murder to add to her list or laughing at the tears that wouldn’t stop. Thankfully, she heard only reality: the splash of waves, the unsteady thumping of Stu’s boots on the deck, and the occasional bell.
She cried for an hour, mourning not for Rob, who she considered little more than a beast, but for some lost part of her. That part was ineffable and unnamed. It would have been easy to label it simply as her “innocence” only that had been dying by degrees for months and her first mercy killing had started a fire that would cremate its remains, leaving her mouth tasting like ash and her soul stained by soot.
No, this loss within her was subtly different and far worse because it was so jarring. It was as if she had suddenly lost the ability to smile, as if she would never again wake up on Christmas morning filled with excitement, or feel the least bit of wonder at a sunset, or feel joy when a baby laughed, or know the pleasure of playing kick the can in the long twilight of a July night.
It was as if she had gone from fifteen to fifty when she had slid that knife into Rob. Her world had dimmed in that one move, or perhaps she had only just realized it had been growing dim for some time. She didn’t know. She only knew that crying was the right thing because she had lost some part of her that most people held onto for years.
Jenn was still crying when she heard Mike come down into the cabin. He squinted around the dark shadows until he picked her out by the paleness of her face. It seemed to have an ethereal glow. Without saying a word, he held her and it was strangely perfect. They were like an old married couple who thrived with the simplest acts of intimacy. Even with his touch, she didn’t regain what she had lost; he only made it bearable.
When the last tear fell, she murmured, “You’re letting Stu pilot the boat. You must really love me.”
It was a joke and he allowed a smile to show, though he didn’t laugh. “We turned east just before I came down. The wind is on our stern.”
“East? Already?” Though she might have lost some ineffable part of her, she could still feel fear. There was only one reason the squadron had turned east: they were getting close to the mouth of Grays Harbor, where the lair of the Corsairs was hidden.
“Yeah, we should hear the approach buoys any minute. From there it won’t be long. At least, I hope it won’t. The wind has been dying.”
Jenn’s fear edged up, as did her depression. It felt as though nothing was going right or ever would. It would be just their luck for the wind to die just as the sun came up. They would be caught ten times over. Even as stern and gruff as Stu was, he still looked his age, and Mike with his golden-hued “baby beard” and his friendly smile was the polar opposite of a Corsair. Then there was Jenn; she would have to hide uselessly below deck and hope no one wondered why the Black Captain’s recon ship had magically appeared among the remains of the fleet.
She followed Mike on deck and did not immediately see the land in front of them. Her eyes were drawn to where she had left the body of Rob LaBar. It was gone. Only a dark stain remained.
Mike saw where she was looking. “We said a prayer and…you know.” He jerked a shoulder toward the sea. “If someone saw.”
“Yeah, it’s okay. He was a Corsair. I wish I could care, but they started all of this.” In truth, Jillybean had been the one who had started the war. Jenn wasn’t going to blame her, however. She was past recriminations. All she wanted to do was start over.
A bell clanked in the distance. The three of them immediately recognized the sound as that of a slowly corroding buoy bell. They were getting close. Mike stood up on the gunwale and strained to peer into the dark ahead of them—Jenn looked back. Beyond the sail of a shadowy forty-foot the clouds had become patchy and a few bolder stars could be seen.
As far as signs went, they meant nothing and yet, a breeze blew back her auburn hair as she stared. It was a healthy, steady wind that filled sails. In front and behind The Wind Ripper, Corsair boats leaned over and took in the wind. Masts creaked, flags flapped, and once more, white showed at the waterline of each of the boats. The entire squadron surged forward.
The Wind Ripper lagged as they came to the harbor, and it seemed like a good time to duck away; however the second squadron was also flying along, gaining on them quickly.
“If we go into the harbor we might be stuck,” Mike told them. “So should try to slip south along the beach, instead? We might be able to circle around them and head north.”
Jenn looked back once more, and once more ignored the boats. The stars were being covered over again. “No,” she said, quickly, feeling the sign more than understanding it. “This is our window. I-I think any ship seen heading south will be viewed, like bad or something. Once we’re in the harbor we might hide, or we can take the same land route to Bainbridge that Jillybean showed us.”
“Go in,” Stu agreed.
“A Corsair boat can probably go anywhere within the harbor without really being questioned. We just have to be out of sight before sunrise.” This was their cue to stare at the sky to the east. It was still dark, but was it as dark as before? None of them knew.
Mike did his best to keep up with the squadron in front of them. In fact, he did too good of a job. The harbor was triangular in shape; it narrowed towards the Corsairs’ lair and as it did, there was some congestion as the ships in front slowed to wait their turn to be pulled up the narrow river that sheltered the fleet.
Thankfully, they hugged the northern shore, giving Mike opportunity to slip away toward the south. One boat hailed them, not to offer help but to make jokes at their misfortune. Mike made sure to play up that misfortune by giving his torn sail some wind and letting it rip completely in two.
This brought on howls of laughter, to which Mike cursed like a Corsair. Jenn raised an eyebrow at the vulgarity, but said nothing. Even knowing that it was all for show did not make her feel any more at ease, realizing that the man she loved could sound as crude as one of them.
Soon they were safely hidden by Rennie Island and letting the gusting wind take them slowly up the Chehalis River. The wind was so perfectly placed that had the river not become too shallow, there was no telling how far they could have gotten. They made it only two miles before the sun came up over white-capped Mount Rainier, which stood tall directly to their east.
Two miles seemed far too close to the Corsair Lair for Jenn’s liking and she wanted to leave the ship and go. Mike looked aghast at the idea. “It’s a ship,” he told her, as if he thought she was proposing to leave the Baby Jesus behind. “What we have to do is hide her.”
“What about hiding us?” Jenn asked.
“First things first. We might need the boat later. You know, like for a getaway if things don’t work out in this direction. What if we run into a horde?”
Jenn only nodded, saying nothing. Deep inside, she wanted nothing more to do with boats. The sight of the stars from a few hours earlier came to her. They had shone brightly for only so long before the clouds came. It meant they had to get under cover, and yet Stu agreed with Mike about the boat.
Generation Z (Book 4): The Queen Unthroned Page 25
