The Tides of Avarice

by John Dahlgren

  Sylvester suddenly realized how these things worked. If you put the flattened ends into the water and pushed on the other ends, the flat bits would act like paddles to propel you along.

  Moments later, his guesswork was substantiated, although the pirates pulled rather than pushed on the oars.

  By now, all three lemmings had found a place where they could peer over the side of the boat and watch what was going on.

  “Heeeeaaaaave!” yelled Cap’n Rustbane every couple of seconds and “Heeeeaaaaave!” responded his rowers in unison as they hauled on the oars and the longboat sluiced through the water.

  As the longboat pulled farther and farther from the shore, they saw a few ascending strands of chimney smoke, then the rooftops of Foxglove came into view. Sylvester could identify the temple and, lower and a little more distant, the Library where he’d worked for so many years – for the most part happily. He hoped Celadon had suffered nothing more than a sore head, something to give him a good excuse for grumbling until the bump went down, and perhaps even longer than that. Then all thoughts of Celadon and even his own mother vanished from Sylvester’s mind as the longboat entered the pool of darkness beside the Shadeblaze.

  Viola slipped her paw into his and squeezed tightly. Whether she was trying to reassure him or seek his reassurance Sylvester did not know.

  ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿.

  The smacking of waves against the hull and the creaking of the masts woke Sylvester early the next morning.

  For a few moments he lay on his hard bunk wondering where in the world he might be, then all the memories of yesterday came flooding back to him: the fighting in the town square, the murder of Nurse O’Reilly, the march to the shore, the trip in the longboat out to where the Shadeblaze lay at anchor.

  Viola.

  Mrs. Pick—Daphne. Three Pins.

  Setting sail.

  Foxglove sinking out of sight beneath the horizon.

  The realization that it was not in fact laundry day aboard the Shadeblaze, that those weren’t big bedsheets and that the topmost piece of flapping cloth most emphatically wasn’t a whimsically embroidered tea towel, and the relief that he hadn’t let slip any remarks that might have betrayed his ignorance.

  Supper. The discovery of what the pirates called “hardtack,” a supposed foodstuff that hovered uneasily on the borderline between edible and poisonous. The discovery of what the pirates called “grog,” which after a while made hardtack not just edible, but actually quite palatable. Grog was rather like Foxglovian apple wine, although it had a kick that was at least three times as ferocious.

  There had been other events last night, Sylvester knew, but they were all rather muddled. That lemming dancing on top of the compass table, surely that couldn’t have been himself? His mind insisted on putting the face of Mrs. Pickleberry on the lemming dancer, which seemed even more impossible.

  It was, however, a thought horrific enough to thrust Sylvester firmly out of any remains of sleep he might have been luxuriating in.

  That was a pity because, now that he was fully awake, he made another discovery about life at sea.

  Years ago, when he’d been small and while Dad was still alive, Mom had shooed the two of them out the door into the back garden one afternoon, telling them they should go and do some “father–son bonding,” as she’d put it.

  “That means we’ve got to play together, son,” Jasper Lemmington had said glumly. He’d just been settling down with the newspaper when the instructions arrived.

  “Bladabladabingbingaboo,” his infant son had replied, that being his favorite word at the time (among the three he’d mastered).

  Clenching his teeth yet more firmly on the stem of his pipe, Jasper Lemmington had dumped the eagerly squirming Sylvester on the seat of the little wooden swing in the garden. He made sure the boy was securely strapped in, and begun rhythmically pushing him.

  It was at this moment that their neighbor, Mr. Frampington, emerged from the next-door house into his own garden.

  “Fine day, Jasp,” Mr. Frampington (whose fault Mr. Lemmington afterwards claimed it all was) said.

  That was the start of it.

  Of course, Sylvester was far too small to understand anything the two older lemmings talked about, but he did know their conversation lasted an interminably long time.

  And all the while his father continued automatically to push, push, push on the swing, steadily, steadily, steadily …

  After more than an hour, Mrs. Lemmington came out to see how father and son were getting along, and found her husband leaning with one arm on the fence, the other dutifully pushing the swing, while he and Mr. Frampington conversed absorbedly about issues of the day.

  Meanwhile, grinning grimly because he knew he was supposed to be enjoying himself, the infant Sylvester was clutching one rope of the swing like a lifeline and displaying a face the color of lime juice.

  Sylvester, even though he was too young to really know what was going on, would never forget the eruption that ensued when Mrs. Lemmington made this discovery. She had always been regarded as somewhat demure in her demeanor, but not today. In the distant temple, priests ceased their chanting to wonder what the sound might be. Jasper Lemmington limped for a week.

  But there was another eruption even more indelibly imprinted on Sylvester’s mind.

  Released from the fastenings of the swing by his raging mother, he’d been put down on the grass while she belabored her husband.

  Walking had been a relatively new skill for Sylvester at the time. It was something of a hit-or-miss affair. Even so, he’d been aware that it had never been quite like this before. The world seemed to pulse closer then farther from him in the same rhythm of the swing. He attempted to put one foot in front of the other in the approximate direction of the back door beyond which, he reasoned, lay security.

  The net result, he was later told, was that he walked around in a perfect circle, once and almost twice, then fell flat on his face and, well, that had been lime-green, too.

  Even after he’d been put to bed following an extremely necessary bath, the world had continued to fluctuate in the same stomach-wrenching fashion. There had been no question of his having supper, of course. His stomach felt like a raw wound.

  Matters were not helped by the fact that Mrs. Lemmington was not entirely finished with her criminally negligent husband, not yet. The ringing walls of the Lemmington home made it hard for Sylvester to find the sleep that would release him from the agony of his insides.

  It was the first time he’d ever prayed to Lhaeminguas, even though he couldn’t pronounce the name.

  Now, aboard the Shadeblaze, he was feeling similar in every respect to the way he had that long-ago night. He couldn’t work out if the aftermath of the grog was making things better or worse. Better, perhaps, because it was insulating him from how he’d otherwise be. It was the bobbing of the ship to and fro on the water that did it, as had been explained to him last night, not long after the nausea had begun. Explained to him none too sympathetically by a bevy of drunken pirates as he’d hung his head over the taffrail. It was just the same as the to-ing and fro-ing of the garden swing, only worse, because there was no getting away from it.

  Sylvester pushed himself up on his elbows and stared out moodily through the porthole just above his bunk.

  He saw an eternity of sea, its gray surface moving up and down.

  That was a bad idea.

  Flat on his back on the bunk once more, he looked at the splintered ceiling.

  Nice ceiling. Pretty ceiling. Friendly, stay-in-the-same-place ceiling.

  Outside, the boat hit a roller, a bigger wave than usual.

  The whole vessel shuddered from the impact.

  Not one part of the Shadeblaze shuddered more than Sylvester.

  “Oh, this is misery – misery!” he cried.

 
There was a knock on the cabin door.

  “I’m dead,” he called weakly.

  Dead or not, he managed to turn his head enough to see that the person opening the door was Viola. The sight was cheering enough to raise his state of health to mere terminal illness.

  “Good morning,” she said, bustling across the cabin to lean over his bunk and wrench the porthole noisily open. A strong smell of salt water and dead fish rushed into the room.

  “Bleurgh,” moaned Sylvester.

  “That’s better,” said Viola. “A bit of fresh air’ll see you right as rain in no time.”

  “Bleurgh,” Sylvester agreed.

  “I wonder what’ll be for breakfast.”

  “Bleurgh!”

  She sniffed the air. “No cooking smells yet. I hope it’s going to be something nicer than that horrible hardtack they made us eat last night. Oh,” she added, “what’s the matter, dear Sylly?”

  “Bleurgh.”

  “Oh, you old fusspot. You know I only call you ‘Sylly’ when I’m feeling especially fond of you.”

  Desperately racking his brains for something to say instead of “bleurgh,” Sylvester tried to muster a few words.

  “What’s that you said?” asked Viola, leaning towards him.

  “I said, ‘That’s kind of you, dear, but I really don’t like the name.’”

  “I can tell a night’s sleep out on the ocean waves hasn’t improved your temper any, you old crosspatch.”

  First a fusspot, now a crosspatch, and both of them old. Even through the miasma of his intestinal controversy, Sylvester saw he’d better do something to improve his “desirable boyfriend” image. He should be saying something both suave and incredibly witty, he knew, but in its current state, all his brain was capable of doing was wondering if he might be able to fit his head through that porthole …

  He was rescued from his quandary by the cabin door being opened again.

  The new arrival was an old sea rat with an eyepatch that had once been black but was now spotted with green mold, as if behind it one might find an exceptionally ripe cheese. The rest of his face was little better. All in all, disgusting as his eyepatch was, it was difficult to look at him and not wish it were bigger. He was, nonetheless, a friendly soul as Sylvester, Viola and Three Pins had discovered last night. He’d taken them under his wing, making sure they got some supper and weren’t shoved to the back of the grog queue. This morning, Sylvester rather wished he had been kept at the back of the grog queue, but that was no reflection on the elderly rat’s kindness.

  “Hello, Cheesefang,” said Viola brightly.

  It seemed that Cheesefang, too, might have partaken too liberally of the grog, because his good humor of the night before had apparently evaporated. Rather than reply to Viola, he just scowled evilly at her.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Viola gave the pirate one of her most charming smiles. Sylvester had never seen her this early in the morning before, and was dubious as to whether he ever wanted to again. There’s something about early-morning irrepressibility that makes ordinary people want to hit things.

  The rat’s scowl deepened. “’M here on offisherl business.”

  “Official business? My, that sounds important, Cheesefang.”

  “Sharrap, wench!”

  “Oo, you—”

  “Sharrap, I said. ’M not here fer you.”

  “Then who are you here for?”

  “Fer ’im.” The rat pointed an ancient and pitted cutlass toward where Sylvester lay on his bunk.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Gerrup. The Cap’n wants ter see yer, right ’way.”

  The news cleared Sylvester’s head like nothing else might have done. That Cap’n Rustbane wanted to see him at this hour of the morning, and had sent such a no-nonsense emissary to fetch him, seemed to Sylvester to bode no good, no good at all.

  “I’ll be right with you,” he said hurriedly, rolling himself from the bunk to the floor.

  “Good,” said Cheesefang curtly. He gave Viola a look of purest venom. “As for you, ye bilge ra—er, bilge lemming, ye c’n just stay ’ere and rot for all I cares.”

  The look she returned him made his own seem positively innocuous, and he cowered instinctively.

  “Er, forget I said that, ma’am. It’s just me piratical ways, see?”

  “Hm.”

  “I’m ready,” said Sylvester, patting himself down. “Shall we get moving?”

  The rat looked delighted to be given a reason to escape Viola’s steely gaze. “Yep. On the double. Can’t keep the Cap’n waitin’. Mornin’s ain’t his best time, if ye sees what I means.”

  Then why the heck has Rustbane asked to see me now? thought Sylvester. Why not leave it until the afternoon?

  This was seeming worse and worse. As he followed Cheesefang out of the cabin, Sylvester paused in the doorway and looked back at Viola. Now that he’d vacated the bunk, she was sitting on the edge of it, worrying her forepaws together. She looked up and saw Sylvester’s eyes on her.

  “It’ll be all right,” she mouthed. “I’m sure of it.”

  “Gerra move on!” yelled Cheesefang. “’Less you want me ter skewer ye where the sun don’t shine.”

  7 The Cap’n Would Like to See You in His Cabin

  Lurching across the deck, the point of Cheesefang’s cutlass at his back, Sylvester began to wake up properly. As the Shadeblaze plowed her way through the waves, periodic showers of icy cold spray hit Sylvester in the face, revitalizing him. All over the deck, pirates were busily working: coiling ropes, repairing rigging, gutting fish, doing any one of half a hundred other tasks that Sylvester couldn’t even begin to identify. It was a far cry from the scene of festivity and merrymaking of the night before. When a blast of spray made him tilt his head back, Sylvester saw a bat far overhead, suspended from the crow’s nest, spying this way and that with a long black telescope. Above the crow’s nest fluttered the flag that last night Sylvester had learned was called the Jolly Roger.

  He and Cheesefang were heading toward the bow of the vessel, where the Cap’n’s cabin was housed.

  There’s something about all this feverish activity on deck that’s not quite right. It’s as if Cap’n Rustbane is keen that everyone is kept constantly busy, busy, busy. Even if there isn’t in fact anything much that needs to be done. Most of it seems to be just make-work. Perhaps his idea is that the more people work, the less time they have for thinking – something he doesn’t want them doing too much of. He’s the one to be doing the thinking, Cap’n Rustbane himself. I must remember, Cap’n Rustbane’s the king on board this ship – in this world within a world. If I forget that, I’m likely to find my head separated from my shoulders, map or no map.

  “Down ’ere,” said Cheesefang gruffly behind him.

  They went down half a dozen wooden steps to face a stout oak door that hung slightly crookedly on its hinges. In the middle of the door was a copper plate, green with corrosion, in the shape of an anchor.

  The rat shouldered Sylvester aside and knocked on the door.

  “Enter,” came Rustbane’s voice from within.

  “That means “Go in,’” said the rat to the hesitant Sylvester.

  “I know that.”

  “Then do it.”

  He did. The rat waited until he was inside and then slammed the door shut behind him.

  Sylvester found himself in a large and comfortably furnished cabin, all polished oak and shining brass and overstuffed black leather upholstery. Hung around the walls were a dozen or more gilt-framed portraits of what Sylvester guessed must be pirate captains of yore. There were otters, minks, rats and even a human, and none of them seemed to have a full complement of limbs or bodily organs. What they had in common, Sylvester thought as he gazed around at the gallery of nightmarish faces, was that they all seemed to be sn
eering at him.

  Where the walls weren’t adorned with pictures, there were bookshelves galore, all of them stuffed to bursting point with leather-bound books. Sylvester felt the Junior Archivist and Translator of Ancient Tongues within him begin to stir. This collection of books was far beyond anything the Library back in Foxglove could hope to offer. Even Celadon had only rarely seen a bound book; Sylvester knew them solely from Celadon’s lovingly fastidious descriptions. Squinting, Sylvester could make out a few of the titles and his eyebrows rose. These weren’t just tables of the tides or nautical manuals, although there were a few of those as well. Instead, Cap’n Rustbane’s library was made up of poetry, novels, plays and treatises on the sciences: physics, mathematics, chemistry, astronomy …

  Sylvester realized he was going to have to revise his opinions of the Cap’n. This wasn’t the library of a scapegrace sea dog, but that of a scholar.

  In the middle of the cabin was a great oak table covered with heaps of books and papers. Cap’n Rustbane stood at the table poring over something, his back to where Sylvester stood at the door. Hanging from the ceiling above the table, a brass lantern swung lazily from side to side with the motion of the ship. The cabin had no windows, and so the lantern was lit, even though it was broad daylight outside. The lantern light, as the ship rocked, created ever-changing patterns of shadow all over the floor and walls.

  “D’you know how long I’ve been searching for this treasure, young Sylvester?” said the fox, not looking up from his task.

  “No.”

  “Most of my life. All of my life, it sometimes seems.”

  Sylvester made a noncommittal sound.

  “Yes,” said Rustbane, “treasure. Glorious, wonderful, fabulous treasure. Treasure beyond all the riches a person could ever dream of. The kind of treasure that decides the fate of nations, of dynasties, of entire worlds. A treasure so splendiferous it could pave every street in all Sagaria with gold. A treasure for which whole armies have lost their lives and gladly so. A treasure that’s fit to make the mountains hang their heads in shame as it o’ershadows them. A treasure that—”