The Tides of Avarice

by John Dahlgren

  “South-southwest’s closer to south than to west,” said Sylvester eagerly. “Yes, I get it.”

  He did too. Up until this moment he’d been looking at the map as merely a type of document with which he was unfamiliar, a source of valuable information that was fascinating to him because it conveyed that information in a way quite unlike the way the words in the old scrolls did. But now, now it was a map, something very special and exciting. It was as if a map could take a whole region of the world, fold it up until it was tiny, then stow it away in a drawer where it would lie waiting, trembling with concentrated latent magic. Ready to be opened out again and become the full-size geographical area once more, complete with the winds and the scents and the splashings of cold ocean spray on your face.

  There was beauty in this whole fresh map concept, but it wasn’t the beauty that attracted Sylvester so much.

  It was the magic that the map, that all maps, possessed.

  The power.

  “The place marked ‘X’ is more down here,” he said, pointing, but he wasn’t really listening to his own words.

  Back at the Library in Foxglove, with kindly old Celadon breathing down his neck, Sylvester had read about books that had power – magical books that might or might not be grimoires. But he’d never dreamed that maps could contain that same pulsing quality. And it wasn’t only special maps that had it, like only special books did, it was all maps. Anything capable of creasing up a part of the world until it was tiny enough to be put in a pocket was surely filled with magical power, was it not?

  And there was one of them in front of him, made all the more powerful by the fact that a part of it didn’t exist in this physical world.

  He became aware that Cap’n Rustbane was watching him very quietly so as not to interrupt his chain of thought. When the pirate noticed Sylvester was returning from his reverie, he gave a little chuckle.

  “You and me,” said the fox, “we’re going to be friends, my lad. Mark my words, but that’s true.”

  Somehow, Sylvester doubted it, but while Cap’n Rustbane was speaking the words, they seemed plausible.

  “Once we’ve found the treasure,” Sylvester said, his voice sounding dismayingly thin, “we’ll be—I mean, Viola and her mom and me, we’ll be free to leave won’t we?”

  “As free as seagulls,” replied the pirate grandly. “You have my word on it, as a fox of honor.”

  A fox of honor.

  Sylvester remembered how much Rustbane’s previous use of that oath had meant to the pirate.

  Nothing.

  Perhaps even less than nothing.

  And he suspected the Cap’n regarded their lives in much the same way.

  I have to be careful, thought Sylvester, about everything, literally everything, I say or do from now on. However much Rustbane may make me believe from time to time he’s good-hearted underneath it all, that he’s a diamond in the rough, I have to remember he isn’t that at all.

  He’s a villain.

  And we’re at his mercy … the mercy he doesn’t have!

  8 The Only Language They Understand

  The rest of the day passed in fits and starts, time speeding up and slowing down in response to Sylvester’s level of interest or boredom as Cap’n Rustbane showed him around the Shadeblaze and introduced him to the realities of seafaring life. Sylvester would never have believed there could be so much to learn, or that he’d take so many hours learning it. Every time he thought his head was on the verge of exploding because of the amount of new information that had been stuffed in there, Cap’n Rustbane (usually with the redoubtable Cheesefang in attendance as a combined bodyguard and straight man) would come up with something new to tell him. The science of navigation alone, Sylvester came to believe as he handled the ship’s sextant or marveled at the hundreds of finely ruled gradations around the perimeter of the Shadeblaze’s compass, merited a lifetime of dedicated study. Rustbane managed to pack its rudiments into a couple of hours or less.

  Navigation was possibly the most interesting of all the topics they covered that day. It was also the one where Sylvester’s learning was most often disrupted by sudden bouts of daydreaming. Talking about navigation naturally led him often to start thinking about maps, and from there it was but a short step from going off into a reverie of wonder at the fact that one of these amazing, magical, powerful entities was contained right inside his very own head!

  Every now and then he’d think about Viola and his mind would cloud with guilt that he wasn’t thinking about her more often. She must be safe, he told himself. He wondered how she and Mrs. Pickleberry were occupying their time. Then Cap’n Rustbane would present him with some new marvel and they’d slide out of his thoughts again …

  … until next time they appeared, when he’d feel guilty all over again.

  There was one deeply disturbing incident during the day, followed by a series of events that would cloud Sylvester’s happiness for a very long time to come.

  It occurred not long after he and Rustbane had consumed their luncheon, back in the Cap’n’s cabin for the meal.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Enter if you really need to see me,” cried Rustbane impatiently. “Otherwise you’d be better off just to creep back where you came from.”

  Under the circumstances, Sylvester thought, whoever was at the door would have to be a very brave person indeed if they entered the cabin.

  So he was surprised when the door opened, and even more so when he recognized the opener.

  “Sorry to disturb ye, Cap’n,” said the mangy-looking ocelot whom Sylvester had last seen, back in Foxglove’s town square, being thrown face first into a wall by an enraged Mrs. Pickleberry. Perhaps the ocelot had lost a few teeth during the encounter, perhaps not. It was hard to tell which of the gaps in the rotting array his mouth presented were new ones, and which had been there for a long time.

  “Ah-hem?” said Rustbane. “Then why did you, Jeopord?”

  “We seem to have a bit of trouble, Skipper.”

  “Spill it out, man!”

  “It’s Threefingers Bogsprinkler, sir.”

  What weird names some of these pirates do have, reflected Sylvester.

  “What about him?” Cap’n Rustbane was saying.

  “Well, sir, you know how I’ve been suspecting him of pilfering gold from the treasure room?”

  “You may have told me, my Jack o’ Cups. If so, I’ve forgotten about it.”

  You never forget anything, you rogue, thought Sylvester. You’ve got a mind like a clamp.

  Jeopord made a little gesture with his hands as if to say he was thinking exactly the same thing but didn’t dare speak it out loud.

  “What about it?” prompted the Cap’n.

  “Today, while he was on deck as one of the party deputed to do patches for the topsail, Skip, I searched his bunk and its environs.”

  “And?”

  “And I found an oilskin packet wi’ a dozen doubloons inside it hidden under his mattress, sir.”

  “You’re sure someone else didn’t plant it there?”

  “Sure I’m sure.” The ocelot gave a wide grin to show how sure he was. The room seemed to fill up with black and broken stumps. “But we’re planning to find out the truth the traditional way, sir.”

  “Then you’re right, I ought to be in attendance. We owe the fellow that, at least. Come along, Sylvester.”

  Back up on deck, the four of them – Cheesefang and Jeopord leading, Cap’n Rustbane and Sylvester in their wake – made toward the bow of the Shadeblaze. There, they found what seemed to be the entirety of the Shadeblaze’s complement gathered around two wolverines, who were holding between them one of the very few human beings belonging to Rustbane’s crew.

  The man looked terrified, his face as pale as one of the ship’s sails. Every now and then he fl
inched with pain as a one-eyed beaver skipped behind the two wolverines and nipped the man in the leg.

  The captive, Sylvester mused, must be the oddly named Threefingers Bogsprinkler. Sylvester tried to see if indeed the man had only three fingers, but the fellow’s arms were being held behind his back.

  Until yesterday, Sylvester thought, amazed at the rapidity with which he kept accommodating himself to the remarkable, I’d never seen a human outside of an illustration in a book, and was only half-convinced they actually existed, that they weren’t just mythical creatures like three-headed snakes with faces in their midriffs. Now I’ve become so blasé about humans that all that interests me is the number of fingers this one has.

  Cap’n Rustbane left Sylvester behind with Cheesefang while he and Jeopord pushed their way to the front of the crowd.

  The Cap’n hopped up onto a barrel so that he came a bit closer to the same height as the frightened man. Aware that he was the focus of all eyes, but most especially Bogsprinkler’s, the Cap’n very slowly pulled a pair of long black leather gloves out of the embroidered pocket of his jacket and pulled them on. Sylvester wasn’t sure what the donning of the gloves implied, but it obviously meant something to Bogsprinkler, because the man shivered in stark dread.

  “So,” said the gray fox as if picking up in the middle of a continuing conversation, “you’re not happy with the share I give you of the spoils we capture, eh?”

  The words came bubbling out of the hitherto-silent man as if they’d been held inside him by a firmly jammed cork that someone had now pulled.

  “’Tain’t that! I was just, like, borrowing a little ’til nex’ payday, Skip, honest I was.”

  “Avast!” said Cap’n Rustbane in a voice like ice. He held up one black-gloved paw. There was a terrible silence on the deck of the Shadeblaze, broken only by the creaking of timbers and the slapping of the sails. “Don’t insult me with such tomfoolery! Save me your pathetic excuses, ye lice-infested scum!”

  In a heartbeat his voice had gone from frigid to thunderous, his tone from calmly civilized to the coarse bellow of the dockside. It was the sudden alternation between these two facets of Cap’n Rustbane’s character that would, Sylvester thought, forever mystify him no matter how long he associated with the pirate captain.

  Shivering in his ill-fitting boots, he hoped it wouldn’t be long.

  “Is there any reason I shouldn’t have ye flayed alive?” snarled the gray fox. His claws, fully unsheathed, were scything rapidly through the air as if the flaying might be a task he’d undertake himself . . . with enjoyment.

  “It-it-it wasn’t my idea,” stammered Bogsprinkler. His eyes, swiveling around desperately, fixed on the face of one of the spectators, seemingly at random. “It was him. Bluespot! It was Bluespot made me do it! It was his idea.”

  “Shaddap, Threefingers, ye accursed liar.” The pirate called Bluespot was a big raccoon with a mightily scarred face. As other crew members shied away from him, clearing a space, he spat on the deck and pulled a dagger from the filthy red scarf he wore tied around his waist. “Lie about me, would ye? Blame me for yer own crimes to save yer lily-white skin, would ye? I’ll gut ye like a fish!” He threw himself at the pinioned human.

  “Seize him!” cried Cap’n Rustbane, staring at Bluespot with sneering disdain.

  The leaping raccoon was plucked out of the air by several sturdy, heavily tattooed arms and thrown onto the splintery boards of the deck, where he struggled and gasped and cursed.

  “Keep your tongue still,” snapped Rustbane. “Or, swelp me, I’ll make sure you don’t have a tongue in your head to waggle any more.”

  Bluespot abruptly stilled.

  “I’m weary of this spectacle,” said the gray fox with a theatrical sigh. Once again, his voice had reverted to its habitual tone of mock sophistication. “Spare me any more of it, you two, will you?”

  Impossibly, Bogsprinkler’s face grew even paler.

  Rustbane’s voice dropped to a deadly hiss. “Threefingers, you know the penalty for stealing from the treasure room, don’t you?”

  “Ye-ye-yes, sir.”

  “Tell me what it is.”

  It appeared as if Bogsprinkler would more likely lose consciousness than be able to get the words out.

  The gray fox’s face adopted a look of deep sympathy. “I see your predicament. Then I’ll say it for you. The prescribed penalty for stealing from the hoard is severe, and rightly so. For it’s not just from me you’re stealing, you despicable cur, but from all your hard-working crewmates.”

  There were shouts of agreement from the surrounding pirates.

  “So, what we do, you see,” continued Cap’n Rustbane, raising a paw to restore quiet, “is we boil treacherous thieves like you alive.”

  This time, Bogsprinkler did faint, collapsing between the two wolverines, without whose grip on his arms he’d have fallen full-length on the deck. They shook him roughly until he recovered his senses.

  “But I’m a merciful man, or, rather, fox.” Cap’n Rustbane turned to look around at his crew, a big, ferociously toothed grin on his face. “Ain’t I just, me hearties?”

  “YES!” they roared in return.

  “So, I’m going to let you off the boiling, Threefingers,” the fox resumed, “although, if you don’t mind me saying so” – he made a show of sniffing the air – “a piping hot bath might do you a world of good. Instead, I’m going to have you keelhauled. There’s a very good chance you’ll survive it, although that pretty face of yours’ll no longer be attracting the ladies, and any future Mrs. Bogsprinkler may find herself faced with an unwelcome surprise when the lights go down on your wedding night. But you’ll bless my name every morning that you wake up still alive, Threefingers, I’ll warrant you that. And you’ll never steal again from the Shadeblaze’s treasure room, will you? I’ll warrant you that too.”

  The fox drummed a hindpaw on the top of the empty barrel, to make an ominous booming noise.

  He turned to Jeopord.

  “Take him away and do it.”

  Sylvester wondered what keelhauling involved. It was obviously something pretty dreadful, to judge from what Cap’n Rustbane had said and how Bogsprinkler had reacted. He’d have to ask the Cap’n later.

  “As for you,” said Cap’n Rustbane, turning to the prostrate Bluespot.

  “Have mercy upon my ’umble soul, Skip,” moaned the raccoon, but without much noticeable hope.

  “You jest, I trust,” said the fox. “For you, there’ll be thirty kisses from the gunner’s daughter.”

  Sylvester looked around for a gunner. He couldn’t see one, and certainly there was nobody on deck who could possibly qualify to be anyone’s daughter. So far as Sylvester was aware, the only females on board the Shadeblaze were Viola and Mrs. Pickleberry (with the latter, in Sylvester’s estimation, having only a sort of provisional female status).

  “Thirty lashes?” shrieked the raccoon. “But I had nothing to do with—”

  “Oh, all right, then,” said the fox, seeming bored. “Make it forty.”

  “Forty? Bu–but—”

  “You want me to round it up to an even fifty?”

  “N-No!”

  “Then thank your lucky stars your skipper’s an amenable sort of cove.” Cap’n Rustbane gestured to Jeopord. “See to it, First Mate.”

  The ocelot whom Rustbane had nicknamed Jack o’ Cups sprang into action, issuing instructions to various ruthless-looking crewmen. Threefingers Bogsprinkler tried pleading with the wolverines for mercy, but the expression on their faces soon silenced him.

  Cap’n Rustbane, who’d leaped down from the barrel as soon as he’d issued his sentences, took Sylvester’s arm.

  “I trust this will serve as a salutary lesson, young friend,” he said as pirates bustled and jostled around them. “A salutary lesson in how to run a pirate vessel. T
hese things have to be done, and they have to be done right.”

  And you think I’m going to believe that? thought Sylvester, looking into the fox’s eyes. In them he saw not the regretful severity of a strict master, but a dancing cruelty. The fox enjoyed ordering the infliction of suffering.

  The Cap’n must have read something of this in Sylvester’s eyes, for he turned abruptly away.

  “Cheesefang!”

  “Yessir?”

  “Show our young companion, Mr. Lemmington, to his cabin. I think he’s had his fill of fresh sea air for the day.”

  “Yessir.”

  There was no trace left of the person who’d befriended them last night. Clearly there was the Cheesefang who displayed kindness to strangers and who emerged only when Cap’n Rustbane wasn’t around, and another Cheesefang who did his skipper’s bidding and was as pitiless a pirate as any. It was the second Cheesefang who grabbed Sylvester by the shoulders and turned him in the direction of his own cabin.

  Sylvester obediently started walking in that direction.

  Not obediently enough, it seemed. There was a sudden agonizing pain in his rear, and he realized as he clutched at himself that Cheesefang had jabbed him viciously with the point of his cutlass.

  He turned toward the sea rat, enraged.

  “Why, you—!”

  “Cap’n’s orders,” responded Cheesefang smugly.

  “He never ordered you to do that.”

  “He would’ve if he’d thoughta it.”

  Sylvester began to speak, then stopped. There was no arguing against that sort of logic.

  Past Cheesefang he could see Cap’n Rustbane standing apart from the rest of his crew, who were moving about in organized chaos as they prepared to enact the punishments the Cap’n had specified. The fox looked vaguely lonely for a moment, but Sylvester knew any fleeting sympathy would have been misplaced. This was the way the gray fox preferred things to be. He was in his element. He had created his own world aboard the Shadeblaze, a world designed to be exactly how he wanted it.