The Tides of Avarice

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The Tides of Avarice Page 37

by John Dahlgren


  It must have been the motion of the branches making me think I was at sea, thought Sylvester crossly to himself, shaking his head to try to banish his dreams from his mind. He pushed the covers back and stretched his legs.

  Someone threw something at the monkey, but it carried on chattering regardless. No wonder. Had it taken it into its mind to do so, the monkey could have easily killed a few of the mice, which were far smaller.

  The mindless cacophony reminded Sylvester of something he’d heard last night as he was drifting off to sleep – or had it been another of his dreams? He’d heard – or imagined he’d heard – Madame Zahnia talking in quiet tones. He hadn’t been able to estimate how far away she was – right outside his bedroom window or on a different branch altogether. In the stillness of the night, once all the mice and their guests were safely tucked up in bed, sounds were deceptive. Nor had he been able to make out any of the words Madame Zahnia had been speaking.

  After a short while, the flow of words stopped altogether. There was the sound of wings fanning the night air, then silence.

  He shook his head again and smiled ruefully to himself.

  There was a scrabbling noise as the monkey suddenly shut up and scampered away through the foliage, attracted by the prospect of food, perhaps, or by another of its kind.

  Sylvester breathed easier. The mice had told him not to worry about the monkeys, that the monkeys were trained not to harm anyone in the settlement, but even so Sylvester couldn’t make himself trust long-legged, long-tailed creatures. They were big monsters, and their teeth were sharp.

  Thinking about sharp white teeth made him think again of Cap’n Terrigan Rustbane.

  He shuddered.

  I wish I hadn’t done that.

  There was no sign of Viola or Mrs. Pickleberry, but someone had left a dish on the floor for him with a couple of bright red berry-like fruit on it. They tasted like sugar dusted with cinnamon, he discovered rapidly, and he wished his unknown benefactor had left him more.

  A few minutes later he was standing at the bottom of the rope ladder, his hand in Viola’s. She and her mother had been waiting down there with Madame Zahnia, Rasco and Gasbag. The plan, they explained to Sylvester when he’d appeared, was for Rasco and Gasbag to guide them to a port on the far side of the island, Skull Cove. Once there, with luck, they could stowaway on one of the merchant ships that, despite the constant threat of piracy, plied their trade in these waters.

  “Now, my friends,” said Madame Zahnia, all the bangles and gewgaws on her arms jangling discordantly as she adjusted her headdress, “it is time for us to be saying our goodbyes to each other.”

  Each of the lemmings leaned down so Madame Zahnia could embrace them around the neck. Her perfume seemed even heavier than it had last night, when it had been almost suffocating in the confines of her house.

  Sylvester was the last of the lemmings she hugged and, once she’d done so, she looked at him earnestly.

  “I wish,” she told him, “there was something more I could give you as you leave Ouwinju than just the advice my Revealer relayed to you yesterday.” She shrugged. “But that’s the way my gifts work.”

  Her voice became so bleak and sympathetic that Sylvester stared at her, trying to read the meaning behind the words.

  “Always remember,” she was saying, “that the true path is seldom the one you’d like it to be, even though it’s the one that leads you home quickest and safest. You still have much to do, Sylvester Lemmington, and many lives depend on you completing those important tasks correctly. Believe me when I tell you I’m acting in your best interests.”

  Sylvester wrinkled his forehead. What in heck is she trying to tell us?

  “Uh, thanks, I guess,” he said.

  “You would do well to remember my words, all three of you, even though it may be hard to believe them in the days to come.”

  Sylvester felt his hackles rising. There was something very … amiss going on here.

  “Thank you, Madame Zahnia,” Viola said, her suspicions evidently unaroused. “Thank you for everything.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Madame Zahnia, pleasantly enough. “There’s something else you should know. There may come a time when one of you has to make the greatest sacrifice of all, when one of you has to close the circle.”

  Everybody looked at the old seeress, expecting her to explain herself, but her lips remained closed.

  “What do you mean?” said Sylvester at last.

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” was all the answer Madame Zahnia gave him.

  Rasco and Gasbag were looking at her in just as much confusion as the lemmings.

  “What’s you talking about, grandmère?” Rasco began. “It seems to me you—”

  There was a sudden turmoil in the undergrowth.

  “Ah, there you are!” said a dreadedly familiar voice. “Good to meet you again, Lemmington. So tiresome of fate to have pulled us apart the way it did, what?”

  Sylvester looked up. Standing over him, a big grin on his face, was the one person he’d hoped never again to meet in his life.

  “Rustbane!” he gasped.

  “That’ll be Cap’n Rustbane to you, my lad. Cap’n Terrigan Rustbane. You could add a few respectful words about me being the Scourge of the Seven Seas and the like, if you felt like being a little bit extra-courteous. No? I can see that my appeals for gentlemanly etiquette are lost on you. So sad. Maybe a few dozen lashes with the cat-o’-nine-tails will persuade you to pay a little more attention to social decorum. Seize her, boyos!”

  The last cry was directed toward a bevy of his thugs, who’d come crashing out of the bushes behind him. Obediently, they leaped as one upon Mrs. Pickleberry,, who’d been threatening to do serious damage to their skipper with Elvira.

  “Now, where was I?” said Rustbane a few moments later, when the din of the scrum on top of Mrs. Pickleberry had died down a little. “Ah, yes, I was dwelling upon the delightful prospect of watching Sylvester’s miserable little furry hide being sliced to shreds by the cruel claws o’ the nine-tailed cat.”

  Sylvester tuned the pirate’s gloating out.

  He looked at Madame Zahnia. The old, gaudily dressed mouse was standing there, her hands knitted in front of her copious breast, the rolls of fat on her throat overflowing the neck of her bright pink dress, her eyes closed as if the last thing in the world she wanted to see was Sylvester’s accusatory glare.

  When finally she spoke, it was in a voice entirely unlike any they’d heard from her before.

  “Here’s yer prey, Deathflash. I’d a trussed ’em up all neat and tidy fer ya, but there din’t seem no need, wus there? Leastwise, that’s what this old jungle priestess thought.”

  Madame Zahnia cackled like a she-devil and danced a little caper where she stood.

  “If a fish coulda keep him mout’ shut, it would neva get itself caught,” she said with a further burst of shrill hilarity.

  Cap’n Rustbane joined her laughter.

  And now Madame Zahnia did open her eyes.

  She stared straight at Sylvester, who stared straight back into the depths of her gaze.

  What he saw there was an emotion entirely different from that in her voice or her words, or on her face. He saw what he could describe only as a frozen ocean, infinitely deep, eternally chill. There was sadness there, and pleading and a wisdom that seemed to belong not to any living creature but to come from somewhere far beyond all mortal understanding. It was, he realized, making a sudden intuitive leap, the wisdom of the Zindars, which had not disappeared from Sagaria when that ancient race had left but passed down from one Sagarian to another, preserved in such unlikely frames as that of a fat old mouse with atrocious taste in dress isolated in the middle of nowhere on a pirate-infested island. The Zindars had left behind two treasures, not just one. And who was to say which was more valuable
?

  Sylvester heard once more those enigmatic words of Madame Zahnia, spoken just a few moments ago, “Believe me when I tell you I’m acting in your best interests. You would do well to remember my words, all three of you, even though it may be hard for you to believe them in the days to come.”

  He nodded almost imperceptibly to the voodoo mouse and she nodded back. He thought he could detect, just for an instant, the hint of a smile in her gaze.

  Then it was gone. She was the cruel mistress once more, the turncoat who’d sold them out to their pursuers.

  “But here’s a fish can’t keep his mouth shut,” said Cap’n Rustbane, beaming. He gestured, and two of his crewmen stepped behind Sylvester and started hobbling his legs. Out of the corner of his eye, Sylvester saw that Viola was being similarly tied. Nearby, Rasco and Gasbag were staring at their grandmother in complete shock. It was obvious this betrayal, if betrayal it truly was, was as much of a surprise to them as to the lemmings.

  “How could you do this, Grandma?” said Gasbag, looking as if he was about to burst into tears. “How could you do this to our friends?”

  “Never trust an old voodoo witch further than you can throw her,” Cap’n Rustbane explained. “It’s a maxim that’ll guide you well in the future. Now get lost, small fry, unless you want to join your friends aboard my merry pirate vessel?”

  The two younger mice melted into the undergrowth, so that within a moment it was as if they’d never been there.

  “I thought so,” said Cap’n Rustbane, picking at his teeth with a long curved thorn.

  He took off his feathered hat and bowed deeply to Madame Zahnia. “I have you to thank for the successful conclusion of this search, my lady,” he said. “Believe me, it is not something I shall forget early. Cap’n Terrigan Rustbane is well aware of how deeply he is in your debt, and be assured he will return the favor at some not-too-distant time.”

  Madame Zahnia gave an awful leer that was at least ninety-five percent scarlet lipstick. Sylvester, by now so well-bound he could hardly breathe, thought she was blushing. “Oh, go on with you, you old rogue,” she said.

  Cap’n Rustbane became businesslike, moving briskly around the clearing at the base of the rope ladder and issuing crisp orders to his henchmen. Mrs. Pickleberry had incapacitated five of them before being eventually overpowered, so arrangements had to be made to carry injured personnel as well as herself – the only way the pirates had been able to subdue her had been by beating her unconscious. One of them, Jeopord, was wearing her rolling pin in his belt as if it were an extra sword. Sylvester could detect no trace in the gap-toothed ocelot’s demeanor of the treachery he was planning against his skipper.

  At last, they were ready to depart for the long march back to Hangman’s Haven.

  “See ya soon, big boy,” was the last they heard of Madame Zahnia.

  Sylvester glanced back down the path along which he was being poked and prodded by his captors. The old fat mouse was standing beneath the treetop settlement of Ouwinju, which had become unnaturally still, as if the mice who dwelled there were horrified by their elder’s perfidy. She was waving a large red and white-spotted handkerchief after them.

  ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿

  Sylvester had no idea how much time had passed when the lemmings became aware from the rocking of the floor beneath them that the Shadeblaze was making its way out of Hangman’s Haven.

  The trek back from Ouwinju had been a nightmare of savage heat, exhausted muscles, and merciless lashing by the low branches and twigs that seemed to search out the captives as they stumbled along in the midst of the scoffing pirates. Once they’d reached the harbor, they’d been led immediately down into the deepest bowels of the corsair vessel. Deeper, deeper and yet deeper, until it seemed for sure they must burst through the planking of the Shadeblaze’s hull and emerge in the cold, murky water beneath. Instead, they’d been hurled into a cabin barely large enough for the three of them that smelled of stagnant water, mildewed timber, and rancid, well, best not to think of what it was that had gone rancid.

  Mrs. Pickleberry had been unconscious but, after they’d been sitting there in the pitch darkness for an indefinite period, Sylvester and Viola heard her pull herself up off the soggy floor.

  “Are you all right, Mom?”

  Mrs. Pickleberry hawked and spat a few times before replying. When she did speak it was in a voice almost unrecognizable. “I’ll be even better when I’ve nailed that blasted mouse’s hide to the wall. With the blasted mouse still in it.”

  “Er, Madame Zahnia, you mean?” said Sylvester. He could hear Viola shuffling on her rear across the cabin floor to put her arm around her mother’s shoulders.

  “Who else? Viola, get your nose out of my ear, drat you, you clumsy chit.”

  “Mo–om.” Threateningly.

  “O’ course I mean that fatty Madame Zahnia,” continued Mrs. Pickleberry, clearly addressing Sylvester now. “Who else d’you think I mean? Though I reckon her hideous little grandsons are as bad as she is any day, if you give ’em the chance.”

  Tripping over his words, Sylvester tried to explain to her what he’d seen after Mrs. Pickleberry had vanished beneath a punching and grunting pile of pirates. “The two young mice were as dismayed by what she’d done as any of us. Besides …” He paused. How to explain in the darkness to a doubtless skeptical Daphne Pickleberry the expression he’d observed in the old voodoo priestess’s eyes?

  The odd thing was that, knowing all this, there was a part of him that still agreed with Mrs. Pickleberry. The knife of betrayal was still turning its blade remorselessly in his gut. He wanted to punch someone, and the only suitable candidates seemed to be the three mice.

  Except, of course, they were countless miles away in the middle of the jungle, doubtless swinging happily along their rope bridges and sparing not a moment’s thought for the three hapless lemmings who’d been delivered into the ruthless paws of the pirate.

  “It could be worse,” Viola was saying to her mother. “We’re all still in one piece, aren’t we?”

  But for how long? thought Sylvester despairingly. He remembered all too clearly the promises Cap’n Rustbane had made to put a painful end to his life, and it was unlikely that Cap’n Rustbane’s memory on the matter was any worse than Sylvester’s own. And Cap’n Rustbane had never struck Sylvester as the kind of individual who failed to follow through on his promises.

  “What was that you said?” Viola asked him sharply.

  “Nothing, I just gulped.”

  “But you gulped very expressively.”

  “I did?”

  “Is there something you’re trying to tell us?”

  Yes, there was, but at the same time he couldn’t tell them. He couldn’t tell them it had been criminal of him to allow them to accompany him on this madcap escapade. Most particularly, he’d been a fat-headed imbecile to let them, when they’d finally escaped from Rustbane’s clutches, be captured once again. He tried to draw some reassurance from what Madame Zahnia had told them yesterday when she’d been reading the messages her Revealer showed her: that a successful result depended on all of them following the course of action that had already, somewhere, somehow, sometime, been predetermined and that this course of action might often seem to them to be doomed. If there was ever a situation that seemed doomed, Sylvester reflected sadly, now was it. But this might have been exactly what Madame Zahnia’s Revealer was referring to.

  Or she might be just a mad old mouse who’d sell her soul to the highest bidder, in which case …

  Sylvester gulped again and hoped it wasn’t as loud as the last time.

  He didn’t like to think about that “in which case.”

  “She could have poisoned us, you know,” said Viola, sounding as if she were trying to sound cheerful.

  “True,” said Sylvester.

  “Just about did, that supp
er they fed us,” mumbled Mrs. Pickleberry. There was still something odd about the way she was speaking.

  “Or,” said Viola, “turned us into something. You know, something voodooish.”

  “She could,” said Sylvester. “Except it was all mumbo jumbo. She told us so herself.”

  “You think it really was?”

  “Of course.” Sylvester wasn’t at all sure it had been nonsense, but he decided the best way to reassure Viola and Mrs. Pickleberry was to pretend he was. “Always remember that the true path,” he said, his voice warbling in a passable imitation of Madame Zahnia’s, “is seldom the most likeable but it most often leads you home.”

  “You’re bad,” said Viola, beginning to giggle.

  “Bloody awful, you ask me,” said Mrs. Pickleberry.

  They didn’t.

  Viola’s giggling was infectious and soon, Sylvester found himself rolling around in the fetid bilgewater that covered the floor of this dungeon. With each new whoop of laughter that came out of him, Viola’s laughter too became more uncontrollable. He knew there was more than a touch of hysteria in the way they were behaving, but he didn’t care. It had been far too long since either of them had just let themselves go like this.

  Mrs. Pickleberry was unamused. “Kids!”

  When they finally calmed, Viola and Sylvester were leaning against each other, shoulder to shoulder. Neither knew how they’d managed to find each other in the dark, but they had. Sylvester thought it must be an omen or something – a sign they were meant to be together, whatever adversities life threw in their path.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he said to Viola.

  “Quite probably,” she said. “But unfortunately, my mother’s here.”

  “I’m not deaf, you two!” roared Mrs. Pickleberry.

  That set the pair of them off laughing again.

  “You know what?” said Viola.

  “What?”

  “We make a pretty good team, you and me.”

  “We do?” said Sylvester, as if this were the most astonishing news in the world.

 

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