Owl and the Tiger Thieves

by Kristi Charish

  The corner of his mouth and left eye twitched in a decidedly unfriendly expression. “Be thankful the skeletons in the cells weren’t moving,” he said.

  I snorted as I dropped the beam to one side. The one nice thing about rotten, termite-eaten wood is that it’s light.

  “I’m starting to think those knitting club stories were overblown.”

  “Then how do you explain all the people who’ve disappeared in here?”

  I shrugged and looked at the name on the next cell. Three inmates, a Smith, Diego, and one that loosely translated to Mateo the Bone-legged. Curiosity got the better of me, and I shone the flashlight through the grate. “There are an awful lot of ways people die in tombs that don’t involve supernatural monsters and magic. Traps, poisonous gas, collapsing tunnels, that pit—hell, there’s good old-fashioned getting lost.” . . . Hunh . . . the name had been accurate . . . I was surprised that they’d left him with the bone leg . . . then again, maybe he’d carved it from an unfortunate cellmate . . . I angled the flashlight around. Sure enough, one of his cellmates was missing a femur.

  Morbid creativity in desperate times. Not to be macabre, but I was tempted. It wasn’t every day you ran across something like that.

  “Maybe,” Artemis said, checking the door opposite mine, me working the left and he the right. “But I’d rather be cautious than caught unaware—and besides, you’re forgetting one thing.”

  “Which is?” Next cell. A few more skeletons with the skin hanging off their bones like rice paper. Yet again, not what I was looking for.

  “That legends like that don’t last hundreds of years without a little bit of truth.”

  I snorted. No—there was nothing in the cell that indicated anything but a bunch of pirates who’d had their heads bashed in, apparently by the one who’d managed to slip his shackles. Maybe he’d gotten tired of dealing with the others and listening to them whine? Or just gone mad . . . or hungry.

  “When did you say your pirate was incarcerated here?”

  “Mid–eighteen hundreds.” Goddamn it, where the hell was my pirate? If the remaining guards weren’t onto the prison break yet, it wouldn’t be long.

  Artemis checked the door again. “These dates are all wrong. Late eighteen hundreds—petty thieves and minor-league pirates. I’m guessing the one you’re looking for was more of a contender?”

  I inclined my head. “You could say that.” Timid Jack, the Mad Hatter, had certainly made a name for himself along the coast. I aimed my flashlight down one of the two offshoot halls that were more akin to tunnels, twisting farther into the cliffs.

  “My guess? If we head down one of these, we’ll reach the sections where the real pirates were kept—well away from any chance of escape. The old Spanish who built this place weren’t afraid of a few ghosts and a dark cave, not when it meant they could do Isabella’s and God’s work torturing the evil out,” Artemis offered.

  If I jumped at every dungeon that gave me the heebie-jeebies . . . “Still not picking anything up?” I asked Artemis.

  “I’m starting to resent being treated like a supernatural bloodhound.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Start sniffing.”

  He shot me a dirty look, but his nostrils flared once again. “From what I can smell and taste in the air, there’s still nothing setting off alarm bells. Yet. Happy?”

  “Very. You go left, I go right. Yell if you find anything, scream if it’s a monster.” I found an old torch left in the wall and, using the prison guard’s lighter I’d pocketed, lit the end. I shoved it to Artemis and started down the right. It didn’t take long to reach the cells. They were larger this time and fitted with reinforced bars. I checked the date on the wall beside the cell: 1852. Michael Smithy, William Bonny, Black Roberts . . . this was where they’d stuck the English pirates. And from the reinforced spikes and solid iron grates fitted over the cell door slot, apparently the Spanish had decided that they deserved special treatment.

  Something scraped against the stone in the hall.

  Shit. I froze and listened. The sound didn’t repeat itself, not even as I counted to a slow ten in time with my pounding heart. It could have been anything, I reasoned. A fallen beam, a piece of sandstone giving way . . .

  Anything. Anything at all.

  Setting my nerves aside, I moved on to the next cell.

  Whereas all the previous doors had angry black letters etched deep into the wood, this one was different. On one of the doors, the one farthest to the left of me at the end of the hall, the burnt, grooved letters and numbers had been filled in with bright green.

  I peered through the grate; at least Artemis wasn’t here to see my hands shaking the beam of light. Obscured by the shadows I saw something green—

  I heard another scrape against the stone floor, then felt a brush of air against my ear.

  I spun, knife out, only to find Artemis standing behind me.

  He smiled unpleasantly. “Still think those old wives’ tales are a waste?”

  I shook my head and put the knife back into my pocket. “I think you like scaring me.”

  Artemis inclined his head and began examining the green-lettered door. He brushed his hand against the grooves, tracing the still bright letters with his fingers and holding perfectly still. For a moment I wondered if he sensed something, but when he caught me looking at him, he said, “It’s nothing—I would have smelled something by now. I’m one of the monsters, remember?”

  I couldn’t fucking forget . . . “Give me a boost, will you?”

  Artemis obliged, kneeling down and bracing his hands.

  I placed my flashlight in my mouth before stepping up. Now, why the hell had I thought there was something green in there?

  “I was impressed you let them go.”

  I glanced down at Artemis as I angled the flashlight into the cell, not bothering to hide my confusion. For once he actually looked uncomfortable. “Your three wayward cellmates,” he clarified. “Not everyone would have. Let them go.”

  Yeah, and if they managed to get caught by the security guard Artemis had decided to leave watching Spanish soap operas, I’d be regretting it. I turned my attention back to the cell. Sure enough, there was something green in the corner . . . “I had the good fortune to be leaving. I figured I might as well spread the love around.”

  “And it doesn’t hurt to have them chasing four people instead of one. Worst-case scenario,” Artemis added.

  What the hell was the green? Leftover green furniture? Maybe oxidized copper? Though I had a hard time believing anyone would leave oxidized copper lying around on purpose— Jesus.

  Sure enough, tucked into the corner and shackled to the wall with irons was a husk of a body, traces of clothing scraps still clinging to the bones and tattered skin of the corpse. It wasn’t too different from the others we’d seen—with one exception.

  It was green—all of him—the same shade as the paint outside the cell. Under other circumstances the color might have evoked grass or new leaves—a picture of the healthy outdoors and spring. Up close, though, in conjunction with the tar-soaked wood door and under the blue glow of my flashlight, it looked more putrid than fresh, lending the corpse a garish, sickly appearance—not that corpses normally evoke good health. It wasn’t every day you saw paint like that hold. Jesus, even his fingers were dyed that color . . .

  “You realize you might have made things worse for them?”

  Hunh? I looked hard at Artemis, taking my eyes off the green dead man.

  “The mousy French girl in particular. She didn’t strike me as a career thief,” Artemis said.

  Yeah, and a lot of people would have said the same thing about me a few years back. I started on the lock. The corpse wasn’t moving, and if Artemis wasn’t worried . . . A cursory look at the key ring I’d lifted from Miguelito showed that none of the keys would fit the jail cell lock—at the very best they’d be stashed away down here in an abandoned office, or more likely they were in some Peruvian attic as part of o
ld family antiques. Shit. “See if you can find something to pick a lock with,” I said to Artemis.

  He frowned at me. “I have no intention of sitting here twiddling my thumbs while you try to get an old, rusted lock open.”

  “I won’t know if it’s rusted through until I try to open it—hey!”

  Before I could stop him, Artemis picked up a broken piece of stone off the floor and smashed it into the lock. I cringed, expecting it to ring out. It rang—but the sound was low and muted, like bending metal. I opened my eyes. Artemis was holding two pieces in his hands. “See? Rusted through.”

  Asshole . . .

  “And that girl could be dead in a week.”

  I doubted it. She had to be resourceful to have survived this long in the IAA. “Maybe,” I said as I tried the cell door. Regardless of the state of the lock, the hinges worked. With a creak of rusted metal the door to the pirate’s cell swung open. I aimed the flashlight inside—again, nothing out of the ordinary, except for the green hue of my dead pirate. “But rotting in a cage because it’s a known quantity isn’t safer. It just means you rot. And I didn’t put her in here in the first place.” At some point, everyone had to stop looking for something and someone else to blame and start taking responsibility for their own fucking disasters. Mathilda had grasped that one—faster than most archaeology students I’d known who’d run afoul of the IAA. “She’ll be fine,” I said, and mostly I believed it. “I could have done without your telling them who I was,” I said to Artemis.

  “Trust me, I’m helping.”

  “How? By making sure the IAA and any supernaturals out looking for me have a trail?” Algorithms were a bitch these days. If online retailers could tell whether someone was pregnant from how many times she bought moisturizer, I’d hate to see what the vampires could do with a handful of confirmed sightings.

  “No, by getting you some fucking credit.”

  I turned on him. “I don’t need credit! I’m a thief. The point is not to take credit—for anything! Ever.” I turned my attention back to checking the corners and ceiling of the cell. “Look, can we change the topic?”

  “Fine. You spent an inordinate amount of time with my cousin over the past six months. Tell me, did you ever have any inkling he had a warlord in him? I mean, I certainly didn’t, but I’ll be the first to admit we haven’t really spoken in decades. I suppose even us supernaturals have the potential for change.”

  Why did I even try? I clenched my teeth and read the name carved into the stone. The Mad Hatter. I’d found my pirate. “How’s Violet?” She was a woman I’d met—both before and after Artemis had turned her into a wraith, right before he’d tried to do the same thing to me.

  Artemis let out a low whistle. “Ouch—that hurt. And Violet is just fine. Doesn’t remember a thing. She’s even enjoying a newfound career on daytime TV. It suits her well.”

  I made a derisive noise. There were no traps, no obvious structural faults, the skeleton looked sturdy enough. I didn’t think it would crumble into dust . . .

  “What?” Artemis said.

  “Nothing.” There was no point saying anything. Artemis was the kind of supernatural that wouldn’t get it.

  “Oh, for—” He turned me around and held the torch near my face, a disconcerted expression on his face. “No, I’m actually curious.”

  I sighed. “You can’t just make things better by giving people things,” I said.

  Instead of offering me a snarky comment, he laughed. “Why not? Violet doesn’t have any complaints about her new lot in life. And who the hell are you to tell her she should?”

  I turned my attention back to the Mad Hatter. Of course Artemis was wrong, but a small part of me wondered if he didn’t have a point—a very small point, but still, it was unsettling.

  “For someone who hates being told what she must or must not do, you’re certainly a hypocrite to hop on the bandwagon of judgment.”

  “Not the same thing,” I replied. What Artemis had done had been abusive, cruel, evil. Not seeing anything that elicited warning bells, I stepped inside the cell.

  I waited three breaths for something to happen, an ancient trap to be sprung. Still nothing.

  “Well?” Artemis called from outside.

  I crouched down in front of the Mad Hatter. His wrists were still chained to the wall overhead with old irons, scraps of bright green cloth clinging to the desiccated and partially mummified limbs. “Nothing in here except a skeleton in chains.” It smelled like death in here—along with the faint trace of something I recognized . . . garlic.

  Arsenic—and lots of it.

  Well, now I knew where the green color came from.

  “What the hell did that to him?” I turned to find Artemis crouching less than a foot behind me. I couldn’t help but jump. Goddamn it, how did he keep doing that?

  “Artemis, say hello to Timid Jack, aka the Mad Hatter. And the healthy green shade is a mark of Jack’s life before he took up a lucrative and short career of rape and pillage along the Peruvian coast.”

  “Failed artist chased out of town? If his hands are a sign of his skill, I agree with them.”

  It really was amazing how well the color had been preserved, if not the fabric and skin. “Close. Jack here owned a clothing shop in London, one that was doing well until a shipment of cotton and furs was pilfered by pirates on its way across the Atlantic.”

  “A tailor?” Artemis asked dubiously.

  I made a tsking sound as I tentatively began searching through the scraps that remained of the Mad Hatter’s clothes. “You make him sound so mundane. Our deceased friend Jack here owned a dress and hat shop for ladies and men of high fashion. Our friend Jack here was a master hatmaker.” And that had been his downfall.

  “A hatter and dressmaker for the high-fashion set during the eighteen hundreds was an unenviably dangerous profession courtesy of arsenic and mercury.”

  I spotted what I’d been looking for in the corner. It reflected some of the light back off its smooth, slick surface—like fur. A black rabbit-fur top hat like the ones that had been worn by well-to-do gentlemen or ones who wanted people to think they were well to do. One that still retained its shine, despite the dust, due to the mercury paint.

  Jack had never been seen without one of his mercury-laced top hats. I guess the prison guards at the time couldn’t be bothered taking it from him.

  “You are familiar with Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland?” I asked Artemis.

  “The debauched author who drank too much absinthe?”

  “And smoked way too much opium—but as far as the Mad Hatter is concerned, Lewis Carroll had the nuances right.”

  “Hatters of the eighteen hundreds went stark raving mad by the time they hit thirty from the mercury used to coat these,” I said, holding up the well-preserved rabbit-fur hat. “The paranoia, shyness, and manic tendencies of the Mad Hatter in Alice? Accurate portrayal.”

  “That certainly puts Alice in Wonderland in a whole new light.”

  “I imagine the arsenic and aniline dyes used for the dresses didn’t help much either.”

  “So he goes from hatter and dressmaker to pirate?”

  I inclined my head as I crouched back down before the shackled remains of Timid Jack. “Guess he was really upset about those pillaged furs and cotton. The mercury likely ate his brain into a paranoid delusional mess years before. The poisons we expose ourselves to . . .”

  “That still doesn’t explain the green skeleton.”

  “Ah, but it does. Dresses, lace, and artificial flowers, especially the flowers, were all painted with arsenic. It was the only way to get the green shade. Shame it eventually took its toll on the dyers’ livers and lungs. Puts a new spin on the expression ‘dying for beauty,’ doesn’t it?”

  Artemis didn’t answer me. Instead, he let out a low hiss. When I looked he was holding up his hand, the universal signal for “stop.”

  All of a sudden I was very conscious just how much breathi
ng echoed in the deserted stone cell. “What?”

  Artemis went silent for a moment, then seemed to shake it off. “I keep scenting something, then it vanishes—probably this place and your mercury-addled pirate.” He nodded at the cell again. “So, did he discard the traditional garb in favor of high fashion on the high seas?”

  I shrugged. “It’s the unexpected that scares us. I don’t know about you, but having a pirate dock at the side of my ship wearing a ridiculous top hat and green frock coat would have terrified the hell out of me. Who knows? Maybe he made hats for all his crew as well.” Hard to give up habits, even if you weren’t poisoning yourself with mercury.

  It brought whole new meaning to the phrase “Pick your poison.”

  A small stone medallion on a chain of leather with markings on the back—that was what I was looking for. Nothing flashy . . .

  I ran my flashlight over the corpse before pushing the remains of his bright green frock coat and the overgrown length of dried hair to the side. I braced myself and with the end of my flashlight pushed aside the tatters of green material that had once formed the lace of his shirt.

  Shit. It wasn’t there around his neck. I searched but there was no medallion—not under the remains of the green frock coat, not on the floor. For all I knew, he could have pawned it off to the locals or the guards in exchange for food or whatever passed for vice down here.

  I stood and did another sweep of the cell, then the walls, searching for any nook or cranny that could have been used as a hiding spot.

  “It’s not here, is it?”

  “Just because I haven’t found it doesn’t mean it isn’t here.” Come on, now, where would a Tiger Thief medallion have been hidden? Think like a mad, mercury-addled hatter, Owl . . .

  “Oh, for the love of—” Artemis added a few more choice phrases that translated in context if not words.

  I gave him a long, hard look. He was agitated; upset and focused down the hallway that led farther into the prison’s depths, a far cry from the way he’d been a moment before. It couldn’t just be the fact that he was losing patience—not that fast. “What are you not telling me?”