The Legend of the Red Specter (The Adventures of the Red Specter Book 1)

by M. A. Wisniewski

  Joy felt her heart race. This had to be the entire active crew—the whole night shift. Right now, this ship was completely unguarded. If she could find the girls they could just walk right off the boat, no problem. Until they got to the docks, and then there would be problems. Big problems. Joy glanced along their escape route, and didn't find it any more encouraging than before. It was so frustrating—this was the perfect opportunity. A chance like this wouldn't come again. She had to get them out now, while the Red Specter had taken out all the guards.…

  She stopped, realized what she was thinking. She wasn't even questioning it now. The Red Specter—or the copycat, whatever—had done this. He was on board, somewhere. Maybe he could help her, if she could only talk to him. She scanned the main deck of the Joanne Spaulding again. It still looked empty, but now she knew it wasn't. The Red Specter was lurking about somewhere, and the thought of it sent a chill down her spine. For a second, she considered calling out to him, but thought better of it. She might attract the attention of the dockside guards, and besides, she had no way of knowing for sure that he'd actually be friendly. Just because the comic strip version was a hero, that didn't mean this guy was. She had no idea what his real agenda was. He could be a complete loon. No, it was best to proceed under the assumption that she was on her own here.

  Joy found the captain’s unconscious form, retrieved his key-ring, and headed down the hatch, into the hold of the Joanne Spaulding.

  Chapter 42

  Exotic Birds

  Getting down to the hold and searching it was a much easier task, now that she didn't have to bother with stealth. She spotted the girls right away, though the reason for that didn't make her happy. Their cage was suspended in the air, a good fifteen feet above the floor, dangling from a rope. What the Abyss was this? Joy followed the path of the rope holding up the cage, down to a block and tackle that was secured to a hard point at the bottom of the hull. Joy stared at the pulley system at the anchor point, trying to see if there was some sort of winch or crank handle to lower the cage, but not finding one. So much for this being easy. Hsiu Mei hadn't said anything about this! Kind of an important detail.

  Joy sighed, took another calming breath. She couldn't let her frustration get the better of her. "Hello," she called out, in Wuyu Xiaish. "Hello, wake up! I'm here to rescue you, but I need your help. Wake up, please."

  After a few seconds, the sleeping forms in the bottom of the cage began to stir, to turn to the sound of her voice. Six tired, confused, and suspicious faces peered down at her.

  "What? What is going on?" said one of the girls. "Who are you?"

  "My name is Fan Joy Song," she replied. "And I'm here to get you out."

  "What? Get us out?" Some of the girls started to direct nervous glances around the hold. "Why would you do that? Where is the Captain?"

  "The Captain has been knocked out and tied up, along with the rest of the crew. So you can escape now, if I can get you down. But I don't know how to use this pulley system. Can you tell me how it works?"

  "You can't work it," said the girl, with narrow, wary eyes. "Not by yourself. It needs four people. It's to protect us."

  Protect them? A likely story. But she could see already that the girls didn't trust her. Well, it was understandable. She was a stranger. Time to take a different tack.

  "Is Lin Lin there? Wong Lin Lin?"

  The smallest girl's eyes went wide. She looked at her fellow prisoners for a second, before raising her hand. "That's me."

  Joy smiled back up. "Nice to meet you. You look just like Hsiu Mei. She's the one that sent me to get the rest of you. She didn't forget about you. She was really worried."

  The girls looked confused. "The ones who bought Hsiu Mei want to steal the rest of us?" Said one of them.

  "Nobody bought Hsiu Mei. She escaped. And found me."

  "She escaped?" said Lin Lin, but the first girl shushed her, and then they all started whispering amongst themselves. Joy couldn't make out any of it. This was a ridiculous way to have a conversation.

  "Okay, hang on," she said. "I'm going to come up to you."

  Joy dropped her flashlight, put the key ring in her teeth, and began to climb the rope up to the cage. Climbing a taut rope at an angle was awkward, compared to going straight up and down, but she managed okay. This was like climbing a new Caliburn obstacle after they’d altered the course each season. About halfway up, she began to regret the decision to hold the keys in her teeth instead of her satchel, as her jaw started to ache and drool began to leak from the corners of her mouth. But it was too late to fix now. She kept going until she got above the cage, then dropped down on top of it. She had a sudden moment of belly-lurching fear as her landing caused the whole cage to lurch and swing, and she went to all fours to keep her balance, while the girls below clutched each other and stared back up at her. Her jaw clenched down on the key ring, and Joy realized she had a huge grin on her face. Wheeee!

  She grabbed the key ring, tried to discreetly wipe it off on her suit, and dropped it through the bars on top of the cage. "Here you go," she called down. Six faces stared back up at her. Lin Lin picked up the keys and started trying them on their manacles. Joy crawled to the edge of the cage and stuck her entire torso over. Hanging upside-down, she reached down to brace one hand against a horizontal cross-bar and got a firm grip at the top of the cage with her other hand. Then she let her hips go over the side, using her wide grip and her core strength to keep control as she righted herself, sticking her feet through gaps in the bars to stand on the cage floor, while hanging off the side. She came face to face with the girls just in time to see their shocked expressions. Joy felt a little nonplussed. That move really wasn't all that hard. Did it look cool? Whatever, it wasn't important.

  Lin Lin was going through key after key, and none of them were working on her manacles. They wouldn't even fit through the keyhole. Of course they wouldn't—only the Sleywie had the right key for those. Joy glanced at the chains leading up to their collars, each of which had a dangling egg-shaped symbol of Nibiru, possibly hiding a shimmering blue jewel inside. But they could deal with that later. Now they needed to open the cage door.

  Joy aimed her most charming smile at the girls. "May I come in?"

  Lin Lin looked up, and started to come to her, but First Girl stopped her.

  "Wait," said First Girl, turning back to Joy. "Who are you? Why should we trust you?"

  "I'm Fan Joy Song, and I'm a friend of Hsiu Mei's," said Joy. "But she didn't mention anything about your cage being hung up like this. It's kind of extreme, don't you think?"

  "It happened after she left," said Lin Lin. "The Captain did it. There's been all this talk—the buyers are acting strange. I've heard the crew say that maybe they wouldn't buy us after all, that maybe Hsiu Mei made them angry?"

  "The captain heard the talk and decided he didn't trust his men any more. Around us," said First Girl. As Joy looked at all the worried faces peering back at her, she couldn't help noticing that whatever agent the cultists had sent had been pretty selective. This cage would turn into a beauty pageant with a little scrubbing. For some reason, this pissed her off even further, but she fought it down, not wanting to frighten the girls.

  "So he hoisted you all up like this, Miss…. I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name?"

  "Ha Shao Yin," said First Girl, after some hesitation. Joy got the rest of them to introduce themselves as well. She tried to make mnemonic puns for each of their names, commit them to memory. It could help convince them that she cared. Two of them weren't from Xia provinces, but from farther off. The war had displaced so many people. But something about this crazy suspended cage wasn’t making sense.

  "Seems like a crazy plan to me, Shao Yin," said Joy. "How is a rope going to stop them from just lowering you down, if that's the problem?"

  "That pulley is set so it needs four men to lower it," she replied. "Because four is too many to keep a secret. Or so the captain says."

  On a ship? That m
ade sense, but.… "It only takes one to climb the rope."

  "The captain gave us orders. If anyone tries to open the door when he isn't here, all of us should kick them until they fall," said Shao Yin.

  Okay, the captain knew what he was doing, kinda. "Wait, how are you getting food, and.…"

  Joy peered past the girls and spotted a sort of wastebin in the corner, thin enough on one side to pass through the bars, attached to a rope, and.…

  "It's that," said Joy, pointing. "That's what you use, right? That's perfect. You can climb down that rope and escape. I'll help you with that."

  "Why?" demanded Shao Yin. "The captain isn't here. Why shouldn't we kick you off?"

  "What?" said Joy. "But I'm not one of the crew. I'm here to help.…"

  Joy looked at the girls’ faces, and saw a mix of suspicion, fear, and anxiety directed back at her. Gears clicked into place in her head. "You think this is a trick? You think one of the men hired me?"

  Shao Yin just crossed her arms and glared. Lin Lin couldn't take it.

  "If the sailors sent her, then why didn't she know about the pulley? It's because my sister didn't know—"

  "She says she didn't know," countered Shao Yin. "Maybe she's just a good liar. And why would she help us? She doesn't know any of us."

  "I know Hsiu Mei," said Joy.

  "How?" said Shao Yin. She rounded back on Lin Lin. "We've all travelled a long way. We're docked at a foreign city. Do-Do-Na." The strange word rolled oddly off her tongue. "Do you know anyone in Do-Do-Na? Do you have family here? I never heard you mention it."

  Lin Lin averted her eyes and didn't say anything.

  "I met her after she escaped," said Joy. "I found her while she was hiding."

  "How did Hsiu Mei escape?" demanded Shao Yin. "That doesn't sound like her."

  Joy took a deep breath and tried to organize her thoughts. These girls were already having a hard time accepting her story. The last thing she needed to do was start spouting nonsense about a "Red-Faced Ghost," or she'd be here all night.

  "All these men—the sailors, the buyers, the Triads—they're all criminals. Selling people is against the law here. And these criminals have started fighting, each trying to double-cross the other. On the night they took Hsiu Mei out, a big fight broke out, and her guards ran. She saw no one was watching her, because of the fight, so she was able to run and hide.…"

  Joy was going to say more, but a firework went off her head, and suddenly she knew exactly how she was going to get the girls past the dock guards. So simple! Now, if only she could get them to listen to her.

  "Shao Yin, I know you don't believe I'd go this far just to help you, but I really am. I know you've had a hard time, but this," Joy waved her hand, a sweeping gesture to take in their manacles, the cage, the hold of illegal cargo, "this isn't the whole world. There are good people out there, and I want to prove it to you. So you just tell me: what do I need to do to convince you? Tell me that and I'll do it."

  Shao Yin glared at her over crossed arms, eyes narrowed in concentration. Finally, she spoke.

  "You say you're Hsiu Mei's friend," she said. "So then, tell us something about her. Something only she would know."

  Six faces turned to Joy, expectantly. Joy kept her welcoming smile plastered to her face while she wracked her brain, thinking back over the past several hours, of the time she'd spent with Hsiu Mei. Joy had spent most of it giving her advice, or explaining things, or translating, or running for her life, or thinking of ways to solve her problems. Had she asked her any personal questions? At all? What a lousy reporter she was. There had to have been something.…

  "Hsiu Mei and Lin Lin both grew up on a farm," she said, stalling for time. Of course that wasn't going to cut it. "And they have an uncle, a Celestial Scholar. His name is Tan, he's married, and he lives in Genyen Province." Whew.

  Five blank expressions turned to Lin Lin. Clearly, that was news to all of them.

  "She's right!" said Lin Lin, face lighting up. "We do! Only Big Sister would know about Uncle Tan. She really did escape. And now she's waiting for us."

  "Great," said Joy. "Keys, please."

  Lin Lin ran over. Shao Yin looked like she wanted to stop her but another girl stopped her. What was her name again? Waves in her hair, friendly-looking... Shu Bo! “She passed the test,” said Shu Bo. “I think we should go for it. Whatever happens, it has to be better than being sold.”

  Shao Yin didn’t look convinced of that, not by a long shot, but she didn’t protest any further.

  Joy had the door unlocked and was inside in a flash. She went straight for the bucket in the corner, though she had to deal with Lin Lin trying to hug her, which she could only do sort of halfway, because of the manacles, and had to deal with a bunch of questions about Hsiu Mei, how she was doing, where she was, and so on.

  "She's at the Temple, the Prakasa Mandira—it’s beautiful, and safe, and you'll be going to see her soon. Um... just hold on to the rest of that for now--we have to get going," said Joy. She was starting to worry about the amount of time she had used up. Blundering around in the dark, shivering in a blanket, searching the chart room, and now, having to debate with her rescue-ees. Was that a word? Never mind—What time was it now? Would anybody be coming along to check on the ship crew? Would replacements come for a new shift? Better get out now, in case the answer to any of those questions turned out to be yes.

  Joy got rid of the bucket, trying not to pay too close attention to its contents, though she couldn't avoid the smell. Barbaric, treating human beings like this. She chucked it a good distance away from the cage, idly hoping for it to land on something valuable and easily stained. She double-checked the knots anchoring the rope to the cage bars and gave it a couple sharp tugs, before she was satisfied. She tossed the rest of the rope out of the open cage door, and was pleased to note that it went all the way to the floor.

  "Okay, time to get moving," she said, turning back to the girls and pointing out the door.

  They looked at each other uncertainly. One of them shrank back, fell to her knees and clung to the side of the cage. "You want us to climb out? We can't do that! We'll fall!"

  Joy did a double-take. This, she hadn't expected. "No, you won't," she said. "Trust me, that doesn't happen. Going down is easy. Anyone can do it."

  "Even with these?" asked Lin Lin, holding up her manacled hands.

  For a second, Joy considered breaking out her lock-picks and opening all the manacles, then decided against it. Too time-consuming. Besides which, those chains had plenty of slack between the wrists.

  "Those are no problem," she insisted. She pulled up a body-length's worth of rope and held it up in front of her to demonstrate. "Going down is easy. You hold the rope close in, tight, see—and just walk down with your hands, like this."

  Joy demonstrated the motion on the rope, then grabbed Lin Lin's wrists and moved them through that same motion. "See, no problem. And you don't even have to move your hands. If you want, you can just squeeze the rope—with your feet, too. Then you loosen up just a bit, and you'll slide down. You'll burn your hands a little, but it'll be fine. And we're not even that high up. It'll only be a second or two, and then you're down. So come on. I'll be right here to help."

  Joy examined the exit and realized that the hardest part was getting past the cage floor. As it was, the girls would be scraping against the lower edge of the cage going over. Joy could easily see them getting their fingers caught between that edge and the rope, and then they might panic and fall. It would be a lot easier if there was some clearance there. After thinking it over, she pulled the rope back up and fed the end over the bar at the very top of the cage, by the door. Then she swung around to the outside of the cage, just by the door, hooked one knee around one of the horizontal crossbars, at around waist-height. She had her other foot braced against the bottom of the cage, and was able to lean out into space, with both her hands free, nice and stable. She grabbed the rope and held it so it no longer scraped the b
ottom edge of the cage.

  She turned down to witness more shocked stares from the girls. What was the big deal? This was just like hanging upside down from your knees on a tree branch, like when you were a kid, only at a bit of an angle. Not many Caliburn climbers here? Well, whatever.

  "So, who's first?" asked Joy.

  Shu Bo started to step forward, but Shao Yin stopped her. "I'm first," she said.

  Shao Yin marched forward, grim-faced, and grabbed the rope. She took a deep breath, and glared at Joy.

  "Why are you looking at me like that?" she snapped.

  "You're going first."

  "So?"

  "I know you still don't trust me," said Joy. "You think I'm lying. You think there's a man hiding down there to jump out and rape the first girl down. But you're going first?"

  Shao Yin just tipped her chin up a bit and returned her gaze, saying nothing.

  Joy smiled at her. "When I told you I was here to help, you didn't believe me. Because nobody would risk their life to help someone else, with nothing to gain in return. But the thing you think nobody does is exactly what you just did, without hesitation. With what you've been through, you've got every reason to be looking out for yourself and no one else, but you're not. Shao Yin, I think you're kind of awesome."

  Shao Yin sort of flinched at that. For a second, her invisible wall of cynicism and hostility was shattered, and Joy got a brief glimpse of a very different person, someone achingly vulnerable and wounded. Then she turned away and jumped off the cage.

  Joy stiffened herself in place, acting as a human strut. It worked. Shao Yin didn't hit the edge on her way down. The load wasn't too hard to bear, though she heard some fearful squeaks from the other girls as the shifting weight caused the cage to lean to one side. Joy had an unpleasant moment where she found her whole body start to pivot horizontally where she had weak support, but she held on until Shao Yin's weight left the rope. Joy looked down to see the girl crouched tensely on the floor, looking around frantically for hidden attackers. None came.