Blue Sea Burning

by Geoff Rodkey

  “I’m going to avenge his death. Seems like he would have wanted that.”

  Adonis didn’t say anything.

  “Do you have enough gold?” I’d left him all but three pieces of what Burn Healy had given us, minus what Janks had gotten. “I’ve still got a bit left if you want it.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t need it please.”

  Kira came out of the house dressed in her own clothes, still damp from Quint’s washing. She’d been wearing an old dress of Venus’s when she went up the mountain.

  “The house looks much better,” she said.

  “Thanks.” A sarcastic comment about all the help I’d gotten with the cleaning popped into my head, but I figured it was better left unsaid. “Didn’t know you were back. Did you find the tomb okay?”

  She nodded, looking sorrowful—and I got a little pang of sorrow myself at the thought that if I’d gone along, I could have paid a visit to my mother’s grave while we were up there.

  But then the house would still need cleaning, and we had to get down the hill to Port Scratch before Burn Healy set sail. For all we knew, he might be gone already.

  “Where’s yer friend, thank ye?” Adonis asked Kira.

  “He went to the barracks. To buy a hook for his hand.”

  “Is Quint ready?” I asked.

  “I think so,” she said. She went back inside to look for him.

  I stood up. Adonis didn’t move, except to keep scratching Clem’s belly. It really was odd to see. I didn’t know my brother had it in him to be gentle like that.

  “Quint thinks Janks will be a good foreman, long as you treat him well,” I told him. “Just . . . remember what Healy said about respect, and you’ll be fine.”

  I didn’t really believe that. Getting the pirates to pull together and put the plantation back on a decent footing was going to take a lot of clever leadership. And Adonis wasn’t clever. Or a leader.

  I think he knew that, which was why he was so upset.

  “You could come with us, you know,” I said.

  He shook his head. “This is me place, right here please. Anyway, yer nuts.”

  “How so?”

  “Gettin’ on that ship again. Ripper an’ that Lilo bloke gonna blow it out of the water.”

  I’d been trying not to think about that.

  “An’ that’s if Healy’s crew let ye on to begin with. Probably won’t.”

  “Well, in that case . . . we’ll be back for dinner.”

  Quint vaulted through the doorway, walking on his hands. Kira was behind him.

  “All squared away. Stew in the pot’s ready to eat,” he told Adonis. “Don’t let it sit more’n a day. Give ye a bellyache after that.”

  Quint had a big grin on his face. Like everyone else on the plantation, he’d been a working pirate before he got too injured to crew a ship, and the prospect of going to sea with Burn Healy had him more excited than I’d ever seen him.

  I still wasn’t sure how Healy would feel about hiring a legless carpenter, but our plan—to promise Healy that the three of us would be Quint’s legs and carry him wherever he needed to go on board—seemed reasonable, assuming the crew went along with it.

  Mung signaled to us that the carriage was ready. We’d decided to take it so Quint wouldn’t have to walk all the way to Port Scratch on his hands, and Mung was at the reins because our old driver, Stumpy, hadn’t survived his last card game.

  We had to wait around a few minutes for Guts. In the middle of it, the ground began to shake like a rickety table. Kira looked terrified.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Earthquake,” I said. “We get a lot of them.”

  Quint squinted in the direction of the volcano. “Been comin’ more regular lately. Coughed up some ash last month, too.”

  “Hope she spits lava on ye comin’ down,” grumbled Adonis. But he must have felt guilty about it, because a moment later, he added, “Sorry thanks.”

  Guts showed up just then. He had a new hook strapped to his left hand under a leather cowl, and his face was twitching hard.

  “Ground’s shakin’!”

  “Earthquake,” I said. “No big deal.” Then I nodded at the hook. “Going to name that one, too?” He’d called his last hook Lucy, which had always struck me as silly.

  He grimaced. “Nah. Just make me madder if I lose it.”

  After saying our good-byes to Adonis—Clem woke up and screeched at us, which more or less matched my brother’s mood—we piled into the back of the carriage and started off down the wagon-rutted road.

  I waved out the window one last time at my brother, and he replied with a hand gesture that would have gotten him shot down in Port Scratch.

  “Think he’ll manage okay?” I asked Quint.

  Quint shrugged. “Probably not.”

  THE DOCK AROUND THE GRIFT was swarming with Healy pirates, all loading gear so fast that it seemed like they might be casting off any minute. I didn’t want to interrupt any of them for fear of getting my head taken off, so we stood around awkwardly on the dock until Spiggs strode by and noticed us.

  “Looking for the cap?”

  I nodded.

  “Went to meet the captain of the Sea Goblin.” Spiggs pointed up the street. “Check the Blind Goat.”

  We left Mung with the horses so they wouldn’t get stolen for meat and started up the street, which was so filth-ridden that Quint rode piggyback on my shoulders rather than walk on his hands.

  “Strange thing, Burn Healy in the Blind Goat,” he said, his head so close to my ear I could feel his breath on it.

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “It’s a Ripper joint,” he said.

  The Goat was a big, single-story box with walls made of wood so warped that they looked like they might cave in at any second. We were about thirty feet from the place when two burly men popped out the open front door, clutching pistols, and ran around the far corner of the building.

  “Stop a bit,” said Quint.

  I stopped. “Why?”

  “In case they’s runnin’ from somethin’, instead o’ to it. Wouldn’t want to get in the way.”

  But nobody else followed them out, so after a long moment standing in the muck of the street, we continued on, stepping through the open doorway into the tavern.

  The only light in the place came through either the door or the dozens of cracks in the walls and ceiling, so it took a moment for our eyes to adjust to the gloom. The place was empty except for three grimy pirates who were hunched over the bar, sniggering to each other.

  The one standing on the bartender’s side looked up to growl at us. “Wot ye want?”

  “Looking for Burn Healy,” I said.

  The men sniggered. “Just missed ’im,” said one.

  “Do you know where he went?” I asked.

  “Down below, I expect,” said another, and they all sniggered again.

  I didn’t get it. “Is there a basement?”

  More sniggers. Then:

  “He’s dead, boy.”

  My stomach fell out at the words.

  “Now, hang on, Zig,” growled the bartender. “Deal ain’t done yet, or we woulda heard it.”

  The words were barely out of his mouth when a shattering crash erupted from somewhere in the back, like someone had just jumped through a window. It was followed by several gunshots . . . and then a thud that I didn’t hear so much as feel through the floorboards.

  “Now it’s done!”

  “Come beggin’ fer help, left with a hole in his head!”

  The men at the bar cackled with glee as they slapped hands in celebration. I looked past them, horrified, at the closed door along the back wall.

  The sneering bartender turned back to face us. “Turns out Healy weren’t so tough after
all. Ripper Jones gonna pay a fine bounty for that meat.”

  He started toward us, pulling a knife from his waistband as he spoke.

  “An’ as fer your lot . . .”

  Quint dropped from my shoulders to the floor. Guts stepped forward, brandishing his new hook. I was getting my fists up, cursing myself for having been stupid enough to walk into a place like this unarmed, when the door in the back opened.

  The bartender glanced back over his shoulder, and the color left his face.

  Burn Healy was standing in the door frame, a pistol in each hand. In the little room behind him, something heavy and slack slid off a chair, and another low thud vibrated through the floorboards.

  All three pirates ran past us out the door so fast that they’d vanished almost before the bartender’s dropped knife hit the floor.

  Healy walked over behind the bar. Through the door he’d just exited, I could see a table, chairs, a lot of broken glass, and several heaps on the floor. Two of the heaps resembled the men who’d run around the back of the building just before we entered.

  My uncle set the pistols down on the bar, and then took a bottle of brown liquor and a glass from the top shelf.

  “It never gets easier,” he said, shaking his head as he wiped the lip of the glass clean with his shirttail. “You spend years building a reputation, so when you need something done, you don’t have to shoot anyone to make it happen.”

  He poured himself a drink. “But the minute there’s some chop in the water, everybody thinks they can get over on you.”

  He drained the glass in one gulp. Then he looked our way. “Why are you here?”

  “We’ve found a carpenter,” I said.

  Quint vaulted up onto a barstool, then onto the bar itself. He waddled over to Healy on his stumps and stuck out his hand.

  “Quint Bailey, Cap. Honor to meet ye. Understand you’re in need of a man with my skills.”

  Healy shook Quint’s hand with a wary look on his face.

  “Carpenter, are you?”

  “Prepped by masters, salted with experience. That’s me.”

  “How much experience?”

  “Five years apprenticed in the yard at Safe Harbor. Six on ships: first one press-ganged by His Majesty, next five as chief man fer Warty Creech, rest his soul.” Quint kissed his finger and raised it to the heavens.

  Healy frowned. “You were carpenter on the Crow?”

  Quint nodded gravely. “Me last ship.”

  “Why couldn’t you save her?”

  “Could’ve—if the shell wot sank her hadn’t taken me legs off.” He shook his head at the memory. “I’d been ten feet farther down the deck, she’d be sailin’ still. So would I.”

  “So would Warty.”

  “Aye . . . That he would.”

  Quint’s eyes crinkled with sorrow, but he didn’t shrink from Healy’s withering stare.

  Finally, the captain spoke. “Come look at my ship.”

  “THAT’S A BIG BITE, that is.”

  We were down in the gloomy main hold of the Grift, wedged into the aisle between the port hull and the massive pile of water barrels that filled most of the space. Quint was standing on a barrel, examining the ragged mix of hammered planks, grain sacks, oakum, and pitch plugging the two-foot-wide hole that had nearly sunk us on the voyage in.

  It had been stabilized, but not truly fixed, and seawater was still bubbling through in spots and trickling down the hull.

  Quint whistled appreciatively. “Wot was it? Shell gun?”

  Healy nodded. “From a shore battery. How many hours to fix her?”

  Quint squinted, thinking for a moment.

  “If we can careen her—”

  “There’s no time. We need to set sail at the tide.”

  “Can ye wait a day?”

  “It’s been risk enough staying in port this long. Best guess is Jones and Homaya are on a regular sweep between here and the coast. If we’re not out by tonight, like as not they’ll catch us either docked or in the dead miles.”

  Quint shook his head. “I can repatch. Shore it up a bit. But if ye want a true fix, I gotta get her out o’ the water.”

  “We can dry-dock her in Edgartown. I just need you to get us there.”

  Quint snorted in disbelief. “Due respect, Cap—how ye gonna make port in Edgartown without gettin’ strung up fer piracy?”

  Edgartown was the colonial capital—the biggest Rovian outpost in the New Lands. I’d never been, but I figured there were plenty of soldiers garrisoned there. And piracy was punishable by death.

  “Leave that to me,” said Healy. “I just need a patch that’ll make the trip.”

  “At wot speed?”

  “Fourteen, if the wind’s right.”

  “Wouldn’t risk more’n eight. And no promises if ye see combat. ’Specially against the likes of the Red Throat.” That was Ripper’s ship. “Wot’s Homaya sailin’?”

  “Two Cartager men-of-war. And there’s five ships in all—Frenzy and Blood Lust have joined them.”

  That last part was news to me. Frenzy and Blood Lust were pirate raiders that, until now, I hadn’t realized were allied with the Ripper. Healy must have learned that since he’d been on Deadweather.

  Quint’s eyes widened. “All five of ’em? Against just us?”

  “That’s right.”

  His mouth fell open. “How in the name o’—”

  “No time for the story,” said Healy. “How soon to get us repatched?”

  “With the right material?” Quint gave the damage another look. “Five hours.”

  “I need you to do it in two.”

  Quint was looking a lot less thrilled about going to sea than he had been when we left the plantation.

  “And there’s the issue of your legs,” Healy added.

  “Wot legs?” asked Quint.

  “That’s the issue. How will you get around if we see combat?”

  “Reckoned these three’d be my mates,” Quint told him, nodding at us. “Haul me where I need to go, plug shot if it comes to that.”

  Healy turned to look at me with concern. I shrugged.

  “If your crew will have us . . . we need to get to Edgartown,” I told him.

  “There’s no guaranteeing we’ll make it.”

  “I understand.”

  “Not sure you do,” he said. “Ever been in a sea battle?”

  “I was on the Earthly Pleasure.”

  “That’ll be a picnic compared to this.”

  “I been in battles,” Guts offered. “Powder monkey.”

  “Under whose command?” Healy asked him.

  Guts’s face twitched hard. “The Ripper,” he said, staring at his feet.

  Healy didn’t comment. Instead, he looked at Kira.

  “I have fought on land,” she told him. “And I am not afraid to die.”

  “I’d rather you were,” he told her.

  Then he looked back at me. “Where’s your brother?”

  “Up at the plantation.”

  “To stay?”

  “Yes.”

  Healy stroked his jaw as he stared at all three of us in turn. “Carpenter’s mates?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He grimaced. Then he leaned in toward me and spoke in a quiet voice.

  “I’m not your father, boy . . . but if I were, I’d never let you on this ship.”

  The way he looked at me put a lump in my throat.

  “I want to go with you,” I said.

  His face tightened in another grimace. He stared up at the ceiling planks for a moment, like he was looking to them for permission. Or maybe it was forgiveness.

  Finally, he exhaled sharply through his nose.

  “Fine.” He turned to Quint. “Tell the purser what you n
eed. And hurry.”

  He was two steps up the companionway when the waver in Quint’s voice turned him back around.

  “Beggin’ pardon, Cap—”

  “Yes?”

  “We hadn’t talked about pay—”

  “Get the job done, you’ll see a crew share. Fifty thousand gold.”

  Quint looked confused. “Ye mean, we split fifty—”

  “That’s the share. You’re splitting ten million.”

  Quint’s eyeballs bulged. “I can live with that.”

  “Let’s hope we all do.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Mates

  AFTER CHECKING THE GRIFT’S STORES against the list of supplies Quint gave him, the purser sent Guts, Kira, and me off with a handful of silver coin to buy extra lumber and nails from Port Scratch’s only store. On the way, I stopped to say good-bye to Mung, who’d been waiting with the carriage in case we needed to go back up the hill.

  “Please watch out for my brother,” I begged him. “Try to keep him out of trouble.”

  Mung gave me a solemn nod, then gurgled a request of his own. I was pretty sure I understood it.

  “I’ll do the same for Quint. I promise.”

  Mung smiled, and I knew I’d guessed right. Then he gave me a hug that nearly squeezed the breath out of me. I had to hurry off after that, not just because I didn’t want the crew to think I was slacking, but because I could feel myself starting to get emotional. The list of things I liked about the ugly fruit plantation was a pretty short one, but Mung was at the top of it.

  By the time we got back to the Grift with armloads of cut lumber and a bucket of nails, Quint already had a team of pirates hard at work in a makeshift staging area on the lower deck, sawing wood for the new patch. We’d barely had time to set down the wood when a lanky pirate appeared with a tape measure that he spread against each of our upper backs.

  “Wot ye doin’?” Guts asked him.

  “Harnesses.”

  He sped away before we could ask him what he meant, but a stocky, square-headed Gualo had popped up in his place, and he answered our question before we even asked it.

  “He makes harnesses from sailcloth. For your backs. So you can carry carpenter. I am Ismail. I train you. Come.”