There was a lurch, a snap, and Smiley was in free fall, landing painfully on the hard ground face first. After a moment lying in a painful, private world of his own, he reached beneath himself and began groping around, for he’d landed on something that was proving incredibly uncomfortable. Forcing himself onto his hands and knees, he pulled the mysterious object out from under his belly. It was a boot.
His boot, Smiley realized with a rising sense of dread. His boot and a very, very angry snake.
“Hurry up!” said Rathbone, for the fifth time in as many minutes. “I thought you said you could pick the lock!” He was pacing, agitated, trying to keep watch on all possible entrances at once while Shan crouched in the icy water and fumbled at the door of the cage. The merfolk within stared impassively as he stamped back and forth.
“I did say that,” Shan agreed, his speech rather slurred thanks to the selection of slender metal implements clenched between his teeth. “But the thing about this lock . . . the main thing about this lock, right, is . . .”
“Is what!”
“Is that I can’t pick it.” Shan admitted, spitting his tools back into his hand and clambering out of the pool. “Not without the rest of my tools. I don’t suppose—”
“No,” said Rathbone firmly. “We’d never make it to the ship and back before that Douglas and his thugs caught up to us.” He swore and shook his head in disbelief. “Merfolk! I mean, you always heard the stories, but never expect to see them in the flesh!”
Shan had to admit that Rathbone was right; the two creatures were captivating. Their faces were mostly human, with features that suggested one was male and the other female, though a few thin lines here and there hinted at the existence of gills and fins somewhere in their heritage. Their skin looked tough, like flattened scales, and seemed to be slightly pearlescent, shifting between white and silver depending on how you looked at them.
Much of their bodies were wrapped in a strange, smooth material that looked like nothing he’d ever seen before and seemed to flow effortlessly in water. The coverings extended all the way down past their waists and tied together neatly in a point, making it impossible to tell with any certainty whether they were disguising something approaching a pair of human legs or, like the legends promised, an enormous fishlike tail. The two mer had been watching the two men intently with large and doleful expressions, but so far they’d given no indication that they understood anything that was being said.
Forcing himself to think less about the cage’s occupants and more about the current predicament, Shan began to join Rathbone in pacing around the cave. “So we can’t pick the lock. Can’t smash the bars. Reckon all four of us could carry the cage?”
“No,” Rathbone said, curtly. “Even if we could, who knows if merfolk can survive out of the water? We need the key, and somehow I doubt Douglas is just going to hand it over.”
“You know, I think he might.”
Rathbone’s hand went to his pistol, for Douglas’s looming form had appeared at the entrance to the cave, but the voice was Ramsey’s. He came in close behind the furious pirate, holding him at sword point. “Personally I was hoping he’d have swallowed it for safekeeping, so I’d have the pleasure of cutting it out of him, but young Smiley tells me it’s on a chain around his neck.”
“Ye’ve no business coming here and meddling in my affairs, ye’ self-righteous prig!” Douglas snarled. “Just ’cos ye’ got here first doesn’t mean ye’ run the whole damn ocean.”
“Not yet,” Ramsey muttered, and there was a glint in his eye as he spoke those words. “But I know more about being a pirate than you ever will, boy, and what separates us from kings and queens is we don’t treat people like things. Not out here, not even if we hate ’em more than anything in the world. People aren’t property.”
He practically spat the last word as he reached for the key to the cage. It was rare for Ramsey not to be the tallest in the room, but he almost had to stand on tiptoe to grasp the silver chain around his captive’s neck. He made no effort to lift the key away, but merely gave a savage yank so that Douglas choked and the necklace snapped.
Ramsey tossed the key to Shan, who caught it ably and began to fumble with the cage’s lock while the merfolk looked on, silent as ever. There were quiet footsteps behind him, and he turned to address Mercia as she entered. “Did you find the rest of his little gang?”
“All awake, but tied up tight,” she confirmed. “And a bit singed.” No wonder, she reflected, considering the amount of gunpowder she and Ramsey had tipped over Douglas and his crew as they’d reentered the camp, covering them in a thick gray coat. The expression on Ramsey’s face as he dropped a burning torch down onto the group was one she wouldn’t forget in a hurry.
Mercia stepped forward, giving a little smile in the direction of the merfolk. They all watched in anticipatory silence as Shan slid the key into the cage’s lock, though Douglas still shook in barely suppressed rage. The door swung wide open, and that was when everything happened at once.
Smiley, who had snuck back into the camp just in time to witness Douglas’s capture, decided that this was his opportunity to make amends. He leapt down from the dark ledges overhead with a loaded blunderbuss in his hands, but as he landed, his leg—bloodied and swollen by a dozen snakebites—gave out from under him. Smiley lost his footing, tumbling into the rock pool and bashing his head against the cage.
The ambush seemed to finally startle the merfolk into motion, and they fled from their prison, diving into the waiting river with two great splashes. What happened to them next no one could say for sure, as Smiley’s frantic thrashing sent water cascading in all directions, extinguishing the hideout’s campfire and casting the cave into darkness. Seizing his chance in the confusion, Douglas stepped forward, turning to swing a vicious punch at the captain who’d cost him his prisoners.
Ramsey, feeling the bulk of the man shifting away from him in the darkness, was faster. His sword came down sharply against Douglas’s ribs, tearing through his tunic with ease—and yet, to his surprise, the blade seemed to bounce away as harmlessly as if he’d struck stone. He had just enough time to land a second, equally ineffectual strike against the man’s leg before being lifted clean off his feet as Douglas’s fist connected. It felt like being hit by a sack full of broken bricks.
Ramsey flew backward, crashing into the boar’s head and dislodging it from its place atop the altar. Disturbing the remains appeared to trigger some kind of ancient mechanism, possibly a trap left behind to protect the shrine, for the ground immediately began to quake.
A ghostly blue light flooded the cave as the entire monument began to glow. It illuminated Douglas, who was standing over the fallen Ramsey with a large boulder held high above his head, meaning to crush him. He might very well have succeeded had Shan not scrambled for the blunderbuss lying next to Smiley’s stricken form and unloaded its contents into the giant’s back. Douglas staggered, but did not fall, and as he shrugged off the shredded remains of his coat, the others could finally see why.
Almost half of Douglas’s swarthy body was calcified, his skin the texture of roughly hewn stone. “Caught myself a little curse a while back,” he roared gleefully as he caught their astounded expressions. “Must’ve stolen something what didn’t want stealing.” Behind him, a fine trickle of sand began to pour from the ceiling. “Reckon I don’t have long left but I’ll last longer’n ye’ curs!”
He brought the rock down against the altar with enough force that the stone plinth actually cracked, but Ramsey was no longer upon it, having disentangled himself and rolled aside just in time. More dirt was cascading down now, and the cave’s exit was already half blocked by rubble. Whatever the purpose of the shrine had once been, its desecration had triggered an avalanche that looked set to entomb them all.
Ramsey ducked another of Douglas’s blows, searching wildly for a weapon that might pierce that unnaturally thick hide—but a large slab of stone crashing down an inch to his left made h
im reconsider the wisdom of fighting a rock-skinned behemoth in a rapidly collapsing cave. The merfolk, he realized, were nowhere to be seen, and he realized what that must mean.
“Into the water!” he bellowed at the others, staggering as a rocky fist grazed his cheek and left a deep cut across it. “Before we’re buried alive!” One by one, his crew threw themselves into the raging river, and Ramsey ducked under Douglas’s outstretched arms to do the same.
“Ye’ll not get away!” Douglas howled, leaping into the river after Ramsey as if to grab him in a great bear hug. Only when he hit the water did his beady eyes widen in fear and understanding, for while Ramsey was buoyed along on the river’s foamy surface, Douglas himself was far less fortunate. The curse of his stony flesh bore him helplessly down to the riverbed, and while he tenaciously tried to take a few faltering steps after the fleeing pirates, it was clear that he’d never be able to hold his breath long enough to escape.
After a moment, Douglas was forced to scramble back onto the riverbank, buckling under blows from tumbling rocks as he scrabbled uselessly against the rubble in search of an exit. There was an almighty crack, more enormous stones crashed down into the cave, and a billowing curtain of dust took him at last from Ramsey’s sight.
The river carried them carelessly outside, bumping and scraping them all off rocky outcroppings and, once, plunging them over a small waterfall. They were all bruised and battered as they finally staggered back onto dry land, finding themselves only a short distance from the Magpie’s Wing. Exhausted, they stumbled back up the gangplank and would have fallen asleep then and there if not for a strange keening sound that seemed to take up all around the ship.
Looking over the railings, the four pirates saw that they were flanked on every side by at least a hundred merfolk—it was hard to tell exactly, for they were all cavorting in celebration, diving and flipping and spiraling around one another.
“What’s this?” Rathbone asked, bemused but curious. “Have they come to thank us?”
“More than that,” said Ramsey cheerfully, clapping Rathbone on his aching back and making him wince. “They’ve come to keep up their part of the bargain.”
LARINNA
Once the distant lights of Sanctuary Outpost had faded from sight, Adelheid and the crew took their places at the map table and spread the parchment out in front of them. Larinna wasn’t entirely certain what form Simeon’s memories would take, but she assumed some kind of map or chart would be involved. Rather, the parchment contained just two lines of spidery writing:
On strangled shores, my ship you seek
Begin your search at Tribute Peak.
Privately, Larinna didn’t think that this was much to go on, and certainly not worth the grief they’d been through to obtain the information. The others seemed satisfied with what little they knew, though, and clustered around the table until they located Tribute Peak in a distant corner of the map. While Faizel and Ned headed above decks to set a course, Adelheid asked Larinna to linger for a moment.
“I’m sure you must think this is all just a wild goose chase,” she said, preemptively. Surprised, Larinna nodded. “Oh, don’t look so startled! You don’t hide your emotions that well.”
“Well, I expected something a little less cryptic,” Larinna retorted, indicating the parchment. “It barely tells us anything, assuming it can even be trusted.”
“It can,” Adelheid said firmly. “Memories aren’t always easy to interpret, but they don’t lie. Besides, I knew Captain Simeon. Back when he was alive, I mean. I was a deckhand on his crew when I was young.”
“You were?” Larinna stared. “That didn’t stop you from pulling his head clean off.”
Adelheid merely shrugged. “Better to be properly at rest than rattling around as a pile of bones for all eternity. He’d have thanked me.” She gave Larinna a look. “Or are you saying you wouldn’t want me to do the same for you, if it came to it?”
“It won’t. Are you saying you know for sure that these memories of Simeon’s are going to lead us to something good?”
Adelheid moved to the Unforgiven’s tiny kitchen and began to fish around in cupboards and cabinets until she produced a bottle of dark red wine and two tankards. “He ran a tight ship, did Simeon. As far as he was concerned, the captain’s word was law. So he never used to tell the crew much.”
“How terrible to be kept out of the loop like that,” Larinna said, dryly, which earned her a scowl along with a proffered share of the wine. She took both with good humor.
“One night, I was up late.” Adelheid took a deep swig of her drink and looked vaguely embarrassed. “Truth was I was stealing food from the galley, so when old Steel-Eye came in, I hid. I still don’t really know why I did it. Perhaps I was already fed up of following orders. Anyway, him and his first mate started talking, and Simeon told her that he was sure he’d found it this time. Sure that he’d found a clue to Athena’s Fortune.”
It took all Larinna’s self-control not to choke on her wine, and she was glad that the tankard obscured her shocked expression. The Unforgiven had been in dock when she’d arrived. Was it possible that Adelheid had been somehow goading her all this time, attempting to influence her actions with those stupid handwritten notes? This was a hell of a way to reveal her trickery if so.
No, she decided after a moment. This was no prank, for there was no trace of mischief on Adelheid’s face, and she’d have been unable to disguise her glee at a successful joke. Larinna decided to play dumb. “What’s Athena’s Fortune?” she asked disinterestedly, reaching for the wine and topping up their glasses as though they were discussing any old trinket.
She expected Adelheid to scoff at the question, but the captain seemed happy enough to answer. “I didn’t know either, not back then. Whatever it was sounded very important, anyway. Important enough for Simeon to risk life and limb going after it. I might have learned more, but at that point a rat bit my ear, I yelped, and they found me. Flogged me, of course, and put me off the ship at the next port. But I kept hunting for clues, and eventually I found an old fiddle player in a tavern who told me that Athena’s Fortune is what they call the most valuable treasure of the Pirate Lord.”
“And then,” Larinna said slowly, finally starting to put the pieces of the puzzle together, “you learned that Simeon had died. Or undied, or whatever the term is. Became a skeleton, I mean.” She didn’t know what a Pirate Lord was, but it sounded important.
“Yes, and I knew that the Order of Souls was bound to put a bounty out on him sooner or later. Whatever memories they were able to get from him, I was sure they’d help lead to Athena’s Fortune, assuming he ever found it.” Adelheid set her empty mug down on the table with a satisfied burp. “The most prized treasure of the greatest pirate who ever lived . . . that’s got to be worth chasing, don’t you think?” Adelheid moved to say more but was interrupted as Ned stuck his head through the hatchway. “What is it?”
“Trouble,” Ned said simply. The two women shared a glance and rose swiftly, jogging up the stairs to the upper deck where Faizel was standing, spyglass in hand, gazing out at the horizon.
“It would appear that we are being followed,” he informed them, with none of his usual playfulness. “We have changed course twice and they have matched our heading both times.”
“Is it the Order?” Larinna asked, squinting as if she could somehow make out the other ship through sheer force of will.
“Unlikely,” said Adelheid. “They’re a bunch of hocus-pocus merchants who normally rely on pirates to do their fighting for them. I suppose it’s possible they’ve put a bounty on us, but I’ve never heard of them doing that for anyone who wasn’t a skellie.”
“I’ve never heard of anyone stealing their wares,” Faizel suggested, grimly. “We did make quite a commotion leaving town, however, so it could be that other pirates know we have something worth taking. I think that they must be faster than us, but for now they seem content to keep their distance and let us kn
ow that we are being followed.”
“That, or they want to work out where we might be heading before they try and sink us.” Adelheid retorted. “Any bad weather around? Somewhere we can lose them? I’m not keen for them to know our destination.”
“It might be too late for that,” Larinna reminded her. “Occulia looked at the parchment, too. If we spend time hiding or trying to throw this ship off the scent, we might find their friends have had time to set up an ambush at Tribute Peak.”
“We could take ’em head on,” Ned offered. “They might not expect us to hit first.”
Adelheid pondered for a moment. “Faster is better,” she said, finally. “I want us to see if we can outrun them. If they can’t see us they might give up and turn tail, and at the very least it’ll give us a chance to hide.”
The crew went about their business, tilting the ship’s great sails to catch all the wind they could, but even as they tore across the waves Faizel reported that the other ship continued to gain on them. They could see it with the naked eye, now, a dark and ominous smudge on the horizon growing steadily larger.
Finally, a frustrated Adelheid ordered all nonessential supplies be thrown overboard in an effort to lighten the load. Barrels of fruit and dried meat, crates packed with plundered weapons and ammunition, even the bed from the captain’s cabin—it all went overboard, one item at a time, along with the spare sails and boxes of gold the crew had built up over the months.
Faizel made a point of marking the position on the map in case they one day had a chance to come back, but abandoning all of their treasure left them in a somber mood indeed. Even Larinna felt curiously glum about having no belongings of her own to surrender, save for the single golden coin tucked safely in her boot.
Even with all of these sacrifices, though, the other ship continued to bear down upon them. They could see her clearly through the spyglass now; she was a modified galleon that Faizel recognized as the Black Gauntlet, reportedly now under the command of a fearsome captain with a reputation for taking home some of the Order’s most notable bounties. The Black Gauntlet herself was equally formidable; her hull had been reinforced with steel bands that Larinna supposed might help brace against cannon fire. Piles of powder kegs had been piled on the deck so that they could be thrown overboard, acting as floating time bombs that could damage and destroy any ship that might pursue them. They could see harpoon guns, too, capable of launching vicious spears that could tether two ships together if used effectively—not to mention skewer her crew.
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