Her hands trembled. Another shot of murky rum slid down her throat. It burned, but did little to calm her. She closed her eyes, but all she saw was the smirking face of Sir Francis Drake as he pulled the trigger on a steamlock aimed at her head. The same smirking asshole that had supposedly sunk Jonelise to the Core of the World—not that Esmeralda believed that for an instant, no matter what the others might say.
Her fist clenched around the empty shot glass until the glass cracked.
I should have done more. Done better. If I’d gotten to our rendezvous quicker, maybe we could have caught her. If I’d searched faster, flown faster, maybe we would have found her before…
Cracks in the glass spread like a spider’s web. With a snarl, she slung it at the wall, one more crash in the din, not even notable.
“You’re gonna pay for that, right?”
Esmeralda grunted as a slim, middle-aged man with a mop of black hair sat at her table, simultaneously taking a swig of amber ale from what was probably the only clean mug in the entire bar.
“Henry Morgan.” She kicked up her boots on the table, her currently bare, dark, toned legs drawing a few eyes from a nearby table. She smirked and waggled her eyebrows at the handful of men and women sitting there, then turned her attention back to the unassuming privateer-turned-barkeep. “What brings you to my little table? You must want something.”
“Like whatever it is that brings you back to my establishment?” Henry Morgan had been the proprietor of the Tortuga and its private docks for decades now, a pirate enclave hidden far beneath the docks of Lisboa, directly under the nose of the Queen’s soldiers and agents in one of the busiest cities in all of the seven skies. “I should ask you the same thing, Thresh.”
“Since when did everyone stop calling me Blackblade?” she complained, tossing thick curls and dreads of black hair over a shoulder. “I worked hard for that nickname.”
He ignored her. “Seriously. I know things haven’t gone well for you and yours.” He glanced to the shattered remains of the shot glass, then slid her another one. It was predictably dirty. “But I want to know why you’re showing up here, now, in my house. What trouble you’re in, and what you’re bringing to my door.”
“Since when is the founder of the Free Brotherhood of the Coast afraid of trouble?”
“Since a particular Dragon murdered most of our friends and sent them to the Abyss.” The dusky-skinned tavernkeep watched her, noting the tremor of tension his words produced in her hands, in her face. “Besides, it depends on how much trouble we’re talking about. The last time you came here, you hired two ships and took them to Arcadia. One came back rich, the other didn’t come back at all.”
Esmeralda shrugged. “That’s just the way it goes for us though, isn’t it? High risk, higher reward. You were a buccaneer for, what? Thirty-plus years before you gave it up? You know what the life of a pirate is like, Morgan.”
“I also know there’s not many of us left. The days of the Free Coast are numbered as it is.” Morgan frowned. “I also know that you’re here because you’re up to something. Something big. I’ve run with you before plenty of times, remember? I know that look in your eye.”
“What? This one?” She tried to put the man off with a cocky, dismissive grin, but her smile didn’t last. Couldn’t last.
Across the stained, scarred table, the aging privateer raised an eyebrow and stared back at her flatly, unimpressed by the attempt.
“I’ve...never been a fan of laws. Rules. You know that.” For the first time in years, her thoughts wandered back to Ecuadoria, to fancy dresses, parties, and expectations. To her father in a fine Elizabethian officer’s suit. To her mother as she starved on the streets. To her own small, bloodstained hands, clutching a loaf of similarly stained bread. She shook the thoughts away, dismissing distant anger at faded wounds. Too long ago to matter. “But the last decade...the last few months, things have changed even further. And not for the better.”
Before she realized it, she was running her fingers through the shaved part of her hair, a strip of smooth, bare scalp marred by scar tissue. A badge of survival. One table over, the pirates still watching her took note of that as well, and the whispers started anew, carrying words such as “Thresh,” “Drake,” and “Blackblade.”
Morgan noted it as well and frowned. “Whatever you’re doing, stop it. Every time you come here, you want something. You break something. You get people killed.”
“We’re pirates, Henry. We all want something. We all break stuff.”
He snorted. “And even by pirate standards, you’re a walking cataclysm. More ships and crews have gone to visit Gravekeeper Jones in your engagements—on both sides—than any other pirate in history. I honestly don’t understand how Samantha is still alive.”
“Yeah, but no one else has ever gotten as rich, either.” Esmeralda grinned, more fiercely and honestly this time. “It’s like you said. Our time’s running out. Sands in the Abyssal hourglass. The age of piracy and freedom’s just about over. The only question is whether we let them silently snuff us out one by one, or whether we go out on our own terms. Whether we go out big—and maybe even turn things around a little while we’re at it.”
Her fingers tapped their way along the scar one final time, not bothering to hide the tremor of anger.
Morgan stared at her, eyes narrowed—before they suddenly went wide.
“You can’t kill him,” his voice was a little too loud with surprise, and the rumors picked up. “You already tried. Several times.” He studied her razor-edged smirk and emerald eyes, his own going even wider. “You’re going to, what, rob him? Sir Francis Abyssal Drake?”
“Maybe.” The chatter ran rampant in the background. She grinned. “But more like give him a black eye. Or two.” She leaned in, lowered her voice. “And I need your help to do it.”
“Oh, no.” The barkeep’s face went stony with stubborn refusal. “No way. Not again. I’ve still got scars from the last time.”
“What does she want, Morgan?” One of the nearby pirates leaned over. “Is she cuttin’ you in on a big score, or—”
“No, she’s trying to get us all killed.” The former pirate pushed his chair back and stood, shaking his head. “Look. Your friend died fighting Drake. I get that. He took something from you—just like he took something from most everyone here.” Pirates nodded. Morgan met her dangerous stare with one of equal intensity. “But challenging him will only lose more lives. Sir Francis Drake is the pirate killer. Even by himself, he broke us. Ground us into the dirt.” He took a look around. “Every soul here is a ship-dog, a thief, a rogue. Scoundrels and heartless blackguards to the man.” A raucous cheer started up, made its rounds of the bar. “But I’ll be Abyss-bound if I let you take more lives with you just so you can sate your urge for revenge. Again.”
The cheers resonated from the top and walls of the hidden cavern. Cries of support and agreement with Morgan rang out. Pirates that had moments ago shown interest in her endeavors now glared at her with skepticism and resentment.
Esmeralda climbed onto the table.
She yanked a grenade from the bandolier from the harness wrapping around her chest, threw it into the air, and shot it with a quickdrawn steamlock.
Stalactites overhead shook from the shockwave. Heat from the blossom of flame washed over her face. Silence fell for a moment as pirates scrambled under tables for cover.
“Well Morgan, what can I say? You’re not wrong.” She grinned down at him. He folded his arms, unimpressed. “I guess I made a mistake. For a minute there, I thought this was a room full of pirates.”
The statement earned her a few more glares, but she kept right on going. “I was in Arcadia as it fell, you know? Fought and bled in the streets. Watched Drake destroy families huddled in their homes. Killed Elizabeth’s men every chance I got.” The last statement earned her a handful of scattered cheers of her own again. “And you know who bled and died right beside me? Farmers. Merchants. Nobility, e
ven. Led by a farmgirl and a barmaid.”
Esmeralda scanned the crowd, grinning wildly, meeting every eye she could. “So are we not better than that? Are we not pirates?” At her feet, one man opened his mouth to object.
She aimed her steamlock at his face. “You. Are going. To die.” He backed away. Tension whispered through the crowd, but she didn’t let it linger. “You, me, everyone here. We’re all on a one-way trip that ends in the Abyss. Maybe right now.” She pulled the trigger; the gun clicked, dry. “Or maybe tomorrow. Or maybe when you catch sick on a voyage. Or maybe when you’re bored and bedridden at sixty. It will happen.” With a flourish, she tucked the steamlock away; every eye but Morgan’s followed her motion. “But this way, we get to choose.”
“That’s the one thing Drake and Elizabeth can’t take from us. Our freedom. Our ability to choose. If those farmers and nobles back in Arcadia can resist and take Her Majesty’s soldiers screaming to the Abyss with them, then so can we. But everyone that gives in to her is what? A slave?”
Morgan thumped the table at her feet. “Well, they’re alive, for one.” There were a couple of chuckles, but not many. “Dead pirates spend no treasure.”
Esmeralda shook her head, thick, dark hair flying wildly. “Alive, maybe. But not living. Submit to her rules and you’re just one more cog in the Elizabethian machine. You might as well sign up for her army. Take her coin and be forgotten—or resist and be remembered.”
She pulled out a trio of grenades and started juggling them, keeping every eye riveted. “Maybe we win. Maybe we die. But either way we get to choose. And maybe...just maybe...we win really big instead.”
A grinning pirate looked up at her. “So what’s the plan, Blackblade?”
“Risk is fine, but we don’t work for nothin’,” another added.
She laughed, tossing the grenades higher and higher. “My plan is to win big and enjoy the spoils. So that when all of you worthless brigands are sixty years old and dying in bed, surrounded by beautiful men and women, fancy pillows and fancier food...you’ll tell your bloodthirsty grandchildren about Esmeralda Thresh.”
Laughter bloomed from the crowd of pirates. Morgan shook his head, but even he struggled to contain a smile.
With a final flourish, Esmeralda caught the trio of grenades, tucked them away with a bow, then straightened and pointed toward the cavern roof. “Above us, right now, they’re building a ship on the Lisboan docks. A warship. A big one. For the Drake, to replace the two of his we already sank. It’s a reminder to everyone who even thought about rebellion, that in the end, the Queen trumps us all.
“So we’re going to wreck it,” the pirate finished. Her grin spread across her face, feral and wild, angry and excited. Like a contagion, it spread to some of the nearest pirates as well then through the cavern. “Send a message of our own...and while we’re at it, we’re going to rob them all blind.”
- - -
Esmeralda stared down the docks at the hulking warship. To her eyes, it looked like an even bigger, manned version of the Queen’s Revenge, the ship that had carried Jone to the Abyss. Engineers and nondescript laborers came and went even this late at night, their toil lit by a line of small spirit lanterns as they worked on its many decks, cannons, and networks of conduits. She noted where the tritanium cables connected the ship’s massive engines, weapons, and fuel supplies to a series of crystalline tanks, no doubt containers of distilled spirits. Jone would hate those. Her eyes followed the curve of the docks further, to the hotels, inns, and taverns packed to bursting with Elizabethian soldiers and sailors: the collective, intended crew of the imposing vessel.
She took a deep breath and turned away. “Thanks for helping me get this organized, Morgan.”
The middle-aged pirate narrowed his eyes at her. “Don’t thank me for garm shit, Thresh. You know full well I didn’t do it on purpose. You set me up.”
“Then why are you still here?” She smirked.
“Someone needs to keep you from getting everyone here killed.” He ran a calloused hand through his dark, curly hair. “And because I’m not old and wise enough yet to keep myself from doing something really stupid.”
“And the massive fortune they’re loading onto those four ships down there doesn't sway you at all, I’m guessing?” She nodded to the quartet of treasure ships being loaded with taxes straight from the Palace of Law, high on the hill above. A cloud of watchful warships kept an eye on the airways while Elizabethian guardsmen crawled the docks, coating them in red-and-gold as another long line of matching laborers loaded the heavily armed vessels with coin and banknotes.
Morgan just glared at her and checked his pistol. “Oh, shut up, Thresh. Don’t you have a job to do?”
Esmeralda smirked and gestured to the small group of pirates in cover nearby. “That I do.” Using the cover of darkness and well-planned routes, they slipped closer and closer to the buildings along the docks: the quartermaster and harbormaster’s offices, as well as the crowded inns and hotels. They took empty bridges shrouded in nighttime shadow, secure in the knowledge that most of the city was properly asleep, and any guards still alive to call the alarm were well-paid to ignore them.
As her small force advanced, it shrunk; pirates broke off in twos and fours to head toward the buildings as they passed, carrying the night’s supplies. Esmeralda and Morgan kept going, headed toward the nicest, fanciest inn of them all, and the pirate captain could only hope that everyone else was all sober enough to find their proper places.
She grinned into the night as she thought about her plan; that grin only abated a little when she thought about how badly it could go wrong.
“You sure about this?” Morgan whispered, white knuckles gripping a pistol and the strap to his backpack. Esmeralda supposed it had been a long time since he’d been in the field, after all. “You know if you botch this, I’m not coming to your rescue.” She winked at him. “Once you start in, there’s no turning back…”
“Pffft.” She tossed thick, dark hair over her shoulder and tied it back out of her way with a bit of blood-red ribbon. “That mark passed us by an hour ago. If we don’t make our move soon, one of these ale-addled assholes will start without us.”
The bartender grimaced and nodded. He knew his clientele at least as well as she did. Together, they set down their packs in the shadows a bit away from the building, then split up as they crept directly up to the wall. A wide, fine window, still dully lit by spiritlights from within, cast its dim spotlight from right above their ducking heads. Not even ten feet away, a solitary guardsman in the Queen’s colors stood near the doorway, drowsily keeping lookout. Morgan gave her a final nod, then slipped away.
Esmeralda smashed the glass above her head and tossed in a fat cluster of incendiary grenades.
And when the single, sleepy guardsman wheeled toward the source of the sound, she shot him in the face to wake him up.
The sound of shattering glass and crack of her pistol was smothered by the roar of multiple explosions. Fire blossomed inside, casting ravenous, dancing shadows.
Inside, people screamed as they burned.
Her smile tempered and grim, Esmeralda retreated, though she stayed within easy view. She knew neither Jone, nor even Black Sam Bellamy herself would have approved of tonight’s bloody beginning...but Esmeralda had seen enough atrocities in her life to know that you could only meet savagery with more of its own.
Sir Francis Drake stepped out of the blazing building, and she nodded.
It was the only thing people like him could understand.
His long, fine silk nightshirt trailed smoke and tongues of flame as he strode past the threshold, staring into the night, single gilded steamlock in hand. His face wrinkled against the pain as his burn wounds healed over, and he brushed shards of shrapnel from a shoulder like inconvenient dust. His angry, cloudy blue-gray eyes scanned the wavering darkness as alarms rang out and panic spread...and finally came to rest on the shadow she crouched in, waiting.
; Esmeralda stood up and shot him in the chest.
He stumbled back, one hand leaping to his heart, the other seizing the shoulder of one of the many guardsmen that rushed to his aid, weapons drawn. The Drake wavered on his feet for an instant, coughed blood…
And rolled his eyes.
“Thresh?” He bellowed her name as he straightened, motioning his guards to stand down as he stalked forward. Esmeralda held her ground. “Is nothing sacred to your kind? I was reading.” Another stride closer, and he sucked in a too-deep breath; the air whipped forcefully past Esmeralda’s bare shoulders, the fire dimmed behind the man’s back.
She quickdrew another steamlock and shot the satchel beside his feet.
Lisboa shook, blasting the breath from her lungs. Drake and his entourage disappeared in a cataclysmic flash of fire, light, and deafening noise. Thrown backward like a ragdoll, Esmeralda tumbled and rolled, one steamlock flying from her hand. It took her a moment to remember who and where she was—and when she did, she curled into a ball and covered her head with her arms.
Her one massive explosion became a dozen as her small squad of pirates recognized the signal for what it was. Thunder struck lower Lisboa like the wrath of an Old God, slamming the docks with fury and raining down nothing but rubble.
Laughing weakly, she rose, wiping dust from her blurry emerald eyes.
On the other side of a broken wall, The Drake strode through a screen of fire and smoke, battered and bloody, hungry embers clinging to tattered clothes and seared skin alike.
But very much alive and intact.
Stormy eyes locked onto her silhouette; his golden steamlock flashed up in an instant and belched fire of its own. Esmeralda was already diving for cover, but it was too late—the lead ball tore through the meat of her shoulder and left behind a trail of searing pain.
She ducked and rolled, scrambled through shadows and took refuge behind a shattered building. Another shot rang out, then another, but not in her direction. Only afterward did she risk taking another look.
Survivors of Arcadia Page 5
