Blaggard's Moon (14 page)

His face was leathered and tanned by the elements, and it was broader from ear to ear than it was from hairline to smooth chin. It was not a handsome face. His mouth was wide and his eyes were narrow. His moustache was long and waxed, points stretching outward. None of his facial features were attractive, but somehow they combined to make him striking, even arresting. Maybe it was his demeanor more than his look; he was a powerful presence. He was self-consciously sure of himself, even vain in that assurance.

Then Delaney heard the words that escaped Sleeve's lips, whispered with equal parts certainty and dread:

“Conch Imbry.”

The pirate captain heard and turned toward Sleeve, touching what would have been his hat, had he been wearing one. Delaney's mouth went dry as dust, and his knees trembled.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

AVERY'S END

“C
ONCH
I
MBRY AND
his pirates,” Delaney said to the fish. “Now there's piranha for ye. Put you little boys all to shame.”

The fish reacted to this news with dull stares and lazily flapping fins.

Delaney tried to think about something else. He did not want his mind to go back there, did not want to think about what had happened next. So he thought of a big glass of ale, and when that got him remembering the Cabeeb pub where the shooting had happened, he switched to thinking about a jug of cool water. That made him think about the water in the lagoon, which he'd just tasted, so he looked at the fish and tried to think about fish that weren't piranha but were regular fish that men killed and ate, instead of the other way around. Grouper and tuna and blackfish.

For a while he succeeded, remembering his favorite dinner. A great steaming plate of grilled seafood. But then he thought of a big hunk of boiled shark meat, which he'd eaten once and was strong and tasty. Then when he'd thought about shark meat, the old legends about Firefish rose in his head, those sea monsters that could eat a whole ship but whose meat could double a man's strength, if only one could be caught and killed. But they couldn't be caught or killed, because only if a man could eat Firefish meat, they said, could he become strong enough to kill a Firefish. But he wasn't strong enough otherwise, so until he did it, he could never do it. And that was a puzzle Delaney couldn't piece together.

But after he'd thought about Firefish eating sailors for a while,
wondering what that might look like, whether those sailors would die like fighting men aboard ship, which he'd seen a lot of, or like Lemmer Harps getting his hand eaten, which he'd seen only once, he ended up thinking about piranha again. They weren't as dangerous as bigger predators, because they were just little fish, really, and hungry. Not greedy to kill men, like Firefish. Or sharks. Or bears, or lions. And once he got to thinking about the worst kind of predators, he thought again about pirates. And then he thought about the worst pirate he'd ever met so far, which was Conch Imbry.

And so after only a few moments his mind flowed back to Conch and the Cabeebs. And there he was, watching the poor Trum boy once again.

Dallis was on his knees now on the stump facing the jail, his hands bound behind him. The jailor stood over the boy, to his left. Conch Imbry stood to the boy's right. Standing beside Conch was the unimpressive man, who now pulled a pistol from his waistband, checked its load, then held it down at his side. Delaney felt a sudden awe. This unimposing man was the executioner, then. Would he take the life of so young a boy, just like that, right before their eyes? Delaney couldn't imagine he would, but then he could see no reason why he wouldn't, him being a pirate.

“What's yer name and what's yer rank, sailor?” Imbry asked. His voice was a croak on top of a rumble, nothing at all like the pure baritone note of the seashell trumpet for which he was nicknamed.

The wide-eyed youngster looked up from between the twin mountains, the pirate and the jailor. His eyes were round in fear. He was younger than almost thirteen. He was barely twelve.

“Ye have a name, do ye?” Conch asked again.

“Yes, sir. I mean,
aye,
sir,” he offered in a squeak.

Conch waited. The Cabeeb jailor kicked Dallis in the thigh, and the boy yelped.

“Just say your name, son,” Delaney suggested firmly, to push Dallis into obedience, but gently, so as not to rile the pirates further.

“Dallis Trum, sir,” came the boy's thin reply. Then, taking strength from Delaney's intervention, he straightened himself up, put his chin in the air and announced, “I'm a tried hand, sir, and a seasoned sailor.” He made a very brief effort to salute before the cords that bound his wrists stopped him.

Delaney grinned in spite of himself. The boy had grit.

Conch seemed thoroughly unimpressed. “Yer accused a' murder,” he offered, as though that fact might be unknown. “What's the penalty,
Horkan
Meeb, for murder in Mumtown?”

“Death, Captain,” Meeb replied. “Death to the lot of 'em.”

At this cue the unimpressive man stepped forward and put the pistol barrel to the back of Dallis's head. He had to lean over to do it, and when he did, Delaney saw that the back of the man's shirt had blood seeping through it in long stripes, as though he was wounded. As though he'd been whipped. But he didn't act wounded or whipped. He acted as though he was just fine. Which was not at all unimpressive. “Now, sir?” he asked evenly.

Conch did not reply but watched the young sailor carefully. Dallis's eyes wandered from the executioner to Conch to Meeb to the executioner again, then to the crewmen, and finally found Delaney.

It was a look Delaney could not forget, a worse one, even, than that which was far more recently branded into his brain when Lemmer's hand was eaten. This boy's momentary surge of pride was gone. He was not a bright lad, not by any means, and Delaney could see he had not quite grasped the finality of these proceedings until the cold steel of the pistol was pressed to the back of his skull. His look was pleading. It was anxious. It was confused. But worst of all, it was
trusting.
He expected his protector to protect him.

At that moment Delaney wished for all he was worth that he'd never laid an eye on the boy.

“Jes' kids,” Delaney said aloud to the fish. Then he clucked and shook his head. “Never should a' come aboard.” It was his downfall, he realized gloomily, to pay so much mind to the young ones. Growing up in the rough and tumble of his father's drunken poverty had hardened him to many things, but not to the plight of youngsters. Especially when they seemed lost and afraid and out of their element. He heaved a great sigh. “Should never a' been aboard.”

Dallis and Kreg Trum had been taken aboard by accident. As the lines were being cast off, one of Captain June Stube's longtime hands had inexplicably fallen from atop the mainsail yard to the deck, and had to be left ashore in a rather grotesque display of broken bones. The boys had simply appeared at that moment, Delaney recalled, as though delivered from on high, with their bedrolls at their feet. Their faces were grubby and their clothes were filthy, but they swore they were sailors, experienced hands
despite their age. Stube doubted, and asked a few pointed questions. To everyone's surprise, Kreg answered them all quite satisfactorily. The captain studied their palms, approved of the thick calluses. He hesitated yet, but then the boys offered to split a share—two crewmen for the price of one. Stube took them aboard and hastily cast off.

They were anything but seasoned hands.

Turned out they were chandlers, the sons of a candle-maker and merchant in some remote village on the Nearing Plains. Their hands were accustomed to hard work and hot wax, but their hearts had led their feet to run from both. They had listened too long and too carefully to an uncle's rum-soaked tales of life at sea, and they had determined to join the Vast Navy. Without papers or commendations, too young and too green, their quest had ended under the wharves at the docks of Mann, where they fought seagulls for scraps, begging every sailor who would listen to help them get on crew.

No one would have them, and now Captain Stube understood why. The boys were aggressively ignorant, showing confidence at all the wrong moments, their judgment in error almost unerringly. Which one of them was worse depended on which one was nearer. They were continually tying off what they should be loosing, coiling what they should be uncoiling, carrying what they should be throwing and throwing what they should be holding onto for dear life. After a cargo pulley missed a crewman's head by inches and crashed through a rum barrel, splaying out its staves like a crunched spider, Stube threw them both into the brig. Bad enough that they had lied, worse that they had bungled, but unforgiveable that they had lowered every man's share of rum.

Delaney had vouched for them, though. Couldn't stand to think of them behind bars. But they'd have been safe there, and if he'd let them be they wouldn't be ashore now. They wouldn't be facing prison, or pirates, or pirate's pistols.

“A seasoned sailor, is it?” Conch Imbry growled. “Now why do that seem so unlikely to me?” He glanced over at the rest of the condemned lot, and Delaney thought he saw a wink. His spirits crept upward.

Conch turned back to speak to the boy, leaning in. His raspy voice softened. “But tell ye what, I'll believe ye, at least till ye prove me otherwise.”

Now hope flashed through Delaney.

“And to give ye a fightin' chance to prove yer mettle, I'll ransom yer
worthless soul. And here's how. In exchange fer stayin' alive, fair is fair, ye'll have a duty to do me. And it's this. Ye'll swear allegiance to me. Ye'll swear ye'll follow me, like I was yer daddy and mama both. Like yer god in a'mighty heaven. Then, 'stead a' bein' dead, ye'll be alive. And ye'll have all the money ye can spend. Ye'll have trinkets and muskets and women, when ye grow up enough fer 'em, and ye'll have all ye can eat and all ye can drink fer as long as ye live. Ye'll even have fame, fer ye'll be sailin' wif the Conch. But hear me now. Ye'll kill who I say kill. And ye'll die when I say die. So. What say ye, son? Is it a bargain?”

Delaney could see a problem here. Not with the bargain itself, which would save a young man's life and so seemed a fresh wind of mercy. Rather, it was the way Conch had framed it. Captain Imbry had used too many words. He had made a simple choice too complex for the brain of this young runaway. So as the brutal and dashing pirate stood still, waiting for his words to play deep into the mind and heart of the least of these crewmen, it became gradually more obvious to all that the boy was not about to speak.

The executioner clicked back the hammer of his pistol. Conch Imbry's jaw tightened.

“ 'Scuse me, sir,” Delaney heard himself say.

Now all eyes swung to him.

Delaney spoke as though in a fog, his mouth moving around words that seemed to form themselves and escape before his mind had a chance to rein them back. “That is to say, beggin' yer humble pardon, I do believe the boy don't understand the offer.”

Conch looked dumbfounded. He looked at the boy. He looked back at Delaney. He narrowed his already narrow eyes. “He's what, a idiot?”

“Oh no. Well, at least not so much that he can't work out the meaning. But if ye don't mind, begging yer pardon again, I'll help explain it.”

Imbry waved a big hand. “Help away.”

Delaney spoke directly to the boy. “Dallis, son, this here's Conch Imbry, and he's a great pirate captain. Says he'll save ye from the Cabeebs if ye'll turn pirate right now. Otherwise—see that man with the gun there? Well, he's gonna shoot ye dead. So now, son, ye got to decide whether to live a pirate or die right now, being a…” the right word did not come to him, “…whatever you now are,” he concluded.

The boy's mouth dropped open as his eyes drifted on their own accord to Conch Imbry.

“I believe he's got it now, Cap'n,” Delaney said with a confident nod.

Then the boy did something that surprised them all. He leaped to his feet and ran to his brother.

“Hey!” the Cabeeb jailor shouted, reaching for his own pistol.

“Let 'im,” Conch said.

Dallis stopped, his hands still tied behind him, looking directly into his older brother's grim eyes. “What should I do, Kreg?”

“I don't know,” Kreg answered earnestly, the predicament too big for him as well. “We din't run off to become no pirates.”

“What if Ma finds out?”

Kreg nodded once in earnest. “She'd be real sore if we came home pirates.”

After a thoughtful pause, Delaney ventured to speak again. “On the opposite hand, I reckon she might also be a tad put out if you was to come home dead.”

The boys looked at him, then looked at one another as they thought that through, their puzzlement complete. “Real put out,” Kreg confirmed.

It seemed an impossible knot to untie.

Delaney spoke to the pirate captain, his mouth again running ahead of his brain. “Why start with the boys? Let the men decide, and leave the boys to follow after.”