Brimstone and Lily (Legacy Stone Adventures) (51 page)

There were no dreams at all. Not good ones, not bad ones, not old ones, not new ones. I got the feeling that Sha’ira might’ve arranged that somehow. Whether she had or not, I appreciated it. The last thing I remembered was hearing Jasper’s voice in the back of my mind, cooing a lullaby Ma used to sing to me when I was little.

38/ Lady Freya’s Eyepatch

Freya clapped her hands, squealing with glee as I flopped about on the deck like a speared fish and expired.

“I like her! She dies good!”

They told me later that I slept all of the next two days. Once or twice I sort of woke up, more like sleepwalking, and Romulus got some food down my gullet. Roberta shooed me toward the head (what sailors call their privy), changed my icky clothes, and scrubbed the exposed skin. I didn’t remember any of it. All I knew was that when I opened my peepers for good, somebody said that Tuesday afternoon of July 1, 1862 had come. At least, I considered that to be the year. From what I kept hearing it could’ve been 1508, 1642, 1804, or any of a hundred others, depending on where you stood. And with the sea being a magickally-confused neutral place, hard telling what that meant for us on the
Kiss
. When I asked Pitcairn what year it was to him he just smiled and said, “Summer of whenever.”

Romulus told me that as far as he knew no place went beyond 1862, so maybe that counted as ‘modern times’. He went on to say that in the Obverse things were a lot different, but didn’t explain. In fact, nobody would go into detail about the Obverse, except to say that the less I knew, the better. All the pirates turned gray just saying the word.

Jasper hadn’t spoken a single syllable. I started to think that the lullaby had been my imagination and worried that our magick connection wouldn’t work on the ship, despite what I’d been told about the Merchantry’s preparations. Over and over again I tried to talk to him in my head and only heard silence. It occurred to me to try making Morphageus appear, but I wanted to keep my new identity as secret as possible until I could be sure it was safe.

In the sickbay Tyrell had opened his eyes but didn’t act like he knew where he was. Rochester fussed over his patient, probing and tapping. He declared that the Redeemer would make a full recovery but that it might take longer than first thought. I tried to talk to Tyrell some but it felt like chatting with your senile great-grandpa. Not a lot seemed to get through. Alcibiades seemed a different story. The Norn horse behaved like he was on a long-overdue vacation. Frisky in his stall down below, Al ate everything in sight and acted as if the splint on his wing had been installed as a mere decoration.

Training continued. Gracchus marched his Marines up and down, moved them about in complicated formations, and made slackers do punishment drills. Mabel’s gulls flew around the ship in their own special patterns, when they weren't patrolling far and wide to keep Pitcairn alerted to any possible dangers. Bob’s pelicans perched on the rail, when they weren’t diving for fish. Every now and then they’d practice scooping up rats and delivering them wherever Gracchus wanted. Ernie’s training seemed to consist in raiding the food stores, burping, and telling the rats they were getting soft.

The whaler hadn’t gone away, even though the crew kept bragging about the speed of the
Penelope’s Kiss
. Not only weren’t we pulling away with the wind to our back, we were getting reeled in. Spyglass to his eye, Pitcairn kept muttering to himself and shaking his head. Our pursuer had no steam engine that we could see, just sails like us. Roberta said it looked to be a lumbering old Britannic craft that had no business thinking it could catch us. I asked about magick propulsion and the sailors assured me that there was no such thing so far as they knew.

Sha’ira eased about the ship like a seasoned deck hand. Most of the time Romulus walked with her. The two of them laughed and whispered. My witched ears could’ve eavesdropped and heard what they discussed, but I didn’t want to be rude. Besides, my sea legs were as wobbly as rubber. Listening in on my friends’ conversations seemed less a priority than upchucking over the rail. This was a type of misery I’d only read about. The reality exceeded my imagination of it. My Legacy Stone seemed helpless to make me better. Even shape-shifting would’ve felt better than being seasick.
What’s the world record for the heroine throwin’ up while on her great world-savin’ quest? How do people survive this?

“How do people survive this?” My head echoed with the sentence I’d just thought of.
Huh?

“Just throw yourself overboard and end this now,” Jasper went on in an awful croaky voice. “Forget savin’ the world from omnipresent villainy. Rescue me from mal-de-mer.”

Wiping my mouth on the sleeve of the blue cotton crewman’s shirt I’d been given, I smiled to myself while I gulped salt air.
That’s a relief.
“Hey, boyo. Where’ve you been?”

“Well, I figured you didn’t need a lot of sorcery assistance in your two-day coma, so I took a nap of my own. If I’d known you planned to come down with the Maritime Belly of Doom I’d have stayed away.”

“You think I planned this? I’d rather be fightin’ giant ticks with a hickory switch.”

He sounded hopeful. “Can we? Please?”

“Sorry, O Cleaver of Despair. We’re stuck till this goes away.” With that I lurched over the side again and bid good-bye to my lunch. The whiny voice in my thoughts didn’t improve things.

A couple of hours later I felt a hundred times better. Sha’ira took me to the stern and taught me a meditation technique she’d learned in the Far East, in Cathay. She said it would help me in all times of great physical and mental stress. Pain, hunger, fear, and illness could all be lessened by simple chanting and concentrating in the manner she demonstrated. It took some doing on my part, though the dreamwriter made it look simple. That was the problem. Its simplicity made me suspect that there was really nothing to it. The harder you tried, the less effective it turned out to be. After a while I got good enough at it to rid myself of the worst of the seasickness. I promised myself, and Jasper, to practice every day with Sha’ira. This would be something that’d come in real handy, no doubt of it.

On my way down the steps to the main deck amidships I got knocked flat on my face by a tiny screeching demon that launched itself onto me from behind. Without thinking I rolled into a crouch, spun back to face my attacker, and pulled the tin cup from my belt. A split-second from bringing Morphageus to life and slashing the foe, I reeled in the thought of command. Instead of giving myself away with the Stone-Warden’s runed blade, I sat back on the teak deck planking and raised an eyebrow at my dread enemy.

“Aargh!” the pint-sized pirate scowled, waving a miniature wooden cutlass at me. She sported an eye patch, red-and-white striped shirt, and three-quarter length trousers. A black bandana covered her head, but red hair that went with her freckles poked out from beneath it. I’d been driven to my knees by a five year-old who looked just like I had at that age.

“Oh, look,” Jasper said, “somebody made a Verity marionette. No strings, though. Must be magick.”

“Surrender!” the itty-bitty buccaneer commanded, aiming the point of her toy sword at me. “Or I’ll slit yer belly and spill yer guts.”

A corner of my mouth went up.
This is about the cutest thing ever.
“Won’t that make a great big mess? Who’ll clean it up?”

She scrunched up her face and thought about that for a second. “I’ll make ye swab the deck afterwards!”

“That’s pretty hard-nosed, even for a pirate as fierce as you.”

Roberta’s voice rang out from the bow. “Freya! Be nice and don’t slay our guest, please. That’s a good girl.”

Freya stuck out her lower lip and pulled off the eye patch. Underneath blinked a perfectly beautiful blue eye. “Aw, can’t I slay her just a little bit? Fergus is too busy.”

The first mate’s shadow appeared over my shoulder. “Well, if Miss Verity says it’s all right.”

My wee adversary looked at me as if I held a giant bag of candy that she wanted. “Can I, then? Can I massa-cree you and throw yer bones to the sharks?”

“Ah-ah-ah,” Roberta warned her, “what do you say?”

Doubt clouded the girl’s face for a second, then she brightened and blurted out, “Please!”

“Why, I’d be honored,” I told her.

With that she grinned, then put her patch back where it belonged. With another guttural “Aargh!” she slid her wooden blade between my arm and ribs. I staggered around, clutching my mortal wound, gagging and coughing. Freya clapped her hands, squealing with glee as I flopped about on the deck like a speared fish and expired in an awfully-acted way that would’ve appalled Mr. Ford.

“I like her! She dies good!”

Jasper’s voice stung my brain. “Hope that doesn’t turn out to be your epitaph.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said to him as I bowed, accepting Freya’s and Roberta’s applause.

“We’re rearin’ Freya for the Guild,” Pitcairn’s lady told me while we watched the pint-sized pirate scamper off to threaten somebody else. “What they pay us covers the whole crew’s wages.”

I gasped. “She’s a Shade in trainin’? You’re turnin’ that little girl into a cold-blooded assassin?”

“Don’t look at me in that tone of voice,” Roberta chided with a smirk. “Shade recruits enter the Academy at age thirteen only of their own free will. Freya can say no and walk away clean if she so chooses. Happens all the time. Guild don’t want no recruits who might turn squeamish on ‘em later. Better to pay for a few prospects who don’t pan out than have ‘em cut and run on an assignment.”

“Like Sha’ira.”

The pirate queen nodded. “Like Sha’ira.” She smiled as Freya whacked at Pitcairn, who tucked one leg under his coat tails and hopped about moaning. “Trust me, shrimp, this old gal’ll make darned sure our little hellion chooses freedom when the time comes.”

We stopped next to the ship’s captain, who resumed standing on both booted feet and kissed his lady’s hand. “Miss Verity, lovely to see that pretty face and not just your backside at the rail. So you’ve decided to stop feeding the fish?”

“Food’s too precious a commodity to waste, sir,” I told him. “Besides, it tastes awful the second time.”

“That it does.” He poked Freya’s belly with one long finger. Roberta had picked her up and held her in front of him. “And you, terror of the waves…run down to the galley and inspect the candy locker. You might just find it open for business.”

“Yay!” the dinky sea scourge cried. As soon as Roberta set her down those short legs sent her streaking toward the hatch.

“You have a candy locker on a pirate ship?” I asked.

“Not really,” chuckled Roberta, arm around her man. “Just a drawer where Herman stows treats for her.”

Fergus waddled toward us, spyglass in hand. “She’s just about the most adorable thing around,” I went on, wondering what was up.

“Hey!” Jasper complained. “I thoughtI was the most adorable thing.”

“Well, you’re a thing, that’s for sure,” I thought back at him.

He sobbed with fake feeling. “Sure, cut my heart out with your cruel wit. Nobody cares about the disembodied spirit. He’s just a tool for you to use.”

“And I’ll use him to stir old fish guts if he don’t knock it off.” I wanted to hear what Fergus said.

“No explainin’ it, Cap’n,” he muttered, staring behind us at the pursuing ship. “Us crowdin’ on all sail, cleanest lines in the sea, and that old barge is catchin’ us like we’re draggin’ anchor.”

Squinting into his glass, Pitcairn sighed. “Mortifying is what it is. There’s more here than meets the eye.” He shouted up to the top of the mainmast, where a young wiry lookout scanned the horizon. “Sancho! What do you see? Anything unusual?”

The portly shirtless sailor called back in an Iberion accent, “You mean besides that great wallowing barn knifing through the water like a canoe? Yes, sir. It’s being towed.”

“Towed?!” the commander exclaimed. “Rub the foolishness out of your eyes and look again, son. Towed by what?”

“Can’t tell. Something below the waterline. But I’m not seeing things. She has four hawsers on the bow, all straight as arrows and all going to the same spot maybe a hundred feet in front of her. Must be making twenty knots.”

Pitcairn took off his tricorn and rubbed the top of his head. “Twenty knots! Jesu Maria! At that speed she’ll be in gun range in less than hour. This must be some new Merchantry devilry. No other explanation.”

“Orders, sweetness?” Roberta asked.

“Let them get up close, then whirl and feed them grapeshot. See if they get indigestion.”

“Leave it to me. I’ll cook ‘em a dinner they won’t soon forget.” With that the first mate spun away and began barking orders. “Down chests! Up hammocks! It’s a fight we’re to have, me hearties!” The
Kiss
started to resemble a nest of angry hornets as the crew all scattered to their posts. Small teams scurried up the masts like monkeys to secure the yardarms with chains. Fergus explained that this would help prevent them from being easily shot away and falling onto the deck to crush somebody. Several sails were furled, to make the ship manageable with fewer men. They laid out extra gear so quick repairs could be made during the fight. Another team hauled up muskets, pistols, and blunderbusses, as well as cutlasses, in case we had to repel boarders. To help with that, they also raised nets above the rail to catch anybody who tried to jump from the other ship. Buckets of sand were strewn across the decks to make them less slippery if blood began flowing. Big barrels full of water, already tied down along the length of the ship, had their lids removed. If fires broke out these would be used to fight them. On the gun deck this had also been done, Fergus told me, along with a host of other measures to ready the cannon for action. Down there Nickleby would be checking to make sure things ran according to his usual drill, all the tools of a gunner’s trade laid out in their proper places: powder, shot, rammers, sponges, linstocks with slow matches. Also somewhere down below the carpenter prepared plugs for sealing any holes from enemy cannonballs, and the surgeon readied his medical instruments. The precision of it all amazed me. McClellan’s army had nothing on Pitcairn’s men.