Sebastian Darke: Prince of Pirates (22 page)

'You did?'

'Yes. Typically, you've missed all the hard work. We've been salvaging what we can from the
Black Hand
. It won't be long now before she sinks.' He threw a commiserating look towards the Kid. 'No treasure, I'm afraid; all they had was food and general provisions. It seems the ship stopped off at Lemora two days ago and left all the booty with contacts on the island. The
Marauder
was to be their first victim since leaving there.'

'Would have been too,' said the Kid, who was slumped in his seat, hands in his pockets, 'if you lot hadn't come along when you did. And like I said, it wasn't about plunder with Trencherman. It was
personal
.'

Sebastian studied the Kid thoughtfully. 'What's
he
doing in here?' he asked. 'Shouldn't he be locked up?'

Cornelius shrugged. 'Well . . . after careful consideration I would like to ask, Captain Swift, for your permission to allow the boy to remain on deck rather than be kept down in the cells with what's left of his crew.'

Jenna frowned. 'Do you think that's a good idea?' she murmured.

'We'll see. I've warned him that at the first sign of disobedience, he'll be thrown down there with the rest of them. Call me old-fashioned, but somehow I can't bring myself to lock up a boy of fourteen summers . . . not unless it becomes absolutely necessary.'

Sebastian studied the Kid for a moment and tried to ignore the throbbing pain in his head. 'Well, what do
you
say?' he asked. 'Will it be necessary?'

The Kid shrugged his shoulders beneath his too-large jacket. 'Course not. You think I want to spend time with that lot? They hate me. There's no telling what they'd do if they got their hands on me, specially now the
Black Hand
is lost.' This remark was puzzling to say the very least.

'But . . . you're their captain,' observed Jenna. 'Why would they hate you?'

'Oh . . . because they never really wanted me to be captain in the first place. See, after my dad disappeared there was two men laying claim to the
Black Hand
: the first mate, Bones, and the bosun, a man called Sully. But pirate law says the captain's eldest son has rights to the ship. Well, I was his only son, wasn't I? Twelve summers old when I started and as green as grass, but it fell to me.' As he talked, the Kid's little face was a picture of misery beneath the brim of his three-cornered hat.

'Then why accept the position?' asked Cornelius. 'If you didn't enjoy it, surely you could have declined the offer.'

'Yeah, but I found out that Bones and Sully were planning to sell the ship to a rich buyer in Ramalat. Take a wild guess as to who that might have been.'

There was a brief silence while they considered this. Then Jenna said, 'Captain Trencherman.'

'Got it in one! My dad would have gone mad if he'd come home and found a creep like him in charge of his ship. It's his pride and joy. And Dad always said he wanted me to take over the family business when he was gone . . . It's just that neither of us expected it would be quite so soon.'

Sebastian and Jenna exchanged glances. They both knew what that felt like and could easily sympathize.

'But you made the best of things, I suppose,' said Cornelius.

'Tried to,' said the Kid. 'The rest of the crew tolerated me, but Bones and Sully was always looking for ways to get rid of me. They was forever trying to get the other men to mutiny. In the end I had the two of them thrown off the ship at Lemora. That made life a bit easier, but the crew kept criticizing me if I didn't get them plenty of plunder, so I had to attack anything that moved.'

'But that's what pirate ships do, isn't it?' said Sebastian.

'Yeah, I know that, but it never sat easy with me. Dad always said I had too much of a conscience to be a good pirate. Maybe he was right.' The Kid shrugged before continuing.

'And then Trencherman started in on us. He harried us from port to port. He didn't want to sink the ship – just get rid of me and take it as a prize. I lost a lot of good men to his guns. In the end I got tired of running; decided to try and catch him unawares.' He glanced at Jenna. 'I was giving him a right good stuffing before you sneaked up on me,' he said proudly.

'That you were,' she agreed. She looked at him warily. 'But even in the heat of battle, you should always keep an eye out for the unexpected.'

'Yeah, well, thanks for the tip. But you didn't play fair.'

Jenna looked at him in disbelief. 'You're saying I cheated?'

The Kid studied his feet for a moment, his face red. 'I'm saying it was sneaky,' he insisted.

She smiled at him. 'Well, if it's any consolation, you managed to do quite a bit of damage to the
Sea Witch
. So much that we're going to have to put in to Lemora to make some repairs.'

Cornelius and Sebastian looked at her in surprise.

'Is that a good idea?' muttered Sebastian.

'Frankly, no. But it's either that or we turn round and follow the
Marauder
back to Ramalat and undertake repairs there.'

'How serious is it?' asked Cornelius.

Jenna frowned. 'When we bumped hulls with the
Black
Hand
, somebody got off a round of shot at close range. It breached us just below the waterline. At the moment we've got a slow leak down there. I've had a temporary patch put on, but it's only going to get worse. It needs to be fixed properly.'

'So surely somebody can do that?' said Cornelius.

Jenna shook her head. 'I won't send men to do it in these waters – there are too many kelfers around. There'll be even more of them once the
Black Hand
goes down with all those dead pirates aboard.' She glanced apologetically at the Kid, but he waved a hand in dismissal. 'No, we need to pull into a dock to do the job properly. We can be in Lemora by early tomorrow morning. I still have a few friends among the carpenters there.'

Sebastian sniffed. 'Pirate carpenters?' he said.

'Carpenters who
work
with pirates,' Jenna corrected him. 'But to be fair, they'll work with anyone who has the money to pay. They're just trying to make a living, the same as anyone else.'

Cornelius shrugged. 'Well then,' he said, 'Lemora it is. You know, I've always had a fancy to take a look at that place, but everyone says it's dangerous.'

'Oh, it's not so bad,' said the Kid. 'People keep themselves to themselves in Lemora. It's only out on the ocean that they show their true colours. That's when you have to look out for yourself.'

Sebastian studied the Kid for a minute. 'Look,' he said, 'what's your real name? We can't go on calling you Kid all the time, can we?'

The Kid looked uncomfortable at this. 'Sure you can,' he said evasively. 'I'm not bothered.'

'No, come on, it's ridiculous. You must have answered to another name before you took over your father's ship, surely?'

'Well, yes . . . but . . . it . . . well, it's a stupid name, that's all.'

'Nonsense,' said Cornelius. 'It's the name your parents gave you; you should be proud of it. Now come along, tell us what it is.' He gave the Kid a probing look. 'I could always go down and ask some of those pirates in the cells,' he threatened.

The Kid sighed, looked at his feet for a moment, then shrugged. 'It's . . . Beverly,' he said glumly.

'Beverly?' Sebastian felt an impulse to laugh out loud and quickly glanced around at the others. 'Well . . . er . . . that's a perfectly good name, isn't it?' he said, a little too loudly.

'Marvellous name,' said Cornelius quickly.

'Yes, very nice,' added Jenna. There was a brief pause. 'Though if he prefers Kid, I see no reason why we shouldn't continue to call him that.'

'Oh no, absolutely,' said Cornelius. 'If that's what he wants.'

'Of course,' added Sebastian. 'Whatever.'

The Kid regarded them sullenly. 'See?' he said. 'I told you it was a stupid name.'

'So listen, what exactly happened to your father?' asked Sebastian, trying to change the subject. 'Jenna told me that he was killed but you said—'

'He
disappeared
!' cried the Kid angrily. 'He didn't die, he just went missing!'

'I see.' Sebastian tried to pick his words as carefully as his throbbing head would allow. 'So . . . how long has he been . . . er . . . missing?'

The Kid's glum expression seemed to deepen. 'Over two summers now. He was out on the Deeps, south of Lemora. I wasn't with him on that trip; I'd stayed home 'cause I had a fever. Bones and Sully told me that they attacked a merchant ship they came across, and during the fight Dad was knocked overboard.'

Cornelius studied the boy for a moment. 'You've already said you don't trust those characters,' he observed. 'You're sure they told you the truth?'

The Kid glared at him. 'They wouldn't know the truth if it bit them on the backside,' he said.

'You said that they wanted control of the
Black Hand
,' Cornelius reminded him. 'It could be that they made damned sure your father didn't return from that voyage. Maybe they even ran a sword through him in the heat of battle—'

'No!' Now the Kid's eyes were blazing with anger. 'You think two dogs like them could beat my father in a fight? No way! He's missing, that's all. And he'll be back one day. I know he will.'

There was an uncomfortable silence. Sebastian tried to think of something to say but couldn't come up with anything appropriate; and then, at the worst possible moment, the cabin door opened and Lemuel stuck his balding head into the cabin.

'The pirate ship's going down if anybody's interested,' he said.

The Kid's face registered shock, and for a moment Sebastian thought he was going to burst into tears; but somehow he managed to hold his emotions in check. 'Why not?' he said quietly. He got up from his seat and made his way out of the cabin. The others followed, Jenna supporting Sebastian, who was still feeling decidedly dizzy.

Up on deck they watched the
Black Hand
, which was listing so badly to starboard that water was starting to creep in over the rails. A couple of sailors flung out a last few bits of salvage and then jumped into the water, where their comrades pulled them aboard a boat and started rowing frantically back towards the
Sea Witch
. At the last moment there was a commotion as numerous rats came scurrying out of their hidey-holes in the pirate ship and leaped into the sea, where they started swimming desperately towards the rowing boat, or climbed aboard bits of floating debris.

'Always happens at the very end,' observed Jenna thoughtfully. 'It's the only thing that will shift them.'

The ship's timbers gave a mighty creak, and then the bows dipped dramatically beneath the surface of the water, churning the sea into violent bubbling motion. The waters closed over the decks, taking the
Black Hand
into a cold, deadly embrace, and then, in eerie silence, the hull of the ship began to slide slowly into the depths.

Sebastian glanced at the Kid and saw that despite the look of grim determination on his face, there were tears in his eyes and his hands were clenched into fists. It couldn't have been easy for him, seeing his father's ship go down like this.

'At least now Trencherman will never get his greasy hands on her,' he said quietly.

The last they saw of the
Black Hand
was the very top of her foremast, where the skull and crossbones still flapped defiantly. But then she slipped beneath the surface and was gone. For a little while Sebastian could make out the dark shape of the ship's hull, going down, down into that seemingly bottomless ocean, and for the first time he felt a chill of real apprehension ripple through him, for he realized that it could so easily have been the
Sea Witch
sinking like that.