The Buccaneer's Apprentice (18 page)

“How would we live during an invasion, Armand?” The Signora was almost in tears. She daubed at her eyes with a handkerchief and leaned into her husband for comfort. “The theaters would be closed. I can’t be a tavern maid again. It’s been too long, and I’m too fa-aa-aaat!”

“Sssh, sssh,” the actor replied, comforting her as he rubbed her back. In his eyes, though, Nic could read concern.

“You must aid us,” said Jacopo to Nic. “The need is as urgent as ever. Maybe even more so.”

“Help them, Niccolo,” implored the Signora, sniffling.

“Please help.” Darcy added her appeal to the others. Nic looked around the group, astonished. They seemed to be confusing the Drake that he’d been portraying with his actual capabilities. His mouth worked impotently for a moment, before Darcy added, “We’ll see to it that you’re rewarded well.”

Those words alone decided him. “Is that really what you think of me?” he asked, rising from the chair where he sat. Little boats fell from his lap and scattered. The contempt in his voice was, for once, not an imitation of a voice he’d heard before. It was his own. It flowed from some angry place within, in abundance. To be so judged, after so much! “Do you really suppose I would put my life in danger—put all of our lives at danger—for a bit of gold in my pocket? What sort of person must you be, to conceive that only people like you—people of means and power—have a sense of … of duty? Of decency?
Oh, Nic’s only a bit of a scrub. We have to give him luni to make him do the right thing
. It doesn’t work that way.”

The girl’s blue eyes flew open. Perhaps she was ashamed of what she’d said. Perhaps she was merely taken aback. “Niccolo. I didn’t mean …”

“We have not known each other for long, Darcy Colombo, but I pretended to myself that after these experiences we at least knew each other well.” He studied her up and down, and tried to harden his heart. “I see I was wrong.”

He wheeled around and opened the cabin’s door. “Niccolo?” he heard Jacopo call out.

“I’ve got to see to the provisions,” Nic growled. “If we’re to set sail as soon as possible, there’s much to be done. Don’t worry. I’ll be getting us all back to Cassaforte.” He stopped in the doorway for a moment. “It’s my country, too,” he added, and then slammed the door behind him.

Through the galley he marched, stomping so hard that several of the tin plates on the dining table rattled. Never before had he been so angry that it actually seemed to impede his vision, but at that moment every blood vessel in his eyes seemed ready to pop. Was this what throwing a tantrum was like? Because if so, Nic required lessons from no one.

He was about to step onto the bottom rung of the ladder above when a noise caught his attention. Someone was standing in the entryway leading to the male crew’s sleeping quarters. “Macaque,” said Nic, freezing in place.

Everything about this situation was wrong. Macaque’s bunk in the cabin had been stripped. His few personal belongings had been stuffed into a gunny sack slung over his shoulder. As Nic stared at him, waiting for an explanation, Macaque’s lips pulled into a sour expression. “I’ll be going, if you please,” he said.

Nic didn’t move from the ladder. The man would have to push past him. The timing of Macaque’s defection made him uneasy. “Why?”

Macaque struggled for a moment. At the last, he seemed to make the decision to come clean. “You know why,” he said, grinning. He strode around Nic and into the galley. On the table lay several mugs that he examined until he found the one that was his. Into the gunny sack it went, and along with it, his personal plate. “I know what you’re hiding.”

“What am I hiding?” The voice that came out was more Nic than the Drake. He attempted to correct the oversight by drawing up his posture and sneering.

“I know what your game is, Drake.” While Nic began to sweat, Macaque hauled the sack over his shoulder again, and stood in the galley entryway. He was an imposing man, larger than Nic by far. “Keep the girl and her father for yourself. Collect the reward. Abandon your crew and sail off, happy as a duck.”

That hadn’t been his game at all, Nic knew, but he played along. “What reward?”

The laugh that Macaque let out was nasty. “I bain’t stupid, and you bain’t as fine a card player as you pretend. Maybe I didn’t see it when you stepped on board with your precious cargo in tow, but when you were talking to that fancy-pants, the comte, and invited him aboard, I recognized a bluff when I saw it. Even if he didn’t.” He spat on the floor. “Move.”

“Where do you think you’re going?” Nic asked, refusing.

“To collect the reward myself. You might have him and her for now, but I’ll be damned if I let you collect the gold. Move out of my way.”

“Listen to me, Macaque.” Nic was fully the Drake now. He tried to sound reassuring. “We can work this out between us, man to man. Perhaps we can come to a gentleman’s agreement.”

Nic’s brain raced as he tried to come up with some kind of way to stall. Unfortunately, Macaque didn’t seem to be about to give him the chance. “We won’t be making one of those.”

“Then I’ll stop you,” Nic said, aware that he was dangerously close to babbling.

“With what? Your mighty muscles?” Macaque laughed.

“I’ll have Maxl stop you. Maxl and the rest.”

Macaque shook his head. “They won’t stop me. Not if you’re down here dead.”

Nic felt a meaty hand on his shoulder, seeming to crush the bones within. He looked up, and saw Macaque’s tiny eyes diminishing to slits. His other hand drew back into a fist that aimed for his face. Nic winced, knowing what was next to come.

A hollow sound of metal reverberated throughout the hold. Like a small gong, it rang. Nic opened his eyes, surprised and relieved to find his head still connected to the rest of his body. Macaque still stood before him, but his neck was twisted to the side at a curious angle. His grip on Nic’s shoulder lessened, then vanished completely. His body fell to the ground in one massive, graceless, crash that made Nic leap back to avoid being knocked over.

Darcy stood in the spot behind him. In both her hands she held one of the galley’s massive iron frying pans, which still vibrated from the impact it had made against Macaque’s skull. The Arturos and Jacopo were behind her, looking shocked.

Darcy and Nic stared at each other for a moment over the pirate’s unconscious form, until at last Nic summoned enough breath to wheeze out, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied, sounding equally surprised and exhausted. They regarded each other with a mixture of emotions—appreciation mingled with wariness.

Finally Nic wiped his face on his sleeve and began to compose himself. “I now think,” he said, looking around their little group, “that we could use a slight change of plan.”

The plans are complete. I have sent guards to deliver them to the cazarro, but I know, as I have known with so many other of our pet projects, that I will never live to see this one come to fruition. My dear, it is pitiful that I must ask this question—but when did you and I become so old?

—Allyria Cassamagi, to King Nivolo of Cassaforte,
in a private letter in the Cassamagi archives

H
ad Gallina several hundred years to establish itself, it might have been deeper than three or four dirt streets spread wide across the beachfront. Had it attracted more permanent residents, or a less shady population, its architecture might have rivaled Cassaforte’s graceful bridges, spacious temples, and deep canals. Had it fewer donkeys and more sewers, it might have smelled a good deal better.

Yet it hadn’t. Once Nic was ashore, he found himself disappointed with the city. From the deck of the
Tears of Korfu
, Gallina had given the impression of being a bustling metropolis. Its ports had been alive with flurries of craft smaller than their sloop moving in and out of the complex rows of docks that surrounded Gallina on every side. Back and forth they shuttled from the larger ships belonging to merchants and adventurers alike, anchored further out in the harbor, their colorful flags flapping sharply in the breeze. Shrouded in the mystery afforded by a layer of the white ash-cloud befogging its streets, the city had almost appeared beautiful—just as the thinnest layer of snow could render picturesque the most rank pile of stable dung.

“Pfaugh!” Nic’s face momentarily twisted with distaste as, for the second time since he had set foot on shore, he narrowly escaped a cascade of slops descending from a second-story balcony. Behind him, Ingenue shrieked and leapt back several feet. The sensation of firm land underfoot after days aboard the sloop were disorienting enough as it was. All of his party walked as if they were slightly inebriated.

As it turned out, the air of intoxication made them fit in quite well among the populace of Gallina. Of all the stucco-covered buildings lining both sides of the muddy street, every other one seemed to be a tavern of some sort. Grimy men and squalling women reeled in and out from the entryways, laughing and yelling in dozens of different tongues. Some of them still clutched their tin mugs of ale as they sallied to the next public house. Only Maxl, among their group, seemed unaffected by his sea legs. One hand on Nic’s shoulder, he pointed at the archways of the taverns. “No doors, see?” he said. “There is no shutting down here. Everything is open all hours of the day and night. They call Gallina the city that is never sleeping.”

“Well, if this is what a city that isn’t sleeping looks like, I would advise a good forty winks!” When she had been told she would have to carry all her possessions from now on, including her own clothing, the Signora had at last abandoned her skirts for a more practical pair of breeches and a wide leather belt. Without her wide farthingale, she looked considerably slimmer, yet somehow in her fluttering she managed to convey an imminent and most feminine case of the vapors.

“It’s very small,” complained Knave as he peered about. “Do they even have any theatrical establishments?”

“Is the docks,” Maxl said. “They are being larger than city itself. They are having warehouses and merchants there, as well, yes.”

“You know,” said Pulcinella. Like her lady, she had also consented to don boys’ breeches, though she was more used to them from her clownlike roles on the stage. “If we were ever to strike out on our own, this might be the very place. New audiences every night.”

“But they wouldn’t speak the language,” Knave pointed out. He turned to wink at a bawd flaunting her wares from a high window. Thoughtfully, he added, “Though they might not necessarily have to.”

“We’ll have no talk about disbanding the company.” Armand Arturo comforted his wife with a pat on her arm. “We may be small, but Armand Arturo’s Theatre of Marvels has not seen its last performance.”

The section of Gallina through which they moved would have been any other municipality’s shadiest area, bustling with the poor and the pock-marked and echoing with the raucous sounds of laughter, shrieks, slaps, and crude language. Drunkards lay on the wooden porches of the taverns, passed out in their tracks. Cassaforte had its own similar neighborhoods—though perhaps not quite as extreme or as rancid—near its docks and river gate. However, the problem with Gallina, as far as Nic could see, was that the seedier areas weren’t confined to any specific sector. They were the entire town. Through the street Maxl drew them onward, pausing every now and again to recite from memory the instructions given to him. At last, at an intersection where a group of small children ran up to them, begging in a foreign tongue for coin or food, he halted. “This is it,” he said, nodding at an open archway to the northeast.

Nic felt uncomfortable with the little ones crowding around him, hands outstretched and eyes wide. Though he couldn’t understand a word they said, he saw the need plain upon their faces. To them, he was a gentleman in fine dress. How could they know that he was as poor as they? “Are you certain?” All the stucco facades looked the same to him.

At that moment, from the upper story window directly over the archway, a woman eased out her torso. Stays from her waist to bosom accented her buxomness; she was all but falling out of her corset as she leaned out the window. Spying Maxl’s painted face, she gave him a wink. “
Oola
,” she called, waggling fingertips that had been dipped into something sticky and then inserted into powdered mica, so that they seemed to sparkle. “
Benado qui?
”

Nic could have sworn that beneath the deep blue, the man blushed. After he stopped laughing, Maxl called out something in the woman’s tongue. She replied in kind, and he nodded to the group. “This is the place.” To Nic, he added in a confidential tone, “You are being young, so be taking it from Maxl, do not kiss any of the women here. Especially if they are having sores.” He touched the area around his lips.

“I’m not kissing any of the women whatsoever!” Nic said, perhaps a little too loudly.

The Arturos looked surprised at the outburst, but concealed their amusement behind barely suppressed smiles. Darcy’s face colored, but before she could respond, Maxl turned to her. “And you,” he said, shaking his finger as if scolding a naughty child, “if you can refrain, do not be bonking people on the head.”

“I don’t hit
everyone
on the head,” she replied, sounding a little sullen.

“Oh yes. You angry,
bonk
. You worried,
bonk
. It is always with the
bonk
,
bonk
,
bonk
. I am thinking, and you may be correcting me if I am wrong, that the bonking on the noggin is not the best way to solve every problem,” Maxl responded. Nic found himself nodding, and he felt sure that Macaque might agree, were the man with them and not tied up and gagged and stuffed in the Legnoli trunk, back aboard the
Tears of Korfu
. The Signora had insisted that they leave the lid cracked for air. Nic, even with that small mercy, shuddered at the thought of that tight, dark space.

“It’s not completely my fault that we have to do this.” Darcy wouldn’t stand to take any of the blame. “I’ve never heard of trading in a boat. Horse carts, perhaps. But entire ships? Who has ships to trade?”

“On Gallina everything is traded.” As if to prove Maxl’s words, a blind youth shuffled through the muck of the streets past their group, calling out for people to buy the necklaces that hung in ropes from his arms. “Even the large ships. People are coming here, they gamble, they bet what they have, including deed to ship. Yes? Sometimes they are betting things they don’t even have, yes? Am I right?”

Maxl’s appeal to Signor Arturo caused the gentleman to cough into the crook of his elbow. “I wouldn’t know anything about that,” he mumbled, his hasty words drawing a look of inquiry from his wife.

Nic turned to Knave, who had been adjusting his costume. Of all the troupe, he alone had traded in his piratical uniform for something different—a subdued ensemble they all hoped made him look more like a merchant passing through Gallina on his way to somewhere better. “You know what you’re supposed to do?”

“Of course,” said the man. He cleared his throat. “I’m to find Signor Trond Maarten somewhere within the lounges of this … establishment.” The expression he gave the ladies of the group was of apology. “I’m to appear as if I were merely another customer. And then, when you begin negotiations, I’m to reveal myself as another merchant of stray sea craft and outbid him.”

“But not by much,” said both Maxl and Nic at the same time. Nic continued, “Just enough to make him match your price. We haven’t much in the way of funds.”

Knave looked offended that they had to remind him. “I’m a professional.” He adjusted the fabric around his throat, and then the cap upon his head. “Trust me.” Without another word, he strode into the building.

Signor Arturo sighed. “He’s off script,” he sighed. “There’s no telling what will happen.”

“There, there,” said the Signora, patting his hand. “It won’t be as bad as in Nascenza, when he forgot and thought he was in a different play altogether.”

Jacopo watched Knave enter the establishment. “I wish we didn’t have to do this,” he sighed. “It seems so much wiser simply to load provisions and go.”

Nic explained the rationale behind his decision once more. “Enough blood has been shed, Signor. I won’t stand for Macaque’s soul to meet its makers simply because it’s more convenient for us.” Jacopo seemed inclined to agree with him, but Nic felt the need to hammer the point home. “We cannot sail to Cassaforte with him as our bound prisoner. The
Tears
is too small for that type of concealment. If he is allowed to roam freely among the crew, he will cause as much dissent as possible. That we also cannot afford.”

Darcy, when she spoke, seemed apologetic for her part in the affair. “Father, what Nic has proposed is best. We should simply abandon the
Tears
and leave Gallina for Cassaforte in a completely different ship. My mother’s countrymen are not inspecting outgoing craft. When Macaque is found aboard the
Tears
by its new owner, neither he nor they will have any idea how we left Gallina.”

“Until they track down and speak to this Trond Maarten fellow.” Jacopo did not sound convinced. “Then they’ll have a clear idea.”

“By which time we’ll be well upon our way and out of their reach.” Nic spoke with such authority that everyone save Jacopo seemed convinced. “The Comte Dumond is not an unintelligent man. What if, between our last encounter and now, he has remembered where he has seen me before? What if his patrol boats are watching for our return to the
Tears
even now? We are in too precarious a position to allow overconfidence to lay us low.”

Amidst the street’s dinnertime cacophony—the cries, the shouts, the laughter and the drunken chorus from a nearby tavern—Jacopo’s only focus was upon Nic’s words. At long last, he nodded. “You are much changed,” he said to the boy.

The observation rattled Nic. It was one of the few things Signor Colombo could have said to him to rattle his nerve. “I—I don’t think I am,” he stammered. Darcy was staring at him. Her scrutiny made him even more nervous. “I don’t feel different. I’m still who I was before, only …”

“Lad.” Armand Arturo shook his head. “Don’t apologize. Not for being our savior.” Before Nic could rebut the charge, the actor announced to the group, “I think we’ve given Knave plenty of time to infiltrate. What say you we begin the latest in our series of clever deceits, eh?” He waggled his eyebrows. “However, I suggest the ladies of our group may wish to excuse themselves from this particular exercise.”