The Buccaneer's Apprentice (2 page)

On the day that Nic and the rest of the troupe that comprised Armand Arturo’s Theatre of Marvels had boarded the
Pride of Muro
, Captain Delguardino had met them on the docks. He had seen their performance of
The Infernal Mysteries
in Massina the night before. So humbled was he to be the man commanding the vessel that would transport the troupe to the coastal city of Orsina that he shook all their hands individually, from Armand Arturo and his company of regulars, down to Nic himself. However, no one had impressed the captain more than Signora Valine Arturo, Armand’s wife and mistress of the troupe. When she stepped forward and curtseyed her rotund figure so deeply that Nic had been able to hear the creaking of the bone stays that created her hourglass shape, the captain had immediately swept off his hat and bowed even lower, until it seemed his forehead might scrape the gangplank.

He had worn a sharply blocked tricorne, decorated with carved jet and stuck with a black plume. Now, the very same hat lay just outside the door to the captain’s quarters below the stern deck. The jet was broken and scattered on the wood, the plume mashed.

Nic stared at the open door and what the torch’s light illuminated beyond it. At first all he could see was a hand, curled into a claw and covered with some dark smudges. Blood, Nic realized with certainty. It was the same blood that puddled beneath the unmoving head on the deck, staring sightlessly into the darkness. Captain Delguardino had taken his final bow.

“Oh, gods,” Nic murmured. When he returned his gaze to the murderer above him, the man let loose with a feral smile and tightened his grip on the blade. The razor point reminded Nic to remain as docile as possible.

For the first time, he realized that the wisp of yellow hanging from the blade’s bone handle wasn’t straw at all. It was human hair, still clinging to a strip of scalp that had dried to leather.

No wind in the sails, a seaman’s in need.
Blood in the waters, sailors, take heed.

—A common Cassafortean saying

A
piercing feminine cry ripped through the dark, obscuring even Nic’s own thudding heartbeats. Almost immediately a man’s voice silenced the scream, snarling in the same unfamiliar language as Nic’s assailant. “
Kama asay var,
” shouted a man coming up from the hatch. Like his comrade, he carried a flaming torch in one hand. The man’s face had been tattooed with black ink in a sinister design. His free hand dragged something up the hatch ladder. He shook it like a sack. “
A var asay var
,” he said, over the screaming.

“Kama quan?
” asked Nic’s attacker. “
Sa kapitan sera vana morto
.”

Nic realized where he’d heard that sound before. “Infant?” he called out, trying to ignore the insistence of the blade in his shoulder. “Infant Prodigy!”

The screaming stopped, or at least assumed words he could understand. “Niccolo?” he heard. The sack unfolded into the girl who’d been the company’s Infant Prodigy. Between acts, she danced the hornpipe, sang ballads, and brought tears to the eye of the most hardened laborer with her recitation of any one of the top dozen sentimental broadsides of the day—and all at the tender age of eleven. Or so she was billed. Though dressed in a child’s clothes, she was in reality four years older than Nic. At the moment, her screams were ten times louder than anything she’d ever produced on stage. “Nic!” she repeated, scrambling to her feet and lunging toward the stern. Scarcely had she made it to her feet than she was diving face-forward for the deck. She did not make impact. Her captor had too firm a hold on the sash around her waist. Her eyes lolled around until they rested on Nic once more. “The crew is gone.”

“Dead?”

“Some jumped overboard!” Infant Prodigy continued trying to squirm away. “These awful pirates killed any who fought back.”

“What of the Arturos?” Nic’s assailant was still talking to his comrade. If these were pirates, they were far grimier and smellier than the ones he’d seen in his master’s dramatic presentations.

“Gone!” The lump that had been growing in Nic’s throat since his rude awakening seemed to swell to the size of a lime at Prodigy’s wailed news. “Taken into the night. Abducted! Vanished!”

Somewhat absurdly, it occurred to Nic that Infant Prodigy might have been fed too steady a diet of melodramas. Other than an actor upon the stage, who talked like that? “Who’s left, Prodigy?” he dared call out. “Are any of the company still below?”

“Only I remain!” The other pirate’s torch dipped low enough for Nic to see Prodigy’s face. Despite the histrionic way the young woman spoke, she looked truly miserable. Her long blond hair hung limp. A runnel of blood trickled from her forehead down the cheek of her heart-shaped face until it was washed into nothingness from tears. “When I heard noises, I hid in the stores. So did the Signora, but she’s so big that they saw her right off. I was behind a barrel of
yemeni alum
but they heard me crying after I thought they’d left … ow!” Prodigy’s attacker gave her sash a savage yank and began to move to the deck rails. He was taking her off the ship onto a rowboat. Just before she vanished, she pleaded, “Nic. Do something!”

“Prodigy!” he called in the darkness. It was too late. Her pirate had thrown her like a bundle of dirty linens over the railing and into some small boat out of sight. Her cry of astonishment was cut short when she landed below with a thud. The thug called out as he leapt over and followed.

The protagonist of one of Armand Arturo’s potboilers would have known the exact necessary course of action to retrieve Prodigy. Hero was always nimble on his toes, whether he was rescuing Ingenue from a certain death at the hands of Knave’s henchmen or wooing her with poetry. Hero, as played by Armand Arturo himself, could fend off a dozen swords with nothing more at hand than a broken walking stick. He could untie Ingenue from a sacrificial altar with his teeth while simultaneously fighting off two priests of the dark gods. If this were one of the Arturos’ plays, Hero would already have swung from a rope around the mainsail to take on both the pirates, thrilling the audience with a carefully choreographed dance through the air that would knock them both flat.

However, Nic was not in a theatrical hall, with its colorful costumes. He was far away from its scents of oranges and perfumes, its crowds, and its bright footlights. Nic was stranded in the middle of the Azure Sea, as distant from land as he had ever been in his life. He had no knowledge of which way lay his home—whatever that was. The body four feet away was not an actor lying motionless with red silks spilling from his coat to imitate blood. It was real, and Nic could only imagine how many more might be littering the boat. There was no way for mighty Hero to save the captain now, much less Nic, the troupe’s lowest drudge.

Yet if he did nothing, Nic realized through the fear and pain, he soon would be lying as lifeless as Captain Delguardino and his men. A casualty, his name quickly forgotten by anyone who had ever known or cared about him. The realization ignited a heat deep within. Not that anyone had ever cared, other than the Arturos. Most of his other masters had never bothered to learn even so much as his name.
Boy
or
mangy cur
had been good enough for the likes of him, all his seventeen years. Only the Arturos and their company had ever done him the favor of treating him as human. No matter what it took, he was going to repay the favor, here and now.

Perhaps the twin gods of the moons indeed stretched their arms over the waters toward Nic that night. Or perhaps the blood rushing through his every vein stirred his mind into motion and prompted his eyes to seek out opportunity. Whatever the cause, the pressure on Nic’s shoulder suddenly ceased. The pirate lifted his weapon hand—very carefully, Nic noticed—up to his turned head. He was scratching his nose, still watching the rowboat speeding away from the
Pride
. The time for action, if Nic intended to take it at all, had to be at that moment.

He lunged. Up from his aching knees he rushed until the top of his head connected with the pirate’s midsection. The crunch that followed resounded from his neck to the base of his spine, leaving the top of his skull feeling flattened and throbbing. The stratagem worked, however. With a whuff, the brigand fell back, stumbling for several feet and carrying Nic with him, until the pair collided into the iron hand pumps used to evacuate water from the hold. Something heavy fell from the pirate’s hand, thudding across the deck. Only once the man was sliding down onto the boards did Nic roll off. With his heart thudding faster than a tambour at a festival jig, and his breath heaving in rasps that pained his lungs, he scrambled backward. The seat of his pants protested at being scraped across the wood, but Nic would have frayed the fabric to shreds if it helped him gain his feet any faster.

“
Ungh … kascado
…” The pirate, still groggy, tried to focus on Nic’s face. Apparently the impact had knocked the man’s skull against the pump handle. A cut ran across his forehead, oozing from his temple to his right eyebrow. The pirate noticed the flow of blood at the same time. Too perplexed for anger, he raised his hand to his brow and pulled it away, staring at the glistening red mark it left.

What was this? The pirate had a free hand? Though Nic’s head still ached unlike anything he’d ever before felt, he pulled together his wits and looked around. The pirate hadn’t dropped his spiked blade. That would have been too undeserved a stroke of good luck. The torch he’d been carrying, however, lay burning on the deck not two arm-spans away. Its flames flicked into the night sky and left the faintest of black scars on the wood beneath.
Tuck and fold
, Nic thought to himself, remembering the choreographed tumble with which Signor Arturo’s Hero had thrilled many an audience during staged sword fights. While in his sitting position, he pulled his legs in close, then rolled twice in the torch’s direction. He landed on his toes and knees, and in one swift motion, grabbed the stock in his hand and sprang to his feet. His lip tickled from something warm. When he lifted the side of his free hand to his mouth, it came away red with blood. Nic ignored it. The torch roasted the right side of his face. “Get off this ship.” His voice sounded cracked and frightened, he realized. He took a deep breath and tried to sound more authoritative. “Leave this vessel at once!”

The man’s eyes traveled up and down his body. Nic could only imagine how he looked in the brigand’s eyes. Very probably he recognized him for the boy he really was. They were quite the contrast: man and boy, pirate and servant, leathery-skinned skeleton and spare youth. Nic might have been the better-fed, but the pirate was an experienced fighter—and certainly killer. That, surely, had to be what the man was thinking as he wiped blood and snot from his nose onto his forearm, spat, then used the pump for support as he stood. He shook his head. Nic took it as the warning it was. “
Vi tolo anscolado
.”

“No.” Nic didn’t know what he was refusing, but digging in his heels against the man’s demands felt right. He took the torch with both hands and brandished it as he shook his head. “Get off this boat.” When the pirate didn’t move, Nic gestured with the torch. “Go!”

In the torchlight, shadows pooled in the man’s sunken cheeks and eyes. Emaciated as he seemed, he was wary and hunched over as well. If he was anything like Nic at that moment, every nerve in his body must have been on edge, prepared to leap into action. Which is why it was a surprise that, rather than lunge at Nic, he raised his free hand, cupped it to his mouth, and let out a whoop—the fiercest howl Nic had ever heard in his life. Deeper and wilder it seemed than the combined howls of outrage an audience might muster at one of Knave’s onstage atrocities. Louder it was than any of the half-wolf hounds one of his masters had kept, even when they bayed during a double full moon. After a few seconds of that ear-splitting shriek, Nic suspected that he now knew how curdled blood felt, as it pumped through his veins.

Still, he didn’t flinch. He’d had men yell at him before. Save for Signor Arturo, all his masters had been screamers of insults. They all had puffed out reddened cheeks, summoned up their worst curses, and let loose. Nic had taken enough of the abuse not to let it rattle his determination. This man was not his master. He would not bow down to him. It was sheer stubborn determination that made Nic answer, with simmering anger, “You do not scare me!” The words were a bald lie, of course. He’d never been so frightened for his life. Yelling back, however, bolstered his spirits. The words and the torch in his hands felt like the only light he had to cast back against the darkness. “You don’t!” he growled, as the man continued the ululation. “And you can quit your damned noise!”

As if understanding, the man’s shrill cry ceased. He bared his gums in a smile. His eyes shone with triumph as he paced to the side. Together, he and Nic trod a slow, wary circle, never taking their eyes off each other or closing their distance. Around his fingers, the pirate twirled his short sword as easily as a juggler at a city fair. Nic’s torch caused arcs of light to dance across the shining blade. The pirate made a feint, suddenly thrusting in Nic’s direction. “
Valla!
” he said nastily, when Nic responded with a leap back.

“
Valla
yourself!” Nic was annoyed with his clumsy and instinctive reaction to the man’s ploy. He was being tested, he realized. Well, he had a weapon too. The torch in his hand might not be as sharp as a sword, but with his loose, dry clothing, the pirate seemed wary of coming anywhere near its tongues of flame. Nic thrust it forward, feeling pleased when the pirate dodged the jabs. “That’s right. Boo!” He jutted out his lower jaw and snarled like a dog.