The Buccaneer's Apprentice (6 page)

What was up there was more island than Nic had suspected from his limited view on the beach. Nothing in all his ventures with the poacher into the royal forest had prepared him for the panorama before him. Wild and utterly untamed, it was. A vast sweep of waist-high grasses ran down to the island’s other edge, perhaps a half-hour’s walk away. Nic’s own encampment appeared to be at one end of the long and narrow strip of land, while the other lay out of sight, hidden from view by the sun’s dazzling reflection upon the sea.

Curiosity prompted him to investigate the rest of the island, but something else made him hold still. The solitude and the quiet made him realize something that filled him equally with as much excitement as it did fear. He was his own master here. In this place, on this island, he had no indentures. While he remained, he was no man’s servant, no dogsbody to be ordered about. He had no schedule to keep. No chores to perform, save those he chose. Much as he had loved working for the Arturos—and that had scarcely seemed like work at all—he was now at no one’s mercy, or pity. “I’m king here,” he murmured aloud as he gazed across the horizon. For the first time, he was the only person in control of his life.

It was with a buoyed sense of purpose that Nic looked thoughtfully at a clump of trees toward the island’s center. Trees needed fresh water to survive, he reasoned. They might be clustered around a spring or some kind of hollow that collected the rain. Sword once more in hand, Nic took a deep breath, decided to make the best of his situation, and set off on the hike.

His short time serving the fence with a taste for poaching was proving more valuable than Nic would ever have suspected. One of the tasks for which Nic had been responsible during those ventures into the royal forests had been to cover the tracks of both his master and himself, ensuring that none of the king’s rangers might suspect their illegal treks to capture game from the sacred lands. He had used fallen tree branches to rearrange the grasses they had trampled, cleared and buried all traces of their camps and blinds, and made very certain to fix anything that a sharp-eyed ranger might spot.

However, someone else had taken no such precautions.

There was another person on the island. Of that Nic was suddenly certain. His eyes could trace an irregular path in the field that wended from the shore inland, tromped down as if not only by heavy steps, but by something heavy dragged all the way from the beach, up the slope, and through the tall grasses. The deep trail ended at the edge of the wooded area. Sword at the ready, Nic dropped his sling on the ground and followed.

The trail was definitely not his imagination. Whoever had traipsed through here had made no effort to cover his tracks. Low-level twigs lay on the ground, broken from the surrounding trees. Their leaves were still green, indicating that the stranger’s passage had been not long ago. Nic’s hand shot out to touch two of the fresh wounds on the bark. “Dry,” he murmured, sniffing his fingers. The trespasser had not been too recent. Perhaps two or three hours at least.

Nic’s eyes remained alert as he followed the path into the glade. His ears prickled for the slightest noise, but all he could hear was the pounding of his own heart and the sudden rasp of his lungs as they tried to draw in air. He took a moment before every step, edging into the shaded woods sideways, sword ready to strike out. It was obvious where the path was leading him. As he’d suspected, deep within the overhanging trees lay a small pond. Beyond it, a stream flowed in the direction of the island’s far end, splashing along mossy banks with a playful sound. A lone bird dove through the enclosure. Its cry cut through the silence, setting Nic on edge. Of another person, there was no trace.

A series of upturned stones and trampled grass betrayed the path’s end at the edge of the nearly still pond. After gazing carefully to all sides, Nic knelt down by the pool’s edge and helped himself to a handful of the water. It was sweet and cool to the taste, and fresh in his mouth, free of any stagnation. That was a relief, then. But about the stranger somewhere in the vicinity … could he have been in search of water as well, dived into the pool, and emerged on the other side? Possibly. Nic was no expert in tracking, though, and picking up a cold trail might take him hours.

“
Vyash tar!
”
The sound of a human voice made Nic nearly jump out of his skin. Sword ready, he spun around, only to see no one behind him. “
Allo!
” said the voice again, sounding like iron pincers scraping against blocks of ice. “
Allo! Tuppinze yere!
” Nic’s head spun in every direction except for the one from which finally he realized the noise was coming—up.

A man hung above him, his fingers grasping in Nic’s direction. One of his legs was tied with rope that suspended him upside down, so that his long black hair spilled toward the ground. The man’s face had been painted blue, though much of the dye had flaked off or had been sweated into his hair since his capture. He was from Charlemance, Nic suddenly realized—or at least had adopted that far-flung country’s habits of bluing one’s skin. His garb was more tattered and begrimed than Nic’s own. Nic judged him to be a pirate, rather than a fine ritter or even a commoner of Charlemance.

The man seemed to be trying to communicate, begging Nic with gesture and strangled sounds to release him. He made sure the man saw his sword before speaking. “What are you doing up there?” Though the stranger was twice his age, Nic spoke with authority. Then he remembered that the pirate more than likely wouldn’t understand a word he said.

To his surprise, however, the man did seem to comprehend. His lips worked a moment before replying. “Cassafort?” he asked, and then at Nic’s expression of amazement, “You are from Cassafort City?”

“I am from Cassaforte,” Nic replied, suspicious. The stranger had been caught in some sort of trap. The rope suspending him had been tied to the top of a young but sturdy tree that even now bobbed and flexed as the man struggled. He took a step forward, so he could see better. “What are you—?”

Too late did Nic hear the warning crack beneath his feet. He did not see the stones fly that he had disturbed with his step. Had he noticed the lithe tree bent almost double among the other tree trunks, he might have been more wary, but the second trap caught him completely off-guard. In mere seconds, all the blood in his body seemed to be rushing to his head. His world was upside down. He watched, dizzy, as his sword fell from his hands and onto the ground, six feet below.

Worse than being tricked in such a way was the man’s reaction. “Ah-hah-hah-hah!” he howled, his laughter echoing throughout the wooded area. For a long minute he laughed and laughed. Tears ran from his eyes onto his forehead and into his hair, carrying more of the blue dye with it. So hard did the man shake and guffaw that he began to spin at the end of his rope. Slapping his knees with mirth didn’t help to slow him down.

“Oh, shut your mouth.” Now that he was face-to-face with the man, although upside down, Nic was certain he was a pirate, probably escaped from the conflagration two nights before. Nic was trapped, and it was his own fault. The rope that had captured his leg was knotted in a complicated pattern that clutched his ankle like a vise. He couldn’t even find the beginning or end of it. “What do you know about Cassaforte, anyway?”

“Cassafort City,” the man said again, almost as if correcting him. “She too is from Cassafort City.”

“Who?” Nic might have understood the man’s words, but he made no sense. “Who is from Cassaforte Cit … Cassaforte?”

“She.” When Nic shook his head, the man pointed down. “She.”

A girl stood on the ground below Nic, her eyes blue and her hair long and golden. In her hands she carried a long club, heavy and blunt. She swung it hard at Nic’s head before he could think to dodge. He had only one coherent thought as he sank once more into unconsciousness: that the girl was the loveliest pirate he was ever likely to see.

It was due to a tiresome error on the part of a housemaid that we received tickets to see not the Marvelous Theatre playing near the city’s center, but to see some third-rate, attenuated troupe called the Theatre of Marvels appearing in the southwest. My ears are still ringing from the two hours of mugging we had to endure, and I have taken steps to dismiss the housemaid.

—Palmyria Falo, of the Thirty, in a letter to her mother

W
hen Nic’s eyesight had begun to focus on the rocks above his head a few hours before, he first wondered if he’d been dragged back to his own shelter. He was in another cavern of sorts, but its craggy ceiling was higher and the sand rockier beneath his feet. Not that he could move his feet. They had been bound fast with rope and tied to his similarly restrained wrists, so that he was curled into an uncomfortable ball, only able to lie on either side, or to pull himself up and sit on his behind. He’d had a brief notion of rolling himself around the crates and sacks and out from the cave mouth to escape, but a mouthful of sand and an uncertainty of who might be out there had so far prevented him. The back of his head throbbed. He wished he had a little more freedom with his hands.

What he wished had been tied—gagged thoroughly, in fact—was his companion’s mouth. The blue-faced pirate with whom he’d been captured hadn’t stopped talking since Nic had woken. “When you making the pirate? Eh? Eh?” he was asking now. His attempts to speak in Nic’s tongue were heavily accented. Nic knew nothing about the language of Charlemance, but apparently the inhabitants of the city of Longdoun all spoke as if they had mush in their mouths. When Nic didn’t reply, the pirate prompted him once more. “Eh?”

“I didn’t make the pirate,” Nic growled back, pulling himself from his near-fetal position until he was sitting upright, with his back against a barrel marked
possoins salés
. “I mean, I’m not a pirate.” He tried to peer at the cavern’s other occupant, who had been unconscious since Nic had come to. All he could tell was that the unknown man was very old and frail. Like a bundle of broken sticks, he lay atop a pile of burlap sacks stuffed, by the smell of it, with dried grasses. His mouth was open, and his jaw limp. He breathed shallowly, like a sleeping baby. Unlike either of the conscious prisoners, the old man’s hands were not bound. “Signor,” he hissed, trying to awaken the man. “Are you awake?”

“Maxl, he making the pirate when he less than you.” The pirate thumped his chest with his chin, to show that he was the Maxl in question. Not even his loud voice awakened the sleeping captive. “How many years you having?”

Nic had learned that not responding didn’t shut the man up. It merely made him inquire more aggressively. “Seventeen,” he said, trying to sound as uninterested as possible. To the old man he called out once more, “Signor!” He still received no response. Perhaps the girl had done a sight more harm to his skull than she’d managed on Nic’s own.

“A-ha! Maxl have four and ten years when he go to sea first time. Less than you!” The pirate’s blue face twisted with gleeful triumph. If this were a competition, Nic thought, it was one of a highly unusual nature. “Maxl live in …”

“Maxl live in Longdoun then,” Nic said along with him. He’d heard several stories so far of Maxl’s upbringing in Longdoun city. Between the descriptions of the riverside town’s docks, Maxl’s humble beginnings as a pickpocket, and the allegedly rollicking tales of his drunken aunt known far and wide as “Fat Sue,” he didn’t think much of it.

“Yes!” said Maxl, his face sunny. “Maxl live in Longdoun then. Fat Sue tell Maxl no go out after dark, bad men be around. But I go out, and am taken up by, what you call, uh, uh?” Nic shook his head and stared out into the darkness beyond the cave mouth. He could see sparks from a small fire flying into the air, but nothing of whoever might be warming themselves at it. Maxl made herky-jerky motions with his shoulders. “Gang. It kind of gang. They walk night streets, kidnap men, make men into sailor. If they not wanting to be sailor, too bad! Hah! Hah!”

“Press gang?” Nic said. He’d heard of such things before, these illegal gangs that delivered unwilling yet able bodies to captains, depriving them of their freedom and families. One of Nic’s own masters had made idle threats to sell Nic to a press gang, but Nic had always hoped they were fictional conceits, made up to scare the young.

“Press gang! Yes! Is thing. Smart boy.” The pirate grinned at him. Unlike the man who had held him captive on the
Pride of Muro
, at least Maxl’s teeth were all intact. They might not have been pretty, but they were all accounted for. “You being like Maxl, yes? Both very smart.”

Nic thought of the Arturos then, and of Captain Delguardino and all the men of the
Pride
lost at sea, and felt an angry fire burn within. “No,” he retorted, staring the man square in the eye. “We are not alike.” Even as he said the words, though, he couldn’t help but wonder. Maxl might have been twice Nic’s age, but no matter how different his long black hair was from Nic’s dark, short crop, and no matter how encrusted with blue dye his face was compared to Nic’s sunburnt cheeks, it sounded as if they’d both had less-than-ideal childhoods. Not to mention the fact that they both had been pressed into labor against their wills. Deny it as Nic might, they were somewhat alike. “And I’m not a pirate.”

“No?” Maxl’s eyebrow shot up.

“No!”

As if sensing Nic’s outrage at the accusation, Maxl cocked his head. For the first time, Nic noticed that both of his earlobes sported small loops of gold. “You carry
shivarsta
.” Nic shook his head. “
Shivarsta
,” repeated the pirate. “To stick. Big cutting …” Maxl made gnashing motions with his teeth.

“Sword,” Nic said. For the first time he remembered the short sword he’d been carrying before his capture. Where was it? After looking frantically around the cave, he finally saw it plunged into the sand, close to the mouth. Its blade glowed, reflecting the fire just beyond the cave’s entrance. “Pirate sword.”

“Pirate sword, yes, but special,” Maxl agreed. “You kill big, uh, importance man. Take hair. Make pirate sword.”

“No,” Nic said, stiff. “I kill pirate. I mean, I killed the pirate. I took his
shivarsta
.”

Maxl swallowed and seemed to understand. “You kill pirate?” he asked. “Ugly pirate? Holes in mouth, yes? Much thin?”

“That’s the one.”

“That is Xi! I know him. Terrible man. And you kill him?”

“All by myself.” When Nic shrugged, Maxl seemed to shrink back a little. Fine. If fear inspired the man to shut his mouth for a few minutes, he’d make him scared. “I killed many pirates last night,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “You boarded my ship. You took my friends.”

“Not Maxl! Maxl not part of Xi and them. I leave crew before that. Men you kill, bad men. Maxl not bad!”

“Well, I killed every single bad man I could. I made the ship go boom!” he said, mimicking the noise of the
yemeni alum
exploding. “So my advice, signor, would be not to anger me too greatly. Understood?”

Whether or not Maxl grasped everything completely, he at least nodded, his eyes wide. He seemed to regard Nic with a newfound respect. “You take hair?” he asked, his voice quiet. “You take dead man hair, pirate-killer? After boom? For Xi’s
shivarsta?
Make it yours?”

“Maybe later I’ll have yours,” said Nic, growling slightly. That seemed to quiet the man completely.

Once Nic was certain Maxl had snuffed his curiosity to ask any more, he spent a few moments inching forward across the sand until he was at the side of the old man lying on the sacks. He still breathed—there had been a few moments when Nic had worried they were sharing their space with a dead man. The man’s face wore the lines of sixty or more years of everyday living. What was left of his hair was thin and dry, and his long beard was uncombed. His long robes had once perhaps been fine, but sun and sea had reduced them to a bleached mass. A track of dried blood streaked his forehead. “Are you awake?” Nic felt foolish for even asking, when it was perfectly obvious the man was dead to the world.

Or perhaps he wasn’t. At Nic’s question, the man stirred. His hand reached for his face, landing uncertainly on the prominent nose in its center, then batting away something imaginary. His mouth worked. “You’re really awake?” Nic asked, suddenly excited.

The old man sighed. Slowly and with great deliberation, his eyelids flickered open. “Mmm?” he asked, through cracked lips.

“
Hallo
?” Nic spoke no language other than his own, but he’d heard the merchants calling out to their customers in other tongues before. “
Ola?
”

“
Oi!
” Maxl spoke up. When Nic turned, startled, he found the pirate watching with interest. “That how we do in Longdoun,” he volunteered.

The old man must have heard Maxl’s outburst. The tip of his tongue shot out to wet his lips. He murmured a few syllables, none of which were recognizable to Nic’s ears.

“He talk in Pays tongue,” Maxl announced with authority. Nic’s mouth twitched. How was he supposed to talk to someone in Azurite? Luckily, Maxl offered a solution. “I talk to him for you. Maxl talk good Pays tongue, just like they talk in Côte Nazze.”

“Is it as good as your Cassafortean?” Nic said with a grimace.

Maxl seemed to take it as a compliment. “Yes! Thank you! Watch.” He cleared his throat, and then in an extremely loud voice, “Allo!
Bongzur!
Voo avec
big pirate killer
, comprendvu?
”

“Even I,” Nic turned to announce, unimpressed, “can tell that was not a proper sentence.”

“Do I know you?” The words had sounded like the rustle of autumn leaves across an empty piazza, but they were distinct enough. Nic shifted on his knees to face the old man again. His eyes were focused now, though they blinked with confusion. “You look like someone I know.”

“We’re like you,” Nic told him, inching forward until he was kneeling directly beside the old man. “Prisoners. Wait,” he said, suddenly realizing something. The man had spoken without accent or flaw. “Are you from Cassaforte?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Cassafort City!” exclaimed Maxl, seeming to follow the conversation. “Yes, beautiful! Many beautiful women! All love Maxl. Hah! Hah!”

The pirate barked out his laughter so loudly that it echoed throughout the cavern. It must have been audible from without, for a shadow crossed the sands in front of the entrance. Long and dark it loomed, though its owner did not materialize.

“Is everything all right in there?” It was the girl, Nic knew. She spoke with a strange accent, almost like the languid tones of Pays d’Azur, but yet not quite. “Sssh,” he warned the others. Maxl immediately stifled his amusement.

“Old man?” the girl called, a touch of warning in her voice.

It seemed to take the elderly gentleman an eternity to struggle to a half-sitting position. He was indeed a gentleman, Nic could now tell. The aristocratic nose, the former formality of his beard and robes, the gentility of his words, all bespoke a certain class. If he was not of the Seven and Thirty, he was at least very well connected among their society. “All is well,” he called out. His voice did not sound strong, but it carried like an actor’s. “No need for alarm.”

The three men waited while the shadow seemed to waver with indecision. After a moment, however, it receded. They all seemed to relax. Nic had only caught a glimpse of the girl, shortly before she’d banged the back of his head and rendered him unconscious. “She’s dangerous,” he whispered to the old man. “The girl. She took out both of us on her own.”