The Buccaneer's Apprentice (7 page)

“She-tiger,” said Maxl. “Killer of pirate-killers. Almost!” Nic shot him a dirty look.

“Yes, she’s dangerous indeed,” the gentleman agreed. By his sober nod, Nic understood that she had overcome him as well. “I would fear crossing her.”

“What do you know of her?” While the old man thought, Nic rapidly began to theorize. “She’s not part of Maxl’s group of pirates.”

“Maxl pirating no more,” he reminded them. “Never see girl, ever, before here.”

“She must be part of another group of buccaneers,” Nic said. The idea sounded more persuasive as he spoke it. Wasn’t the cavern filled with supplies plundered from cargo ships? “But is she the leader? Or just one of them?”

The expression on the old man’s face was difficult to pin down. “Surely the girl is too young to lead her own merry pirate band?”

“And that accent,” Nic said. “What is she?”

“Half of her is of Cassaforte,” said the old man, turning his head to look at the cave entrance. He was sitting up straighter now. Though he did not appear to be a strong man at all, his posture had dignity and bearing. “Half of Pays d’Azur.”

Nic nodded. That made sense. In the short time he’d heard her speak, she’d managed to combine the lilt of his own language with the nasality of Azurite. Exotic, it sounded, but familiar. “Why in the world would she attack a half-countryman?”

“Well …”

Nic thought he saw the direction in which his elder’s doubt was heading. “True. She might not have known I was a countryman. Perhaps if I just talk to her …”

Maxl had a definite opinion on that suggestion. “Pirate not care. You say Maxl should not attack Charlemance boat, because he is from Charlemance? Pirate say pooh that.” He struggled forward, jerking back and forth to scoot across the cave floor regardless of his bonds. “When man become pirate, he is becoming free man, man without country.” He wrinkled his nose and tossed back the hair that was tickling it. “Or sometimes woman,” he admitted.

“But that’s insane,” Nic told him. “You don’t lose your heritage because you become a pirate.”

“A pirate is an outlaw. I’m afraid no country is going to set their banners flying with joy at the sight of a pirate frigate. They disrupt the flow of goods and make the seas a place of terror.” Nic nodded at the old man’s words, thinking of the dread he’d felt upon wakening at the mercy of a pirate’s blade, two nights before. Any man who’d say such a thing had to be trustworthy. “No offense, my piratical friend, but that is the way of the world.”

“Maxl no … offense.” The pirate mouthed the word carefully, as though it were the first time he was using it. Cheerfully, he added, “Is true. Pirate answer to no country. Is why Maxl not pirate no more.”

“Signor. What is your name?” Nic asked, on sudden impulse.

“My name?” The man hesitated before answering. “Jacopo. Jacopo Colombo.”

“Signor Colombo, listen to me. My name is Niccolo Dattore. I have lived in Cassaforte all my life. I was on a ship, the
Pride of Muro
, sailing from Massina to Orsina with my master and his troupe of actors. My master was asked to bring his Theatre of Marvels on tour, in honor of King Alessandro naming Milo Sorranto as heir to the throne,” Nic explained to the old man. He spoke hastily, as if expecting the girl to step in and separate them at any moment. “Maxl’s men boarded our ship. They killed the captain and most of the crew.”

“I am not being in that,” Maxl protested, scraping forward a few more inches. “I am off boat before orders made. Why you make noise?”

“I’m making noise,” Nic said, furiously moderating his tone because he was, indeed, making too much of it, “because you—they—took my master and his lady, and all the troupe! I’m making noise because I’m gods-know-where in the middle of the sea without a chance of getting back home. If I had a home to go back to. Which I no longer do.” He turned to the old man. “For the first time I had a master I was proud to serve.”

“You do revenge on him.” Maxl pointed out. “You kill the pirate killing him. That is honor. Be happy!”

“Stop making it sound like something to be proud of!” If Maxl didn’t pick up on Nic’s every word, his tone got through. The pirate shrank back. “If that’s honor, I want none of it. It didn’t make me happy. One man is dead at my hand. Probably four others as well.” Thinking about the enormity of what he’d done caused a point at the front of his skull to ache. “I had to, though. I
had
to.”

One of Jacopo’s hands reached out to steady Nic. “It sounds like it was self-defense.”

Nic nodded. “Honor won’t bring back the captain or his men. Honor won’t bring back the Arturos, and now they’ve been sold for … for … for soup! Or for their gold teeth.”

“Sell chicken for soup,” Maxl said, almost attempting to be comforting. “Live folk make better slaves.”

“That’s superb news, Maxl,” Nic snapped. “I thank you for that. Slavery is so much better.” It wasn’t, of course. Nic added it to the list of things he couldn’t bear to think about. “What did I expect, coming from the man who thought stringing a bit of hair from my sword would make everything right?” The old man didn’t seem to understand, but Nic realized that now was not the time for any further explanation. “Listen,” he told Jacopo, trying to turn in place. “She didn’t tie you up. Undo my knots. Let me free. I’ll take care of the girl.” It was a grim thought, attacking someone again, but for the last two days he’d done what he’d had to do to survive, and he was prepared to keep at it for as long as necessary. “Then by the gods, I swear I’ll find a way for the two of us to return to Cassaforte.”

“That would be most gratifying, my friend.” It occurred to Nic then that perhaps Signor Colombo might be thankful enough to offer him a position in his household, if he were to find them a way home. “But as for the girl, I don’t think …”

“Undo Maxl too?” The pirate’s teeth were white in the gloom as he tried to smile at and charm the old man.

“No. He’s one of them. We don’t know what he’ll do.” Nic had never sounded more firm in his life.

“I not know girl!”

“He’s a pirate.”

“How many times am I telling you. I am being … eh … I not have word. Old man, foots up, smoking pipe and whittle on wood, working no more.”

“I believe,” said the old man, his fingers fumbling with the rope around Nic’s wrists, “our friend is saying he has retired from his former profession.”

“Retiring, yes!” Maxl seemed pleased to be understood. “Undo Maxl now?”

“Pirates don’t retire,” Nic growled. Now that the restraints around his wrists were loosened, the blood flowed back to his fingertips with a vengeance. For a moment they felt like fat, prickling sausages, but the pain had subsided by the time the last of the hemp fell from his hands. He attempted to reach back and assist as Jacopo turned his attention to the knots around his feet. “He’s the enemy.”

“Undo Maxl!” the pirate demanded.

“I am releasing Niccolo here,” the man explained. “He appears to be the victim of circumstance. Possibly he may be of aid.”

“Maxl can aid!” The pirate shook his wrists.

One of the clumps of rope next to Nic’s left ankle was proving particularly tricky. Both the old man and Nic picked at it blindly with their fingertips. “Just be quiet,” Nic urged the pirate.

“Undo me. Or Maxl yell for girl.”

It was blackmail, plain and simple. Nic gawped at him. “No!”

“Girl!” Maxl bawled at the top of his lungs, before either Nic or the old man could hush him. “
Girl!
Allo! Halp! Fire! Murder!”

Nic felt the knot spring free as the mouth of the cave darkened. Against the shadows from the fire and the dark twilight horizon loomed the girl’s shadowy form. The outline of her long, flowing hair was edged with gold, and she appeared to be wearing some kind of boy’s billowing breeches. “What’s going on in here?”

“My dear—” the old man began.

Nic, however, had no time for the man’s diplomacies. It was time for action. The last of the ropes coiled from his ankles as he sprang toward the girl. He was aware of Jacopo’s dismayed cry and of Maxl’s howl behind him, but they were drowned out by the deep, guttural grunt he let out as he lunged at her figure. Only at the last moment did he think of his sword, stuck into the sand.

The girl couldn’t have known that he was free and lunging at her, but some instinct made her leap sideways. Instead of connecting with her midsection as he’d planned, Nic nearly missed her altogether. At the last moment, though, his arm shot out and grabbed the girl, tackling her to the ground. Over and over each other they tumbled until they landed outside the cave on the sand. The girl spat out a mouthful of grit, leapt to her bare feet, and crouched into a fighting posture. Azurite curse words tumbled from her lips.

Nic had landed on his face, his nostrils full of sand. He snorted it out and blinked to clear his eyes, only to see the girl looming above. By the light of the fire, he could see her thick, curly hair hanging around her face, making her look like she wore a head of snakes. “
Bâtard!
” she bellowed, and then pounced.

This time it was Nic who propelled himself away, rolling to one side before she could land atop him. He’d underestimated her. Though she was no older than him, and a girl, she was an equal if not more dangerous opponent. Still, Nic hadn’t grown up in the back warrens of Cassaforte among thieves and worse without learning a few tricks of his own. Before he swung his legs into the air and pulled himself to his feet, in his right hand he grabbed a handful of sand. He kept it clenched tight into a fist. “Shame on you!” he growled at the girl. “Your captive is old enough to your grandfather. What honor is there in that?”

“What would you know about honor?” she snarled back. Her curious accent only made the words sound more full of disdain. “Working for
them
.”

Nic’s temper flared even more hotly. “The Arturos are honorable folk,” he retorted without thinking. “They have always been good to me! I would give my life to save them from someone like you.” His sword was directly behind her, just within the cave’s mouth. If he could edge around her to it, he could get the advantage.

“What?” she asked, not seeming to understand. Then suddenly it didn’t matter. “Stop! Don’t move a hand’s span more,” she warned, arresting Nic in mid-step.

“I’m not,” he assured her, holding out both his free left hand and the clenched right fist.

“What are you up to, spy?” she asked, suspicious.

“Spy?” Nic asked. Where in the world had she gotten that idea? If only he could get to his sword.

Perhaps some flicker of his glance or inclination of his body gave away his intentions, because the girl risked a look over her shoulder. She spied the sword buried in the sand, and a smile of triumph crossed her lips. Nic’s heart sunk. She was going to get it for herself. “That’s mine,” he warned her. His mind began working quickly. “It’s cursed, like me. Woe to you if you touch it.”

She seemed to eye the carved bone handle and its trophy of human scalp. “Liar,” she finally announced.

“Find out if I am,” he warned. Every muscle in his body tensed as he readied himself to make his move. “Have you heard of Prince Berto and the accursed withering of his arm?”

“Prince Berto was cursed by the Scepter of Thorn and the Olive Crown,” she said. She eyed the weapon once more. “Not by a killer’s sword.”

“The curse is the same,” Nic said, sounding more confident at her hesitation. “Care to discover for yourself?”

Apparently the girl did not. She stepped away from the cave. Nic saw her fist draw back. It was time to make his move. He forgot about his throbbing head. With a cry of triumph, Nic let loose the handful of sand he’d been saving for exactly this moment, letting it fly in the girl’s face. She would be blinded by the dirt and rock, allowing him to grab his sword and gain the upper hand. Jacopo would help him bind her as she had him, and he could use her as a hostage to barter his freedom with her comrades.

At least, that was the theory. For at the very same moment that Nic loosed his handful of sand, the girl sent a similar hidden volley in his direction. His eyes watered and stung, abraded by the sharp grains that flew into his face. For a moment, the air hung heavy with dust, and both Nic and the girl coughed and spat and fell to their knees, trying to clear their eyes.

It was into this pitiful display that Jacopo Colombo stepped. He came to a stop between them. “Niccolo Dattore,” he asked, in the mildest of tones. “Would it be too much of an inconvenience were I to ask that you not kill my daughter?”

The natives of the Azure Isles are a savage race, with teeth like vipers and a ruthless thirst for blood that would give pause even to the mighty armies of the Yemeni. Or so it is rumored, for no sophisticated soul has seen them and lived to tell the tale.

—Celestine du Barbaray,
Traditions & Vagaries of the
Azure Coast: A Guide for the Hardy Traveler

I
t had not taken Nic very long to figure out something after he began his service to the Arturos. No matter how many broadsides printed with rapturous reviews they pinned to the boards outside their theaters, and regardless of the way they referred to the Theatre of Marvels as the finest performing artists in the countryside, they were not one of Cassaforte’s major dramatic troupes. The dockside stages on which they appeared were rowdy wrestling rings compared to the opulence of the city’s finest theaters—particularly those near the mouth of the Via Dioro, in the palace square. The Arturos’ homegrown scripts, well-received though they might have been, were not penned by the foremost dramatists of the lands. Ingenue, though pretty, was not as lovely as the famous actress Tania Rossi, who was not only featured in many a Buonochio painting and honored by no less an august personage as King Alessandro himself, but was courted by many elder sons among the Thirty.

No, the Arturos were definitely a second-rate theatrical troupe. During most seasons they provided a cheap evening’s entertainment to workers and everyday merchants. In the summers, when the city’s theaters were too warm and close to encourage attendance, the Arturos took to the road to entertain the smaller towns deep in the
pasecollina
, the stretch of farmlands and vineyards that ran for a hundred leagues to the mountainous foothills that marked the Vereinigtelände border. They had played in the famous open amphitheater of Nascenza, true. More likely they were to be found in a converted barn in the cow town of Turran, or playing to the entertainment-hungry craftsman in one of the several insula outposts.

Nic had been with the Arturos for perhaps two months when they had visited Fero, a small crafting colony of the Insula of the Children of Muro. The drama they had performed that night was typical fare—Hero was being called upon to save Ingenue from being forced into marriage with the conniving Knave, with Pulcinella acting as Ingenue’s maid and Infant Prodigy providing songs between scenes—and Nic had been standing off in the darkness, ready to help Ingenue with her costume change. He had seen this particular drama perhaps a dozen times by that point and knew many of the lines as well as the actors, but as always, he was caught up in the melodrama. A big grin on his face, he watched as Ingenue gasped and tossed her hair while the Signora, playing her disapproving older sister, begged her not to leave home.

So caught up in the action was he that he nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the voice of his master in his ear. “The purest of ham acting, isn’t it? You know, I intended that part to be Ingenue’s mother, not sister. The Signora claims she’s not old enough for that sort of role, of course.” Armand’s hand restrained Nic from leaping to attention. “No, enjoy it, lad. It’s all part of the magic. The magic of theater.” Seeing Nic’s expression, his master smiled as well. “You like it here with us, do you?”

“Oh, yes sir,” Nic had replied with all the fervor he knew. “More than I can say.”

“Good lad. Good lad,” said Armand Arturo. He crossed his arms. “Have you ever thought about it?” At Nic’s quizzical expression, he added, “The stage, my boy. Taking a turn on it.”

“You mean acting?” Nic nearly laughed. “I couldn’t do that.”

“You couldn’t? No, of course you couldn’t, no, of course.” The man had scratched his chin and studied Nic for a moment. “So you’ve never, say, been polite to one of your former masters on a day he’s treated you badly? Or smiled and pretended you weren’t in pain when every bone and bump ached?”

Nic’s hand automatically flew to the place on his forehead. The knot the Drake had left there had vanished by then, but a half-moon scar the shape of his cane handle would remain there for years to come. “That’s not the same.”

“It’s acting, Niccolo.” Signor Arturo had leaned in close, because Ingenue and Knave were then speaking in quieter voices. “It’s remembering what normal and happy are like when you feel anything but, and saying lines you must instead of the words you want. We do it in the flames of footlights. You’ve done it by the light of day, every day of your life. Some have a better knack of it than others. Trust me, Nic, lad, you could do it. I have an eye for talent.” He laid a finger aside his nose and winked. “I have the eye.”

Though he understood what Armand meant, Nic was still dubious. “I still think it’s different,” he said. It was still a novelty to be able to disagree with one of his masters. “On the stage, you have to know where to enter and exit. There’s props. There’s business.”

“My poor lady,” said his master, pointing at the stage. Ingenue and the Signora were carrying out a complicated bit of business in which the Signora was supposed to be concealing a love letter to Ingenue from Hero, so that Ingenue would assume that Hero was no longer faithful and true. Only tonight, the Signora had forgotten the letter. Her hands dug into her bosom where it should have been, and kept coming up empty. She continued to say her lines as she dug more deeply. When it became obvious that she would have to do without the folded paper, she continued on as smoothly as if she’d had it. Did the craftsman and apprentices in the audience notice? If so, they didn’t show a trace of distraction, as absorbed as they were in the summer night’s proceedings.

“She’s improvising, though,” Nic said. It had been a neat piece of business.

“And getting away with it. She’s a professional, that woman. Better than Knave.” Signor Arturo whistled. “You should see how very bad he is without a script. Oh, the stories I could tell, lad. Why do you think she’s getting away with it, though?”

Nic thought for a moment. “Because she didn’t falter,” he had said at last.

“She looks like she knows what she’s doing. She appears to be in authority,” said Armand.

“People believe that?” Nic wanted to know.

Signor Arturo laid his finger alongside his nose once more, and then pointed at Nic. “That’s all acting is. You take a deep breath. You stand straight. You become the person that you want them to believe in. And then you go on.”

It was a night that Nic had reason to recall, stranded in the Dead Strait. The fire warming them was much smaller than the one that had been blazing before the makeshift stage in Fero. But it was just as dark beyond the edges of its flickering light, and the stars were in nearly the same position as the summer before. While he wasn’t exactly treading the boards among the footlights, he was having to act—specifically, act like the man that Jacopo Colombo treated him as, instead of a lost servant adrift in the most remote reaches of the Azure Sea. “What I’m about to share with you, Niccolo, is confidential,” the old man was saying. By the crackling fire, the man sat with a posture that would not have seemed amiss at the dinners of the Thirty. Still, for all his dignity, he still appeared to be immensely frail. “Have you heard my name before?”

Jacopo’s daughter watched Nic’s every reaction. Her eyes reflected the flames of the small fire—or else they blazed on their own while she studied his every slightest movement. Self-conscious of her appraisal, yet still attentive, Nic shook his head. “No, signor.”

“The name I gave you is my own, but it is not my title.” Jacopo’s daughter shot him a warning look. He quelled her with an upraised hand. “Among some circles, I am addressed as Nuncio. No,” he added quickly, after noticing Nic’s reaction of surprise. “This is not the place for bowing or whatever you’ve been taught to do.”

“If,” said the girl suddenly, her Azurite accent strong, “he has been taught to do anything.”

“Darcy.” Jacopo’s brow furrowed. Nic was offended, but not very deeply. People of privilege thought the worst of him constantly.

“Papa, we don’t know a thing about him.”

“I listened to them talking in the cave, my dear.”

“You fell asleep,” she pointed out. Nic noticed for the first time how heavy her eyebrows were, as they crumpled in on themselves. They were almost a man’s brows, though on the girl they somehow seemed appropriate. “You weren’t supposed to fall asleep.”

“Nonetheless,” replied Jacopo, sounding slightly abashed, “I heard enough to know that the boy is a victim, not a villain.”

“A victim of the same pirates who have brought you to these dire circumstances!” Whether Nic was appealing to the father or daughter, he was uncertain, but he managed to modulate his voice so that he sounded as if he knew what he was talking about.

“No.” Jacopo ignored a warning glance from his daughter, who announced her frustration by taking what looked like a long pair of tongs the length of her arm and jabbing with them at the fire’s hot coals. “Though Darcy and I have been stranded on this isle for nearly a week, it was not brigands who forced us to become castaways.”

“Then who, signor?” Nic felt ill-equipped to deal with the confidentialities of a nuncio. Kings and courtiers were more Jacopo Colombo’s usual set … not a dogsbody like himself.

Jacopo sighed. “I was not always Nuncio to Pays d’Azur. My father had been a hero of the Azurite Invasion, and after Pays d’Azur withdrew its forces from the siege, he used his honor fee to establish a mercantile concern.” Nic nodded with the respect the information was due. Heroes of the invasion were those who had lost a limb or more during Cassaforte’s most bloody battle. “It was a business I handled myself from the time I was a young man. I have lived most of my life in Pays d’Azur, in the capital of Côte Nazze. I married there. My daughter was raised there. I buried her mother there, long ago.” Darcy turned her head then until her face was concealed by her thick mane of hair. “It was my home, and I counted the people as my friends. When King Alessandro re-ascended the throne after the coup, not long ago, he requested I become his ambassador. He appointed me Nuncio of Pays d’Azur, and my life changed.”

“How?” Nic asked, both baffled and intrigued. He would think the elevation in status—acting as the king’s messenger to the court in Côte Nazze—would be dizzying in its scope. “Surely not for the worse.”

The father and daughter looked at each other. Nic’s eyes darted between them as he strained to make out the mute conversation they seemed to be having. “Much for the worse,” Jacopo said at last. His shoulders sagged. “Not long after I took the appointment, I was approached by people in the know who suggested … nothing concrete, mind you … that my predecessor’s demise might not have been as accidental as it was said.”

“Accidental?” Nic shook his head. “You mean he was … ?”

“Murdered.” Darcy’s light voice should have been too sweet for such a harsh word. She sent shivers up Nic’s spine, though. “Pushed down a flight of marble stairs in the nuncio’s residence.”

“By whom?” Nic wanted to know. “Surely not anyone in the court?”

“Oh no. No, no, no.” Jacopo laughed uneasily. “He had made enemies, we were told. Debt collectors.” Jacopo reached out a hand to settle his daughter, who was stoking the fire with the tongs again. “Afterward, we began to notice certain things. A great deal of floor wax on the marble, for example. A bottle of wine that had been unstoppered and discolored.”

“A poisonous snake in my father’s chambers. And a fire in the nuncial house.”

Nic looked aghast. “All that?”

“Yes,” agreed Jacopo. To Nic, he said, “And then there was another incident that put all others to shame.”