The Sea Wolves (7 page)

“She knows where things will be,” Louis said. “Ships, people, gold. She reads the sea. Ghost calls it finding order in chaos, or”—he waved a hand—“some other strangeness.”

“And she's with Ghost?” Jack asked.

Louis blinked, and then smiled again. “Well, not exactly
with
—”

“Telling your tales again, Louis?” Ghost's voice was unmistakable, and for a second Jack saw a flicker of abject fear crossing Louis's face. But then he took a deep breath, masking himself again with that gold-glinting grin, and slipped from the galley counter.

“Just complimenting Cooky here,” Louis said.

Ghost stood in the door, an imposing presence. “Time to get back to work.”

Louis nodded, but Ghost remained blocking the doorway. He was staring at Jack, his gaze so strange that Jack had to glance away. It was like being examined by a shark. Totally inhuman, and yet with an intelligence that could not be escaped.

Not even by turning away.

“Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.”

Jack held his breath, then began scrubbing again.

“You've read Hawthorne, young Jack?”

“Some,” Jack said. He was trying to gauge Ghost's purpose with him, because he knew it went beyond cooking. And while he was striving to figure out what Ghost sought from this interaction, he was hesitant to commit completely to any reply, even to the most innocuous question. He might deny any knowledge of Hawthorne, and perhaps that would be wrong. Or he could admit to Ghost that he had read some of Hawthorne's novels and many of his short stories, respected his complexity, questioned the moral purity of his vision … but perhaps that would also be a mistake. He had no idea what might set off the captain's explosive temper.

“Good,” Ghost said. “I should like to discuss him with you someday.”

Jack heard the captain move aside and Louis scamper away, and then Ghost's gentle, confident footfalls also led away from the galley toward his stateroom at the stern. Jack let out his held breath and took in another lungful, surprised at the tension within him.
Someday
, Ghost had said, promising a future that Jack feared.

And yet his most pressing concern for the future was not Ghost's savage volatility but the question of how soon he might see Sabine again, and if there would ever be an opportunity for them to converse. If she was Ghost's woman, simply gazing too long at her might get Jack killed. But he knew he had to look upon her again. And if she was not Ghost's woman, that only prompted more questions. Where did she sleep on board this ship of rough men? How did she endure their constant presence?

He wondered, also, about the claims Louis had made about her strange gifts. Jack would have doubted him, or presumed the tale augmented with fantasies, but he had seen the way Sabine gazed upon those maps, Ghost and Johansen watching her with anticipation. In addition to whatever covetous affection Ghost might have for her—whether she reciprocated or not—she provided a service to them. That alone might be enough to explain why she had been untouched by the captain's brutality.

And what of me?
Jack thought.
What service do I provide? Discussing Hawthorne?

No, Ghost had to have some other purpose in mind for him. The rest of the passengers abducted from the
Umatilla
were prisoners somewhere aboard the
Larsen
, but Jack had been left free, assigned the duties of cook while Finn recovered. The captain had admired his fighting spirit, and perhaps his cleverness.

And the wildness in you
, Jack thought.

Perhaps that as well.

But whatever the captain's purpose, Jack knew that he had to make use of his limited freedom to locate the other hostages from the
Umatilla
, to do whatever he could to secure their safety and find his way off this ship. And if in the meantime he should discover more about the mysterious Sabine, all the better.

Jack spent the rest of that day either working in the galley or clearing away plates from the mess and Ghost's stateroom. Ghost and Johansen ate together, but there was no sign of Sabine. Jack watched for her everywhere he went, and listened for quiet footfalls on the deck above that might belong to a woman. The one time he found a few minutes to spare and went on deck, he took deep breaths as he left the galley, passed through the mess, and mounted the steps rising up into the open, hoping all the while that he would find the perfumed scent of a woman. But there was only brine and sweat, and that underlying animal stink—wet fur, musk—that he had come to know so well.

It did not belong here on the ship. The last time he'd smelled that, he had seen a wolf and its pack preparing to battle the dreadful Wendigo.

Several times he considered breaking away from his duties and searching the
Larsen
, but each time he'd find one of the crew in the mess or, closer yet, in the corridor outside the galley. They rarely acknowledged him—he was beginning to think Tree could not speak, and the Scandinavians wore the constant glazed expression of people isolated behind a language barrier. But he knew that to step out of line might bring down another beating like the one he'd received from Finn. And with his jaw and nose aching, and his ribs bound tight with torn blankets, more such treatment might just be the end of him.

So he cooked and cleaned, scrubbed the galley and sorted the ship's limited foodstuffs, and by sunset he was so tired that he could barely stand.

In the corner of the galley, bloody pelican feathers and the proud creature's bones sat ready to be flung overboard. All those meals he'd prepared in the Yukon—shooting an animal, skinning and gutting it, making the most of the carcass—had prepared him for his painful duties here. But still he'd found butchering the bird a difficult task, and the compliments from Ghost after he'd cooked and served the meal did nothing to lessen the impact. If anything, knowing that the dead bird had provided an enjoyable meal to these bastards made Jack despise himself, just a little. He could have spat in the meal, or found a bottle to crush and scattered powdered glass inside—a meager, symbolic revenge for the bird's death. But instead, he did the best that he could. It was all part of his instinctive effort to survive, and he was sure the bird would understand.

By the time he went up on deck again, the sun was bleeding across the western horizon, and the sea had risen into a heavy swell. The sails slapped in the wind, and rigging rattled as the
Larsen
dipped and rose. Maurilio stood silently at the wheel, ignoring Jack and staring up at the moon, smudged behind a veil of high clouds. A few others were on deck, but there was no sign of Ghost nor, to Jack's continuing dismay, Sabine.

But the ship was not large, and he knew that she was somewhere close.

Jack tipped the waste bucket over the side and bade a final farewell to the pelican. Then he descended to the galley, blew out the oil lamp he'd been burning for the past few hours, and settled into the galley's tight sleeping nook, which still smelled of Finn. Ghost had moved Jack from the sailors' cabin in the forecastle, at least.

Midnight
, he promised himself.
It'll be time for a stroll
. And despite everything, he slipped into an exhausted sleep.

Jack snapped awake and sat up, and something smashed him in the head. He groaned and rolled, bringing his hands up to defend himself, lashing out in the darkness and feeling his bare feet striking wood. He paused, listening and sensing. There was nothing. He was alone, and the nightmare had brought him fighting awake, banging his head in that confined sleeping space.

He gathered his senses, breathing in the foul scents of stale cooking that permeated the galley, however much he cleaned. The ship creaked and rolled, and a metal ladle hanging on a wall hook scraped back and forth across the bulkhead, back and forth, a metronome that had aided his sleep.

No time for sleep
. Jack stood and leaned on the galley work surface, scooping a mug of water from the large bucket kept there. It tasted gritty and warm but quenched his thirst. He'd need a clear head for what was to come.

Beyond the galley lay the mess, and in the other direction, at the ship's stern, the captain's quarters and several other smaller cabins. Johansen kept one of these, another was the chart room in which Jack had served them breakfast, and he guessed Sabine must be in another. He'd have to navigate the mess in complete silence, then venture up on deck to begin his exploration of the ship.

The way he had it figured, the pirates had snatched at least six people from the
Umatilla
. There couldn't be many places for them to be hidden away, and it was time now to find them.
And then what? Steal a boat, row away across these vicious seas?
But that was a problem for another time. Discovering where they were must be his first step.

He left behind the old boots Johansen had provided for him to replace the ones he'd lost in the ocean before being dragged on board the pirate ship. As he took his first step out of the galley, an image came to him, so sudden and shocking that it brought him up short: Ghost, lying in his bunk with eyes wide open, hearing and sensing everything that happened on his ship and smiling through it all.

Jack glanced along the short, dark corridor. Ghost's door was out of sight in the shadows, but the weight of his presence was undeniable. Jack moved quickly through the mess, worried that thinking so much about Ghost would bring the captain's attention his way.

A single weak oil lamp lit the mess, casting large, troubling shadows. But Jack heard no breathing or snoring and saw no sign of anyone sleeping behind the benches or beneath the table.

Once through the mess, he paused again at the foot of a staircase. Up the stairs, through a small hatch, he would reach the open air. He could breathe more freely up there, and yet he knew that Ghost would always post a watch, even in the dead of night. Someone was steering the ship, and others would be patrolling the decks or doing other sailors' duties. He could not afford to be caught now. He had not been locked away, yet he suspected the punishment for snooping would be severe.

Jack closed his eyes and gave his senses free rein. That underlying scent of old wet animal was just as prevalent here as elsewhere. The ship rode the sea, dipping and shifting in rhythmic motion. Boards creaked, rigging stretched and hummed with tension, sails slapped at the air. And somewhere above him, casual footsteps trod the decks.

For the moment, he would need to remain belowdecks. That suited him, because the prisoners would not be found topside. He needed to explore the ship's hold.

Jack bypassed the staircase and approached the forbidden door. It was not locked. The hinges creaked and he shoved it quickly, darting inside and closing it behind him. He squatted in the darkness and held his breath, and slowly his vision improved. There were four grilles set in the ceiling along the gangway, casting moonlight down from above, and a small gutter ran along either side to take away any water that came through. It smelled of the sea.

With some areas weakly illuminated, shadows along the gangway seemed darker than ever. He walked slowly, crouched down, listening for any movement that would indicate he had been discovered. There was none … but there
was
something down here disturbing the dark air, and he sensed an awareness brought alert by his arrival.

Stepping softly, breathing through his mouth, Jack advanced toward the first pool of light. He looked up before passing through, expecting one of those pirates to be staring down at him with a blade in his hand. But he was still alone.

He stopped at the first door set into the bulkhead to his left. It was a heavy, wide door, bolted shut and locked with three iron padlocks. The hinges seemed to be embedded in the bulkhead, and Jack was sure he could see, in the cracks between timber boards, the glint of metal lining the door's inside surface. He raised his fist and almost knocked … then wondered what a door such as this might be used to imprison. The damp, clinging animal smell he'd caught in the air before lingered here as well, but even more powerfully. It was as if the wood itself stank of it, and for a moment he thought he sensed something looming behind the door. But when he reached out with his senses, searching for some living presence there, he felt nothing but the ominous absence of something, like the quiet of a bear's den when the beast is out hunting and might at any moment return.

He moved on, eager to leave that strange door behind.

The second door in the hold area was smaller and nowhere near as secure, and Jack sniffed at the crack between door and frame. He smelled salted meat and slowly rotting vegetables, sea biscuits and flour, and heard the cackle of chickens startled by his arrival.

Footsteps above. Jack froze and shifted along the corridor, out of the weak splash of moonlight, in case one of the pirates looked down through the grille. The sailor moved on, and it was as Jack approached the third and final door that he began to hear the whispers.

He froze, head tilted to one side, and for a moment he was afraid to hear what they said. There was something so strange about this ship, and he'd already entertained the possibility that the prisoners were dead, and that he alone had been kept on as…

As what? A cook? For the moment perhaps, but that had been the result of Finn's punishment, and not part of Ghost's initial decision to separate Jack from the others. Had he been kept aside for some more elaborate torment as the pirates' plaything? No, because there was something more than amusement in Ghost's eyes when he looked at Jack. The captain of any ship was kept apart from his crew by virtue of his position, but Jack had noted almost immediately the intelligence glinting in Ghost's eyes and hinted at in his words. Could it be that he truly did want to discuss Hawthorne, or other subjects about which his crew were doubtless woefully ignorant?