The Tides of Avarice (27 page)

What better time to start a new volume of my logbook than now, when I have reached a turning point in my piratical life? From the very first moment I heard those wonderful, dream-inspiring words “the magical chest of the Zindars,” I have known that somehow my fate and that of the chest were to be intertwined and, sure enough, that is what has come about. It was by something of a miraculous happenstance that I heard about the chest at all, for few have done so and fewer still have lived to tell the tale. I am in the process, wherever I can, of rendering that number even smaller.

I can still remember that night at The Moldy Claw in Darkwater, many years ago, as if it were only yesterday. Such are the illusions that the mind plays to trick a man, even as scurvy a knave as this old dog of the open sea! I was in the tavern for the simple purpose of wetting my whistle, with a few of my men alongside me for—

“He was a dog then?” said Viola.

Sylvester stopped reading and looked at her in bafflement.

“Who?”

“This Cap'n Adamite of yours.”

“I, ah” – he looked down at the logbook, where his claw was marking a place that was still far too close to the beginning – “I don't know what particular type of animal old Adamite was. Now I come to think of it, it was something Rustbane didn't tell me that day in his cabin.”

“But Adamite himself just said it.”

“Hm?”

“He called himself an old dog. I remember.” Viola jostled Sylvester as she peered over his shoulder at the journal. “See? There it is, an ‘old dog of the open sea'!”

“I heard it too,” said Mrs. Pickleberry. “Ain't no gettin' out of it, young Lemmington.”

“I think—” Sylvester began wearily.

“Don't matter what you think,” said Mrs. Pickleberry, pulling a pipe from her pocket and looking around for some means of lighting it. “If there was one person best placed for knowin' what sort o' a creature Cap'n Adamite was, it'd bin Cap'n Adamite hisself, the ol' bastard, and he said he was a—”

Sylvester put up a paw to stop this madness. “He just said he was an old sea dog.”

“'Xactly.”

“It's an expression.”

“So you says.”

“He was just saying he'd been at sea most of his life, that's all. That's what's meant by ‘sea dog,' just ‘sailor,' really. I mean, if I'd spent years at sea I could call myself a sea dog, even though I'm not a dog at all, I'm a—”

“Lemming,” said Mrs. Pickleberry for him. “Not an 'amster. We knows. You keep tellin' us.”

Sylvester drew a very long, very noisy, very deep and, in the end, wholly unsatisfactory breath. It did, however, serve its purpose which was to stop him from beating Mrs. Pickleberry to a bloody pulp and possibly, however much he might love Viola, doing the same to the younger lemming.

“Look,” he said when he thought he'd probably be able to keep his voice under control, “if I keep being interrupted every few lines, we're never going to get the journal finished, are we?”

“Who's doin' any interruptin'?” said Mrs. Pickleberry, glaring around the cabin as if there might be culprits hiding under the furniture. She'd managed to get her pipe lit, which somehow made her bulging-eyed glare even more intense. It was also turning the air in the cabin a virulent-looking yellow-gray. The lantern chose that moment to flicker. Sylvester wondered if the flame was about to expire through lack of oxygen. “I can't see no one,” she said.

He sighed again. “Let's just try to get through the rest of the logbook in one go, shall we?”

“Why not cut ahead to the interesting bits?” said Viola, clearly thinking she was being helpful.

“That was one of the—”

Realizing the trap he'd been just about to walk into, Sylvester tried the conciliatory approach.

“Perhaps we can learn something from Cap'n Adamite's account of how he first learned of the magical treasure chest of the Zindars?”

“Hmmf,” was Mrs. Pickleberry's acerbic response, but she seemed ready to let him carry on. With any luck, she'd fall asleep soon. Surely it must be about time for her afternoon nap by now?

“Where was I?” Sylvester muttered. He must have moved his paw during the disputation, but soon he found his place again.

… with a few of my men alongside me as a safeguard and for company, couthless though it might be. The atmosphere in the tavern was if anything more pungent than ever, which, I might tell you, took some determined pungenting. My trusty midshipman, Hamish, was with me, as he always was when there was ale to be had and the prospect of a wench between the sheets, as was my first mate Jeopord …

This time it was Sylvester who wanted to pause, although he knew any hesitation on his part would be pounced upon gleefully by Viola and Mrs. Pickleberry as setting a precedent for the future. He pretended there was an extra bad smudge of the ink, holding the page closer and screwing his eyes up as if struggling to decipher the words.

Jeopord . . . I know that name! He's that ocelot who carries out Rustbane's orders with such gratuitous willingness. So, he was old Adamite's first mate as well, was he? That means that at some stage Rustbane must have leapfrogged him in the Shadeblaze's pecking order, doesn't it? It's a wonder Jeopord is happy with that situation – getting rid of the old master simply to find himself serving a new one. Perhaps there's resentment still there. I must bear it in mind in case it's something I can explore to our advantage later.

“D'yer want me to do the readin' fer yer?”

“No, no, no, Mrs. Pickleberry. I'll be fine. Just a, heh heh, tricky bit, that's all.”

… as was my first mate Jeopord, with whom at the time I'd have entrusted my soul, so confident was I of the fellow's loyalty. But, as the old saying goes, the only ocelot you can ever trust is the one whose pelt you're wearing, and that certainly has proved to be the case with Jeopord, damn his guts. I can still use him for a while yet, so long as I keep a vigilant eye turned on him, but the time must surely come when either he or I must walk the plank. 'Tis a pity I ever took that mangy fox, Rustbane, aboard, for it's him I blame for the turning of Jeopord's allegiance from me!

But enough of this. I lose track of my own musings …

We were in the Moldy Claw, all those years ago, the three of us and a few others from the Shadeblaze besides, and I make no apologies for the fact that the drinks were chasing each other briskly enough down my throat. I've always had a hard head for drink, but this night . . . well, let's just say I was glad enow that we'd brought a youthful second mate with us to act as our Designated Stander and make sure those of us who wanted to got home.

When the ales had caused their usual consequence, I decided to brave the rigors of the shack that's out the tavern's rear. Something I'd never have done had it not been for those same ales, mark my words! I wobbled past rogues from every corner of Sagaria as I made my way to the door of that crowded room, and was dampened by so many spilled drinks of so many kinds, that e'en at the best of times I'd have not been able to put a name to all of them.

On coming out into the colder air of the night, I stood there motionless awhile, hoping the chill might reduce the befuddlement of my brain.

After I know not how much time, although I'm sure it cannot have been long, I found myself with my arms wrapped around a lantern post, grinning inanely at the full moon above.

It was then, in that dingy, misbegotten light, that I heard the voices.

No, dear reader (should this private journal ever have a reader other than myself), I do not mean I heard those voices that sometimes speak to a body when he's been oversupping ale! These were genuine voices, not fancies. They came from the opposite corner of the courtyard in which I stood. Either, the speakers had not noticed my emergence from the inn or they'd assumed I was just a harmless drunk in front of whom they could speak as freely and with as little concern for privacy as they might in front of a trunk of wood or a block of stone.

Of course, me being Cap'n Josiah Adamite, the blackest heart of any blackheart that ever sailed the ocean, while drunk I might be – and that I willingly confess – harmless I most certainly was not, nor ever shall be.

“'Tis the greatest treasure that's ever been known,” said the first of the voices.

My mind honed itself to razor-sharpness the instant I heard that word “treasure,” I can tell you.

“Hist!” said the other voice.

Both of the speakers, whom I could identify only as grayer shapes in the smoggy, cloying, darkness of the Moldy Claw's back courtyard, froze.

As for me, I did the opposite of freeze. I was just a mud-brained drunk, wasn't I? What mud-brained drunks generally do is make quite a lot of noise. Besides, I'd come out of the boisterous warmth of the tavern's interior for a purpose, and it might well behoove me to fulfill that purpose even as I spied upon the locutors.

“He doesn't half rattle on with this ever-so-posh hoity-toity lingo of his, doesn't he?” Viola complained.

“Shut yer trap,” said her mother crossly. “This is beginnin' ter get good.”

Even so, Sylvester decided, in order to spare his companions' delicate female sensibilities, to skip the short paragraph in which Cap'n Adamite described, in some detail, the satisfaction he gained from “fulfilling his purpose.”

I think it was the fact that I'd drenched my right foot (not, in fact, a deliberate camouflaging effect on my part, but a happy accident of which I took full advantage) that convinced the pair I was no more sinister than I seemed. Just in order to cement this notion in their minds, I gave a hefty moan and leaned against the nearest wall as if my innards were in rebellion. The two strangers hastily retreated a couple of precautionary steps, but then seemed content to leave me to my own devices.

“The greatest treasure of all time,” said the second stranger. “'Tis a marvel such a thing should exist.”

“Beyond gold,” said the first. “Beyond jewels. Beyond the powers of coinage to equal. Beyond life itself.”

“What can this marvel be?” wondered his fellow.

“'Tis just this …”

“Yes?”

“'Tis the magical chest of the Zindars!”

“The magical chest of the … Who was that again?”

“The Zindars.”

“And they were?”

“You know.”

“Um, no.”

“They were the—wait a moment, what was that?”

“What was what?”

“That sound.”

“It was just the old drunk over there by the door.”

Of course, the “old drunk over there by the door” was none other than Captain Josiah Adamite – me, at your service, old Throatsplitter himself – and I was getting rapidly less drunk with every passing moment. I too had heard the sound. It had come from somewhere beyond the courtyard's wall, somewhere beyond the miasmic shed where drunks more courageous than I might risk relieving their ale-wrought pressures.

“A cat,” said one of the speakers at last, the one who had been about to explain the provenance of the Zindars.

“If you say so,” said the other, sounding not entirely convinced. “Now, about these Zindars of yours …”

The first speaker's voice dropped even lower than before, so that it became even more difficult for me, trapped by my subterfuge on the far side of the courtyard from where the two strangers conversed, to hear what he was saying. Yet never let it be said that Captain Josiah Adamite is without guile and resource! I gave a louder groan than before, then staggered to where someone had left an empty beer barrel in the midst of the area, presumably in a doomed attempt at capturing “ambience.” I sat myself down on this object and let out a piteous bellow.

It was enough to convince the speakers they had nothing to fear from me.

“No one knows for sure,” said the individual who had initiated this discourse, “precisely who the Zindars were, nor when they walked the world. What is known, however, is that they built a civilization far beyond anything Sagaria has seen. In the arts, the Zindars were paragons. They made music that could conjure the souls of singing birds from the air and weave them into tapestries of harmony which so delighted the ear that even the sound of a lover's words became drab. Their poetry was so emotive that its words smoldered upon any page which attempted to contain it, while the triple-breasted goddess herself became jealous of their paintings and sculpture, which she rightly saw cast even her own legendary beauty in a shadow of ordinariness. But, if they were prodigies of the arts, the Zindars were yet more than that in their scientific endeavors. They had vessels that could cruise not the seas but the skies and, 'tis said, might go yet farther than this, to sojourn among the stars! They built devices such that a Zindar could talk in one continent and be heard by his fellows in another, and not just heard, but seen as he was speaking. They had wheeled machines that could—”

“What's a continent?” said Viola, who'd obviously been finding the mental strain of not interrupting difficult to tolerate.

“I think it's an exceptionally big piece of land,” said Sylvester.

“Sort of like Mugwort Forest, you mean?” she said, referring to the dark, forbidding woodland onto which Foxglove rather tremulously backed.

“A lot bigger than that,” replied Sylvester. “A very, very lot bigger than that.”

Viola's eyebrows rose. “Oh, my.”

“Where was I now?” said Sylvester, hoping his change of subject was adroit enough. “Ah, yes, here we are …”

“… They had wheeled machines that could travel faster than the fastest horse, bearing not just a single rider but as many as dozens, hundreds even, or so the story goes. They could—”

“Yes, yes,” said his comrade. “This all sounds very wonderful and all, but what about the treasure?”