Virgin Star (37 page)

Seanessy first shouted a series of sharp orders about the rigging, wanting the business over as fast as possible, before he called out to the men to stop working on the chains for a moment. "Just look at them. Set to quaking with fear. Get them some food and water first, then they'll know we aren't planning to toss them seaside. Now where is the ruddy bastard that is lord and master of this hell?"

Butcher promptly pointed out Rand, handing Seanessy a whip that had never once felt a nag's back, but had been used many times nonetheless. Seanessy stepped before him, hands on hips. He looked a frightening enough sight, wearing only white breeches and a thick black belt, all of him sunwashed bronze muscle. He stood nearly a foot taller than Rand and he was barefoot. A number of prominent and rather dramatic scars showed as well, a warning when none was needed. More than anything he seemed to have a taxed, almost bored, air about him, the unconcealed disdain and contempt for the man and what he was about.

"So, Captain Rand, is it? Yes? Now where were you headed with this bit of humanity?"

It required three cracks of the whip before the man realized he could not trade the information for his life. It might have been longer but for the queer knives Butcher abruptly thought to sharpen. Through gasping breath Rand shouted, "China Seas!"

"Yes? Where?"

He spit out the bile rising in his throat with a gasping scream. Through gritted teeth: "A bloody island is where."

The whip cracked hard against his face. The man knocked his head against the wall before doubling over with the hot stinging pain. Seanessy gave him but a moment to recover when he heard the man gasp, ""Tis called Blue Caverns. Fifty knots from Sumatra at the mouth of Malacca Straits. Owned by French nobility called Armanac."

A whispered rush came over the crowd of men. Everyone stopped what he was doing. Word quickly crossed the sea to the other ship where the men labored to rig a tow. Silence came over the entire proceeding. Rand's gaze frantically searched the men surrounding him for an understanding that eluded him.

"Sean ..." Butcher said.

"Aye, I heard him. I just can't believe the piece of luck. If this doesn't sweeten the pie better than ripe blackberries," Seanessy said, and with a grin to toss like a lifeline to Rand: "My luck appears to be yours as well, Captain Rand. Butcher, the poor man can't wipe the line of blood from his face. Cut those ropes if you will?"

Rand almost screamed as Butcher stepped forward with one of his knives before it sliced neatly through the ropes binding his arms. Seanessy called to Prescott, "Fetch the good captain a cup of rum."

This was quickly produced. Rand looked suspiciously into the cup, but knowing he would need it no matter what happened, he drained it whole. The smooth liquid went down his throat. He felt better immediately.

"Well, my good Captain Rand,” Seanessy said, patting him on the back as if he were now a great admirer of the doomed captain. "Let us discuss this business. You are confused, I see. It amounts to this: I am very much interested in the particular island you just named. Perhaps you can provide me with some information. Perhaps too I can be so kind as to turn my back on your--" His hand swept the poor savages. "Sorry life course."

Rand felt a queasy uneasiness at this abrupt change of fortune. Sean held a cloth in his hand suddenly. It took Rand a moment to realize Sean was offering it to him to wipe the blood from his face. He slowly took it and set it to his face. He was no fool, though. "How do I know you're good for it?"

"Don't let your imagination work over time," Seanessy told him, explaining, "The bargain is very simple, simply because it is no bargain. You see, if you do not provide me with what I want to know, I'll kill you. Well, not me specifically," he qualified quickly. "I rarely feel inclined to get my clothes bloody. Butcher here has no such aversion."

"You can count on that, Cap'n." Butcher grinned, nodding.

"Anyway," Seanessy continued. "The point is: once you are cut into pieces for fish bait, then we'll go to your first officer there, and so on. Until my questions are answered."

As he comprehended these dismal prospects, Rand's face went white again. Seanessy motioned to Prescott to fill the captain's cup. This was quickly drained as Rand realized this Nordic-looking captain would not likely blanch as he and his crew met the devil's own claws.

"So. The first question is: have you been to this island?"

Rand nodded as he removed the bloody cloth from his face and wished to God he had a pistole.

"Add to my picture of this place, will you? It is an island some twenty miles wide and ten long, mostly of jungle. Port is windward on the north end. The duke lives in a castle there, an absurd pretension, I'm told, the kind of thing common among members of the French aristocracy. There is a standing army of two thousand men. A slave population of? Yes? Have you an idea?"

He figured. "More than five hundred."

"How many more?"

He shrugged, the question drawing him in. "Maybe by a couple of hundred."

"And what are they used for?"

"Sugar mostly. 'Bout the only thing that can sprout there when the monsoons hit."

He studied the man's eyes, but for a moment. "Do not tax me, my merry captain. That's too many bodies by half at least; and you were bringing two hundred or so more. Furthermore, that man is not interested in sugar, I know that much. What is he using those slaves for? And don't lie again—it really annoys me."

Rand saw what everyone who knew Seanessy did: the man was as shrewd as the king's tax collector, as

sharp as the executioner's ax. He quickly realized his chances here: none. "I do not know, if truth be told. Something about a treasure."

Butcher spun a dagger in his hand; Rand would not be warned again.

"I do not know—"

"A couple of us took a longshore boat around the leeward side of the island—"

Everyone turned to the crew member of the slaver who had blurted this out. The man stared at Seanessy, fearing nothing and feeling absolutely no loyalty to any member of the French nobility, even if paid gold.

"Aye," Seanessy said. "I am listening."

"The man had a couple of hundred black bodies digging on the shoreline."

"And why is he doing that?"

The man's grin answered Seanessy's demand. "Like the captain says, there be a rumor of treasure on that island. 'Tis said it be the whole reason the swarmy bloke bought the island. We reason he's digging it up looking. That's all we know."

"Imagine the novelty!" Seanessy almost swore. "An island with a rumor of treasure!" He was not the least interested in the idea, except as it indicated the duke's amusing little pastime. "Butcher—"

Yet the man continued, "Well, this one's got some bite to it, Captain. The treasure be four hundred years old, Chinese pirates, and worth more than the—"

"Crown jewels?" Seanessy gamely suggested. "Or is it—all the tea in China?"

The man apparently was not without a sense of humor and he grinned. "Something like that. Anyway, rumor says a man named Singleton, an Englishman, a surgeon or somethin' high-minded like that, got the map from a infidel, some monk or somethin' who had spent his whole bloody life chasin' it down through China. He gave it over to the English for next to nothin' 'cause no way a Chinaman's ever going to get on the island without help. Anyway, 'tis a flawed map after all. The island is not named. Still the English shows it to different mapmakers in the region. They say it took him some two years before he finally figures out 'tis buried on the duke's Isle of Blue Caverns. So, he travels to the island, thinkin' to approach the duke about it. He was said to offer an even split to the duke but—"

"Let me guess," Seanessy interrupted, "he too died as hapless as a dead beggar's lice just before telling where the treasure could be uncovered!"

"I ain't sayin' 'tis true," the man said. "But the fact is no one heard of the Englishman or Chinaman again and the smarmy Frenchman be tearing up a lot of sand to find it."

"If ifs true"—Butcher shook his head sadly—"the man is dumber than a box of rocks."

"Fascinating," Seanessy said, but not at all as if he meant it. "Now that we've all enjoyed our afternoon's amusement, let us return to you, Captain Rand. Here's the all-important question: did you see on this island a large house, for storage of something?"

Rand stiffened, but he shook his head.

"Nothing?"

Again he shook his head. "Nothing like that as far as I could see. We weren't allowed many paces past the dock."

After a moment's consideration, Seanessy decided he was telling the truth. The storehouse would not be out in the open anyway, and according to Ram, the duke was ever careful about letting visitors wander freely there.

“
Very well. Edward?"

"Aye," he said, coming to Seanessy's side.

"See the blackguards into a lifeboat. Their lifeboats. Give them, oh, let’s see: three days' worth of water and a compass."

"Aye, aye."

Fear instantly worked into Rand's face, and indeed all his crew members' faces changed with alarm. Alarm growing with their fear. "You can't do that! ‘Tis nearly a hundred miles to shore. You might as well shoot us now and be done with it—"

"Oh, very well," Seanessy said. "Any man who doesn't want to work up a sweat rowing will be shot. Now." He turned to Prescott. "How are those poor men faring? I see they have been fed. Good. Now I believe you can begin taking their chains off—"

The chains were sawed. Butcher and Edward led the crew of the slaver up the plank to the other ship, where the lifeboats waited. "Captain!" Rand shouted with terror. "One o' me men seen a huge warehouse beneath a green pile at the far south end of the island."

"Leeward or windward?"

"Windward, looks like a patch of grassy garden from the seashore. We didn't dare a look inside. Ye can only reach it by ship—"

A very pleased smile spread across Seanessy's handsome face. "Why, thank you, Captain Rand. Edward, toss in some of Oly's chow for the captain to gnaw on as he rows."

Edward was not the only one to laugh but was unquestionably the loudest, a laughter that sounded much louder and carried much farther than Captain. Rand's vicious curses. In the moment Seanessy decided on a plan. They would sail to the island, blow up this warehouse, and sail out before ever seeing the duke again.

The duke could just rot in hell ...

Seanessy changed his mind about the tow; he had more than enough reason to make all speed to the duke's island. The slaver was set to blaze. Angry red flames leaped from the dark blue ocean. The two longshore boats drifted in the rising waves of the blue sea; Rand's crew forced to watch their ship burn. With any luck, the Wind Muse could make Madagascar by dawn. The poor wretches would be free.

Shalyn emerged from the captain's quarters. Her gaze swept the crowded decks arid the sea of Negro faces: they were so frightened! Emotion filled her eyes and the Chinese voice said, "Slavery exists everywhere; it is a weed that grows in every soil, but I have oft heard it told that the white slave master is the cruelest of all, for those slaves lose everything in their chains, even their desire to escape them . :."

Shalyn waited for another memory, more of this ancient voice that kept filling her mind. Seanessy stood alongside Butcher discussing the rotation of the crew when quite suddenly one of the Negroes pointed, calling out in his strange tongue.

Hazel eyes watched with incomprehension as a half-dozen dark-skinned men dropped to their knees and bowed, curled up into balls. "What the devil brought that on?"

One of the men raised his head, looking behind the place where Seanessy stood, while muttering the same word over and over. Seanessy turned around. He found himself staring at Shalyn. He looked back at the man, kneeling not just with obsequiousness, but also with fear.

"Shalyn..."

She came slowly to his side, her eyes wide, panicked as she tried to comprehend the men's fear at her presence. A tingling alarm shot up her spine.

"Ah, the poor sod's probably never seen such gold hair." Butcher shrugged as he dismissed it; though his brow remained furrowed as he headed to the galley to see the mess that would be supper. "She probably looks like a queen."

Seanessy stared at her hair. Sunlight lit the lovely braid, accenting a thousand different shades of gold that made it up. He smiled. "Queen Shalyn. Well now, I could get used to that." His tone changed completely. "Shalyn mine, I'm in a gamely mood. How about a wrestle to the ground to see who comes out of their clothes first?"