Wake of the Bloody Angel (30 page)

I studied him closely as I sat up. He looked exactly like a little boy. The light from the flickering lantern fell on his skin, and when he moved his foot, I heard his callused toes scrape faintly on the floor.

I said at last, “You’re a ghost, aren’t you?”

Eyes downcast, he nodded.

The urge to try to touch him, to see if my hand would go

through him, was overwhelming. I thought about all the times I’d seen him dodge around people or slip through doors just before they closed. I thought he was just being discreet or sneaky. Now I realized he was hiding his true nature. “You could’ve told me.”

He shrugged.

“Okay, so you’re dead. Why are you still here, then?” He looked up and met my eyes. There was nothing otherworldly in his gaze. “Cap’n Clift needs me. Especially with Cap’n Jane around. He feels like me dying was his fault. Like he should’ve paid more attention to how sick I was. But it wasn’t nobody’s fault, things just happened. I know that. When
he
realizes that, I won’t need to watch him anymore.”

I nodded. That made as much sense as anything. “But he can’t see you and I can. Why is that?”

“I didn’t show myself to you. You just saw me. You must’ve crossed the line once yourself. You died, and then came back. Otherwise, you’d never have seen me, either, unless I’d wanted you to.”

“Yeah,” I said, and felt a tingle in the scar over my heart.

“Besides, you’ve met this lot. If I showed myself to any of the crew who knew me, I’d scare them to death. They’d go screaming over the side like parlor maids with their hair on fire. You just thought I was the cabin boy. I missed that. Cap’n,” he added deferentially.

I nodded, then yawned. My catnap had been a tease. I rubbed my eyes, and when I opened them again, Dorsal wasn’t alone.

I jumped and hopped back on the bunk. Now a little girl, younger than him, stood beside him. She wore a simple sleep gown and had curly brown hair. In one hand, she carried the same doll Jane had fished from the bilge on the monster ship.

“This is Aggie,” Dorsal said. “Her father was Captain Verlander of the
Vile Howl
.”

My mouth was dry, but I managed, “Hello.”

“You look like my daddy,” the girl said. “He has a beard, too.”

Like Dorsal, there was absolutely nothing about her to give away her supernatural status. “I’m sure he’s very handsome,” I said.

“I can’t find him,” she said sadly, and looked down.

“The monster on that ship killed him,” Dorsal said. “And her, too.”

A chill that came from somewhere other than a fear of ghosts ran through me.

“The mean captain found me hiding,” Aggie said. “He made me go down into the bad ship. He told me my mommy and daddy were there, but they weren’t, at least not anymore. The monster ate me.” She paused. “It hurted a lot.”

Her round little face was impassive as she said this. It made the horror of her words that much more vivid.

“She’s too angry and scared to move on,” Dorsal said.

“I can imagine,” I said. “I’d be angry, too.”

“She has a favor to ask.”

He nudged the girl. She asked, “Is that the mean captain I hear singing?”

“Yes.”

Without looking at me, she said, “Can you kill him for me?”

I was speechless for a moment. Then I said, “No, not in cold blood. I’m not that kind of guy. He is, but I’m not.”

She nodded, as if it was the answer she expected. “I’ll just wait for him to die, then.”

“Why?” I asked.

“When he dies, I can hurt him. I was innocent. He was evil. Over here—” Then she looked up and smiled, a sweet expression made terrifying by her words. “—I have more power than he does. I can hurt him back. Forever.”

I swallowed hard. I really didn’t need to know this much about how the universe worked. I’d already encountered a goddess masquerading as human and a face-changing sorceress. That was far too much cosmic insight for a simple guy like me.

Then I had an idea.

“Look . . . Aggie . . . I can’t kill him for you. It’s not that I don’t believe he deserves to die, because I do. But it’s not my place to do it. Can you understand that?”

She nodded.

“But . . . he knows something I need to know. He won’t tell me. I’m not sure we can make him; he’s pretty tough. But I think
you
can.”

Aggie wiped her nose as if it could still run. “How?”

“Just go see him and tell him what you told me. That you’re waiting for him, and what you plan to do to him when he does cross over. Can you do that?”

She looked at Dorsal. He nodded. She looked back at me and said, “Yes.”

“And afterwards . . . I think it’ll be okay if you go on to your father and mother. I know they’re waiting for you.” I didn’t, but under the circumstances, it seemed a little enough fib.

“Okay,” she said.

Dorsal looked at me. “Thank you, Cap’n.”

“You can go, too, you know.”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Captain Clift would want you to. He’d be very sad if he thought he was the reason you stuck around.”

His little face creased with concentration as he thought about that. At last he said, “I’ll ponder on it.”

“Wait a minute first, though,” I said. “Marteen’s got a bag on his head. I want him to be able to see you.”

I stood, and they scooted away from the door just like any real, corporeal people would do. I went past the sleeping guard and into the captain’s dayroom. When he heard the door, Marteen stopped singing.

“Well, what brilliant trick do you plan to try now?” he said mockingly. If possible, he smelled even worse. “Or do you have a request for my next number?”

I yanked the hood off his head without a word and went back out.

“An attack of conscience?” he yelled after me. “You’ll never make it as a pirate, you know that? You’re soft as a cookie fresh from the goddamned oven, that’s what you are!”

I went back into Jane’s cabin. It was empty.

I sat on the edge of my bunk and waited.

It didn’t take long.

chapter TWENTY-SIX

Wendell
Marteen screamed in true, pure terror. There was no secondary emotion, like anger or frustration. It was the kind of scream that gave nightmares to the people who heard it, as their imaginations tried to conjure the source. I knew the source, and it still sent chills through me.

I left my cabin just as the guard snapped awake and jumped to his feet. He looked around, blinking in confusion. “What was that?”

“Your prisoner,” I said.

“Oh, crap,” he said, and preceded me into the dayroom. Marteen’s demeanor was entirely, completely different. All

the arrogance and defensiveness were gone, replaced by the kind of gallows terror you see only in men who know they are about to die. “Please, don’t kill me,” he whimpered when he saw us, his words rushing out all at once. “I’ll tell you anything, I’ll take you to Black Edward, just please, don’t kill me, I’ll do anything you want, please, I don’t want to die.”

Clift burst into the room, followed by Jane. Others gathered just outside, all summoned by the unearthly shriek. “What’s going on?” the captain demanded.

Marteen bent forward, bowing in as much supplication as his bonds allowed. “Please, Captain Clift, don’t let them take me, I’ll help you, I’ll gladly go to Remy’s prison, just don’t let me
die
!”

Clift looked at me; I shrugged.

“He was alone in here when he screamed, Cap’n,” the guard volunteered. “Mr. LaCrosse came in with me.”

“I’ll tell you where Edward Tew is,” Marteen said in a tiny voice. “I’ll tell you where his
trea sure
is, just don’t let me die. Please, promise me you won’t kill me.”

Clift quickly closed the door on the watchers. He glared down at Marteen and demanded, “What do you think will happen if I do?”

Marteen stopped talking, and for a moment, I was afraid he’d even stopped breathing. Then he sagged against his ropes and began to cry. It was oddly touching, and I was annoyed at the sympathy I suddenly felt for the guy.

Jane looked questioningly at me. I touched my lips and winked, a signal that I’d fill her in later. She nodded slightly in acknowledgment, then pushed in front of Clift and snarled at Marteen, “All right, prove you mean what you say. What heading should we take?”

“Southwest,” Marteen said through tears. “Straight due southwest. Bring me a map, and I’ll show you. We’re about eight days away. It’s an island with a pair of mountains, and a long sandy peninsula on one end.”

“And Black Edward is there?” she pressed.

“Yes, I swear. Now, please, promise you won’t kill me.”

Clift smacked him on the side of the head. “I will if you don’t stop blubbering.”

Marteen immediately fell silent. His lower lip trembled like a child’s, and tears cut through the dirt on his face.

Clift then turned his full authority on the guard. “Your name is Carrisimo, right?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, standing straight.

“You heard what this worm-riddled piss pot said about Black Edward Tew’s treasure, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Clift stepped nose to nose with the younger man. “You breathe a word of that to anyone other than the people in this room, and I’ll have your balls for castanets, understand?”

Carrisimo gulped. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now cut him loose, but don’t take your eyes off him.” Clift went the short distance into his cabin.

As Carrisimo followed his orders, Jane sidled up to me and said, “What the hell did you do?”

“Nothing, I wasn’t even in here.”

“Bullshit, I know that smug look of yours.”

Before I could say anything else, Clift returned with a handful of maps. Marteen was rubbing his wrists where the ropes had bitten into them. Clift unrolled one map, held it in front of Marteen, and said, “Show me.”

Marteen unhesitatingly pointed to a tiny dot among a cluster of other dots. “Here. He’s here.”

“Now show me on this map,” Clift said, switching them quickly. Marteen immediately pointed out the same island. Clift made him do it twice more on two additional maps before he was satisfied that Marteen wasn’t making the whole thing up. “How long has he been there?”

Marteen laughed ironically. “Twenty years. For the last fifteen, you couldn’t get him on a ship again if you chained him up and had a whole brigade to drag him.”

“Why?” I asked.

Marteen looked at me, swallowed hard, and pointed at Jane. “Because Black Edward has that thing she said you and Captain Clift have. A conscience. He was so horrified by what he did to secure his treasure that he swore never to sail again.”

“What did he do?” I asked.

“He sank his own ship, with all his crew on board,” Jane said. “After he took the treasure off. Didn’t he?”

Marteen nodded.

AT
dawn, the
Bloody Angel
left for Blefuscola with a hold full of chained prisoners and about a third of the
Red Cow
’s crew to mind them. It said something that our ship didn’t seem significantly less crowded. We then returned to the monster’s vessel, which waited in the sunrise as innocent as a child opening a birthday present.

“Bring Marteen up here,” Clift said. “I want the son of a bitch to see this.”

We smelled him before he appeared. He’d been manacled again, and Carrisimo escorted him with a knife to his back. He moved heavily, like the life had already gone out of him. He watched impassively as the ship’s largest ballista was positioned and the bowstring was winched back. The head of the bolt was lit, and when the fire was burning well, the gunner shot it over to the monster’s ship. It struck the middle of the empty deck and stuck there, the flames slowly catching. Two more bolts joined it, and a fourth was being prepared when Clift said, “That’ll do it.”

And it did. The ship was fully aflame now, and all at once, the monster’s tentacles burst from the water and tried to somehow fight the fire. Big bursts of water came from the creature’s siphons. It snuffed some of the blaze, but by then, the hull was compromised.

With one last desperate effort, the monster rolled the ship belly-up, trying to use its own pulpy weight to drive the burning vessel into the water. We saw how it was attached to the bottom: the huge round head was encased in a net, fastened to the hull so that the animal’s mouth was forced against the hatch. The ship sank, taking the monster with it, and leaving only a roiling sea of foam, black ink, and blue monster blood.

“And now,” Clift said, “head southeast, Mr. Greaves.”

Greaves, promoted to quartermaster since Seaton’s death, said, “Aye, sir.” He walked the length of the deck, calling orders up to sailors in the riggings.