Blue Sea Burning (14 page)

“To get the ten million gold?” I guessed.

“Smart boy,” said Okemu.

“And where might that be?” my uncle asked. “Where's a pirate keep his treasure?”

I thought about that for a moment. “Buried?”

The pirates all laughed.

“Son, if I buried ten million gold, how could I earn six percent on it?”

“What's six percent?” I asked.

More laughter.

“The interest,” said Spiggs.

“The what?”

They were laughing even harder now. “Better make him a pirate, Cap,” chortled Mackie. “He ain't no businessman.”

“Let's try again, son,” Healy said. “Where's a pirate keep his treasure?”

“A bank?”

The pirates cheered. Healy gave my hair a gentle ruff.

“You see, brothers? He's teachable.”

The Rovian Gentlemen's Mercantile Exchange

THERE'S NOTHING QUITE LIKE
walking up a busy street in the company of eight terrifying pirates, even if the most infamous of them insists on calling himself “Commodore Longtrousers.”

The street didn't stay busy for long. When we turned up the main road from the docks, it was elbow-to-elbow with townspeople, but by the time we reached our destination—a white-columned brick building with
ROVIAN
GENTLEMEN
'
S
MERCANT
ILE
EXCHANGE
chiseled in stone above the doors—most of them had mysteriously disappeared. The few who were left kept their distance. It was like there was an invisible wall surrounding us that repelled anyone who got within fifteen feet.

It's possible it was the smell. Healy hadn't been kidding about that—none of the pirates had seen a bath in who knows how long, and the stink was so ripe you could almost see it rising off their backs. I wasn't much cleaner myself, although at least I'd had a dunk in the ocean two nights earlier.

Crowded or empty, it was a very nice street. The Continental-style buildings were pretty and well kept, and there were quite a few shops that looked interesting, along with a street-meat shack that made my mouth water. But as we passed each one, its door would slam shut, and someone with badly shaking hands would shove a
CLOSED
sign in the window.

“That's curious. Do you reckon it's a holiday?” asked Healy—or, at the moment, Longtrousers.

“Funny holiday,” said Pike, looking up at the clock on the bell tower at the end of the street. “Where the shops all close at nine-seventeen exactly.”

“Hope the bank's open,” said Spiggs.

“Oh, it will be,” said my uncle. “One way or another.”

He led us up a short flight of steps to the bank's thick doors. To my surprise, they weren't locked. As my uncle began to push them open, I could hear frantic shouts from inside—but by the time he'd taken his first step inside, the shouting had given way to an extremely nervous silence.

I'd never been inside a bank before, so I can't say whether it was more or less impressive than other banks. But I was pretty amazed—there were big chandeliers, thick rugs on the floors, and lots of gold fixtures that gleamed like they'd been polished to a high shine. Massive, serious-looking desks filled the space here and there, and running the length of the room about a dozen paces from one of the walls was a stone counter with some kind of wooden barricade atop it. Every ten feet or so, there were little gold-barred openings in the barricade, just high and wide enough for a man's head to peer through.

The dozen or so people in the room were all frozen like statues when we first entered. As we approached the counter, some of them made an effort to move around, like they were just going about their business without a care in the world. But they did a lousy job of it.

Healy led the way. Halfway across the room, he passed a ruddy-faced man in a suit who I think tried to say, “Good morning, Mr. Longtrousers!” But all that came out was a series of broken squeaks that sounded more like, “Gya-mana-Mista-Laaghtraii . . .”

“Good day to you, sir,” my uncle replied pleasantly. He stopped when he reached the counter. Behind one of the gold-barred openings was a skinny, quivering bald man.

“Hello,” said Healy.

“M-m-ma—”

The bald man was having a hard time getting the words out.

“‘May you help us?'” Healy suggested.

“Y-ye—”

“Yes, you may,” my uncle answered his own question. “The name's Harold Longtrousers. I'm an account holder. And you are . . . ?”

“A-a-al—”

“Why don't we just go with ‘Al'? Keep things moving along. Al, my friend, I'd like to make a withdrawal from this account.” Healy passed a sheet of paper through the opening, then clasped his hands together and rested them on the counter, smiling politely at Al's face just a couple of feet from his own. The rest of us stood behind Healy in a semicircle.

Viewed up close, Al was not only quivering, but remarkably sweaty. So many rivulets were running down his bald head that I looked up to make sure there wasn't a leak in the ceiling.

“S-s-sure. H-h-how—”

“‘How much?'”

Al nodded.

“Ten million gold,” said Healy. “Or its equivalent in silver. Is there an exchange rate posted—?”

Healy turned his head to look around the room. So did I, which was why I didn't actually see Al faint. I just heard the
thump
of something long and skinny hitting the floor, and when I turned around, he'd vanished from his little hole.

“Oh, dear. Al's fallen ill.” Healy leaned forward, peering through the gold bars. In a much louder but no less friendly voice, he called out, “Could someone else help us, please? And possibly get Al some medical attention?”

One by one, the bank employees all turned to stare at a gray-haired man in a black suit. He was standing near an interior door, his hand on the knob.

The gray-haired man looked for a moment like he was trying to decide whether to flee. Finally, he took his hand off the doorknob and approached my uncle, gulping through a pained smile.

“Yes! Of course. I . . .”

Healy smiled back. “Ah! Mr. Smith-Jones, isn't it? The bank president?”

Mr. Smith-Jones nodded, looking like he'd rather be anything on earth besides the bank president at the moment.

“D-did I hear you correctly? That you n-need to withdraw . . .”

“Ten million gold. Yes.”

Mr. Smith-Jones took a deep breath. “Why d-don't we speak in my office?”

The private office of Mr. Smith-Jones was even more fancy than the main room. It was filled with what looked like very expensive but rather fragile furniture—the chairs and settees all creaked loudly as the big pirates settled into them, and Mr. Smith-Jones winced at every creak.

There weren't quite enough seats to go around. I wound up standing against a wall, while Mackie and Roy Okemu perched on either side of the desktop. Roy was so big that Mr. Smith-Jones had to crane his neck to peer around Roy's butt at my uncle, relaxing in a plush leather chair on the other side of the desk.

“Do we . . . ah . . . need . . . everyone . . . ?” Mr. Smith-Jones's eyebrows wiggled in the direction of Roy Okemu's butt.

“Unfortunately, we do. These are, let's see, my”—Healy pointed at each pirate in turn—“accountant, attorney, personal physician, secretary, factotum, stenographer, assistant stenographer, and . . .” He finished up with me. “Bodyguard. So! How's business?”

Mr. Smith-Jones looked like he might throw up. Which made sense for a lot of reasons, including the smell. There wasn't much ventilation in the room, and the weeks-old pirate fumes made even me want to gag.

“Ahhhh . . . not bad?”

“Glad to hear it. I'm assuming this is just a friendly chat while your employees get the ten million together?”

“Well . . . about that . . . um . . . ahhhh . . .”

“Please, Mr. Smith-Jones. Speak freely. I'm not here to make trouble. I'm merely a loyal account holder who wishes to withdraw some money.”

“Of course! But . . . well . . . you see, it's
quite a lot
of money.”

“Although not nearly as much as I have in my account.”

“Yes! Obviously! I realize that.”

I was glad to hear my uncle's account had more than ten million in it, because it meant that saving me from hanging hadn't bankrupted him.

“You do have my money, do you not?”

“We do! Of course! But. Ahhhh . . .”

Mr. Smith-Jones spent some time tugging at his shirt collar.

“Could you finish the sentence, please? The part that comes after
but
?”

“Mr. Longtrousers . . . the way a bank works, you see, is, we take in deposits, and then we lend that money out, and it's those loans that allow us to pay interest to depositors like yourself, and . . .”

“Let's skip to the end, shall we?”

Mr. Smith-Jones sighed heavily. He wasn't happy about skipping to the end.

“Well, most of our money, you see . . . it's lent out. So what we have on hand is just a small fraction—”

“How small a fraction?”

“At the moment . . .” Mr. Smith-Jones took a big gulp of air. “About two million.”

“Two million gold?”

“Mmmph.”

“Let me get this straight. I have, what? Thirteen million on deposit?”

“I'd have to look at the exact—”

“Trust me. It's well north of that. Closer to fourteen, last I checked. And yet, when I ask for just ten of it back . . . you tell me all you've got is two?”

It was a good thing Mr. Smith-Jones was sitting down, because judging by the color of his face, there wasn't any blood left in his head.

“The w-way a b-bank w-works . . .”

Healy held up a finger. The bank president clamped his mouth shut.

“We've had that lesson. Here's one for you. The way a pirate works . . . is I get what I ask for.”

It was a good thing the door flew open just then, or I think Mr. Smith-Jones might have died of fright.

Standing in the doorway—or as much of it as he could shove open, given the tight quarters on the other side of the door—was a barrel-chested man with a handlebar mustache. His Rovian military uniform was pinned so full of medals that he rattled when he moved.

Like every other man we'd seen in Edgartown so far, he was flushed and sweaty.

“Mr. Longtrousers!”

“Oh, hello, Governor,” Healy said mildly. “It's actually ‘Commodore' Longtrousers now. Or have you forgotten that you promoted me?”

“Commodore! Yes! Of course. What, um, uh . . . What is happening?”

“Doing a spot of banking. What's happening with you?”

The Governor-General—at least, I assumed that was him, and if so, he was the supreme Rovian leader in the New Lands and surrounding islands, his authority second only to King Frederick—looked flustered. “I'm . . . well, wondering . . . why you, ah, chose to dock in the main harbor.”

“Simple thing, really. My ship sustained quite a bit of damage during the conquest of Pella Nonna that you ordered. Needs to be dry-docked for repairs. During which I decided it was appropriate to give the brave marines of the Forty-Third Rovian Irregulars some shore leave.”

“I'm not at all sure that's appropr—”

“But we seem to have run into a bit of a snag, banking-wise,” Healy said, in a tone of voice that, while arguably still friendly, made the Governor-General's head and neck draw back inside his stiff-collared uniform like a frightened turtle. “You see, I need to withdraw ten million gold. And your man Smith-Jones here says he's only got two on hand.”

The bank president and the Governor-General exchanged looks of pure panic.

“The thing is, Commodore . . . ,” the Governor-General began, “that the way a bank works—”

“I've heard enough.”
My uncle's voice, while calm and level, was no longer friendly. He'd switched to the tone that only he knew how to use—the one that could make a man's insides turn to water.

“Here's what's going to happen.” Healy turned to the bank president. “You're going to give me every coin in this bank, down to your last copper. And you”—he shifted his gaze to the Governor-General—“will see to it that every establishment in Edgartown opens its doors to my men, offering lines of credit for them to borrow against. We'll take our rooms at the Four Winds Hotel. Please be so kind as to run ahead and have them prepare hot baths for a hundred and eighty-seven. And tell them to expect a bit of a crowd for lunch.”

The Governor-General looked aghast. Healy turned back to the bank president.

“I'll drop by tomorrow for the other eight million. See you then.”

He gave the banker a wink with his unbandaged eye, then stood up. As he passed the Governor-General, he gave the man's limp hand a friendly shake.

“If you're not busy for lunch, drop by the Four Winds. We'll catch up. My treat. Cheerio!”

MOST OF THE BANK'S
two million gold wasn't actually in gold, but silver—which was about ten times as heavy to carry. In the end, we needed three pack mules just to get it all back to the ship. As Spiggs and three other pirates began to divvy it up, Healy gathered everyone together for another short speech.

“The bad news, brothers, is that at the moment, your coin in hand is just a fifth of what you're owed. The good news is you've got lines of credit all over town. If you'd rather not pay cash for something, just have them put it on Commodore Longtrousers's bill. Please try to pace yourselves—given the amount of repairs the
Grift
needs, we'll likely be here . . . what do you say, Quint? Four, five days?”