Miya Black, Pirate Princess I: Adventure Dawns (10 page)

"Wait a sec," said Miya. She thought a moment, then looked at the map. "That frigate would be one of the slower ships, right? So maybe Pete did split his gang up—half attack Pala-Mala, half attack Wo'osi, maybe. Then the two fleets meet up with the frigate at another point—like Tonfa-Tonfa—and transfer the slaves there."

"Yes. Yes, maybe," said Tomas. He looked at the map again. "In fact, that would explain why Sola didn't see any Wo'osi'ans on the ship—Wo'osi is the northernmost island, perhaps the prisoner transport from there hadn't quite caught up yet. This is good, Coconut."

Miya beamed as her father continued:

"This means that—especially if that frigate is trailing the main fleet—if we could find it, target it, free the prisoners ... if that is the strategy Pete is using, we may be able to use it against him."

"Right! That way we free the islanders, cripple Pete's biggest ship, maybe even capture Pete himself!"

"Maybe," said Tomas. "Don't get too excited too soon. These are all guesses, remember."

"But such good guesses! I'm sure we must be right. We ARE right, I can feel it! But, oh, we have to hurry, if we're going to—"

"And what's this 'we' I keep hearing?"

"Um ... the royal we?"

"The royal we. Meaning 'I'. So, in fact, you are planning on doing all this yourself?"

"No! Together! With you! And the Black Navy, we have enough ships, don't we? Even if we leave half here that'd give us four corvettes and your brig, and ... and the Black Swan IS the fastest ship in the ocean, we both know that, I could scout ... I wouldn't even have to be in the battles, I could just ... y'know ... watch, maybe?"

Tomas looked at his daughter a long while.

"Miya ... my darling ..."

He stopped a moment, and cleared his throat.

"You don't know how much I would love to have you at my side—"

"So—"

Miya's father raised his hand, and she closed her mouth.

"If you were not my daughter, I would have you as part of my crew in a moment, your age be damned."

Miya forced herself to be silent, her dark eyes bright.

"But you
are
my daughter, Miya. The thought of ... I've had dreams ..." Tomas stopped again, just for a moment, then continued. "Please understand a father's dilemma," he said. "Please understand that ... that to avoid anything, anything happening to you, I would give up everything I owned, I would give this vermin Badger Pete my crown and my island, my ship, my crew, the clothes off my back and the sword from my belt."

"Dad ..."

"But it won't come to that," said Tomas, his voice firm. "Because before that can happen I will fight. I will fight armed with the knowledge that you are here, and that you are safe, and that I am fighting for you. Do you know the strength that you give me, my darling? Maybe one day you will understand. But do not ever think that by staying behind—by staying safe—you are not helping."

"I ... I won't."

"And please understand why you must stay behind."

"I still want to go with you, but—"

"Please, Miya," said Tomas. He grinned. "Don't make your father cry."

"I won't," Miya said fiercely. "I'll keep safe."

"Good." Tomas relaxed, letting out a long breath. "Aside from anything else, honestly, your mother WOULD kill me."

*

"So. Here to waste my time? I was wondering when you'd turn up, your father mentioned something about this a few days ago."

Miya smiled as she walked into the blacksmith's forge, the heat of it starting her sweating within a few seconds. She'd always loved this place—the orange-white glow of the forge itself, the ever-present smells of burnt horse hoof and metal and coal, the solid walls built from huge chunks of dark stone, blackened further by the smoke of many years.

"How many times have you told me to make sure my sword is sound?"

"I didn't know you were going to end up with
that
sword," said Hands, the blacksmith. He was sitting on a wooden stump beside his anvil, shirtless but wearing a thick leather apron, his wiry, muscular body a mass of burn-scars. He was in the middle of eating a large sandwich.

"Still, could you check it? Please?"

Hands grunted.

"Ah, give us a look, then."

Miya drew her sword. Hands glanced at it.

"Sound enough," he said.

"Do it properly."

"All right, all right." Hands put his sandwich down on a stack of wood piled against the forge's wall, then took Miya's sword from her. "Let's have a look at this royal Amician sword and see if it's miraculously bucked the trend of every other royal Amician sword in the world and decided to break."

Miya watched Hands check her sword, bending it, flicking it, using an astonishing variety of small hammers to tap all along its edge—despite Hands' words he obviously loved handling such a fine weapon, and as he examined the sword his expression changed from indifferent resignation to the happy focus of the true devotee.

"By hope, they don't make them like this any more. You know it used to be illegal for a master Amician bladesmith to make more than one sword a year? Punishable by death! That's how it should be, these days they just run them out as fast as they can. No craftsmanship. No passion in them. That's what this sword has, passion. For an entire year, this was the focus of a master bladesmith's life. Hope's truth, the dedication! Look at this blade, how straight it is—and it's not like it hasn't been used either, by your father and however many owners it had before him, but still as straight as the day that Amician bladesmith looked at this sword and declared it to be perfect. Not a bit out of line. Although ..."

"What? What is it?"

Hands was holding the sword up to the light, turning it this way and that as he eyed it, frowning.

"There are some signs of wear. Not surprising in a sword this old, even a royal blade. Nothing to worry about, though. This edge, on the other hand ..."

He glanced at Miya.

"You sharpened it?"

"I ... yes, last night—"

"I think you were a bit rough with her."

"I just—"

"Nah, nah, just hang on a moment."

Hands rummaged around in a small iron box, took out several small, rectangular objects before he found what he was looking for. He held it up for Miya to see—a flat, dark, bluish stone, just an inch long.

"Too small, you're thinking? Lemme ask you, when you fight with this sword,
would you use brute force
?"

"That's not really my style," Miya scoffed.

"Right. What's the word?"

"Finesse," said Miya firmly.

"Right. This sword wasn't meant for hacking and slashing, though that isn't to say she ain't got weight—heavier than she looks, yeah?"

Miya nodded. "It's much heavier than my old sabre, even though it's not that much longer."

"They say royal blades got twice the soul of any common sword—I reckon there's some truth in that. But look at this edge here, look how thin and straight and beautiful it is. This sword wants some finesse to keep it sharp. Like so," said Hands, letting the tiny stone slide along the sword's edge at a precise angle. "The sword knows what it needs. Just listen to it."

Miya smiled as she watched Hands sharpen the sword, listened attentively as he talked her through the techniques he was using, his usual rough way of speaking disappearing completely as his love for the subject shone through, and after half an hour of instruction and practice Miya felt she'd mastered the art of sharpening her new sword. At her request, Hands tapped a tiny, precise hole through the stone and threaded a fine loop of copper through that, so she could attach it to her wrist bracelet, the stone taking its place beside the wooden horseshoe charm and tiny blue and green shell already hanging there.

It took a little effort, but eventually Miya managed to pay the blacksmith for his time and the sharpening stone.

"Ah, at your insistence, Princess," said Hands, taking the coins Miya handed him and dropping them carelessly in his apron pocket. "Treat that blade with the respect it deserves and it'll see you right. Of course," he added hurriedly, "it'd be best if you never had to use it, but—"

"I know Mum told you that you had to say that, Hands. Don't worry, Dad AND Lars AND Mum have all spent hours lecturing me about everything to do with fighting and swords and 'make no mistake Miya this is a tool of war designed to kill but in the right hands it can be used to protect' ... I mean, I get all that. You don't need to worry about me. Anyway, see you around!"

Hands watched Miya leave his shop, his brow furrowed, then he picked up his sandwich and began from where he'd left off.

*

To take her mind off things and give herself something to do, Miya looked for Sola, stage two of Make Sola Happy already bubbling away in her busy little head. He wasn't in his room, which ignited a spark of suspicion in Miya, and as she opened the door to the library this suspicion was confirmed.

"Sola! Have you been reading this WHOLE TIME since I left you here last night?"

Sola blinked, then looked up at Miya.

"Miya," he said. "Hello."

Miya put her hands on her hips. "Oh. My. Goodness. Think of your health, man! Have you eaten?" She spotted the absence of cinnamon bun on the little table. "Just a cinnamon bun?"

"Thank you for leaving it."

Miya looked at the two books on the table. "Did you read these already?"

"Yes."

One of the books was a very dry-looking treatise on naval navigation that made Miya want to yawn just looking at it. The other was, to Miya's slight surprise, 'Necessary Tales', her favourite book from childhood, a collection of stories about adventure in and around the Necessary Ocean from the times before the Great Pirate War. She glanced at the book Sola was currently reading, which was a guide to sailing.

"Um," said Miya. "Uh, did you, um, you know ... understand these books?"

"I do have some questions," said Sola, carefully placing a small purple feather in the book he was reading to mark his place, then closing it.

"Oh. Um, I ... I don't really know that much about navigation, to be completely honest, that kind of book—"

"The navigation book was very clear and precise. I could understand everything in it, although I had to read some parts carefully, and more than once. But the other book often made no sense."

Miya bristled. "What do you mean?"

"As an example, one of the first stories in the book is about a race between Patty Kidd and Two Beard Higgins."

"Oh yeah, I never really liked that one so much either, Patty Kidd should've won that race. Two Beard cheated. And the way it's written, it's like he's the hero? What?"

"That wasn't my problem with it."

"Oh."

"In a later story, Patty Kidd is present at the Battle of Cutter's Rock. But that battle took place in 1650, and Two Beard was not born until 1654. In another story Patty Kidd retires from pirating, aged 32. Two Beard's age is not given in the first story, but it's made clear that he was older than Patty Kidd at the time."

Miya nodded at Sola, her expression open.

"Sorry, what was the question?" she asked. "Is this like a maths problem?"

"No. Perhaps it's a logic problem. How can Patty Kidd have been present at the Battle of Cutter's Rock, and also retire at age 32, and also be younger than Two Beard? Are there two Two Beards?"

"Oh. Oh, I get your problem. With those kinds of stories you can't take them too seriously. Like, in that first one? Maybe it was Two Beard that was in the race but probably it was with some no-name pirate who never did anything else. So instead of making the story about Two Beard and someone you've never heard of, they made it about Two Beard and Patty Kidd, which makes it more interesting. You get it?"

"No."

"Look, when people write a story like that, they're not trying to make it realistic or, like, accurate or anything. They're just trying to make it fun and exciting and interesting to read. It's not a history book."

"I realised that quickly. But, it has real people in it. Patty Kidd was a real person, wasn't she? I've read about her in a book of history. Other people in the book too, are real, Two Beard Higgins, and Doctor Bones, and Gentleman Death, and Jean and Jonathan Black—"

"Oh, they're real all right," said Miya. She grinned. "They're my grandparents."

This didn't have quite the expected effect, as Sola just nodded and said, "I did wonder."

"Oh. Most people are kind of, y'know ... shocked and impressed."

"You share the same family name and I know that our father was a pirate. That would make them my grandparents, also."

"Oh, hey! Yeah, I guess so. Huh."

Miya pursed her lips for a moment. Having two legendary pirates as her grandparents had always been one of her special things. Sharing it with someone else, especially someone who didn't seem to care all that much, was a little annoying.

"Anyway," she said, "you can't take those stories as truth. Dad says most of the stuff in that book is way different to how things really happened—half of it's just completely made up."

Sola nodded. "So our grandparents are different to how they're portrayed in these stories."

"I, um ... I don't really know. I guess they are but I've never actually met them. Apparently my grandmother and grandfather had a big argument when Dad was about my age, so he jumped ship and set out on his own. Aside from the stories in that book, I don't really know anything about them. They don't, like, visit or anything."

"Our father hasn't told you any more about them?"

"Mum REALLY hates it when they're even mentioned, and whenever Dad accidentally says something about them he clams up really fast. I think he's a bit embarrassed or something. I don't know why, they're both legends. At one point they were called the King and Queen of the Necessary Ocean. My own grandparents were among the greatest pirates these waters have ever known," said Miya, eyes shining.

"It's unfortunate that they're not here now," said Sola. "In their stories, triumphing over improbable odds seemed to be an everyday occurrence for them."