The Buccaneer's Apprentice (16 page)

Nic hesitated. Whatever it was didn’t sound good. “Will I?” When Infant Prodigy pointed to the north-northeast, the direction in which they were headed, Nic took several broad steps to the ship’s rail. Through the spyglass he peered, squeezing one eye closed so he could see through the scratched and dirty lenses. Across the horizon he scanned, looking for whatever it was the actress had spied. “Gods,” he sighed, when he caught the first glimpse of what he was meant to see.

“What?” asked Maxl, trying to peer in the same direction. Without any aid, he wouldn’t be able to see anything at this distance, Nic knew. He thrust the viewing device into Maxl’s hands, waited until he was looking through it, and then pointed. “We have company,” he whispered.

Maxl’s hands scrabbled for the glass. It took him several adjustments before he could see what Nic had just spied. He swore under his breath, and then handed back the instrument. “Blockade,” he said with unusual terseness.

“Are we near land?” Signora Arturo had appeared from down below as well, huffing and puffing up the galley ladder. Of the women, only she and Pulcinella had declined the switch to men’s breeches, and she had to gather her skirts with one hand and hold them tight in order not to fall. With a judicious use of her needle, however, her new costume somehow managed to convey a nautical jauntiness. “I do hope so. Tell me we are, dear boy.”

“Blockade?” Jacopo Colombo had been attending to his duties at the aft, and at all the bustle, came down to see what all the fuss had been about.

“Blockade!” Signora Arturo clutched her chest, shrieked, and looked to the heavens with a silent prayer.

The noise brought out several more of the crew, including Darcy. Whatever she’d been doing below deck had left her face blackened with soot. She emerged up the ladder, blinking with wonderment, looking first at her father and then at Nic for some kind of explanation. Nic placed the spyglass to his eye once again. When first he had looked, he’d seen only two ships in the far distance. Now that he swung the glass around, he could see more—four, six, eight, perhaps twelve in total, all spaced across the horizon. What Nic knew of shipbuilding could probably have been written on a packet of tea, but to his eye they all seemed identical in their bulk, their three-masted majesty, and in the ominous import of the cannonados darkening their hulls. “They’re ships of war,” Nic announced.

“Are you witnessing their sails?” Maxl inquired, his own fingers obviously itching to clutch the far-seeing device again. “What is being on them?”

Nic had to squint to make it out. “A flower,” he said at last, seeing the outline on a smaller ship’s sail. Unlike the others, it seemed to be traveling back and forth along the long row of ships, perhaps patrolling the waters. “An iris.”

“The iris crest,” Jacopo said, without emotion, “is the national symbol of Pays d’Azur.” Darcy, without realizing it, let out a hiss.

During the relative calm of the last day and a half, Nic had almost forgotten the now-familiar sensations accompanying a rush of fear—the prickling of the back, the shivers along the spine, a heat beneath his arms accompanied by a thudding of his heart and a sudden need for air, as if he’d forgotten how to breathe. It all came back to him in a rush. He did not welcome it. Still, he had a crew looking to him for some kind of response. “Well,” he said, curling his lips into what he hoped was an ironic smile. “My old friends from Pays d’Azur. What a pleasure.”

He handed the glass over to Maxl, who once again turned it across the skyline. “This is what I am seeing,” he announced, sounding excited. He lowered the spyglass and grabbed Darcy’s hands, bringing them together at face level until her fingers touched. Like an artist, he sculpted the shape they made into an inverted half-circle. “This is being the Gallina harbor, yes?” In the air, he made stabbing motions in the air, creating an invisible downward arc between Darcy’s wrists. “Pays d’Azur is posting warships across, so they control city. But,” he added, after a moment’s hesitation, “is not looking like a siege. Other ships, they are coming out.”

“So they’re controlling the port, not impeding it,” Nic said. He thought over the meaning of that information.

“Perhaps they’re searching for stolen goods,” said Signor Arturo, sounding worried. The
Tears of Korfu
had held precious little in the way of goods of any sort when Nic had taken over. A lead casket containing a moderate amount of gold was all Nic and Maxl had been able to find of the pirates’ spoils. Very likely, they had intended to make more from the sale of the Arturos to slavers. “Searching for something at some rate.”

“Or someone.” Darcy pronounced the words flatly, but when Nic looked around, her eyes were wide as saucers.

“Yes. Well.” In the Drake’s bored voice, Nic spoke loudly enough to be heard by all. “It is fortunate we have nothing to hide, is it not?” He turned to Maxl, and asked more quietly, “Is there somewhere else we could find provisions?” The man lowered the spyglass and shook his head. “And we absolutely must stop?”

“If we are seeing them,” Maxl breathed into his ear, so close that Nic could almost feel his whiskers, “they are seeing us.”

“Back to work,” Nic announced to everyone. Darcy still looked at him with unanswered questions in her eyes, but in front of anyone else she would never say anything. “Pretty lady of the galley, if you would accompany me for a moment.” Nic immediately took Signora Arturo by the arm and escorted her away from Macaque and his crew. She responded to the courtesy with a little coo of pleasure, then leaned in with avid interest when Nic bent in close, once they were out of everyone else’s earshot. He spoke as Nic, and not as the Drake. “I need you, without asking any questions, to conceal the old man and the girl as best you can. They must be completely hidden.”

“But why?” The Signora clapped her hands over her mouth, aware that she had completely ignored his request for no questions.

It was difficult to be curt with the woman. “Mistress,” he said, imploring her. “Pretend that this is one of your husband’s plays, and that Darcy and Jacopo are Ingenue and Vecchio, father and daughter, pursued unjustly for a crime they did not commit.” Nic had not given the Arturos any information about the Colombos’ background. To them, the pair had been simply two more refugees Nic had managed to rescue in his battle to return to their sides. Perhaps he was gilding the lily a bit, but the Signora was listening with an eager expression, taken in by the skeleton of a good story. “You are Zanna, daughter of Muro, Mistress of the Hunt, come upon them in their time of need. What do you do?”

“Oh, naturally I conceal them, by the rules of the hunt!” Already the Signora was throwing herself into the role, Nic could tell. “I would be costumed in something beautiful and white, of course, with a high neck that would frame my face in the footlights. She’s the star of the show, Zanna is, isn’t she? And of course, I would be so beautiful that their foul pursuer would forget his chase, whilst I seduce him with my feminine wiles. Little will he suspect, though, that I and the forest animals under my command have concealed the pair beneath twigs and leaves, and lulled them into a quiet sleep with my beautiful song.” So clear was the vision in her head that she sighed, enchanted.

“Ye-es.” Nic felt he had to intervene before she completely lost herself. “Except that you’re going to be wearing your pirate lass costume, and you’re on a strange boat, and there are no twigs and leaves or forest creatures about. And please don’t sing. Can you do it?”

Signora Arturo scoffed. “Can I do it! Of course I can do it. Although it takes an actress with the proper
seasoning
, shall we say, in order to get the true complexity of a character such as Zanna across. She is dispassionate, you know, of the world of man and yet not quite human. A heart of trembling feeling concealed in the unemotional form of a demi-god …” While his mistress rattled on about her role, Nic turned. Jacopo and Darcy were still looking out to sea in the direction of the unseen blockade. He motioned them over, while steering the Signora in the direction of the main hatch. “What a delightful plot. I really must get Armand started on a new production the moment we are back home,” she was still saying, by the time the Colombos joined them. “
Zanna’s Wiles: A Pastoral Tragedy in Three Acts
. No, five acts. Three is scarcely enough.” A smile crossed her face as she took Jacopo by the hand. “Come, my squirrel,” she told him, before addressing Darcy. “And you, my little nutkin. Zanna will take care of you.”

The expression Darcy cast him as she was hustled below deck was of sheer confusion mingled with terror. He stepped over to the hatch opening and knelt down before she disappeared. “It will be all right,” he told her and Jacopo both. “Just listen to the Signora. Will you trust me?”

“Of course,” said Jacopo.

Darcy, on the other hand, didn’t seem as convinced. Last down the ladder, she bit her lip and nodded, however. “Do what you must,” she whispered when she reached the bottom.

“Come now. Hurry. We haven’t much time,” said the Signora, scurrying them beyond Nic’s sight. Nic straightened himself and sighed, feeling decidedly not at all like the man of scorn and contempt that he was supposed to be. Perhaps the Drake had been right to disdain the world. Caring for the people within it only led to anxiety and vexation.

Then again, he realized with a smile that he quickly concealed, perhaps it was a good thing to know that he was not as much the Drake as he had feared. Nic straightened his neck, elongated his posture, cleared his throat, and readied himself for what came next. He was certain that it would take the performance of a lifetime. Two people’s lives depended upon it.

Do not say of your poor cousin that he is gone to Gallina. Rather, say nothing at all, or if you must, say merely he is at sea. Even saying that he is dead would be preferable than to let anyone know that one of our blood has given himself over to the wildest and most uncivilized of lands.

—From a communication between Amilitta Mancinni,
of the Thirty, and her four children

I
t was said that the coastal island of Gallina had been founded when refugees from the country of Ellada, anxious to find a less stringent place to practice their diverse religious practices, wrecked their ship on the island’s rocky shores. They settled in the one tiny area that was habitable, nestled in the isle’s natural harbor, and prospered. Had the island been closer to Ellada, that kingdom surely would have annexed it at some point during the previous few hundred years. If it possessed more arable land (or indeed, any arable land at all), it might have grown to be more of a force among other countries. If it had been larger, or positioned anywhere at all of strategic import, some other nation with an eye to controlling the Azure Sea might have conquered its people long ago.

But the city of Gallina perched precariously on the beaches of a wall of rock jutting up from the sea floor. A volcano kept the city in shadow for all but the earliest daylight hours, cooling it during the warmest months. The shadow also produced an air of perpetual gloom exacerbated by long weeks in which clouds of ash shrouded the isle. Gallina attracted as residents misfits and merchants who were not particularly picky about their clients, as well as exiles and those of a more criminal bent. Visited as it was by merchants and freebooters alike, it was not a city one visited for its fine temples, or its cultured manners. Yet at least the view of Mount Gallina was fine from the water on this particular day, Nic thought as he regarded ships sailing in and out of the low clouds obscuring the harbor.

He’d had long enough to observe it. As the
Tears of Korfu
had sailed close within sight of the giant warships blockading the harbor, a contingent of smaller patrol boats had ventured over the waters in their direction. At their prows were strung bundles of triangular flags that, as Maxl had explained in the privacy of the captain’s quarters, signified various maritime messages. This particular combination of red and white meant to drop anchor and proceed no further until further instructions.

And await they had. For two hours now, they’d sat motionless in the water, doing nothing and saying little. The old members of the crew were positioned on barrels by the rail’s edge, watching the harbor and the boats that appeared to be protecting it. The members of the Arturos’ troupe milled about, gossiping among themselves as they attempted to figure out exactly what this meant for their own immediate futures. As for Nic, he kept an eye out, trying to discern some pattern. It was no coincidence that warships from Pays d’Azur were here. They were searching for the Colombos. What was interesting, however, was that none of the boats leaving Gallina for the high seas were stopped at all. Whatever the Azurites expected to find, they were not worried about it being smuggled out of the city.

At long last, from the largest and most preeminent of the warships ventured another patrol boat, set in a course designed to intercept them. Nic watched its progress as impassively as possible, waiting without a word as it lowered its sails several dozen spans from their own boat. On its deck the men scurried like the ants of a colony, working as one to winch down into the water an even smaller craft roughly twice the size of Maxl’s rowboat. Several other men boarded it when it reached deck level. As sailors in bright blue rowed the passengers closer and closer, Nic knew with certainty that the man in the small craft’s center was none other than the Comte Dumond. There was something in the bearing of the man’s posture and in the tilt of his head that bespoke of an arrogant nobility. Nic remembered hating it the night the man refused to come to his aid, aboard the
Pride of Muro,
and he bristled to see him even now.

The three officers accompanying the comte may have been those who had been aboard the
Pride
as well, but Nic did not remember them as clearly. One of them called out in his own language. While Nic stood near the deck’s railing, motionless, matching the comte in the rigidness of his posture, he allowed Maxl to reply in broken Azurite. Finally, as the small boat bobbed right next to the
Tears
, the officer spoke in words Nic could understand. “What is your business in Gallina?”

“We are coming to pick up the supplies,” Maxl called down. “The hardtack, the water, the wine, the meats.”

“And who are you?”

“We are being the crew of the
Tears of Korfu
,” Maxl replied, trying to sound as polite as possible. “Please be letting us pass. We are peaceful.”

Comte Dumond, when he spoke, had a voice that could cut through any conversation with ease. Nic could see the mole on his cheek’s crest clearly from this distance. “The
Tears of Korfu
,” he said, his eyes moving over the line of crew at the rail’s edge with loathing. “I know this craft, of course. It is why I insisted on coming myself. They are pirates.”

With a hand, Nic restrained Maxl from replying. “I disagree with your choice of words. We are adventurers,” he announced, breathing deeply and supporting the words with some hitherto-unknown strength from within.

“Pirates,” replied the comte. Like a hawk choosing its prey, his eyes focused on Nic for the first time. He took in the boy’s youth and the tricorne atop his head, and seemed to judge him. “And partaking of my coin, if I recall.”

As always, the moment Nic had summoned the character of the Drake, all his stage fright vanished as the role took over. He could now match the comte arrogance for arrogance. The way the man had rubbed his thumb across his first two fingers as he spoke of coin made Nic feel dirty—just as the comte intended. “Perhaps under the previous management,” Nic drawled as the Drake. “But it is something of which I, as current captain, know nothing.”

“Is it, now.” The comte did not seem at all amused. “Where is Captain Xi?”

“It is,” replied Nic. He was aware that all aboard the
Tears
hung on to his every word. It seemed as if they collectively held their breaths, afraid to disturb the conversation with so much as a stirring of air. “It further distresses me to be the bearer of bad tidings: Captain Xi is no longer with us.” He made the traditional bowing of the head that the polite performed when speaking of the deceased, but barely enough to pay the man respect. “A pity he could not be here to answer any questions you may have.”

“Do I know you?” the comte asked suddenly. He twisted to get a better glimpse of Nic. “I know you somehow. What is your name?”

“I am called the Drake by those I command.” Beneath his character’s reserve, Nic began to feel a prickle of alarm. What if the comte connected a frightened boy lying on the aft deck of the
Pride of Muro
with the self-assured commander he was trying to portray?

“Drake?” The comte turned over the word in his mouth as if it were something dirty and unfamiliar. “As in, a type of duck?”

“As in the
dragon
. Rawr!” Nic had parted his lips to say much the same thing, minus the
rawr,
but his first mate had beaten him to it. Nic lay a hand on Maxl’s shoulder to restrain his obvious anger.

The comte barely seemed to notice. He had managed to toss his poisoned barb, saw that it landed, and didn’t seem to care where. “I suppose I can hardly enforce an agreement made with a previous captain,” he said, ignoring Maxl altogether. “A lawless crew of pirates, by definition, have no honor.”

Nic seethed. The man spoke of honor, but what honor was there in hiring freebooters to attack and kill the crew of ships like
The Pride of Muro
? What honor was there in allowing innocents like the Arturos and their company to be sold into slavery, or in letting a servant boy fend for himself at the mercy of a man little more than a savage? “I suppose you are an expert on honorable behavior, then?”

“I honor my king and country,” the comte replied. He seemed taken aback that Nic would address him so familiarly. The three officers accompanying him began murmuring among themselves. “He would not question my loyalties.”

“Nor do I,” Nic assured, smoothly. “I, too, have my own loyalties. To my own people.” Though he raised his hands to indicate his crew, Nic had a city full of individuals in mind. “I must do what is best for them. Which, for the moment, means sailing past your little … military exercise … and buying provisions where we may. Do we have your permission?”

One of Nic’s masters once had a mastiff trained to growl at the slightest threat, real or imagined. It seemed to Nic that the comte bristled at his words in much the same way as that hound. “It is a pity you do not care to prolong such a pleasant conversation,” said the comte, oozing false regret.

“My stay outside this harbor has been prolonged enough,” Nic said. “Three hours or more by my reckoning, and we have a good deal to do in port before setting sail on the morrow.”

“Such a short stay.”

“I hope it is. Unless you have more business with us?”

The face-off between the two personalities seemed destined never to end. Neither the Drake nor the comte seemed likely to stand down. Comte Dumond regarded Nic with derision for a long moment. At last he adjusted his exquisitely-coiffed periwig and replied. “We are seeking two fugitives,” he said, eyes once again scanning the line of crewmen at the railing. “Criminals. Jacopo Miandro Colombo and Darcy Fontaine Colombo are their names.” During the stab of fear that followed the comte’s distinct enunciation, Nic thought for a moment that the Drake might vanish completely and leave standing only the cowering boy within. Yet despite the shock, Nic’s facade held. “Your previous captain had accepted an incentive to locate them, with a further bounty if he was successful.”

Now, more than ever, Nic was grateful that he’d always referred to the Colombos as Thorntongue and Old Man whenever the ship’s original crew was about. “Captain Xi,” Nic hastened to correct, “was never my captain. Merely my opponent.” He smiled with what he hoped was a world of meaning.

“I see. And you know nothing of the two outlaws?” Nic pulled his lips into a line and shrugged with indifference. “A pity.”

“What did these ruffians do to merit your country’s displeasure?” Nic asked. He smiled. “Did they eat their garlic snails with the wrong fork?”

“For that offense my king does not order death upon sight,” riposted the comte, unamused. The news made Nic shiver, inwardly. The words that followed did not ease his heart. “They are wanted for murder—the murder of the Vicomte San Marquis, in cold blood. All you need know is that the reward for their capture would set a man up for life. Or a woman,” he added, with a nod at Ingenue, in her breeches. For once, she did not respond with a batting of her eyelashes or coquettish curtsey, but merely a blank and slightly hostile stare.

“Naturally I should be glad to inform you should I hear of the miscreants.” To his left, Nic heard motion and a cleared throat. Both he and Maxl turned slightly. Nic was certain the sound had come from Macaque. The notion disturbed him that the sailor might be aware of more than Nic realized. Macaque, however, merely spat over the railing and resumed the leaning pose he had adopted there, his face unreadable.

“My officers have been boarding many craft entering Gallina harbor to ensure that the two are not smuggled aboard,” the comte declared, with a speculative look to observe how Nic reacted.