The Tides of Avarice (45 page)

“Bladderbulge,” said Jeopord, gesturing behind him with an indolent paw. “Truss up the Cap'n here the way you'd truss up one o' those turkeys you burn.”

“With pleasure, Jeopord,” said the cook, moving forward. “Do I get to stick him in the oven afterwards?”

“I'm still thinkin' about that.”

“You treacherous swine!” Cap'n Rustbane burst out. “You'll be sorry for this, mark my words.”

“I'll mark 'em, all right,” said Jeopord, visibly relaxing. Obviously, as Bladderbulge advanced upon the deposed skipper, the ocelot felt he was now in complete command of the situation. “About two out of ten, I'd say.”

“Ha!” Cap'n Rustbane let rip with a string of nautical oaths. Mrs. Pickleberry blinked admiringly. “Without me – me, d'you hear? Without me, you're just a rabble of rabid street curs, waiting for death to come along and claim your miserable rotting hides. If it wasn't for me, you'd all have danced to the tune of Jack Ketch long ago, and be moldering in your unmarked graves. I made something out of you, I did! I made you into pirates. Pirates who could be proud to hold their heads up high, unafraid to look offal like the Queen of Spectram's pantalooned dandies in the eye.” He waved a paw toward the floating planks that were the sole relics of the Specter of Justice, and to the lifeboats vanishing in the distance. “Without me you'd be nobodies, not the fearsomest crew there's ever been a-sailing on the seas of Sagaria!”

The gray fox paused for effect, wiping the back of his wrist across his lips. Bladderbulge was a statue beside him, the rope suspended between the fat pirate's paws.

“Without me,” Cap'n Rustbane continued, his voice hardly above a whisper, “you'll never find Cap'n Adamite's treasure. You'll go to your graves still trying to hunt it down.”

Murmurs spread through the thronged cutthroats. Rustbane's final remark had obviously struck home among some of them. Once more the direction of the pistol in Jeopord's paw wavered; once more the ocelot almost immediately brought it back under control.

“Don't listen to him,” said the ocelot. “Pay him no mind. Do you think he'd share the treasure with the likes of us if he ever did find it? Do you? Do you really?”

Those words obviously hit their targets, too.

“Nah, he'd never let us have so much as a sight of it, not Rustbane, he wouldn't,” said someone.

Another of the pirates began to laugh bitterly. “Our bones'd be bleached powder on the ocean bottom afore Terrigan Rustbane'd give us so much as a doubloon amongst us.”

Jeopord's eyes twinkled triumphantly. He'd pulled the other pirates back on to his side again. A word from him and they'd have Rustbane swinging from the yardarm before the gray fox could so much as blink.

Rustbane saw that too. He snarled. “I'll have your head for this, you big motheaten pussycat.”

“Perhaps,” said Jeopord with an infuriating smile. “But it's not going to be today, is it? Today you're going to be taking a long walk off a short plank. Besides, it's the lemming who knows where the treasure is, isn't it? Not you. Finish tying him up, will you, Bladderbulge? Get a move on, man!”

With a show of enthusiasm the corpulent cook renewed his efforts trussing the fox. Sylvester could see, though, the reluctance in the badger's eyes. However much fealty the pirates might profess toward their new skipper, it was obvious at least some of them were still, at heart, loyal to Rustbane.

✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿.

The new skipper of the Shadeblaze proved to be one who saw no need to stand on ceremony. A mere fifteen or twenty minutes later, Sylvester stood with his arm around Viola on top of a bundle of provisions as Cap'n Rustbane was led by a posse of pirates, all with their swords pointing towards him and ready to pierce the thick cocoon of rope Bladderbulge had wound around him. In front of Sylvester and Viola sat Mrs. Pickleberry and Rasco, the two keeping a wary distance from each other. This was a moment Sylvester hadn't really wanted to watch, but Jeopord had insisted they did.

Sylvester was still trying to sort out his feelings about Cap'n Rustbane. On the one hand the gray fox had been intending to kill all three of the lemmings, and would have lost not a moment's sleep over doing so. On the other, well, the fox had the quality of inspiring loyalty in the unlikeliest places. Sylvester remembered the times they'd spent in the captain's cabin, and he couldn't help feeling that a kind of friendship had been brought into being then, and that, as with any friendship, it came with certain obligations. Of course, he wasn't going to grab a weapon from somewhere and rush to Rustbane's rescue, but he felt it was what he ought to be doing.

“When you knocked that pistol out of the old rogue's paw,” Viola was murmuring in his ear, “and it came sliding across the deck to land right at my feet, I just couldn't believe it. Bookish Sylvester, suddenly turned into a lemming of action? So stirring! So wonderful! So dashing! So magnetic! So” – she nuzzled him a little more – “sexy!”

“Oh, get along with you, you little strumpet,” Mrs. Pickleberry grated, glancing back over her shoulder.

One of the pirates had started beating a slow, solemn tattoo with his foot on the deck, and now others took it up. With each of those dread-laden beats, Cap'n Rustbane took another step forward, another step nearer to where the plank jutted out from the side of the ship, another step closer to his doom.

Jeopord watched from next to the plank. He was smiling.

“Do you have anything to say before you go?” he asked as the gray fox reached him. He reached out and took the mightily plumed tricorn hat from his erstwhile skipper's head.

“To you, nothing!” spat Rustbane.

Then he turned his eyes to run a fearsome green-eyed gaze over each of his erstwhile crew, one by one, finishing with the trio of lemmings and the little black mouse who'd contributed to his downfall.

“To the rest of you? Why, yes, I do have something to say.”

As was his wont, he waited until the tension had screwed up to an intolerable pitch before continuing.

“Enjoy it while it lasts. That's my advice to you, to all of you. It won't last long, but enjoy it while it does. But there's a black spot on each and every one of you, and I've put it there, I have. There isn't a jack among you who isn't dead already. It's just that none of you knows it yet!”

Before anyone could move to stop him, Cap'n Terrigan Rustbane jumped up onto the plank. Apparently moving without difficulty despite his encumbering bonds, he scampered briskly along the plank until he reached its very end.

“Dead, every last one of you!” he cried.

Then, with a whoop of what sounded impossibly like triumph, he took a single step backward and plummeted into the gray waters of the unmindful ocean.

Jeopord stood motionless. The only sounds were the creaking of the Shadeblaze's timbers and the snapping of the Jolly Roger on the mast-top high overhead as the wind tore at the banner.

Only when Jeopord raised Rustbane's feathered hat into the air and slowly lowered it onto his own head did it seem the pirates could fully believe that the skipper, who for so long had held the power of life and death over them, had finally been vanquished.

Their cheers split the air. Jeopord bowed to them like a conjurer who has successfully pulled off the most mystifying trick of his career.

✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿.

Late that night, as Sylvester lay sleepless, he thought he heard a splash that was somehow different from the splash of the ocean swells against the sides of the Shadeblaze. But he wasn't sure and it didn't seem to matter, so he turned over in his bunk and shut his eyes even tighter than before, and wished that sleep would finally come.

So, Jeopord has the coordinates, does he?” said Viola. “He has the coordinates,” Sylvester confirmed. “He made me an offer I couldn't resist,” he added ironically. “And that was?”

“Being keelhauled then boiled alive and hung from the highest yard arm, and more in the same vein if I didn't tell him what he wanted to know. And to make matters worse, he also found Rustbane's two-thirds of the map in the fox's cabin.”

“So, in other words, he has the entire map,” Viola said and sighed.

“That about sums it up.” Sylvester reflected that it was a miracle Jeopord hadn't sent the lemmings and the mouse along the plank in the wake of the gray fox.

Perhaps it was just a whim of the ocelot to keep them alive. Perhaps he was waiting until the inspiration came to him for some particularly imaginative way of executing them. It was impossible to tell.

For now, though, each breath they took was like a gift given to them by a merciful fate.

But! thought Sylvester, I didn't tell him everything, especially the rather important fact that Cap'n Adamite put the “X” alongside the wrong island. That's a little secret I'm going to keep to myself until the time is right. It might be a way to delay our demise.

The Shadeblaze's new skipper had seen no need to keep them locked up. The Shadeblaze itself served as a perfectly good prison cell, did it not? All around it, the ocean stretched as far as the eye could see. They had the run of the ship, although dreadful things had been threatened should they go too near the longboats.

Viola and the rest were still alive. That was the good news, Sylvester mused. The bad news was the future. Every time his thoughts turned towards what the future held, he felt like curling up and dying on the spot.

What would Jeopord do with the single, all-encompassing wish the magical chest of the Zindars offered him?

It didn't bear thinking about.

What would the fate of Sagaria be?

Sylvester shuddered.

Viola, sensing his despair, held him closer. “It's all going to turn out all right. You'll see.”

“She's right, you know.” Rasco was sprawled on a pile of ropes nearby. The four captives were sunning themselves on deck near the stern of the ship – not that there was much sun. Mrs. Pickleberry had fallen asleep for a while. The big sunhat with which she'd covered her face had risen and fallen in a monotonous dance in time with her breathing. A couple of minutes ago she'd woken up with a snort and a snuffle and a few other noises that the rest had pointedly ignored. Now she was looking around for something to do – always her most dangerous mood.

“That's fine for you to say,” grumbled Sylvester.

“It's not just me as says it,” Rasco replied, shifting on top of the ropes in an attempt to make himself more comfortable. “It's Madame Zahnia.”

“Madame Zahnia?” exclaimed Sylvester. The conversation between them had been going around and around in circles ever since yesterday, when Cap'n Rustbane had finally been consigned to the waves. Here, at last, was something new. “How come you never told us this before?”

Rasco shrugged. “I donno, mon.”

“That damned woman betrayed us,” grunted Mrs. Pickleberry.

“I'm not so sure Madame Zahnia's sole purpose was to throw us to the wolves,” Sylvester said.

“It was important you find your way back aboard the Shadeblaze,” agreed Rasco, “and she figured the best way of arranging that was to ensure the pirates found you and made you prisoners once more.”

“Huh!” said Viola's mother.

Viola leaned forward, regarding Rasco intently. “Why did she figure we should be on the Shadeblaze?”

Rasco spread his hands. “I don't know. If Grandma Zahnia knew the reason, she didn't tell me. But what I think is that Madame Zahnia didn't know the reason either. It was like she said to you, Sylvester, if everything's going to come out well in the end, then it's important a pre-ordained pattern of events is followed, and you folks being on board the pirate ship is a part of that pattern.”

“But what if Cap'n Rustbane had put us all to death?” said Sylvester. “What then?”

“That's why she sent me after you,” Rasco replied. “To try to make sure it didn't happen. And if it did . . .” He smiled. “Well, maybe that would have just been part of the pattern of events it was so important must come to pass.”

Sylvester gulped. The trouble with people who made or received prophecies, he'd concluded, was that the very act of seeing visions of the future made you insensitive to such seemingly trivial matters as people losing their lives.

Yet, Madame Zahnia had seen fit to send Rasco in the train of the pirates and their captives. And, it was indeed largely thanks to Rasco's intervention that they were still alive – Viola and Mrs. Pickleberry, anyway.

The lemmings hadn't long been reunited following Jeopord's takeover of the ship before Sylvester had managed to coax out of Viola what had happened.

“When I was standing there on the plank, trembling all over and thinking these were the last few breaths I'd take,” Viola had explained, “I happened to glance downward and there, bobbing along in a little boat, was Rasco. I could hardly believe it! He was spreading out a fishing net over the surface of the water and signaling that it was safe to jump, that he'd catch me in the net. I'd hardly gotten myself aboard the rowing boat beside him when – splash – there was Mom landing in the water beside us. Then we waited for you, but …”

Remembering the way she'd paused after saying these words, looking at him as if he should complete her sentence for her, Sylvester was embarrassed all over again. He hadn't been able to bring himself to tell her that the reason he hadn't followed her and Mrs. Pickleberry wasn't gallantry or courage or anything praiseworthy along those lines, but sheer stupidity. Unlike Mrs. Pickleberry, who'd picked up on Viola's cue and realized the waters beneath the plank held safety, Sylvester had been completely undecided. He might well have paid with his life for that indecision.

“Which was why we came back aboard,” Viola had told him, after the pause had stretched nearly to breaking point. “We had to rescue you.”

With the result that Rasco and the Pickleberries had become captives alongside Sylvester – that was the truth of the matter. If they died, that'd be the cost of his stupidity. He couldn't even console himself with the thought that he'd carry the guilt to the grave, because he'd almost certainly be dead before they were.

Just before.

“Madame Zahnia knew all of this was going to happen,” Sylvester said wonderingly. “She didn't tell me in so many words, but now I look back on some of the things she was saying, it seems clear.”

“My grandma,” said Rasco, rubbing the side of his nose, “she's a cunning old coot, that one. Before I left Ouwinju to come after you she told me that, unless one of us did something really insane, we'd all come out of this with our skins intact.”

“Easy enough for her ter say,” observed Mrs. Pickleberry.

“Did Madame Zahnia foresee Jeopord would get his hands on the map or the coordinates, which are basically the same thing?” asked Sylvester.

“How can I tell? I am not her confidant.”

Sylvester didn't believe the denial, but decided not to pursue the matter. He was beginning to get a glimmer of an idea as to why the ocelot had so far spared their lives.

“No one else knows Jeopord has the map, do they?” he said.

Viola looked at him in perplexity. “What do you mean. We know, don't we?”

“But none of his crew do. He swore the four of us to secrecy, on pain of terrible death. See, here's the way I reckon it …”

The others bent toward him as he explained in a low voice the theory he'd developed. Jeopord wanted his captives to know he possessed the map, because that way, they'd be aware of just quite how unnecessary their survival was to him. That's what he wanted them to think, anyway. But the truth was he actually did need to keep them alive. If he threw them overboard to the sharks it'd be immediately evident to the rest of the Shadeblaze's crew that either he'd extracted the treasure's coordinates from Sylvester or he owned another copy of Cap'n Adamite's chart. The crew of the Shadeblaze had recently mutinied against one captain: the thought of mutiny must be ripe in their minds. Jeopord couldn't run the slightest risk of tipping them into another mutiny. And, if word got out to the crew that he had the map, there'd be half a dozen pirates willing to chance their paws to wrest it from him.

“Makes sense.” Mrs. Pickleberry spoke grudgingly, but she was nodding her head. Earlier, she'd told Sylvester she was beginning to dislike the cut of his jib somewhat less than he probably deserved. After untangling this declaration in his mind, he'd decided to accept it as a compliment.

“I think this whole business about the chest of the Zindars and the single incredible wish is just a myth,” said Viola, changing the subject.

Rasco gave her a whimsical smile. “My grandma doesn't.”

“Yes, well …” Viola twitched her ears as an indication of what she thought about Rasco's grandma.

“It doesn't really matter what we think,” observed Sylvester. “It's what Jeopord thinks that counts. We're going to be dragged along with him until he's located the very spot where the treasure is supposed to lie. After that …”

He broke off. There was no sense in reminding the rest what was likely to happen as soon as Jeopord didn't need them anymore.

Viola shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. “To think, we'd managed to escape and get so far from the pirates it was as if we'd left them behind in a different world, and now we're back in the same boat as before.”

Rasco and Sylvester groaned.

She looked puzzled briefly, then realized what she'd said. “Oops.”

“Ye think Rustbane's dead?” she Mrs Pickleberry.

“How could he be anything else?” said Sylvester.

“He's survived tighter scrapes, from all he told us,” she responded.

“Tighter than being thrown into the ocean many miles from shore, trussed up like a birthday present?”

Mrs. Pickleberry nodded. “Wou'n't surprise me to see him come climbing up over that taffrail any minute now.”

All eyes turned toward the taffrail in question. What Mrs. Pickleberry described was an impossibility, Sylvester knew, yet he couldn't help half-expecting to see Cap'n Rustbane's snarling gray face above the brass of the rail.

“You're kidding,” said Rasco at last.

“Mebbe.”

“Having him back might be an improvement,” Viola murmured gloomily.

“I know what you mean.” Sylvester touched his head to hers. “Jeopord seems even worse than Rustbane ever was. And the worst thing about Jeopord is that we barely know him, so we've even less of a chance of guessing what he's thinking or what he might do, than we ever had with Rustbane.” He paused a moment before he spoke the next few words, reluctant to utter them. “Besides, though it goes against the grain, I think I actually miss the old buzzard.”

“Fox,” corrected Mrs. Pickleberry.

All the correction did was remind Sylvester of how Cap'n Rustbane had made a joke out of calling the lemmings hamsters. He wished he could hear the insult again, if only the once.

When Mrs. Pickleberry had awoken she'd put her sun hat on the deck beside her. Now a sudden gust of wind blew across the area and picked the hat up off the boards, so that it tumbled away. Rasco sprinted in pursuit as the straw hat, possessed by a mind of its own, danced along the deck.

“There's a wind coming up.” Viola shuddered as if suddenly pierced by shafts of cold.

Indeed there was. Without Sylvester and the others having noticed it, the sky had filled with heavy-looking dark clouds. Off in the distance, he could see the slanting gray lines of heavy rain.

The Shadeblaze lurched beneath them. The bat in the crow's nest started a berserk chatter of warning. Pirates ran to and fro along the length of the ship yelling instructions to batten down the hatches, fasten anything loose, take shelter.

Rasco gave up Mrs. Pickleberry's straw bonnet for lost. He watched it flutter away into the leaden sky like some enormous wayward moth.

“Come on!” Sylvester shouted at the mouse. “Come with us!”

“Sure thing, mon.” Rasco scurried to join the rest.

Their arms around each other for protection against what had already turned into a full-scale gale, the lemmings and their smaller friend made their way below deck. Following their own footsteps, they soon found themselves back in those same dank cabins where Rustbane's crew had incarcerated them long ago as the Shadeblaze left Foxglove behind. The last time Sylvester saw the sky before going below, it was an angry gray turmoil. Several tall, thin columns of blacker darkness reached upward from the sea, their tops broadening to become lost in the ashen sky.

The next few hours were a misery of pitching floors and shrieking timbers as the Shadeblaze did her best to survive the tempest. Soon, Sylvester felt his whole body must be one single mass of bruises from being thrown so often and so hard against the cabin walls. Viola and Rasco were in no better shape. Only Mrs. Pickleberry, perhaps because her center of gravity was so low, seemed able to maintain any measure of stability as the ship bucked and heaved. The worst of it all was that they had to endure the commotion in near darkness, because little or no light crept in through the small portholes and the lemmings dared not keep a lamp lit for fear of scattering burning oil everywhere.

A long, grating shudder ran up the full length of the ship. Suddenly the heaving and tossing of the vessel lessened and it began a different movement, rocking slowly from side to side.

“What was that?” shrieked Viola, clinging to Sylvester.