Wake of the Bloody Angel (11 page)

Finally someone clever suggested the creation of a special fleet of fast, heavily armed ships designed for the sole purpose of catching, capturing, and returning for trial any and all pirates. Someone even more clever—our old friend Queen Remy—realized that the best ones for the job were former pirates themselves.

So, for the last twenty-five years, the Anti-Freebootery Guild had done an adequate job keeping piracy confined to very specific, well- known areas of the ocean. Why had they not wiped it out entirely? For two reasons: One, pirates were as renewable a resource as corn or whores, and second, if they did wipe it out, the pirate hunters would be unemployed and might return to their old ways.

We’d been at sea for two weeks without encountering any pirates, but no one seemed too concerned. Certainly not the
Red Cow
’s captain; in fact, I had yet to see him concerned about anything.

As my eyes finished adjusting, a new voice said, “Good morning, Captain.”

I turned to see Quartermaster Seaton clinging to the port mainsail shrouds. He was like many seconds-in-command I’d known, competent but happy to stay in the background. He had a goatee decorated with little bits of seabird bone, and a fringe of sun-lightened hair around his head. His otherwise bald pate was tanned dark and spotted in places with big moles. His arms sported muscles that looked like leather cords, and were covered with elaborate tattoos from ports all over the world. The captain led the crew, but Seaton made sure they followed his orders. He continued, “How’d you sleep?”

“Mostly on my back,” I deadpanned. “Still getting used to the heat. Have you seen Captain Argo?”

He nodded forward. “She’s down there jawing with Captain Clift.”

I followed his gaze. Jane, clad in billowing trousers and a sleeveless tunic tight enough to let everyone know when she got a chill, stood at the port bow rail. Beside her was our captain, Dylan Clift.

Clift was taller than Jane, slender, and deeply tanned, with a thin mustache along his upper lip. He was as likely to leap into the crow’s nest himself as send one of the crew to do it, and much like Jane, he tended to laugh a lot. He knew every crewman’s name, usually his background, and instinctively handled them in the most efficient way, goading with some, no-nonsense with others. He was the reason we—well, really Jane—had chosen the
Red Cow
. He’d served as Jane’s quartermaster during her pirate days, and followed her into pirate hunting. Several of the crew had also put in time under “Cap’n Jane” on both sides of the law. The rest had heard enough about her to be properly respectful, and they treated me well because I was with her. Jane’s exaggerated hints about my past helped, too.

“Interesting to see the two of them together again,” Seaton said.

“Did you serve under Jane?”

He nodded. “Aye, on her last two voyages.”

“When she captured Rody Hawk?”

Seaton’s expression hardened. “We don’t mention that name, Mr. LaCrosse. He’s bad luck. And no, that was before my time. In fact, no one who was on that voyage, except Cap’n Clift, still follows the sea.”

“My apologies,” I said. At least I wasn’t the only one leery of saying Hawk’s name aloud. “Lots of new rules to remember.”

He smiled. “Aye, it’s true. But as the man who’s paying our way, I suppose you can follow or not any rules you please.”

“I’ll still try to be less disruptive.”

Seaton saluted me. “Aye, sir, it’d be much appreciated.”

The conversation had caused a lot of my anger to burn away, but it grew hot again when I heard Jane’s laugh on the wind. I went along the rail past the windlass and joined the two captains at the bowsprit.

Clift turned to greet me. “Good morning, Mr. LaCrosse,” he said. His dark tan made his white teeth startling.

“Morning, Captain Clift. Any imminent action?”

“Not yet. Possibly tomorrow at the earliest. We’re still not in the real shipping lanes, so unless we come across a pirate skulking out of his hiding place, we have the luxury of peace and quiet.”

“I guess I can stand the wait.”

“You seem to be able to stand anything that’s necessary, Mr. LaCrosse.”

“I imagine my job is kind of like yours. Days of boredom punctuated by moments of total panic.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “That’s it exactly.”

I turned to Jane. Smiling, I said, “May I speak with you for a moment? In private?”

“Sure,” she said. “Excuse us, Dylan.”

“Certainly,” Clift said. And once again, I caught the moment that I’d seen now at least once a day since we left port. Clift smiled at Jane, then looked quickly away. He seemed to be changing clothes internally, putting on a different face for Jane than for everyone else. The “Jane face” wasn’t that different from his regular demeanor, and if I hadn’t caught on to the moment he switched, I might never have noticed. I had asked neither of them about it, because I could interpret it for myself: Captain Clift had it bad for ex-Captain Argo.

I pulled Jane across the deck to the starboard bow rail. She twisted out of my grip and said, “Hey, what’s the matter with you?”

I said quietly, “It took me a while, but I finally realized you lied to me.”

She looked outraged. “The hell I did.”

“You knew
exactly
who Black Edward Tew was the first time I mentioned his name.”

She started to protest some more, but bit it back. She knew I had her.

“When I asked you if you’d heard of him, you deliberately said something like, ‘There’s a lot of pirates in the world,’ which is
not
an answer. You were hiding that you knew about him without having to actually lie about it. And it was only
after
that that you started asking about his treasure. I thought you were just joking, but you
knew
there might be a treasure involved. At that point, even I didn’t know that.”

She said nothing.

“Now tell me why you did it,” I finished.

She started to speak, then stopped, then looked out at the water. I waited. A few sailors passed us, regarded us oddly, but said nothing.

At last Jane said softly, “Okay, you got me. I knew about Edward Tew. I should’ve told you. But I didn’t lie to you.”

“Don’t split hairs with me. Tell me why.”

“Why do you think? Miles. That stupid son of a bitch. Ever since I’ve known him, he’s been after the big score. I thought about telling you, but I know how good you are at this kind of thing, Eddie; if you started looking from scratch, without any hints from me, you might turn up a clue everyone else missed, and we might actually find Black Edward’s treasure. Even if I only got a cut of it, it’d be a fortune. Maybe then . . .”

She trailed off and looked away, but I heard the words anyway.
Maybe then Miles will stop gambling and whoring.

“I’m not interested in Black Edward’s treasure, Jane. I’m really not.”

“I know that. I didn’t believe it at first, but I do now.” She looked contritely down, and then slowly her smile returned and she cut her eyes up at me. “Still, if we happen to, you know, stumble across it . . .”

I threw up my hands. “If we come across it, I don’t care who takes it. To be honest with you, the last thing I want is a pile of ill-gotten blood money.”

She grinned knowingly. “You’re piling it on thick, Eddie. I’m starting to not believe you again.”

I poked her in the hollow of her throat. “This is your warning shot, Jane. If you lie to me again—and just so we’re clear, just like I told Angelina, keeping things from me counts as lying—I’m leaving you at the next port we come to.”

“Okay,” she said seriously. “I’m sorry, Eddie. I should’ve trusted you.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“But I didn’t lie to you. I wouldn’t.” She poked me in the chest. “And you know damn well if you’d been really paying attention, you’d have caught me. So it’s really your fault for being sloppy.”

She said this playfully, but the seriousness beneath it was clear. And damn it, she was right. She smiled, which was bearable; if she’d laughed, we might’ve fought right there on the deck. But she didn’t.

I turned and walked away. As I did, I spotted Clift watching with the same mixture of curiosity and faint jealousy I’d noticed before.

The
Red Cow
was not a big ship to begin with. I wondered just how much smaller it would get before this trip was over.

chapter NINE

The
lookout, a gangly girl named Estella who stood on the foremast crosstree, called, “Sail ho! Right ahead.”

It was the first change in routine since we left port, and I expected a major reaction. What I got was a collective, ship- wide shrug. The crew did not rush; they
sauntered
into action. Half the men continued to lounge around the deck, while the other half waited to see if this was anything more than a passing vessel minding its own business.

You couldn’t miss one change, though. Suhonen emerged from the hold, clad only in knee-length pants and a sword belt holding a cutlass. Around his thick neck stretched a tattooed line of dancing human skeletons. Men scrambled to get out of his way as he went to the rail and stood casually, as if waiting for a carriage. But his eyes never left the horizon directly ahead, where the mysterious ship now appeared as an unmistakable silhouette.

Clift yelled to a man halfway up the mainmast shrouds. “Greaves, you old seagull, what do you see from your perch up there?”

Greaves, the sailing master, was a solid man in every sense: thickly muscled, unflappable, and with a manner that ensured he never had to give an order twice. He kept a short unlit pipe perpetually clamped between his teeth. “It appears t’be a Langlade merchant vessel,” he said. “But she’s flying the flags in the right order.”

Murmurs traveled through the crew around me. More men stopped what they were doing and came to the rails to watch. Clift said, “Verify that with the lookout.”

“Verify!” Greaves called up.

“Confirmin’ the mate’s statement!” Estella called down. Jane and I joined Clift at the port bow. The ship ahead flew several flags and banners, so I wasn’t sure which ones conveyed the information they all recognized.

“This is damned peculiar,” Clift said, wiping sweat from his chin. “A Langlade
merchant
ship.”

“Maybe she was taken before the pirates could refurbish her,” Jane said. To me she added, “Pirates don’t build their own ships, they just take existing ones and modify them. Usually they pick something with a little more muscle, though. A Langlade merchant ship is just a raft with ambition.”

“Why would a Langlade merchant ship be flying the pirate- hunter safety signals, then?” I asked. “For that matter, what exactly
are
the pirate-hunter safety signals?”

“It’s a way to let other pirate hunters know a ship has already been taken,” Clift said. “There’s a code in the way the flags are flown, which masts they’re attached to, which ones are higher or lower. Otherwise, we might start fighting before either side recognized the other.”

“Could it be a trick to lure us in close?” I asked. I felt tingles of excitement at the thought of a break in the monotony, even if that break might mean bloodshed.

“Maybe,” Clift said thoughtfully. “If someone bought the code, which gets changed every six months, and used it correctly. It’s not a simple thing. Still, that doesn’t explain why a ship like that would be sailing under such a banner.” He looked back at the quartermaster and called, “Call the watch below, Mr. Seaton. The men can use the practice.”

“Aye, Cap’n,” he said, then repeated the order in a roar that rippled the canvas.

Turns out “call the watch below” meant, essentially, what we were already doing: watching as the new ship grew closer. Jane’s description of it was accurate. It had a single mast, a low waterline, and a deck that was flush from bow to stern. The big, crude tiller seemed wholly inadequate to open ocean travel. In the middle of the deck, just forward of the lone mast, stood a pyramid of wooden crates held in place by a net and ropes.

There seemed to be about half a dozen men aboard her, no more frantic than our own. At last Greaves bellowed, “That’s Fernelli, first mate on the
Randagore
. They’re for real.”

“The
Randagore
is another pirate hunter,” Jane explained to me.

“So everything makes sense now?”

“Fuck no. Not a lick.”

The man Greaves had indicated waved from the other ship’s deck. “Hello,
Red Cow
! Do I smell rum from your ship?”

“You smell it from your own foul breath!” Clift yelled back good- naturedly. “But come aboard anyway!”

The ships pulled abreast, and a boat lowered from the other ship. A few minutes later, Fernelli, bald and with a bushy beard decorated with ribbons and little bells, leaped aboard the
Red Cow.
His two oarsmen followed with much less flair.