Panna looked out over the ocean and felt a great longing to be there, somewhere in the middle of that sea, where Packer was. But she was not there, she was here, and so she took off her shoes and socks, rolled up Mr. Molander’s pant legs, and waded into the surf. She had climbed down to this small beach from the hill above. At this spot the cliffs had just begun to rise from the shoreline. They grew tall not a quarter of a mile north, where the beach dwindled to rocks and the cliffs sprang up twenty, then thirty, then fifty feet. She squatted down and began scrubbing her hands. Painful though it was, it was good to be getting them clean.
What amazed her, now that she had some time to think about it, was not that the events of the night had happened the way they had. Panna understood them better, understood herself better now. Her sheltered existence had deceived her about her own strength, her ability to defend herself, and that was that. The rest was predictable enough, given that simple miscalculation.
What amazed her most was the quickness with which it had all changed. Yesterday morning she’d awakened to a day exactly like a thousand days before. She’d washed, scrubbed, cooked, cleaned, and longed to be doing all those things for Packer Throme and their children, rather than for her father. She was a part of the village, loved and accepted, pitied by some, perhaps, but that was the warp to go along with the woof. One day later, she awakes a criminal, hiding in the woods from the same villagers.
She still felt concern for the fisherman she’d hurt, but not remorse. He was among those who had deceived her, keeping her sheltered from the society of men, convincing her she was helpless and small. He simply drew the short straw, and felt her fury when she learned otherwise. It was wrong to have let her, and thousands of other young women just like her, believe they had no power, no strength, and therefore could have no place or position. Now that she had found out she was strong, she was an outlaw. That couldn’t be right. There must be a way for women to be strong within the law, and it was worth finding. If only she had been able to learn about her strength some other way.
Her father would be missing her by now, and within a few hours he would have spoken to Hen Hillis, and perhaps Mrs. Molander. He would likely not join the search parties. He would stay home and pray. That was like him. And she took comfort from the thought that he would plead with God for her safety.
Panna’s raw and swollen knuckles stung, but they were at last clean. She glanced up and down the beach again, to be certain she was alone. Then she leaned over and splashed water onto her face, scrubbing that, too.
Here was the true source of her amazement: She wasn’t going back. Somehow, in the span of a day, she had become far more the dark-cloaked criminal than the pining maiden. Maybe she always had been, and this is what it took to bring it out.
She finished scrubbing up and trudged back toward the woods. She stayed just in sight of the sea, just inside the woods, as she walked south toward Inbenigh. Once she reached the village, she would find a spot far enough up the beach to be safe, and there she would wait for nightfall. Then she would get a boat, steal it if she had to, and set out after Packer Throme. She didn’t know how to sail, but she now firmly believed that if all these frail old fishermen could do it, certainly she could figure it out.
Henrietta Hillis beckoned him to lean down. She was stretching up on tiptoes to get within an arm’s reach of his shoulder. She looked frightened. “I talked to her last night,” she whispered.
Dog looked around him. No one else was paying them any attention. “What time last night?”
“Long about midnight, I suppose,” she answered, and covered her mouth. She felt guilty about saying it, guilty about having done it.
Dog turned to face her, put his hands on her shoulders, and leaned down. He spoke gently but urgently. “Go into the kitchen and wait for me. Don’t say anything to anyone else.”
She nodded.
The crowd in Pastor Seline’s parlor and dining room was still buzzing, growing in size and number, at mid-morning. They had a lot to talk about. Not only had Panna disappeared, but word had now come that the battered man was Riley Odoms, a fisherman from Red Point. Pirates and Packer Throme were the leading suspects in both cases, but Dog had been doing his best to make sure everyone understood who the better candidate was. Packer had clearly become unbalanced and dangerous, he told anyone who would listen. Many witnesses had seen how violent and unpredictable he had become, and for those who hadn’t seen, Dog carried the wounds on his hands and throat, enough to convince them.
Hen Hillis trembled noticeably. Her hands, her knees, her chins all shook. Extracting details in a coherent and fruitful manner might be difficult. Dog closed the kitchen door and leaned against it.
“Now, Hen. Everything’s going to be fine. Just tell me what happened.”
“I didn’t think she’d go! She said she wouldn’t!” Big tears welled and flowed, splattering on her calico bosom.
He looked around, found a dishcloth, offered it to her. He smiled as gently as he could. She dabbed her eyes. “Everything’s going to be just fine,” he repeated. “I just need to know the truth. Tell me exactly what happened, and what she said, and what you told her.”
She smiled back. “Well,” she began. “I was sound asleep when I heard this banging on the door below…” she knocked on the counter. “Startled me out of the deepest sleep. I was frightened, and I always worry anyway, and this time I was thinking those pirates had come back. So of course I was having bad dreams…”
The floodgates were opened. Every detail would be forthcoming. Eventually. Dog nodded, impatient to get to the facts that would condemn Packer Throme.
The piece of ship that carried Talon washed ashore on a desolate stretch of beach. The waves were just large enough that when they broke over her, she opened her eyes. She heard and felt sand scraping wood, reached out with a hand to test the depth. How long had she been unconscious? She remembered desperately trying to work her way onto the board, on her back, as the ocean tried to suck her under. She had known she needed to lie on her back so her head would remain out of the water, but she didn’t remember succeeding. Her hands were numb, but the sandy bottom was there. She turned over, off the board, and splashed face first into the saltwater. She raised her head and looked around her. The beach was empty.
She looked for the sun, but it was obscured by heavy cloud cover. The wind was blowing in cold from the sea, and the smell of rain was in it. She recalled the red sunrise that had promised a storm. When was that? She could hardly feel anything, hands, legs, or feet. She had to get warm and dry. With a huge effort, she stood up in the sand. She lurched forward, barely keeping herself from falling. The beach was rocking under her. She staggered toward the woods, toward a dry gray tree trunk lying just outside the woods in the sand, parallel with the shoreline. Her body was dragging her back into sleep. She fell over the tree trunk and lay down on the other side, concealed now from the wind and from anyone on the beach.
She needed rest. Her mouth was dry, and it occurred to her, vaguely, that she should be thirsty. But she didn’t feel a great need for anything but sleep. She put her head on the sand and closed her eyes.
In the woods, a cloaked figure watched.
When it was obvious that the stranger was asleep, Panna crept closer. She didn’t know who this person might be, but she hoped he was a sailor. Panna had spent all day here, half a mile or so north of Inbenigh, waiting for the cover of night. She had been praying, rather weakly, she thought, for some help from above.
It was astonishing to her, even miraculous, that a stranger should wash up on the beach within her sight, and collapse not twenty yards away. If this was a sailor, and one who could be persuaded one way or another to help, then this was the answer to her prayer. If she could assist the sailor somehow, bring him back to health, perhaps he would feel a sense of gratitude. She would have her guide, and would need only a boat. Regardless of who it was, what harm could possibly come of doing good, and coming to the aid of a half-drowned man?
“He may fight like the devil, but he’s a good man,” Delaney swore to his rapt listeners, one hand raised. The entire watch had gathered in the forecastle, awaiting the start of the evening shift, lounging in hammocks, sitting on the floor, smoking pipes, and hanging on his every word. “You’ve seen me swinging steel, most of you. You know I can hold my own.”
“You’re the best I’ve seen,” one piped in. Others murmured agreement. No one mentioned Talon, though more than one thought of her.
“I swear to you, he hardly moved a muscle from his head to his foot except what was needed in his arm and hand to fend my every stroke, and all the while he looks at me with them deep blue eyes like the sea itself, calm as the eye of the hurricane.”
Delaney did not fancy himself much of a storyteller, and rarely joined in the spinning of yarns that often passed the time in the dark, cramped world of the forecastle. He was glad of it now. That he wasn’t a teller of tales made his words stick deeper, somehow, with more meaning. And Delaney was quite pleased with his words, the part about the eye of the hurricane particularly.
“He’s got the devil in him,” a sailor suggested.
Delaney let out a short laugh. “No, no. Less than you or me. He’s just got a sword that don’t allow for comparison. And a heart of compassion to boot.”
“So how is it he’s alive, except he’s got the devil in him?” another asked. “We all saw him dead. We saw what the witch done.”
“He’s got nothing in him but the devil,” said a low voice from the darkest corner, a voice so sure of itself that it seemed almost bored with the observation. “No heart, no soul. It’s a devil in a boy’s body.” All eyes peered into that dark corner. “The witch breathed it into him.”
One of the sailors grabbed a lantern and swung it toward the speaker so he could be seen by the rest of them. It was Mutter Cabe, the old sailor who, it was rumored, was part Achawuk warrior. He would never admit to it, but he didn’t go far to deny it either.
Mutter’s face was deeply lined, his limbs scrawny; he seemed ancient, but his strength was equal to that of men half his age. He had a dark presence about him that kept him from making friends, even among those who had sailed with him for years. Achawuk ancestry was an acceptable rationale for all of his oddities. Plus, as was often noted, he talked to himself.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Mutter,” Marcus Pile blurted out. The room’s attention, and the lantern, swung toward the young man. He was agitated, eyes fierce. “I talked to him. Me and Delaney did. We know him, don’t we, Delaney?”
“Aye, we do. Seems nothing like a devil, just the contrary. He’s a swordsman and a Christian.”
Mutter laughed again. Attention, and the lantern, swung back his way. He smiled thinly. “Convinced you two, anyway.” His look suggested that such a deception might not be too difficult. There was laughter.
Delaney felt his audience slipping away. “He wouldn’t join a mutiny even though he was a prisoner. Who’d do that but a Christian?”
“Mutiny? What mutiny?” several asked, alarmed.
Delaney pulled on his mangled ear, wishing he hadn’t mentioned it. “It was just the Captain’s orders, to try him with a story, that’s all. Just a false mutiny, to test his honorable intentions. Which he passed, as might not well you or I in the same irons with him!” There were several quizzical expressions. Delaney was sorrowful now about the way his words seemed to come out jumbled. His oratory powers had fled.
“Would the devil announce himself?” Mutter asked, again quietly, but not aimed at Delaney or Marcus. He was asking all the rest, convincing them that these two were in utter error. “Or would he act the part of a gentleman, to deceive you?”
In the silence that followed, dark wings spread in each man’s mind. The boy, if he could swing steel against Delaney without effort, certainly had something supernatural about him.
Delaney grew defiant. “He could have killed me. He had the right. He chose to show mercy, and gave me this instead.” Delaney pointed to his swollen head.
Silence followed again, and eyes shifted back to Mutter. “He struck you down. Yet you swear allegiance. I want none of him, if that’s what his mercy looks like.”
Delaney could see that this was not going well. “All I can say is, next time, I want him fighting beside me and not against me.”
There were a few murmurs of agreement.
Delaney turned on Mutter. “Mutter, you best not be speaking that way around the Cap’n. He hates that sort of talk, you know, spirits and whatnot. You’ll find yourself keelhauled, and no witch will stop you from staying dead.”
Mutter held up a hand, shook his head.
The issue had not been put to rest by any means, Delaney knew. Mutter was a talebearer, and the worst kind. But he and Marcus had done what they could, and at least kept the opinion of Packer from solidifying around Mutter’s view. The debate was on.
The stranger was a woman. Panna fought back disappointment, reminding herself that not all women were as she was. Or rather, as she had been. This one was dressed as a forester, and carried both a sword and a knife. It passed through Panna’s mind that before her might be the very woman who had accompanied the pirates to the inn, the woman in her dream, but she let that thought go. There was too much hope in it. That woman, for good or ill, would know exactly how to find Packer Throme. More likely, there were strong fighting women like this everywhere outside the fishing villages. Perhaps in all the world, women worked and rode and fought and sailed as men did, in all the world except the fishing villages of Nearing Vast. Panna simply didn’t know. What else had they not told her?
This woman had a nasty scar on her left cheek, from her eye down to her jaw, and then down again on her neck. There was a story behind that slash, Panna thought. Perhaps she’d tell it. The woman’s dark hair was knotted and braided alongside her head. She wasn’t particularly beautiful, but she was exotic. Her sharp features, her olive-dark skin, high cheekbones and deep-set eyes…Panna’s heart beat faster. A woman who knew the ways of the world might be the best companion possible. Better even than a man, a man who might do anything, try anything. A woman, even a fighting woman, would understand her. Wouldn’t she?
Panna knelt beside her, reached out a hand and laid it gently on the castaway’s shoulder. The leather jacket was cold and wet. She shook her gently. The woman didn’t stir. Panna swallowed hard. Very carefully, trembling slightly, she put her hand on the woman’s cheek. It was like ice.
Panna pulled her hand away. Was the woman dead? Fear rose. Was she breathing? Panna couldn’t tell. She shook the woman harder, but with no response. Panna looked up and down the empty beach, as though help might be in sight. Then, still kneeling, she took the woman’s face between her hands. “Wake up,” she said softly.
Nothing.
Panna shook the woman’s head. “Please,” she said more loudly. “Please wake up. I need you.”
Talon’s face twitched.
“Good. Good—open your eyes now,” Panna implored.
Talon struggled, but opened her eyes. She had trouble focusing, and when she succeeded, was confused by what she saw. It seemed to be a girl, smiling at her.
“Are you all right? You’re so cold.” Panna took off her knapsack and pulled her autumn cloak from it, laid it over the woman. “You must have been in the water for a long time. Was it a shipwreck?”
Talon tried to force her mind to work. She vaguely remembered being adrift. Was she cold? She didn’t feel cold. An alarm rang deep within her. The healing arts in which she had been schooled worked through to her awareness. The numbness, the disorientation. She was suffering from exposure. “Fire…” she whispered. She was sleepy, and the single word came out without urgency, like a distant longing not likely to be fulfilled.
Panna shook her head. She had matches, and a flint. But she couldn’t risk a fire; they’d be seen. “You stay under that cloak—it’s the warmest thing I own.”
Talon tried to reach for her flintlock, not thinking how wet it would be. She couldn’t find it. She fumbled for her sword or her knife, but her fingers were too numb.
Panna didn’t understand what the woman was trying to do. “I have some dry clothes, if that’s what you need…” She had one extra peasant dress in her knapsack.
“Fire,” Talon said again, even less urgently. The exhaustion was creeping over her, pulling her back in. She knew now it wasn’t sleep that beckoned, but something permanent, unending.
Panna smiled. “You’ll be warm in a minute or two.”
Talon tried to focus on the girl, this stupid, happy girl who would let her die. But her mind drifted, and she closed her eyes.
Panna became alarmed. Unconscious, the woman looked lifeless once again. And her skin was still ice-cold. “Stay awake now,” Panna said urgently, patting her hand. “Ma’am?”
Talon was in the water, warm water, floating face up, bobbing gently up and down under the moon and stars. Something was pulling her under, pulling her downward, and she longed to succumb, to quit struggling. But the voice, the sweet, angelic voice kept probing, asking her something, demanding she stay on the surface. There was light growing, light in the voice. Talon didn’t want to go there, where it beckoned.
She let her head slide under the black water, let it overtake her. The darkness was cool, the sounds echoing, pleasant, reassuring. And then she was looking into those yellow eyes again, those huge, haunting, powerful, intelligent eyes—smiling, greedy, ravenous. The beast’s mouth opened, its teeth crackled with lightning.
Talon surfaced in a panic. She reached a cold hand out to Panna. It rested on her neck, producing a chill that shot down Panna’s spine.
Panna felt the urgency now, she couldn’t miss it. “What do you need?” she asked fearfully.
The beast rose up from below the water, its teeth on either side of Talon, swallowing her whole. She could see nothing else. “Fire…” She could not complete the word, she could not name the beast. The single syllable was all she could manage. Her eyes stayed locked on Panna’s for a moment, then they rolled upward. And then they closed. Her hand dropped.
Panna could not reawaken her.
“Strip down to your skivvies, Packer,” Mrs. Throme had ordered, and seven-year-old Packer, wide-eyed and embarrassed, obeyed with tears. His mother had ordered him to lie beside the boy, whose clothes were already shed and whose skin was all ashen. Mr. Throme then wrapped the two of them together in blankets. Panna was there, and remembered Packer saying softly how cold he was, lying there with his back to the boy’s icy stomach, and Panna remembered Packer’s shivers and blue lips, gotten from trying to warm the boy with his own body’s heat.
Packer’s father, Dayton Throme, had pulled the boy out of the water, a victim of a shipwreck, and sailed home as quickly as he could. The boy was wrapped in blankets when he arrived on a cart, Mr. Throme lashing the mule and yelling to Mrs. Throme, who ran out, took one look, and sent Packer to light the fire and heat some water. By the time the boy was inside the Throme house, the entire town seemed to be there as well, and several women went fetching hot water they already had boiling in their kitchens.
“Into the wineskins!” Tamma Throme had ordered as women arrived with their kettles of water. Packer’s mother had directed the pouring of the steaming liquid into the wine flasks, the sealing of them, the placement against the boy’s back. “Not too warm, now,” she had said. She scolded her husband for bringing the boy all the way home, when fire and warmth were available in Inbenigh. “He’s got the exposure. He’ll die without warmth. But he’ll die if he warms up too fast.”
Panna opened her eyes, thankful for the memory. That boy had lived, and his father had rewarded Dayton and Packer by schooling Packer far above his station. Now Panna had to take a risk, or let the woman die. She couldn’t heat water, but she could build a fire. She’d very possibly draw any search party’s attention, but at least she’d be able to defend herself, or flee if necessary. Or she could avoid building a fire, and risk being found here, nigh on naked, trying to warm this woman with her own body, unable to run or to fight.
Panna would certainly save the woman’s life. She hated what it might cost her, but how could she ever live with herself, or with Packer for that matter, if she sacrificed so basic a principle as this at the first opportunity? She may be an outlaw, but she was still a Christian. Which risk to take was not a difficult choice. Panna needed to be ready to run or to fight, or to go get help as necessary. She quickly entered the woods to gather tinder and kindling.
Dog Blestoe held the man’s shoulders, looking closely at the bruises and cuts. Riley Odoms, the fisherman from Red Point, well known to Dog and others in Hangman’s Cliffs, was a mess. His nose was broken, both eyes swollen almost shut, lips cut in several places. Dog nodded knowingly. “Was it Packer Throme who did this to you?” Dog had only just arrived here in Inbenigh, following up on the news given him by Hen Hillis.
“I don’t know,” Riley said, slitted eyes riveted on Dog as though he were both a judge and jury. Odoms was not much more than a wisp of a man even in his prime, which was a good decade past, and was not known for his backbone. He was altogether the wrong man to leave guarding boats, not only for his demeanor, but because he was prone to drink more than he could hold. Dog smelled alcohol on him now. “I don’t think I ever seen him before in my life.”
“But you didn’t get a clear look at him.”
Riley shook head. “Not really. I mean, it was dark.”
“So it could have been Packer Throme.”
“I…I guess. Coulda been anybody.” Now Riley glanced at the other fishermen, those watching him. They stood on the creaking docks of Inbenigh—Riley, Dog, Ned Basser, and Duck Tillham, also of Red Point. These last two had yet to join the manhunt now underway throughout the woods because they had taken the time to return home for what they felt were the most necessary supplies, which they now concealed under their coats. The goings-on of the night before were still the only agenda of the day. Fishing could be done tomorrow.
“Did he have a beard?” Dog asked.
Riley paused, then shook his head. “No.”
“Was he my height?”
“No, shorter.”
“You’re sure?”
“Well…yeah. He was standing uphill from me a little bit, but not much. He wasn’t as tall as you.”
“Old man?”
“No.”
“Young then?”
“Yeah, I guess. Pretty young.”
“Yellow hair?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Did you get a good look at it? At his hair?”
“No. Like I said, it was dark.”
“So it could have been blond?”
“Sure, I guess.”
“You know you’ve just described Packer Throme, don’t you?”
“I guess. I don’t know the boy that well.”
“You’re lucky. He cut me here, and here.” Dog pointed to his hands. “And put his sword right here.” He pointed to his throat. “And would have run me through if it hadn’t been for so many witnesses to his murderous ways.” The only eyewitness here present was Ned Basser, the man who had egged Dog on by tossing him Cap’s sword. If he disagreed with Dog’s assessment, he didn’t show it.
“More to the point, Hen Hillis told me that Panna Seline left home last night to meet up with Packer. He lured her away. Now she’s missing, and you’re half killed. What does that tell you?”
Ned Basser cursed Packer Throme’s parentage. “Come on, Riley. Let’s us go a-huntin,’ ” he said quietly. His silver-tinged hair was swept back like he’d just stepped in out of a windstorm; his visage looked like he was aching to step right back into one. He opened his coat to show Riley and Dog his “supplies,” the flintlock pistol he’d stuck in his waistband.
Duck, bigger and wider than Dog, though not as tall, showed off his pistol as well. Then he held out a sheathed hunting knife for Riley to take. “I brought this for you. For carving out some justice.”
Riley was uncomfortable. Sympathy he’d take by the gallon, but he had no stomach for revenge. “Maybe we ought to let the sheriff handle it,” he said weakly.
“The sheriff?” Dog scoffed. “He’s got to come from Mann, if he cares to come at all, which I doubt. Which means even if he does come, he won’t be around till tomorrow at least.”
“And all he’ll do,” Ned chimed in, “is post a reward, and then the woods will be crawling with bounty hunters. You want some stranger getting your justice for you, walking off with a reward?”
That would suit Riley just fine, but he didn’t say it. He shook his head. “I don’t know, boys. My back’s still hurtin’.” He squirmed a bit, wincing, to prove his point. Then he touched his puffy eye and looked at the inn at the top of the docks. He felt suddenly dry. He longed to be inside its doors. “Maybe I’ll just stay here and get a drink, if you don’t mind. You know, heal up some.”
Ned spat, angry. “You gonna sit around and moan while everyone else tracks him down for you?”
“Well, yeah…”
Dog stepped in before Ned let loose. “Riley should stay and heal up. You and Duck’ll move faster without him anyway. The important thing is catching Packer.”
“How about you?” Ned grunted. “You coming with us? Seems like you’ve got as much reason to hunt the boy as anyone.”
Dog hadn’t considered traipsing through the woods himself. But now that Ned was leaning into him, there seemed little way to shake free of it. “I’ll go with you some. I want to circle back here, though, now and again, see what the other groups have found. Mostly, I want to make sure he’s caught.”
The village fishermen were not woodsmen. Despite the best efforts of some of their number to organize into parties, or perhaps because of their best efforts, the fanning out, circling, and tracking down degenerated within the first hour into aimless wandering and the occasional shout, which brought any within earshot running. It was fortunate that so few had any weapons, since the strangers they continually encountered and accosted turned out, without exception, to be themselves. Then, once it was determined that all present were true and honest fishermen, handshakes and pipe-smoking commenced, flasks flashed and were passed liberally, until eventually it occurred to one or more that they had spent a good long while in one spot strategizing while the scoundrel they so valiantly hunted had perhaps moved farther afield, at which time they reluctantly returned to the search. What most of the villagers actually sought was their own safety, and they managed to find it everywhere they turned.
But those who sought danger found that as well. Dog, Duck, and Ned kept themselves apart from the larger groups, avoiding their peers, cursing them from a distance for ignoring and even running off the prey. Ned, Duck, and Dog also drank liberally from their flasks, but the same liquid that lessened their peers’ keenness for the hunt had the opposite effect on them. As the day wore on, the three grew more and more bent on the heroic dispensing of justice that was certainly their right, they being the ones truly serious about the mission.
It was this agitated and armed threesome that, late in the day, flasks now fully emptied into bloodstreams, stalked their way through the woods toward the sea, a mile-and-a-half north of Inbenigh, toward the spot where a gray tree trunk lay just outside the woods, parallel with the shoreline.
“Once again John Hand is more vigilant than Moore Davies,” Scat mused to himself. He had read the flagman’s message, and was disappointed. He would always prefer that his huntsmen outperform his butchers, but it rarely happened that way. John Hand was as good a captain as there was.
Scat lowered his telescope. He sighed. “Signal this back,” he ordered. “Coming about.”
Jonas Deal looked askance at the Captain, but caught his return glance and quickly obeyed. Scat peered through the scope just long enough to see that his message was acknowledged. “It seems Captain John Hand has a question about our bearings. I’ll be meeting with him.”
“Aye, aye,” Mr. Deal responded.
“Storm!” came the cry from the crow’s nest, a hundred feet above them. “Starboard astern!”
Scat raised his telescope and looked at the dark line along the horizon to the south. They’d all felt the atmosphere changing, but hadn’t seen evidence of what that change might bring. “Hmm,” he said. “Not a small one, either.” Before he returned to his quarters below deck, he said casually, “Bring her about, Mr. Deal. Then heave to on a port tack.”
“Hard to starboard!” Jonas Deal commanded. “Reef the main four points! Strike the mizzen! Strike the top! Stand by to haul those sheets, ye swivel-yoked sea dogs! We’re comin’ hard about!” The bosun’s mate, Dumas Need, piped the orders on his whistle. The entire watch was in motion; any inward grumbling at the sudden flare of activity so late in the shift quickly dissolved into the unified motion that was the muscle and sinew of the great cat, moving in synchronous, instinctive motion in response to the command from the sleek animal’s brain.
The Captain was the mind of the cat, but the bosun was its instinct, its reflexes. Andrew Haas on the port watch, and his mate Dumas Need on starboard, forever peered anxiously at each sail, piping orders anew whenever something might be done better, faster, more completely. When the bosun needed a better view of a sail, he stepped into the bosun’s chair and hauled himself up into the rigging using a series of lines and pulleys.
His orders given, his men busy carrying them out with all the energy they possessed, Scatter Wilkins was content to think about the future.
“So you’re worried about the Achawuk, are you?” Scat asked with a smile when John Hand and Lund Lander had joined him in his saloon. John Hand, a full professor of Nautics at the University of Mann, had left his ivory tower to join with Scat and now captained one of the escort ships. It was a disgrace to the university, of course, but only served to increase the mystery around Scat’s new dealings.
“Never saw a sane man who wasn’t,” Hand replied with ease. He was a big man, not as lean as Lund but broader across the shoulders, with a bushy head of graying hair and a gray-peppered beard to match. “Are we headed far inside their territory?”
“About twenty leagues.” Scat’s eyes were stony.
Lund’s throat grew suddenly dry, and he threw a gulp of rum down it.
Scat Wilkins had been a little surprised to see Lund Lander follow John Hand into the saloon, but not enough to let it show. It bothered Scat that Hand always had someone in tow. Maybe it was the professor in him that made him always want to be teaching someone something. Or maybe it was the desire for counsel; Hand was a great one for talking everything to death before acting. Or maybe it was weakness; fear of facing the odds himself, alone. Scat Wilkins knew for certain only that John Hand was very different from himself in this regard.
“That’s a long way,” John Hand answered evenly. “All night in a good wind.”
“We’ve got a good wind, and we’ve got all night.”
“A good wind for sailing northeast.” The same wind, of course, was bad for returning southwest. “What do you expect to find so far into the territory?”
“Firefish, Hand. Isn’t that what we’re out here for?”
“There are other places to look,” Hand volleyed back.
“We’ve been looking other places.”
“Why there?”
Scat squinted. “Don’t like taking a little risk?” Talon was forever telling him the men were getting soft, and she blamed John Hand for it.
Hand stared hard and considered his answer. He was an easygoing sort, usually, but not when challenged directly. He knew all about Talon’s messages to the Captain. She was not afraid to speak them in his presence. Finally Hand smiled. “If a little risk bothered me, I’d still be standing in front of a chalkboard.”
“Making a living impressing students with your brilliance.”
Hand’s lips went taut. Scat was goading him; he liked to see John Hand angry. It comforted him. All three of these men knew that while the idea for hunting the Firefish belonged to Scat Wilkins, the course they had taken from idea to reality had been charted by John Hand and his chalkboards. Scat had had the idea, and had enlisted many a good man to the cause, Lund Lander and John Hand at the top of the list. Scat had hired the huntsmen, had staffed the Marchessa with a suitable captain in Moore Davies, and took great pride in their storied prowess.
But John Hand and his sketches, Lund Lander and his diagrams, blueprints, and equations, together had created the ships, the processes, the science, and the fledgling, hugely profitable and yet more promising Firefish industry. Without Lund’s lures, Scat would have little to show but dead sailors and huntsmen.
Not that John Hand and Lund Lander didn’t have great respect and admiration for Captain Scat Wilkins. They did. No fisherman or whaler or hunter or businessman had ever had the vision or the courage to do what Scat was doing. No one had thought of it; no one would have thought it possible. He was slaying dragons for profit. He was monetizing monsters. It took a pirate’s guts and a pirate’s greed to build this new world; and to John Hand, that was exactly what was being built. The entire economic life of the kingdom, of all known kingdoms, for that matter, would be turned upside down by this venture. That’s what John Hand loved about it.
Hand was under no delusions: This was Scat’s business top to bottom. The pirate was simply shrewd enough to stand back and let Hand and Lander make it work. The Captain knew they could succeed, had already succeeded, and would succeed more greatly yet.
But at what price in human life, if they were now to sail into the Achawuk Territory? The struggle between Hand and Wilkins was silent, but it was palpable, and Lund, for one, didn’t want to see it escalate. So he spoke.
“Begging your pardon, Captain, but while no one on any of your ships is averse to a risk, the crew of the Camadan didn’t sign on to face the Achawuk, and they aren’t trained fighters. They’re mostly tradesmen, and no match for those warriors.”
Scat turned on Lund, his voice cold. “You hired them.”
Lund had indeed hired them. “To process the Firefish,” he reminded him.
“How hard a job is that?” Scat asked with disdain. “Something a swordsman or a pistolier couldn’t learn?”
Lund took a deep breath. Scat had always pushed John Hand to hire sailors, and fighting men, and then to teach them the trades they’d need. Hand had wisely held out for quality workers who knew what they were doing, the kind who could handle long voyages and demanding work below decks, who would put up a quality product worth buying. He didn’t need a shipload of pirates deciding they had gutted enough fish. But all this was moot at the moment. The sterner fact was that it seemed Scat wouldn’t hold them out of a fight just because they might all get killed.
“Take your licks when you’ve earned ’em,” Scat said to Lund. “Then next time, you’ll know better.” Lund’s face flushed. Scat saw it and was satisfied. Lund was smart, Scat knew, maybe a genius at designing things, making them work. That was useful. But the world needed more people with guts, men willing to gamble for the big payoff. Scat had seen plenty of smart men like Lund die with cold steel through the belly. Scat had put the steel there sometimes himself. He had yet to see an unarmed genius outduel an idiot with a pistol. He’d rather stand with half a dozen fighters who could swing a sword and weren’t smart enough to know the odds than two dozen Lund Landers who could make a clock out of chicken bones and clothespins.
“What makes you think there’s Firefish in there?” John Hand asked.
Scat shrugged. “Call it a hunch.”
John was silent. Then he sighed and raised his glass. “Well, then, here’s to your hunches—may they make us all rich.” He drained it. Scat and Lund Lander locked eyes, both smiling through gritted teeth, and they both followed suit.
“Any possibility I could have a conversation with this hunch of yours?” Captain Hand asked.
Scat nodded. But it unnerved him that Hand knew about Packer Throme. He probably had sources of information aboard the Chase that Scat didn’t know about.
Hand saw the suspicion, knew he needed to allay it. “Everyone knows about the stowaway. Talon took him below decks. Doesn’t take much to figure out he told her something.”
Scat rubbed his beard. “Pimm!” he called, not looking away from John Hand.
The steward entered. “Sir?”
“Fetch me Packer Throme.”
Deeter nodded and left, looking slightly more pale than usual.
“I don’t know if the lad knows where the Firefish feed. But he says he does. And I know that I sure don’t.”
A loud creak, followed by a howl, accompanied a leeward lurch of the ship. They all understood exactly what it meant, well before Jonas Deal burst in on them. “She’s blowin’ a gale, Cap’n,” he said. “A true gale, and no lie.”