THE AIR was sweet and clean after we left the cave. I still held Sun’s hand, and I all but ran for the cool comfort of the forest’s shade. Weasel followed with a black leather billfold of papers he’d taken from Edwin’s coat while I freed Sun from his chains with the keys from Martio’s belt.
Weasel said his real name was Marisol, and he was a French spy. As we ran through the forest, he spoke in whispers—things my mind wouldn’t absorb—something about needing proof of the British Empire inciting uprisings in New World colonies. I tried to listen, but I couldn’t focus. All around me were the familiar sounds and sights of our forest, the feel of Sun’s hand in mine as we clung to each other, and we moved around trees and bushes together so we wouldn’t have to break our grasp.
I followed mindlessly until Sun pulled on me. We were crossing the path that led back to his cave and our tree house beyond. Marisol the Weasel ran down the path the other way, toward the beach but stopped when he realized we weren’t following.
“What are you doing?”
Wordlessly I looked at Sun, who tugged my hand toward the cave, but wasn’t making much headway because I’d stopped on the path, staring between the spy and Sun without seeing them. In my mind’s eye, I saw Edwin and Martio on the ground, smoking holes in their chests.
“Benjamin. Come.” Sun pulled.
“What are you two doing?” Marisol demanded. “We have to go and help Swift.”
I dimly realized, with Edwin and Martio dead, we were free. Free to regroup, at least, and keep ourselves away from the rest of the pirates for as long as possible. Perhaps free to allow Sun to neutralize their threat forever, one by one. The bloodthirsty thought disturbed my rational mind, even as my emotional response considered recent events and told my rational mind to go fukka itself.
“We can help ourselves, thank you. Swift and I are free,” Sun fired back in rapid Portuguese.
“What?” Marisol wrinkled his nose. “Weren’t you listening? This isn’t Swift. He’s back on the ship.”
“What?” Sun asked. I was as confused as he sounded.
“His name is not Swift,” Marisol said, pointing at me. “He’s the famous smuggler Benji Swift as much as I’m a man.”
And that was when I saw Marisol for what she was. Blood-drenched, spindly limbed, weasel-faced—a spy, a killer, and… a woman.
I goggled at her. So did Sun.
“So thick. S’il y avait une taxe sur ton cerveau, tu n’aurais plus un rond!” Then she swore at us in French so creatively, even I was impressed, and I’d learned no small amount of choice phrases from the Marquis de Sade before Mother confiscated that particular book and burned it. I thought I knew every French malediction there was, rounding out my collection with phrases from my too-brief stay in the New Orleans gin palaces. But Marisol was… imaginative and ruthless. And now I knew the exact phrase for licking the Devil’s couilles. “You want off this island, we go help the real Benji Swift and his mutiny on the Fury, which by now is well underway,” she said.
“Why would we want to go back there?” Sun yelled at her. I stared at him—tears flowed down his cheeks. My brave, strong Sun was coming apart. He needed me. It took heroic effort to pull myself together. I squeezed his hand to let him know I was back from the dark place shock and pain and death had taken me.
“What’s going on? Tell us everything,” I demanded of Marisol, in what I hoped was a tone that brooked no argument. I do not know if I spoke in French, Portuguese, English, or a mix of all three.
She rolled her eyes. “We do not have time to stand here discussing. You need to pick a side. Stay here on your island that other people won for you, killing everyone who comes here, even the innocent, and see how long until someone kills you and takes everything away from you. Or come with me to the Fury, help the real Benji Swift take that ship, and go somewhere safe.”
Did such a place exist for Sun and me? I looked into his storm-dark eyes and gripped his fingers in mine. He glared at Marisol, but he didn’t pull me toward the cave.
I made a decision. “What we do right now does not mean that we must leave our home, Sun. We can come back.”
“Unless you are shot, or stabbed, or drowned.” Sun tensed, as though he might attack Marisol. “I won’t lose you. I won’t. Never again.” And I guessed he was thinking of that night at the mass grave when he thought I’d taken a bullet.
“Why should we help this Swift person? What’s he ever done for us?” I challenged her.
Now it was Marisol’s turn to gape at us. “Only saved your lives. He told Edwin to spare you, both of you—convinced him he might still find his guns. Swift boarded the Fury back in New Orleans because he’d heard talk in the taverns that the famous Captain Benji Swift was hiring sailors for a smuggling run. He discovered someone had assumed his identity, and came aboard the Fury as the ship’s cook to learn the whos and whys of the false Sea Swift setting sail. When he found out who Edwin James was and his purpose, he alerted me, so I came aboard as a sailor. We’ve done our best to keep you alive and whole, despite Edwin and Martio’s depredations. Have you forgotten how Swift nursed your wounds? Did you not wonder why you look as brothers?”
I stared at her. The Butcher was the one who had helped us… a tall mulatto. Benji Swift, the man I was impersonating. I pictured him without his bushy, black beard, and realized the similarity. We were of a height, the same dark brown hair—I glanced down at my sun-dark arm—and the same shade of mixed.
I looked at Sun. I had never seen him so surprised. I sympathized completely.
Marisol swore again so vehemently that I silently apologized to God for her under my breath—while taking mental note of the declension of that particular verb when concerning multiple goats. “Did his help mean nothing to you? He needs us now. He’s the key to this whole enterprise.”
Sun and I exchanged a look.
“Why did I bother saving your lives? Cowards. Vous n’êtes que des petits branleurs bons à rien.” Marisol turned and ran down the path toward the beach, having either given up on us or grown so anxious about Swift she would no longer wait.
I took a step toward the beach, stopped, and looked at Sun. He glowered, but he nodded. We ran after her.
GUNSHOTS RANG from the distant Fury, a chaos of men on deck, striving with cutlass and pistol. A sailor in the crow’s nest picked off fighters using a long gun. We’d have to be careful he didn’t see us coming. Marisol struggled, slowly pushing a long boat back into the water when Sun and I joined her, and in one fluid shove, we three sent it out into the lagoon. Sun and Marisol leaped aboard, and I scrambled up over the side gracelessly. Sun and I quickly gained the benches and pulled powerfully on the oars so we shot backward through the water. She nodded at us, wordlessly accepting our company and help, “worthless lazy good-for-nothings” that we were. Marisol primed and readied her flintlock, then put a knife on the bench next to Sun, who thanked her.
“What are you best at?” she asked me.
The real answer was reading, praying, playing the fiddle and flute, and getting other people in trouble, but since she probably meant the deadly arts instead, I said, “I’m a fair shot.” That was true, at least. I made somewhat of a reputation for myself as a marksman with the other lads in the village and engaged in a few hunts. I knew my way around any flintlock. Marisol reached forward and pulled Edwin’s pistol from the back of my britches, where I’d shoved the discharged weapon without thinking about it.
She primed and readied the flintlock with quick, skilled movements, despite the motion of our boat gliding through the water. It seemed Marisol was yet another person who excelled at everything. I decided spending my time with spies and knife fighters was probably not the best for my manly self-esteem. Then decided I didn’t care about the status of my manhood if Sun and I got out of this in one piece. I wondered for a moment why we hadn’t run back to our cave and tree house when we had the chance, then reefed the sail on those thoughts. We’d made our choice. Alea iacta est—the die was cast. Now hopefully we lived through the consequences.
“Keep down,” I said, telling them both about the swab with a long gun I’d seen atop the mast. But Marisol said, “He’s one of ours.”
“How can you tell?”
“I know the men loyal to Swift.”
“That doesn’t really help us,” I said, breathless from the strain of rowing and the burn of the lash mark across my chest with every stroke. “How will we know?”
She considered that a moment, then pulled open her shirt, showing a brace of short throwing knives strapped across her chest—her breasts were bound flat, but she definitely was physically female.
“I’ll prick ’zem. If they’re still standing, you kill ’zem.”
“So be it,” I said. She talked like no woman I’d ever known.
We reached the Fury. Marisol unsheathed one of her throwing knives, clamped it between her teeth, and climbed a rope ladder up the side of the ship.
Bodies floated in the gentle sea around the Fury, gunfire overhead. Sun stood to follow Marisol, but I grabbed his bicep, pulling him to me, and kissed him on the lips. He blinked.
“For luck,” I said, a bit lamely. It was really because I couldn’t face sending him into danger without one more kiss. He smiled, then put the knife Marisol had given him between his teeth and was on her heels. I shoved the flintlock she’d readied for me back in my britches, hoping I didn’t accidentally shoot myself in a buttock, and followed them both aboard.
They were twins—the blond golden-skinned savage and the dark-haired, pasty spy—light and darkness, whirlwinds of death. Men fell screaming, clutching hamstrings or fountaining throats. Marisol paused, threw three knives into various combatants, who were nicked, hampered, or killed by her strikes.
I took a steadying breath and pulled out the flintlock, remembering the sneers and jokes of these men when I was forced across the deck to see Edwin. No. Not for revenge. I watched Sun strike down one of the men Marisol had marked, while another circled behind him, drawing back to slice him with a falchion. For Sun, I told myself. For him I could, and would, kill again.
I pulled the trigger, and my bullet dropped Sun’s would-be attacker like a stone, with Sun off and slashing at another man Marisol had marked before the last one slumped to the deck. A shadow loomed over me, a man with a cutlass bearing down. I dropped the spent gun, jumping back, and picked up another pistol from the boards at my feet. It was discharged. The man lunged at me with his cutlass, and I dodged, but tripped over a body. My hand closed on the stock of a flintlock—I got the gun up and fired, taking the man in the shoulder, and he fell back. The sharpshooter in the crow’s nest finished him with a bullet to the heart, and I was glad that, whoever he was, the swab was on our side. I thanked God the gun I’d pulled off the dead man had still been primed.
Then I found myself without a gun, facing a man armed with a rapier. He jabbed forward, and I fell back, slipping on blood. Sun was there, and with three savage, quick jabs to the lung, the man was down.
I was in a lull—no one attacking me, no one within reach to attack—while gunfire thundered and men screamed and died. Butcher was engaged in a swordfight on the quarterdeck, an impressive display of skill and footwork. I saw now that he did look like me—a deadly, thickly bearded me, who skillfully deflected the blows of his opponent. His attacker lunged, and he dodged the thrust and kicked the man in the knee so he fell forward and his rapier and sword hand lodged in the ship’s wheel, which Butcher spun, trapping the man between the spokes. Against all odds, the man managed to keep ahold of his blade.
“Yield,” my double thundered in a commanding tone.
The man dropped the sword. Marisol was there on lithe feet, dancing with her knives around the real Captain Benji, with Sun at her back, having dispatched the men remaining on the quarterdeck.
Faced with such incomparable bladework, their opponents threw down their weapons and surrendered.
“Tie them up,” Butcher commanded. Marisol and Sun followed the order, tying fast the prisoners, while I covered the men with a pair of pistols they didn’t know had already been discharged. The gunman climbed down from the crow’s nest, and a few more came up from the hold. Six sailors, myself, Sun, and Marisol had survived the battle on Swift’s side, taking five living prisoners from Edwin’s.
The bound men glared at their captors. Marisol, whom they knew as Weasel, addressed them.
“Your captain is dead. Edwin James and Martio de Fortaliza are no more. You have two choices. Either swear your service to Captain Swift, or be marooned on Dread Island.” She indicated the volcano with a tilt of her chin.
The survivors stared at the aspect of a skull formed by the partially collapsed cone, then each other, superstition warring with the desire to be free.
Sun turned on Marisol. “This is my island. Not theirs.” The knife she had given him dripped blood. He was splattered from head to toe in red freckles from the men he’d killed.
The sailors looked at him, then swore themselves, every one, to join Captain Benji Swift’s crew. No doubt they remembered the gruesome number of bodies Sun had amassed in the caves.
“Well chosen. You’ll be treated fairly and have no reason to complain of your earnings,” the new captain said, then turned to me. “I’ll be taking my name back now, if it’s all the same to you.”
I nodded. “Of course.”
He scratched his beard. “What do we call you, then?”
“Lector. My, uh, my family name is Lector. Benjamin Lector.”
He laughed. “What are the odds? I suppose you were named for—”
“Benjamin Franklin, yes.”
He smiled and shook his head. “As was I. Born the day he died. You?”
I shook my head. “Mother appreciated his treatise on abolition. Though we are close enough in age that you could be my elder brother, sir.”
“Captain will do.” He turned from me to address his new crew. “Listen up, you dogs! Anyone here troubles Mr. Lector or his friend Mr.…?” He looked at Sun and then me, questioningly.
“Thorvaldson.” I awkwardly pronounced the last name Edwin had mentioned. “Sólmundur Thorvaldson.”
“There’s a mouthful.”
“Call me Sun.” Sun spoke for himself as he cleaned the blood off his knife and glared around at the men, as if daring them to object to the name I had given him.
“Anyone causing them trouble will face quick justice—a hand raised against them is a hand raised against me.”
It was a reasonably impressive speech. No doubt it made more of an impression because Sun and Marisol, dripping with blood, glowered like deadly bookends on either side of the captain.
The men muttered among themselves as Marisol cut the newly sworn sailors’ rope bonds away.
“Now, then,” the captain continued, “Benji Swift took this shipment of guns out of New Orleans. It’s Benji Swift who is going to turn them over to the French Navy.”
“They’ll hang the lot of us!” one man burst out—the redhead who’d almost shot Sun back in the cave. I was slightly disappointed he’d survived. Then I prayed God forgive me the evil thought.
“They won’t. We’ll be flying le drapeau francais. Look around, gents. You’re all French corsairs with a letter of marque from King Louis XVIII and Prime Minister Jean-Baptiste de Villèle.”
“Prove it—” the redhead started, and Marisol advanced on him with her knife out. “Captain,” the man added hastily.
“Go on, then,” Captain Benji told Marisol.
“I am Marisol Soult, niece of Duke Jean-de-Dieu Soult of Dalmatia, Marshal of France. You will know him formerly as King Nicholas, Plunderer of Portugal and Master of Oporto.” She opened her coat, revealing her brace of daggers and bound breasts, and produced the leather wallet she’d pulled from Edwin’s body.
One of the men crossed himself. The rest, including the sailors I knew were Captain Benji’s loyal men, looked too stunned to move as their fellow sailor was revealed to be a relative of a French general famous for sacking Oporto and declaring himself rightful heir to the Portuguese throne, then was deposed. Well, and also revealed as a woman, which was a double sort of shock, considering the lack of care most had with cussing and nudity aboard ship.
“This,” she said, allowing the wallet to fall open, displaying official papers with loopy signatures, wax, and a ribbon, “says Captain Benji Swift, and everyone sailing with him, is in service to the French Crown and may plunder on her behalf.”
The men exchanged glances.
“This here”—she tapped a familiar-looking signature with the tip of her bloody knife—“is King Louis’s own mark.”
“What do you say to that, corsairs?” Captain Benji asked.
“Long live King Louis?” offered one English sailor.
Captain Benji laughed, and his loyal men broke into cheers, which the former prisoners joined somewhat less lustily. “Now clap to, me hardies! We’ve enemies of the French Empire to plunder! Weigh anchor and ready the mainsail.” The men scrambled to obey. The caravel had a lateen sail for tacking against the wind and close to shore, which the captain ordered run up and readied.
I sidled over to Marisol as she folded the wallet.
“You took an awful chance there,” I said softly, holding out my shaking hand for the papers featuring my signature selling Sun and me to Edwin.
“You ever meet a sailor who could read? Vous avez le cerveau comme une meule de fromage,” she challenged quietly, tucking the wallet into her coat.
“I’d like those, if you don’t mind,” I said through clenched teeth, reaching for her coat and thinking her comparison of my brain to a wheel of cheese unfair. She slapped my hand.
“I think I’ll hold on to these a bit longer—at least until we can collect the real letters of marque from my colleagues at Tortuga.” She stalked away to help ready the ship, the men wary of her but jumping fast enough as she relayed the captain’s orders.
I would have prayed for God to forgive her lies to the men, except I knew she had much larger sins that needed to be addressed first. I wondered if she really was the niece of the Marshall of France, and realized I’d finally gained the wisdom to doubt others since leaving New Orleans with Edwin and Black Miguel. Second, I wondered why she was rendezvousing with her French colleagues at a famous pirate port recently taken over by revolutionaries of the Republic of Haiti, who had no love for Frenchmen after Napoleon overturned abolition and re-enslaved them all. Hispaniola had been the largest, most prosperous French colony, and subsequently the sight of the largest, most violent slave revolt known to modern man. Losing Hispaniola had cost Napoleon so much he sold Louisiana to the United States and effectively ended France’s status as an empire in the New World.
“Benjamin,” Sun said softly, next to me. It was a low, anxious sound. I gave him my full attention. He looked a mess—spotted with blood like a Carolina speckled trout. I reached up to wipe clean his cheek, but let my hand drop. There were too many other men around us, and, despite Captain Benji’s orders protecting us, I didn’t want to gamble with our safety. I was taking no risks where Sun was concerned.
His blue-gray eyes were dark with anxiety.
“What is it?”
He turned from me to look back at our island. I took his meaning. “You want to go back ashore.”
He nodded.
I looked around the Fury, so like the Sea Swift I’d lost, and took in the welcome sights and sounds of the sailors in the rigging. I realized with a sudden pang that, while I loved Sun and I loved our island home, I had missed the society of other men and being underway to parts unknown, sharing tales, adventures, and songs. My stomach gave a grumble. And, cheese for brains or not, I missed a nice flakey cheddar.
“Sun, I—”
“Ready, Sun?” Captain Benji strode toward us with a purpose.
Sun sidestepped away from the captain, toward the gunnel.
Captain Benji held up both hands to show he held no weapon. “Easy, Sun. I’m not going to hurt you or Benjamin. You’re free to choose. Stay or go, whichever you like.”
Sun stopped moving but remained tense, as though waiting to see if Benji’s promise could possibly be true.
“Tell me where the guns are. We’ll tack over to them, my lads will load them, and you won’t have the French or Portuguese or British mucking up your island looking for them. All neat and tidy and no one’s the wiser to your paradise.”
I looked at Sun, capturing his blue eyes with mine, and nodded encouragingly, hoping he would agree and therefore buy me more time to talk over with him the future that was newly forming in my mind—especially if the French paid me for the weapons that were technically still mine.
“I will show you and Benjamin only,” he said finally, glowering.
“That’s all a man can ask,” Captain Benji said.
In short order, the deck was cleared of bodies and weapons, a brief Christian ceremony was held to honor the fallen laid to rest at sea, and the surviving sailors swabbed it of blood. The anchor was aweigh, and the Fury was readied to set sail.