Kal Moonheart Trilogy: Dragon Killer, Roll the Bones & Sirensbane (50 page)

Kal was impressed. ‘You’re probably the most skilled member of the crew,’ Kal probed. ‘Does the captain appreciate you?’

‘He thinks I’m worth a share and a half,’ Jako said, with a modest grin.

A share was an equal division of the crew’s earning. ‘That’s still dependant on how profitable the whole
operation
is though, right?’ Kal said. She was determined to find out more about why such a skilled crew was wasting time smuggling calico.

‘The rewards are
potentially
enormous,’ Jako sighed, ‘although the captain is a cautious man, and doesn’t want to take undue risk. I guess we will have to slow things down even more now we have that Dogwood sniffing around. The captain has the patience to wait trouble out, but I can’t say the same for the rest of the crew, especially with this curse hanging over us. Some of us want to make our money fast, to send back to our families in case the worst happens.’

Kal cast a concerned glance over to where Dogwood was sitting with Lula. ‘Don’t worry,’ Jako said. ‘
I’m
not going to do anything rash, at least. I’ll leave it to you to sort out. Lula assured me you’re never going to let us turn into zombies.’

He took over at the tiller and handed Kal the other black jack. She took a sip of the watered-down rum; it was revolting, but after a long hard sweaty day, she could see its appeal. She wandered down to the deck abeam the mainmast, where Lula and Dogwood were playing. She didn’t recognise the game. The board was painted onto the inside of an open wooden case: two rows of alternating black and red extended triangles, like teeth, on which were laid out black and white counters. Lula shook two dice out of a cup, and moved her counters along the teeth.

‘The game’s called
cosmic race
,’ Lula said. ‘I don’t know why.’

Dogwood snorted. ‘It’s because there are twenty-four points—one for every hour of the day; thirty counters—one for every day of the month; and the spots on opposite sides of the dice add up to seven—the number of days in the week. It’s
cosmological
, you see!’

‘If you say so,’ Lula said. ‘All I know is that I’m winning.’

‘Not for long!’ Dogwood said. He tossed his dice and moved two of his counters around the board.

‘It looks pretty random to me,’ Kal said. ‘Where’s the skill?’

‘A Nubaran merchant taught me everything there is to know about this game, Moonheart,’ Dogwood said. ‘Believe me, it takes a great deal of skill.’

Lula’s dice fell on the board. ‘Double six,’ she said. ‘Fancy that!’ On his next turn, Dogwood only managed a three and a two. Lula then reached for another die, but one that had numbers on it rather than spots. ‘I double,’ she said, placing the die next to the board so that the top face read sixteen.

Dogwood studied the board in silence for a while, then stood up. ‘I decline,’ he said, throwing Lula some silver coins. ‘I just remembered that I need to go and write up my journal in my cabin.’

He plodded off. ‘I should have let him win,’ Lula said, as Kal took Dogwood’s seat. ‘The game keeps him from his
investigations
, at least. Apparently he’s on the trail of an evil gang of narcotic traffickers. My crew are getting sick already of his constant questioning.’

‘I’ll try and warn him off, if I can,’ Kal said. The last thing she wanted was for Dogwood to get in the way of her own, subtler, inquiries into Lula’s operation. ‘Now tell me about this game,’ she said. ‘Is there really an element of skill?’

‘Oh yes,’ Lula said. ‘But only a small one. If an expert played a beginner twenty times, then on average the expert will only win by about eleven games to nine. That’s why
cosmic racing
is all the rage over on the Islands now: anyone can take on the professional gamblers and have a chance of winning.’

A sudden spark ignited in Kal’s brain. ‘But there
is
definitely an edge?’ she asked again. Lula nodded.

In gambling parlance, an edge was a long-term advantage that would net a profit over a period of weeks and months, if not on any one particular day. It was the reason that Kal stuck to playing games of skill at the Snake Pit back home, but avoided games like
the Magic Wheel
or
Shoot
, where the odds were stacked in the gaming den’s favour.

The trip to Port Black was suddenly looking to be a lot more exciting. In any place, in any situation, where Kal had an edge, she knew she would thrive.

‘Teach me how to play,’ she said.

I.viii

Serpent Shanty

Kal stood at the rail and threw her last old lambswool pullover into the sea. They were two weeks into the voyage, and the winds and waters were getting a lot warmer. Her sea chest was empty now, save for her weapons, Ben’s letter, and some bundles of calico that Lula had asked her to hide from Dogwood. She was looking forward to splashing out on a new wardrobe once they reached Port Black—perhaps a striped silk shirt like Lula favoured, teamed with a spotted kerchief like Jako wore on his head to keep off the sun.

Right now Kal was wearing a baggy linen shirt, but Lula was going about her duties on deck half-naked. The Island girl had a certain confident swagger. No, it was more than confidence.
Kal
was confident; Lula was
showy
. The two women could not have been more different: Lula had luscious brown curves, whereas Kal was lean and pale. Lula’s body was decorated with tattoos and gold; Kal’s was unadorned. The only thing they had in common was a collection of scars.

Maybe I should get inked once we get to Port Black
, Kal thought idly, watching Lula with a kind of envious fascination. As she watched, Dead Leg came to stand beside her. He raised a brass sexton to his good eye, and declared to anyone within hearing range that they were at the Equator.

‘How does that thing work?’ Kal asked him.

The captain looked at her in surprise, like he had just been caught out. ‘This contraption?’ he said. ‘No one’s ever asked me how it works before. Truth is, Kal, I don’t really know myself. I just point it at the sun at noon, and it tells me something called the
angle
; but I have to go back to my cabin, get out the almanac, and cross-reference the angle with the date to find out our latitude. We were near enough to the equator yesterday, so I figured today was as good a time as any to announce it to the crew.’

Dead Leg treated Kal to a gap-toothed grin. ‘The captain has to act like they know what they’re talking about, even if they have to sit down later to double-check their facts.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Kal said with a straight face.

The crew had gathered on deck to perform the traditional line-crossing ceremony: a ritual conceived to appease Whalo, the god of the sea. Two of the youngest crewmembers, a teenage boy and girl, had dressed as Whalo and Vuda—Whalo in blue calico robes, and Vuda draped in a black flag. The scene they acted out was Vuda’s forgiveness of Whalo, her husband.

A millennia ago, when
the Dragon
and its minions had attacked the Auspice Islands, Whalo had sent a tsunami to sweep away the monsters. It had worked, but it also drowned the native Islanders, broke the land into hundreds of tiny islands, and drove his wife into a rage of grief and fury from which she had never recovered. The forgiveness that the costumed players enacted was an optimistic plea to the two gods to cease hostilities in whatever heaven they now resided, and to calm the storms and tempests that spilled over into the mortal world.

As Kal and Dead Leg watched the pantomime, a white head popped out of the midships hatch, causing Vuda to stumble on her words. There were mutters and a few boos from the crew, but they turned to laughter when Che climbed on deck and showed them what he was carrying: a giant rat trap that was mounted on a foot-long plank of wood. Not one, but
two
enormous rats dangled from the sprung mechanism. They had evidently both been caught sniffing for cheese at the same time.

‘Coo yah!’ Che exclaimed triumphantly, holding up his gruesome trophy. ‘Two rats; one trap!’

‘I told you he was lucky,’ Dead Leg said, wading into the crowd and slow-clapping with his meaty hands. ‘Alright, show’s over; time for you all to get back to work.’

Che joined Kal at the bulwark just as he was about to toss the rats overboard.

‘Can’t you make a nice stew with those?’ Kal asked.

‘Already try it,’ the cook said with a wink. ‘Most of the crew moan that it taste like bilgewater, though. Only
you
and Sea Dog seem to like it.’

Kal laughed. ‘You should stuff them and make a trophy,’ she said. Che laughed too, and they chatted companionably for a while, both of them avoiding work while Dead Leg was out of sight. Kal spotted a dark line on the horizon. ‘Is that land? Where are we?’

Che suddenly looked fearful. He squinted, but his pink eyes watered. ‘Cuss my eyes,’ he said. ‘You sure you see land? Why we not turnin’?’

Kal looked up the mast to where Dogwood was snoozing in the midday sun. She put her fingers in her mouth and let out a piercing whistle. Dogwood jerked awake and almost fell out of the crow’s nest. He looked frantically in all directions, until he too spied what Kal was seeing. ‘Land ahoy!’ he announced, with an impressive parade ground bellow.

‘Port helm!’ Dead Leg shouted in response. At the tiller, Jako banged the rudder full-left so hard that Kal almost fell overboard.

Che was still staring anxiously out to sea, nervously pulling on his dreads.

‘That’s Nubara, right?’ Kal said. ‘There’s nothing dangerous there, is there? At least not in the north; its just deserts and camel-herding nomads.’

‘Nubaran pirates patrol the coast now,’ Che said, ominously. ‘They the worst of the worst. Gangs of escaped slaves in captured ships. They got no use for treasure or hostages, since nobody will trade with them, so they
kill
and
burn
and
rape
instead. At least they will spare me the worst if they catch us.’

Kal gave him a quizzical look.

‘They most likely kill me first,’ Che said. ‘We albinos bring bad luck everywhere we are found south of the Equator. Twice so aboard a ship. Dead Leg, he only manage to convince his crew to let me on board the
Swordfish
by reason that I must a made the trip
to
Amaranthium safe enough.’ He lightened up a shade. ‘That, and the fact that I cook a sweet jerk chicken.’

Kal looked at Che with part sympathy, part admiration. ‘You’re brave to come home,’ she said.

‘It is long past time to work things out with my father,’ Che said.

Lula was up on deck; in her role as quartermaster she was exhorting the crew to put some effort into their work. ‘Come on, you scallywags, I want us on an even keel with every sail as trim as it can be!’ She turned to the cabin boy, a young lad who looked about twelve. ‘Pip, toss a log overboard and get our speed. The faster we get away from Nubara, the faster we’ll make it safely back to Port Black! Now sing for me, my sea urchins!
Take my darlin’ and take my land!
’

‘
Crush my castle down into sand!
’ the crew sang back to her.

‘
You can pull the ground from under me!
’ Lula exhorted.

‘But you can’t steal away the sea!’

* * *

That night, black clouds hid the moon and stars, but the wind was still mild and the brief showers of rain were warm. Kal was alone on deck, apart from Jako, a dark shape abaft. He seemingly never slept, and was always at the helm. The
Swordfish
cruised through the night, the sails having been shortened and braced securely before the crew retired to their bunks in the forecastle. The ship was now heading further out than Kal had ever been from land before, cutting a dangerous path to the Auspice Islands across barely-charted waters. Kal hated the unknown—she would almost rather take on Nubaran pirates than suffer the horrors of her imagination.

She was hanging by her arms to the foremast boom, her ankles crossed and raised behind her. With a grunting effort, she pulled herself up until her chin rose above the boom, then she lowered herself slowly, feeling the pain in her biceps and in the spread of muscles in her back. She tried to raise herself again—for the fifteenth time. The effort made her want to scream, but she needed to do this—the whole voyage so far had been one of preparation; Kal had to be ready both physically and mentally for the challenges ahead. It was how she had lived her whole life since she had left her village: death could come out of thin air like lightning out of a summer sky, and sometimes the only thing that could save you was readiness. Hope for the best; prepare for the worst, she had told an old lover once. Where was he now? He was dead, she remembered.

Kal had been aware of Lula watching her for some time, but she didn’t react. It was a game she liked to play with people: convince them that they had her at a disadvantage, and then surprise them as they made a move. Lula was too clever to try and sneak up on Kal, though. Instead, Lula reached out surreptitiously and slackened the block that held the boom in place. Kal found herself moving slowly across the deck. When the ride stopped, she looked down and saw the open hatch and the black hole of the hold below her.

‘Damn you, Lula,’ she laughed. ‘Put me back.’

‘I’m already damned, remember,’ Lula said, holding up her palm. The white spot was twice as big now as when Kal had first seen it. ‘I just want to make sure you’re fit to fight zombies for me. Come on—ten more chin-ups!’

Kal managed two more. It was two more than she would have managed without the extra encouragement.

‘Eight more!’

‘I can’t do
one
more,’ Kal groaned.

‘Alright,’ Lula said. ‘Tell me something instead, then. What were you and Ben talking about that day in the captain’s cabin?’

‘What? Nothing, Lu. Nothing important, anyway. Now, put me back!’ Kal’s arms had gone numb, and she didn’t even dare try to move along the boom to get to a safe spot to drop down.

‘Tell me that he’s not tasked you with hunting smugglers, like he did Dogwood,’ Lula said. ‘I just need to know that you’re giving your all to me, Kal.’