Steel (12 page)

Cooper, of course, didn’t seem intimidated by either of them.

Mary Read looked over and caught Jill staring at her. Jill almost fell over; fear more than anything kept her rooted in place, staring back, wondering what she’d done to draw the pirate’s attention, scrambling to figure out what she had to do to get away from it.

Then Read looked away, turning a smile as if chuckling to herself, and the spell was broken. Jill could breathe again.

Henry nudged her and put a mug in her hand.

“No, no more rum,” she said, groaning. She was tired of rum. She wanted a nice cold Coke more than anything right now.

“It’s not rum,” he said.

She tasted it, an amber liquid, bitter and frothy. Definitely not rum. No—this was beer. It still wasn’t a Coke, and it wasn’t cold, but she sipped it anyway.

Jill imagined that this was where the pirates made deals. For all the talking, laughing, and drinking going on, for all that the gathering seemed on the edge of turning rowdy, it never did. People sat close, chairs pulled together, bent over tables, talking. Maybe forming plans to raid together, maybe selling stolen cargo, maybe trading information about where their enemies had last been spotted, which ports to avoid and which were clear.

When she thought of those dozens of ships in the harbor, all with cannons, she understood why the navy didn’t come along to capture everyone.

Abe had left the captain talking with Rackham and the others. He passed through the room, greeting and shaking hands with people who seemed happy to see him.

“What are they doing?” Jill asked Henry. “Why are we even here?”

“To find out what anyone knows about Blane. Without seeming like we are.”

Moments later, Captain Cooper left the side room and returned to the main bar; Abe spotted her movement and joined her. The captain was full of business.

“Rackham’s drunker than anything as usual, but Bonny says Blane’s on the island. Doesn’t know just where, of course. He raced ahead, got here before us. I count it as a stroke of luck. We’ll have to bribe everyone here not to run to the old steer and tell him we’re looking for him.”

“Already done, Captain,” Abe said, grinning.

“God, what a lot of rogues and thieves.” She shook her head, but her lips curled in a smile, as if she could think of nothing better than rogues and thieves. “Let’s go, all of you.”

“But I’ve not finished my mug,” Henry complained.

“Then drink fast,” said the captain. And Henry did, upending the mug and draining it all.

Jill just set her drink aside and followed the captain and company outside, wincing in the sudden bright sun. It was like stepping from one world to another, a dark world of conspiracy into one of light and sea air.

“Tadpole?” the captain said, with only a cursory look over her shoulder to make sure Jill was really there.

“Aye?” Jill said reflexively, before she’d realized she’d said it. The reply had become habit.

“I need to you to stay on the ship for the rest of our time here.”

“But—no, I can’t—”

“You’ll stay on the ship. Blane knows about that bit of rapier, Bonny says, like he can smell it on the air, and he may know about you as well. But he’ll not have either one of you. So you’ll stay on the ship.”

She didn’t want to stay on that ship a second longer. She had to find a way home, and the way home had to be here. Maybe if she went back to the stretch of beach where she’d picked up that stupid piece of sword in the first place. She couldn’t find a way home if she was on the ship.

Henry looked at her with interest, waiting for the next volley in the argument, but Jill didn’t have one. She was too angry to speak. Cooper kept insisting she was part of the crew, but really the captain only saw her as a way to get to Blane. A pawn in a rivalry that had nothing to do with her. Not even worth being crew.

But she wasn’t part of the crew. That was what Jill kept saying, that she wanted to get home, that she wasn’t one of them. She shouldn’t care what Cooper thought.

But she did, she discovered.

Jill marched along, feet pounding on the packed dirt road, not saying a word, biding her time. Making a plan.

C
aptain Cooper sent Jill and Henry with a couple others of the crew to help row back to the
Diana
. The returning crew relieved the crew on watch, who took the rowboat back to shore, leaving Jill stuck on the ship.

Night had fallen, but the town of Nassau was still alive, lit by lanterns and torches, a glowing golden pool nestled by the harbor. Shouts, laughter, and songs from the taverns carried over the water, drunken pirates and merchant crews wandered the streets. A dog barked.

“What’s she going to do when she finds Blane?” Jill asked Henry.

Henry sat on the bowsprit, leaning back, legs dangling high over the water. Jill sat near him on the gunwale, looking over the town. Her hand tapped nervously.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “Run him through, I expect. She truly hates him.”

“Why? Because he marooned her?”

“Some folk say it’s because he broke her heart. They were once in love and he left her. In her fury she turned pirate and now roams the waves, vowing revenge.” He took on the exaggerated tones of a storyteller.

“That’s kind of melodramatic, isn’t it?”

“It does seem a bit common for the likes of them, doesn’t it? I’d guess it’s something plain. He stole the ship from her, and she holds the grudge because that’s how she is.”

Whatever Cooper planned to do to Blane, the captain didn’t much care what happened to Jill in the meantime. She stuck her on the ship to keep her out of the way. Jill frowned at the thought.

“What’s wrong?” Henry asked, shifting to see her face, turned slightly away from him.

She shrugged and changed the subject. “You didn’t have to stay here with me. I know everyone else is onshore, partying. You should have gone with them.”

“Naw, this is fine. Besides, Captain ordered me to keep an eye on you.”

Of course Henry hadn’t stayed behind just to keep her company. Of course this was about Blane, again. Looking away, she muttered. “Or to keep me from escaping?”

He laughed. “And why would you do that?”

“I want to go home,” she said, sighing.

“Do you even know where home is? We fished you out of the water, you didn’t remember a thing.”

That was the story they told themselves about her, because she hadn’t told them the unbelievable truth. But Blane—maybe he’d know. If his broken sword brought her here, then maybe he’d know how to send her back.

Henry seemed inclined to sit on the prow talking all night—keeping an eye on her—but Jill said she was tired and needed sleep. She went below, curled up in her hammock, and waited. Nervous, she didn’t worry about accidentally falling asleep. She had to wait until the ship was quiet, until she heard snoring from the handful of crew who remained aboard.

Someone would be keeping watch. One wrong step or stray noise would wake everyone. Very carefully then, very quietly, she climbed out of the hammock. Setting a bare foot on the wooden deck, then the other, she slipped to her feet, holding on to the hammock to keep it from swinging. They all went barefoot on board or on the beach, but she’d been given a pair of leather shoes to protect her feet on the dirt roads in town, and she put these on.

Sticking to the wall, she crept to the stairs, moving slowly to keep the floorboards from creaking. She checked one more time, but the two other people asleep in hammocks hadn’t stirred. Climbing without a sound, she waited at the edge of the hatch and looked out. A few more men, including Henry, stood watch on deck. Rather, they drank rum and sang songs, picking up the scatterings of tunes carrying over the water from the town. They were drunk. She could probably walk right past them and they wouldn’t notice.

Still, she remained careful and quiet.

They were on the starboard side of the ship, near the middle; so she crept to the port side, toward the bow, where the anchor was. Staying low, she kept to the shadows, easy to do in the sparse and scattered lantern light.

Using the anchor line, she climbed off the ship and into the water. The rope was thick and covered with slime; she had to practically hug it to make her way down, gritting her teeth and trying not to breathe too much. Then she swam, hoping there weren’t sharks.

She brought the rapier with her, though she hated getting it wet. But she didn’t dare go ashore unarmed. As long as she dried it off quickly, the water wouldn’t hurt it. But the length of steel weighed her down and made swimming more difficult. Especially since she was trying to be quiet. She dog-paddled, keeping her head above water, and tried not to splash.

She avoided the pier, since people would be watching there, and swam to the beach instead. Once onshore, at the edge of Nassau proper, she only had to worry about running into anyone from the
Diana
. Especially Captain Cooper.

She hid behind a stack of crates waiting to be loaded onto a merchant ship in the morning. A scrap of canvas she found wasn’t much good for drying anything off, but she was able to scrape most of the water off her rapier. The rest of her had to wait for the cool breeze coming in off the water. She started shivering; the sooner she got moving, the sooner she’d get warm. She couldn’t worry about the cold.

The real trouble was, she only had one idea about where to start looking for Edmund Blane, and that was back at the pirate tavern.

She tied her hair up with a scarf and stuck a soft cap over it. The rest of her clothing was plain, nondescript: the loose shirt and trousers that everyone working on a crew at sea seemed to wear. She didn’t think she could really pass as a boy. But she could hope that maybe people wouldn’t look too closely at her. Maybe no one from the tavern that afternoon would recognize her as the girl who was with Captain Cooper.

The town wasn’t large, the streets weren’t complicated, so she found her way back to the alley and the sprawling house with its painted sign. Instead of going in, though, she slipped into the shadow of a nearby building, crouching at its corner and watching for Cooper and her crew. Some of them were surely here, but she wanted information and was willing to take the risk. The tavern seemed even more loud and boisterous—she could hear shouting and singing from the street. Those people who’d spent all day drinking were still at it. The settings had reversed: This time, the outdoors were dark, lit only with sparse lanterns, while the inside blazed with light.

Jill crept around the building, looking for a back entrance, to avoid drawing too much attention. She discovered the back door by the smell of the latrine. The rough, square shed stood only a few yards away from the house, nestled among the trees, and reeked about as sourly as she’d have expected a latrine outside of a bar where people had been drinking all day to smell. After she’d been watching a moment, a man stumbled from the shed, to the back of the tavern, and through the door.

She sneaked to the doorway and ducked inside.

For a moment, she lingered at the door, searching the room for anyone she recognized, for any reason to duck back outside and flee. No one seemed to notice her, which was good. This time, there wasn’t just singing in the tavern, there was music played on fiddles and pipes, even dancing. And lots more women than she’d seen before, and with their bright dresses, low-cut bodices, curled hair, and made-up faces, it was pretty clear that they were working. Yet another reason for shore leave. Jill just wanted to stay out of the way.

Staying against the wall as much as she could with all the tables and chairs taking up spaces, and people using the walls to prop themselves up when they were on the edge of passing out, she moved through the first room and into the next, searching for someone who looked like they might be Edmund Blane. She imagined a towering villain with a scraggly beard and glaring eyes. And a broken sword at his hip. It was a haphazard way to search. But it was a start.

Then she saw someone she recognized, a woman sitting in the corner, smiling wryly, like she was also trying to keep out of the way but still enjoying the view. Mary Read.

Jill took a deep breath and approached. If she was too chicken to talk to the pirate, she should never have come here.

Read spotted her before Jill was ready to be spotted. She’d hoped to sneak up on her, come obliquely along the wall, maybe clear her throat to startle her, or tap her shoulder—though that might have gotten her punched, in hindsight. Instead, Read looked over, as if she spotted Jill from the corner of her eye. As if she’d been waiting.

“Hey now, what have we got here?” Read announced, drawing the attention of the ragged, drunken bunch of pirates around her. Jill glanced at them, daring them to laugh at her, which they did. She glared.

“You’re Marjory’s new little pet, ain’t you?” Read said. Her accent was thick, some brand of English Jill couldn’t identify. “Has she sent you on some errand then?”

“No,” Jill said. “She doesn’t know I’m here.”

Read raised a brow, as if surprised—maybe even impressed. Jill could hope. Read waved to a man, who handed over his mug of beer, and she passed it to Jill. Jill didn’t want to drink; she didn’t want to get muzzy headed. But she took it to be polite.

Here it went, then.

“I’m looking for Edmund Blane,” she said.

“You and everyone else,” Read said, looking away, taking a drink.

“I want to meet him.”

“Why would you want to do that? Do you know what he’s like?”

“No, not really. Just that Captain Cooper hates him. But he may be the only one who can help me.”

“And why do you need help? Other than the fact that you’re a wee lass who’s fallen in with pirates. And how did that happen?”

It would take too long to explain, and Read wouldn’t believe her anyway, so Jill just shook her head.

“Ah yes, that’s what I thought. Too complicated, it always is. Which ought to make it simple but it doesn’t.”

“How did you fall in with pirates?” Jill asked, wary, ready to run if the question made Read angry and she drew the short, stout cutlass at her belt, or one of the three pistols slung in a brace across her chest. Not that Jill was getting paranoid.

Read smiled into her beer. “It starts with putting on breeches and cutting your hair. Then you run away and join the army in secret. Then you think maybe you’ll try a normal life—get married, find a respectable trade. And then your husband dies on you, so you go back to what you know best. You sign on to a ship and get captured by pirates and decide you like that best of all. Pirates are more forgiving than fathers, ain’t they?”

Not her father, Jill thought with a pang, sure that he thought that she’d drowned long ago. Her parents and siblings surely thought her long gone. And there were all those times she’d been so wrapped up in the rest of her life she’d barely paid attention to them. She shouldn’t have argued about going to the beach.

Jill couldn’t tell if Read was drunk or not. She smelled of beer, but that may have been the rest of the room. The pirate studied her surroundings with a wary gaze, ready for action in a moment.

“But look at you,” Read said. “You can’t be all that green. You’ve seen action, eh?” She pointed to the bandage, still damp and stained from her swim, wrapped around Jill’s bicep.

“It’s just a cut.”

“A battle scar’s good enough to get you respect in this crowd,” Read said. “Ah, but lose a leg, that’ll really put folks in awe of you.”

“I’d rather not.”

Read chuckled.

Jill looked around, she hoped without seeming like she was, which probably didn’t help at all with the attitude that she was supposed to be projecting. She tried to follow Henry’s advice, to carry herself like she deserved to hold a rapier, but she was afraid she only appeared awkward.

Some of the crowd she recognized from the afternoon, which meant they’d been here most of the day. There were new faces as well. It was hard to keep them all straight.

“Where are your friends?” Jill asked Read.

“Who, Jack and Anne? Don’t tell me I have to explain
that
to you?” Read said.

“Ah. No,” Jill said quickly.

“You didn’t actually think you’d find Blane here, did you?” Read asked.

“No,” Jill said, frowning. “But I don’t know where else to start looking for him.”

Read leaned close, and the conversation turned hushed. “You really want to see Edmund Blane? You know what you’re doing?”

“Yes, I do,” Jill said, earnest, bluffing. She wasn’t sure Read really believed her.

“I’ll tell you what we told Marjory. Blane’s up to something. Well, he’s always up to something, but this is more than usual. He’s not like the rest of us. Most of us who go on the account do it ’cause we’re sick of taking orders from wicked captains who get rich off our labor. Out here, we have our code and our articles because that’s what’s fair. We’re not so lawless, we have some honor, and most of all that means treating each other right. Blane’s different, and if you want dealings with him you should know that. That rotten dog would be the king of all pirates if he could. Turn the Caribbean into his own empire. He ain’t out here to live his life, he’s in it for power.”

And Jill knew: the power of a sword that called out to a broken piece of itself across the whole ocean. That drove Captain Cooper to such a rage.

“That’s why Captain Cooper hates him so much?”

“For her it’s personal,” Read said.

“Why doesn’t anyone else stop him?”

“Because a lot of men think like Blane, and they’ll join up with him, happy for just a scrap of the power he promises. He’s building an army that way. That lots of men are willing to sell themselves for a scrap of power is why the world’s in the state it’s in, isn’t it?”

“Where can I find him?” Jill said

“Let me ask you something first. Cooper says you had a piece of his old rapier—how did you get it?”

“I told her—I just found it. Washed up in the sand.”

Read studied her in earnest, as if trying to decide if she was lying. Jill glared, because she could tell the truth all she wanted, but what good did it do if no one believed her?

“He’ll be wanting it back,” the pirate said. “If he thinks you have it, he’ll come looking for you.”