Blaggard's Moon (15 page)

Conch Imbry walked with surprising grace of movement toward Delaney. It reminded him of a cat moving in on a mouse. Conch Imbry's every step seemed to speak aloud, and the words they seemed to speak were, “I'm tired of you, sir, and so now you'll die.” And as if to emphasize this silent point, the pirate pulled his pistol and patiently, almost passively pressed its cold, round muzzle into Delaney's forehead. “Yer a talkative one,” he croaked. He pulled the hammer back until it clicked. “Talkin' leads to trouble.”

Delaney's heart seized up. He thought at that moment that those cold, slitted eyes would be the last things he would ever see.

“Don't shoot him, please!” Dallis yelped, and for the first time in all this, tears appeared in his eyes.

Conch looked over at him, a sudden spark in his own eyes. “I
will
kill 'im, though, ye little bawler. I'll kill 'em all dead unless ye turn pirate and sail with me for all yer days.” He did not move the pistol, held in his left hand, from Delaney's forehead.

Dallis's round head bobbed like a cork on the sea. “All right, then. I will. Aye, sir.” He looked at his brother Kreg. “For Mr. Delaney.”

Kreg nodded. “We're pirates now,” he confirmed. “Jus' don't shoot Mr. Delaney. He's a good man.”

“A good man, is he?” The right side of Conch's long mouth rose up into something between a smile and a sneer. He reached out his free hand in a flash, and grabbed Dallis Trum by the back of the neck. Then he swung the pistol around and pressed it to Dallis's temple. His grip was firm, too firm to be anything but painful. The boy closed his eyes and grimaced, but said nothing. He'd sworn to die whenever Conch said so. He seemed bound to keep his word.

“And how about you, Mr. Delaney?” Conch asked. “Yer a too-much talker. Will ye save this lad?”

“If I can,” Delaney answered firmly.

“Swear it, then. Swear ye'll kill who I say kill, die when I say die, and follow me all yer days.”

Delaney had no worries about what his parents might think. Yer Poor Ma was dead and Pap, if not dead by now, was surely dead drunk. “Times bein' what they are, sir,” he answered, “it seems a fair bargain.”

“Swear it.”

A lump rose in his throat. He knew there was no turning back, not from an oath to a pirate. “I swear to follow you sir, live or die, all my days.”

Conch nodded. He lowered the pistol. He turned back to the boys. “What's yer name, son?” he asked the older boy.

“Kreg Trum. Dallis here's my kid brother.”

“Kreg and Dallis.”

The unimpressive man spoke. “More like dregs and ballast, if you ask me.”

Conch laughed, which sounded a bit like a bullfrog with the croup. “Aye. That's what they are, no doubt. Dregs and Ballast.” And no one called them anything else from that moment on, for as long as they sailed with Conch Imbry.

“How about the rest of you men?” Conch then asked around. “What say ye? Death, or piracy?” He said it with a surge of energy, as though offering a wondrous choice, perhaps selling some healing potion or leading a prayer meeting.

The men spoke all at once, racing one another for the privilege of being first. “Aye, we'll be pirates!” and “Yes, sir!” and “Yers to the bitter end, Cap'n!” and “I'm in, ye can count on me!”

“Swear it!” Conch ordered.

“I swear it!” his new crewmen answered in healthy unison.

All but one.

The good cheer receded as Conch walked calmly over to Avery Wittle. “I din't hear ye swear, sailor.”

Avery was short and soft and round and unassuming. If it was possible for a man to have an opposite, Avery was the Conch's. He lowered his eyes. Conch looked down at the pistol in his own left hand. He gripped an iron bar with his right hand, then pointed the barrel at the ground.

“What about it, now?” he said in a low rumble. “Speak up, sailor. No sense dyin' like a hog trussed fer slaughter.”

Avery Wittle shook like the last leaf on a bare branch in winter's first storm. But he remained silent.

On his post, Delaney squirmed. Usually he didn't remember all this, this far into the story. He'd kept it far away since the days right after it had happened. Whenever that memory came around, his mind always went off somewhere else, often following his legs to a pint of ale or a card table, or even a deck that needed a swabbing. Anything to avoid what had happened next.

But there was nowhere for his legs to take him now. Squirm or stretch, it didn't matter. The scene went right on.

Avery just looked up at the pirate captain with that same childishly sincere look he'd given Delaney, just hours before when, hat in hand, he'd helped Delaney remember the events of the previous night.

Conch sighed. “What's yer name, sailor?”

“Avery Wittle, sir. Able-bodied seaman, and a true hand.”

“A true hand, is it? Well, true as yer hand may be, ye know what I got to do, don't ye, Mr. Wittle? What would it look like to these men here if, after all my talk, I let ye loose alive and no pirate?”

Avery's breaths came in sharp, quick bursts.

Conch watched him a moment, then asked quietly, almost gently, “Not got the stuffin's for a little buccaneerin,' is that all it is?”

He shook his head. “I'm sorry,” he said, struggling to look the Conch in the eye.

“It ain't that hard,” Conch assured him. “We're just takin' gold from the very men who've taken it from us, and kept it fer themselves. See, these merchants and shipmen, they make the rules, and they make 'em so's men like you and me cain't ever win. But me…I just make diff'rent
rules. Ye play by my rules, Mr. Wittle, ye win. You and yer mates. Then we're the ones end up with the gold. That's all it is.”

Avery's voice quavered and his chin trembled, but he spoke plainly enough. “I can't tell you how truly sorry I am for this. But I…I can't rightly serve a pirate in this world and be prepared to meet my Maker in the next. And I say that meanin' no offense.”

Now Conch's gentleness faded away. His voice was cold and distant. “Ah, a man wif a principle. Well, no offense taken, Mr. Wittle. We all makes our choices. And when a man makes up his mind to die, well, likely he's goin' to die.”

And with a single gunshot, that's what Avery Wittle did.

Monkeys screeched and birds flapped upward, and Delaney shivered. Everything had changed. The pond was darker; he was colder. He looked up and found that the sun had now moved in its arc past the opening in the canopy above, and he was in shadow.

Why would Avery do such a thing? Why not pretend to turn, then run the next chance he got? At least that way he'd have lived a while longer. No sense having a principle and then being dead and unable to use it. Who knew, maybe he'd have gotten lucky and made a clean break, disappearing from sea life, and gone on to plow corn the rest of his days far from the reach of pirates.

Fear is all it was,
Delaney thought.
Avery was just a coward, through and through.

Or at least, that's what Delaney had told himself ever since it happened. But now he was remembering it, it didn't seem that way. It seemed…it almost seemed that something else was happening. Avery was fearful; he was trembling. True enough. But something about what he'd done was haunting. Kind of like that little girl's strange and beautiful song was haunting. It was almost like—in some way that Delaney couldn't get his mind around—rather than being pure afraid, Avery was only afraid just on the surface. Like his fear was just the ripple on top of a deep pond. Underneath, it was like Avery was doing something he knew he must do, even though he didn't want to do it. It almost seemed, somehow, when you looked at it that way,
brave.

And then the song came back to Delaney's mind, and the young girl's pure voice singing it. And though it still made no sense, it seemed now to be a song about Avery, or if not about him, about the sort of man he was. Or maybe, about the sort of thing he did.

A true lang time and we shall meet

On the silver path to the rushing sea

Where moons hang golden under boughs of green,

A lang true la 'tis true…

That little girl had something of the next world in her, Delaney concluded. And it made sense, her being the daughter of Jenta Stillmithers. There was so much of this world's strife bound up in the union that created her, so much of longing for something better and running up against the harsh brambles, so much of the dark in pursuit of the light, that it was only natural the result would be a child connected to this world by a thread.

In her first two weeks in Skaelington, Jenta Flug, now Jenta Stillmithers, was invited to two fine events. The first was a small, private party for a few of Runsford's many business associates, but the second was the city's most splendid dance of the year, the annual Summer's Eve Ball, celebrating the summer solstice. It was the climactic end of the social calendar. Everyone who mattered was there, along with a great many who wished to matter more than they did.

Jenta immediately attracted a flock of admiring young men—and some not so young—all of whom were astounded that such beauty could have been among them and remained hidden. Whispered conversations filled the splendidly decorated room, which she made drab by comparison. She wore a brocaded gown tailored for the occasion, cream with scarlet trim, cut tastefully and elegantly. Her hair was done up and wrapped, leaving one curl of tresses to fall to a bare shoulder. Eyes drifted toward her, then drifted away, or else drifted and stayed.

Her laughter, sweet and ringing, rose above the music. She danced with perhaps twenty different gentlemen and made each one feel he had a direct route to her heart, if only he chose to pursue it.

Jenta was spectacular.

Shayla was in bliss.

Wentworth was in agony. He stood by the wine bar, drinking too much and becoming too jealous. Then when a dashing, muscular man with a wide face, pointed moustache, curling locks, and silk-covered calves took his turn with her, Wentworth could see his prize slipping away.

He marched to where his father chatted with a banker, took him by the sleeve, and pulled him clumsily aside. “She dances with Carnsford Imbry!” he seethed. “The pirate!”

Runsford, having had a few glasses of wine himself, was not prone to let such a fact break his good mood. “Captain Imbry is a businessman, too, remember. Let's not be hasty in our judgments.”

“The Conch takes what he wants. Everyone knows that. You brought Jenta here for me!”

Runsford sighed. His mood was broken. “I would remind you that it is your own long train of indiscretions that has made it so difficult for you to win and keep the hand of a lady. Conch has had little to do with that.”

At this Wentworth's face turned red. “
My
indiscretions? She's dancing with a pirate! What does that say of her own discretion?”

Runsford eyed his son. “Are you angry with him because he wants to take Jenta for himself, or angry with her for wanting to be taken?”

“Who says she wants him? Where did you hear that?”

Runsford pried the wine glass from his son's hand. “This pique is unbecoming. Stop drinking, and calm yourself. She's a young woman at her first ball. Let her dance. All will look far less sinister in the morning. Captain Imbry will be off to sea again, and Jenta will be living in a cottage outside your bedroom window.” He winked.

This calmed Wentworth some, but not much. He watched the remainder of their dance with suspicion, each curtsy, each smile, each touch a knife's blade between his ribs.

“Are you in love?” the whispered words echoed in Wentworth's ear. He didn't know if they were his own thoughts or someone else's, for the answer was obvious, and unavoidable, and a revelation to him. He could not take his eyes off Jenta long enough to turn and find the source of the question. When he finally did, his father was there, but several feet away and chatting with another businessman, paying Wentworth no mind.

In the morning, things did look brighter. Conch's ship, the
Shalamon
, had sailed. Jenta was at breakfast, looking far less formal but no less radiant, her attention focused more or less on him. Wentworth had no stomach for the eggs and bacon set before him, but the girl's laugh, her bright eyes as she recounted her evening, were a healing balm.

“Conch Imbry is a pirate,” he told her when she paused in her stories.

“Who?” she asked.

“Captain Carnsford Imbry. Goes by Conch…like the shell. He's the pirate with whom you danced.” She still looked confused. “Yellow vest.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “The man with the…?” She grasped an imaginary flow of hair above her shoulder.

“
Quite
the pirate, I hear,” Shayla said with a tone of warning for her daughter.

False rebuke, jesting, was the way Wentworth heard it. “A dance is fine,” Wentworth instructed, “in polite company. But stay away from that one.”