Blow Me Down (27 page)

I looked up from the note to Prudence, who stood before me with a particularly belligerent expression.

“Cap’n Corbin says ye won’t be needin’ me to deliver any more notes,” he said, his eyes narrowing at me. “He says that ye’re through behavin’ womanish, and ye understand that he’s old enough to take care of himself. He says ye won’t be embarrassin’ him by motherin’ him in front of his crew.”

I sighed and put down the quill I had picked up the minute I finished Corbin’s note. Logically, I knew that he was right—he was able to take care of himself, and not likely to do anything that would hinder his recovery. But emotionally, I couldn’t help but worry about him. If only I could see him to make sure he was all right . . .

“Amy? Maggot, he says ye’re wanted down at the docks. The ship be ready to sail.”

“All right, Bas, thank you. Pru, you go with Bas to the ship. Tell Tar I’ll be down in a couple of minutes. And make sure that the supplies I sent down earlier are loaded properly, not just stacked on the deck.”

Both boys nodded and hurried off, Pru with a relieved expression, Bas with a hopeful gleam in his eye. No doubt he was hoping for more blood and gore. I had other goals, one of which was managing a few minutes to check on Corbin.

I gathered up my foil and headed down to the harbor, waving when the women gathered at the docks called their hellos. Pangloss was standing at the head of the dock just as he had been the day before—the treacherous wretch. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to him about why he’d attacked me the day before, but Bart had sent me a short note the previous night saying that Pangloss had confirmed his guess—the similarly painted ship near Corbin’s flagship had been mistaken for mine, and mine for the enemy’s ship.

I wasn’t entirely buying it.

“Hoy, Pangloss,” I said, trying to adopt a nonconfrontational pose. “I understand you’re ready for us to sail?”

“Amy!” He spun around, a wide smile on his face that faded as he saw the grim set to my lips. “Lass, I’ve been meanin’ to see ye so I could apologize in person. Bart says ye’re thinkin’ I opened fire on ye deliberately.”

“Well, the careful positioning of the ship and repeated volleys did sort of give me the impression of deliberateness, but Bart says you didn’t actually know that was my ship you were destroying so very efficiently.”

“Aye, I thought it was another of Black Corbin’s ships. I saw one painted just as yers, close to the flagship, and I figured ye was in position, so it would be safe for me to pick off a few of the sloops at the end of the line. Rumor has it that Corbin himself was on one of the ships that sank.”

“Really?” I asked, glancing toward the ship that had been loaned to me. My small crew was busy readying the ship, but that didn’t mean Tar hadn’t been talking. The only reason I had not asked Holder to keep him in custody was because Corbin was safe—and there was nothing Bart could do to me, not if he wanted me to provide supplies as the blockade tightened.

“Aye, but the devil takes care of his own. Corbin was sighted this morn on the
Java Guru.
”

“Probably walking around when he should be resting in bed,” I muttered to myself.

“What was that?” Pangloss asked.

“Nothing. I trust there won’t be any mistakes in identity today, since I’m sailing one of your captain’s ships.”

“Aye, there won’t be,” he said quickly, his blue eyes guileless. “I’m hopin’ ye’ll forgive me for the mistake yesterday. I’ll be happy to send a few of me swabbies to help with yer ship repairs.”

“Thank you, I’d appreciate that. There’s just my four guys, and I need them to help sail, so my ship is just sitting all crippled.”

Pangloss nodded and started to turn away. I grabbed the arm of his shirt to stop him. “There’s something I wanted to ask you, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, aye? What be that?”

I hesitated, trying to find a way to phrase the question that wouldn’t tip him off if he was really Paul. “You’ve been with Bart for how long?”

“Since I was a wee lad,” he answered promptly, turning to bellow out an order about a barrel of gunpowder.

“Ah. Odd; you two look to be about the same age.”

He didn’t even look at me as he watched his men roll the barrel on board a large ship. “Nay, I was apprenticed to Bart when I was a wee sprog. Use yer deadlights, ye lubbers! Ye damage the mizzenmast gettin’ that powder in place, and it’ll be the cat for ye!”

“So, what did you do before you were apprenticed to Bart?”

Pangloss shot me a quick look. “What be ye talkin’ about? Bloody hell—ye scurvy dogs! Be ye all three sheets in the wind?”

Before I could pump him for more information, Pangloss stormed off to his ship, yelling orders at his crew. I made a mental note to try to pin him down later, and toddled off to my own ship.

Five hours later I stretched and looked in the basket I had used to bring lunch for everyone. “Hey, who ate all the apples?”

Bas burped and looked away. Bran hacked up an apple seed.

“Oh, well, I guess we’ll get more when we go back to port. Which I hope is soon. I never imagined a blockade would be boring after yesterday, but this . . . bah.”

The blockade ships stretched out in a ragged line across the opening of the harbor. Our ships were staggered inside the harbor, with us slightly to the left of and behind Pangloss. The air was still and silent, the wind almost nonexistent. The guns were quiet, cleaned and prepped, ready to be loaded and fired. Overhead sea birds wheeled and dove, the only movement visible to the eye. I gave the blockade line a desultory look. It hadn’t moved; their ships were as anchored as ours.

“ ’Tis the way of a blockade,” Tar said, picking his teeth with the tip of a dagger.

“It wasn’t at all like this yesterday,” I pointed out. “Yesterday was all about blowing up innocent people’s ships, and blood, and drowning, and such.”

“Aye, the opening of a blockade can be that way. Then it settles down to this,” he said, waving his knife at the ships. “Black Corbin’s ships is there makin’ sure no one gets in or out.”

“I can see why they’ve dropped anchor—they’re in a good position, and they’ve achieved their goals. But why are we here?” I asked, bored to death. There were a thousand other things I’d rather be doing than spending my day getting sunburned sitting around on the deck of a borrowed sloop.

“We’re ensurin’ that Black Corbin’s men don’t take the harbor,” Tar said slowly, as if he was explaining it to an idiot. Which, I had to admit, was pretty much me when it came to subjects like the proper etiquette at a blockade.

“How long are we expected to wait here? Do we get to go back when the sun goes down?”

Tar looked at me as if I’d started turning backflips. “If we go back, who’ll guard the harbor?”

“Well . . .” I hesitated. “I guess I never really thought about it. I just kind of assumed that everyone ceased the hostilities when it was dark.”

Tar muttered to himself and spat over the side of the ship.

I was silent for another half hour, then something struck me. “I didn’t bring enough food to last us days. We’re going to have to go back so I can get more.”

You would have thought sailing back to the dock was a minor thing, but as soon as I had the sails unfurled in preparation for heading for the dock, a small rowboat was launched from Pangloss’s ship. The pirate Maggot quickly rowed over to our ship, yelling up a question about what we were doing.

“I need to get food,” I yelled down at him.

“Ye what?”

“Food, I need food!”

“Ye’re in a blockade, and ye’re not fully stocked?” he asked, surprise written all over his face.

“No one told me we’d be out here for days! I’ll be back in a little bit, just as soon as I round up enough foodstuffs to keep us from starving for a few days,” I told him.

He stared openmouthed at me for a moment until I gave the order to set sail, whereupon he rowed as fast as possible back to Pangloss’s ship.

I gave it a little wave as we turned.

On the island, I used the bulk of Holder’s money to buy up salt beef and pork, a couple of barrels of ale, one of rum, one of water, dried peas, a form of hardtack that the trades-men swore would repel weevils and other icky bugs, oatmeal, huge wheels of cheese, and as a special treat, two crates of apples, and one of lemons.

A brief chat with my crew established that Impulsive would be the best person to cook (the others showed a disinterest in proper food preparation that had me envisioning E. coli running amok), so once everything was stowed away, we sailed back out into the harbor and dropped anchor to resume the blockade wait.

And wait we did. I lasted twenty-four hours; then I couldn’t stand it anymore, and sent Prudence off in a rowboat to the nearest blockade ship with a note for Corbin to inquire how he was doing.

He sent back a terse reply saying he was bored out of his head, his wound was much better, and didn’t I want to come and play cowgirl with him?

I was tempted; I was very tempted. But daily visits from Pangloss as he made his rounds of all the harbor ships drove home the importance of presenting a unified front to the blockaders.

“Not that Corbin is about to attack with us here,” I said aloud the third day of the blockade, glaring at Bran the raven as I paced by him. The bird had apparently decided it was part seagull, and flapped its stubby wings while mimicking a seagull’s cry every time a gull soared overhead. “Shut . . . up!”

“Eh?” Prudence asked, looking up from the game of chess he and his twin were playing with crudely carved chess pieces. Tar stood at the bow of the ship, his hands behind his back, staring out at the blockade line.

“Not you; the bird! Bas, can’t you tape his little beak together, or something? Two days of him doing his gull impression is starting to wear on my nerves.”

Bas looked up from where he was dangling a piece of salted pork over the edge of the ship, hoping, he had confided in me the day before, to catch a man-eating shark. “I couldn’t do that! ’Twould be cruel, that would!”

“Not nearly so cruel as having me make him walk the plank,” I growled to myself, pacing the length of the ship.

“Kree, kree, kree,”
called the gulls as they circled the ships hoping for food.

“Caw, caw, caw,”
answered Bran, hopping around the deck.

Pad, pad, pad
went my bare feet as I paced the length of the ship for the three hundred and twelfth time. “Aaaaaaaaaah!” I yelled, unable to stand it any longer.

Everyone looked at me.

“Ahhh?” Pru asked me, ignoring Bran as the bird hopped past him, chasing a low-flying gull.

“Yes, aaaah!”

“Are ye talkin’ to yerself again?” Impulsive asked, giving me an odd look.

“Maybe. Possibly. Probably. What if I am?” I stopped in front of him, my hands on my hips.

“Nothin’. It’s just that ye’re doin’ a lot of that lately.”

“Hey,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “There’s nothing wrong, nothing at all, with talking to yourself when you’ve been trapped on a ship with four people whose idea of personal hygiene is lax, to say the least. In fact, I think it’s pretty much a requirement to keeping your sanity. I’d go so far as to say it’s the only way to stay sane when you’re stuck on a ship in the middle of a harbor doing abso-freakinglutely nothing for three endlessly long days just so you can push the damned game forward, and Bas, so help me God, if you don’t shut that bird up, we’re having raven stew for dinner!”

Complete and utter silence fell on the deck. Four pairs of eyes—five if you count the bird’s—stared at me in mute surprise.

“All right,” I yelled, throwing my hands in the air in a gesture of defeat. “I admit it; I’ve snapped. I’ve had it! I can’t take any more! We’re going back to port, and if Pangloss or Bart has a problem with that, they can just stick it where the yardarm don’t shine. And don’t tell me yardarms don’t shine, because I don’t care! Drop the sails, heave the anchor, and all that other nautical talk that I am now too insane to remember! We’re going back to town.”

This time as we made ready to sail, no rowboat zipped out to see what was up. I was a bit disappointed by that, itching as I was for a fight, but we made it back to port without me actually going off the deep end, or strangling Bas’s bird.

Fifteen minutes later I gave the men leave, ordered Bas to bathe himself and Bran before he went to bed that night, and commandeered the big wooden bathtub that sat in Renata’s common room, hidden by a ratty red silk screen.

It took a while to heat up enough water to fill the tub, but I used the time chatting with the ladies of the house about what had been happening while I was parked in the harbor for three days.

“Food is scarce,” Sly Jez said, stirring a smelly pot of fish stew. “We’ve fish, but all the meat is gone, or been taken for the blockade.”

“Aye, and the greens be almost gone, as well,” Mags said. She and Red Beth were sewing a dress, sitting next to the open window to catch the last of the daylight.

I frowned as I tested the water in the big copper kettle that hung in the fireplace. “You shouldn’t be feeling the effects of the blockade so quickly. Bart knew it was coming—surely he stockpiled as much nonperishable food as he could?”

Mags shrugged. “All I know is there’s naught to be had but dried beans and oats. Renata’s gone now to try to round up some fruit, but they say there hasn’t been a pear or apple seen for days.”

“Huh. I’ll have to ask Bart what’s up. Maybe he has the food stored somewhere safe and he just hasn’t released it yet.” The water seemed hot enough, so I wrapped a cloth around the handle and dragged the heavy kettle behind the screen to where the tub sat. I’d already added two kettles of lukewarm water, enough to moderate the hotter water.