The Tides of Avarice (32 page)

In the bay were moored a dozen or more sailing ships though none of them, Sylvester was illogically proud to observe, as large or as splendid as the Shadeblaze.

He wasn't the only one to notice this. Here and there along the dockside people were pausing in their activities to stare at the new arrival. There were stoats, foxes, weasels and bobcats there, Sylvester saw, as well as a couple of animals he didn't recognize at all that must be native to these far southerly climes.

No lemmings, though.

The fact that there weren't any other lemmings in sight was an unwelcome reminder of how truly far from home he and the Pickleberries were.

A large paw fell on his shoulder.

Cap'n Rustbane.

Sylvester almost jumped out of his fur.

How had the gray fox managed to creep up behind him and Viola without either of them having the slightest suspicion of his approach?

Rustbane chuckled, reading Sylvester's mind.

“How are you, me hearties?”

“Ve-very well, thank you. We were just w-watching—”

“Blighter Island,” the pirate captain completed for him. “None other, and that's the pretty little burg of Hangman's Haven you can see in front of ye.”

He settled his elbows on the rail alongside Sylvester's, ignoring Viola's hostile glare.

“The place got its name because it was once said that, if ever a hangman could survive in it more than five minutes without finding a dagger in his back, there wouldn't be a single person there – male, female, grown-up or whelp – who'd not qualify for his noose. There are no laws down in these parts, see. Leastwise, no laws that anyone can remember to obey. Perhaps it's because the Caraya Islands are so close to the equator and the heat stifles the growth of laws. I don't know, I'm just a humble pirate.”

He chuckled again. The meaning of his chuckle was clear. If there was ever a pirate who was humble, it wasn't Rustbane.

The gray fox was dressed in his full piratical finery today, from his black cocked hat to the toes of his highly polished black leather shoes, their brass buckles gleaming in the sunlight. He'd chosen a fiery red tunic and jacket, the seams embroidered in gold thread. A few brightly ribboned medals sparkled on his chest. Medals, thought Sylvester sourly, that the pirate must have stolen from victims of his treachery.

Topping off the whole dazzling assemblage was Rustbane's broad grin. There seemed to be even more teeth in his mouth than ever before.

“Looks pretty enough from here, Blighter Island does, don't it?” he remarked. “You can't tell at this distance that yer throat wouldn't be safe one instant in those cute little streets. Not if anyone thought you might have a wallet to steal or a gold tooth they could prize from its socket and sell for a farthing. Why, you're safer aboard a pirate ship than you'd be in Hangman's Haven.”

The hint was thunderingly obvious. Sylvester pretended to take it at face value.

“Lucky we won't have to go ashore then, isn't it?”

“I wouldn't even think about it, if I was you.”

“How long are we going to be here, with that” – Sylvester offered a histrionic shudder – “hellhole just the thickness of the hull away from us?”

“Three days.”

“That long?”

“We got to pick us up supplies for at least three months, I reckons.”

“Three months? How far do you think we're going to be at sea?”

“It's not how long it'll take us to reach the island where the treasure's buried that counts, young Master Lemmington, it's how long it'll take us to find the treasure once we get there. It also matters what the island's got to offer. If we're lucky, the trees'll be bowed down by the weight of bananas and coconuts, not to mention all the fat pigeons nesting there. But if we're unlucky it'll be some stony, barren shore with nothing but crabs to catch and seaweed to dress 'em with. So I'm laying in plenty o' salt pork and oranges and barrels o' water. And grog, o' course. A pirate cap'n must always make sure he has rivers o' grog to feed his crew or the next thing he's likely to find is himself wishing he'd made sure the barnacles were cleaned off his keel. You savvy?”

“We savvy,” said Viola.

Rustbane shot her a glance, clearly not liking the cold detestation dripping from her voice.

“O' course,” he said quietly, “there's another animal a pirate crew's more'n happy to eat if provisions run short and that's a lemming.”

“You so sure about that?”

Rustbane just grinned in reply.

“How many of your men would be wanting to eat their good buddy Three Pins then?”

The pirate's grin faltered. “There are lemmings and lemmings.”

“Or Three Pins' daughter?”

It was fun, Sylvester decided, watching Cap'n Rustbane realizing he'd been outflanked. The pirate looked this way and that, as if someone might come to rescue him, but there was no one to come and it was clear he was at a complete loss for words.

Rustbane made up his mind to abandon this topic of conversation. He directed his gaze toward Sylvester.

“Three days before we set sail. Not a lot of time, young Lemmington. Not a lot of time for you to make sure you have every last piggly detail of that map engraved on your mind. Even Three Pins's best friend among the crew'd not be in any mood to show mercy to her if the Shadeblaze sailed and sailed until it was obvious we was on the wrong course. And if my brave boyos would be cruel to Three Pins, it don't bear imagining what they'd do to Three Pins's daughter and, worst of all, to Three Pins's daughter's paramour, him that'd got everyone into this mess in the first place.”

The pirate stared out into the limitless sky beyond Blighter Island and spoke quietly, as if to himself.

“There ain't nothing more pitiful than watching a brave fellow, or lemming as it might be, trying to stop hisself screaming long enough to beg to be fed to the fishes.”

“You're good at threatening people weaker than yourself, aren't you?” said Viola, her voice, if anything, even icier than before.

Rustbane laughed. “That's what life is all about. The strong win out, and the weak lose everything. The wages o' kindness is misery, the wages o' cruelty is wealth and happiness. You don't need to be one o' they famous philosophers to work that out.”

“You poor sap,” commented Viola, dropping her words like icicles into the frigid pond of the silence that had followed Rustbane's remark.

He snorted. “Me? Poor? Sap?”

“Yes, you. What have you gained from your life of cruelty and murder and theft?”

Rustbane's gesture embraced the proud ship on whose deck they stood and his own magnificent attire. The pearl handles of his flintlock pistols shone, but even they seemed almost tawdry alongside the splendor of the jewels encrusting the pommel of his evilly curved cutlass.

“Quite a lot, I'd say.”

“You would?” said Viola, feigning incredulity. “There's more comfort in the poorest Foxglove cottage than there's to be found on board this cesspit of a ship. Oh, sure, it looks fine and dandy when you see it from afar, with its flags fluttering and its sails full, but as soon's you come close you start smelling the stench of its bilges. And there's better food on the table of that Foxglove hovel than ever you'll eat on the Shadeblaze. Fresh nuts and vegetables, not cabbages that've been rotting a month and more.”

Rustbane looked nettled.

The cabbages were a sore point, and by tacit agreement everyone aboard the Shadeblaze resisted the temptation to talk about them. Long before the ship had come to Foxglove, its captain had struck what he'd thought was a fine bargain with a trader out of Winter Isle for a large consignment of cabbages. Food enough to keep the cold out for the next three voyages, the trader had claimed before making himself scarce with the gold Rustbane had given him. For the next week, the crew of the ship had eaten cabbage with every meal. By the end of that week, even the pirates who'd started out being rather partial to a spot o' cabbage, doncha know, were in a mood fit to kill anyone who even suggested the possibility of ever eating the vegetable again.

So the huge consignment, barely marked by the incursions made upon it by a full week's worth of eating by the Shadeblaze's complement, sat in the ship's hold.

Moldering.

Six days ago, Cap'n Rustbane, in one of his rare misjudgments of the mood of his men, had insisted that, waste not, want not, it was time once more to have a meal of cabbage.

He had been deaf to the protests of the ship's cook, Bladderbulge, that the heap of vegetables had by now become more liquid than anything else. Rustbane had paid for this fodder, hadn't he? Who was Bladderbulge to be suggesting the captain's investment should be pitched over the side?

Sylvester remembered that meal, remembered it only too clearly no matter how hard he tried to forget it.

So did everyone else on the Shadeblaze.

And no wonder.

They'd all seen it twice. Once on the slow, reluctant way in and a second time, not long thereafter, as they clung to the ship's side wishing sweet death would come down from the skies to claim them as it forcefully propelled itself from parts of their digestive system they'd never known they had.

As soon as enough of the pirates had regained their strength, the remainder of the squelching heap of cabbages in the hold had gone the same way as the stuff Bladderbulge had cooked up, being abandoned as a green, poisonous scum spreading across the ocean surface behind the Shadeblaze's rapidly receding stern.

Surprisingly, Bladderbulge hadn't gone into the sea alongside it.

To give Rustbane credit, thought Sylvester, the gray fox had headed off the vengeful mob of pirates that was in search of the cook's hiding place and persuaded them Bladderbulge was not to blame but, instead, he himself was.

Somehow mutiny had been averted.

No one mentioned the word “cabbages” again. Not outside their own nightmares, anyway.

Now Viola had.

No wonder Rustbane's eyes flashed venom.

“You've got some serious thinking to do, Sylvester,” he said tightly. “Three days to remember every last detail. And if I'm not satisfied that you've done exactly that, then you're going to find yourself swinging from my high yardarm with,” he gave a bitter mock-courteous nod towards Viola, “your lady friend dancing alongside you. Understood?”

“Understood,” said Sylvester, trying but failing to match the pirate's stare.

“Good,” snarled the gray fox.

He turned and stomped off down the deck away from them.

A squawking gull flew down towards him, perhaps hoping the pirate might feed it some tidbit.

The bright steel blade of Rustbane's cutlass flashed.

The two halves of the bird fell like stones into the churning dark water below.

✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿.

“Darkness at last,” said Viola.

More hours had passed. The three lemmings sat in the cabin Viola shared with her mother. Luckily Mrs. Pickleberry agreed with the two younger lemmings that flight from the ship was their best option. Sylvester had been worried she might have grown to enjoy the pirate life and would prefer to throw in her lot with Rustbane and his nefarious crew.

But Mrs. Pickleberry had no better plan for escape than Sylvester had managed to conjure up himself, which was no plan at all.

They'd all agreed any attempt to escape should wait until nightfall.

And now Viola was pointing out that, indeed, night had well and truly fallen.

“Any suggestions as to how we're going to set about this?” Sylvester said desperately, not looking at either of his two companions but instead at the paneled wall on the far side of the cabin.

“Not nuttin',” said Mrs. Pickleberry glumly.

“It's not as if we could just walk out the door,” said Sylvester.

“Or even the window,” added Viola, significantly not looking in the direction of the open porthole. She and Sylvester would have been able to squeeze through that aperture, but her mother was a middle-aged lemming with a middle-aged lemming's amply spreading girth, and … Best not even to think about it in case Mrs. Pickleberry heard your thoughts.

“On the other paw …” Viola continued, her voice growing more thoughtful, even dreamy. “Yes, the window's the answer, isn't it?”

Sylvester darted an incredulous look in her direction.

Viola intercepted it and smiled merrily.

“Listen,” she said, beckoning the other two to bring their heads close to hers. “Listen, here's what we'll do …”

✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿.

Cheesefang tended not to bother knocking on doors, especially doors behind which were confined females who might or might not be changing their attire. Instead, he either kicked doors open or, if he was carrying a heavy tray laden with steaming plates of tucker, as he happened to be doing right now, he turned and burst doors open with a mighty clout from his threadbare rear end.

The door satisfyingly crashed against the cabin wall.

“Here ye are, ye stinking landlubbers. Here's a supper ye don't deserve, scumbags. Ye c'n spend the whole time yer eating wondering which is the plate inter which I've gobbed, heh heh. Ye c'n—oh, by the lips of the triple-breasted goddess, I'll be dancing to the tune of the hempen jig for this!”

The cabin was empty.

The porthole gaped wide open.

The tray clattered to the floor.

“Emergency!” yelled Cheesefang, his claws rattling on the steps of the companionway as he sprinted up to the main deck. “Alarm! Tarnation! The prisoners is escaped!”

Below, barely daring to breathe, the three lemmings huddled inside the secret study that Cap'n Josiah Adamite had built for himself.

The sound overhead of Cheesefang's claws scuttling this way and that was joined by other noises of panic.