The Wrath of a Shipless Pirate (The Godlanders War) (15 page)

I
n his time as a pirate, Corin had seen plenty of opportunities to play the stowaway. It always was a boring task, but it was none too difficult. The biggest challenges were staying unseen and staying hydrated. For any voyage longer than a day or two, securing rations became the most pressing challenge.

Corin’s first thought, as he analyzed the little hold, was that rations wouldn’t be a problem this trip. For a two-man vessel, the little hold was
packed
with crates of food and barrels full of drinking water. Corin broached the first of each he found and stole a drink and a loaf of bread.

But as he lay there in the claustrophobic darkness,
something
about the ship began to itch at him. He’d never spent much time on river ships, but still, he had an instinctive feel for the basic
architecture
of the things, and everything about this ship was wrong. Tired as he was, distracted by the things he’d seen, it took him longer than it should have to figure out the problem, but at last he did.

The hold was far too shallow. The slope of the walls wasn’t sharp enough, the bottom not deep enough. As soon as Corin noticed it, he understood. He’d known it for a smuggler’s vessel from the first, but he had not considered everything that fact implied.

This was a false hold. This was the one they’d open to
taxmen
and officials. But there would be another, deeper down, with some form of concealed entry. Pirates rarely wasted effort on such sorts of subterfuge, but the years he’d spent in the close quarters of all sorts of ships gave him a clue. He could tell by feel which walls were true.

But even armed with that knowledge, he spent more than an hour searching to no avail. He began to imagine other designs, other places they might hide the entrance to the false hold, but nothing seemed more likely than some false panel, some
artificial
crates within this space. So he checked them all, and then he checked them all again. He had the time to spare.

Once, while he was working in the crawlspace of the hold, he had a moment’s warning at the clomp of boots above him. He wedged himself into the very farthest corner and went still as midnight when the hold door flew up. If it had been day, the sun might have betrayed him, but not even starlight peeked past the heavy stormclouds, so Corin’s dark clothes concealed him in the shadows. He watched from perhaps a pace away as one of the two sailors stooped to draw a mug of drinking water.

Corin didn’t breathe until the door fell closed again. Then
he waited in his hiding hole another hundred
heartbeats
,
jus
t to
be safe. But no one came back for him, and it was
boredom
as much as anything else that eventually drove him forward again.

A little after midnight, by his best guess, his questing fingers found the latch. It was an uneven plank on the floor. A water
barrel
sat atop it, and Corin’s first attempts to budge the thing drew a heart-stopping groan from the scraping wood. Corin froze in panic, ears straining hard for some sound of alarm, but no one came.

After that he sat and waited for another of the frequent spats between the sailors. When he heard voices rise in anger, he planted his back against the heavy barrel, shoved with his legs, and, inch by inch, he slid the thing aside. That might have taken half an hour, though it felt like days. Still, when that task was done, the rest seemed almost too easy. He crouched above the false panels, trying all the edges with his fingers, until he found the spot to press, the spot to slide, and then the whole thing fell back to show him the true cargo hold.

It was mostly empty now, and that was no surprise. Corin couldn’t think of much worth smuggling
to
the Wildlands. They’d simply chosen this ship for its speed and stealth. But he also discovered he was not the first passenger to stow away down here. The lower hold was outfitted with a bunk and a bucket, a tiny table with a stub of candle, and a tinderbox. And there was a spot on the forward wall just high enough that Corin could stand straight.

He marveled at the space, after hours crammed inside the false hold. Then he went back to secure the panel, and in the
process
he discovered a locking latch. Not a hold for chattel, then, but for paying passengers. He grinned at that and threw the bolt, and then he sank down on the bed.

He’d gone three days now without sleep, and barely any food to eat, and now he found himself with a cabin and a
locking
door as well as provisions. He had no way to slide the water barrel back, but even if they discovered it, he’d have some
warning
when they had to break the door. He’d have time to make a plan. At worst—at absolute worst—he could always step through dream.

But in the meantime, he had a place to sleep and time to kill. He stretched out on the bunk and closed his eyes, enjoying the old, familiar pitch and roll of a ship at sea. In no time at all, he was fast asleep.

He couldn’t easily guess how long he slept, but when he woke, it wasn’t to the shouts of discovery or a pounding on the door. Everything seemed pretty calm. Corin rose and went back to the forward nook so he could stretch his arms and back, and while he was there, he discovered another perk of the smugglers’ hold: It offered excellent acoustics. Standing in just that spot, he could hear the sailors up on the deck as though he were standing right beside them.

The sailors called each other Ezio and Gasparo. Not pirates, then, or they’d have taken pirate names. Instead, they used good Ithalian names, which suggested these were formal attendants of the Vestossis. There seemed no clear distinction between the two in power, but Ezio clearly fancied himself the leader. Gasparo was the brute, uninterested in the little plots and schemes that Ezio got up to, but still he showed no d
eference
. These were Ethan Blake’s errand boys, carrying
messages
to Taker. That was no more than Big Jack had already told him, but Corin felt some measure of comfort to find a point of confirmation.

Alas, for all the clarity with which he could hear them, he could do nothing to steer their conversation. He would ha
ve giv
en much to hear some gossip concerning their
master
, some idle speculation concerning their current task, but all they talked about was wine and women. Corin spent an hour
listening
,
hoping
, searching for some clue within their prattle, but he heard nothing useful.

In the end, the only real advantage he could take from
eavesdropping
came when he abandoned it. He could wait until they were most distracted by their boasts and
bickering
, then steal into the upper hold to fetch more water or m
ore foo
d.

Ezio asserted his assumed authority in little ways. As the first day waned toward night, Ezio took the first watch, sending Gasparo to get some rest in a pretense of generosity that Corin saw right through. By midnight, Gasparo’s turn came up, and Ezio slunk off to snore beneath the stars while Gasparo sailed on alone through the darkest part of night.

That single fact provided a tantalizing opportunity. Corin sat in darkness and considered. He could use the glamour to impersonate one or another of the sailors. Of course, that would require the removal of the man he chose, but Corin had no
compunctions
against that. The only real challenge was choosing which man to replace.

The quickest answer was Ezio because of the role he played. Corin had no doubts that he could boss around Gasparo just as easily as Ezio did. But Gasparo had bragged that he’d done the stabbing back at the smuggler’s tavern. Corin’s lips pulled back at the memory. Gasparo needed killing.

The real decision depended entirely on information. More than he wanted either of these men dead, Corin had to find Dave Taker. Until Corin learned the rendezvous location, or at least learned which of these men held the secret, he didn’t dare move against either of them.

So he waited. His second day yielded him nothing but
frustration
, and the third was even worse. Big Jack had said it was a four-day trip, so Corin tried to bide his time, but every hour trapped in that tiny room, listening to the inane
yammering
of Gasparo and Ezio, drove him closer to madness. He did everything he could to learn their speech patterns, information that would be useful in his masquerade, but even more intently he searched for some subtle clue, some hint of where on Spinola’s coast they were heading.

And then, late on the third day, just as Ezio was sending Gasparo off to bed, he dropped a juicy morsel. “Get some rest,” he said, his voice ringing in the hidden cabin. “Tomorrow we’ll meet Taker.”

“You know the place?”

“I’ll know it when I see it.”

“You ever seen this guy before?”

“Once, I think. At a gala for the princess. He’s a dirty pirate, same as all the rest, but he has his uses.”

“And what’s he gonna want from us?”

“The don said to facilitate him. Whatever way he needs. But he sent you and me, so
…
”

“Killing, then.”

“Gotta be. A killing or a kidnapping, and who’s to kidnap in the Wildlands?”

“You’re the smart one, Ezio.”

“Don’t forget it. Get some sleep. I’ll take first watch again.”

“Wake me when it’s mine.” Then Gasparo plopped down in his place on the deck and set to snoring like a man at work.

Corin sank down on his bunk, grinning so hard it almost hurt his cheeks. Ezio knew the rendezvous location. Two hours until the watch changed, and then Gasparo would be up for four. Plenty of time to put his plan in motion. Corin closed his eyes and waited.

An hour into Gasparo’s watch, Corin slid aside the panel and crept out of his hidden cabin. He eased himself into the upper hold and lay a moment on his belly, motionless, surveying the open deck.

Ezio was curled under a thin blanket off to starboard, fast asleep. A strong wind blew dragging at the sails and making masts and rigging creak, making waves slap
pap pap
against the hull below. That would be more than enough noise to cover Corin’s actions.

Gasparo stood at strict attention in the bow, staring out across the waves, alert for any hidden rocks. Corin slipped out of his hiding place and stole across the deck, silent as a stalking cat. Two paces from his target, Corin grabbed a corner of his cloak and balled it in his left hand while he drew his dagger with
the ri
ght.

He slipped up behind Gasparo and jammed the makeshift gag over the sailor’s mouth, dragging his head backward. “This is for Big Jack Brown,” he whispered in Gasparo’s ear. “You’re not the only one who knows his way around a dagger.”

Gasparo struggled, his arms scrabbling frantically, but Corin squeezed tighter with his left arm, then slipped the right past a flailing elbow and, with a short, sharp gesture, inserted his dagger just below the sailor’s sternum. One thrust did the job. Gasparo fell limp against him, and Corin eased him to the deck.