“But you have to promise never to tell anyone.”
By the time I reached the armory, Isabelle and the other two mutineers had Captain Cross cornered at the points of their machetes. In the dim lamplight, I could just make out two dozen sailors watching the standoff and waiting to see how things would go before committing to a side. The hulking form of Double Eyeball Bill, Cross’s bodyguard, lay sprawled across the floorboards, groaning, a bloody hand over the left half of his face. It was clear that Double Eyeball would not be doing any more bodyguarding tonight. And that he would be needing a new nickname.
Unarmed, outnumbered three to one, and thin as an eel’s skeleton, still Cross had no intention of going down without a fight. He swung his gaze back and forth between the mutineers, as if trying to decide which to kill first. Each sharp turn of his head whipped his grey curls and jangled the mess of brass keys threaded onto his hoop earring. Cross’s eyes tightened and his face scrunched. Or perhaps it unscrunched. The old man was such a mess of wrinkles and scars it was impossible to know the difference. In any case, the bits that made up his face rearranged themselves in a rather affronted sort of way.
“So it’s mutiny, then, is it?” Cross snarled. “The lure of my magic bounty finally became too much for you traitorous lot, and you’ve come to steal it right out from under me, eh?”
“You mean the magics you snatched from all them noble houses,” Thomas said. “How’s us nicking it from you any different than you nicking it from them?”
“I was doing them a favor,” Cross said, as if truly offended at the accusation. “They’d grown dependent upon their magic to maintain their fortunes. Landing in the slums with the common folk forced their children to grow up tough and resourceful.”
“What are we blithering about for?” Two Ears asked. “Any second now Buckworth’s fleet will spot us.”
“Right you are,” Isabelle said. “Let’s get on with it, then.” Isabelle started forward, then paused, glancing back over her shoulder with a confused look. She caught my eye and in an unsure voice asked, “Where’s Dead Arm?”
“I took his axe and kicked him overboard,” I said. While the three mutineers stood with mouths agape, I strode forward and pushed Isabelle against the wall, putting the axe blade to her throat.
Thomas looked at me like I’d stomped the tail of his favorite cat. “But you were the one who kept—”
Before he could finish, I rounded on him with a fist to the jaw and down he went. Two Ears didn’t see Cross’s kick coming for his knee until it was too late. The man crumpled to the floor, groaning while Cross stood over him and glared at the crowd of sailors.
“Who else was with them?” he bellowed.
A quick eye might have caught a dozen knives quietly being returned to waistbands behind a dozen backs. Then a dozen men and women looked around innocently at everything but the captain. Somewhere in the mob, someone softly whistled an old sea shanty.
“To the brig with this lot,” Cross ordered. As the mutineers were hauled away, he turned to the remainder of his crew. “This foolishness has all but cost us our chance at snatching Lord Buckworth’s storm magic. But we will press forward. From this night on, the winds and the rain shall do our bidding, and forevermore the Carrion Crow will be the most powerful and fearsome ship on all the seas!”
A roar went up from the crew, every hand raising a weapon into the air.
“And then we’ll get our hands on some really huge piles of gold!” called out Five Finger Jack.
“No . . .” Cross said, as if explaining something to a child. “Then we’ll go after more magic.”
“Shouldn’t we also steal some gold?” asked No Disease Nina. “I mean . . . eventually?”
“Yes, yes,” Cross said impatiently, “we’ll get around to that.” He turned to unlock the vault door behind him, muttering something about “kids these days.”
The heavy wood door of the vault creaked open, allowing just enough room for Cross to step inside. He looked over the shelves, which held eighteen padlocked wooden chests. Cross lugged one of them out into the armory, dropped it onto the ground in front of him, and removed his key-hoop earring. After sorting through its eighteen keys, he unlocked the chest, unleashing a misty, pale blue glow and a hum as soft as the purr of a slumbering cat.
“Dent Skull,” Cross called out. “The feather magic is yours for the night. See you don’t die before returning it to this chest.”
Dent Skull Sally stepped forward and slowly reached her hand into the chest. The glow and hum slithered up her arm and seeped into her body. Her eyes and smile widened as it settled into her. Cross dragged another chest forward and found its key.
“Dead Arm!” Cross shouted, looking about the room. When no one answered, he said, “Oh. Right.”
“I’ll take his place, Captain,” I said, a little too eagerly.
Cross considered me for a moment, then said, “If you take the ghost magic, everything depends on you. You don’t make it to the Flower’s vault, it’ll be prison for the crew and the noose for myself.”
I restrained my movement to a slow nod, careful to show no signs of the butterflies flitting about inside my rib cage. “Aye, Captain. I’ve thought on that.”
Eyes fixed on me, Cross tilted his head toward the chest. I dropped to a knee and hefted open the lid. Dozens of faint white rays of light curled up out of the opening. I slowly dipped my hand inside, the magic’s radiance wrapping around my arm with effervescent pinpricks. My skin drank them in. A buzz raced up my arm and spread through my body like the warmth of rum.
“You know how the ghost magic works, aye?” the captain asked me.
“None will perceive me, through eyes nor ears,” I said, “but only so long as I do nothing to draw their gaze.”
Cross handed out magic to a few more of the crew—just those magics essential to his plan—and secured his vault with a double turn of the weighty key he kept on a chain around his neck. He spun and jealously eyed each of his crew members, all of whom knew that looking away and feigning disinterest was the healthiest course of action. Idle curiosity about the vault and its contents had earned more than one former crew member an unexpected and unending holiday in the middle of the ocean.
“We’re about in position,” Cross said. “Keep your excitement under a tarp for now. Quickly and quietly—with me.”
The sailors followed him through the dark corridors and up to the top deck. Removing myself from the sight of men was as simple as thought—I looked down at my hand to find that the moonlight passed straight through it and all the clothing I wore. Even my newly acquired axe vanished as if it had been transmuted into pure ether.
Our crew had brought us up so close to the Flower of the Indus the sides of the two ships nearly rubbed together. The Flower’s night-watch crew, dressed in identical royal-blue livery, loomed over us, looking down over their rail with the same expression one might have worn after noticing an oddly shaped snail hiding amongst the food on their dinner plate.
“Ahoy there!” Cross called out. “I am Captain Cross of the Carrion Crow. We are pirates here to take your vessel. Please surrender immediately so that we may avoid any unpleasantries of the stabbing variety.”
“Um . . .” came the slow reply from one of the Flower’s crewmen. “Yes, I can understand how our surrender would be desirable—from where you’re standing, that is—but it seems you’ve failed to notice the disparity in size between our vessel and your own.”
“I have eyes, lad,” Cross replied. “But you see, this ship and her crew are like a wolverine . . .”