The unmistakable smell of Leo Friend.
Blackbeard's hand slithered up to Beth's shoulder and curled around it. His lips were wet and his eyes couldn't have been opened any wider and his breath was whooshing in and out through his open mouth. The cigar clung precariously to his lower lip. Shandy realized, even as he started forward, that the disembodied Leo Friend was somehow inhabiting the same space as Blackbeard, and, at least at the moment, was in control.
Shandy grabbed Beth's other shoulder and spun her aside, and then with the back of his hand he slapped the cigar out of the big man's slack mouth, and when it hissed as it hit the water below the pier, he drove his sword with all his remaining strength into the giant's belly. The big man's eyes stayed wide open, but now they were staring straight into Shandy's and it was only Blackbeard looking out of them. The mouth opened in a bloody but confident smile. Blackbeard took a step forward. Nearly fainting with the pain, Shandy leaned on the saber and tried to stand his ground, but though the blade was forced another couple of inches into Blackbeard's body, the needle was grating in his wrist-bones and he had to step back. The scuffing of his boots sounded loud on the planks of the pier.
The giant, still grinning bloodily, took another step, and again Shandy braced himself against the torment in his hand, and this time he felt the blade punch out through the man's back—but Blackbeard had reached the brazier now and reached down, picked up one of the glowing, ash-dusted coals as daintily as if it were a candy on a proffered tray, and squeezed it in his huge left fist. All over the harbor, for miles up and down the shore, sea birds flapped up into the air, clamoring in alarm.
Smoke spurted from between Blackbeard's fingers and blew away, and Shandy could hear the flesh sizzling. "Low-smoldering fire," the giant grated. Blackbeard stepped lithely back, so that as Shandy kept his grip on the saber hilt the blade slid out of him, and with his right hand he drew his own rapier. For a moment he paused, staring at the quick drops of blood falling from Shandy's hand. "Ah, Jack," Blackbeard said softly. "Someone taught you the blood and iron trick? You've clenched your fist over a compass needle? That won't work against Baron Samedi—he's more than a loa and he's not bound by their rules. He was showing the Carib Indians why night is to be feared centuries before Jean Petro was born. Drop the sword."
Shandy was sure he had lost, but he could feel Philip Davies at his back, and when he spoke he half thought Davies was prompting him. "My men and I," said Shandy hoarsely but distinctly, "are sailing to New Providence, to surrender to Woodes Rogers." He bared his teeth in a smile. "I'm giving you the choice. Join us, wholly adopt our goals as your own, or be killed right now where you stand." Blackbeard looked startled, then laughed—
—And suddenly Shandy lurched back on the carpentry shop bench, staring at the marionette he held in his right hand. It was one of the expensive yard-high Sicilian marionettes, and he had to hold it steady until the glue that held its head on had dried, but a long splinter was sticking out from the back of the mannikin and stabbing him painfully in the palm. The thing was heavy, too. His arm was trembling with the weight and agony of the thing. But if he let it go it would be ruined. Its brightly painted eyes were on him, and then its mouth opened. "Drop me," it said. "Open your hand and drop me."
The little wooden man was speaking with Shandy's own voice! Didn't that mean that it must be all right to do as it said? Shandy wanted to, but he remembered how proud his father had been when they'd got this one. He couldn't just drop it, no matter how much it hurt to hold it up.
"Drop me," the marionette repeated.
Well, why not, he thought as the sting of the splinter became more intense. What if it is my life I'm holding? It hurts, and none of these things lasts forever anyway.
Then he remembered something an ancient black man had said to him once in a boat on the Seine:
"You got that tactic, that mud-ball trick, from Philip Davies—and you have wasted it. He gave you something else as well; it would not please me to see you waste that too." The black man was gone, but a soft, reassuring hand gripped his shoulder, and he decided he could hold up the torturing mannikin for a while longer.
He opened his eyes, and found himself staring into Beth Hurwood's face.
Beth had been understandably slow to realize that she had drifted out of her delirium and was again wide awake—on a pier at dawn, dressed in her nightgown and surrounded by standing dead men. John Chandagnac was in front of her, holding a sword in a hand from which blood dripped energetically, facing a big bald man with a smoking fist and a terrible cut in his belly. It had been the sharp chill in the air, and the clean smell of the sea, that finally convinced her that this strange scene was not another dream. There was tension and dire challenge in the air, and she hastily called on her memory for some of the recent speech here: Ah, Jack. Someone taught you the blood and iron trick? You've clenched your fist over a compass needle? That won't work against Baron Samedi … Drop the sword.
Her eyes had darted to Shandy's sword hand, and she'd winced to see the blood pooling in the curve of the saber's knuckle-guard and running down his forearm … but at the same time she'd grasped the fact that the iron needle shredding his palm was his only hope … and that this bald man was trying to make him drop it.
Shandy's eyes were shut and the sword was wobbling in his hand—obviously he was ready to let go of it—but Beth was already moving forward. She took his shoulder firmly with one hand, and with the other she steadied the sword—by gripping the razor-edged blade tightly. Her own hot blood ran down the cold steel, followed the tang through the bell guard, and mingled with Shandy's. His eyes opened and met hers.
When the two bloods mixed the bald man was pushed back, but she knew he was only hampered, not beaten.
And then she heard a voice in her head, and at first she didn't want to listen because of its cynically humorous tone … it was the voice of that pirate, that Philip Davies! … but he was explaining something she needed to know, something about the areas of magic that were accessible only to women, and could be used by men only under certain specific conditions …
"Do you, John, take me, Elizabeth, to be your lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward … uh, forsaking all others … for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, I think that's all of it, till death do us part?" Her nightgown was flapping around her ankles in the chilly sea breeze and she was shivering like a wet cat. Her slashed hand trembled as it gripped the saber blade. Blackbeard was pushed back another step. He had drawn his rapier and he swung it around him in great whistling arcs as if to clear the air of resistance. "No," he choked, "you are for me! You can't—"
"I do," said Shandy. "And do you, Elizabeth, take me, J-John, to be your lawful wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward,"—he grinned—"forsaking all others, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part?"
Blackbeard howled with rage.
"I do," said Beth.
She now let go of the blade and hugged her slashed hand to herself, but Shandy felt himself waking up, felt alertness pouring into him and expanding his field of vision and making his saber feel lighter, springier. The surrounding dead men moved in, and then were pushed back by some force that withered them.