Still, the other captain, Mr. Marn, was clever. He veered, he dodged, he forced them to overshoot once, and the men on his deck fired their pistols across the gap. But it was only a matter of time before Dauntless overtook them and grappled.
“Heel over or I’ll sink you and leave you swimming!” Candless roared, and the other ship gave up the fight.
Before they even were fully reefed, Candless’s crew was leaping across the gap, hunting, pistols in hand. They swarmed across the deck and poured below. After a few bated-breath minutes, the rest of the Ray’s crew came up on deck with their hands on their heads. Half-men guards and cooks and stewards and finally, Captain Marn. They glared across at the Dauntless.
“Where’s Miss Nita?” Candless shouted.
Marn grinned and shouted back, “If you can’t find her, you’ve got no business with her, you mutinous bastard!”
“Mutinous?” Candless muttered. “I’m not the one who lapped red cash out of Pyce’s hand.” He turned to his lieutenant. “Reynolds, take the ship.” He made his way down the steps with Nailer following. The jump from one ship to the other was nerve-racking, but Nailer was determined not to show any fear. He leaped and landed badly on the moving deck, but at least he was aboard.
Captain Candless surveyed the deck. “Go see if you can sniff out Miss Nita, boy. She’s got to be somewhere.”
Nailer slipped down into the bowels of the ship, making his way from state room to state room, but every place he looked revealed no sign of Lucky Girl. Nothing. She wasn’t in any of the astonishingly large staterooms. She wasn’t anywhere. Others were searching this ship as well, Knot and Vine and Cat, and all of them were increasingly nervous as they went through the rooms.
“What about secret places?” Nailer asked.
“Wouldn’t she make a racket?” Cat wondered.
“Not if she’s drugged or tied.”
Cat made a face of distaste. They continued their search. Finally they came back on deck.
“Nothing,” Cat reported. “We’ve got nothing anywhere.”
The captain cursed and turned on Marn. “Where is she?” He poked his finger in Marn’s chest. “If you free her, I won’t drop you over the side. Which is better than you deserve. You’ve gone against all your clan oaths, and you should be hung.”
“From where I sit, there’s only one person against his clan oaths and it’s you, you piratical bastard.”
Captain Candless scowled and turned to shout at his crew. “Take it apart! Take the whole damn ship apart. Take it apart piece by piece! I want Miss Nita found and then I want this ship sunk.” He glared at his opposite. “You had a chance to do the right thing. More than enough chances.”
Suddenly Captain Marn grinned. “We always suspected you of not being loyal. You couldn’t have been. Not after what happened to Ms. Sung. We always knew. But you were more careful than most of them. Biding your time. Keeping your head low. Some people thought you deserved the benefit of the doubt.”
Candless smiled tightly. “Mighty grateful for that.” He tipped his hat. “I’ll think about your kindness while I’m watching your boat sink under you.”
“Don’t bother with thanks,” Marn laughed. “Now that we know where you stand, we’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth.”
“Not once the board convenes. You’ll be gone and I’ll be back at sailing.”
Captain Marn grinned and shook his head. “I’m amazed at you. You used to be such a clever bastard.”
Candless’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Marn shrugged. “Just that you’re not as sly as you used to be. You used to have a sixth sense. I was sure you’d smell a trap and never fall into it, and then you came all the way in, just like they expected.”
“Like who expected?” Captain Candless stared at Marn. A look of fear flitted across Candless’s face, an anxious thought; then the captain roared, “Reynolds!”
“Captain?”
“What’s our horizon?”
“Clear, sir.”
“Check again.”
A pause, then Reynolds called down, “I’ve got a sail.”
“Identify!”
Another pause and then she was shouting over the side. “It’s Pole Star, sir! It’s Pole Star for certain!”
Captain Marn and his crew grinned as the news went through Candless’s crew. “If you surrender now,” Marn said, “we’ll treat your crew as combatants rather than mutineers.” He said it loud, so that everyone could hear. “You can go free if you surrender now! Or you can die like dogs with your captain. Your decision!”
Captain Candless stared at the decks full of his crew around him, his face white. His first attempt at an order came as a croak. He tried again, and this time his voice was there, loud and angry, “Back to the ship! Ready sails!”
Already his crew was streaming back, but not all of them. Cat and three others stood by the rail watching. Cat gave a sad wave to them, and then he was allowing himself to be disarmed by the crew of the Ray.
Candless wasn’t done yet. “Vine! Knot! Destroy their nav.”
Dauntless’s gun swung around. Marn started to protest, but Candless just pointed his pistol in the man’s face. “I’d sink you, but your crew doesn’t deserve to drown just because you’re a lying dog.”
The gun fired and the con exploded in flames. Vine and Knot ran to the sails with torches and suddenly silk and ropes were burning. Flames rose high. Mutters of anger ran through the Ray’s crew. The flames leaped into the sky. The rest of Candless’s people leaped aboard and Dauntless heeled away from the burning ship.
“Full sails!”
Nailer looked to where the ship was closing on the horizon. Even without Dauntless’s scope, it looked large.
“Pole Star’s a fighter,” Candless said. “All we can do is hope they want the ship as a prize, or they’ll blow us up where we sail and we all die.”
Nailer watched the ships. “Why would they let us live?”
“We don’t have their armaments. It makes them confident.” Candless glanced back at the Ray, where the crew was pumping seawater onto their burning sails. He smiled without humor. “So now we’re the kittens being hunted.” He turned and shouted orders.
“What are you going to do?” Nailer asked.
“We’re going to run for the coast, and then see if we can make them make a mistake. They’ve got the jump on us, but it’ll be a long chase.” He looked out at the ocean. “We’ll just have to see if we can maybe make some trickery.”
“What kind?”
Candless was smiling, but to Nailer it looked forced. “I won’t know until I see it.”
He hurried up to his con, and Nailer, without any specific task, followed. The captain and Reynolds spread out maps, looking at the depths of the ocean.
“Our draft is shallower than Pole Star,” Candless muttered. “We have to find some place we can sneak into and hide.”
“We could try going up the Mississippi,” Reynolds suggested.
“They’ll radio down reinforcements for sure. I don’t want to be trapped into fighting on that river.”
Nailer stared at the maps, trying to make sense of them. The captain pointed to lines on the map. “These are our depths. Anywhere deeper than six meters, we’re okay. Shallower…”-he shrugged-“we run aground.” He pointed to a spot on one of the charts, deep in the Gulf’s blue water lines. “We’re about… here.” He pointed to a distant bit of shore. “That’s your old beach.” He returned to his discussion with Reynolds.
Nailer stared at the map, at the letters that made up Bright Sands Beach, and was surprised that he could actually make out words. He ran his finger along the depths and indicators, reading the numbers. The island where he and Pima had found Nita’s wrecked ship showed as a point of land, still connected to the mainland. “Are these maps old?” he asked.