For a heartbeat, he wondered if it might be possible to catch them all by surprise and somehow coerce them into putting him back in command. Then he snorted at his own foolishness and turned his thoughts to the practical question of how to escape the ship.
He had no way of determining the caravel’s precise position but assumed it had traveled too far for him and Stedd to swim ashore. Even in the unlikely event that he could make it, a child never would. They’d fare better in one of the ship’s boats, but he could see no way to launch one without somebody noticing. Unless, that was, no one on deck was in a state to notice anything.
Head bowed and shoulders hunched, he shuffled astern and climbed the companionway to the quarterdeck. When he did, he saw that the current helmsman was One-Ear Grim, a stooped, grizzled fellow whose nickname was something of an exaggeration. He’d lost only the top half of his left ear when someone bit it off in a tavern brawl.
Likely tired of standing alone in the rainy night, One-Ear Grim gave the newcomer a sour look. Then his eyes snapped open wide as he registered who’d joined him at his post. He sucked in a breath and snatched for the cutlass hanging under his cloak.
Anton rushed the other pirate and thrust the narrow-bladed knife into his throat. One-Ear Grim stiffened with his warning cry unvoiced and his weapon only halfway clear of the scabbard. Anton stabbed him twice more, and then the helmsman’s legs buckled and dumped him on the deck.
Anton peered down the length of the caravel. As best he could judge, the lookout was still gazing out over the bow, not back at the stern, and hadn’t noticed anything amiss.
Anton appropriated One-Ear Grim’s mantle, cutlass, dirk, coins, and baubles and manhandled the dead man’s body over the rail. Then, still trying to look like he was in no hurry, he returned to the hatch, lifted it, and beckoned.
Stedd swallowed and gave a jerky nod. Despite the powerful magic he’d worked earlier, at the moment he looked like a scared little boy, not anyone’s idea of the agent of a deity. But he climbed the ladder without needing to be coaxed.
Anton pulled the child close and wrapped one wing of his stolen cloak around him to conceal him. “Now we go astern.”
“What?” Stedd asked.
“Up into the back of the ship.”
The jolly boat hung from davits. Anton discarded the tarp that covered it, helped Stedd clamber in, and swung himself in after him. He then untied a pair of knots and let out the lines they’d secured. It was ordinarily a two-man job, but he managed to lower the small craft without simply dropping it into the sea.
Impelled by the moaning wind, the dark mass of the Iron Jest quickly receded from the jolly boat. Stedd watched it for a moment, then gave Anton a grin. “We did it!”
“Not yet,” Anton replied. He lifted an oar from the bottom of the boat and set it in a rowlock. “Now comes the hard part. I row, and when the boat starts to fill up with rain, you bail.”
As the night wore on, Anton discovered exactly how hard the hard part was. His back, shoulders, and arms ached. His hands blistered, and then the blisters broke. But, breath rasping, teeth gritted, he kept hauling on the sweeps, and when a trace of dawn filtered through the clouds on the eastern horizon, the light revealed a stretch of shoreline.
He smiled. But his satisfaction gave way to dismay when he saw that Stedd had set his bailing bucket back in the bottom of the boat and was staring at the eastern sky, whispering.
Anton was no priest, but like most people, he understood that folk with a connection to a supernatural power renewed their abilities through prayer and meditation. Judging from appearances, Stedd was doing that now.
If not for the boy’s magic, Anton would still be lying broken and bound in the belly of his former ship, but that didn’t mean it would be wise to allow Stedd further access to his talents. A prisoner who lacked the ability to cast spells was apt to prove less troublesome than one who could.
Yet it was also true that since fleeing the caravel, Stedd had seemed increasingly at ease in Anton’s presence. Perhaps it was because a frightened child needed someone to trust, despite excellent reasons to the contrary. At any rate, if Stedd failed to grasp that his fundamental circumstances hadn’t changed, perhaps it would behoove his sole remaining captor to keep him confused as long as possible. That too might make him easier to manage.
If that was the tack Anton intended to take, he needed an excuse for interrupting Stedd’s prayers. He thought for a moment then barked, “Keep bailing!”
Startled, the boy jerked around to face him. “I’m supposed to pray at sunrise. And you take little rests every once in a while.”
“I forgot you’re a landlubber. Otherwise, you’d realize the boat’s sprung a leak. We need one last long, hard push or we’ll sink before we make it ashore.”
Stedd looked down at his feet. Fortunately, with the rain constantly replacing the water he scooped out, it certainly looked as if the clinker-built hull might be leaking, and with a resolute scowl, he grabbed the pail again.
Stifling a grin, Anton took a fresh hold on the oars.
Not long after dawn gave way to morning, the jolly boat ran aground several paces away from a strip of mud and weeds, and the two fugitives waded the rest of the way ashore. Anton was poised to grab the boy if he tried to run, but there was no need. Stedd just looked around with a dazed expression that suggested he couldn’t believe they’d actually reached land. Or that he was too exhausted to think or do anything more at all.
If it was the latter, Anton could sympathize, but he mustn’t allow himself to slip into a similar condition. He scanned the gray, heaving sea and then the desolate shore with its windblown grasses and scrub pines slumped and dripping beneath the weight of the rain. To his relief, no threats were in sight. Not yet.
“Rest,” he said. “On the ground, if you like, although if you’re like me, those benches gave you your fill of sitting. Just don’t fall asleep. In a little while, we need to look for food and shelter.”
Stedd peered back, and Anton was struck again by how blue the captive’s eyes were even on another dismal day. “Good,” said the boy at length, “I’m hungry. But then what?”
“You mean, what am I going to do with you?”
“Well … yes.”
“You know I’m a pirate,” Anton said, “and I meant to collect the bounty on your head. But I give you my word, that was before you saved my life.”
Stedd smiled. “The Morninglord told me to.”
“So I could help you escape, I imagine. Anyway, you and I are comrades now-shipmates, thanks to our noble vessel beached yonder in the surf-and shipmates don’t betray one another.”
As soon as the words left Anton’s mouth, he remembered that Stedd had only recently witnessed multiple demonstrations to the contrary. But likely punchy with fatigue, the boy gave every indication of taking the ludicrous statement seriously.
“Then will you go on helping me?” Stedd asked. “Can you help me go where I need to?”
“Where’s that?”
“Sapra.”
Inwardly, Anton winced. As a notorious reaver, he had nooses and worse awaiting him all around the Sea of Fallen Stars, and seldom did he permit the threat of them to deter him from plying his trade. But for the most part, he steered clear of his homeland; folk there recalled him with a special hatred.
Fortunately, he had no actual reason to take Stedd all the way to Sapra or anyplace else in Turmish. But he might as well say he would. Because then the boy would willingly accompany him on a trek east.
East made sense because Teziir lay in the opposite direction, and the city-state’s patrols would still be on the lookout for sea raiders. Besides, if Anton failed to procure a ship or sailboat capable of reaching Pirate Isle before he came to Westgate, he could surely find one there. Westgate was a major port, and like any outlaw worthy of the name, he had contacts among its thieves’ guilds and criminal fraternities.