I pulled Jane across the deck to the starboard bow rail. She twisted out of my grip and said, “Hey, what’s the matter with you?”
I said quietly, “It took me a while, but I finally realized you lied to me.”
She looked outraged. “The hell I did.”
“You knew exactly who Black Edward Tew was the first time I mentioned his name.”
She started to protest some more, but bit it back. She knew I had her.
“When I asked you if you’d heard of him, you deliberately said something like, ‘There’s a lot of pirates in the world,’ which is not an answer. You were hiding that you knew about him without having to actually lie about it. And it was only after that that you started asking about his treasure. I thought you were just joking, but you knew there might be a treasure involved. At that point, even I didn’t know that.”
She said nothing.
“Now tell me why you did it,” I finished.
She started to speak, then stopped, then looked out at the water. I waited. A few sailors passed us, regarded us oddly, but said nothing.
At last Jane said softly, “Okay, you got me. I knew about Edward Tew. I should’ve told you. But I didn’t lie to you.”
“Don’t split hairs with me. Tell me why.”
“Why do you think? Miles. That stupid son of a bitch. Ever since I’ve known him, he’s been after the big score. I thought about telling you, but I know how good you are at this kind of thing, Eddie; if you started looking from scratch, without any hints from me, you might turn up a clue everyone else missed, and we might actually find Black Edward’s treasure. Even if I only got a cut of it, it’d be a fortune. Maybe then…”
She trailed off and looked away, but I heard the words anyway. Maybe then Miles will stop gambling and whoring.
“I’m not interested in Black Edward’s treasure, Jane. I’m really not.”
“I know that. I didn’t believe it at first, but I do now.” She looked contritely down, and then slowly her smile returned and she cut her eyes up at me. “Still, if we happen to, you know, stumble across it…”
I threw up my hands. “If we come across it, I don’t care who takes it. To be honest with you, the last thing I want is a pile of ill-gotten blood money.”
She grinned knowingly. “You’re piling it on thick, Eddie. I’m starting to not believe you again.”
I poked her in the hollow of her throat. “This is your warning shot, Jane. If you lie to me again-and just so we’re clear, just like I told Angelina, keeping things from me counts as lying-I’m leaving you at the next port we come to.”
“Okay,” she said seriously. “I’m sorry, Eddie. I should’ve trusted you.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“But I didn’t lie to you. I wouldn’t.” She poked me in the chest. “And you know damn well if you’d been really paying attention, you’d have caught me. So it’s really your fault for being sloppy.”
She said this playfully, but the seriousness beneath it was clear. And damn it, she was right. She smiled, which was bearable; if she’d laughed, we might’ve fought right there on the deck. But she didn’t.
I turned and walked away. As I did, I spotted Clift watching with the same mixture of curiosity and faint jealousy I’d noticed before.
The Red Cow was not a big ship to begin with. I wondered just how much smaller it would get before this trip was over.
Chapter Nine
The lookout, a gangly girl named Estella who stood on the foremast crosstree, called, “Sail ho! Right ahead.”
It was the first change in routine since we left port, and I expected a major reaction. What I got was a collective, ship- wide shrug. The crew did not rush; they sauntered into action. Half the men continued to lounge around the deck, while the other half waited to see if this was anything more than a passing vessel minding its own business.
You couldn’t miss one change, though. Suhonen emerged from the hold, clad only in knee-length pants and a sword belt holding a cutlass. Around his thick neck stretched a tattooed line of dancing human skeletons. Men scrambled to get out of his way as he went to the rail and stood casually, as if waiting for a carriage. But his eyes never left the horizon directly ahead, where the mysterious ship now appeared as an unmistakable silhouette.
Clift yelled to a man halfway up the mainmast shrouds. “Greaves, you old seagull, what do you see from your perch up there?”
Greaves, the sailing master, was a solid man in every sense: thickly muscled, unflappable, and with a manner that ensured he never had to give an order twice. He kept a short unlit pipe perpetually clamped between his teeth. “It appears t’be a Langlade merchant vessel,” he said. “But she’s flying the flags in the right order.”
Murmurs traveled through the crew around me. More men stopped what they were doing and came to the rails to watch. Clift said, “Verify that with the lookout.”
“Verify!” Greaves called up.
“Confirmin’ the mate’s statement!” Estella called down. Jane and I joined Clift at the port bow. The ship ahead flew several flags and banners, so I wasn’t sure which ones conveyed the information they all recognized.
“This is damned peculiar,” Clift said, wiping sweat from his chin. “A Langlade merchant ship.”
“Maybe she was taken before the pirates could refurbish her,” Jane said. To me she added, “Pirates don’t build their own ships, they just take existing ones and modify them. Usually they pick something with a little more muscle, though. A Langlade merchant ship is just a raft with ambition.”
“Why would a Langlade merchant ship be flying the pirate- hunter safety signals, then?” I asked. “For that matter, what exactly are the pirate-hunter safety signals?”
“It’s a way to let other pirate hunters know a ship has already been taken,” Clift said. “There’s a code in the way the flags are flown, which masts they’re attached to, which ones are higher or lower. Otherwise, we might start fighting before either side recognized the other.”
“Could it be a trick to lure us in close?” I asked. I felt tingles of excitement at the thought of a break in the monotony, even if that break might mean bloodshed.
“Maybe,” Clift said thoughtfully. “If someone bought the code, which gets changed every six months, and used it correctly. It’s not a simple thing. Still, that doesn’t explain why a ship like that would be sailing under such a banner.” He looked back at the quartermaster and called, “Call the watch below, Mr. Seaton. The men can use the practice.”
“Aye, Cap’n,” he said, then repeated the order in a roar that rippled the canvas.
Turns out “call the watch below” meant, essentially, what we were already doing: watching as the new ship grew closer. Jane’s description of it was accurate. It had a single mast, a low waterline, and a deck that was flush from bow to stern. The big, crude tiller seemed wholly inadequate to open ocean travel. In the middle of the deck, just forward of the lone mast, stood a pyramid of wooden crates held in place by a net and ropes.
There seemed to be about half a dozen men aboard her, no more frantic than our own. At last Greaves bellowed, “That’s Fernelli, first mate on the Randagore. They’re for real.”
“The Randagore is another pirate hunter,” Jane explained to me.
“So everything makes sense now?”
“Fuck no. Not a lick.”
The man Greaves had indicated waved from the other ship’s deck. “Hello, Red Cow! Do I smell rum from your ship?”
“You smell it from your own foul breath!” Clift yelled back good- naturedly. “But come aboard anyway!”
The ships pulled abreast, and a boat lowered from the other ship. A few minutes later, Fernelli, bald and with a bushy beard decorated with ribbons and little bells, leaped aboard the Red Cow. His two oarsmen followed with much less flair.