Chapter 4 - Fortune
“This here is Lady Beck. She’ll be taking your cabin so long as she’s aboard,” Drake said to Princess as he stormed up the gangplank onto his ship.
Princess spared a long-suffering glance towards the woman and sighed. “Aye.”
That there, Drake decided, was why he would never give Princess a ship of his own. The man was an excellent first mate, able to shout orders and knock heads with the best of them. He was competent with a sword and no coward in battle either. He was as loyal to Drake as folk came, but the man had no conviction; Zothus would never have given away his cabin so easily. Unfortunately Zothus was true captain material, and Drake needed as many friendly captains as he could find, so he’d been near forced to give the man a ship of his own. In one unfortunate but necessary decision Drake had given away the best first mate he’d ever known and the most terrifying ship-board pest-hunter any pirate had ever heard of. Drake would never admit it, but he actually missed Zothus’ giant spider at times.
“Beck, this is Princess.” Drake paused, waiting for the comment about the man’s name. The Arbiter kept her mind to herself. “You need anything, I reckon you should just go see him.”
“If I need anything I’ll bring it straight to your personal attention, Drake,” Arbiter Beck said. There was cold iron as well as honey in the woman’s voice, and ordinarily Drake would have found that appealing, and more than a little so, but she was on his ship now – and nobody gave Drake Morrass orders on his own ship. He rounded on the woman, grabbed hold of the collar of her tunic with one hand, and, with more effort than he liked to admit, sent her stumbling down the deck. She collided with the main mast shoulder first, yelping in what was either surprise or pain. Drake sincerely hoped it was both.
Beck pulled a pistol from its place on her jerkin, pointing it at Drake. Her hat had fallen from her head, and for the first time Drake saw something other than disapproval in her eyes: he saw fear. To the Arbiter’s credit, her aim was steady in spite of it. Drake stopped just in front of Beck, her pistol barrel poking him in the chest.
“Now, might be you think ya safe on account of the Oracle sending you to me. You ain’t. Or maybe you reckon those little pistols’ll protect you. Thing is, I counted ’em and you got seven. One word from me and my crew’ll descend on you like particularly hungry laughing dogs, and there’s a few more than seven of ’em. So no matter how safe or protected you think you are – you ain’t.
“Captain’s word is law on board a ship and I just happen to be captain on this one, so you live and die by my leave.” Drake leaned in closer and stared directly into the Arbiter’s icy blue eyes. “You wanna fuck off, be my guest. Something tells me you’ll be staying though. You follow my orders to the fucking letter, or I swear to your god and mine that I will put one of those little pistol bullets of yours through your chest and throw you overboard for whatever fucking denizen of the deep’ll have ya.”
Drake didn’t bother waiting to see if the woman agreed; he turned away and raised his voice so all his gathered crew could hear. “This here is Arbiter Beck. Our friendly Oracle sent her to look after me.” That earned a chuckle from the pirates. “She’s off-fucking-limits. Good?”
There was hurried assent from the crew in general. “Good,” Drake continued. “Now get the fuck back to work before I decide to make an example out of one of ya.”
Drake turned back to Princess and Arbiter Beck with a smile. “Pirates – sometimes they just need a good threatening to keep ’em in line.” As the Arbiter lowered her pistol, Drake laughed and shook his head. “How are we looking with the repairs, Princess?”
Princess took a step backwards and winced, his long hair falling in front of his face, and that face looking like it really wanted to be elsewhere. “About that, Cap’n. We need to beach the ship.”
There was far too much at stake and far too much to do, and Drake was not about to lose weeks to beaching the ship. “No,” he said in a voice that brooked no argument.
“Aye, Cap’n. Only thing is…” Princess sighed and pointed at an unassuming bucket sitting by the mast. It appeared to be filled with murky water.
“Shit,” said Drake, staring into the bucket and seeing that it wasn’t water, but rubbery, grey flesh.
“Ying noticed it on the starboard bow, Cap’n,” Princess continued. “Got it off pretty quick, but there’s at least one plank that’s gonna need some repair if not replacing.”
“Any more of them on my ship?”
“Won’t know for sure ’til we get her beached. Get a good look at her belly.”
“What is it?” Arbiter Beck asked quietly from beside Drake. He felt her compulsion tug at his mind, but as before his will slipped away from her magic.
“A gipple,” Princess answered immediately. “Fuck me, that felt odd.” No doubt it was his first encounter with an Arbiter’s compulsion.
“A pain in my arse,” Drake said testily. “One part seal and one part demon.”
“Demon?”
“Maybe. Attach themselves to the hull and… here.” Drake reached into the bucket and grabbed hold of the creature’s oily skin, turning it around in the bucket to reveal its head. “See the mouth? That circle of teeth there moves back and forth in a rasping motion. Fucking things chew right through the hull all slow like. Can take weeks, but once they do – well, ships don’t do so well when they’re full of holes.
He turned to Princess. “Get her beached. We’re gonna need to slap another coat of lime tar on her as well. Can’t afford to have these little bastards putting holes in my ship.”
“Aye, Cap’n,” said Princess as he moved away to begin preparations.
“You found me a replacement for the spider yet?” Drake called after him.
“Depends, Cap’n. You still dead set against a cat?”
“Aye.”
“I’ll keep looking.”
Drake looked at Arbiter Beck; the woman seemed to have backed down a little after his earlier threats, but she was in no way cowed. “Might not wanna move aboard just yet, Arbiter. Reckon we might be here a while.”
Chapter 5 - The Phoenix
Only one ship occupied the berth at south port, a sloop by the name of North Wind. Keelin had never seen the little ship before and, more importantly, had no idea who captained the vessel. What Keelin did know for certain was that it wasn’t The Black Death, and it was therefore not captained by Tanner Black.
No sooner had Keelin set his boots onto the decking of the jetty than the harbour master – a truly superficial title as he was master of nothing, but more accurately a caretaker of the jetties – was beside him, bowing and offering “sincere” opportunities for monetary advancement. The man obviously didn’t remember Keelin, but Keelin remembered him, and not fondly. Even ten years ago the harbour master had seemed ancient, with thin greying hair hanging lank about his face, a mouth dotted with decaying brown teeth, and breath that could kill a shark at fifty paces. Keelin was ashamed to admit he’d been young and naive, and the man had swindled him out of nearly a month’s pay. These days he was neither.
“Good fortunes an’ fair weather, Captain.” The man’s voice had an annoying habit of whistling through his teeth when he spoke certain sounds – it did very little to endear him to Keelin. “S’nice ship ya got there. Very nice. Plenty o’ ruffians round these parts though, real bad eggs, some would say. Might be they see ya nice ship there as a bit o’ fun. Of course, I could look out fer it for ya, make sure those ruffians don’t touch it, nor none o’ yer men either. Keep it safe. Fer a small fee…” The man’s voice rose annoyingly high at the end of the offer, and a greedy glint lit his eyes.