Peter and the Shadow Thieves (3 page)

T
HE AIR SUDDENLY TASTED OF LAND.

Captain Nerezza turned his pox-eaten face windward, where two smal , puffy clouds hugged the horizon, reminding him of the mashed potatoes in a shepherd’s pie.

Everything reminded Nerezza of food these days: he and his crew had dined on hardtack and skinned rats for the past two weeks, having run low on food and, far worse, water, as they wandered the sea aimlessly, increasingly desperate. Nerezza had begun to wonder if there real y
was
an island, or just a madman’s confused memories.

But now these midmorning clouds hovered, stationary, al alone, not another spot of white in the rich, cobalt-blue sky. And that tantalizing taste lay ever so gently on his salty, parched tongue.

Land.

Nerezza started to bark out an order, then caught himself. But the crewmen around him had heard his intake of breath and—knowing the painful punishment that awaited any man who failed to instantly obey Nerezza’s orders—were watching him intently.

The sight they saw would have shocked anyone unaccustomed to it. Nerezza’s cheeks and brow were deeply cratered and scarred from a disease he’d picked up in some godforsaken port. His eyes were smal , close-set, ratlike; his teeth, a disaster. But these weren’t the most distinctive features of his ravaged face.

Nerezza had no nose.

The one he’d been born with had been lost in a knife fight. In its place was a smooth-finished piece of African blackwood, shaped remarkably like the original, though without any nostrils. It was held to his face by a leather strap. When Nerezza wanted to smel something, he lifted the nosepiece to reveal a black hole in the center of his face. Through that hole he could pick up a scent as wel as a bloodhound—although when he sneezed, you didn’t want to be standing in front of him.

Nerezza lifted his nosepiece and sucked sea air into the hole. No question. Land.

Nerezza replaced the nosepiece and, ignoring the crewmen awaiting his orders, strode toward the mainmast. He grabbed the ratline and began to climb toward the first yardarm. The entire crew had stopped to watch this unusual sight; the only shipboard sounds were the whistle of lines and the random snap of dry canvas.

Hand over hand, Nerezza climbed. He was careful with his feet: where most of his crew went barefoot, he wore a fine pair of black leather boots, polished with whale oil for waterproofing, but il -suited to climbing rope.

Steady now,
he thought, glancing at the deck far below and the curious faces of the crew. Normal y he’d have ordered them back to work, but he wanted them to see this.

Wanted to make a point about who ran this ship, and what would not be tolerated.

He switched to another rope, avoiding the bulge of a sail. He pul ed himself up onto the second of three yardarms and climbed the mast the rest of the way, passing the topgal ant and coming up through a hole in the bottom of the crow’s nest. He pushed the trapdoor out of his way and pul ed himself up. The lookout, a sal ow, thin-faced man, was slumped against the side of the crow’s nest, snoring.

“Palmer!” bel owed Nerezza.

“Aye, sir! Captain,
sir!
” said the startled lookout as he clambered to his feet. He kept his face turned away from Nerezza, fearing the captain would smel the grog that had put him to sleep on his watch. “Captain,” he stammered, “sir, I—”

Nerezza cut him off, his voice calm, cold. “South-southeast, Mister Palmer. See anything?” Palmer spun in the wrong direction, corrected himself, and final y raised his spyglass. “A pair of cumulus, sir! Captain Nerezza, sir.” He was sweating now.

Slowly, deliberately, Nerezza pul ed his knife from his belt. He held it in his right hand, the blade sparkling in the sun. Palmer pretended to keep looking though the spyglass, but his free eye was locked on the knife.

Nerezza’s voice remained calm. “Wind speed, Mister Palmer?”

Palmer took a look at the long pieces of cloth tied to the rigging at the ends of several yardarms. “Fourteen, fifteen knots, Captain, sir.”

“And those clouds, Mister Palmer…are they moving with the wind?”

The end of Palmer’s spyglass shook. Nerezza reached out and steadied it for him. Nerezza said, “Wel ?”

“No, sir. They ain’t.”

“Ain’t moving, you say?” Nerezza asked. “And why would that be?”

Palmer lowered the spyglass. Terror turned his face from deep tan to the color of dirty soap.

“Can’t you smel it, lad?” Nerezza asked, lifting his nose-piece and sniffing loudly in the direction of the two clouds. “Or has the grog
clouded
your ability to smel , eh?” Nerezza smiled at his wordplay. Not a pretty smile.

Palmer, shaking, tried to answer; words formed on his lips, but they were too soft, and the wind carried them away.

“What’s that you say?” Nerezza bel owed.

“They ain’t moving because…because they’re over an island, sir.”

“And what exactly has we been out here searching for these past eight weeks, you pitiful excuse for a sailor?”

“An island, sir.”

“Yes, Mister Palmer. An island.
That
island, I’m wil ing to wager. The island that you missed because you was sleeping on your watch. Now wasn’t you, Mister Palmer?”

“I was, yes, sir,” Palmer said, shaking harder now.

“Cold, are you, Mister Palmer?” Nerezza said. It was hot enough to melt the pitch between the planks on the deck. Nerezza leaned close, to where his breath played against Palmer’s ear. “You want to experience cold, Mister Palmer, perhaps I could arrange a visit with our esteemed guest, the one who travels in the cabin next to mine. The one who don’t come out except at night. Would you like to meet
him,
Mister Palmer? Want to spend a few minutes
alone
with him?”

“NO!” said Palmer, a new level of terror in his eyes. “I mean, no, sir, Captain. No. Thank you, no.” His teeth were clattering now. He put a hand over his mouth to shut himself up.

“You sure, Mister Palmer?” Nerezza said. “I could arrange it.”

Palmer shook his head violently.

“I didn’t think so,” said Nerezza softly. “Not that I blame you.”

Nerezza stepped away from Palmer and looked down. The crow’s nest towered a hundred feet above the waterline. The ship, on its current tack, was heeled over, so the sea was directly beneath Nerezza. The deck, to the side, looked impossibly smal in the vast expanse of blue ocean. Nerezza saw the upturned faces of the crew, al intently watching the drama taking place aloft. That pleased Nerezza. He wanted their ful attention.

He turned back toward Palmer and held his knife up for al to see. Raising his voice—the powerful voice of a captain used to making himself heard throughout his ship—he addressed Palmer’s cowering form.

“I offers you a choice, Mister Palmer,” he bel owed. “
Three
choices, in fact, as I am a fair and evenhanded captain. One, you can pay a visit tonight to our esteemed guest in the cabin next to mine.”

This brought gasps from the men below. Palmer whimpered, and again shook his head violently.

“Two,” continued Nerezza, “I can carve a set of gil s into you and toss you into the sea for the sharks to play with.” He turned his knife so it glinted in the sunlight. Palmer was sobbing now.

“Three,” bel owed Nerezza, “you can jump. Right now. Without another word from your worthless trap. If you can reach that island—the island
you
should have spotted—I’l welcome you back aboard, Mister Palmer, as I am a forgiving man.”

Nerezza drew in a deep breath, the air whistling past his wooden nosepiece.

“Now, which is it to be? The swim? The sharks? Or a visit with—”

Palmer was gone. Nerezza leaned over the side and calmly watched as the receding body grew smal er, then disappeared in a splash of white foam that quickly dropped behind the fast-moving ship.

Whether Palmer surfaced or not, Nerezza neither knew nor cared. He never looked back as he gave the orders—orders that the crew executed even more quickly than usual—

to start the ship tacking toward the two smal clouds in the distance.

“
C
AP’N,” BAWLED THE LOOKOUT perched atop a tal palm. “It’s the boy!”

“Where away?” bel owed a rasping voice from inside the fort. A moment later the owner of the voice appeared in the doorway: a tal , rangy man with long, greasy black hair, a hatchet face, close-set dark eyes, and a hooked nose protruding over the extravagant foot-wide flourish of facial hair that had given him his legendary and feared pirate nickname: Black Stache.

“East-nor’east, Cap’n!” shouted the lookout. “Coming down the mountain!”

The fort was made of fel ed palm trees, vines, and nameless barbed and spiked plants, lashed together into an ugly but surprisingly sturdy wal , which enclosed a half dozen huts and lean-tos. On one corner of this wal , high up, was the lookout’s perch: a lonely palm tree, its fronds turning brown. Black Stache stepped through the massive double-door gate, the only break in the wal ed compound. He abruptly halted, a look of concern crossing his usual y fearsome face.

“Is that…that
creature
around?” he cal ed up to the lookout, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice.

The lookout scanned the area around the fort.

“No, Cap’n,” he said. “It’s gone, least for now.”

Confident again, Black Stache strode into the clearing in front of the fort and looked up toward the mountain, squinting in the blazing sunlight.

“Smee!” he shouted. “My glass!”

“Aye, Cap’n!” came the response. “Here it…OW!”

First Mate Smee—a short, baggy man in short, baggy pants—tripped hard over the doorsil , as he had a dozen times a day since the fort had been erected. He sprawled in the dirt, the spyglass flying from his hand and rol ing to the feet of Black Stache, who looked down at it, then back at Smee.

“Smee,” he said, more wearily than angrily, “you are a supreme idjit.”

“Aye, Cap’n,” said Smee, scrambling to his feet. He picked up the spyglass and handed it to Black Stache, who took it with his right hand and, turning to the mountain, held it to his right eye.

“Focus!” he said.

Smee scuttled alongside the captain and slowly turned the lens piece of the spyglass—a task that Black Stache had not yet learned to perform for himself with the hook he wore in place of his left hand. The hook was a nasty-looking semicircle of shining steel fashioned from a dagger by one of Black Stache’s handier crewmen, and bound to the captain’s wrist stump by a stout leather strap. It was sharp as a razor, so sharp that Black Stache had several times cut himself in unfortunate places by absentmindedly scratching.

Smee had offered to dul the hook, but Black Stache liked it gleaming sharp—liked the nervousness he saw in the eyes of his men when he thrust it toward them. Black Stache was coming to believe that, despite the inconveniences, a man like him—a man whose authority depended on the fear he created in others—was better off with a hook than a hand.

He had even grown secretly fond of the name his crew had taken to cal ing him when they thought he could not hear. Yes, the name had first come from the boy, the hated, cursed boy. But despite that, Black Stache had come to like the sound of it.
Captain Hook.
A name to fear.

“Avast focusing,” he growled, shoving Smee away. “There he is, the little bugger.”

With a steady hand gained from years at sea, Captain Hook kept the glass trained on the form of the boy swooping down the side of the mountain, skimming the tops of the jungle trees. As the boy drew nearer, Hook could see that he carried something dark and round in his hand—a coconut, perhaps, or a piece of rock. He knew what was coming—of late, the boy had taken to raiding the pirate encampment almost daily.

“Smee!” Hook snarled. “Fetch my pistol!”

“Aye, Cap’n,” said Smee, running to the doorway. “OW!” he added, tripping into the fort.

“Hurry, you idjit!” shouted Hook.

“Got it, Cap’n,” said Smee, re-emerging from the fort. “OW!”

As he tripped, the pistol flew forward, past Hook; it hit the ground and went off, emitting a puff of smoke and a sad little sound:
phut.
The pistol bal dribbled out the end.