The Buccaneer's Apprentice (21 page)

“No,” Nic breathed. This was a very old craft and, from its general air of neglect, seemed to have been here for a long time. “It’s magnificent. Doesn’t it seem familiar to you?”

“Wait a moment. I was pouring out my heart to you, and you interrupted to look at a
boat?
” Darcy took a step back. “Men!”

“Come on,” Nic said, jerking his head. He almost ran around to the narrower walkway leading down the ship’s length. This dark ship, whatever its name, dwarfed the corsair bobbing next to it. At the farthest reaches of its stern a bay window jutted out where the captain’s quarters would be. Its panes were inky and opaque. Three masts had the galleon, fore, main, and mizzen, each rigged with two squared sails. Though they had drooped and slumped with abandonment within their ties, Nic could guess that they were still whole. A ramp studded with crossbars ran from the pier to just behind the head rails. It was at a steep angle, so Nic held out his hand. “Let’s look.”

“Why?” Darcy appeared genuinely baffled at Nic’s sudden obsession. “Nic, we should be helping the others on the
Sea Butterfly
. I should, anyway. You should be there overseeing.”

“We are not going home in the
Sea Butterfly
.” Nic sounded certain of that. His hand twitched, impatiently motioning Darcy to follow.

When she did, it was with reluctance. “We’re not going home in this wreck,” she said, following him up the plank. “It’s horri … oh.” She stopped when they neared the top. “Nic.” Darcy had to let go of his hand. She clutched first her stomach, and then her head. “Stop. Really. Stop.”

Nic had felt it the same moment as she. There was some force preventing them from stepping onto the deck. In the past, Nic had seen bits of metal magnetized by a lodestone sometimes attract each other, and yet sometimes repel. It was if some invisible and unseen hand pushed the pair away.

At least, that’s what it felt like for him. Darcy apparently was having a more violent reaction. Struggling for breath, she sat down on the plank. “There’s something evil here,” she rasped out.

She was not far from the truth, Nic realized. Every surface of the ship seemed to seethe with a malevolent energy that, in the early dawn, was almost visible to the naked eye. Black and forbidding, it seemed to snake from the wood in coils, like moisture on the foggiest of days. “Something evil,” Nic echoed.

“It’s in my head. It’s so loud—I can’t …” Darcy was near tears. She began to slide down the ramp, crossbar by crossbar. “Nic, come away.”

“Sssh,” Nic said. He stepped down onto the deck, pushing past that gentle force warding him off. He trespassed, he knew, but some compulsion drew him onward.

Then he heard it. It came from a distance, but at the same time, from very close by. It might have even come from within himself, for all he could tell. “
Who are you?
” it asked.

“Do you hear that? That voice?”

Darcy shook her head, though whether she was answering his question or trying to rid herself of what plagued her, he could not tell. “Make it stop,” she said, sounding tearful.

“
Who are you?”
Nic looked all around, trying to find the words’ source. It sounded like a woman of deep and terrible voice, thrilling in the way Signora Arturo imagined herself during a climactic scene onstage; but it was like a little girl’s inquiry, curious and without malice. At the same time, it sounded like a bell. Its echoing reverberated, growing louder and louder. He raised his hands to stop his head from buzzing, and maybe to keep it from falling off his shoulders.

“
Get away!
” Nic heard Darcy yell. “
Get out of my head!
”

“Darcy?” Nic could barely see now. The purple blackness coiling from the deck had clouded his vision. Across the boards he stumbled, hands to his ears, trying to prevent the voice from getting in.
Who are you?
it asked, over and over.
Who are you? Who are you?
“I’m coming back. Don’t fret. I’m coming.”

He had to let go of his ears to find the ramp by feel. He climbed atop a small crate and onto the slanted board, gripping for dear life as he let himself down. Darcy was back on the pier, trembling in a small ball. “It’s all right,” Nic assured her. He knelt down and put an arm around her shoulder. “Has the voice gone away?” She nodded, sniffling. “It has for me, too. What did it say to you? Did it ask who you were?”

“No, it …” She struggled for words. “I couldn’t understand. It kept battering at me. It wanted to know something, but I didn’t know what. It was just … not right.”

Footsteps came pounding down the pier then, accompanied by points of bobbing light and the metallic sounds of the lanterns shaking on their grips. Maxl arrived first, his face full of concern. Nic nodded at him to answer his unspoken question. “She’s all right.” He watched Maxl as he looked first at the corsair as if expecting some sort of assailant to leap out from within, and then at how his face twisted with repugnance at the site of the black galleon.

“Th-Thorntongue?” said Jacopo, wrestling to produce his daughter’s assumed name. He and the rest of the crew had caught up, drawn by the sound of Darcy’s cries.

“I’m fine,” she said. Darcy was not the sort of girl to weep in front of an audience, Nic knew. She wiped her face and struggled to her feet.

Trond Maarten pushed his way through the assembled people. “Good gods,” he snapped in as impatient a tone as Nic had ever heard him use. “You didn’t go aboard, did you?”

“Yes, signor.” Nic stood as well, and drew himself up to his full height. “I did.”

“You’re a lunatic.” Maarten swore under his breath. “Or you wish to be. Do you know how many men that ship has driven mad?”

“How in the world can a ship drive a man mad?” asked Signor Arturo.

Maarten laughed without amusement. “You spend five minutes aboard it, mynheer, and learn for yourself.”

“
Don’t!
” Darcy’s voice was sharp as she reached out to prevent anyone from taking the man up on the offer. That, more than anything else, convinced Armand to step back.

“What is it?” Nic could not shake the ship from his mind, try as he might. He had to know.

The trader shrugged. “Maarten’s Folly is what they call it. Named not, as you might imagine, after me, but after my father’s grandfather, who started the business. As I was told the tale, this … this monstrosity … sailed into Gallina harbor during a storm and came to a rest.”

“During a storm? Were there no survivors?” Nic asked.

“None. There were victims aboard, though, all deceased. Pirates. From a clan that operated off the shores of Ellada. All of them died in agony—not from the storm, mind you. But from the ship itself.”

“Preposterous,” said Jacopo.

“No, it’s not.” Darcy spoke up. “I would have been dead if I’d stayed aboard. It gets into your head. There’s something wrong with it.”

“Aye,” agreed Maarten. He ran his hand over his skull, obviously concerned that the pair had so close a call. “So said my great-grandfather when he claimed it from the harbor, thinking he could resell it for a tidy profit. So said my grandfather, and his son, when it sat untouched for decades, and when they had to watch greedy men try to claim the ship as theirs go mad before their very eyes. So said I, the one and only time I set foot aboard its wicked deck. I’d offer three hundred kronen to any man who could remove its blight from my docks, but no one dares touch it. Maarten’s Folly it will remain, during my life and that of my son. It’s cursed.”

The last word should have surprised Nic, but it didn’t. Nothing else could have produced the malignancy that gripped Maarten’s Folly. “Are you all right, Signor Drake?” asked Jacopo, extending a hand in his direction. “If so, let us return to the
Sea Butterfly
and be on our way, so that we trouble this good man no more.” Maarten smiled and demurred, indicating that they had caused no inconvenience whatsoever.

“No.” It was Nic who spoke, not any character he played. Yet his voice was as firm as the Drake’s and as sure. “I’m sorry, Old Man,” he said, shaking his head, and then at Darcy, intending the words for her as well. He jumped up onto the plank, causing several in the assembly, including Ingenue, to cry out in caution.

“Don’t be a fool, boy!” Though Nic was only a few handspans from the ground, Trond Maarten cried out as if he were attempting some dangerous stunt from the heights of the ship’s main mast.

“You heard the man, lad.” Armand Arturo was so flustered that he accidentally trod on Urso’s foot, but the large sailor caught him before he fell sideways.

The Signora produced a hanky from her bosom, into which she sniffled, “We couldn’t bear to lose you, dear boy.”

“This ship is from Cassaforte,” Nic said, holding out his arms in its direction. He couldn’t say why he was so certain, but it made sense. It had been the familiar curves of its hull, the graceful shapes of the windows and of even the masts themselves that had convinced him. Gnarled and blackened though it may have been, no other nation could have fashioned this craft.

“That may very well be,” said Maarten. “I have heard it speculated before that only Cassaforte, with its strange magics, could have produced something so foul.”

“She’s not foul,” said Nic. He made an appeal to the group. “She’s one of us.”

“It’s a ship, boy. Not a woman.” Knave’s comment was met with a few uneasy chuckles, and at least one boo from Infant Prodigy.

“I’ve done much for you in the last few days.” Nic looked around at the more than dozen people of whom he was in charge. He paused to allow those of the crew who could understand him to translate for those who could not. After he’d made the decision to abandon the
Tears of Korfu
and leave Macaque’s unconscious body behind, he’d spoken to the entire company and given them the opportunity to leave, if they so chose. Gallina was a town where any of Macaque’s five crewmen could find employment, legal or not. All had willingly chosen to follow him. He hoped they would listen now. “Allow me to do this for myself.”

Darcy, however, looked the most distressed of all. “You won’t be able to stand it,” she warned him, coming to the plank’s bottom but daring not to venture any further.

“A
zingari
woman once told my master I was cursed,” Nic told her. “She said that only when I encountered one more cursed than myself would it be broken.”

Her voice cracked with worry. “Since when have you listened to crazy
zingari
women?” she wanted to know. “You don’t even listen to me!”

“Heed the girl,” said Maarten, still pale. “She has your best interests in mind.”

Yes, Nic realized. She did indeed. “I will return,” he told her in a low voice. She nodded, then staggered back to her father. Nic tried to reassure her silently, but she refused to meet his gaze. To the rest of the company he gave a nod. The Arturos held each other for comfort. Maxl stood and gave his best salute in pure Charlemance style, with the palm faced out and the neck and back rigid. Maarten swore to himself once more and mopped his brow.

At the ramp’s top, Nic paused, rebuffed again by the soft wall that seemed to stand in his way. Pushing through felt like passing from warm air into a pillow of cold. Scarcely had his foot touched the deck when the terrible ache behind his eyes began once more. The back of his throat tickled as it might before the worst of colds, then increased in intensity a hundredfold. He found it difficult to breathe. “
Who are you?”
he heard the woman’s voice asking.

He stumbled to the galleon’s center, foot over foot, barely able to stand. The pressure behind his eyes was so intense that, open or closed, all he could see were whorls of purple light. Nic’s shoulder thudded against the main mast. It felt oily to the touch. “I’m Nic,” he managed to mumble, though his lips felt as if they’d swollen and grown thick. Why had he thought that he, of all people, could break a curse? “I’m Niccolo. I’m nobody.”

The voice wasn’t satisfied. A vicious wind seemed to whip across its surface, stronger and more frigid than any storm the ship had ever weathered. He could feel its icy blast on his face as the anger of whatever inhabited this ship was unleashed in full force. “
Who are you? Who are you?”
The words battered away in his head, trying to break down every bastion of sanity it found there. Around him, Nic began to see the unearthly forms of men, pale as the blue summer sky and transparent as glass, mere wisps of forms writhing in pain. Perhaps they were the spirits of those who had died upon the galleon at sea, or the unfortunate crew from Ellada. Perhaps they were nothing more than the result of madness. Nic could feel the agony wracking every inch of their soundless frames. It made him grit his teeth, so intense was the rictus it caused. “I … am … Niccolo,” he fought to gasp out. “I am … Niccolo No-Name, the orphan. I am Niccolo the foundling, nobody’s pride and joy.”

“
Who are you?
”

He used the mast to straighten himself, still fighting against the cold and the stabbing betrayal of every muscle. If this entity wanted to know who he was, then fine, he thought to himself, stubborn to the end. He’d tell it who he was. He’d tell it every single person he’d ever been. “I am Niccolo the servant, the dung-slinger, the sewer rat. I am Niccolo the game skinner, the boot shiner, Niccolo the digger. I am Nic of the kitchens, Nic the rag-boy, Nic who tends to the mules. I am Niccolo who sleeps in the stables with the pack animals.” With every word he felt stronger and more contrary. His voice had begun cracked and defeated, but now he spoke loudly against the zephyr’s howl. “I am Niccolo Dattore. That is the name I chose for myself. I am Nic the dogsbody, the card-fetcher. I am Nic, to be wagered at taroccho. Niccolo, the stagehand.”