The Fox (14 page)

Inda said only, “Make it now.”

She flitted away and dropped down the hatch to raise those she’d already chosen as allies. Inda and Fox entered the galley, Fox cramming some bread into his mouth, Inda a sentinel at the door, observing everything.

Barend watched him observing everything, except himself amid the flow of people and events. He was the eye of the storm, his voice and hands moving the storm before him, around him. Barend tried to figure out how Inda had transformed within a single watch from the Stupid of before into what he was now.

He was the only one who knew what to do.

Excitement made his hands shake, his knees watery, made him want to pee, made him want to laugh as he scrambled down the ladder to the lower deck. He shook and pinched awake the battered, bewildered hands that he and Fox had long ago chosen and to each bleary face he whispered the words, over and over,
Take the ship. Now. Get a weapon. Wait for my signal. Your target is—

They crept swiftly, silently, past pirates sunk into exhausted slumber; though equally exhausted, they moved with the desperation of those who, once committed, know the risk: they had to win or die.

They flowed like ghosts along the companionway and up past the cabin, most of them sending furtive glances at the cabin door, behind which Walic sat in an exhausted haze waiting for Tau to bring wine as he tried to soothe the still-terrified Coco.

Fox’s head rang. The galley fire had been doused, no hot drink possible, so he ducked his head into the pure water in the magic-cleaned bucket, sucking down great gulps.

The headache had fired into molten rock. But he forced himself to lift his head and leave the galley. The world, his place in it, seemed strange and unreal as he slipped down the hatch behind the galley to his bunk. He pulled out his fighting knives, then dug down into his gear and retrieved the Sartoran knives he’d captured from Inda—which he’d intended to hold until he was ready to use Inda in his plans. Laughing at himself, he ran back to the galley, not even pausing to tie on his black fighting scarf, though he hated sweat in his eyes.

He did not hear Inda’s low-voiced instructions to the stunned cook. He slapped Inda’s knives into his hands, and Inda’s fingers closed over them, his face distracted, unquestioning. His mind obviously far ahead.

Cook worked his big, fleshy face as though he would speak, but said nothing. A sheen of tears stood on his lower eyelids.

“Go,” Inda said softly.

The cook grabbed up his biggest chopping knife and vanished up the aft hatchway.

“Now,” Inda said to those crowded along the passage.

The sense of unreality intensified for Fox when his head cleared the level of the weather deck. His awareness sharpened, taking everyone in.

Sails used her awl to gut Walic’s torture expert, sobbing as she did so; Nizhac tumbled into the hatch past Fox, who swung out of the way, then lunged up to the deck.

On the companionway Taumad, dressed only in cotton trousers, his hair flagging in the wind, struck down one then another of the torturer’s mates, handling the boarding cutlass and a vegetable knife with speed, skill, and a lethal grace.

Stamping feet: Fox whirled as Inda led an attack party onto the forecastle. Inda fought with the unerring speed and assurance Fox had seen only once before, when they first attacked Inda’s convoy. Inda grinned, a ferocious, white-toothed grin that distorted his face as he chopped his cutlass into a pirate’s neck, then—how could he do that?— kicked up behind himself, straight into the crotch of a pirate bringing his blade down toward Inda’s neck. He was so fast you had to concentrate to see the individual moves, but every strike was telling, every block effective. With power focused from his planted bare feet through his shoulders Inda drove his blade straight into one of the first mate’s biggest followers. Then—again without looking—he kicked out the knee of the one who had smashed that small Chwahir boy down just behind him.

Inda then snapped his knives out, shifting grip from cut to thrust as he jammed them into attackers on either side. The pirate on the left dropped, blood spraying from a ripped throat; the one on the right staggered, gripped his sword with both hands to drive down at the Chwahir boy struggling to rise, but Inda whipped up his blade and took the man right under his chin. He flung the pirate backward, blood gouting. Then Inda twisted, sword raised in a block as a cutlass slashed at the back of his head; he struck the cutlass aside and kept moving, his blade sweeping in a horizontal arc straight into the ribs of one of Walic’s best killers.

Inda whirled back without looking at the dying pirate. The fight had spread out. He leaned his hands—still gripping his knives—on his knees as he panted open-mouthed. Paused to wipe the sweat off his face, then he rasped orders in a dry, wheezing voice. Like they’d first seen on the deck of the Sartoran Guild ship. But this time, instead of watching Inda through a glass as he issued a continuous stream of orders, Fox heard the orders spoken in a voice of command.

The sense of watching from the periphery fled when Inda’s gaze met Fox’s dead on. “Behind!”

Fox whirled. Brought up his knives, one high and vertical, the other low and horizontal, ready for the Leap of the Deer. The first mate’s eyes distended with disbelief and rage.

This duel Fox had rehearsed so often in angry night-watches over the past years that it too seemed part of the dream world as his body responded with lightning speed— the Deer-Kick, block, whirl, Snake-Strike, parry, Duck-Snap—strike—spray of blood, ruby gleam in the sun—

The strange sense of unreality vanished when the first mate thumped dead to the deck.

Fox lifted a shaking hand to wipe his eyes. The others were gawking in disbelief at the fallen pirates on the blood-slimed, steaming deck, Inda standing in the midst of them, whooping for breath.

Fox’s headache by now had intensified to forge-hot, hammering pain. He struggled to comprehend what had taken place so fast: new crew as well as old obeying Inda, who had changed from the slouching dullard of yesterday into a commander.

The quiet Chwahir girl was the only one moving, Disappearing the dead, one by one. Fox still gripped his knives; his breath hurt in his throat, his tongue felt like a salt-dried sponge. His head pounded as if struck by white-hot steel, but through it seared a shrill keening. Not inside his head. Outside.

He turned his head—it took more effort than it had to fight the first mate—as two of the forced pirates muscled a wildly struggling Coco up onto the deck.

“What about her?” asked a big, scarred deckhand, licking his lips as he flicked his gaze from person to person. “Who gets to snuff her?”

The mutineers sent up a shout, the older ones volunteering to slice her up like she’d done to this or that crewmember, while she whimpered a crazy mix of threats and pleas, her skirts splashed with Walic’s blood. Others seemed uncertain, some looking out to sea for Walic’s fleet.

Barend strained to spot the second mate on the island, wondering if he’d thought to take a glass.

“Sail ho! Dead astern!”

Eyes turned skyward to the mizzen masthead, then out to sea. Barend swung the glass, squinting into the glare at the triangle nicking the skyline.

“The sloop?”

“Too small—”

“Three fires!” Mutt, who had clambered up to the mizzen shrouds despite his healing ankle, yelled from aloft.

Three fire arrows: the old signal!

“It’s Jeje,” Inda said to Tau, his brown eyes wide with disbelief.

Tau did not answer. He could not answer, just laughed freely for the first time in what seemed to be years. His sweet, young laugh clawed at Coco’s heart, kindling a yearning to kill whoever it was who could make him smile like that.

“Mutt! Send her a return, two and one,” Inda called their old covert approach signal up to the masthead, where Mutt caught hold of the backstay with one hand, and leaned out to wave acknowledgment of the order with the other.

“I’ll get the bow,” Uslar volunteered, running forward.

Some of the mutineers murmured, wondering how Stupid had managed reinforcement without anyone knowing it. Two moved apart with stealthy haste, hoping he hadn’t overheard their plot to jump him as soon as he went below so they could take the ship. “Later,” one mouthed, pawing the air in a gesture meant to be covert; the other nodded as he sidled away.

Tau, ignored by both, kept staring out to sea.

“I can help you,” Coco wailed. “Tell him, Taumad. I can be anything you like. Or send me to Halliff on the
Sea-King
.”

Inda looked around. “Brig for now.”

His voice was almost lost, as few listened beside Tau and Thog and Inda’s own people. As yet, Fox realized, no one quite believed that the ship was theirs, that already a new hierarchy was fast forming, unperceived. Old habit prevailed: without Walic’s deadly authority muzzling them, everyone wanted his or her voice heard. Typical of pirates.

“Death! She can pillow jig with Walic on Ghost Island!”

“Let her choose one o’ us,” the surviving cousin yelled, looking around for approval. He had switched sides at once, looking somewhat forlorn without his cousin telling him what to do.

“Let the bawdy-boy decide,” a top hand yelled from the main masthead, brushing back tendrils of black curls from her kerchief-bound head. The pirate she’d killed hung upside down, one foot caught in block-and-tackle, arms swinging loosely. “If he wants her to die of the thousand cuts, well, I’m for it. I’d be glad to help,” she added, showing her teeth.

Silence fell, except for the creaking of wounded timbers and the distant caw of birds returning to the island.

Coco, dazed from the storm and from Walic’s sudden death, now felt a surge of hope as she turned to her beautiful Tau, who had so smilingly tended her down below while the worst of the storm raged. She shivered, thinking of his patient fingers and how she had waited for them to touch her tenderly, just once, on their own, and not at her command, or at the captain’s. Just once.

She’d convinced herself of his imminent devotion so thoroughly that her main emotion when Cook went after Walic was relief, and pleasure that she no longer had to hide her love. She had so convinced herself that his role-playing was real that at first she didn’t comprehend his words: “Get her out of my sight.”

She didn’t realize it was she who had shrieked until that short, brown-eyed one they all called Stupid waved a hand at her, and hard fingers gripped her arms, forcing her down below, despite her raging commands to stop, watch out for the fabric of her gown, to let her go—that
hurt!

“The others will be back,” Inda said to the crew. “We better be ready. That fight will be tougher than this one was. We had the advantage of surprise, but I don’t believe that will be true again.”

The second mate! Everyone exchanged glances, while absently wiping at lacerated skin or massaging wrenched limbs.

“Why don’t we sail?” someone asked, hoarse with fear.

Inda pointed at the foremast stump. “We need that topmast spar. We’ll get it on board, and as soon as we do, attack on signal. Each takes his man,” he added. “They’ll fight hard, and we can’t afford to lose any more crew. Sailing is going to be hard as it is, we’ll be on watch and watch, even after I get Dasta back from the
Sea-King
.”

If he’s alive,
Inda thought, meeting Tau’s bleak gaze.

“Leave him,” Fox said. “That’s too risky.”

Inda faced Fox, lifting his chin. “I won’t leave Dasta.” His mouth tightened. “We never abandon crew.”

Fox heard an intake of breath from that weird little Chwahir, but she said nothing, just passed by with cleaning equipment and vanished into the captain’s cabin.

The rest of the pirates stared at Inda, and Fox could almost hear those simple words repeating in their heads like the echo of a bell down a valley.
We never abandon crew
. It was probably one of his regular rules for the marine defenders. To the pirates, Fox knew, and to Barend, watching from the helm, it was more like a world change. All of the old crew had seen Walic kill his own people on a whim or for fun. And if he decided to make a fast retreat before possible danger from a warship, he had abandoned scouts to whatever might happen without any apparent regret.

Now they faced Inda—not just his own people, but all of them—as unwavering as flowers tracking the sun.

But Inda’s attention was not on them. It was on
him
. Inda was waiting for a challenge. Didn’t he see he already had command? No, he probably didn’t.

Inda wiped at a trickle of blood from his scalp, his face already bruising from either the fight or his smash against the hull during the second storm, or both. He probably had as stupefying a headache as Fox did—

But he’d seen the right moment, and he’d taken command as if he’d planned it for days. Months.

Fox raised a hand, turning the palm up, his expression mocking:
Over to you
.

Inda wiped his face again, then pivoted, his toes squeaking on the deck. “Right now we’d better get ready,” he said in a loud voice. “It’ll be a bad fight, and we should be as prepared as we can be for another storm.”

The crew shuffled, looked around, wiped at sweaty faces.

Most were uncertain, some surly, all exhausted. Inda began with his own people, each being ordered to a task within the doer’s ability—and one by one the remaining pirates were given orders. They obeyed, some of them furtive and motivated by fear; others with the eased faces of those for whom order had been restored.

Inda sent Cook, Mutt, and Uslar to pass food and water around. For a short time before getting to work everyone sat where they were, eating and drinking, talking in low voices. A few gazed passively up at the tangle of sails, rigging, and lines, the soft
slap-slap
of the ocean and the clacking blocks soothing. Some fell asleep right there on the deck; the worst wounded were taken below to their hammocks and tended by their mates.