“Blood!”
“You’ll get nothing but your heart plucked out if you don’t leave now while I’m still in a good mood.”
“She bleeds me!”
“The whiskey in this place is thin as pond water so I doubt I’ll be quite so benevolent in a short while. You can run back to your ship and face your mates or you can catch board upon some passing vessel. I suggest the latter choice, if you want to live out the week.”
“You hussy witch—”
“None of that.” She cut him again in the same spot, deepening the wound. Jessup cried out and hit a nice high squalling note that even the squeeze-box musician couldn’t reach on his instrument.
It had been a fine spectacle. Almost everyone in the shadowy, lantern—lit tavern applauded and kicked up a ruckus. Especially loud were the other women freebooters, a few of the fishwives and whores. Though they dressed, swore, and even fought like men, it was still easy to see—with a few notable exceptions—that they too were ladies who needed their liberties. No man should be allowed to speak to a woman thusly in these parts. They raised tankards and cups in salute as Jessup stumbled out of the Hog’s Head Inn, whimpering and holding his collar tightly closed as the blood pulsed between his fingers.
Owlstead gave her one brief nod and was gone, possibly to finish off the job, now that Jessup was beaten down and scurrying for cover.
When Crimson was done with the chubby sod, she sheathed her sword and returned to her table to sit over her cold supper. An old bearded man with a wild shock of white hair and a black leather eye patch sat beside her sipping whiskey.
“I thought ye’d have a harder time with him,” he said.
“He was just an overconfident ass, like most of them.”
“True, but he’s still a butcher, truth be known. Some time ago I saw him cut the sex off a merchant in Mayaguana and stuff it in the dying man’s mouth.”
“Ah, well, and here I was hoping he’d marry me. Pity my na i ve dreams. I need more grog.”
Welsh—he’d never used another name in front of her—grinned with rotted stumps of teeth. His tangled beard smelled of gunpowder. Like Edward Teach, the notorious Blackbeard, Welsh often intimidated foes in battle by wrapping slow-burning lighted coils in his long hair. It was a good trick and kept their minds focused elsewhere. He had trembling hands but they were thick and powerful. “You’ve a poisonous tongue on ye, ye do.”
“I inherited it from my father.”
Ten years ago, while Crimson’s mother lay dying of consumption, she had claimed that Crimson had come from the loins of Welsh. It was a blow she’d never quite fully recovered from, whether it was truth or not. Nobody wanted to hear that they’d been born to that pirate. Welsh denied being Crimson’s father, but once you got past the scruffy white beard, the seamed skin and broken nose, you could see a definite resemblance. At least she could.
“Now don’t go spoutin’ that nonsense again, child. Order a second bowl of stew and get on with yer meal.”
“I’ve lost my hunger. Another round of ale instead. Where’s that damned barkeep?”
“And don’t go sulking either, girl.”
He could talk fatherly enough when he liked. “I do what I please, you goat, and don’t be getting on me about it.”
“Then keep yer jibes to yerself or stick ’em elsewhere.”
“I put them where I like, and you be glad I don’t use something sharper to stick into your sagging flank.”
She was never sure why she pushed this matter, even after all these years. Considering how many families she’d seen ruined by betrayal, deception, and greedy appetites, she’d have thought she’d never want to meet up with any of her own relations, wherever they might be.
And yet there was a certain haunting weakness within her, a hollowness that made itself known from time to time. The need to discover her father. As a child, she’d had idle dreams that she was the daughter of the duke of some distant northern country, where her bedroom resided in a tower glazed with rime year ’round. It gave her something to think about under the burning sun.
Regardless, she enjoyed irritating the old bastard too. No matter how she prodded him or how similar their features were, she knew her mother was out of her head with fever on her deathbed. The woman spoke to the long-deceased and saw leering faces in the draperies.
Welsh tightened his leather wristbands in an effort to help control some of the quivering. His blunt knuckles had been broken so many times that they’d turned black. He could still wield a sword with tremendous might and dexterity, but in the little day-to-day things like rigging a sail or carrying boxes of cargo, his trembling would sometimes get so bad he couldn’t hold on to what he was carting. He was always on the lookout to make sure enemies didn’t spot his weakness.
He caught her eye and smiled, ignoring her unspoken comments. “Yer gettin’ a notable reputation, lass. Word’s been crossing the compass. There was a eighty-footer in yesterday called the Yardarm. One o’ the riggers met up with a sloop called the Hopewell two days back and said a rich man named Maycomb and his wife’re comin’ to see ya about business. They’ve heard how good y’are at settling scores and locating what’s been lost.”
“Maycomb. English?”
“Originally, I’d guess. Scottish, maybe. Now he’s in the Colonies. Virginia, the rigger said. Tobacco farmer.”
“So he’s money to spend.”
“We can hope and pray. Trouble is, I’m thinkin’, the Hopewell is run by Dobbins now.”
“Christ spread on his cross,” she said. “With Dobbins as captain they won’t be alive when the ship comes in to anchor. He’ll rape the woman and steal their coin if his crew hasn’t already.”
“He’s been goin’ easy on that sort of activity lately,” Welsh said. “From what I hear. Cleaned his ship up some. Runs smaller smuggling operations. Keeps his men in hand.”
“Does he now?”
Welsh grimaced and pursed his lips, thinking about it. “Well, most of ’em, leastways. Bad fer business when half the passengers who ship out wit ye turn up dead or not at all.”
Crimson leaned back in her seat. “If this Maycomb is murdered before I get a chance to speak to him, don’t let me forget to kill Dobbins.”
“Be me pleasure to remind ye.”
2
In the deep night, halfway to dawn, as she lays upon the sheets of her snow-covered tower, she whispers for her husband of only six months. He’s dead, she knows, but that cannot stop him from keeping his promises. She feels him here, now, slipping between the shadows and easing himself from corner to corner. The curtains rustle though the shutters are closed and locked.
Mother was right, there are faces in the drapes, and they’ve always been there, watching and tittering.
She reaches out blindly, first in one direction and then another, hoping to grab hold of him. The door is bolted and the hinges are of iron, but a thin sheaf of light eases from beneath and looms against the stone floor, rolling like the water at high tide. The room brightens a bit. He touches her lightly in odd places. Behind the ear, in back of the knee. She spins and brushes his chest, his neck perhaps, as he settles beside her among the thick covers. “Tyree?” she asks.
He presses himself against her and finds her backed up against her velvet pillows. Darkness twines as her misted breath rises to his face like smoke and breaks against his strong chin. His breath isn’t frosted in the cold room. She cocks her head, staring at the hard cords and muscles of his throat. The veins there are black and unmoving as marble. He doesn’t breathe at all.
“Tyree?” she asks again, and the name, though familiar, is almost difficult to form and say aloud.
He makes a plaintive sound. A sob perhaps, or a moan cracking distantly inside him.
“It’s me,” he says, and his voice, like the rest of him, doesn’t seem to be entirely with her in this world
