The Devil's Looking-Glass

his own well-rehearsed task. They danced to Courtenay’s tune, his orders booming like the thunder tearing through the half-light. Hands on hips, he threw his head back in insane laughter as he felt the first spatters of rain on his face.

‘This is a contest, Master Swyfte,’ he roared, ‘between men and the gods of the storm. Shall we see who wins?’ If any man could battle the elements and win, it would be Bloody Jack, Will agreed. It took a madman to face a tropical storm without a flicker of fear in his heart.

The spy gripped the slick rigging as the deck bucked beneath his feet like an unbroken Barbary steed. The rain was starting to come in harder on the gusts. Wiping his eyes clear, his gaze flickered out to sea as a bolt of lightning lanced down. In the flash, he glimpsed something that should not have been there. Wrapping one arm through the rigging to steady himself, he pulled out the tele-scope and attempted to place it to his eye. The view through the lens danced across the green ocean and darkening sky. Cursing under his breath, Will moved the tele- scope in incremental steps until a dark shape appeared before him. A galleon. The grey cloud bank that had followed them across the Atlantic was dissipating in the storm, and the ship sailed out of its billowing depths like a shark. A row of white diamonds had been painted along the castle. On a standard flapping from the mainmast was a black bird – a crow, Will thought. The galleon surged towards them, sails full.

Our Enemy are revealed, Will thought, and they have skilfully chosen this moment of confusion to attack.

Cupping his hand to his mouth, he yelled for Courtenay. The captain saw the spy’s urgency and bounded over. Snatching the tele-scope, he studied the ship for only a moment and then turned to Will, his features dark. ‘I know that flag. All sailors do, and they would sell their own mothers to avoid the misfortune of encountering it across the Spanish Main. The ship is the Corneille Noire, the cursed barque of that cut-throat Jean le Gris.’

Will knew well the bloody reputation of the French pirate who had plundered the trade routes for five years now.

‘And he is not alone,’ Bloody Jack added, answering the spy’s unspoken question. He handed the tele-scope back.

Will frowned, looking once more. This time he alighted on the galleon quickly as it bore down on them. When the crew swam into view, shock flooded him as he saw the haggard faces of the men, the hollow cheeks, the grey skin; each one looked dead apart from a tall, sinewy man with an eye-patch and a wild black beard whom he took to be the captain. Other, shadowy figures drifted in the half-light, pale spectres, like fish from the deep. Will held his breath as he watched Lansing and the Fay overseeing the ship like a court from Hell. A part of him had expected no less, but the evidence of his eyes still felt chilling.

‘The question now, Master Swyfte,’ Courtenay boomed, ‘in the middle of this godforsaken storm, is do we run like dogs and pray for the best, or stay and fight and risk a slow death in the deep?’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THE STORM ENGULFED the Tempest in a hell of fierce wind and driving rain and walls of black water. Cresting mountainous waves, the galleon plunged into deep, midnight valleys where the sailors feared they would never see the sun again. Barbs of lightning lanced down. Booming thunder throbbed into the roar of the sea. Will clung on to the rigging for dear life, barely able to keep his legs from the deluge sluicing across the deck. He glimpsed Carpenter, and Strangewayes with one hand gripping a stay, sodden and gasping, and Launceston, seemingly unmoved by the terror of the gale, one hand twirled around the rigging as he observed the fearful antics of the crew.

Courtenay, too, looked untroubled by the elements as he barked his orders. Though the ship was tossed this way and that, he strode through the ankle-deep brine on the deck as if on dry land. ‘Those that can, man the guns,’ he roared. ‘We have a fight on our hands, lads.’

Will craned his head to look over the crew with even greater respect. He knew the risks of opening the gun ports in a storm; the waves could flood in and take the ship to the bottom. But there was no choice. Putting aside their fear, seamen scrambled down to the gun deck, obeying their captain without question. Though it was hell above, he wondered how much worse it was below in the confined night-dark space, deafened by the hammers of the waves, thrown around by the pitching and yawing and fearful that every plunge would end on the seabed.

Peering into the face of the storm, he glimpsed the swinging lanterns of the Corneille Noire. The pirate vessel drew ever closer, despite the wild seas. He had seen before how the Unseelie Court’s ships defied the very elements, and he understood now why the Enemy had chosen this moment to attack. In the tumult, the Tempest’s guns would be nigh-on useless.

Carpenter clawed his way to Will’s side, both men’s hair and beards drenched. ‘This is why I turned my back on a life at sea,’ he raged. ‘Damn all this hell! Give me dry land and I would fight an army.’

‘It could be worse, John.’

‘How could it be worse?’

‘There could be two ships filled with those Fay bastards determined to send us to the bottom.’

Carpenter cursed loudly. ‘You find this sport? You are as mad as Bloody Jack. There are times I think you are seeking out ways to die.’

The Corneille Noire swept across the waves, a single-minded predator with the Tempest caught in its cold glare. Courtenay waited with one foot on the rail, one hand gripping a line, his grim gaze fixed on the other galleon’s progress. As it swept alongside, he raised one arm.

Will stared at the Enemy ship, frowning. In the light of its swinging lanterns, the grey-skinned, unblinking crew seemed like statues, oblivious of every sensation. Even from that distance, Will could tell they had the taint of rot about them. But if the captain Jean le Gris was troubled by what had happened to his men, he showed no sign of it, levelling his sword at Courtenay and shouting abuse into the roaring gale. Behind him, the pale sentinels of the Fay waited for the bloodletting. Will sensed their terrible gaze upon him.

‘Let us not wait for them!’ Courtenay bellowed. ‘Send them a greeting from Hell!’ He slashed down his arm.

The message darted from man to man until it reached the master gunner on the gun deck. A rolling wall of fire erupted into the watery world. From bow chasers to broadside cannon to stern chasers, the booming of the guns thundered out, louder even than the storm. Plumes of white smoke whipped away in the wind. Most of the shot plunged harmlessly into the towering walls of black water as the squall flung the two vessels around the high ridges and deep valleys of the swell. But one smashed a hole through the pirate ship’s castle to where the captain’s cabin would have been and another tore rigging from the mizzen top. Bloody Jack shook his fist and roared his jubilation, leaning so far over the rail that Will thought the waves would pluck him away.

‘No cannon will drive them off,’ Carpenter shouted, his brow furrowed. ‘They will not rest until we go down.’

‘If our only choice is to take them with us, that is what we shall do,’ Will yelled back. ‘Though in these turbulent waters, it will take an age to whittle each other to pieces.’

The Tempest rolled at an alarming angle as another wave crashed across the deck. Will swallowed a mouthful of brine. Only his grip on the rigging saved him as his legs flew out beneath him. When the galleon righted, he saw the Corneille Noire broadside on, its gun ports open. The captain was waiting for the swell to draw the two vessels in line before giving the order to fire.

‘Heads down,’ Will called. The fire spewed out of the pirate ship, and the cannon cracked. He flung himself on to the deck as red-hot shot screamed by. To his right, the rail disintegrated. A sailor slow in dropping low disappeared in a red mist. Another screamed, his leg gone. Deadly shards of timber flew around, and the cacophony of cries of men in agony echoed along the length of the galleon.

Courtenay hung over the rail to survey the damage inflicted on his vessel’s hull. ‘All above the waterline,’ he concluded with a pleased nod. ‘Then let us not stop there.’ As the swell lifted the Tempest high, he bellowed the order to fire again. Thunder rolled all around. The acrid stink of burnt powder whisked in the wind.

Sizzling shot tore through the Enemy vessel, more by good fortune than judgement. Seasoned oak as hard as iron burst into shards. Rigging tore free, lashing across the deck. The mainmast cracked and skewed at an angle. Bloody Jack made his own luck by throwing caution to the wind, Will knew: any other captain would have taken the