“Are you willing to start searching for the source of these ghost ships under the belief that it will lead to Marteen? Because I can’t continue the charter otherwise. This is too serious, and the Cow needs to get back to her real job.”
“Yeah, I’ll go along with it.”
He smiled. “Then let’s get to work.”
When we climbed back onto the dock from the launch, I felt eyes on me at once. It took me a moment to spot my watcher, but there he was: a man in a faded jacket and patched trousers, with a black handkerchief around his neck. His poxscarred face resembled the cracked bed of a river after the waters had dried up. He was just beyond the docks, staring at us-at me-as if I owed him money. People gave him a wide berth.
Jane saw him, too. “Friend of yours?” she said softly. I shook my head. “Never saw him before.”
The man pointed at me. I did as well, raising my eyebrows in a question: Me? He nodded.
“I’ll meet you at the boat,” I said.
“I’ll come with you,” Jane said.
“No,” I said, and my voice sounded strange even to me. “I want to talk to him alone.”
“Why?”
I wasn’t sure myself. “I just do. I’ll tell you what he says.”
“Okay,” Jane said, although she clearly thought I was bonkers.
I went through the cordon of guards, down the steps, and onto the muddy shore, where the man awaited me.
“You wanted to see me?” I asked when I was face-to- face.
He smelled of mud and fish.
“You be the man with the hole in his heart?”
I assumed he meant my scar, although I couldn’t imagine how he knew about it. “Maybe. Who wants to know?”
“My name isn’t important. Just that I hear things before they happen.”
I smiled wryly. “And you heard something about me, right?
How much will it cost me to find out?”
“I don’t want your money,” he said with a twitch. “I just want to tell you that you will find the man you seek. The man with black hair.”
I felt goose bumps on my back. I tried to stay nonchalant.
“Oh. Well… thanks.”
“And you will find him alive.”
“That’s good, too.”
“But don’t seek after his gold. It’s got too much blood on it.”
“I’m not interested in his gold.”
He laughed. “A man may say that, until the gold’s before him.”
“And a man may mean it.”
He shrugged. “As you say. This is my claim, my threatening, and my message.”
“You do your office fairly,” I said in court-speak, and pressed a coin in his hand.
He jumped back as if scalded, and the money landed in the mud at my feet. “I told you, I don’t want your money!” He rushed away toward town and disappeared back into the crowd. I bent and picked up the coin. I wasn’t a superstitious man, but I’d seen enough to convince myself that I had little knowledge of how the universe truly worked. I took his warning under advisement. Very serious advisement.
Back at the dock, the two sailors who rowed us from the Cow rushed to meet us. “Did you hear, Captain?” one said. “The Indigo Ray was found as a ghost ship. They took down a pirate hunter!”
I knew the sailors had no idea who “they” were, which made the concept even scarier. If they got back to the Cow, we might be as marooned as the Copper Lance. I pulled out my money bag and handed each man a gold coin. “You’re to stay here,” I said. “Learn as much as you can. When we get back, I’ll want a full report.” I looked at Clift. “Right?”
Clift understood. “Right.”
Jane and I rowed while Clift navigated the boat back among the anchored ships. When we got to the Red Cow, Clift called for all sails, and in the faint wind, we eased toward the harbor opening. Finally we emerged, the real wind caught us, and we shot forward into the ocean, toward our rendezvous with a nightmare.
Chapter Fifteen
We found the Vile Howl the next day.
The sunrise revealed an ocean as empty as you could imagine. Somehow knowing every ship was huddled back at Blefuscola added to the effect. It seemed like the only things out here were us and whoever had been raiding the ships. There was a breeze, and the waves had little whitecaps that made the ride rougher than normal.
I stood with Seaton at the starboard bow rail. Jane had watched for a while, but left when it became clear nothing was going to happen quickly. Clift slouched with his arms draped over the wheel without an apparent care in the world; he received reports every few minutes from the foremast crosstrees. So far, they’d been variations of “all clear.”
Suhonen appeared over me. “May I have a word with you, Mr. LaCrosse?” He looked at Seaton. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Seaton.”
The quartermaster did not even look at Suhonen, but he said, “Any trouble, you’ll wake up on the bottom of the sea with lobster claws around your pecker, got me?”
“No trouble, sir,” the big man assured him.
I followed him across the forecastle to the port rail, where a seaman quickly scampered away to give us privacy. “Must be handy to intimidate everyone,” I said.
“Sometimes,” he agreed. “Sometimes it’s just a pisser, though.”
“So what can I do for you?”
“I’d like to ask a favor,” the big man said respectfully. “I’d like to be included in whatever you and Cap’n Jane are doing.”
“Why is that?”
“I want to see how you work. A man can’t stay on the sea his whole life. I want to live to an old age, like you.”
He said this with a straight face, and I was really glad Jane wasn’t there to hear it. I suppose, for him, I did seem old; he was maybe twenty-five. I said, “Well, okay, but isn’t Jane a better role model? She was a pirate and a pirate hunter, too, just like you.”
With a completely straight face, he said, “She’s a little scarier than you. I wouldn’t know how to talk to her.”
Now I did smile. “She scares me sometimes, too. All right, you can tag along, but there’s no extra pay in it, just so we’re clear. No trea sure.”
“Aye,” he agreed with no hesitation.
When I returned to Seaton, he asked, “Suhonen give you more trouble? I thought you two had settled things. Want me to have a word with him?”
“No, he just wanted some career advice,” I said.
Seaton’s eyebrows rose, but he did not comment.
The lookout standing on the foremast crosstrees cried out, “Ship right ahead!”
Everyone on deck rushed to the rail, the opposite of their casual interest when we sighted the Mellow Wine. Blefuscola had them all on edge, even though they hadn’t left the ship.
“Battle stations, Mr. Seaton,” Clift called nonchalantly.
