Mama before we’re done.”
WHEN Clift and I returned to Jane’s cabin, Skurnick stood over her leg. Dorsal had vanished, no doubt chased away by the doctor. Skurnick had cut away half her trousers to expose a single puncture on the inner side of her thigh, dangerously near the big artery that ran there. The edges of the wound were crusted with scab, but the center was still dark red and oozing. Each time he wiped it, more blood trickled out.
“Not much I can do for her,” he wheezed. “I’ve cleaned it, and the wound’s closing on its own, but she’s lost a lot of blood. She’ll either survive or she won’t.” He looked at me. “She’s tough. I was with her for three years before she left the sea. If anybody can pull through this, it’s Captain Argo.” To Clift, he said, “She shouldn’t be alone. She might be delirious, and she could hurt herself.”
Clift and I exchanged a glance. I said, “I’ll stay with her until midnight. You can send someone to relieve me then.”
“I’ll relieve you,” Clift said. “I don’t want the crew to see her like this.”
Skurnick said, “She’s got a fever, and it’ll probably get worse before it gets better. Maybe we should tie her down.”
I shook my head. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t hurt herself.”
He looked me up and down, measuring my apparent strength against Jane’s. “If you think you’re up to it, son.” Then he left, chuckling to himself.
Clift looked at the nameless ship through the porthole. “Who does that, LaCrosse? I mean, it’s one thing to catch a beast like the one over there, which I admit is impressive. But to allow it to do your dirty work, and then just sail in and pick up the pieces… Who does that?”
“Someone pretty smart. I bet every other captain rushed in to rescue his crew and never came back.”
“I learned from their mistakes,” he said with no irony.
Jane said something we didn’t catch. Her eyes were open, and she licked her lips before speaking again. “I said… he’ll be coming to check his trap.”
Clift nodded. “I already figured that. I’ve got a plan.” But Jane’s eyes were already closed.
“What is it?” I asked Clift.
“You’ll see.” He turned toward the door. “I have work to do. We have to gather Veasely’s and Kaven’s gear and toss it overboard. Keeping it is bad luck, or at least the crew will think so. I’ll see you at midnight, and I’ll make sure Skurnick stays sober. If anything changes, yell good and loud.”
“Aye,” I said, and half saluted.
Dorsal slipped in before the door closed and joined me at Jane’s bedside. “I hope she doesn’t die.”
“Me, too.”
He touched Jane’s hand. She gasped and jerked her hand away without waking. Dorsal took a step back, and I said, “Don’t take it personally.”
He looked up at me. “I don’t.”
“Thanks.”
I sat down on the floor, my back against the wall. I was asleep within minutes.
The sun woke me when it had crossed the sky and now shone through the porthole. I hadn’t intended to sleep, but there was no resisting it. I got up, stretched, and opened the cabin door to allow what little breeze we could get. Dorsal sat outside the cabin and nodded at me. I saluted back.
Jane was breathing steadily, but sweat poured from her, soaking her hair and the bedclothes. I removed the blood-soaked bandage on her leg; the wound was now closed, but the scab was fragile, like the first ice on a pond. I decided to let it air out a little before I rebandaged it.
She opened her eyes. They were shiny with delirium and didn’t focus on anything. “Miles?”
“No, it’s Eddie.”
“Eddie? Where’s Miles? Is he here?”
“He’s home. Safe.”
“Are you sure?” Her voice was pitiful in its concern. “He’s not a fighter, he gets hurt so easily…”
“Absolutely,” I said. “He’s fine.”
“Good,” she sighed. Her eyes closed again.
After sunset, I lit the lamp, and again her eyes opened. This time they were clear, and they looked right at me. “Have you been here all day?”
“Yeah.”
“How am I?”
“ ‘Bitchy and foul-mouthed’ seems to be the consensus.”
She smiled. “I’m too tired to look. Have I still got my leg?” “Yeah.”
She chuckled weakly. “Skurnick usually doesn’t wait to amputate. I think he keeps score; his bone saw has little notches on the handle.” She raised herself on her elbows, an effort that took all her strength. “Goddamn if it isn’t the same leg I broke back at that conference where we met. Do you remember that?”
“I do.”
“Can I have a drink of water?”
I found the jug and tipped it up for her. She was still very pale, but her fever had broken and the sweat had dried. She asked, “How’s Suhonen?”
“Fine, the last I heard,” I said. Which was true. Like Jane, he’d either live or die based on his own innate toughness.
She lay back. “Who was that boy that was in here?”
“His name’s Dorsal.”
“Is he the cabin boy?”
I nodded. “But he thinks he’s the captain.”
“And the little girl?”
“I think you might have been dreaming her. There’s no little girls on board.”
She laughed, weak but unmistakably Jane. “That figures. Not sexy young men, just a strange little girl.” She smiled and lay back. “At least it wasn’t the handmaiden again.”
I remembered Clift’s drunken assertions. “You dream about her a lot?”
She nodded. “Don’t you dream about your failures?”
“I used to. Talking to Liz about it has helped, believe it or not. You ever talk to Miles?”
She snorted weakly. “What do you think?”
“You want to talk to me?”
She thought for so long, I worried she’d passed out with her eyes open. Then she said, “Close the door.”
I did so and sat on the floor opposite her bunk.
She said, “You were a mercenary before you became a sword jockey, right? What made you change jobs?”
I didn’t want to get into detail about the whore house massacre that left me the only survivor, with no idea who’d killed everyone else or why. It made me take a long look at myself and the life I’d chosen. “I saw who I’d become and didn’t like it.”
She nodded. “Me, too. I was a pirate, and a really good one. My crew made tons of money. Then one day we captured a ship with some noblewoman on board. She wouldn’t tell me where her jewels were hidden. I told her I’d kill her if she didn’t cooperate, but she was stubborn. That snotty kind of stubborn, you know? When I threatened to torture her, one of her handmaidens jumped to her defense. So I snapped the girl’s spine across my knee.”
I knew where this was going. I’d suspected something like this ever since I met Jane. “Did the noblewoman change her mind?”
She laughed, weak and without humor. “No. She didn’t think any more of the girl than I did. Except after a while, I couldn’t get the girl out of my mind. The look on her face, the terror…” Big tears welled in her eyes, but her voice remained steady. “Sometimes we have to be ruthless, you know? Show no mercy. But I killed that girl for all the wrong reasons, primarily just because I could. For the hell of it. I was fucking showing off.” She wiped her eyes. “I didn’t like myself much after that. I became a pirate hunter because I thought I could help balance the scales for that girl’s life, you know? But they don’t ever balance, do they? The past never goes away.”
