The Widow’s Saloon (Part 6 of 7)
In Part 5: The pirates behaved contemptibly, Alistair’s hands were injured, and the first mate of the Delta Comet was revealed to be a traitor.
Captain Marces gave Vlorance a deep, sweeping bow, and set his plumed tri-corner hat back on his head. Then he turned on his heel, and marched out the door, nodding curtly as he passed by Dr. Geovini. The doctor returned the gesture before returning his attention to the task of healing the wounded.
Vlorance, amused and touched, said, “Why, he’s half a pirate himself.”
Geovini called back, over his shoulder. “Oh, I’d say he’s quite a bit more than that!”
The captain had not been gone for more than a couple of minutes when a loud thud from the attic apartment above them caused every person in the room to look up. Vlorance’s nerves had been on edge since the morning, and her patience finally reached its limit. She bullied her way through the gathered crowd, coming to a halt at the bottom of the stairs that led up to her private living quarters.
“If there’s somebody up there, oooh, you’d better just show yourself at once!”
A door creaked open at the top of the stairs. For a moment, the doorway remained a dark, empty rectangle, but then Robert Elmsly stepped forward, leaning against the door’s frame as he stepped into the light. Vlorance gasped when she saw him.
“Bobby?”
Chapter 9
Vlorance placed a pitcher of ice water and a glass in front of Elmsly, who she knew as Bobby. The man filled the glass until it overflowed, then drained it in a few loud gulps before immediately pouring himself another. He finished most of the second glass before he finally stopped to wipe his mouth with the edge of his damp sleeve.
“They’re gone, Vlo,” he said, after he had caught his breath.
“Who is?” she asked. A hollow of expectant dread formed in the pit of her stomach. “Who is gone?”
“The pirates. Once they had everything they could carry, they got on their longboat and rowed back to their ship.”
Vlorance felt a wave of relief wash over her, though it was tempered by the grief she felt for her neighbors. “Oh, well, ’m glad they are gone, I suppose, but I do hate the thought of them getting away.”
Elmsly finished his drink. “Don’t worry,” he said, standing up. “They’re not getting away.” He set the glass down on the table beside the glistening pitcher. “Thanks for the drinks,” he added, before walking away to assist Dr. Geovini, who was trying to throw a suture under dim lighting.
Once Bobby had moved on, Vlorance noticed the large, dark stain that his saturated clothes had left upon her chair. He had tracked a trail of wet footprints across the floor as well, with the imprints of his toes clearly visible. When Vlorance took a second glance at him, she was shocked to discover that Bobby was not wearing any shoes!
Chapter 10
Karl Rhote, the trusted first mate of the Delta Comet, was in actuality a man named Luis Smarner. He was the captain of the pirate vessel that had unleashed havoc upon Harbor Side, and it was his crew that had plundered the docks. While the night’s haul had been…adequate, it was not the fortune he had anticipated or promised his men. The guard tower had been a new addition; Smarner had not anticipated those nifty smoke signals. Once they were sent up, the pirates’ time in Harbor Side had been curtailed. They would have to return when the Navy was gone to finish what they had started there that evening.
Captain Smarner stood upon the bow of his ship, the Opal Lance, and peered through his spyglass toward the mouth of the harbor. The exit was a passage of open water narrowed by the jagged remains of a collapsed mountain jutting out into the water. Beyond it lay the glittering expanse of Ocean Bay, and it was there that Smarner saw how his path to freedom might be blocked. Two of the Navy’s warships were already moving into position to cut off his escape.
“Damn.”
He stalked aft, considering a return to the docks, but when he reached the stern and extended his looking glass once more, he saw the Delta Comet behind them closing the distance that separated them with predatory speed.
Captain Marces was on the Comet’s deck, observing the Opal Lance through his own telescope. When Marces realized that Smarner could see him, Marces took the looking glass away from his eye and effortlessly collapsed it against his knees with a brief series of sharp clicks. He offered the man he only knew as Rhote a broad, mocking grin, twiddling his fingers in greeting from across the water.
On the Opal Lance, Smarner snarled. The captain found himself in a situation that defied sound logic. There was no doubt that the Delta Comet possessed impressive speed, but the Opal Lance should have held an insurmountable lead, even against that strange hybrid of a ship. The wind had remained fair and strong, filling the Lance’s unfurled sails until the strained spars and beams groaned. With such a consistent gale to propel them, the pirates should have been able to easily leave the Comet in their wake, and get clear of the harbor before the Navy sealed the passage to Ocean Bay.
Smarner raised his glass once again. The warships had nearly reached their mark and soon, they would deploy their long ships as well, making the passage entirely impassable. Panic began to sharpen the pirate captain’s frustration. Why did the Lance feel so damned sluggish?
“Helm!” he hollered at the thin man who gripped the ship’s steering wheel. “Why‘re we moving so slow?”
The helmsman was a weathered, bald-headed pirate with a leather band over one eye and prominent dueling scars that ran the length of both cheeks. His ratty shirt was little more than a collection of holes bridged by roughspun fabric, revealing the man’s sallow skin and protruding ribs.
“Don’t know, sir!” he called back, voice straining against the wind. “She’s dragging hard and swayin’ like she’s taking on water.”
“What!”
Just then, a hatch in the floor beside Captain Smarner opened up and outward. Several members of the Opal Lance’s crew clambered up a ladder from the cargo hold below and rolled onto the ship’s deck, soaked and exhausted. They lay on their backs, trying to catch their breath.
Smarner peered down through the open hatch at the hold below and swore when he saw what was happening. Water had filled the ship to waist-height. It sloshed violently back and forth, a massive destabilizing weight whose chaotic movements increased the intensity with which the Lance swayed and rolled. Frothing white foam washed across the lower deck. As Smarner watched, a wooden bucket floated by, bobbing along atop the intruding flood.
The captain grabbed one of his men by the hair and yanked the poor man to his feet. “What. Happened?”
The sailor wrenched his head out of Smarner’s grasp, leaving strands of his hair in the captain’s hand. “The cannon, sir! Somebody cut it loose and it—!”
A thunderous crash erupted from the Lance’s lower deck. Smarner rushed to the hatch and arrived just in time to see one of the ship’s massive iron cannons rolling free, propelled by the force of the water that surged powerfully through the hold. The weapon had become a lethal, erratic wrecking ball, and it smashed against the interior of the Opal Lance’s hull with every tilt of the choppy sea.
Smarner screamed at his cowering crew, his shrill voice cracking with unrestrained rage. “What happened!”
In Part 7: Zed talks to Robert Elmsly, more Kallowaries show up, and —ultimately— time passes.
