"Good to have you back, Captain."
Merrill Pegsworthy broke out of his reverie to acknowledge
his First Mate with a cheerful grin.
"Good to be back, Mistress Loor." The pause must have alerted her, though,
because she eyed his expression closely, unconvinced.
"Somethin' happen?"
"Oh, no," he replied, gesturing toward the ship
now receding into the distance.
"Tatsumi is well set up aboard the Kitsune--"
"The what, now?"
"Oh, some fancy of his, some kind of legendary fox
creature, I understand. But she is sound
and on her way, as you can see for yourself." This did not produce the desired response; if
anything, Labella grew more uneasy.
"Are ye sure ye had no troubles? We expected ye long afore this, truth be
told."
Pegsworthy essayed a dismissive shrug. "There were some troubles, but they were
not ours. Met some likely young folks
with a newly-acquired ship; they helped Rickety fend off some sort of giant
wasp attack. So, of course we had to
wait for him to clear up the mess and launch their ship. Took a couple of days."
"New pirates, eh?
Well, they'll be in for some schoolin' if they think they can give us
any trouble," she announced, somewhat to his chagrin.
"I doubt they'd want to, the first mate is Tatsumi's
sister. They seem like nice enough
folks."
"Then the Shackles will swallow 'em whole and spit the
bones."
"I wouldn't be so sure of that, either. They acquired their ship from that devil's
son, Plugg. You remember him? Harrigan's Mate."
Labella spat on the deck.
"Not like to forget, me. So
he's dead, then? Good, though I wouldna
have minded doin' the job meself."
"From the sound of things, you would have had to outrun
an arrow to do it, that archer of theirs is a fiend. Never seen anyone shoot so fast in my life,
and she killed Plugg herself according to Tatsumi's sister, spitted him right
though his black heart!" He
grinned, bemused, causing Mistress Loor no small distress as she looked askance
on her Captain's peculiar new mood.
"Must have been quite the sight!
Say, Labella, do I still have that Azlanti bow somewhere?"
Labella felt her jaw loosen as her heart seemed to writhe in
her chest. "The Eagle-Claw, Captain?"
"That's the one."
Her jaw sagged again.
"The one ye said ye'd sell t'buy an ISLAND
if ye ever decided t'retire, Captain?"
"Yes. Wherever
did I put it?"
"The bow that's worth more than the Bonaventure and
everything else aboard her, COMBINED?!
THAT bow?!?!"
Something in her tone finally seemed to penetrate whatever cloud
Pegsworthy's brain currently occupied.
He glanced at her, his eyes sparking dangerously. "Is there some kind of point to this
inquiry, Mistress?"
Labella forced herself into some semblance of
composure. No matter how easygoing he
was, one did not scream at one's Captain.
Even if he'd clearly lost his mind.
Perhaps especially not then.
"N-no, Captain."
"Good. So where
did it end up?"
"It's still locked in yer safe, Captain." She felt faint. She was going to faint.
"Go fetch it out for me, will you? And have Pinch find me some sort of gift case
for it or similar."
"Besmara save me!" Labella squeaked. The end had come. The Captain was sending her on an errand that
meant telling the notoriously ruthless quartermaster that Pegsworthy intended
to give away the single most valuable object he'd ever had in his
possession. There was no help for
it. If she was going to have the hide
ripped from her bones she'd rather it happen trying to talk some kind of sense
into her beloved Captain. "Captain,
ye know I love ye like me own flesh and blood--"
"That's kind of you to say." His voice was flat, hard.
"Aye, Captain.
And ye know I've ne'er disobeyed yer orders, not e'en when I thought ye
were lettin' yer kind and noble heart rule o'er yer sense . . ."
"Yes?"
"So, I'm beggin' ye, Captain, don't go givin' THAT bow
to some . . . some . . . strumpet!"
Pegsworthy's breath hissed between his teeth. "Mistress Loor, I cannot help but think
that I must have misheard you just there."
Labella flinched and hid her face with her hands.
"Nay, Captain, an' it please ye, ye can have me flogged
afore the mast, but by Besmara's tits and nipples there's such a thing as
whores, Captain!" She hunched,
shaking, not daring to look at him.
There was a long, horrible silence.
"Oh, dear," Pegsworthy said finally. Labella felt him gently put his hands on her
shoulders and turn her to look at him.
"Calm yourself. It's not
like that."
"I'm sorry, Captain, I didn't mean . . ."
He squeezed her shoulders.
"No, I'm the one who's sorry.
My mind was wandering and I didn't explain myself well enough. I'm not looking to . . . um . . ." to her surprise, he faltered and looked
slightly embarrassed.
"Get yer buoy bobbed, Captain?" she offered,
anxious not to let him get distracted again.
His face twisted, caught between horror and humor. He blinked repeatedly then finally frowned,
although it was clearly a struggle.
"Yes, all right . . . that . . . what you said, and
thank you so very much indeed for putting that image in my head at this
moment--"
"Sorry, Captain."
He massaged his forehead with his fingers and sighed. "It is a bit . . . extravagant of me,
yes--"
"A BIT?!"
"Watch it. It is
MY bow, Labella, I took it as my share, won it with my own hands and rather
more of my own blood than I care to part with.
It's doing no one any good where it is.
I . . . I would much rather see it in the hands of someone I believe I
can trust, who has the skill to use it for its intended purpose. If I sell it, it'll just go to some rich
merchant or, hah, 'nobleman' who'll put it in a case so he can gloat over it at
his drunken parties, and that just wouldn't be right. It'd be like"--he gave a self-conscious
little chuckle--"like throwing away a man because there was an accident
and he got himself a bit of a limp.
Anyway, I wasn't planning on retiring just yet."
Labella was sick with horror. Like the rest of Pegsworthy's crew she took
it as an article of faith that anyone who thought the Captain was less than
capable for being minus one leg was an idiot, a poltroon, and the worst kind of
blind damn fool. For him to mention it
himself, well, that was unthinkable. "Captain,
I . . ."
"No, it's all right, I understand. I'm not angry. Be a good girl and go take care of it for me,
would you? It's been a long day and I'd
like to sit down."
"Aye, aye, Captain!"
Pegsworthy sighed again as he watched her scurry away. She was right, of course, he was being
foolish, and it didn't help that he'd spent several hours while he waited for
the rendezvous in pleasant contemplation of exactly what Labella assumed he was
contemplating. Time to put aside
unlikely daydreams and focus again on the main chance. Or maybe not so unlikely, considering some of
the things he'd heard about Mwangi tribals . . .
STOP that, Merrill
Pegsworthy, you old fool. Not old
enough, apparently. Not by a long
shot. Have you finally forgotten what honor is, that you'd break the only
word you still have? If you're a fool,
ADMIT it, so at least you won't be a blind fool. He'd made an oath to himself years ago, when
he'd first stolen the Bonaventure and turned to piracy to support himself and
his crew, that no matter what happened he would never, ever lie to himself
about what it was he was doing. He would
never pretend he was not a killer and a thief, never claim he was a better man
because there were some evils he still shied away from committing. It
might bring you the love and loyalty of your crew, but you don't buy your way
into the Light by claiming that well, you weren't as bad as you could have
been. You are a pirate because you
couldn't bear to spend the rest of your life saying you were a cripple, so
before you go getting all stupid over some woman, Merrill Pegsworthy, remember
that SHE is a pirate TOO.
He sat down at his desk and unbuckled the straps holding the
wooden peg to the stump of his left leg.
It had hurt all day, a weird, phantom tingling that seemed to originate
in the part of his flesh that was cut away.
Whenever his leg hurt like this he always dreamed that night of being
whole, an Eagle Knight, a seacaptain in the service of Andoran, fighting for
the sovereign People who trusted him with their liberty and lives . . .
Who threw your own
life, the lives of better men than you, and all your works away like they were garbage,
of no use to anyone . . .
It was why he still wore his Knight's coat even though it
made most Shackles people uneasy. Not to
remind him of what he once was, oh no, to remind him of what he wasn't. Without it, he feared he would forget and
start throwing away the lives of the men and women who depended upon him. He owed them better than that.
Still, sometimes you had to think first about what you owed
yourself, he decided, and reached for a piece of parchment. Dipping his quill in the bottle of ink, he
began to write.
Madam--
You have not
vouchsafed to me the right to address you by name, nevertheless I hope you will
not feel it an imposition if I beg you accept this token of my goodwill toward
yourself, your Captain, and his newfound ship.
In truth, I feel somewhat in your debt for the magnitude of the service
you have performed in ridding the world of several men who befouled her with
every breath they took, so in that light I hope you will accept this bow, the
Eagle-Claw, that it might aid you in the prosecution of many similar works in
the future.
Was it getting dark already?
And here he'd written barely a paragraph. And his leg was cramping.
While much of the
Eagle-Claw's history is obscure to me, I do know that it dates from ancient Azlant
and may even have been crafted by those fabled peoples.
There, that was safe enough, surely?
The sockets upon the
grip were made to contain ioun stones, although of course any such they once
contained are long gone. Still, you may
be fortunate and come across replacements in your travels.
Come ON, Merrill, you
can't send off barely half a page with a bow like this.
Perhaps you wonder
how it came to be in my possession.
Doubtful. Oh, well, press on, press on.
While I cannot make
such claims with regards to many of my acquisitions, the Eagle-Claw came to my
hands honorably enough. Some years ago
we took a man aboard who was adrift in a tiny boat far from any land. He was sun-struck and nearly dead of thirst,
but he claimed to be the last survivor of an Andoran merchant expedition to the
island of the Sun
Temple
We were never to make
landfall upon the island itself. Long
before we came even to the suspicion of land in the distance, we were viciously
set upon by none other than the Wormwood, flagship as you know of the vile
Barnabus Harrigan, and two of her sister ships who were in the process of
stripping a vessel so badly damaged that her name and provenance were
impossible to determine. The resulting
battle was a terrible one, for Harrigan seemed determined that no one should
survive to bear hence the tale of this plunder.
Had not one of my other ships arrived, I have little doubt that the
Bonaventure, along with myself and all hands, would now rest at the bottom of
the Arcadian Ocean
Having witnessed your
bravery and skill and heard of your sufferings at the hands of Harrigan and his
ilk, I had no thought but that the gods must will for you and this bow to be
together.
Pegsworthy hesitated for so long that the ink dried in the
quill and he was forced to dig out his pocket knife, trim the quill, and clean
it before cutting a new point.
So, I hasten to carry
out that will and hope you will look favorably upon me in the future when we
might have opportunity to spend time together ourselves.
Entirely at your
service,
Merrill Tantrey
"Gods," he breathed, staring at his
signature. That name! He hadn't used that name in years, a decade
even! Yet here it was, coming out of his
pen as if it were completely natural and right.
Scrape it off, some part of
him hissed in panic, but no, it would leave a mark and who aboard that ship of
lubbers would know, anyway? Still, he
must not lie and misrepresent himself.
Inking his quill one last time, he added a final word.
Merrill Tantrey Pegsworthy
There, it was done.
He set the parchment aside to dry.
The rest he could leave to Labella, before he thought too much more
about it and really did drive himself insane.
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