Pirate Emperor Read online

  Since then, it was said, the cask with the corpse stood on the bank of the island like a memorial. Even the most hard-boiled pirates shuddered when the story of Santiago’s end was recounted for the benefit of people in the taverns. Yes, people laughed about that greedy gut, but secretly the vision of the lonely rum cask with the pirate’s boots sticking out gave chills to many. Of course Santiago wasn’t the first to become a victim of his own insatiable thirst, but the way he did it was unprecedented. Soon the talk was of a curse the captain was supposed to have uttered in a gurgle and celebrated with his last swallow of rum.

  All the same, however many stories made the rounds, it was a fact that Santiago had doubtless been one of those who’d have known of the secret meeting of the Antilles captains with Pirate Emperor Kendrick. The Ghost Trader’s plan was thus as follows: He and Soledad and Walker would ride on sea horses to the island, where he would call up Santiago’s ghost and get him to reveal the meeting place of Kendrick and the pirates; the living might well fear the consequences of a betrayal and keep silent, but Kendrick’s threats could mean nothing to a dead man. The Ghost Trader was confident his plan would succeed.

  The three riders intended to then proceed from Santiago’s island to the captains’ meeting place, for d’Artois’s spies were reporting that the meeting with Tyrone and Kendrick was going to occur soon. Haste was thus in order, not just because of concern for the attack by the Maelstrom, but also because the meeting might be over before the comrades even got there.

  Soledad told Jolly all this while they descended through Aelenium’s narrow little streets together, passing under the shading awnings the inhabitants had stretched from house to house. It took them almost half an hour to reach the stables of the hippocampi down along the water. There Walker and the Ghost Trader were already waiting.

  The sea horses’ stables were located in an extensive complex on the shore of a sea star point. Grooms hurried around, some carrying two or three large baskets filled to the rims with tiny fish that were freshly caught. Others rolled hip-high balls of dried algae and trailing plants, which were harvested from the plantation-like fields on the walls of the undercity. Both were used as fodder for the sea horses, which were, despite all their stamina, still vulnerable to nutritional deficiencies and, as Jolly had learned from d’Artois, to catching cold in cooler waters. This was one of the reasons why the sea horses never moved outside the boundaries of the Caribbean Sea.

  The interior of the stables consisted of a center walk, several hundred feet long, with water-filled pools sunk into the floor on both sides of it. The sea horses romped around within the pools, frequently underwater, sometimes also lined up beside one another. With their great round eyes, they curiously observed the men and women who were busy keeping the pools clean, adding new streams of water, or scrubbing and feeding their charges. It smelled of algae, saltwater, and the soaking-wet clothing of the workers in the stables. The fishy smell you might obviously have expected there was missing almost entirely, for the sea horses had an earthy smell, a little like shore mud and damp stone.

  Walker and the Ghost Trader were waiting for Jolly and the princess at one of the pools. Three saddled sea horses rocked quietly beside them in the water. Stable hands held the bridles, scratched the animals’ bony plates, and whispered soothing words to them.

  Walker grinned at Jolly, while the Trader nodded thoughtfully and uttered only a growling “hmm, hmm.” Perhaps he’d been afraid Jolly would disapprove of her friends’ departure and refuse to accompany Soledad to the stables. His two parrots were nowhere to be seen; they were to remain in Aelenium so that in case of an attack, they could quickly fly over the sea and warn their master.

  Walker hugged Jolly. She flinched slightly, his grip was so strong. “Don’t let any of these fatheads get you down, little one! Just remember: In better times we’ll rob the whole store, drive these powder puffs into the sea, and sink the city.”

  Jolly assumed her darkest pirate mien and nodded.

  “And one other thing,” said Walker, before he released her. “If any one of them wrinkles his nose at you, break it for him. Punch it right in the middle! Is that clear?”

  “That is clear!”

  Soledad, too, hugged her again. “We’ve come quite a long way together, haven’t we? From Kendrick’s hole in New Providence to here?”

  Jolly grinned. “Right.”

  The princess punched her lightly on the shoulder. “Damn, who would have thought it?” She took a deep breath, looked for a long moment as though she was going to add something, then shook her head and stepped back to make room for the Ghost Trader.

  “Take care of yourself,” he said as he went into a crouch in front of Jolly in order to bring his eye on a level with her face. “You’re a brave girl. And no matter what Munk can achieve with the mussels—he needs someone like you to go along with him.”

  “And I’ll need him down there at the Crustal Breach.”

  “If everything works out, we’ll be back before you leave,” he said. “If not … well, you two are the only ones who can do it.”

  He patted her on the shoulder and stepped back without embracing her. The three climbed onto their sea horses, waved once more, then turned the animals toward an opening in the coral wall. No one else had come to see them off. Jolly guessed that the official leave-taking had taken place already, in the council room of the count, probably, or in another hall in the great coral palace. But why hadn’t Buenaventure shown up? And Griffin?

  She gave herself a shake and ran along the central walk to the exit from the stables. Under the archway she stopped, shaded her eyes with her hand, and looked out across the water. In the distance she saw the three riders on their sea horses growing ever smaller, until they disappeared into the billowing fog wall. A last streak marked the place at which they’d gone into the fog, but only for a moment, then everything settled back to a uniform gray.

  Jolly stood there for a long time, paying no attention to the growling of the grooms, in whose way she was standing. Sorrow filled her, as if she’d seen her friends for the last time. The whispering of the waves sounded like an invitation to run out onto the sea after them, away from Aelenium and the people who lived here; away from the Maelstrom and the Mare Tenebrosum; away from a responsibility she didn’t want to bear.

  What would Griffin think of her if she simply stole away? Would he consider her a coward? Perhaps.

  But what if she had a good reason, one that weighed more heavily than her fear? If she, like Soledad, remembered her own goal again?

  Would he understand her?

  Yes, she thought, Griffin understands me. For sure.

  Suddenly she had an idea, and she was amazed that the thought hadn’t come to her much earlier. She cast a last look at the fog wall, then raced up the steps and little streets to the palace. She stormed excitedly into her room and searched through her things for the little box with the dead spider, the only proof she had that she hadn’t imagined the attack of the poison spiders on the Skinny Maddy. Not that she mistrusted her own memories. However, it was a reassuring feeling to hold a witness to this catastrophe in her hand—even if it had eight legs and hideous bristles.

  With box and spider she hurried to the great library again, not to Forefather’s book room but into the main buildings. There she began her search.

  The spider had a Latin name, which Jolly had to divide into syllables in order to read it. When she said it out loud to herself, it still sounded as though she were spelling it, instead of saying it in one word.

  It had been late afternoon when she finally worked her way into that part of the library. Armed with a ladder and a telescope she’d searched room by room, from the lowest piles of books to the highest. When she was just about to give up, she chanced to go through a small door and discovered behind it the Division of Jungle Organisms and Intestinal Diseases in Tropical Climates—obviously not an often requested subject among the sages of Aelenium.

  After
the long search, it felt almost as if the finger of Fate pointed to the book with the information she sought lying right on top of a pile that rose just next to the dusty reading desk. It had been written about three decades before by a monk who—as Jolly learned in a little note appended—had lost his life in a shipwreck after the completion of the book.

  On page 426, she found the first clue that might possibly give her information about Bannon’s fate. Again and again she compared the striking markings of the spider body in the open box with the illustration in the folio.

  According to that, the species of spider to which the dead one in the box belonged came from a region on the coast of South America. Not just any coast, not just any region—but from exactly that region that Jolly had already encountered once today in her conversation with Soledad.

  The Orinoco delta.

  That part of the jungle into which the legendary Captain Tyrone had fled and where he was said still to rule today as a cruel despot over a population of cannibals and pirates.

  A coincidence? Possibly, but very improbably.

  The spiders in the reefed sails of the galleon that had been waiting for the boarding pirates from the Skinny Maddy; the spiders that Jolly had barely managed to escape and to which all the other members of the crew had fallen victim—they came from the cannibal kingdom of Captain Tyrone.

  Jolly gasped with fright, inhaled a load of dust, and coughed for half a minute before she was quiet again. Then she compared the light brown pattern on the spider’s body with the illustration once more. There was no doubt. She also studied the text again, but it gave no indication that this species of spider appeared in any other regions.

  It all fit together. The ambush, the spiders, and Tyrone’s sudden readiness to work with the pirates again after such a long time.

  But why? Why should a man like Tyrone set such a trap for Bannon? What interest did he have in the crew, the ship—or in Jolly?

  Supposing Tyrone had in fact been after the polliwog from Bannon’s ship—did this mean there was a connection between him and the Maelstrom? Or was there something she’d overlooked?

  One thing was established, anyway: She now had a clue. For the first time since the fearsome attack by the poison spiders, Jolly felt real hope spring up in her. If Tyrone had set the trap for them, then there was a possibility that he’d supplied Bannon and his men with the antidote in time. Always provided he had an interest in getting his hands on Bannon alive.

  Jolly slapped the book closed. Clouds of dust arose and veiled her sight. When it had settled again, the library room lay as still and extinct as it had all the years before.

  At night the sea around Aelenium was as black as a bottomless pit. The fog ring swallowed up a major part of the starlight. Therefore Captain d’Artois had given the order to kindle giant fires on floats. Their light was supposed to illumine the night and warn the defenders before kobalin attacks. Blazing, the platforms floated on the dark water, but their circles of light were nowhere large enough to illuminate the entire upper surface. It was as if someone tried to become lord of the darkness with a handful of fireflies.

  Jolly took cover behind a pile of logs. The repair work on the Carfax was finished, but the rest of the materials and the tools still lay near the quay. The sloop rocked gently at the edge of a sea star point beside a dozen fishing boats, whose low masts were dwarfed by the Carfax.

  While she strained to look over to the quay from her hiding place, it seemed to Jolly for the first time that the ship had something majestic about her. And the thought of her plan gave her conscience a painful stab: Walker had inherited the sloop from his mother, a much-feared freebooter, whose urn he kept in the captain’s cabin as a reliquary. It was wrong to steal that ship. But damn it, Jolly was a pirate. Walker would understand. At least for a second—before he beat her brains out.

  Jolly knew that soldiers were hidden everywhere in the darkness. In the late afternoon d’Artois’s men had run into a troop of kobalins in the fog; they had been observing the city out of the mists. Since then they’d known that the Maelstrom’s soldiers were moving inexorably closer. The watches had been doubled along the shores of the city and in the watchtowers.

  Jolly’s plan was crazy, and she knew it. Escaping from Aelenium unnoticed was impossible. She could only hope that no one would presume her to be aboard the Carfax. She had possibly a one- or two-day lead before anyone drew the right conclusions. Even then, the sea horses were still fast enough to catch up with her. But perhaps they’d understand that Jolly was not suited for what they asked of her. After all, Munk was still there. He was the braver polliwog and the more powerful mussel magician, better prepared for the battle against the Maelstrom.

  She felt a sharp pang at this thought and was forced to recall the Ghost Trader’s words at their parting. She could turn it and twist it however she wanted: In the end it came down to the fact that she was leaving Munk in the lurch. He’d have to go into the deep alone, have to walk to the Crustal Breach alone.

  Stop that! Don’t make it harder for yourself than it is already!

  She tried to breathe quietly and regularly. When she had herself somewhat under control, she looked around for a last time, then scampered, stooping, across the open harbor landing to the quayside. The gangplank to the Carfax vibrated as she went on board. Her steps sounded hollow on the deck.

  She took cover behind the railing and looked back. Not a human soul far and wide. Soldiers were in the vicinity, but possibly they had their eyes only on the water, not on the quayside. Probably no one figured that someone would steal a ship.

  But the cone of the mountain, with its hundreds upon hundreds of spires, towers, and bridges, appeared to lean over her if she raised her eyes to it for long enough. Then it was as if it were tipping forward infinitely slowly, and she had to fight the urge to whirl around and run away. Even in the dark she couldn’t get entirely free of this feeling. Perhaps it was just the worry that somewhere up there someone was looking down at her.

  She crouched again and crossed the deck. It smelled of fresh sawdust, of tar and carpenter’s glue. The workers of Aelenium and the ghosts on the Carfax had done good work, as far as it was possible to tell in the dark. Although Jolly had never encountered ghosts in the city anywhere, dealing with the misty beings seemed to be nothing new for the people of Aelenium.

  Jolly had tried before to command the faceless beings, without success. But after her lessons with Forefather, she knew what she needed to do to control the ghosts. She’d proven it in a competition with Munk only two days before.

  Now she ran up to the bridge, loosened the safety rope on the wheel, placed her hands on the grips, and concentrated. Her lips formed silent words that only she herself knew and that had meaning exclusively for her; for magic, she’d learned, was something entirely personal. There was no fixed spell that anyone could use, no written-down charm formulas. Books of magic and magic scrolls? All nonsense. One formed one’s own devices to work the magic. The words and syllables for it were found deep in one’s innermost thoughts. The mussel magic also worked on a similar principle, only it was far more powerful and its effects much more dangerous.

  Jolly’s call to the ghosts sent a gust of wind over the boards of the Carfax. It nestled gently around the masts and crept up into the ropes and sails. Like an invisible power, it danced over the rigging and forced under Jolly’s command the lost souls of all those who’d died aboard this ship.

  It took only a few moments for the foggy outlines and silhouettes to rise from the wood, with fuzzy borders and blurry faces, making it impossible to differentiate one from another. Soon they were all on the main deck and gathered on the bridge around Jolly and the wheel. A ghost as shifting as a shred of fog even wafted up into the crow’s nest on the new topmast. Jolly let her eyes travel over the deserted pier of Aelenium once more. She’d never sailed alone in a ship before, not to mention commanded an entire crew. But she couldn’t allow herself any doubts now. Bannon had taug
ht her all he knew about seafaring. She lacked only experience.

  The ghosts manned all the important positions on deck and in the rigging. Only the rustling of the unrolling sails, the groaning of tautened ropes, and the creaking of the anchor winch were to be heard. In a few minutes the Carfax would be ready to run out.

  “Haven’t you forgotten someone?”

  Jolly whirled around. Behind her, in the shadows of the railing, a thin figure was seated cross-legged. On the dark deck shimmered a circle of small, bright dots.

  “Munk!”

  He sighed softly. “Yes, just me. Too bad, huh?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He looked up at her. “You’d rather it was someone else.”

  She glared at him angrily. “Stop that foolishness. This isn’t the time for—”

  “Why don’t you take Griffin with you? Now that you understand each other so well.”

  “This is my affair alone. Not Griffin’s. And not yours either.”

  “Hmm,” he said, tilting his head as if he had to think about that. “Haven’t you overlooked something?”

  She considered whether she should order the ghosts to throw him over the railing on the spot.

  She had neither the time nor the patience for arguments of this sort. And especially not with someone who was acting like an offended little boy.

  “The Crustal Breach,” he said, thus unerringly hitting her sore spot. “So you mean for me to get the job done alone.”

  “I have to find Bannon. I intended to do that from the beginning, and you know it.”

  “And Aelenium? The people here and in the entire Caribbean? I and—devil take it—oh, all right, Griffin, too? Don’t we matter to you?”

  “I must do what I must do.”

  “Good Lord, Jolly! Can’t you think of anything more original?” He stood up, walked carefully around the mussel circle on the deck, and stopped close in front of her. “Admit it. You’ve got the jitters. Bannon is only an excuse to run away.”