CHAPTER FOUR
SURVIVOR’S CURSE
THE MAN WHO ANSWERED THE DOOR scrutinized Shae with a clear look of disgust on his unshaven face. “Who are you, and what do you want?”
“My name’s Shae,” Shae said evenly, catching a whiff of rum over the funk of someone too long without a bath. “You’re Torse Grayfenn?”
“Why do you want to know?” The man didn’t look like he wanted to let Shae inside.
“Because I’ve got a deal for you. Information for gold, and you don’t even have to leave your flat.” Shae jingled the fat purse at his belt and scowled. He didn’t like standing here on the stoop with his back exposed to the street. “Now, let me in.”
“Fine. Come in, but I don’t need your gold, and I don’t know anything worth paying for.” Grayfenn stepped aside, and Shae moved past him. “And turn that smoke-pot on your back down. You’ll stink up the place.”
“Sure.” With a miniscule arcane effort, Shae dampened the fire of his armor’s boiler to the bare minimum, though he doubted a little coal smoke would do anything but sweeten the smell in Grayfenn’s rooms.
The term squalor would have been a generous description of the place. A rickety table with one chair, another chair in the corner with a sooty oil lamp and a book resting on the table beside it, and a door that probably led to a bedroom. There was a coal stove in the other corner and a dirty frying pan atop it. A few plates and bowls were scattered about. Cockroaches skittered here and there. The place reeked of spilt rum and a chamber pot that should have been emptied days ago.
“Now, what do you want?” Grayfenn went to a cupboard and pulled down a bottle half-full of brown liquid. It had no label. He poured a measure into a grimy cup and stuffed the cork back in the bottle.
“I want to pay you for information about Seacutter.”
The cup stopped halfway to the man’s mouth. “I don’t know anything about it.” The cup finished its journey, and the liquid within passed down the stubbled throat in one loud swallow. Grayfenn reached for the bottle again.
“The word I hear is that you do. Why not tell me and earn enough to buy yourself some decent liquor?” Shae nodded to the bottle. He could smell the rotgut even over the stench of the room. It was probably half wood alcohol, even worse than the swill Doc used to clean out amputations before sewing the bloody wounds up.
“I like this stuff.” Grayfenn poured another cup and recorked the bottle.
“Nobody likes that stuff.” Shae shrugged. “Not my business, but why are you lying to me, and why are you trying to kill yourself with that swill?”
“No, it’s not your business.” Grayfenn drank again and brushed past Shae to his chair in the corner. His gait was remarkably steady, considering his probable state of inebriation. He balanced the cup on one arm of the chair, picked up his book, and sat. “Now, go away. I’m busy.”
Shae just chuckled and folded his arms. “I won’t go away. I don’t care what broke you, and I don’t really care what forced you to crawl into a bottle in hopes of dying. Tell me what you know about Seacutter.” He pulled the money pouch from his hip and tossed it to the wreck of a man. “Then you can slither back into your bottle. Maybe you’ll find your courage there.”
Grayfenn batted the money pouch aside with surprising ease and surged to his feet, his face blanching white with rage. “What do you know about courage?”
He downed his rotgut and threw the cup at Shae. It missed by a wide margin and shattered against the wall. “You and your fancy sword and warcaster armor. You don’t know the first thing about a merchant’s courage. Facing down bloodthirsty pirates with nothing but a dozen twelve pounders and some rusty cutlasses, watching your entire crew slaughtered before your eyes, murdered in cold blood, your ship looted and burned to the waterline, only kept alive because your family had enough money to pay for your worthless life, even if it ruined them!”
So, that was it. Grayfenn had lost his ship and was ransomed by pirates, and the payment had decimated his family. That was enough to threaten any man’s courage, and it wasn’t so far from Shae’s own plight in life, his family ruined by the Mercarian League for his act of mutiny against a homicidal captain.
Grayfenn strode to the cupboard and snatched up the bottle of rum. “Go back to your fancy ship, Captain Shae. Go hide behind your mighty warjacks and call yourself courageous.”
Three quick strides and Shae snatched the bottle out of Grayfenn’s hand before it touched the man’s lips. He cast it aside to smash against the wall. Grayfenn stumbled back a step, fear and something else, something Shae couldn’t define, stiffening his features. Maybe there was a shred of defiance there after all. Maybe Grayfenn hadn’t been completely broken.
“I’ve watched more of my sailors die than you’ve ever had under your command,” Shae said through clenched teeth. “Some at my own hand because they were gut-shot and couldn’t face an end screaming and shitting themselves.” He bridled his anger at the man’s ignorant accusation and made a decision. Perhaps there was a way to get through Grayfenn’s ruin. “Courage isn’t not being afraid, Captain Grayfenn. Courage is being so terrified people under your command are going to die because of your orders that you’d rather lose an arm than continue giving them, then giving those orders anyway. Courage is going on despite your fear.”
Grayfenn swallowed hard but didn’t say anything. Shae could see the mote of courage deep down in the man, not dead, but injured so badly it might never recover. There was one way to find out.
“Come with us,” Shae said. “Face your fear. You’re a sailor. I can see it in your stride. You belong on the sea.”
Grayfenn swallowed again and shook his head. “No, Captain. I’m not going back to sea. Not ever. I can’t face that again.” He looked away, his jaw trembling.
It was useless. The man was gone. There was nothing left but an empty shell. Shae turned away. He couldn’t even be angry at Grayfenn.
“Captain Shae?”
“Yes?” He turned back to see a spark of hope in the man’s disheveled features.
Grayfenn rubbed his stubbled jaw and frowned. “I’m not going to sea again, but I will make you a deal.”
Shae looked at him skeptically. “Go ahead.”
“The bastards who did this to me, the ones who killed my crew and ruined me, are the ones who know about Seacutter. I heard them talking about the wreck when they were holding me for ransom. I don’t know where the shipwreck is, but I know where they are.”
“All right.” That matched what Elan had told him. “That’s worth payment.”
“Keep your gold. Just give me your word on one thing, and I’ll tell you where they are.” Grayfenn opened the cupboard and pulled down another bottle of rotgut. “Promise me you’ll destroy them, and I’ll tell you.”
“I need to find Seacutter. If these pirates know where it is, I need them to tell me. Murdering them isn’t likely to get much in the way of cooperation.”
“Then promise them something. Tell them there’s treasure aboard, and you’ll split it with them. I don’t care. Just destroy them once you get what you need from them.”
“Betray them?”
Grayfenn choked a laugh and wrenched the cork from the bottle in his hand. “Yes. They deserve nothing better for what they did to me and my crew.”
Shae couldn’t argue with that. These cutthroats seemed the worst sort if they’d murder an entire crew and burn a ship after they already had her cargo. Wanton cruelty had never been a redeeming quality in the warcaster’s eyes.
“All right, I’ll take that deal. Tell me where they are.”
Grayfenn opened a drawer and rummaged through for a pencil and then seemed unable to find something to write on. Shae produced the note he’d been given by Elan, and the merchant captain scrawled out a series of numbers, coordinates. Finished, he handed the note to Shae.
One glance and Shae knew this would be a long voyage. “The Southern Ocean?”
This didn’t bode well. It was storm season for another two months, and passages south could be perilous.
Grayfenn nodded. “Those are the coordinates where they sank my ship. They sailed about thirty-six hours at a course two points south of east after they burned her. We stopped at an island. They had a stronghold there. It’s not much—a cove on the leeward shore that might anchor two ships and a ramshackle little village. You’ll know it when you see it.”
“How?” Shae folded the note and stuffed it into his sash. “There are lots of islands in the Southern Ocean.”
“You’ll know by the storm.” Grayfenn drank deeply from the bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“What storm?”
“The storm that follows those pirates around like a harbinger of doom, Captain Shae.” He drank again. “You see, they’re cursed.”
* * *
CROSSHAIRS SETTLED ON PHINNEUS SHAE’S forehead as the pirate captain descended the steps from the dwelling. Ghostmaker’s finger itched on Baby’s trigger.
“Not yet. Easy. Patience.” She moved her finger aside and watched the captain walk away. “Soon, Baby.” She started to get up to make her way over to the place. It was her turn. “Now all we’ve got to do is—”
Ghostmaker stopped as a small woman in a slicker stepped from the chandlery and started up the steps Shae had just descended. The woman glanced back at the departing pirate twice as she ascended, which suggested she knew Shae and probably knew what he was about.
“Who the hell are you?” Ghostmaker muttered, settling back down and focusing Baby’s scope on the woman, scrutinizing her with a professional eye.
Young and dark haired, with a shiny repeating pistol on her hip, she seemed like a walking contradiction. Her hands and face were soiled with soot and grease, but her boots looked new, black and shiny where the toes weren’t scuffed. She knocked on the same door Shae had, and a grizzled man answered. The irritation on his face turned to obvious surprise. A few words and a smile from the pretty young woman earned her entry. The door closed.
So, the League isn’t the only one chasing Seacutter. Ghostmaker focused Baby’s scope through the grimy window and let a cruel smile crease her lips. Well, we can fix that, can’t we?
* * *
LIANE KNOCKED ON THE DOOR and checked again over her shoulder to make sure Shae was well on his way back to his ship. The door opened.
“Now what in the name of—?” A disheveled man blinked at her and swallowed in surprise. “Who are you?”
“My name’s Liane, sir. Captain Liane Fromish. I’m with the Cygnaran Navy.” The man’s eyes widened more. She tried for a disarming smile. Just as she’d suspected, the truth would serve better than a lie to rattle the location of Seacutter from this man. “I need to talk to you about the man you just spoke with and a matter of Cygnaran security.”
“Well.” The man swallowed and stepped back. “Well, then you better come in.” He ushered her in and closed the door. “Now, what’s this about a matter of Cygnaran security?”
Liane tried not to wrinkle her nose at the stink of the place or of the man. “You may not realize that Captain Shae is a notorious pirate. He’s taken the job of finding the wreck of Seacutter with nothing more than gold on his mind.”
“He did have a piratical look to him,” the man conceded, strolling to the counter beside the stove and picking up a liquor bottle. “Pour you a drink?”
“No, thank you.” Liane cleared her throat. “I’m willing to offer you a substantial reward for information about Seacutter, sir.”
“Don’t call me ‘sir,’ Captain Liane Fromish.” He filled a cup and drank some of his liquor down. “I’m not in your navy and never was.”
“No, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do the Navy a service and earn your life back in the process.” She made a gesture around the squalid room. “We’re willing to pay handsomely for the information you possess. Handsomely enough to put you back on your feet.”
He arched an eyebrow. “You don’t know how much that is.”
“Name your price.”
“Fifty thousand crowns,” he said without pause, his mien unchanged.
“Done.” That was a hell of a sum, but as far as the Navy was concerned, it was pocket money. If they wanted the cargo of Seacutter, they could pay for it.
The man put his cup down and stared at her. “You’re serious.”
“Deadly serious, sir.” Liane met his stare with a calm assurance that had gotten her through dozens of meetings with admirals. “The Navy wants the cargo Seacutter was carrying very badly, and we want it before it falls into the hands of that pirate.”
“I see you do, but there’s a problem.” The man frowned, strolled across to his chair, and bent to pick up a fallen pouch. It jingled with coin. “I’ve already been paid to—”
The chamber’s grimy window exploded in a shower of shattered glass, and the man sprawled back. The report of a heavy rifle shot rang out an instant after the shattering, and Liane ducked reflexively. The man she’d been speaking to a moment before struck the wall and slid to the floor, a broad bloodstain on the wall trailing him down. His face bore a look of utter shock as his grimy shirt blossomed with blood at the center of his chest.
“I. . . don’t. . .” He coughed blood, and his eyes sagged closed.
“No!” Liane dashed to him, but she knew from the location of the wound that he didn’t have a chance of survival.
From the size of the hole in his chest, she could tell he’d been shot with a large-bore weapon. She felt for a pulse at his neck and found nothing. The money pouch he clutched to his shattered chest fell to the floor with a clash of coins, and she jerked, her nerves still singing from the gunshot.
Her nerves saved her life. Another bullet crashed through the window, but instead of blasting her heart through her breast, it only creased her shoulder and blew a fist-sized hole in the wall next to the dead man’s head.
Liane dove for cover, pulling her pistol and scrambling across the floor to the side of the window. Whoever had killed her informant was gunning for her as well. She pressed her back against the wall and risked a glance out the shattered window. She could see nothing through the slashing rain, but as she ducked back, she was rewarded with another salvo from her assailant. The round blasted the windowsill to splinters mere inches from her head.
“Morrow’s balls!” she spat, flattening herself on the floor and crawling under the window to the other side. Whoever was shooting at her was damned good.
Another round blasted through the wall precisely where she’d sat moments ago, blowing a hole in the wall and a gouge in the floor.
A desperate idea flicked into her mind, and she acted on it without hesitation. Crawling back under the window, she lined up the gouge in the floor with the hole in the wall, shoved the muzzle of her pistol through the latter, and emptied the ammo wheel. The moment it ran empty, she dodged back to the other side of the window.
Yet another blast tore a piece of the window frame away in a shower of splinters. Liane dumped the empty ammo wheel and slammed in another. She only had one more, so this was going to be a very short gunfight. She had nowhere to go and no way to spot her target through the rain. She fired two rounds blindly, thinking her only hope was to attract the attention of the guard with the noise. Her salvo was answered by another round through the wall, this one barely a hand-span from her head.
Shooting randomly was getting her nowhere. Instead, she picked up a shard of broken glass and held it up at the corner of the window to try to see anything in the reflection. She could barely make out the rooftop of the warehouse across the way. She saw a flash right on the edge of the roof, and then a round exploded a hole through the wall above her. She took a chance that the rifleman would have to reload—she took quick aim, fired twice more, and flung herself back down flat on the floor. The wall erupted in more shattered plaster and wood. She was running out of places to hide.
She spent the last round of her ammo wheel in retaliation and flattened herself again to reload with her last wheel. Liane glanced around the room, wondering if her late informant might have a weapon stashed away. With only five bullets between her and the lethal sniper, she didn’t have much of a chance. Then she saw the bottle of rotgut rum beside the dead man’s chair and got an idea.