Майкл Салливан - Deep Magic. Fourth Collection

Thomas looked at me like I’d stomped the tail of his favorite cat. “But you were the one who kept—”

Before he could finish, I rounded on him with a fist to the jaw and down he went. Two Ears didn’t see Cross’s kick coming for his knee until it was too late. The man crumpled to the floor, groaning while Cross stood over him and glared at the crowd of sailors.

“Who else was with them?” he bellowed.

A quick eye might have caught a dozen knives quietly being returned to waistbands behind a dozen backs. Then a dozen men and women looked around innocently at everything but the captain. Somewhere in the mob, someone softly whistled an old sea shanty.

“To the brig with this lot,” Cross ordered. As the mutineers were hauled away, he turned to the remainder of his crew. “This foolishness has all but cost us our chance at snatching Lord Buckworth’s storm magic. But we will press forward. From this night on, the winds and the rain shall do our bidding, and forevermore the Carrion Crow will be the most powerful and fearsome ship on all the seas!”

A roar went up from the crew, every hand raising a weapon into the air.

“And then we’ll get our hands on some really huge piles of gold!” called out Five Finger Jack.

“No . . .” Cross said, as if explaining something to a child. “Then we’ll go after more magic.”

“Shouldn’t we also steal some gold?” asked No Disease Nina. “I mean . . . eventually?”

“Yes, yes,” Cross said impatiently, “we’ll get around to that.” He turned to unlock the vault door behind him, muttering something about “kids these days.”

The heavy wood door of the vault creaked open, allowing just enough room for Cross to step inside. He looked over the shelves, which held eighteen padlocked wooden chests. Cross lugged one of them out into the armory, dropped it onto the ground in front of him, and removed his key-hoop earring. After sorting through its eighteen keys, he unlocked the chest, unleashing a misty, pale blue glow and a hum as soft as the purr of a slumbering cat.

“Dent Skull,” Cross called out. “The feather magic is yours for the night. See you don’t die before returning it to this chest.”

Dent Skull Sally stepped forward and slowly reached her hand into the chest. The glow and hum slithered up her arm and seeped into her body. Her eyes and smile widened as it settled into her. Cross dragged another chest forward and found its key.

“Dead Arm!” Cross shouted, looking about the room. When no one answered, he said, “Oh. Right.”

“I’ll take his place, Captain,” I said, a little too eagerly.

Cross considered me for a moment, then said, “If you take the ghost magic, everything depends on you. You don’t make it to the Flower ’s vault, it’ll be prison for the crew and the noose for myself.”

I restrained my movement to a slow nod, careful to show no signs of the butterflies flitting about inside my rib cage. “Aye, Captain. I’ve thought on that.”

Eyes fixed on me, Cross tilted his head toward the chest. I dropped to a knee and hefted open the lid. Dozens of faint white rays of light curled up out of the opening. I slowly dipped my hand inside, the magic’s radiance wrapping around my arm with effervescent pinpricks. My skin drank them in. A buzz raced up my arm and spread through my body like the warmth of rum.

“You know how the ghost magic works, aye?” the captain asked me.

“None will perceive me, through eyes nor ears,” I said, “but only so long as I do nothing to draw their gaze.”

Cross handed out magic to a few more of the crew—just those magics essential to his plan—and secured his vault with a double turn of the weighty key he kept on a chain around his neck. He spun and jealously eyed each of his crew members, all of whom knew that looking away and feigning disinterest was the healthiest course of action. Idle curiosity about the vault and its contents had earned more than one former crew member an unexpected and unending holiday in the middle of the ocean.

“We’re about in position,” Cross said. “Keep your excitement under a tarp for now. Quickly and quietly—with me.”

The sailors followed him through the dark corridors and up to the top deck. Removing myself from the sight of men was as simple as thought—I looked down at my hand to find that the moonlight passed straight through it and all the clothing I wore. Even my newly acquired axe vanished as if it had been transmuted into pure ether.

Our crew had brought us up so close to the Flower of the Indus the sides of the two ships nearly rubbed together. The Flower ’s night-watch crew, dressed in identical royal-blue livery, loomed over us, looking down over their rail with the same expression one might have worn after noticing an oddly shaped snail hiding amongst the food on their dinner plate.

“Ahoy there!” Cross called out. “I am Captain Cross of the Carrion Crow . We are pirates here to take your vessel. Please surrender immediately so that we may avoid any unpleasantries of the stabbing variety.”

“Um . . .” came the slow reply from one of the Flower ’s crewmen. “Yes, I can understand how our surrender would be desirable—from where you’re standing, that is—but it seems you’ve failed to notice the disparity in size between our vessel and your own.”

“I have eyes, lad,” Cross replied. “But you see, this ship and her crew are like a wolverine . . .”

“I’m sorry, a what?” the crewman called down.

“They don’t have those in Albion, Captain,” Dent Skull Sally whispered.

Cross sighed. “It’s a furry, clawed animal. Small, but vicious and strong completely out of proportion to its size. It’s known for taking down much larger animals.”

“And that’s you?” the crewman asked.

“Aye.”

“I thought you just said you were the Carrion Crow .”

“I didn’t say ‘wolverine’ was the name of my ship . . . it’s a metaphor, son. You do have those in Albion, don’t you?”

The crewman looked around at the rest of the Crow ’s people. “I’m sorry . . . who put this gentleman in charge? You all do realize his mind has gotten a bit . . . overripe, aye?”

“That’s it,” Cross growled. “I’m through dickering with you half-witted clods. We’re coming over.”

Four of the Crow ’s crew hefted our plank off the deck and threw it across the space between the two ships, tilted upward to allow for the Flower ’s height.

“Excuse me,” the Flower ’s crewman exclaimed with a frumpled expression of disdain, “I don’t believe we actually invited you to come across.”

As if he hadn’t heard them, Cross marched up the plank, a handful of his crew keeping pace behind him. Our captain was not, in fact, addle-brained. Pretending to be so was a common tactic of his. It was all part of his plan, wherein I, unseen by any, would stride across the plank in between Cross’s men and women so the Flower ’s crew wouldn’t notice the plank warping and bouncing under the weight of a man who seemingly wasn’t there. As my shipmates kept the Flower ’s crew occupied, I’d stroll down to her vault, easy as you like. It was getting through the vault door and getting away with the storm magic that would be the tricky bit.

Just as Cross set foot on the Flower , the jaw-rattling thunder of an explosion knocked us about, half the crew falling onto their backsides. Cross himself remained on his feet, but frozen, with a look of pure bewilderment on his face. This was not part of the plan. As thick splinters of wood rained down, it became clear a cannon blast had erupted between the ships, but which had fired upon which no one could say. What came next was nothing short of bedlam.