Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

"That happened in my grandfather's day, or so I am told," William Radcliff replied. "He hated waste in any form, and so lopped off the final e."

"I marvel that he did not leave you but a single f," Walton observed.

"The story is that he thought hard on that, but decided not to for fear men might pronounce the name Radclif." William lengthened the i in the last syllable. "I cannot say of my own knowledge whether this be true-he died when I was a boy."

"One more impertinent question?" the Londoner asked, a small smile playing across his full, red lips.

"Ask, sir, ask," William said. "If it be impertinent enough, I will put you out on the street once more, and be damned to your business."

To his surprise, Walton's smile got wider. "And if it be impertinent enough, you will put me out on the street without bothering to open the door before you pitch me through it. Well, I hope to avoid that, at any rate. All I wish to know is, what is your opinion of your…notorious cousin?"

"Again, this is something you could learn from others besides me," William Radcliff said. "In a word, I despise him. Not only does he dip the family name in the chamber pot, not only does he revel in befouling it, but he also preys on my ships whenever he finds the chance. If I could kill him with my own hands, it would be a pleasure-and a privilege."

Walton took another pinch of snuff. This time, he had to slap the lid back onto the box lest his sneeze blow its expensive contents all over Radcliff's office. "Potent stuff!" he said, dabbing at his streaming eyes with a blue silk handkerchief. "Well, sir…Very well indeed, in fact. How would you like to win that privilege and take that pleasure?"

William Radcliff leaned toward Walton so intently that the older, paunchier man gave back a pace. "Tell me more," Radcliff said.

Avalon despised law, scoffed at law, reviled law…and lived by law. What the pirate town would never have accepted if imposed from outside, its freebooters took upon themselves without a qualm. A virgin carrying a sack of gold could go from one end of Avalon to the other without let or hindrance-so long as she was, and was known to be, under the protection of one pirate lord or another.

Flags fluttered from the hilltop forts of Avalon: Red Rodney's black hand on white, Christopher Moody's swordarm and skull on red, Cutpurse Charlie Condent's three skulls and crossbones on a long black pennant, Goldbeard Walter Kennedy's naked headsman holding an hourglass, Stede Bonnet's skull and heart and dagger, and more besides. Some of the chieftains hated others, and would attack them on sight anywhere else in the Hesperian Gulf, the Atlantic, or the Bay of Mexico. In Avalon, though, a truce and the rule behind it had held for most of a lifetime.

You don't shit where you eat.

Red Rodney Radcliffe sometimes dreamt of uniting all the pirates of western Avalon under the black hand. He dreamt not of harrying the Terranovan towns but of seizing them and ruling them-of going from pirate to king. Only one thing kept him from trying it: the certain knowledge that all the other chieftains would combine against him the instant he tried to change them from equals to subjects.

He knew he wasn't, he knew he couldn't be, the only captain with dreams like that. He also knew he would cut the ballocks off any man who tried to make him bend the knee. Knowing that kept him from trying to impose himself on the others.

With his loot and his hostages and his slaves safe inside Black Hand Fort-one of the best, since it lay close to the harbor and had a reliable well even though it was on high ground-he could relax. Fields of indigo and sugar cane were beginning to stretch across southern Atlantis. With sugar naturally came rum.

At sea, Rodney doled out a glass of grog to his men each day. He took no more for himself, lest they think he thought he was better than they were. Ashore? Ashore, he could drink to his heart's content, and so could they. When he couldn't steal rum, he traded for it like an honest man, and he wasn't the only freebooter who did.

"This is the life!" he told his daughter. The rum sang in him, but he hadn't drunk himself sleepy yet. He hadn't drunk himself mean yet, either.

"Well, of course it is." Ethel Radcliffe was eleven, and knew no other. None of the women Rodney had taken into his bed since her mother had dared mistreat her in any way-or not for long. One wench who roused his ire in that regard left Black Hand Fort most suddenly, naked and with stripes on her back. Ethel drank rum, too, and swore and scratched as she pleased. She was a dead shot with a pistol.

Red Rodney laughed and tousled her buttery-yellow hair. "One of these days soon, by God, I'll bring you along with me when I set sail. Blast my mizzen if you wouldn't make a better raider than most of the dogs I could scrape up here."

"Do it!" the pirate's daughter said eagerly. "I want to shoot a Dutchman, or even a copperskin. Can I shoot one of the copperskins you brought back?"

"Sorry, love. Not this lot," Rodney answered.

Ethel pouted. "Why not?" Her voice took on a sugared whine that could coax almost anything out of her father.

Almost-but not quite. "Because they're worth good silver to me, that's why not," Rodney Radcliffe said. "And they cost blood to take. That makes 'em too dear to kill for sport." Whether killing them for sport was wrong didn't worry him. Silver did. Silver was one more measure of a man's rank among men.

"But I want to," Ethel persisted. She didn't care to come up short at anything-which only proved she was her father's daughter.

"No," Red Rodney said, and the flush that mounted to his cheeks came from choler as well as rum. "My men listen to me. You'd bloody well better, too. If they don't listen, I make 'em sorry. You think I can't make you sorry?"

He didn't put his foot down very often. When he did, he was likely to crush whatever lay beneath it. That could include Ethel, as she had painful reason to remember. The whine didn't go away, but it did change course: "Well, what can I shoot, then?"

"If you have to shoot something, go up on the stockade and shoot the first stray dog you see. Nobody'll miss that," her father answered. "And after you do, get one of the slaveys to chuck the carcass into the bay. Don't leave it lying there to rot and stink. Does that suit you, you little rakehell?"

"I'd still rather shoot a copperskin," Ethel said. Red Rodney's face must have sent up storm warnings, for she backtracked in a hurry: "A stray dog will do, I suppose. Better than nothing." She hurried away.

A few minutes later, a pistol banged. Rodney was tearing into roasted honker then, and couldn't hear the dog howl. He guessed it did, though, because Ethel didn't come back unhappy. A smile spread over his face. He'd done what a father should do: he'd pleased his little girl-and he'd got her out of his hair for a while.

He didn't smile so much about the honker. "What have we got here?" he demanded. "This sorry bastard's no bigger than a rooster's drumstick." He exaggerated, and by no small amount, but he'd seen plenty of bigger honker legs.

"Begging your pardon, sir, but it's the best the hunters brought back," the cook replied.

"Likely tell, likely tell," Rodney said. "When I was Ethel's age, by Christ, the honkers were three times the size of this miserable bird."

"Hunters say, sir, that the big ones are all gone-at least from close enough to Avalon to bring them back before they spoil," the cook told him. "They have to shoot the smaller, scrubbier kinds instead. Even those are harder to find than they were once upon a time."

"Sweet suffering Jesus!" Rodney poured himself more rum. "Will we have to start raising sheep and goats and cows? Are we farmers or are we men?"

The cook maintained a prudent silence. He was no pirate himself. He'd cooked for the governor of Nieuw Haarlem in Terranova till Red Rodney captured him and carried him back to Avalon. After eating some of his food, Rodney refused a ransom for him. The cook hadn't done badly here-or rather, he might have done much worse, and he was smart enough to know it. If he said too much, his lot might change in a hurry.