The Buccaneer's Apprentice Read online

  now from the clutches of this vile wrongdoer?

  Knave (fastening her wrists): Shush. Your doom approaches.

  Ingenue: Hist! Is that the tread of Hero on the stair?

  No, it is not! I faint! I wither! I weep!

  Knave: You know, if you spent a quarter of the

  time struggling that you waste talking, my dear,

  you might have saved yourself three times by now.

  —From The Glass Blower’s Other Daughter: A Perilous & Thrilling Tale of Hazard & Deceit, penned by Armand Arturo

  For many years after, a popular play graced the stages of Cassaforte. Entitled The Buccaneer’s Apprentice, or, A Dread Tale of Adventure Upon the Bonnie Blue Seas, it played to houses all around the Via Dioro. Acting companies fought for the rights to perform the piece. It was so popular that it could fill a house to capacity, and still have patrons paying for the privilege of watching from the aisles. The finest actors of a generation squabbled openly for the chance of playing any of the lead roles.

  The most rapturous applause of all the drama’s scenes, however, was reserved for the opening of its second act. Backstage, two boys hidden at opposite ends of the stage would sit upon the floor with their feet firmly planted, pumping furiously at handles attached to machinery that would rotate broad, low flats painted in blues and greens, moving them from side to side and up and down so that they resembled sea waves. Two flat discs hanging from the battens, both painted with treated bone ash so that they seemed to glow in the dark, represented the moons. Onto this picturesque tableau would roll a set piece painted to resemble a rowboat. It would contain four players.

  The first, usually a junior of the company, would typically be sporting a scarf tied around his head. From beneath would protrude dark hair the color of Nic’s, though much longer and fashionably twisted into beribboned plaits hanging halfway down his back. “Ar!” he would cry in a thrilling baritone, as he pointed to the horizon. “Thar be the scurvy ship.”

  “Indeed it be,” would say the handsomest of the foursome. He was always played by the troupe’s Hero. Even the famed Donatello Raello, born into one of the houses of the Thirty before rising to fame as the leader of his own company in the Via Dioro’s jewel of theaters, played the role to great acclaim. At the advanced age of forty-five, however, most of his critics had to admit that he had far too much girth to pass as a seventeen-year-old servant boy. “And a wicked vengeance shall we rain down upon them all. By the very grace of Lena, I swear it!”

  “And I,” would say the troupe’s Ingenue, who though typically attired in a boy’s shirt, breeches, and boots, as well as a piratical cap perched at an angle atop her blond curls, would display enough of her womanly curves so that there was no confusion in the audience as to her true gender. “I shall taste blood for breakfast!”

  “Vengeance shall be ours!” would intone the oldest of the foursome, usually a gray-haired member of the troupe who specialized in aged character roles like Philosopher or Vecchio. Despite his years, he would also be clad in the clothing of a pirate.

  “No,” would say Hero, lowering his spyglass. “Vengeance will be mine. Row on!” he would command the long-haired pirate. From a pocket he would produce a rounded triangle of cloth affixed with a narrow ribbon. Once slipped over his head, it would be revealed as an eyepatch, making him even more fearsome to behold. “Row on, and let us feast like starving men upon their misery!”

  At this juncture in the production, two more boys would man the counterweighted ropes in the wings. Hand over hand they would pull as fast as they could. The battens would rise, taking with them the painted clouds that covered the backdrop. The audience, hitherto quiet and attentive, would gasp, because looming over more layers of the bobbing waves, surrounded by thousands of points of phosphorized light representing the stars, would loom the giant hulk of a pirate ship. More shadow than reality, its silhouette would seem an almost-impossible construct of ropes and riggings, of vast, complicated sails and black, inscrutable flags flying from masts that extended into the flies. More often than not, the first sight of that vast pirate ship, produced by the illusions of stagecraft, would send audiences into an impromptu flurry of applause.

  Even Nic, who watched the show’s very first production from the upper balcony of The Beryl, standing at the back, a cap pulled low over his eyes, was impressed by the sight of that ink-black ship blotting out the stars of the heaven as it seemed to bob upon the waters. Like the rest of the audience, he applauded with enthusiasm.

  But it was nothing like the present reality—though the costumes were similar. It was true that Maxl sported a kerchief tied around his head to keep his long hair from blowing into his face, and that he had changed his grime-ground tatters for a billowing white shirt and tight black breeches. Jacopo was outfitted similarly. Hunched over on the rowboat bench, he seemed both chilly and more than a little bit embarrassed to be out of his formal robes of state.

  Both moons were high in the sky and waxing to fullness. Bathed in their twin glow, Darcy’s expression was not difficult to read. In fact, Nic had been avoiding it since they had eased away from shore. “I am quite capable of rowing, you know,” she asserted, not for the first time.

  “Maxl and I are fine,” Nic assured her, trying to sound as if he meant it. They had been rowing since dusk, and had left behind their own camp long ago. It had taken almost an hour to reach the next islet in the chain, which had been smaller than their own and seemingly just as deserted (or as Nic hoped, much more so than his island had turned out to be). He was, in fact, knackered. His shoulders felt as if they were on fire. His forearms had progressed from hurt to numb to heavy, and now felt as if made from stone. He paused in his exertions to wipe his brow before the perspiration could run into his eyes. “Thank you.”

  Darcy had taken for herself a man’s red shirt, leather breeches, and a pair of leather boots too big for her feet. Any womanly curves she might have possessed were fairly well disguised beneath the oversized garments. “A cold sweat is a certain sign of imminent exhaustion,” she commented, her arms crossed. “Excessive panting, paleness, and a short temper follow, topped off by nausea.” She cocked her head in challenge. “Soon you’ll be tasting your breakfast.”

  “Darcy.” Jacopo’s voice carried reproof. “The boy is helping us.”

  “Yes, of course he is. Therefore he’s beyond reproach. How unseemly of me.”

  Nic ignored the brush-off, and hoped that it arose simply from an illusion Darcy hoped to preserve for Maxl of contention between them. He was feeling a little sick to his stomach, but not all of it was from the rowing. Knowing the challenge that lay ahead was enough. “I’m fine,” he replied, trying not to seem snappish.

  “This is what I am not understanding.” Beneath his new finery, Maxl was little more than the sparest of muscle stretched over a narrow framework of bones, Nic knew. It was difficult to understand how the man could keep rowing without seeming to tire. “The women of the two sex, she is handed everything. The man gives her the clothes, the flowers, the books, the jewelry. He opens the doors for her. When they walk down the street, he is on the outside so the pig dung is not tossed on her skirts so much.”

  “Longdoun sounds like a charming city,” murmured Jacopo.

  Maxl’s teeth gleamed in the moonlight. “Yes! Thank you!” He continued with his thought. “The women of the two sex only have to smell nice, look nice. Yet you carry the wood. You fight like man. You want rowing. Why do extra, yes?” He swatted Nic, who nodded. “See? Master Nic, he is agreeing.”

  “He is?” asked Darcy, her tone dangerous.

  “Yes. I mean, no.” Nic was confused. On a certain level he knew that Maxl was speaking nonsense. At the same time, though, Nic had been forced to carry out the most menial of tasks every day, all his life. If he were given the option to sit back and watch, and not have to act upon a dictate, wouldn’t he take it? Wouldn’t
anyone? “I’m not agreeing all the way.”

  “You are not satisfied with being girl?”

  Darcy’s voice remained a growl. “No, I am not satisfied. The ladies of Charlemance may cultivate a life convincing others that they are debilitated simpletons, but the women of Pays d’Azur and of Cassaforte, I assure you, are no mere lapdogs.”

  Something about the way Darcy spoke caused Nic great confusion. While he couldn’t help but admire her sentiments, he was a little frightened of the way she pounded out her words, like a workman driving home nails. Ever since the day she had kissed his cheeks, he’d hoped to maintain a good standing in Darcy’s eyes. Yet he felt embarrassed to admit how much her esteem meant to him. He cleared his throat and tried to side with her argument. “In Cassaforte, women hold as many positions of power as men,” he explained to Maxl. “We have women nuncias and artisans, female guards …”

  “Truly Cassafort City is a city of savages,” clucked Maxl. “When the men are so weak they make their women to fight. It is from having enchantments no other country has, yes? Everyone lazy from not working. Poof! Magic is doing it all.”

  “Enchantments aren’t like that. Craftsman enchantments on an object only enhance its primary purpose. Like the Arturos’ trunk. It’s enchanted, but it simply holds more than it seems it ought. Furthermore, we don’t make our women do anything,” Nic argued.

  “Why? You are not know how?” asked Maxl.

  “Shall I tell you what I know?” asked Darcy, her irritation flaring once more. “I know that if I pushed a certain blue-faced savage out into the middle of the ocean, none of us would give two lundri were he to drown there.”

  “You are pulling the bluff,” Maxl retorted.

  “Am I? Test me, buffoon.”

  “You are mean girl, very tough yes, but you need me.”

  “Perhaps we do need you.” Darcy’s voice cut through the night like a blade through a crisp apple. “Yet I’m willing to test the theory and cut you loose.”

  “Daughter.” Jacopo reached out and settled his hands on Darcy’s back, as if sensing she might spring at Maxl and carry out her threat.

  “You need to stop,” Nic told Maxl, thoroughly annoyed with him.

  “Niccolo.” Jacopo used the same tone. “Our friend is merely trying to arouse your ire.” When Maxl began snickering to himself, Nic knew the old man had hit the nail on the head. “It would behoove us all to keep our tempers even during this stressful venture, if we are to succeed. Including you, sir,” he added to Maxl.

  “Hush,” said Maxl, holding out a hand.

  “I will not be silenced on this matter. The coup of a ship by a mere four people, three of whom have no experience with piracy whatsoever, is a matter of utmost gravity, and it falls upon us …”

  “No, hush,” said Niccolo. In the distance, two golden lights burned on the horizon, larger than any of the stars in the heavens. The waters reflected their wavering glow. “Row on,” he whispered at last, signaling for Maxl to draw them closer.

  The moment, as it appeared on the stage much later, resembled what Nic remembered of that night, but only in its superficials. The moons did make the waters of the Azure Sea shine like a mirror as their small boat cut through it on its journey to the slumbering ship. The clouds did part. Most importantly, the silhouette of the Tears of Korfu did loom against the night sky, blocking out the stars behind it. But its black form was not as large nor as impressive as it grew upon the stage; it did not have as many sails or as much rigging, nor did it have a single flag flying from its one mast. In fact, the Tears of Korfu was a mere sloop, the tiniest of boats that could carry a crew. The two lights that Nic and Maxl had spied from afar turned out, at a closer distance, to come from portholes set into the ship’s aft, likely marking the captain’s quarters. No shadows moved within.

  The sea lapped gently at the boat’s hull as they quietly rowed near. The cargo they had been towing behind the rowboat drifted with the pull of the tide. So they would not drift, Darcy used a rope to fasten their craft to a hook sunk deep into the hull. Both Maxl and Nic set their oars into the boat’s bottom as quietly as possible. To produce little to no noise seemed to be everyone’s goal.

  Maxl put a finger to his lips. It was an unnecessary gesture. “Stay here, until I say so.” Careful not to rock the rowboat, he slipped over the side and into the water with barely a splash. His form disappeared into the depths. Before it seemed humanly possible, he surfaced a dozen feet away near the ship’s bow, snorting water from his nostrils. Liquid ran down his long mane and his back as he pulled himself up. After letting the reflected moonlight bounce for a few moments from the waters, Nic realized that Maxl was climbing up a chain—probably for the anchor. Like some sort of monkey he ascended, scampering from the water’s surface into the air, then lunging up onto the deck as if he’d done it a hundred times before. Of course, knowing Maxl’s history, Nic suspected he probably had.

  After his disappearance, they had to wait in the shadows, on the side of the boat away from the moons. They could all be killed at any moment, Nic knew. Vengeance hadn’t been at the forefront of his mind when he’d formulated this plan.

  No, he’d come up with it out of necessity. He and the Colombos had to return home with as much speed as possible. Earlier that day, when Maxl had uncovered the rowboat and mentioned that the Tears of Korfu was anchored so close to their own island and unlikely to move until a new captain has been settled upon, Nic had instantly dreamt up the most unlikely of plans. It was so outrageous that the scheme might have been ripped from the pages of one of the Arturos’ potboilers. Yet it was improbable enough to work. His mind had raced as he’d asked, “Maxl, exactly how many of you pirates were aboard the Tears of Korfu?”

  “Perhaps making ten and two?”

  There in the woods, by the little rowboat, Nic had performed some rapid subtraction in his head. Twelve pirates, and Nic had already taken out the captain and three more. Maxl had defected. So there were seven, more or less, and four on Nic’s side. True, one of Nic’s proposed invasion force was an old man, but not all problems had to be solved with brute force. He had the advantage of two strong young people and an inside informant. Hopefully, the sheer surprise of it might catch the remaining mates off-guard. “Maxl,” he said, knowing he was making more work for them both. “We need to take the long way ’round the island to where I came ashore, on the trip back.”

  When Nic and the former pirate had finally paddled their way across the outgoing tide to the Colombos’ camp, Darcy and Jacopo had waded out into the waters to help them draw in the rowboat. Darcy had scowled at the sight of the Arturos’ costume trunk, bobbing along on the water on a rope tied to the boat’s end. “I hope those are more provisions,” she had commented. When Maxl had then produced the fish caught in the traps Nic had laid out his first day, she and her father had been mollified.

  “I can’t believe you were actually supporting his ridiculous argument,” Darcy now said, bringing Nic back to the dark and the present.

  “I wasn’t!” Nic replied, keeping his voice low. “I agreed with you.”

  “You agreed with him.” Though he could not see Darcy’s face, Nic certainly could imagine the storm clouds gracing it.

  “The only part I agreed with was that if you had two men to row for you, why would you want to take an oar?”

  “Because I can. And because I might want to. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Sssh.” Jacopo reminded them of the danger nearby.

  “Fine, you can row next time,” Nic told her, returning his voice to a whisper. “I would love the opportunity to relax.”

  “Because it’s so relaxing to sit about helplessly while everyone else does the important work for you.”

  “It might be,” Nic said, trying to ignore the irony in her voice. “I wouldn’t mind, once in a while. If you knew what real w
ork was …”

  “Oh, very well. I see. You think of me as a pampered lapdog as well, do you?”

  “Darcy, my dear …”

  Yet Jacopo’s daughter was too heated to silence herself. “I thought we were allies,” she scolded Nic. “I thought we were working well together.”

  “At times. When I know what you’re doing,” he agreed.

  “Didn’t I agree that we would go along with your plan? Didn’t I agree to play … dress-up?” Yes, indeed she had. Nic had been able to tell, however, once he’d opened that Legnoli-crafted trunk how very unlikely she thought the plan to succeed. She had curled her aristocratic lip at the sight of those much-used costumes as though he’d presented her with a chest full of bull droppings. “Then the least you could do would be to agree with me when I require it.”

  “Humbly do I beg your pardon,” Nic retorted, at his most formal. “Though to me, it seems a bit funny for someone who dislikes being treated like a lapdog, to treat others that way.”

  He felt a stab of satisfaction when she couldn’t reply. It took a moment before Darcy opened her mouth again, and when she did, her father intervened to stop her. “I think silence,” he suggested in a tone that was not to be challenged, “may be advisable in this situation.”

  “Fine,” Darcy replied. Nic sensed, rather than saw, her crossing her arms.

  “Perfectly fine,” he said, keeping his hands in his lap.

  “Shush,” said Jacopo. Not eight feet overhead, at the edge of the sloop’s railing, they heard the sounds of footsteps. For a split-second, Nic hoped it was Maxl, ready to help them up. When the footsteps continued, he merely hoped that whoever it was had not heard their petty squabbling. Whoever was above them began to whistle. Imperceptibly, all three in the boat below relaxed. Nic realized he’d been holding his breath.

  It was ironic that at that moment, a fish leapt from the water high into the air, falling back with more of a splash than Maxl had made either leaving their rowboat or boarding the Tears. The whistling ceased. Nic sensed all three of them stilling themselves and leaning even further into the shadows. “Oi? ” said a voice from above. “Kella stas veni? ”