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Captain Charles Milverton ran the Wasp with the same merciless hand he had used on his first ship. Gold flowed onto the deck – for their patron and the captain only. The officers got a tiny portion, and the crew scuffled with each other over the slops. Milverton was a valuable asset to the Spider’s master, with an uncanny ability to gauge how much could be fetched for each of his captives held for ransom.
But if Milverton ran his operations with a pirate’s ruthlessness and eye for treasure, he still treated his crew with the brutal authority of a Navy captain. The Wasp was the worst of both worlds – the crew plundered like pirates and kept none of the goods, were worked to exhaustion like Navy men with none of the freedom enjoyed by their fellow Brethren of the Coast. Petitions to the captain, a right aboard pirate ships, were punished like Naval insubordination; there would be no voting this captain out of his seat as on other privateer vessels.
Above all things Milverton tolerated no loose talk aboard – keeping a tighter grip than even his days aboard the lost Octavius. Insubordination by so much as a sullen look was a flogging offense; Milverton’s men were constantly busy holystoning the blood out of the deck. Sailors had to go ashore for water and provisions but they were not to talk when they came back save to take orders.
So it was that no one whispered the rumours that Milverton had set powder to his own ship, the Octavius, killing good sailing men, to snare one man in a trap. Nor that he had been given the Wasp by Moriarty as a reward for his treachery. Nor that the man he’d snared had been recaptured by his own captain in a daring rescue and they now hunted down the crew of that lost ship to exact revenge for that work.
No word aboard the Wasp that was not for ship’s business. Not a spoken word.
One fellow came back from duties ashore in Trinidad with supplies, and a lump of chalk for marking depths.
Not long afterward the slow, stupid cabin boy was whipped, howling that he ain’t done nuffin, when Milverton saw the scrawled dancing stick figures on the mast in chalk. The crew silently watched the punishment, having seen the dancing men themselves before being ordered to wash them off.
They gestured to each other as they called ship’s orders – each gesture a word, a thought, an understood message.
The captain’s grip was inexorable, unbreakable. The rope was stretched taut as a spider-line.
***
“Ship, Mr. Atherton?” Milverton called up at the lookout.
“The Sainte Marie, Cap’n.”
Milverton looked forward. “Ah, excellent.” His intelligence from Moriarty had let him know that aboard that merchant ship would be a French comtesse travelling to her plantation in Trinidad; she might as well be covered in jewels for the ransom she would fetch. With any luck her retinue would include a number of valuable names for a few more hundreds in gold. Two-thirds to Moriarty, and a third to him, save a few coins. Aboard also would be sailors for his silent, sullen crew to cut down, and possibly even servant-girls for them to spend their rage; it would make them less dangerous.
The lookout and the first mate held eyes as the lookout tugged his pigtail, touched his ear and then his hand, and clenched his fist. The mate waggled his hand back and forth. “Wind’s good, Captain,” he said at Milverton’s glare. “We’ll be upon them within the hour.”
“To the guns,” Milverton said. Any ship carrying aristocracy, especially female aristocracy, needed only a shot across the bow to make them surrender. Cowards were such lucrative creatures. “Line the deck, armed all, now!”
The men got their pistols and swords – hands tugging at pigtails, touching ear-and-hand, clenching fists, drawing hands across throats, as they took up arms.
“Run the flag.”
Up went the black banner, featuring crossed red-dripping swords over a bag of gold – the sign of Milverton the ransom-taker. Another sure way to make them surrender without a fight. Most wealthy people carried Letters of Ransom with them for just such eventualities in travelling the South Seas, and knew they’d be kept alive as captives of a ransomer.
“Up sails! To the oars!”
The Wasp swept upon the Sainte Marie.
“Fire!”
BOOM! One across the bowsprit. Shouts and a scream aboard the French merchanter.
The Wasps stared at the handful of musket-armed guards in French uniform aboard the merchanter, surrounding the slim black-shrouded figure. Ah yes, the Countess was a recent widow, which explained her move to the colonies. No doubt debt and le Comte’s greedy relatives had taken the house and lands in England. And soon the Spider and the Wasp would feed from her as well.
“Arrêt! Nous sommes le corsaire Wasp!” bellowed the lookout. “Reddition sans combat et vous vivrez!” (Halt! We are the privateer Wasp! Surrender without a fight and you live!)
The Sainte Marie lowered her flag and dropped anchor. The guards dropped their muskets and put up their hands. The Wasp pulled alongside, grappling hooks flying, as its own anchor dropped.
“Running boards.” Milverton beamed at his treasure chest in black. He knew how to handle valuable merchandise; there was a protocol to this sort of thing and these sort of people. “Mr. Atherton, Peaky, with me.”
The three men strode across to the Sainte Marie, pistols out; every gun on the Wasp was trained on the merchanter crew and the bodyguards. Hm. Crewmen and bodyguards so far; no doubt her retinue were below, terrified. The guards stood off, apprehension on their faces, as he approached their charge.
“Capitaine, un peu miséricorde, s’il vous plait,” the black-veiled woman pleaded, her voice light and pleasant. “Captain, if you please, mercy, a little.” Her English was good if French-accented.
“Now now, mon cher, this is precisely why you travel avec un lettre de rançon,” Milverton said pleasantly, his pistol trained on her as he reminded her of her Letter of Ransom. “Do be sensible and come with me of your own accord, Madame Comtesse, and I won’t bind you like a vulgar prisoner.”
The veiled woman nodded. “Oui, Capitaine Milverton.” And pulled off her veil.
Not a woman. Slim, black-skinned, eyes like banked coals that burned with hatred. Eyes he knew.
“Octavius cochon!” Jun the cabin-boy spat, and drove the kitchen knife in his hand into Milverton’s belly even as the two other men were overwhelmed by guards and dragged to the deck.
Men boiled out of the hold, all armed with muskets, and the shouting Wasp men faced an equal number of muzzles pointed in their direction.
The Wasp-men froze at their posts, shocked into stillness by the unexpectedness and speed of the attack – and that momentary hesitation to come to Milverton’s aid as would a loyal crew had made all the difference. Milverton – who now bubbled and bled on the deck of the Sainte Marie.
The “Comptesse” would have fallen on the dying man, kitchen knife poised to do more damage, if one of the guards had not put a hand on Jun’s shoulder. “No more, lad. You have struck your one blow. It’s over.”
The lean whip of a lad nodded, and spat once on the writhing man. “C’est moi, Jun. Je suis Baker!”
Straightening, the guardsman looked at the shocked and still men on the Wasp. Peaky and Atherton were on their knees, disarmed and held by the Bakers who had best fit the uniforms.
Facing the row of men on the other ship, the guard pointed to himself, then tugged at his bound tail of hair.
(I am Captain Shear-Lock.)
One open palmed hand, waggled back then front then back again, then circled in a great O.
(I sought revenge against the Octavius.)
The hand clenched into a fist.
(I set a trap.)
Shear-Lock pointed both forefingers like pistols at the Wasps, then pointed both down.
The Wasp men obeyed, and dropped their weapons.
Smiling a little, Captain Shear-Lock touched his ear then his hand, and turned his head.
One-hand Jack – his ship’s surgeon, quartermaster, and deadliest shot – was standing at his side, also facing the Wasps. Jack held up his bonesaw he had instead of a left hand, the wooden base gleaming with the gold leaf that had made his name a terror in every port. The Wasps crossed themselves, whispering the name – or touching ear then hand: “Gold-Hand,” “Gold-Hand!”
“Yes,” Shear-Lock called, his voice now reaching from one end of the Wasp to the other. “No doubt some of you knew that I had been looking for your master. I perceive not only from your appearances and your use of dumb-sign but from my observation of the Baker’s newest crewmember that your service under the late Captain Milverton was hellish. Since he was the only member of the Octavius aboard the Wasp, his is the only life I wish taken today.”
Jack spoke up – and the voice of the avenger Gold-Hand was the pleasant tone of a doctor asking where the pain lies. “Who among you is an accomplished commander?”
The two men held on the Sainte Marie looked at each other. “First Mate Atherton, sir,” the one said.
“Captain Atherton, you mean,” Shear-Lock said as courteously as at any parley. “For while Milverton yet lives, his wound is indeed mortal and he is quite unable to command.” A loud moan of pain from the man on the deck. “Mr. Gregson, if you would be so good as to help up Captain Atherton and this gentleman?”
The Wasp officers rose. Not ten minutes had passed since they’d boarded the ship with their dying captain.
Shear-Lock took Atherton’s hand. “Captain, I strongly recommend that you employ the easier ways of the Brethren with your crew than the Naval tyranny of your predecessor. Beaten and starved men afraid of the lash will indeed do as you order – but may leave you to die like a dog at the very moment speed is needed.” The pleasant smile dropped from Shear-Lock’s face as he gave one contemptuous look at the moaning wretch.
A well-fed, well-treated and well-paid body of men,” added One-Hand Jack, with a wry smile at his missing limb, “will sail into Hell and drag you out again.”
The Wasp crew were still and silent. But when Shear-Lock strode over to the twisting Milverton, bent down and pulled off his small brown wig, hoisting it aloft like a London-Tower axeman presenting the head of a traitor, a cheer rocked the Wasp from bow to stern.
“You have a ship to command, Captain.” Shear-Lock smiled. “And no doubt a hoard in the old captain’s cabin to dole out to the labourers with a freer hand.”
“Captain Shear-Lock,” Atherton said.
“Cap’n.” It was Gregson, standing before Shear-Lock. He said no other word.
Shear-Lock looked the bosn’s mate top to bottom. He nodded. “Go. You are a Wasp now.” He turned to the armed men on the Sainte Marie. “Are there any other Bakers who wish to take quarters in a ship that will be safer from Moriarty for now?”
Two or three Bakers stepped forward; Dix, Black Rat, Matew. Shear-Lock nodded. “Gunners and gunner’s mate. You will have a livelier time on another ship – more firing and less hiding. Go.”
One-hand Jack shook his head ruefully as the new Wasps followed the new captain back aboard the ship; but he laughed with Shear-Lock when five or six Wasps crossed to board the Sainte Marie and become new Bakers. Atherton was about to shout them back, but held his tongue. A pirate came and went at his liberty, and it was up to the captain to prove himself to the crew, not the other way round.
The ships ungrappled and the Wasp stayed in place as the Sainte Marie weighed anchor. “And now back to Tobago so that the Comptesse may have her transport back – less half its hold,” Shear-Lock said; Hopkins took the wheel. “I do however fear that Gregson and the others will have a terrible head tomorrow from the men tearing into the grog and rations store. So Milverton is no more, Moriarty has lost his most reliable source of income, and we have recrewed and refinanced the ship. A splendid night’s work.”
Hopkins laughed. “If l’Estrade’s made off with the Baker while it’s moored in Tobago you won’t be as happy about it, Cap’n.”
“If l’Estrade can get around Angel he’ll deserve the Baker,” the captain replied serenely to his first mate.
***
Pain. Utter agony that wormed through him like fire in the veins. Murdered by a goddamn slave-boy – he should have beaten that vicious little black rat to death on the Octavius when he’d had a chance.
He opened his eyes, trying to stave off the encroaching darkness even as every inch of his flesh shrieked for death to end this Hell.
Level blue eyes over a bleached-gold moustache and a set mouth. A bonesaw in a hilt of gold for a left hand. The cargo for whom he’d touched match to powder keg and destroyed the Octavius, and whom he’d handed over to Moriarty.
Brown eyes in a black face. A grin. The brat had filled out aboard the Baker; he was no longer a scrawny skeleton. Shear-Lock wasted good food on a slave…had fed and tamed him, and given his arm strength enough to strike back. Fool. Not long before that knife was in Shear-Lock’s back, the fool. The cat-o-nine, the grog-can. That was how a ship was run. God’s eyes, that monster Jun was sitting next to Dr. Jack on the deck, watching him die and enjoying his pain.
Jack. He was a doctor, it was why he’d come to the aid of the destroyed Octavius, soft-hearted enough to come and be captured. Milverton knew why he was here.
“Kill me,” he whispered – anything louder would turn into a shriek of pain. “Dr. Jack. Kill me. It’s why you’re here. End this.”
“Funny thing, pain,” Jack said, tilting his bonesaw back and forth to make sunlight flicker off the polished blade. “So little time and it seems to last forever.”
“Kill me. Please.”
The eyes were the blue of a flame’s core. “Where does Moriarty transact his business with you?”
Nothing. He’d say nothing oh GOD THE PAIN. Nothing would come out of his mouth except the blood-trickle getting larger and fouler.
Flicker. Flicker. “He has played us all like Punch and Judy. Shear-Lock will end this for all. All will be avenged.” Jack met his eyes. “If you lie to me I’ll go below and leave Jun here to tend you. He has several years of your floggings and starvation to repay.”
Jun winked at Milverton and held up his gory galley-blade.
Louder than the pain, fear sheeted through him like an Arctic storm. Not that. Oh God in heaven. Not that.
Jack made as if to stand up. “Where does Mor-“
“La Marche! La Marche Bay near Les Cayes! Haiti! Haiti! Haiti!” The last a long ululating scream.
Jack nodded once. “Watch closely, Jun. The carotid artery lies just under the left ear, so. One good stroke, and –“
And the reign of Captain Milverton ended in the blur of a gold hand.