Wake of the Bloody Angel

Chapter Sixteen

The tug of the two mysteries-what happened to the ships, and whether Marteen was involved-kept me antsy and ill-tempered. The ship’s routine became even more maddening since I had no real part in it. The one bright spot was the ongoing sword-fighting lessons, now attended by everyone not actively on duty. The deck was almost too small for all who wanted to participate. Suhonen quickly became a second teacher, absorbing what I demonstrated and tweaking it for ship-to-ship combat. I started to learn as much as I taught.

The men were tough enough as a group, but they had no individual discipline. They counted on intimidating their opponents as much as they did outfighting them, which was a holdover from their piracy days. What I tried to show them was that when they waved their swords overhead and screamed curses, they left their entire torsos wide open to a simple thrust to the heart. If we’d been in combat against a trained force, they’d have been massacred. It took a lot of drilling to break those old habits, but they began to operate more quietly, and with more lethal efficiency, as every day passed.

The night after we sent the Vile Howl back to Blefuscola, I was on deck with Suhonen and his friends. We’d passed the rum around, and I’d gotten more talkative than usual, telling them about some of my adventures. I chalked it up to the drink, but truthfully, I was growing to really like these guys. They were men who’d voluntarily changed their lives, yet still found a way to operate largely on their own terms. I admired that.

“How’d ye meet Cap’n Jane?” one of them asked. The others eagerly repeated the question.

“We crossed paths professionally,” I said, and tried to leave it at that, but they insisted on more, so I relented. “I was handling security at a conference of lords and ministers trying to hash out a border dispute. Jane was bodyguarding one of the lords, whom somebody knifed during a formal dance. She took it personally. We did some questioning, figured out who was telling the biggest lie in a castle full of professional liars, and ended up fighting it out with the personal guard of one of the other lords. Turns out, his wife was behind it all. She was hanged, and I split my bonus with Jane. We’ve been friends ever since.”

That was the story, all right, but the truth was in the details. We’d caught two groomsmen who were in on the plot but refused to say who was behind it. After we tied them to chairs, Jane produced a snake whip and said, “I’m going to use this on you both until one of you tells me what I want to know. That means one of you will take a whipping for nothing.” It took only three lashes before one of them cracked.

Then, as the woman behind the murder tried to escape under the protection of her guards, Jane fell from a parapet and broke her leg, but still managed to hobble to the drawbridge and stop the vicious bitch from escaping. Think about that-one severely injured woman took down five professional soldiers single-handedly before I could make it down to join her. I watched her fight the fever for a week that resulted from her injury. When she came out of it, the first thing she asked was about the case. I gave her half my bonus because the family of the murdered man wasn’t going to pay her at all. I’d never doubted her toughness or her commitment to her job since.

Suddenly there was a commotion from the hatch. Jane climbed on deck, dragging a struggling figure behind her. She looked around, spotted me, and came over. “Look who I found skulking about like a bilge rat.” She tossed Duncan Tew at my feet. He sat up and wiped his bloody nose.

Damn. I’d forgotten to tell her.

“Claimed he followed us from Watchorn and signed on here when I wasn’t looking,” she continued. “And he’s been hiding ever since.”

“Uhm, actually-” I began.

Duncan roared to his feet and put all his weight and strength into a punch to Jane’s chin. It was an uppercut that would’ve broken a normal person’s jaw, and it rocked Jane back a step, but she didn’t go down. Her eyes blazed with full-on battle fury and she reached for Tew, but I stepped between them. “No, wait, settle down, both of you.”

Duncan tried to get past me, so enraged, he didn’t realize Jane was truly mad enough to kill him. Suhonen grabbed him by the hair and held him. “The man said settle down.”

“You, too, Jane,” I said warningly, in a tone I wouldn’t use on her unless it was life or death. Given the murderous look in her eye, I was pretty certain it was. She stopped, the cords in her neck straining, then settled down. “What?” she snarled.

“I knew he was here. He came up to me and told me. I just forgot to tell you.”

She glared at Duncan. “Really?”

Suhonen still had him by the hair, so he just said, “Yeah.”

Jane took a deep breath, and the rage faded. She held up one hand; her bejeweled fingers trembled with the fury she would’ve poured into Duncan. “You’re a lucky man. That’s how close it came.” Then she smiled, laughed, and walked away to the stern.

“Let him go,” I said to Suhonen. Duncan spent a moment shrugging his clothes back into place, then said, “If that bitch thinks she can-”

“That bitch knows she can,” I said. “And you know she can, too. So shut up. This was my fault, and I want her mad at me, not you. Understand?”

Like her, he took a deep breath, but his anger didn’t entirely fade. “What ever,” he said. “Just keep her away from me, okay?”

“She’s not on a leash,” I said. “You’ll have to do some of that yourself.”

When Duncan had gone back belowdecks, Suhonen asked quietly, “How do you know him?”

I figured this was as good a way as any to test his honesty. “Just between us?”

Suhonen nodded.

“He’s the son of Black Edward Tew.”

Suhonen’s expression didn’t change. “Really.”

“Yes. His mother’s the one who hired me. He never knew either of them, but everyone where he was raised knew who his father was, and held it against Duncan all his life.”

“That might put you in a permanently bad mood,” Suhonen agreed.

I was impressed with his empathy. It wasn’t a quality I associated with my idea of giant ex-pirates. “That’s what I figure, too.” Then we rejoined his friends and resumed telling lies about how tough we were. I knew if word got around about Duncan’s parentage, there would be only one source. I truly hoped Suhonen proved trustworthy.

The next day, Duncan Tew showed up at swordfighting class. I didn’t know if Suhonen or Jane had said something to him, or if he’d simply decided he needed to know more than he did. I quickly realized that wouldn’t be hard-he had virtually no sense of how to handle a weapon. After class, as the half-dozen novices walked away rubbing their sore wrists, I motioned for Duncan to step aside.

He looked at me suspiciously. “I know, I’m not very good at this. Killing people isn’t something I’m really looking forward to.”

“You shouldn’t, but that’s not what I wanted to say.” I paused to get the right words together. “I’m sorry for being so rough on you.”

“I have to learn it, don’t I?”

“No, I don’t mean today. I mean since we met. I tend to see the worst reasons for people doing things, and usually I’m right. But not always.”

The insolent defensiveness in his glare slowly faded. “Well… thanks. I appreciate it. Does that mean you and your lady friend won’t smack me around anymore?”

“I can’t speak for her, but I don’t think she’ll need to.” Again I paused. “Who’s taking care of your children while you’re gone?”

“April moved back in with her parents. They’ll be fine.”

“Why are you here? Really.”

He looked out at the sea. “You saw my sons, right? They’re more important to me than I can explain using words. I need to know who I am, so I can make sure I don’t turn into the man my father was. Then maybe they won’t turn into me.”

“Your father never knew about you.”

“You say. I want to hear it from his own lips. Tell a man you’re his son, he either takes it as good news or bad news. That’ll tell me all I need to know.”

“What does your wife think?”

“She doesn’t think I’m coming back, but I’ll show her.”

“You know, she’s not the enemy.”

“You haven’t lived with her.”

“No, but…” I stopped. I was about to offer relationship advice, and I had no business doing that. I managed what I hoped was a friendly smile. “You know, you’re right. I don’t know your situation.”

“What were you going to say?” He added earnestly, “Really, I’d like to know.”

“Just that you and she are supposed to be on the same side. The enemy is anyone else who comes after either one of you.”

“Is that how you and your wife are?”

It seemed pointless to explain that no, I wasn’t married, but yes, I was committed. So I nodded.

“I miss her, you know,” he said quietly. “We may fight all the time, but to tell you the truth, I like the way she fights.”

“You’ve got time. If she really doesn’t think you’ll come back, then showing her that she’s wrong will go a long way toward fixing things.”

“What if she’s found somebody else by then?”

“Well, that’s always a chance. And if it happens, you’ll have to deal with it. But remember, what those boys see you do is what they’ll think a man is supposed to do. Make sure they see the right things.”

He sat up a little straighter when I called him a man. Raised without a real father, by people who never let him forget his origin, he’d probably never been called that. I patted his shoulder and left him there, afraid that if I kept going like this, I’d soon be giving him fashion tips.

As I headed toward the hatch, I met Jane emerging. She acted as if yesterday’s altercation had never happened. “How’d the babysitting class go?”

“You could help, you know. Especially with the beginners.”

“Me? I’m the worst teacher imaginable.”

“But they need a good opponent. Right now they’re just clacking swords together like kids. They don’t seem to realize they’re supposed to try to hit the other guy, not just his weapon.”

She laughed. “Maybe when I’m too old to swing a blade myself, I’ll paint a bull’s-eye on my back and rent myself out as a target.” She looked out at the sea. “Man, I just spent an hour helping Seaton work out our course. It’s really hard to tell where that ship came from. I couldn’t do that much math if you put a crossbow to my head.”

Quietly I asked, “And how are things with the captain?” She shrugged. “As well as can be expected, I suppose.” “Have you talked to him?”

“No. But I’ve tried to… not provoke him.”

“I noticed. Thanks.”

“He’s not a bad guy, you know.”

“I know. You could do worse.”

“I have done worse. Last time I saw worse, he was chained to a rock, whining that his ankle was chafed.”

“But your word is your word.” It wasn’t a question.

She nodded. “If it’s not, what have I got left?”

I started to quote the play myself, but knew better. In Jane’s case, as in mine, who you give your word to is irrelevant. Your word is your word.

I excused myself to go clean up after class. Dorsal sat in the corner outside my door, and jumped up as soon as he saw me.

“How are you today, sir?” he asked brightly.

“I’m okay,” I said. I wondered where he slept when he wasn’t huddled here. “And how about you?”

He beamed. “Shipshape and wagon tough, sir!”

I laughed. “That’s a good one.” I went into my cabin, shut the door, and sat down on my bunk. It was hot, still, and quiet as the ship rolled over the waves, and my eyelids grew heavy. I lay back, stared at the waving lamp hanging from the ceiling, and tried to focus on my case. That was usually helpful, but now it simply made me too frustrated to sleep. There was absolutely nothing I could do to speed the process along, and if we didn’t find something or someone soon, I might slaughter my beginner’s class just to keep from going mad.

Or worse, I might keep giving people advice.