The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [70]
Lightning flashed.
Bars of hissing, sizzling electricity shot out of Captain Wyvern's hands and hit the men fighting on the deck. Here, he pointed, and here, and here, and with each imperceptible movement lightning fell from the tips of his digits and hit one of the Nautilus' sailors.
Lightning flashed, again and again and again.
The men who were hit screamed, but only briefly.
The air on the deck filled with the smell of cooking meat.
Strangely, horrifyingly, even as he was gagging, Orphan's stomach made a growling noise, his body reacting to the smell the way it would to any cooking meat: with hunger. Then a wave hit the ship and the deck moved, and one of the corpses came rolling down and almost crashed into him and he screamed, and was sick all over himself.
The boiled face of the corpse looked at him with the glazed look of a mounted fish.
It was Robur.
Slowly, with the same serene expression on his face, the young cook stood up with his hands raised. He kicked Orphan, not hard. Orphan rose with his hands up and tried not to retch.
There was movement behind him. He half-turned, saw the face of a pirate, sunburnt skin livid with blood, broken teeth exposed in an animalistic grin, and something raised to strike…
He tried to escape but his movements were slow and sluggish, as if he was drowning in water, and then something connected with the back of his head and pain shot through him and brought with it darkness.
TWENTY-THREE
Mr. Spoons
I steer'd from sound to sound, as I sail'd, as I sail'd,
I steer'd from sound to sound, as I sail'd,
I steer'd from sound to sound and many ships I found
And most of them I burned, as I sail'd.
– Captain Kidd
Orphan came to on the Joker's deck. He was lying on his side, his head resting painfully against the hard boards. His hands were tied behind his back.
Rain was falling, and his clothes were soaked. The rain got into his eyes and ran down his face. He blinked, and the world came into sharp focus and he cried out involuntarily.
Ahead of him, the Nautilus burned.
It was growing smaller in the distance. The Joker must have turned around, he thought. He was lying by the stern. He watched, helpless, as the sails flamed and billowed in the wind of the storm. The flames licked the sides of the ship. The masts burned like beacons.
Orphan turned his head away. Beside him on the deck, he saw, were others, a half-dozen sailors from the Nautilus that he vaguely recognised. Like him, they were tied up. Like him, too, they were still alive.
He saw no sign of Verne or Dakkar. No sign of the cook, either, when he thought about it. He wondered what the pirates had in store for them. The rain worked its way into his clothes and wrapped cold hands around his belly. He shivered and looked back at the burning Nautilus.
The ship was falling into the sea. He wondered what had happened to Verne. Then he thought, Does it matter? He was alone again, and in trouble.
No change there, then.
The lightning, he noticed, had abated. The Joker was sailing away, growing faster, and the storm seemed to be receding, the dark clouds beginning to edge away from each other like a crowd of people at the scene of an accident. He tried to turn, moving his legs, and his hands scraped against the floor. He managed a halfturn. There was a dark pool where his head had been.
"Well, well," a rich, cultured voice said. "Look what the cat dragged in."
It was Captain Wyvern. The pirate stood facing the group of captured sailors, his single eye shining red. His tongue snaked out in a hiss of amusement. He stepped forward. He was no longer wearing the lightning gloves. Beside him stood a bulky, mean-looking pirate: his head was a smooth shaved dome, and a scar ran all the way down his bare chest, as if someone had once tried to cut him open and nearly succeeded. He wore hooped earrings in both ears and held a cutlass