“Thanks!” said Arthur. “My name’s Arth—”
He stopped halfway through. Better to keep his name to himself, he thought.
“Arth? Well, get aboard, Arth.”
Two of the closer Denizens held the boat against the buoy and another one helped Arthur across.
“Gettin’ yer leg ready to cut off, are yer?” asked the helping Denizen with a grin. He slapped Arthur’s cast and waved his own leg, showing off a wooden peg that started below the knee. “They grow back too quick, though, I’m telling yer.”
Arthur grimaced at the sight and quickly suppressed a flash of fear that his leg might have to be cut off. And his wouldn’t grow back, unlike a Denizen’s.
“I’ve had this one chopped a dozen times,” continued the peg-legged crew member. “Why, I remember—”
He stopped in midsentence and recoiled, staring at Arthur’s red-stained hands.
“He’s got the Red Hand!”
“Feverfew’s mark!”
“We’re all doomed!”
“Quiet!” roared Sunscorch. He peered down at Arthur.
“It’s only red tar or something from the buoy,” said Arthur. “It’ll wash off.”
“From the buoy,” whispered Sunscorch. “This here buoy?”
“Yes.”
“There wasn’t any smoke, was there?”
“Yes.”
“What about birds? That smoke didn’t turn into cormorants, did it? Smoky black cormorants that screamed out something that might have been ‘Death’ or ‘Dismemberment’ or anything like that?”
“There were birds,” admitted Arthur. “They screamed out ‘Thief’ and flew away. I thought they must have brought you here.”
Sunscorch took off his hat and wiped his bald head with a surprisingly neatly folded white handkerchief that he took out of a pocket.
“Not us,” he whispered. “Lookout saw the open buoy and the Captain thought it worth a glance. That there treasure marker must be one of Feverfew’s. The birds will have flown to find him, and his ship.”
“Shiver,” intoned the crew. “The ship of bone.”
As they spoke, the Denizen with the lantern shuttered it right down to the merest glimmer and everybody else looked out at the sea all around.
Sunscorch ran his tongue over his remaining teeth and kept wiping his head. His crew watched him intently, till he put away his handkerchief and clapped his hat back on.
“Listen up,” he whispered. “Seeing as we’re probably dead or headed for the slave-chain anyway, we might as well see what’s below. Lizard? Where’s Lizard?”
“Here,” came a whisper from the water. “There’s a chest all right, a big one, sitting pretty as you please atop a spire of rock, ten fathom down.”
“The chain?”
“Screwed to the rock, not to the chest.”
“Let’s be having that chest, then,” whispered Sunscorch. “Bones, you and Bottle back oars. Everyone else, hands on the line. You, too, Arth.”
Arthur joined the others to grab hold of the rope. At Sunscorch’s hoarsely whispered commands, they all hauled together.
“Heave away! Hold on! Heave cheerily! Hold on! Heave away! Hold! One more!”
At the last command, a dripping chest as long as Arthur was tall and as high as his waist scraped over the gunwale and was manhandled into the boat. As soon as it was settled, there was a mad dash to the oars. With Sunscorch whispering more commands and the rowers very gently dipping their oars, the boat moved ahead and then turned towards the lights of the Moth.
“Hope we get back to the ship in time so as we can all die together,” whispered the Denizen on the oar next to Arthur. “It’d be better that way.”
“What makes you so sure we’re going to die?” asked Arthur. “Don’t be so pessimistic.”
“Feverfew never leaves any survivors,” whispered another Denizen. “He slaves ’em or kills ’em. Either way they’re gone for good. He’s got strange powers. A Sorcerer of Nothing.”
“He’ll torture you first, though,” added one of the women, with a grin that showed her teeth were filed to points. “You touched the buoy. You’ve got the Red Hand that shows you tried to steal from Feverfew.”
“Quiet!” instructed Sunscorch. “Row quiet and listen!”
Arthur cupped a hand to his ear and leaned over the side. But all he could hear was the harsh breathing of the Denizens and the soft, regular swoosh and tinkle of the oars dipping in and out of the water.
“What are we listening for?” Arthur asked after a while.
“Anything we don’t want to hear,” said Sunscorch, as he looked back over the stern. Without turning around, he added, “Shutter that lantern, Yeo.”
“It is shuttered,” replied Yeo. “One of the moons is rising. Feverfew will see us miles away.”
“No point being quiet, then,” said Sunscorch.
Arthur looked where the mate pointed. Sure enough, a slim, blue-tinged moon was rising up on the horizon. It wasn’t very big and it didn’t look all that far away—a few tens of miles, not hundreds of thousands—but it was bright.
The blue moon rose quickly and rather jerkily, as if it was on a clockwork track that needed oiling. By its light Arthur could easily see the Moth, wallowing nearby. But he could also see something else, far away on the horizon. Something that glinted in the moonlight. A reflection from a telescope lens, atop a thin dark smudge that must be a mast.
Sunscorch saw it too.
“Row, you dogs!” roared the Second Mate. “Row for your miserable lives!”
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_3c54aba4-ade5-5cbb-a111-cf619f710bb0)
Their arrival aboard the Moth resembled a panicked evacuation more than an orderly boarding. The boat was abandoned as most of the Denizens clawed their way up the side ladder or the untidy mess of netting that hung along the Moth’s yellow-painted hull, all of them shouting unhelpful things like “Feverfew!” and “Shiver!” and “We’re doomed!”
Sunscorch managed to drag several Denizens back and get them to take the line from the chest. But even he wasn’t able to get the crew to do anything about retrieving the boat. As it began to drift away, he jumped to the ship’s side himself, reaching back to help Arthur get hold of the netting.
“Never lost salvage nor a passenger,” he muttered. “No thanks to the scum of the sea I have to sail with. Mister Concort! Mister Concort! There’s a boat adrift!
