Having acquired a hostage worth (if it does not make me sound immodest) as much as any cargo of silks and spices and infinitely more portable, the pirates of the Black Fortune set sail for safe harbor. Now, when one is a pirate one can rarely just cruise merrily into port, sell goods, and resupply, one reason why they'd ransacked the Swiftsure for sails, lines, and carpenter's tools. However, it is a sad fact of human nature that where there is a dishonest silver to be made, people will find a way. Indeed, Meribia itself has been a home to some of Lunar's most notorious pirates when those pirates sailed as privateers under the authority of one House of merchant-lords or another.
As a true pirate, though, Hell Mel had no such easy time of it. What he did have was Blue Dragon's Key, located in a tangled archipelago south of Caldor Isle. Here there was legitimate business, tropical plantations and the like, but also a safe haven for freebooters. Indeed, many of the Houses and other powerful merchants had representatives on Blue Dragon's Key, where stolen goods could be turned into legally purchased ones under the blind eye of Horam Keys trade law. Indeed, in all of Lunar only Reza is a more noxious den of thievery and brigandage.
The Key's unique position made it a perfect place for the negotiations concerning my ransom to occur. The local law, such as it was, was vastly outgunned by the collected pirates, who would be happy to set aside past grievances for the sake of telling Governor Spotswood to keep out of things that didn't concern him. As for a Meribian military expedition, House de Alkirk's rival merchant-lords wouldn't lift a finger to help, claiming it would be an insult to a sovereign city to send in the fleet to arrest criminals in Horam Keys waters or some such rot. There were the de Alkirk private assets, of course, but I'd have wagered on Master Mel, the Black Fortune and whatever support he could rally in his home waters, especially since my presence as a hostage ruled out measures like decimating the entire ship with fire or water magic.
And just why was I with them, ashore, instead of being under heavy guard? Well, this was the first night back in port, which meant the kind of drunken revelry that did not go well with keeping anyone under any kind of guard. As Mel himself put it, "If I have ta trust anyone ta keep an eye on ya, missy, I'll trust meself first, last, and always." So I was bundled off to Pegleg Pete's with Mel and a contingent of his men.
It was Ace who started it, the man who'd put his cutlass to the back of my neck on the Swiftsure. He was a lean, dark-skinned man in his mid-twenties who favored green shirts and had a dry, almost sardonic sense of humor. He'd been unable to resist using that wit when he'd seen his crewmate Morgan flirt tirelessly with the pretty barmaid and, handsome as he was, nonetheless get precisely nowhere.
"Give it up, Morgan," Ace laughed. "You wouldn't be Nita's type even if you came in loaded with the Cape Matapan treasure."
It was at this point that I made the mistake.
"What's the Cape Matapan treasure?"
I know... I shouldn't have asked. I was tired, though, sick of being pushed from place to place, locked into a tiny cabin, fed common sailors' rations (although, to be fair, Mel invited me to dine with him and I'd refused out of stubborn pride), held at blade's point, and generally made well aware of the fact that to them I wasn't a person but an object, a valuable asset. It was terribly dehumanizing, and the truth of it was that just getting someone to respond to my question would feel like a major victory, a breath of fresh air. And, practically speaking, anything I could do to make the pirates see me as a person might help save my life, not that I thought of that at the time.
"Ahr! Ye've never heard o' th' Cape Matapan, girlie?" Patch bellowed in surprise. He was a burly, stubble-cheeked fellow whose nickname came from his missing eye. His accent was, if anything, thicker than Mel's. "Cap'n, this has ter be set right at once, afore th' lass goes back inter th' world in such woeful ignorance."
"Well enough. Ya'd like ta hear the yarn, would ya, lassie? I warn ya, it do be a tale o' death and piracy on the high sees, fit ta chill the blood o' a gentlewoman."
There was general laughter at this announcement, but I'd met his eyes as he said it and I got the idea that Mel was being genuinely sincere. I therefore gave him the courtesy of a serious answer.
"Yes, Captain Mel, I'd be most interested."
"Very well, then. Morgan, since yer dreams o' romance are gone fer now, ya can tell the tale."
Morgan groaned, then wet his whistle with a goblet of wine. I had the feeling he'd been born on the wrong side of some rich man's blanket, because he had that whole more-noble-than-thou act down to an art form. He dressed in exquisitely tailored garb suitable for the scion of any House, right down to the broad-brimmed, feathered hat, carried a light, straight-bladed dueling sword rather than the more customary saber or cutlass, and wore his facial hair in a neatly trimmed goatee. Drinking wine instead of ale, beer, or rum was all part of the same dandied-up act.
"Patch is right, Miss Amelie. This is a tale you should know, for it's the story of the largest treasure ever taken by a pirate in these waters, as well as the final legend of the most notorious and bloodthirsty sea-rover ever to hoist the black flag."
"Ahr, that he was," agreed Patch.
"Do you mean... Bloodheart Van Dierken?"
Mel roared in triumph and crashed his fist on the table.
"Har! Didn't I tell ya the lass had spirit?"
I blushed hotly at that.
"I hear stories too, that's all."
"Well, you're quite right. Owen Van Dierken, to give him his proper name. Most stories about him say that he originally hailed from Lyton, but he certainly never sang with anything other than the edge of his sword. He was a brilliant seaman, a near-superhuman fighter, and a master of ship-to-ship tactics. He had to be, because he was also a sadistic barbarian who would put whole crews to bloody torture if they put up the slightest hint of resistance."
"Which differs how, exactly, from your practices?" I asked pertly. I'm not quite sure where my courage was coming from; perhaps I was intoxicated from the fumes--or just hoping that someone would kill me so I would no longer have to endure the stench of the place.
"Now see here!" Mel roared. "We may be pirates, right enough, and I'm not saying there ain't been our share o' killing and looting, but by Althena no one in my crew goes about torturing anybody, not so long as I be cap'n here. This ain't a friendly and jolly business, but there's a world o' difference between being a gentleman o' fortune and a monster!"
"He's funny that way," observed Jack.
Blast it, it was not fair. There was genuine hurt in Captain Mel's eyes. They'd kidnapped me, for Althena's sake. They were not supposed to have feelings, especially not ones I could do any damage to. Nor was I supposed to feel guilty for getting back at them in any way I could. Since when were bloodthirsty pirates supposed to be people?
"I'm... sorry," I found myself saying.
"Don't be worrying yerself over it, Miss Amelie. That's the point o' fearsome reputations after all, ta scare the prey blind so's no one's got ta be killing anyone else. Seein's how I makes sure ta spread that reputation far and wide, I oughtn't be afraid o' the consequences."
"The difference, of course, being that while our reputation is essentially the product of skill in battle combined with a good job of rumormongering, Van Dierken's was not," Morgan regained the floor. "He was a killer through and through, and naturally enough his crew consisted of the most vicious rogues and cutthroats to sail the Meribian Sea. For years his atrocities were the talk of every seaport, until at last he committed one too many."
"The Cape Matapan?"
"Precisely. She was the prize of House Blaydon out of Meribia, nominally a trader but easily a match for any warship afloat. She was at the head of an expedition sent out by a consortium of merchant-lords, which sailed all the way around the horn of the Marius Zone to fetch up in the Stadius Zone southeast of Meryod. They say one of the four ships was taken by sea monsters on the way, but in any case the expedition was in good enough shape to carry out some..."
"Unauthorized archaeology?" Ace ventured.
"Just so, in the lands of the Prairie Tribe. Now, I've never met anyone from the Prairie myself, but I hear they are quite protective of their territory--and positively implacable towards thieves. The expedition had almost escaped when the Tribe ran them down on those fantastic horses of theirs. There was a ferocious battle on the beach, which only the Cape Matapan managed to survive, but she did so with a hold stuffed with silver, jewels, and valuable relics, including some kind of hideous pagan idol made of solid gold. A million silver's worth at the very least, enough treasure to set any pirate's blood afire."
"If that pirate knew it was there," Jack Hook said. "How did Van Dierken know to hit the Cape Matapan, anyway?"
"I suspect he had contacts with their ears close to the ground in Meribia," Ace contributed. "If a rival House got wind of the expedition, it might risk passing word to the pirate community to, in essence, hire a force to ruin their competition's venture without having to pay a single silver piece."
"Ahr, that'd be jest like them greedy coin-stackers," Patch agreed.
While I was not so naive as to believe that inter-House politics did not take place, I was deeply shocked that these men would so cavalierly assume that the merchant-lords of Meribia would scheme at the murder of shiploads of retainers. At the time I simply wrote it off to criminals measuring everyone by their own yardstick, although in truth they were more accurate than I in their understanding. I was about to voice a protest, only to find that I did not have to.
"Patch, curse yer eye, did ya ever stop ta think that yer speaking o' Miss Amelie's friends and family?"
"Sorry, Cap'n." Mel kept glaring at the one-eyed pirate until the man turned to me and added, "Sorry, Miss Amelie." The exchange drew any number of significant glances between the other pirates, whose meaning I could not follow.
"So what happened to the Cape Matapan?" I asked, genuinely interested in the story by now.
"No one knew, for the longest time. Then, more than two weeks after she was due to return, her wreck drifted ashore near Lann. It was as if she'd been guided home by spirits, for there was no one living on board--but plenty enough of the dead. After a search, the salvage crew found a log which explained what had happened."
Morgan took another drink of wine at this dramatic moment, and waved his empty cup to get Nita's attention. While he did this, my gaze followed the goblet, and as it did I saw an old, bearded man sitting close by at fireside, paying more attention to us than I thought natural.
"It seemed that just as she reentered the Meribian Sea, the Cape Matapan caught sight of the Balthasar, Captain Van Dierken's ship. The sailors wanted to heave to and surrender at once, but the soldiers and adventurers on board had shed blood for that treasure and would be da--er, cursed if they'd give it up at the last. The Cape was damaged from her voyage and the fight with the Prairie Tribe, and this let the Balthasar repeatedly rake her with arrows before grappling and boarding. The defenders were softened up by the initial stages of the battle and exhausted by their ordeal, and at last they fell. The ensuing orgy of torture and debauchery is not a tale fit for anyone's ears, let alone yours, Miss Amelie, but it will suffice to say that only one merchant survived, by hiding in the bilgewater with a breathing tube. The Cape Matapan was too damaged for the pirates to bother with and too recognizable to sell, so they stripped her of every last bit of her stores, in addition to the treasure, of course. The last survivor died of hunger and thirst, therefore, but not before she updated the ship's log to tell the story."
I shuddered in horror. I was young and innocent then, but even now as I write this I cannot help but tremble at the fate of that poor woman, marooned on a man-made island with only the dead for company. There are worse things than blades and spells to fear at sea.
My reaction was hardly unique, Morgan told me. The pitiful story aroused the sympathies of many across the Katerina Zone. The expedition's backers wanted the fortune they'd "earned," of course, and the Prairie Tribe even lodged a formal complaint with Althena's Shrine, requesting that the Goddess herself intervene to force the Meribians to return the stolen cultural artifacts.
"Besides these powerful enemies, Van Dierken also managed to incur the wrath of Blue Dragon's Key and his fellow pirates. The Governor could not afford to be associated with a man who'd crossed so many others, while the other pirates either wanted to get their hands on the plunder or punish the man who'd brought the wrath of all Lunar down on piracy in general."
Nita arrived with a bottle of wine and foaming tankards, which were passed around happily.
"There was a worldwide hunt," Ace elaborated the last point, "and the career of many a pirate was cut short as were those of any number of smugglers and other relatively inoffensive louts."
"What they didn't do was find the Balthasar, not at sea, not at port, and not in some secret pirate hideaway out of a book. No trace of ship, captain, or treasure was ever found."
"Do you mean that they retired?" I guessed. "The pirates shared out their plunder and... bought farms, or something of that sort?"
"If they did, then they did a right fine job of hiding. Oh, I'm sure the rank-and-file could have gotten away with doing just that, especially if they took their shares in silver coin instead of goods they'd have to sell, but Van Dierken and his chief crew members? It isn't likely, not with bounties on their heads in the thousands of silver and personal motives to hunt them down besides. Also, don't forget that these men were pirates, experts at seamanship and combat, not stealth and disguise. Ours is a profession of courage, adventure, and flamboyance!"
"Listen to him, Miss Amelie," Ace suggested. "Anyone who wears a feather in his hat and dresses in those colors known about flamboyance."
Morgan flipped Ace's own hat off the dark-skinned pirate's head in retaliation.
"It has become," he continued, otherwise ignoring the interruption, "one of the great mysteries of the sea. What became of Captain Van Dierken and the Balthasar? Where is the Cape Matapan treasure now? Even if you steer clear of grave-goods and keep to honest loot there's a fortune out there to be found, and the last chapter to be written in the life history of the most dastardly villain ever to sail the seas of Lunar. It's a mystery that may never be solved."
As Morgan concluded the tale, the old man by the hearth I'd noticed before broke into a wheezing laugh.
"Never be solved, youngling? Why, ye could solve it yerself, if ye'd half a mind to."