Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker #1)(59)

“No one!”

“Bullshit.” He nodded at one of the half-men. “Whip him raw, Knot. Get me some answers. I want to know who sent him.”

“Nita sent me!” Nailer screamed. “She did, you rotten bastard! I told her we should run, but she said you could be trusted!”

The captain stopped. “Miss Nita is dead more than a month. Drowned and dead. The clan mourns.”

“No.” Nailer shook his head. “She’s here. Hiding. Back in the Orleans. She’s trying to get home. But Pyce is hunting her. She thought she could trust you.”

The lieutenant smirked. “Christ almighty. Look what the Fates dragged in.”

The captain stared at Nailer. “You baiting me?” he asked. “Is that it? You’re baiting me the way they did Kim?”

“I don’t know Kim.”

The captain grabbed him, pulled him close. “I’ll strangle you with your guts before I go down like she did.” He turned away. “Whip him. Find out who sent him. If the girl’s out there, we’ll go hunting.”

The lieutenant nodded and turned. As he did, the captain raised his gun and shot the man in the back. The gunfire echoed in the darkness, running flat across the water. The lieutenant crumpled to the planks. Smoke curled from the barrel of the captain’s pistol, slowly disbursing.

Nailer stared at the dead man. The captain turned back to the half-men. “Let the boy go.”

Nailer found his voice. “Why did you do that?”

“He was my minder,” the captain said simply. To the half-men he said, “Weigh him down and then go with the boy. We’re leaving with the tide.”

“And the rest of the crew?”

The captain grimaced. “Find Wu and Trimble and Cat and Midshipman Reynolds.” He stared out at the water. “And do it damn quietly. No one else, you understand?” He turned to look at Nailer. “You’d better not be lying to me, boy. I don’t fancy a life of piracy, so you’d better damn well be right.”

“I’m not lying.”

The half-men Knot and Vine guided him into the launch. They were huge and daunting. The boat moved slowly away from the dock, aiming for the deep streets of the Orleans.

“Where are we going?” Nailer asked. “She’s close to shore. We don’t need to go so deep into the drowned city.”

“First our men, then her,” Knot said.

Vine nodded. “She will need protection. It is better not to drag her into the open until we are ready to run.”

“Run from what?”

Vine grinned, showing sharp teeth. “The rest of our loyal crew.”

19

Knot and Vine were fast and efficient, moving from bar to nailshed to bar, seeking silently and collecting their fellows. They said little to Nailer as they worked the Orleans. The rest of the crew were regular people, not half-men at all. Wu: tall and blond and missing fingers. Trimble: thickly muscled, with forearms like hams and a tattoo of a mermaid on one bicep. Cat, with his green eyes and steady stare. Reynolds, with a long black braid running down her back, short and stocky and with a pistol in her belt.

Reynolds was the first located and she took command. At each venue, all she said was “Nita” and the drunken crew sobered or dropped their whores and came away until they were a fast-moving knot of muscle and bare steel cutting through the drowned city’s revelry of sailors and traders.

It was astonishing to watch how efficiently they moved. An entire team mobilized instantly at the invocation of Lucky Girl’s name. Astonishing to see the value these people placed on her. Until recently, Nailer had mostly thought of her just as a rich girl who bought the muscle she needed, but here was something else, this clustered tribe of weaponry and purpose. Total loyalty. More intense even than crew loyalty in the ship-breaking yards.

Reynolds pointed them to scouting locations. “Anyone seen Kaliki and Michene?”

Heads shook. She smiled tightly. “Good. Keep your eyes out for anyone you’ve seen on another of the company ships. We know Pyce’s lackeys are around and they’re hunting, too.” She turned to Nailer. “Where is she?”

Nailer pointed out the drowned mansion that over-looked the Orleans waters. “Up there. In one of those rooms. Where the trees are growing out of the roof.”

Reynolds nodded at Vine and Knot. “Go get her.” She waved at Wu. “Bring the skiff around.”

Nailer said, “I’d better go, too. We saw some other half-men before. Pyce’s. They were hunting for her. She’ll think you’re with Pyce.”

Reynolds hesitated.

Cat shrugged. “Captain Candless believes him, right?”

“Go,” she said.

Nailer ran to catch up with Knot and Vine. “She’s up here,” he said breathlessly. He slipped ahead of them, leading.

They sloshed into the collapsing house, water splashing around them. Rotten stairs creaked as they made their way up to the squat. The house was strangely silent. No one was in it at all. None of the other slum dwellers, none of the other scavengers and dock laborers. It should have been full of the snoring bodies of coolie laborers, all exhausted and unconscious from their day shift work. Instead, there was silence. Their own room was empty except for the rusted bed and its springs.

Nailer came down the stairs to the flooded main floor, shaking his head, followed by the half-men. “I don’t get it. She’s—”