No: A painter robbed of his technique could form another life for himself; a man driven insane by confinement could not. If they found no help in Wick, he might have to turn surgeon.
The thought made his gut run cold. Not the surgery itself—he’d done worse—but the idea of Damian’s expression when he tried to control a brush, and could not.
Imagine: Sherlock Holmes dodging responsibility.
Standing over his son’s form, he became aware of the most peculiar sensation, disturbingly primitive and almost entirely foreign.
Reverend Thomas Brothers (or James Harmony Hayden or Henry Smythe or whatever names he had claimed) lay dead among the standing stone circle, but had the corpse had been to hand, Sherlock Holmes would have ripped out the mad bastard’s heart and savagely kicked his remains across the deck and into the sea.
Read on for an excerpt of
PIRATE
KING
A novel of suspense featuring
Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes
by LAURIE R. KING
Published by Bantam Books
CHAPTER ONE
RUTH: I did not catch the word aright, through being hard of hearing … I took and bound this promising boy apprentice to a pirate.
“HONESTLY, HOLMES? PIRATES?”
“That is what I said.”
“You want me to go and work for pirates.”
O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea, our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free …
“My dear Russell, someone your age should not be having trouble with her hearing.” Sherlock Holmes solicitous was Sherlock Holmes sarcastic.
“My dear Holmes, someone your age should not be overlooking incipient dementia. Why do you wish me to go and work for pirates?”
“Think of it as an adventure, Russell.”
“May I point out that this past year has been nothing but adventure? Ten back-to-back cases between us in the past fifteen months, stretched over, what, eight countries? Ten, if one acknowledges the independence of Scotland and Wales. What I need is a few weeks with nothing more demanding than my books.”
“You should, of course, feel welcome to remain here.”
The words seemed to contain a weight beyond their surface meaning. A dark and inauspicious weight. A Mariner’s albatross sort of a weight. I replied with caution. “This being my home, I generally do feel welcome.”
“Ah. Did I not mention that Mycroft is coming to stay?”
“Mycroft? Why on earth would Mycroft come here? In all the years I’ve lived in Sussex, he’s visited only once.”
“Twice, although the other occasion was while you were away. However, he’s about to have the builders in, and he needs a quiet retreat.”
“He can afford an hotel room.”
“This is my brother, Russell,” he chided.
Yes, exactly: my husband’s brother, Mycroft Holmes. Whom I had thwarted—blatantly, with malice aforethought, and with what promised to be heavy consequences—scant weeks earlier. Whose history, I now knew, held events that soured my attitude towards him. Who wielded enormous if invisible power within the British government. And who was capable of making life uncomfortable for me until he had tamped me back down into my position of sister-in-law.
“How long?” I asked.
“He thought two weeks.”
Fourteen days: 336 hours: 20,160 minutes, of first-hand opportunity to revenge himself on me verbally, psychologically, or (surely not?) physically. Mycroft was a master of the subtlest of poisons—I speak metaphorically, of course—and fourteen days would be plenty to work his vengeance and drive me to the edge of madness.
And only the previous afternoon, I had learnt that my alternate lodgings in Oxford had been flooded by a broken pipe. Information that now crept forward in my mind, bringing a note of dour suspicion.
No, Holmes was right: best to be away if I could.
Which circled the discussion around to its beginnings.
“Why should I wish to go work with pirates?” I repeated.
“You would, of course, be undercover.”
“Naturally. With a cutlass between my teeth.”
“I should think you would be more likely to wear a night-dress.”
“A night-dress.” Oh, this was getting better and better.
“As I remember, there are few parts for females among the pirates. Although they may decide to place you among the support staff.”
“Pirates have support staff?” I set my tea-cup back into its saucer, that I might lean forward and examine my husband’s face. I could see no overt indications of lunacy. No more than usual.
He ignored me, turning over a page of the letter he had been reading, keeping it on his knee beneath the level of the table. I could not see the writing—which was, I thought, no accident.
“I should imagine they have a considerable number of personnel behind the scenes,” he replied.
“Are we talking about pirates-on-the-high-seas, or piracy-as-violation-of-copyright-law?”
“Definitely the cutlass rather than the pen. Although Gilbert might have argued for the literary element.”
“Gilbert?” Two seconds later, the awful light of revelation flashed through my brain; at the same instant, Holmes tossed the letter onto the table so I could see its heading.
Headings, plural, for the missive contained two separate letters folded together. The first was from Scotland Yard. The second was emblazoned with the words D’Oyly Carte Opera.
I reared back, far more alarmed by the stationery than by the thought of climbing storm-tossed rigging in the company of cut-throats.
“Gilbert and Sullivan?” I exclaimed. “Pirates as in Penzance? Light opera and heavy humour? No. Absolutely not. Whatever Inspector Lestrade has in mind, I refuse.”
“One gathers,” Holmes reflected, reaching for another slice of toast, “that the title originally did hold a double entendre, Gilbert’s dig at the habit of American companies to flout the niceties of British copyright law.”
He was not about to divert me by historical titbits or an insult against my American heritage: This was one threat against which my homeland would have to mount its own defence.
“You’ve dragged your sleeve in the butter.” I got to my feet, picking up my half-emptied plate to underscore my refusal.
“It would not be a singing part,” he said.
I walked out of the room.
He raised his voice. “I would do it myself, but I need to be here for Mycroft, to help him tidy up after the Goodman case.”
Answer gave I none.
“It shouldn’t take you more than two weeks, three at the most. You’d probably find the solution before arriving in Lisbon.”
“Why—” I cut the question short; it did not matter in the least why the D’Oyly Carte company wished me to go to Lisbon. I poked my head back into the room. “Holmes: no. I have an entire academic year to catch up on. I have no interest whatsoever in the entertainment of hoi polloi. The entire thing sounds like a headache. I am not going to Lisbon, or even London. I’m not going anywhere. No.”
Other Mystery Novels by
LAURIE R. KING
Mary Russell Novels
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice
A Monstrous Regiment of Women
A Letter of Mary
The Moor
O Jerusalem
Justice Hall
Locked Rooms
The Language of Bees
The God of the Hive
Kate Martinelli Novels
A Grave Talent
To Play the Fool
With Child
Night Work
The Art of Detection
And
A Darker Place
Folly
Keeping Watch
Touchstone
About the Author
LAURIE R. KING became the first novelist since Patricia Cornwell to win prizes for Best First Crime Novel on both sides of the Atlantic
with the publication of her debut thriller, A Grave Talent. She is the bestselling author of four contemporary novels featuring Kate Martinelli, seven Mary Russell mysteries, and the bestselling novels A Darker Place and Folly. She lives in northern California.
The Game is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
2010 Bantam Books Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 2004 by Laurie R. King
Excerpt from The God of the Hive copyright © 2010 by Laurie R. King
Excerpt from Pirate King copyright © 2011 by Laurie R. King.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2004.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book The God of the Hive by Laurie R. King. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
King, Laurie R.
The game: a Mary Russell novel / by Laurie R. King.
p. cm.
This book contains an excerpt from Pirate King by Laurie R. King. This excerpt has been set for this edition only, and may not reflect the final content of the book.
eISBN: 978-0-553-89876-7
1. Russell, Mary (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Holmes, Sherlock (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Women detectives—India—Fiction. 4. Intelligence officers—Fiction. 5. British—India—Fiction. 6. Missing persons—Fiction. 7. Married women—Fiction. 8. India—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3561.I4813G36 2004
813’.54—dc22 2003055684
www.bantamdell.com
Map by Laura Hartman Maestro
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Laurie R. King, The Game
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