“She’s making good progress with her own sword skills,” Cate said. She noted that Connor immediately tensed up, as he always did when the subject of Grace and swords came up. Surely he couldn’t be worried that she would prove a rival to him? As good as Grace was — and she certainly showed some natural flair for attack — she just didn’t apply herself as consistently to swordplay as Connor. It was a shame, Cate thought. Why should the boys have all the glory for themselves? She must have another word with Grace and get her to take things a bit more seriously. Maybe a little one-on-one training with another of the women pirates — perhaps Johnna? — was the way forward.
“You’re not going to put her into attack for the moment, are you?” Connor asked.
“No,” said Cate, shaking her head. “No, she’s not quite ready.” She saw Connor’s shoulders immediately relax. Now she thought she understood. He was simply a brother, being overprotective. He didn’t like to think of Grace putting herself into danger. But there was no free ride on a pirate ship and, besides, Grace had proved that she was able to deal with significant danger. After all, she had been “rescued” by a ship of vampires — or rather Vampirates — and lived to tell the tale. In spite of her crewmates’ urging, Grace had said very little about what she had endured aboard that ship. She had only confided in Connor and, though he had steadfastly kept his sister’s secrets, he had hinted that she had faced some truly horrific situations on board. It was understandable that he wanted to protect her from further trauma.
“You mustn’t worry about her,” Cate said to Connor. “She’s as tough as the leather on my sword hilt.”
Connor smiled, but only faintly. “She’s my sister, Cate. She’s all I have left in the world.”
“Na-hah, buddy,” said Bart, reaching out a hand to Bart’s shoulder. “What about us?”
“Yeah,” added Jez, digging Connor in the ribs. “What about the Three Buccaneers?”
“All for one and one for all!” added Bart.
“Very original,” said Cate, with a sigh.
But their clowning had done the trick. Connor was smiling again.
“All right, lads,” Cate said, “I’m off to make the final preparations for attack.”
“Yes, sir!” Bart said, saluting her.
Cate tried to frown but she couldn’t stop the laughter breaking through. “Enough of your cheek, Mister Pearce. Any more lip and you’ll be on toilet duty tonight, while the rest of us are off to Ma Kettle’s.” She turned and walked away, before another wave of laughter broke through her serious demeanor.
“Ohh, I love it when she gets all uppity,” said Bart to his mates.
Connor rolled his eyes at Jez.
“Come on, Connor,” Jez said, “let’s leave Mister Pearce here to his lovesick fantasies while we get on with some serious rapier maneuvers.”
“You’re on,” agreed Connor.
After spending the morning cleaning swords, Grace Tempest was in need of a good wash herself. She scrubbed away at her hands and arms but, though she managed to get rid of most of the grime, she couldn’t extinguish the smell of oil and metal. Oh well, she’d just have to let it wear off, she decided. Bidding farewell to her fellows, she headed back down to her cabin for a well-earned break. As she walked down the corridor, she could hear the pirates on the top deck getting ready for the attack. Connor would be among them. She felt an instinctive wave of nerves for him. After three months, it was still strange to think of her twin brother as a pirate prodigy.
Sometimes, she wondered at the way things had turned out. After their father’s death, there had been nothing left for them in Crescent Moon Bay — nothing save a life of drudgery at the orphanage or being adopted by the lunatic bank manager, Lachlan Busby, and his demented wife, Loretta. And so they had taken to the ocean in their old boat, Louisiana Lady, not exactly sure where they were heading, but certain that wherever they ended up would be better than what they left behind.
Neither one of them could have ever imagined what lay ahead though, thought Grace, pushing open the door to her small cabin. Her brother had been rescued by this pirate ship. And as for her, well, she had been brought to the Vampirates — creatures she had only heard of in the strange shanty her dad had sung to both twins.
I’ll tell you a tale of Vampirates,
A tale as old as true.
Yea, I’ll sing you a song of an ancient ship,
And its mighty fearsome crew.
Yea, I’ll sing you a song of an ancient ship,
That sails the oceans blue . . .
That haunts the oceans blue.
As many times as they had heard the shanty, they had never thought that the ship might actually exist. But it did! And she had found herself on board, coming face to face — or rather, face to mask — with its enigmatic captain.
They say that the captain, he wears a veil
So as to curtail your fright
At his death-pale skin
And his lifeless eyes
And his teeth as sharp as night.
Oh, they say that the captain, he wears a veil
And his eyes never see the light.
The captain did not wear a veil, but rather a mask. This was just one of the ways in which the reality of the Vampirate ship contrasted with the words of the shanty. The ship was as mysterious as she might have anticipated. But it certainly wasn’t the place of unalloyed horror that everyone expected. At least, it hadn’t been for her.
“Wasn’t it a terrible place?” one or other of the pirates would ask her each and every day. “What was the worst thing that you endured?” was another popular question. And “What were they like, those demons?”
Faced with these questions, Grace had decided the best strategy was to say, “I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.” That generally did the trick. Poor Grace, they thought. Of course, she doesn’t want to conjure up memories of that awful place.
This was far easier than trying to persuade them that she had actually been treated well on board that ship. The masked captain had seemed a benevolent creature, with Grace’s best interests at heart. And though the Vampirates did — of course — drink blood, they did so in a measured fashion at the weekly Feast. And the blood was supplied by donors, who were treated well in exchange for their gift. She had told Connor about this, but even he had struggled to understand how she could be so accepting of it all. The mere thought of blood-taking — or “the sharing” as the Vampirates called it — filled him with horror. Grace smiled. As tough as Connor might appear to his pirate comrades, the very thought of blood made him nauseous. It was a good thing, she reflected, that it was she who had found herself on the Vampirate ship and he on the pirate vessel — and not the other way around!
As strange as it sounded, Grace had made good friends on the Vampirate ship. Why, the very clothes she was wearing had been given to her by Darcy Flotsam — the ship’s figure-head by day and, in her own words, “figure of fun by night.”
Sitting down on her narrow bed, Grace drew back the thin curtain over her porthole. Outside, the ocean was dazzling blue. It made her think — as she so often did — of Lorcan Furey. He was the “young” Vampirate who had rescued her from drowning. He had guarded her on the ship and, when the pirates came to find her, he had protected her one last time. She had left the ship in much more of a rush than she would have liked. She hadn’t even had the chance to say a proper good-bye to Lorcan. She had lost track of him after Connor arrived. Her brother’s arrival had been such a surprise!
Of course, Lorcan must have headed inside the ship as daylight fell. But, when Grace went to his cabin to bid him farewell, he wasn’t there. She had made Connor wait while she searched the rest of the ship for him, but she hadn’t found him. Even the Vampirate captain was unable to tell her where Lorcan might be. Finally, she could stall Connor no more. Grace said her good-byes to the Vampirate captain and then returned to her cabin one last time. She took a small case of possessions — includin
g the notebooks from her cabin and some of Darcy’s cast-off clothes — and headed back up to the deck to depart.
When she had unpacked the case in her cabin on The Diablo later, she had discovered a small wooden casket that she didn’t remember packing. There was a small cloth bundle inside. As she unwrapped it, a small note-card fell out. Written in a familiar scrawl were the words:
Dear Grace,
Something to remember me by.
Travel safe!
Your true friend,
Lorcan Furey
Grace’s heart was beating fast as she lifted the card. Just the sight of Lorcan’s scrawled signature was enough to move her. But, folded within the cloth, lay an even greater shock. For there was Lorcan’s Claddagh ring. She remembered the first time she had seen it, as he’d brushed a stray hair from her wet face, after rescuing her from drowning.
Now she looked down at the ring — at the strange icon of the hands clasping a skull, a small crown set upon the skull’s head. She took the ring in her fingers. This was too great a gift, she thought. It was almost a part of Lorcan. But perhaps that was the point, she thought with a thrill. He wanted her to have a part of him. She’d have to return it to him one day, she decided. In the meantime, it would be her talisman — a reminder of the time she had spent on the Vampirate ship and an omen that one day, in the future, she would return.
For now, she unfastened the chain Connor had given her, and slipped the ring onto it, so that it nestled beside Connor’s locket. They were her two most precious possessions.
Grace reached up her fingers to touch the ring now. Sometimes, when she touched it, she closed her eyes and had such a clear vision of the Vampirate ship, it was as if she were able to see it for real. If only this were true!
How were they all — the captain and Darcy and Lorcan? — she wondered. Where were they now? Once again, she wished she had had longer to say her good-byes. It had been impossible to argue with Connor when he had said she must come to live with him on The Diablo. She would never have been able to convince him that they should stay on the Vampirate ship. That would be madness, wouldn’t it? Choosing to live amongst a crew of vampires? She remembered something her father had once told her. “Sometimes madness is wisdom, Gracie.” She had the feeling her dad would have understood.
Grace let her hand fall from Lorcan’s ring. She would have chosen to stay with them if she had had a real choice. Only one of the crew had threatened her. As always, she shuddered as the image of Lieutenant Sidorio came into her mind — his eyes flaming pits of fire, his gold incisors as sharp as daggers.
Sidorio — who had killed his donor and held Grace hostage in her cabin until the captain rescued her.
Sidorio — who had told her that he had been killed by Julius Caesar himself before he crossed.
Sidorio — who had been banished from the ship, and sent into exile.
He had been the only truly dangerous one aboard that ship, thought Grace, as she stared out into the translucent ocean. But Sidorio was gone. The danger had passed. Surely it would be safe to return now, if she could only find a way.
2
AN EASY VICTORY
“Sound the cannon!” cried Cate. The attack was on.
Now The Diablo was alongside the target ship. Cannon fire signalled the raid had begun and the sound of grinding metal signalled that the grids the pirates called the “Three Wishes” had swung down from above to make bridges onto the containership. Connor had not yet cured his fear of heights and his heart did a familiar somersault as he heard the wishes descend, anticipating his imminent run across the wishes, high above the water. Mercifully, it all happened quickly, and today, there was further compensation in the relative gentleness of the ocean.
“Fours — go!”
The instant the wishes were near horizontal, the teams of four raced heavy-footed across them. These were the teams of muscle — mostly grown men, including Bart — who began the attack by swirling their broadswords and inducing fear and apparent chaos on the other deck.
“First eights — in!”
Cate’s cry signalled the movement of three teams of eight rapier and épée bearers across the metal grids. This was the first flank of precision fighters. Though the broadsworders appeared more fearsome, it was the first eights who posed the deeper threat. As Cate had once told Connor, using her épée was like “fighting with a needle.” If that needle pierced a human target in the right spot, it would puncture a vital organ and trigger a slow, painful death from the inside out. Jez was the last of the first eights, ahead of Connor.
“See you on the other side!” he cried to Connor as he jumped onto the wish.
The 4–8–8 formation in which the pirates of The Diablo launched their attack on the containership was one of Cate’s favorite and most successful maneuvers. It was her preferred mode of attack on a medium-sized craft, such as the current target, and involved sixty pirates, divided into three teams, which then further subdivided into 4–8–8. Each pirate in the second team of eight was paired with one in the first — the second acting as a backup to the more experienced and accomplished fighter. Today, Connor would act as Jez’s backup. They’d been working as a pair during every attack for the past eight weeks and Connor was learning a lot from his good friend and mentor.
“Second eights!”
The head of Connor’s team made the cry and now the teams of second eights flew across the wishes to join the battle. Connor was the last of his team. Again he thought back to his first attack, when Cheng Li had nudged him forward. Now, Cheng Li was gone and there was just his own will to push him on. Taking a deep breath, Connor leaped onto the wish and ran into the fray. Now it was all about instinct and timing and precision. Now Connor Tempest inhabited not just the clothes of a pirate but a pirate’s skin and soul. As he let out a cry and drew his rapier from its sheath, he felt the blood pumping through his veins. He felt truly alive.
As Connor raced through the melee aboard the containership, he saw that Jez was running rings around two of the opposing ship’s crew. They were dressed head to toe in black and brandishing curved swords with sharp outer edges, which Connor recognized as scimitars. To be brandishing such weapons, he realized that the cargo of the containership must be precious indeed. The stakes of today’s battle would be high.
“Welcome aboard!” Jez greeted Connor, with a laid-back smile. “Come and meet my new friends!”
At the sight of Connor — charging forward, rapier in hand — the two crew members promptly surrendered, dropping their scimitars to the deck.
“An excellent decision, my friends,” Jez said, beaming. “Connor, keep them under guard here. I’ll be back in a flash.”
“No problem,” Connor said, standing in the ready position with his rapier covering both men. This was not the end of the battle. He’d been caught out before and he knew that one slip mid-combat could result in a very different result at the end of the fight.
He did, however, allow himself a quick glance across the deck. The attack seemed to be going in their favor. Although the defending crew were well-armed, they seemed to be insufficiently skilled at fighting techniques, and the pirates of The Diablo had them on the defensive with Jez’s maneuver repeated all over the deck. The containership’s crew was brought to the center of the deck, their scimitars dropping like pine needles onto the boards. Connor felt flushed with pride. The Diablo, under the instruction of its new deputy captain, Cate, was truly an elite fighting machine.
Connor looked into the eyes of his captives. “Always watch your opponent’s eyes,” Bart had once told him. “The sword can lie, but the eyes don’t.” During past attacks, he’d grown used to reading the fear in his prisoners’ eyes. This was the part of the operation he found the hardest to deal with. Bart and Jez had told him that this would change in time.
“There’s nothing wrong in it,” Jez had told him. “It’s good to remember that your prisoner is just another guy — just like me or you — another guy with
mates and family and dreams of glory. It only becomes a problem if you let your guard slip for an instant and allow him back into the fight.” Connor was already an experienced enough pirate to know that that wasn’t going to happen here.
Careful not to let his captives out of his sight, he again cast his eyes swiftly around the deck. It looked like the battle was coming to a close. He could see Cate and Captain Wrathe circling the core of prisoners, all clustered around the mast at the ship’s center. Farther in the distance, Connor saw Bart and his team of broadsworders, guarding the periphery. Everything was under control. Now, just one important maneuver remained — the surrender of the defending captain. But where was the captain? Who was he — or she? All the pirates were dressed identically, with no distinguishing marks of rank. Why, Connor himself might be holding the captain captive.
Connor watched his prisoners’ faces as he heard Molucco Wrathe call out.
“Captain, come and show yourself. Your ship has been boarded and I, Molucco Wrathe, of The Diablo, lay claim to your cargo.”
There was no response. Captain Wrathe’s words hung in the air like the residue of cannon fire.
Jez rejoined Connor. Connor turned to him, expecting his comrade to be smiling, but Jez’s face was serious.
“I don’t like this,” he whispered. “I don’t like this at all. It’s been too easy.”
“Easy is good, isn’t it?” said Connor.
Jez shook his head. “There’s easy, and there’s too easy. Something’s wrong.”
Connor trembled at his words.
Captain Wrathe called out again. “Come and show yourself, Captain. We’ll do no more harm if we can agree to terms swiftly — and fill our hold with your treasures!”
This time, there was an answer. It came with the sound of a bell. The ship’s bell. As the strange tolling rang out three, then four, then five times, the pirates of The Diablo looked from one to the other, wondering what was going on. Connor could just make out Cate’s face in the distance. He could see that she was as perturbed as the rest of them.