Serpent's Kiss

When his stomach finally settled, Goraksh felt drained and embarrassed. He forced himself to his feet and stood on shaky legs amid the mess he’d made.

“Are you through shaming me?” his father roared from the other ship.

Goraksh faced his father and intended to speak roughly, as a man would do. But his words were soft and without direction.

“The crew went down with the ship,” he said.

“Good. Then maybe they didn’t have time to call in this location,” his father said. “Maybe we’ll have more time to work.”

Even after all the years he’d lived with the man, Goraksh couldn’t believe how callous he was. Rajiv had brought Goraksh along on the pirating expeditions after storms for eight of his twenty years. During the past four, Goraksh had been expected to take part in stealing whatever cargo they could salvage.

Finding the illegal salvage was one thing, but getting away with it was quite another. The Indian navy and merchant marine, the British navy and the International Maritime Bureau, were all problems. Rajiv Shivaji considered those risks a part of doing business.

Goraksh recognized them as an end to the life he wanted. His father was a pirate. Rajiv Shivaji carried on an old family enterprise. Goraksh never romanticized the nature of what his father did.

But if Goraksh was ever caught doing his father’s business, he knew his dream future was forfeit. Still, he loved his father. After his mother had died, his father had raised him and had never taken another wife. It had only been the two of them.

If Goraksh was ever to be asked if he feared or loved his father more, though, Goraksh didn’t know what his answer would be.

K ARAM USED a crowbar to open the crate Goraksh had selected from those in the flooded hold. Water, foam peanuts and boxes of iPods spilled out across the ship’s hull.

“They’re ruined,” Rajiv snarled. “Go below and find something salvageable.”

Goraksh put the respirator back in his mouth and dived back into the hold. He recovered his floodlight and tried not to look at the dead man floating amid the boxes. Then he found two more.

He bagged more crates and sent them up. During the time he waited for the net to be sent back down, he scouted the hold. Two hatches, one at either end, normally allowed access to the upper decks. Both of them had jammed.

If there was anything in the crew’s quarters, they wouldn’t be able to get to it without cutting through the floor or forcing the hatches. Goraksh hoped his father wouldn’t demand that. Doing either of those things might upset the equilibrium of the ship.

Even now he truly believed the ship had sunk lower in the water. He reached the opening they’d created more easily.

Pounding echoed throughout the hold. Goraksh felt as though he were trapped in a gigantic drum. He netted a final crate, thinking his efforts were going to be as wasted as the other times. He surfaced.

Karam leaned down into the hold. He cupped one hand around his mouth to be heard over the sound of the sea against the hull. “Your father wants to leave.”

“All right,” Goraksh responded. He swam through the maze of boxes to the opening and wondered what had made his father change his mind. Not even the fact that they’d only pulled up ruined electronics in over a dozen attempts would have made Rajiv Shivaji give up on the hope of turning a profit.

Something had happened.

“I S ANYONE OUT THERE ? Can anyone help us?”

Goraksh stood beside his father in the ship’s wheelhouse and listened to the broadcast over the shortwave radio. His sodden clothing gave him a chill.

“Hello? Hello? God, please let someone be out there. We need help. Our boat is sinking. Please. Please! ”

The voice belonged to a woman. She sounded young and frightened.

Rajiv glanced at the radio operator. The man worked quickly with a slide rule, compass and map. He made a few tentative marks and watched his instruments again.

“Why don’t you answer her?” Goraksh asked. For a moment he couldn’t help imagining his girlfriend at the other end of the radio connection. Then again, Tejashree feared the open ocean and wouldn’t accompany him sailing.

“Because I don’t wish to answer her,” Rajiv said.

Goraksh fell silent and knew better than to ask again.

“Our boat is the Grimjoy, ” the woman said.

Although he tried, Goraksh couldn’t decide if her accent was American or Canadian. He knew there was a difference between the two, but he didn’t quite know how to tell. He would have known if she had a British inflection.

“ Grimjoy, ” one of his father’s men said as if he were familiar with the vessel.

“I know.” Rajiv nodded happily. “I know that boat.” He looked at the radio operator. “Can you locate it?”

The man made a few final notations on the map. “I have it now.” He handed up a slip of paper with the coordinates listed.

“How far away are we?” Rajiv demanded.

“Ten or fifteen miles. They’re north of our position.”

“Is the boat in the open sea?”

The radio operator shook his head.

Goraksh knew that within the country’s boundaries the authorities would arrest his father for what he was doing. Most of the men on the Black Swan had been in trouble with the law on some occasion.

“Does anyone else know they’re out there?” Rajiv asked.

“I’ve been monitoring this frequency. So far they’ve received no reply.”

“Good.” Rajiv gave the paper with the coordinates to the helmsman. “Set a course to take us there immediately.”

The man nodded and hurried away.

Rajiv strode out of the wheelhouse and onto the deck. He bellowed orders to abandon the sinking cargo ship and put on sails.

Goraksh watched his father, but he listened to the woman’s plaintive voice coming over the radio frequency.

“Please. Someone has to be out there. We’re adrift. I don’t know how to work the boat.”

In seconds the Black Swan got under way. She heeled hard to port, caught the wind and sliced through the rolling waves like a thoroughbred.

When he joined his father on the deck and saw the savage exuberance on his father’s face, the sick knot inside Goraksh’s stomach twisted more violently. He’d never seen his father kill anyone, but he was aware of the stories that were told in the rough bars and opium dens in the darkest corners of Kanyakumari that said Rajiv Shivaji was a murderer several times over.

5

“Dude, nagas were evil.”

“Maybe in Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition, but not in Three-Point-Five. In Three-Point-Five you could roll up a naga character and play one. You could be Lawful Good if you wanted to.”