Drowned Wednesday

Arthur didn’t care. He stood up gingerly, his muscles cramping from weariness and confinement in the buoy, and waved frantically.

“Help! I’m over here! Help!”

There was no answering shout from the ship. It rolled and plunged towards him, but he could see some of the sails being furled, and there were Denizens rushing about on the deck. Somebody was shouting orders and others were repeating or questioning them. All in all, it didn’t appear very organised.

Particularly as the ship sailed right past him. Arthur couldn’t believe it. He shouted himself hoarse and almost fell out of the buoy from jumping up and down. But the ship kept on its way, till Arthur could only see the glow of the single lantern that hung from its stern rail.

Arthur watched till the light disappeared into the darkness, then he sat down, totally defeated. He rested his head in his hands and fought back a sob.

I am not going to cry, he told himself. I will work something out. I am the Master of the Lower House and the Far Reaches. I am not going to die in a buoy in some rotten sea!

Arthur took a deep breath and lifted his head up.

There will be another ship. There must be another ship.

Arthur was clutching at this hope when he saw the light again, followed by another.

Two lights!

They were a hundred feet apart and perhaps two hundred yards away. It took Arthur only a second to understand that he was looking at the bow and stern lights of the ship. He’d lost sight of the stern light as the vessel turned, but now it was heaved-to, broadside on to him.

A few moments later, he heard the slap of oars in the water and Denizens chanting as they rowed a small boat towards him. Arthur couldn’t make out the words till they were quite close and the light of a bull’s-eye lantern flickered across the water, searching for Arthur and the buoy.

“Flotsam floats when all is sunk.Jetsam thrown isn’t just junk.Coughs and colds and bright red soresWaiting for us, so bend yer oars!”

The yellow beam of light swept over Arthur, then backtracked to shine directly in his face. Arthur raised his arm to shield his eyes. The light wasn’t bright enough to blind, but it made it hard to see the boat and its crew. There were at least a dozen Denizens aboard, most of them rowing.

“Back oars!” came a shout from the darkness. “Yarko was right! There is a Nithling on that buoy! Make ready your crossbows!”

“I’m not a Nithling!” shouted Arthur. “I’m… I’m a distressed sailor!”

“A what?”

“A distressed sailor,” replied Arthur. He had read that somewhere. Sailors were supposed to help one another.

“What ship? And what are you doing on that treasure marker?”

“Uh, my ship was the Steely Bed. It sank. I swam here.”

There was a muttering aboard the boat. Arthur couldn’t clearly hear all the words, but he heard “claim”, “ours”, “stick ’im and sink ’im” and the sound of someone being knocked on the head and grunting in pain. He hoped it was the Denizen who said “stick ’im”, since he was fairly sure he was the “’im” being referred to.

“Give way,” shouted the Denizen in charge. The oars dipped into the sea again and the boat moved forward. As it came alongside the buoy, Arthur got his first real look at the crew, with the Denizen holding the bull’s-eye lantern opening its shutters to spread the light around.

They were not a good-looking bunch. There were eight men and five women. They might have started with the usual handsome features of Denizens, but the great majority of them had eye patches, livid scars across their faces and an illustrated catalogue of tattoos, ranging from ships to storms to skulls and snakes, up and down their forearms, on cheeks and foreheads and bared midriffs. They wore many different styles of clothing, all in bright colours, the single common feature being a wide leather belt that supported a cutlass and knife. Half of them also had red knitted caps, and the leader, a broad-shouldered male Denizen with scarlet sunbursts tattooed on his cheeks, wore a leather Napoleon hat that looked a little too small for him.

He smiled at Arthur, revealing a mouth with most of its teeth missing. Of the remaining four or five, three were capped in gold.

Pirates, Arthur figured.

But there was something strangely non-aggressive about them too. Something that reminded Arthur of people playing dress-up. Surely real pirates would just kill him without a second thought, not sit quietly looking at him. And one of them was drawing a picture of the scene with a charcoal stick in a sketchbook.

“The Steelibed,” said the leader. “Can’t say I’ve heard of her. When did she sink? Carrying any cargo?”

“Maybe a day ago,” said Arthur cautiously. “Not much cargo. Um, cotton and stuff.”

“And stuff,” repeated the leader, with a wink at Arthur. “Well, with a treasure marker in front of us, we’ll not bother with ‘cotton and stuff’ if there’s anything below. The question is, are you claiming salvage?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” said Arthur cautiously. “Maybe. I might.”

“Well, if you’re not sure, then it don’t matter!” declared the leader, with a laugh that was echoed by the crew. “We’ll just have a look below and if there’s anything left, we’ll have it up. Then we’ll be on our way and you can get on with your own business.”

“Hold on!” cried Arthur. “Take me with you!”

“Lizard, take a line and have a glance under the buoy,” said the leader to one of the crew, a small woman who had blue scales tattooed all over her face. At least Arthur hoped they were tattoos and not actual scales. She undid her belt, kicked off her boots and quickly dived over the side with a rope held between her teeth.

“Please, I need to get to land,” said Arthur. “Somewhere I can make a phone call.”

“Ain’t no phone calls in the Border Sea,” said one of the Denizens. “Exchange got flooded and they never built a new one on the high ground.”

“Shut yer trap, One-Ear,” instructed the leader. He turned back to Arthur. “You want to come aboard the Moth as a passenger, then?”

“That’s your ship?” asked Arthur. “The Moth?”

“Aye, the Moth,” replied a Denizen who had a shark’s toothy mouth tattooed around his own. “What’s wrong with that? Moths can be extremely frightening. If you get trapped in a cupboard with a whole passel of moths—”

“I didn’t mean anything bad about the name,” said Arthur. He thought quickly. “It’s just I was surprised to be picked up by such a famous ship.”

“What?” asked one of the other Denizens. “The Moth?”

“Yes. Such a famous ship and its crew of … uh … such renowned pirates!”

Arthur’s speech was met by a sudden silence. Then the crew of the boat erupted, falling over themselves as they tried to run out the oars again. All of them shouted at once:

“Pirates! Where?! What pirates?! Back to the ship!”

“Hold hard!” roared the leader. He waded in among the crew, slapping them openhanded across the backs of their heads till they subsided on to the slats. Then he turned to Arthur.

“I ain’t never heard anything so insulting. Us! Pirates! We’re Salvagers and proud of it. We don’t take anything that hasn’t been thrown away first or sunk and come up. Or treasures left in the open sea.”

“Sorry,” said Arthur. “It was just the eye patches and the clothes and the tattoos and everything… I was confused. But I really would like to be a passenger.”

“Just because we’re only Salvagers doesn’t mean we can’t dress nice and wear an eye patch if we want,” muttered Shark-Mouth. “Or two eye patches, come to that.”

“Can’t wear two, you idiot,” said another Denizen.

“Can so,” replied the first. “Get some of that one-way leather from the doctor—”

“Shut up!” roared the leader. He turned back to Arthur and said, “I’m not saying you can be a passenger, right? I’m only the Second Mate of the Moth. Sunscorch is my name. But we’ll take you back to the ship. The Captain can decide your fate.”