Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
As they glided closer to the port, Cali walked to the railing to get a better view. This was the notorious outlaw island? It looked not unlike other port towns she’d visited, although with perhaps more armed inhabitants than was typical.
Ships of all sizes crowded the dock, painted every color and no color at all, bristling with masts and rigging that tangled against the sky like a leafless winter forest, ragged skull and crossbones flags sagging.
On the docks, crews busied themselves loading and unloading, mending rope, and arguing over manifests.
Taverns backed directly onto the waterfront, their doors gaping open to unleash lamplight and the aroma of ale into the late afternoon.
Salt and tar mingled with the scent of charred meat, wood smoke, and the potent tang of rum.
Cali spotted orcs and gnomes, a clutch of what appeared to be goblins examining something behind gnarled shoulders, and a very tall elf who should have looked out of place but somehow didn’t. There were daggers worn openly, the way you’d wear a belt, and all degrees of armor.
Voices bargained and laughed and argued in some languages Cali recognized and several she didn’t. Wooden hulls knocked against pylons. A barrel cracked while being breached. Laughter bounced off the water, and muffled cheers echoed from somewhere deep in the port town.
Tris pressed forward into the harbor with an eagerness that Cali felt through the soles of her boots, the ship quickening as if the island were a welcome haven.
When the pirates looped ropes around the dock cleats and yanked them tight, the ship let out a long, low breath from somewhere deep in her timbers that was so plainly relief that Cali pressed a hand briefly to the painted rail.
“We made it,” she whispered, and felt the wood quiver under her palm. “You got us here, Tris.”
“She always does.”
Cali turned to find Bonnie standing behind her, but the captain’s eye was not on the ship, nor on the bustling dock. She was scanning the harbor, her brow pulled into a tight line.
“You’d think,” Cali teased, “that surviving a storm, sirens, and mermaids might produce a slightly happier expression.”
“I don’t see Jolli,” Bonnie said.
Cali looked at the harbor. She had not, she admitted to herself with a dose of shame, been looking for the jolly boat.
The harbor held a considerable number of vessels in various states of repair and disrepair, and a small rowing boat could be anywhere.
It could be pulled up on a beach, tied behind a larger ship, or tucked into any of several inlets she could see cutting into the base of the cliffs. “Could they have hidden her somewhere?”
Bonnie’s frown eased slightly. “A jolly boat isn’t hard to hide.”
“Then she might be here even if we can’t see her.”
“True.” The captain didn’t sound entirely convinced, but she turned from the water and put two fingers in her mouth and produced a whistle that knifed through the din of the crew.
“We’re here to find Jolli and the hellkins,” she said once everyone was looking at her.
“Have a bit of fun while you’re at it. I won’t object to information gathered over rum.
But don’t get into so much trouble that I’m forced to add you to our search.
” Her gaze lingered briefly on a pair of gnomes in the back. “Got it?”
The crew rumbled their understanding before they hurried from the ship and dissolved into the port like sand into water.
“I’ll question the harbormaster,” Gert said as she headed for the gangway, “then I’ll ask the other pirates if they’ve seen some hellkins in our Jolli.”
Pinkie was close on her heels. “I’ll put the word out through the gnome network.” She winked at Cali. “It’s never failed me yet.”
Seraphina, however, did not move. She stood at the top of the gangway with her arms folded and her cloak writhing around her ankles in the breeze. “I’ll remain with the ship.”
Bonnie nodded once, apparently having expected nothing else. “I won’t be gone long.”
From the stairs leading below deck came Thrain’s fading voice. “I’m going below, and I’m not coming back up. I’ve had enough of adventure, thank you very much.”
Bonnie caught Cali’s worried look. “He’ll be fine here. Marvella won’t let anything happen to him.”
Cali was about to follow his example and retreat somewhere quiet and dry when she felt the captain’s gaze on her.
“Are you coming?” Bonnie hiked a thumb over one shoulder. “The least I can do after everything is show you the best place to eat on the island. And you’ve earned a meal that isn’t stew.”
Cali looked at the gangway and then at the port, and then at Bonnie. “Is anywhere on an outlaw island safe to eat?”
“Safer than you’d think. Honor among thieves and all.”
That was one kind of honor, Cali supposed. “Lead on.”
She followed Bonnie down the gangway and onto the dock.
She looked at the crews moving through the port and took inventory without meaning to.
Gert stood, head bent in an intense conversation with a bandy-legged human she assumed was the harbormaster.
A group of gnomes haggled with a halfling over what appeared to be a cage containing something both winged and spiked.
A card game just outside a tavern appeared on the verge of tipping into a brawl until a bearded ranger cracked a joke and pocketed his trick card.
Once, her own crew would have walked through a place like this with enormous pleasure.
Vaskel would have found someone to charm within the first five minutes.
Lira would have been internally cataloguing dangers and clocking escape routes.
Rog would have found a bar where he could spin a yarn over a few ales.
Even Malek, sly as he was, would have found a dark wizard willing to trade in illegal charms. Pirrin would have flirted with someone’s husband or wife and nearly caused an incident, and they would have had to extract him with apologies and coin, and it would have been something they laughed over for years to come.
Then she remembered her first crew and Adelaide and all the memories they didn’t get to make together.
She shook off thoughts that threatened to cloak her in sadness and focused on following Bonnie. The pirate’s strides were long and sure, and her cutlass bounced on her hip as crowds parted at her approach. She inquired about hellkins a few times, but frowns and head shakes were the only responses.
As they wound through narrowing streets and alleys, Cali’s nose twitched from the cacophony of spices that seemed to spill from every market stall and open window. Then she caught the yeasty scent of bread baking, which made her think of Pip with a sharpness she hadn’t expected.
Suddenly, longing engulfed her and pressed hard against her ribs.
She was homesick, but not for the place she’d grown up or for a past she kept chasing.
Homesick for Wayside. For Lira and Vaskel and Rog and Iris and even Sass, who would have had an opinion about every single person in this port and not kept a single one of those opinions to herself.
How had the village weaselled its way into her heart and become home?
She almost laughed at the absurdity before remembering something her father had told her.
Sometimes we’re so busy looking ahead that we don’t take time to enjoy where we are.
Had Cali been so busy thinking about the next quest and searching around the next corner for her lost love that she hadn’t realized what she had until she’d left it behind?
The pantheri looked up just in time to realize that she was about to be left behind in the middle of the port town.
Bonnie turned a corner ahead of her, ducking into an alley strung with sun-bleached pennants, and the hairs on Cali’s neck prickled.
This was the way to the island’s best place to eat?