The Glamorous Accessories of a Pirate King
Under Ratwin’s command, they hauled anchor and sailed the Neverfear out of sight of Great Caruta in the dark: ‘Just in cases: best nots to be too nears any paddling giants.’ They slept fitfully before waking at dawn. They washed, and then sat on the deck, the whiskers glowing between them.
‘What do we do with them?’ said Anya. ‘Do we go back to Lithia with them?’
‘Do we posts thems?’ said Ratwin.
But the question of the whiskers was answered an hour later when, as the sun rose higher, a stymphalian bird flew over the horizon towards them. The bronze glint of its beak made the bile rise in Christopher’s throat.
‘Avast!’ cried Jacques. ‘Look up! Incoming enemy! Take arms!’
Christopher drew his sword. Anya stood next to him, her elbow touching his.
‘How do they know where we are?’ she said, her neck craned upwards. ‘I don’t understand how they found us!’
‘Me neither,’ he said. ‘But we’re searching the whole boat, after this.’
The stymphalian bird swooped down to land on the deck. It had in its beak a piece of folded parchment. Before they could move towards it, it had dropped the parchment, snatched the whiskers and was gone.
Christopher held the note in his hands for a moment, staring out after the bird.
‘Open it!’ said Anya. ‘Quickly!’
Christopher turned the sheet over. He read aloud:
The dog was easy: it was just the beginning.
Bring me the Belt of Hippolyta.
If you speak of this, Irian Guinne dies.
If you fail, Irian Guinne dies.
‘Who’s Hippolyta?’ Christopher was tense in every muscle.
‘I think she’s something to do with Greek myth,’ said Anya. ‘Gallia taught me about her.’
‘Good. Then who was she?’
‘Sorry, I should’ve been clearer – I was taught about her. That doesn’t mean I learned about her.’ She turned to Jacques. ‘I don’t suppose you came across her in your summer reading?’
The dragon had been reading biographies, ‘To get,’ he said, ‘a sense of style and rhythm for my own.’ Anya caught Christopher’s eye and winked. Her voice had been exactly the right amount of shy, impressed and hopeful.
Jacques preened himself. ‘As it happens, she is one of those whose lives I have studied. Hippolyta: daughter of the god of war. She possessed a famous belt – but not of your paltry leather kind, which merely stop your trousers from falling around your ankles. It was a girdle, a thing of lustrous gold. It gives the wearer strength. Hercules killed her and took the belt by force as one of his Labours. A most uncouth gentleman. But this was all thousands of years ago of course. It has been lost.’
Anya’s face fell. ‘If it’s been lost,’ she said, ‘we won’t be able to trace it through thousands of years of history.’
But Ratwin spoke. ‘It has nots been lost.’
‘What?’
Every head whipped round to look at the small ratatoska. There was the edge of a smile on her rodent face.
‘I knows where the belts is. And so does yous. You saws it around the middle portion of Vigo Nex, the pirate king of Freondell. And he askeds you to his party.’
They sat in the galley with a map spread out on the kitchen table, as Ratwin charted a course for the Island of Freondell. The waves were high and a chandelier winked in the mirror as the boat rocked, so that it looked as if something were moving deep within the mirrored glass.
Anya turned to Christopher. There was a glint in her eye. ‘Freondell,’ she recited. ‘Mostly lawless, pirates common, stay away.’
‘It’s a lot of ocean-lengths to sweeps,’ Ratwin said, ‘to get there punctual-timewise by Fridays. We wills have to sails through the darkling.’
First, Ratwin said, they would need clothes.
‘The camps is in an oasis in the slap-middles of the desert, but that doesn’t mean they isn’t ruthless fashionistas.
They throws out any they don’t like the looks of, so you wills need to dress dazzling.
There is a band of outlaws in the easts of Antiok who likes to dances in just the smallests imaginable pants and mighty-enormous hats. ’
Anya rolled her eyes. ‘Ratatoskan tales.’
They ransacked the boat for supplies. They found a gold jacket of Nighthand’s, which Anya wore as a coat, and lengths of thick gold ribbon, which Christopher wound around the tops of his boots and waist.
‘What about you, Ratwin?’ said Christopher.
‘I haves my horn,’ said Ratwin, ‘and I shall slick-polish it to shining. A ratatoskan horns is glamorisation enough.’
Anya found a stick of charcoal, which she used to circle Christopher’s eyes with a flick up at the corners. ‘Just practising,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it again before the party.’ She did the same to herself, and lined the Cupid’s bow of her upper lip in black.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘I don’t actually know what swashbuckling is, but we look like we might be about to do it.’