Читать книгу A mermaid and a corsair - Natalie Yacobson - Страница 5

Desmond couldn’t sleep. He tossed from side to side on the narrow bunk. The mermaid’s song was in his ears. It seemed to emanate from all the walls of the captain’s cabin and even from the low ceiling.

When he closed his eyes, he could see Merediana sitting on a fancy throne of shells.

“Captain! Wake up!” The young man who had entered the cabin shook him by the shoulder.

“What’s the matter? Is it a riot over a mermaid?” Desmond was already awake. He sat up on his bunk. “Is the crew so superstitious they want to throw me overboard with the magic cargo?”

“No, something worse has happened,” the youngster was very shy and hid his eyes.

He can’t be trusted, Desmond’s mind flashed. The ship’s boy was not long ago the Crown Prince’s page in Mirid. He should have brought him along for nothing. The boy, accustomed to the luxury of royal palaces, dreamed of adventure, but being in a sailor’s cabin on a pirate ship might change his mind.

“Do you want to go back to Mirid?”

“No, I’m fine here, but the fleas are biting me,” he flicked a creature off his sleeve that looked more like a tiny scorpion than a flea. “They must have gotten to me from the skipper. But I didn’t come to you about fleas. And I didn’t come to you about a riot.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I found this in the helmsman’s things.”

“You went through the helmsman’s things?”

“I didn’t mean to, but it was like a mermaid’s voice called me and… you know how it is, you hear a song and you do something you didn’t mean to do.”

“It is nonsense!” Desmond was careful to hide the fact that he himself had fallen under the mermaid’s spell. He snatched a piece of paper from the young man’s hands. It turned out to be a wanted notice.

“I didn’t know they were going to catch me and hang me like any pirate!”

“Take a closer look,” insisted the young man. “The reward for you is very high – 1,500 gold coins. That’s a fortune. With it you can buy your own estate with plantations. For an ordinary pirate, you get a hundred gold pieces at most, but no more.”

“So I don’t remember doing anything outrageous to be valued so highly.”

“Or maybe it’s your past. The text at the bottom of the ad says that you’re being rewarded by the Mirid’s government, and that you must be captured alive.”

“You’re so damn literate!” Desmond crumpled up the wanted notice. It looked like the helmsman had turned out to be a spy sent from Mirid. He’d saved him for nothing. The case had almost solved itself when the helmsman had almost died on the voyage. Now he’d have to kill him anyway. Too bad the sea creature’s tentacles didn’t finish the job.

In the morning, we’ll have to see if there’s anyone on board who can replace the helmsman. With the last one injured, it won’t raise suspicion.

“Do you think your father has a reward for your capture?” The young man inquired cautiously.

Desmond could only laugh deafeningly.

“My father put a bounty on my head.”

“But it says you must be caught alive.”

“It’s a figure of speech. Pirates prefer to be caught dead.”

The coins he took from the morgen fell out of the chest on the shelf. The ship must have swayed, so they fell out. The gold glittered dazzlingly.

“It is sea gold!” The young man saw the crests with the kraken, crowns and mermaids. “They’re talismans, not money. You should drill a hole in them, string them on a string and wear them around your neck. They’d make excellent sea magic charms.”

The ship’s boy picked up one coin, and the skin on his palm from contact with the sea gold immediately began to turn blue and rot.

“Ouch!” The kid dropped the coin. “How can you even keep them in your house? Anyone else would have died of seasickness by now. It’s like you’re enchanted!”

It must have been Cassandra’s amulet. Although it seems he took the gold from the morgen long before he got the amulet as a gift.

Desmond followed the young man’s advice and made a necklace out of the coins. It was easy. Someone had already drilled holes in them. All that was left was to string them on a string.

“Didn’t you go down into the hold?” He asked the ubiquitous young man.

“No, the door was locked.”

“Have you heard any suspicious noises from down there?”

“I always hear a song without words, as if the mermaid is humming something under her nose,” admitted the young man. “You say she is in the hold now? Can I see her? I didn’t even see her when they dragged her on deck. There was nothing to see behind the backs of the older pirates.”

“Grab a lantern and let’s go!” Desmond found a shard of mirror in the chest and quickly combed his hair with his fingers. Somehow he was worried about how he would look, as if the sleeping mermaid could see him.

“You’re not as handsome as you were at court, but you still look good,” the young man praised. “You’re not so dapper anymore.”

Desmond could see that he looked bad himself, but once he had been considered the handsomest boy in Mirid. His golden hair had recently been trimmed with a dagger blade, but it was almost shoulder-length again. The ends were curling, and there were no scars on the skin of his face yet. Could a mermaid like him? Earth girls liked him. But what is mermaid flavor? Is it true that mermaids can only like drowned guys? Or was it all a sailor’s fiction?

Desmond threw on a tattered camisole and followed the young man carrying the lantern. The watchmen were asleep that night. This was not usually the case, not even during a feast. Just because it was night didn’t mean the ship couldn’t be attacked. Pirates were not allowed to be careless. Had the mermaid’s presence suppressed their will?

Nothing had changed in the hold. Barrels of rum, ale, and wine, taken from merchant ships that had crossed “The Triumphant’s” path, were piled around. Bales of cloth and spices were piled nearby, to be sold in Pion or Arcades. Only the container with the captured mermaid had changed location. It stretched to the ceiling. The mermaid was no longer lying down, but straightened up to her full height, as if she were floating on ice. In this position she seemed even more beautiful.

“Wow!” The young man whistled. “We have a sea goddess in the hold!”

The wax from the candle in the lantern dripped on the symbols on the floor, left by the morgen, and melted them. The ice inside the vessel immediately began to melt. The mermaid wiggled her fins. She woke up instantly, as if the magical protection that made her sleep had been removed. She was no longer motionless. Her webbed hands pressed against a thin partition that had not yet melted. Desmond even thought it was made of glass, not of ice. Or was it still ice? He ran his fingers along the partition. His fingers immediately felt frosty cold.

The mermaid’s purple hair fluttered in the water like a scarlet storm. The open eyes were iridescent. They flashed alternately with different hues. The pearls growing in her skin also glistened and shimmered with pearlescent hues.

“Merediana!” Desmond whispered breathlessly, as if making a prayer to a goddess. Her eyes mesmerized him.

The mermaid was pounding against the partition, demanding.

“Let me out! Let me out!”

How could he hear her voice through the water? And why hadn’t the top layer of the tank melted? Desmond looked around for something to break it with. He hadn’t brought his saber. There were plenty of boarding hooks in the hold, and a harpoon among them.

“Don’t!” The young man was afraid. “What if she storms when you let her go?”

“We can’t keep her here like a fishbowl.”

“But you used to keep captives from foreign ships, who were sold as slaves in Pion,” the young man said reasonably.

“The mermaid is prettier, and she is magical. You can’t treat her disrespectfully.”

“Do you want to lose the King Opal’s favor? I hear he wants to marry one of the sea queens, perhaps her.”

“The King of Opal wants to marry a mermaid? I doubt it. That sounds more like gossip.”

“But in exchange for her, the King of Opal will give you anything you want. You could ask him to magically alter the Mirid’s Almanac. Then you can get even with all your enemies and reap the benefits. The King of Opal is rumored to be capable of all kinds of magical wonders.”

He didn’t care about the King of Opal. Desmond swung his harpoon and shattered the magic cage. Ice, sharp as glass, shattered into shards. A suspiciously large amount of water spurted to the bottom of the hold, as if a hole had reappeared in the bottom of the ship. The water level was rising.

Merediana shook her purple hair. Up close, she appeared so beautiful it took Desmond’s breath away.

“Just don’t cause a storm to flood my ship,” Desmond asked her. He was no fool, and he knew that the bubbling water was not flooding the hold by accident. It was already up to his shoulders. Cassandra’s amulet glowed alarmingly scarlet. It meant danger was near.

Merediana swam up to Desmond. He couldn’t resist touching her, and his hands slid around her waist and into her sharp scales.

“Who is more valuable: the whole ship or one captain?” Merediana ran her webbed fingers through his hair. “You’re not a typical pirate captain and you won’t drown.”

She noticed the amulet.

“How romantic?!” Merediana tried to rip the amulet from Desmond’s neck, but couldn’t. Her fingers burned from contact with the amulet.

“It is nasty Earth sorceresses!” The sea beauty cursed. Her arms wrapped around Desmond’s shoulders and held him captive. Desmond felt he could not move. All he could do was obey the mermaid. She pulled him with her into the water, and then under the water. A hole formed in the bottom of the ship, out of nowhere. Meredina dived into it, dragging Desmond as if he were a slave on a leash. In her embrace, Desmond could not think clearly. He did not even immediately realize that the mermaid was dragging him as a prisoner to the Underworld.