Crock shot his crewmen a scathing look. “I’m the captain, an’ it’ll be me who decides!” Turning back around, he pawed the Ring again. “An’ I jist ain’t sure.”
“Fine by me. I’ll take my winnings and go.” Slowly rising, Blake drew a pouch from his belt and began gathering the pile of coins. “Good day to you, gentlemen.”
Crock growled. “All right, all right. Hold yer squid. Winner takes all it be.” He yanked the Ring from the cord and tossed it on the table.
Finn chuckled.
Blake smiled.
The game began. He knew he could easily beat Crock in his inebriated condition, but he found his eyes constantly wandering to the Ring. He’d been searching for the artifact for a year, ever since the old Jewish pirate had told Blake about it right before he died. And now it was so close, so close, he had but to grab it.
He would do just that, if it weren’t for the bloodthirsty look on Crock’s crew—and the men in the shadows staring his way. No doubt Crock had more allies in this punch house than Blake knew about.
A group of sailors took up a ditty to the screech of an off-key fiddle. A fight ensued to his right, and a parrot squawked overhead, but Blake paid the noises no mind. Instead, after several agonizing minutes of trading cards and keeping score, he laid out his final card while slipping his hand to the hilt of his cutlass.
Crock would not take the loss well.
’Twas an understatement, for the man leapt from his seat, grabbed the table with the ferocity of the Kraken itself, and overturned it. It crashed to the floor, sending doubloons flying. But not before Blake grabbed the Ring and jumped out of the way.
He slammed into a man as wide as a barrel, who cursed him, his mother, and the day he was born, and then shoved Blake so hard, he tumbled to the floor. Thecrackof a pistol sounded, and the shot whizzed by his head, missing it by inches. His men drew their blades, and before Blake could rise, Crock’s henchmen rushed forward, cutlasses in hand. Crock, however, dropped to his knees and scrambled over the sticky floor, gathering up as many coins as he could.
Shoving the Ring into his pocket, Blake plucked his blade from its sheath and took on one of Crock’s men who stormed his way.
Several pirates and not a few barmaids, scrambled across the floor like cockroaches, grabbing coins and ignoring Crock’s threats to gut them if they stole a single one.
Blake cared not a whit for the money. He had what he wanted. Now, to dispatch Crock and his men and be on his way. But the mongrel swinging his sword toward him was not so easily done away with.
Leaping out of the way of a thrust that would have sliced him in two, Blake spun and brought his cutlass to bear, clipping the beast on his massive thigh. The man seemed not to notice. Not a scream, screech, or shout did he utter amid the growls and barks pouring from his lips. And Blake began to wonder if he wasn’t part mongrel, after all.
The brute rushed blindly toward Blake, sword raised and teeth bared. Blake met his thrust with a counter-parry that pushed him back. But the man would not relent. Snapping his blade quickly to the left, he rammed it at Blake.
Blake veered to the right—just as the curvy barmaid who’d delivered their rum slammed a pitcher over the beast’s head. Eyes rolling back, he folded to the floor.
“Thanks, love!” Blake winked at her as he spun, blade raised, to face the next pirate.
Within minutes, more pirates joined the fight, swords slashed, pistols fired, tables crashed, and all the while someone continued playing the concertina in the background.
Quickly disposing of his current enemy, Blake sought his crew.
He found Maston parrying with a pirate who held a mug of ale in one hand and a cutlass in the other. Grabbing his bosun by the sleeve, he dragged him over to Finn, who had just sent his opponent flying over the top of the bar into a row of bottles that crashed to the floor.
While Crock’s two remaining henchmen were swept up in a brawl that grew larger by the minute, the man himself was nowhere to be seen. Perfect time to make an exit. Blake gestured toward the door and then led the way, shoving pirates aside as he went.
Sunlight, far too bright for the late afternoon, stung his eyes, along with a stiff salty breeze, and he blinked as he headed down the busy street. Finn and Maston came alongside him and chuckled.
“Haven’t ’ad that much fun in a while, Cap’n,” Finn exclaimed.
“Mon dieu, you left all that money!” Maston shook his head with a sigh.
“Yet, gentlemen, I have in my possession something far more valuable.”
Before his men could comment, the door to theSiren’s Revengesqueaked open, and four men dressed all in black emerged.
They glanced toward Blake and started for him.
b
Grabbing a basket of fruit, bread, and cheese, Emeline Hyde approached the woman who had been standing in the distance staring her way for over an hour. Two young children, faces dirty and eyes vacant, clung to her stained and torn skirts. The closer Emeline drew, the more she could see that the woman wasn’t much older than her own age of one and twenty. Yet she was as thin as a mast, her cheeks sunken, with dark circles framing eyes that once must have had the luster of a turquoise sea but now were a hazy blue. No doubt she was a beauty in days past, but the ravages of hunger and poverty had wilted her bloom.
