“Come aboard then, cullies! Port-side if you please.”

Mister Fitz leaned on the tiller and hauled in the main sheet, the skiff turning wide, the intention being to circle in off the port-side of the xebec and then turn bow-first into the wind and drop the sail. If properly executed, the skiff would lose way and bump gently up against the pirate ship. If not, they would run into the vessel, damage the skiff and be a laughing stock.

This was the reason Mister Fitz had the helm. Somewhere in his long past, the puppet had served at sea for several decades, and his wooden limbs were well-salted, his experience clearly remembered and his instincts true.

Hereward, for his part, had served as a gunner aboard a frigate of the Kahlian Mercantile Alliance for a year when he was fifteen and though that lay some ten years behind him, he had since had some shorter-lived nautical adventures and was thus well able to pass himself off as a seaman aboard a fair-sized ship. But he was not a great sailor of small boats and he hastened to follow Mister Fitz’s quiet commands to lower sail and prepare to fend off with an oar as they coasted to a stop next to the anchored Sea-Cat.

In the event, no fending off was required, but Hereward took a thrown line from the xebec to make the skiff fast alongside, while Fitz secured the head- and main-sail. With the swell so slight, the ship at anchor, and being a xebec low in the waist, it was then an easy matter to climb aboard, using the gun ports and chain-plates as foot- and hand-holds, Hereward only slightly hampered by his sword. He left the pistols in the skiff.

Pirates sauntered and swaggered across the deck to form two rough lines as Hereward and Fitz found their feet. Though they did not have weapons drawn, it was very much a gauntlet, the men and women of the Sea-Cat eyeing their visitors with suspicion. Though he did not wonder at the time, presuming it the norm among pirates, Hereward noted that the men in particular were ill-favoured, disfigured, or both. Fitz saw this too, and marked it as a matter for further investigation.

Romola Fury stepped down the short ladder from the forecastle deck to the waist and stood at the open end of the double line of pirates. The red waistcoated bully stood behind, but Hereward hardly noticed him. Though she was sadly lacking in the facial scars necessary for him to consider her a true beauty, Fury was indeed comely, and there was a hint of a powder burn on one high cheek-bone that accentuated her natural charms. She wore a fine blue silk coat embroidered with leaping sea-cats, without a shirt. As her coat was only loosely buttoned, Hereward found his attention very much focussed upon her. Belatedly, he remembered his instructions, and gave a flamboyant but unstructured wave of his open hand, a gesture meant to be a salute.

“Well met, Captain! Martin Suresword and the dread puppet Farolio, formerly of the Anodyne Pain, brothers in good standing of the chapter of the Syndical Sea.”

Fury raised one eyebrow and tilted her head a little to the side, the long reddish hair on the unshaved half of her head momentarily catching the breeze. Hereward kept his eyes on her, and tried to look relaxed, though he was ready to dive aside, headbutt a path through the gauntlet of pirates, circle behind the mizzen, draw his sword and hold off the attack long enough for Fitz to wreak his havoc . . .

“You’re a long way from the Syndical Sea, Captain Suresword,” Fury finally replied. Her voice was strangely pitched and throaty, and Fitz thought it might be the effects of an acid or alkaline burn to the tissues of the throat. “What brings you to these waters, and to the Sea-Cat? In Annim Tel’s craft, no less, with a tasty-looking chest across the thwarts?”

She made no sign, but something in her tone or perhaps in the words themselves made the two lines of pirates relax and the atmosphere of incipient violence ease.

“A proposition,” replied Hereward. “For the mutual benefit of all.”

Fury smiled and strolled down the deck, her large enforcer at her heels. She paused in front of Hereward, looked up at him, and smiled a crooked smile, provoking in him the memory of a cat that always looked just so before it sat on his lap and trod its claws into his groin.

“Is it riches we’re talking about, Martin Sure . . . sword? Gold treasure and the like? Not slaves, I trust? We don’t hold with slaving on the Sea-Cat, no matter what our brothers of the Syndical Sea may care for.”

“Not slaves, Captain,” said Hereward. “But treasure of all kinds. More gold and silver than you’ve ever seen. More than anyone has ever seen.”

Fury’s smile broadened for a moment. She slid a foot forward like a dancer, moved to Hereward’s side and linked her arm through his, neatly pinning his sword-arm.

“Do tell, Martin,” she said. “Is it to be an assault on the Ingmal Convoy? A cutting-out venture in Hryken Bay?”

Her crew laughed as she spoke, and Hereward felt the mood change again. Fury was mocking him, for it would take a vast fleet of pirates to carry an assault on the fabulous biennial convoy from the Ingmal saffron fields, and Hryken Bay was dominated by the guns of the justly famous Diamond Fort and its red-hot shot.

“I do not bring you dreams and fancies, Captain Fury,” said Hereward quietly. “What I offer is a prize greater than even a galleon of the Ingmal.”

“What then?” asked Fury. She gestured at the sky, where a small turquoise disc was still visible near the horizon, though it was faded by the sun. “You’ll bring the blue moon down for us to plunder?”

“I offer a way through the Secret Channels and the Sea Gate of the Scholar-Pirates of Sarsköe,” said Hereward, speaking louder with each word, as the pirates began to shout, most in angry disbelief, but some in excited greed.

Fury’s hand tightened on Hereward’s arm, but she did not speak immediately. Slowly, as her silence was noted, her crew grew quiet, such was her power over them. Hereward knew very few others who had such presence, and he had known many kings and princes, queens and high priestesses. Not for the first time, he felt a stab of doubt about their plan, or more accurately Fitz’s plan. Fury was no cat’s-paw, to be lightly used by others.

“What is this way?” asked Fury, when her crew was silent, the only sound the lap of the waves against the hull, the creak of the rigging, and to Hereward at least, the pounding of his own heart.

“I have a dark rutter for the channels,” he said. “Farolio here, is a gifted navigator. He will take the star sights.”

“So the Secret Channels may be traveled,” said Fury. “If the rutter is true.”

“It is true, madam,” piped up Fitz, pitching his voice higher than usual. He sounded childlike, and harmless. “We have journeyed to the foot of the Sea Gate and returned, this past month.”

Fury glanced down at the puppet, who met her gaze with his unblinking, blue-painted eyes, the sheen of the sorcerous varnish upon them bright. She met the puppet’s gaze for several seconds, her eyes narrowing once more, in a fashion reminiscent of a cat that sees something it is not sure whether to flee or fight. Then she slowly looked back at Hereward.

“And the Sea Gate? It matters not to pass the channels if the gate is shut against us.”

“The Sea Gate is not what it once was,” said Hereward. “If pressure is brought against the correct place, then it will fall.”

“Pressure?” asked Fury, and the veriest tip of her tongue thrust out between her lips.

“I am a Master Gunner,” said Hereward. “In the chest aboard out skiff is a mortar shell of particular construction—and I believe that not a week past you captured a Harker-built bomb vessel, and have yet to dispose of it.”

He did not mention that this ship had been purchased specifically for his command, and its capture had seriously complicated their initial plan.