High Seas Stowaway. Amanda McCabe
crowd of customers came in, wanting their rum, and she was kept busy again. Slowly, inexorably, the noise level grew once more as a game of dice commenced. The throng closed around Balthazar, blocking him from her view.
From her view, perhaps, but not from her thoughts. She was all too aware of his presence, of the sparkling tension within her. He was near her again, after all this time! The man she had once been so infatuated with; the man whose father killed her mother.
And what was she, Bianca, going to do about it now?
As she rinsed more goblets, she thought of the Calypso, that “legendary” ship said to be able to cross the Atlantic in three weeks. To be impervious to attack and storms. And Balthazar was her captain? How had he gone from his life of luxury in glittering, sophisticated Venice to being such a great seaman, the captain of his own vessel and the scourge of the seas?
She laughed with disbelief. Perhaps his father had bought him the ship, and hired a mage to ring it round with spells. Ermano Grattiano had always seemed enthralled with the occult.
As she set the clean goblets out on the counter, she caught a blur of movement from the corner of her eye. Somehow that flash, out of the kaleidoscope of the room, caught her attention. She turned just in time to see the mysterious cloaked stranger from earlier. The hood was still drawn up, concealing his face, but he moved with a stealthy, swift purpose. As Bianca watched, bemused, he drew a thin, lethally sharp dagger from beneath his sleeve.
Her stomach lurched. Violence was a constant threat in Santo Domingo, quarrels threatening to break out at any second, over any tiny slight, and spill out like a river of blood into the cobbled streets. A place so far from the civilities and comforts of home, a place so full of treasure and rum and rivalry—yes, danger was a constant. Hot tempers flared under the hotter sun. But not in her taverna. She had seen enough violence to last her a lifetime.
The cloaked man vanished into the milling crowd. Every nerve in her body tense, Bianca reached for her pistol. As she hurried around the counter, Delores let out a high-pitched shriek.
And the dreaded pandemonium broke out.
Men’s shouts, the crash of crockery and splinter of wood added to the cacophony of Delores’s screams. Bianca shoved her way through the thick crowd, sensing their readiness to join in any fight, even one not of their own making. One man drew a blade from his boot, but Bianca kicked it away, pushing him out of her path.
“Get out of my way, you poxy whoresons!” she shouted. “I’ll not have this in my tavern.”
Some of the men around her fell away, yet she still heard curses and crashes from the central knot of the trouble. At last she shoved through to see Balthazar’s table overturned amidst shattered pottery and spilled rum. Delores was still shrieking, and Balthazar’s men dashed around shouting, swords drawn as if to menace any who stood in their way. One of the men held the wraith’s ripped cloak, though the man himself had utterly vanished.
And Balthazar—he lay on the floor, his left shoulder bleeding from a dagger wound as his men closed ranks around him.
It would almost be comical, if it wasn’t so very dangerous. And threatening to become even more so, as Delores’s screams and the men’s bellowed threats and clashes of steel grew ever louder, like a match tossed on to dry timbers.
Bianca knew words would do no good. She had no hope of even making herself heard. So she pointed the gun at the ceiling, braced herself and released the matchlock.
The exploding recoil nearly knocked her from her feet. Whitewash from the blasted hole rained down on them as the explosion reverberated deafeningly. Thick clouds of acrid smoke billowed in the suddenly silent air.
“I told you I’ll not have riots in my place of business,” she said calmly. “Now, everyone get out. Unless you mean to make yourselves useful and clean up this mess.”
She swung the pistol in a wide arc, and most of the would-be brawlers fled, leaving the door swinging in the breeze. Soon only Delores and the men from the Calypso were left.
Bianca shoved the gun at one of them and knelt down beside Balthazar, ripping off her apron to press it against the wound. It was not terribly deep, but she could tell from a cursory glance that it would need cleaning and stitching. A mere few inches lower and the blade would have found his heart.
She was not the only one who hated Balthazar, then.
One of the men leaned over her, his bearded face peering down intently at the captain. “Is he dead, señora?”
Before Bianca could answer, Balthazar opened his eyes and growled, “Of course I am not dead, Mendoza. My hide is tough enough to resist such a puny blade and bad aim.”
“Not so puny as all that,” Bianca said, lifting her wadded apron to peer at the wound. “It’s caused enough bleeding. You are fortunate the man’s aim was off, Captain Grattiano, or I’d have to deal with a corpse in my tavern.”
He stared up at her with his moss-green eyes, his gaze sharp and steady, as if he sought to peer into her very soul. “How do you know my name?”
Bianca had no answer for him. She tore her gaze from his, shifting him so his head rested on the lap of her grey wool gown. The apron was becoming soaked, and Delores’s sobbing was so loud Bianca could scarcely think.
“Oh, shut up, Delores!” she cried. “Go fetch me some water and some clean rags for bandages. Now! And you—Mendoza, is it?”
The bearded man nodded. “I’m quartermaster of the Calypso.”
“Mendoza, what happened? My tavern is usually a peaceful enough place. The governor doesn’t appreciate those who come here to deliberately cause trouble.”
It was Balthazar who answered, his voice rough and taut with suppressed pain. “It was Diego Escobar,” he said. “He vowed he would find me, and so he did. I was a fool to let my guard down even for an instant.”
“I said we should have stayed aboard ship, captain,” Mendoza said gruffly.
“We’ve been aboard that poxy ship for weeks,” Balthazar said. “And, as the señora says, her tavern is usually peaceful.”
“Until you arrived,” Bianca answered.
“We will pay for the damages.”
“Yes, you will. Along with all the drink you consumed,” Bianca said. Delores came back with the cloths and a basin of water, and Bianca peeled back the sodden apron. The bleeding seemed to have slowed, and the edges of his torn shirt were dark brown and crusted.
Balthazar turned his penetrating stare to the men who hovered around. “And why, may I ask, didn’t you go after the knave?”
“We thought you were dead, captain,” one of them answered.
“Oh, so there was no need to hurry after my murderer, then,” Balthazar said. Bianca thought she heard a note of wry humour in his voice, beneath that pain, “if I’m not here to see him brought to justice.”
Another man tossed aside the would-be assassin’s cloak. “He just vanished, captain! Like a puff of smoke. Just like last time…”
“Mayhap the man is a wizard after all,” Balthazar muttered. Bianca swiped a wet cloth at the edges of his wound, and he arched up with a hiss. “Damn it, woman! Are you trying to kill me, too?”
“I am trying to help you,” Bianca said, pressing him back down. As his head rested again in her lap, a long strand of his hair fell over her hand, silken and binding. “Despite the trouble you have caused me. Infection takes hold fast in this climate; the wound must be covered.”
She glanced down at the floor beneath them, sticky with rum and sand. The toxic mixture would be sure to kill him as fast as any dagger-wielding madman. And, for some unfathomable reason, Bianca wasn’t quite ready to let him go.
Not until he gave her some