“He seeks for a place more land than sea, yet neither,” was the quartermaster’s theory. “Only there might this bane of his be lifted, and he find peace, if that’s indeed what he’s after.”
“Do you doubt it?”
“With the captain? Where he’s concerned I doubt all things, ‘til I’m told otherwise. ‘Tis the best policy I’ve found, thus far.”
I glanced away, just in time to catch my fellow captive—listening too, as always—shoot me what passed for a smirk on that mask-like parody of a human face of his, as if to say: What fools!
Indeed, it did often seem to me the crew barely knew whereof they spoke, notwithstanding the fact they’d spent far more time under Parry’s rule than I had. And one way or another, for all my researches, exactly nothing they—or I—had discovered about him could in any way free me from my situation. I remained trapped, his possession, his slave; yet still worse, for I was not even of any great interest to him, of any particular use.
It galled me to realize this, almost as much as it galled me to realize I cared, either way. But perhaps Captain Parry was not altogether human either—partly dragon, maybe, for his twinned love of gold and fire, his magic, his damnable arrogance; partly wolf, for his love of blood.
Or he was just a man like any other, plundering this great sea-womb and stealing its children, using power he had no right to to bend our Mother herself to his selfish desires. Would that make things better, or worse?
I could not fight him, either way—not I, who had declined to fight even my own kind, against whom I might have stood some chance of success. So I must find some other, more subtle, way . . . think myself out of this trap, like the man he’d condemned me to pretend to be, instead of the seal I so heartily wished I still was.
So I thought, and thought again, and thought yet further. Until, at last—I found a way.
One night, while Mister Dolomance swam his own discomforts away in the sea below’s black bosom, I threw a rope over the ship’s side and shimmied far enough down to face my fears—plunged my face into the water and took a deep, drowning breath, opening my mouth wide enough to let words leak out, trusting the water to carry them to Mister Dolomance’s ear-holes, translated thus into speech we might both understand.
We must work together, I told him, to gain our freedoms.
A gulp, and the reply came back, harsh even through silky fathoms: Clumsy sea-cow in man-skin, born neither of one sort nor the other, you fat-greased, fleshy thing! What could you offer that I had any need of, save for enough of your meat to fill my craw, and your too-hot blood to wash it down with?
I had expected nothing less, nothing more. Yet I spoke on, anyhow, and he . . .
. . . hard words aside, I could tell, even then: Mister Dolomance listened.
There was a long silence, after. So long I feared he might be swimming closer, too intent on an easy kill to truly mull my plan over.
But: I accept, he said, at last. Just that.
Good, I replied. And shimmied back up, before the crew might find me gone.
***
We did not consult long, Mister Dolomance and I, in forming our plans; I knew from the start just how ill-suited by nature he was to be anything like the planning sort. Yet it is always in their desires that men make themselves most vulnerable, and though Mister Dolomance had surely never looked to, we both understood he had already gained far more insight into our captor’s yearnings than I ever would.
So—having extracted such intelligences about the hungers which drove Captain Parry as my co-conspirator was capable of giving—it fell to me, instead, to find a way to turn their direction to our mutual benefit.
It was not so much that the captain trusted Mister Dolomance (for in truth, he trusted no one, thinking no one equal enough to him to merit such a gift). Yet, as had already become rapidly clear, he placed a quite foolish amount of trust in his dominance over this awful creature, whose taming-by-force formed much of his own reputation.
“I think you are not entirely honest with me, sir,” I heard him say, one evening, over those charts of theirs. “Yet so long as you do what I require, I find I care little what details you may think to withhold.”
A mistake, on his part. And to not consider me, at all, in his equations . . . this was a mistake too, though he did not know it.
Not yet.
The Bitch made on, leading ever-westerly, with Mister Dolomance’s grumbles our pilot’s only guide for navigation. Islands grew scarce, and stores likewise; the crew grew unhappy, yet loath to express it. While Captain Parry kept his face carefully schooled, with only the dullish glint in those sea-burnt eyes to indicate a growing undercurrent of excitement—until the night when I saw him stride into the mess unexpectedly and swig lit rum from the communal store along with the rest, all of them too disconcerted by far to refuse him a part in their drunkenness.
Later, his back set against the foredeck’s supplemental mast while the crew reveled down below, I watched him stare out over the topmost figurehead’s shoulders at the dark billows Mister Dolomance hid in, and mutter to himself: “Hell gape to take you, Solomon Rusk, if it didn’t that day, the way it should have—you had no stink of the true practitioner about you, trained or un-, that I could discern. How was I to know it hid in your blood, any more than you did, waiting for that very last breath to bring your death’s vow of ruin on me to fruition?”
Here he actually paused a half-moment; I swear I saw him listen, as to an invisible companion. Then grimace at nothing and reply, pale face suddenly touched with heat—
“‘Nice as a divine’ . . . yes, you would say that. But here is truth: You took liberties with me, though I warned you not to, and this is the result. Do not think to deny it! I swore you ship-loyalty, nothing more, but you were not the sort to stint yourself and you have reaped bitter fruit from that decision since, dead man. So you may complain all you wish when drink opens my ears, but I have suffered long enough for your sins, as well as my own. I will have my place, got for me with the sea’s help, and you—you will have nothing. Now stop your mouth, before I prison your ghost in a bottle and sink you further still; from this instant forward you may watch but not touch, not ever again, and choke on the sight.”
All at once, the humid breeze seemed to turn sharp-cold, blowing in one bitter gust from where the captain sat to where I squatted, listening; I shivered to feel it pass by, as if touched by some strange hand. Behind us, meanwhile, the quartermaster took up with a chantey tune, fellow after fellow soon joining in as a bawling round. Quickly, I recognized in it a song usually attributed to Captain Kidd, here modified to fit a different, entirely predictable personage:
. . . Oh, ‘Salem Parry is my name, as I sail, as I sail,