“That’s right! Cap’n Parry swore the place chafed on him, seein’ he’d been trapped aboard almost ten whole tedious years, but Cap’n Rusk maintained he’d had the worse of it, bein’ caught there just the same for at least as long, and ghostly all that while. An’ though both of ‘em thought Parry bein’ dead too would finally loose their chains, by the time his bones’d hit sea-bottom Bitch of Hell’d already popped right straight back up t’surface an’ started floatin’ westward, with Rusk and Parry at her helm.”
As Mipps told it, the Bitch—already well-used, as was Parry’s habit-turned-hallmark while still alive, to being kept sea-ready with magically garnered donations from the same vessels he and his crew preyed upon—had immediately steered herself into the path of a hapless trader, which soon fell before Rusk and Parry’s combined attack. No ship could long stand ‘gainst a seasoned magician’s assaults, while the sheer shock of being boarded by a one-eyed giant whose flesh blades passed straight through was enough to literally disarm the trader’s occupants, ‘specially once they realized his own blade seemed not even a fraction as insubstantial.
It was Mipps, who’d been part of that first group of “recruits,” who suggested that Parry might be able to use much the same spells—helped along with some simple human carpentry, wherever arcane invention failed—to cobble a command of his own, thus finally separating his and Rusk’s destinies forever. And they’d done fairly well in their attempt (the bulk of whose materials comprised all those missing ships whose absence Collyer had been first charged to investigate), by Mipps’s professional estimation . . . right up until the moment they’d launched, only to find themselves becoming less stable the further they drifted from the Bitch’s side, as though every stitch of magic were melting away, leaving only an inadequate half-hull behind.
With all the seams sprung and bailing proven pointless, Parry’d turned to using sorcery for caulk, increasingly baffled by his own inability to keep this tub he and Mipps had sunk their labor into afloat. His last order was a brusque cry of Abandon all hands!, after which he’d been seen to wink out, immediately reappearing back by Rusk’s side, only to find himself smirked at for his pains.
Obviously, such insult could not be borne—or so Mipps assumed, since the last sight he’d had of his former home involved Parry leaping at Rusk with teeth bared, a smoking blue-green blade starting to issue from one palm, followed by Rusk grabbing him under one arm and wrestling him up against the mast, pinning him there by his throat. They were still struggling when the last of Mipps’s work gave way, prompting him to follow Parry’s advice; by the time he resurfaced the Bitch itself was gone as well, flickering away in much the same manner by which it had originally arrived.
“Snatched a cask as I went under,” Mipps concluded, “and drifted, using it for ballast, ‘til them as brang me here come by. Oh, I was main lucky, I can tell you—never did see any other o’ the men I picked for Cap’n Parry’s detail. But then, them waters is known for sharks.”
“What sort of commander lets his crew flounder, and does nothing?” Collyer demanded, genuinely shocked. “Could he not see your distress? If his skills had returned, whyever would he not use them in your defense?”
“Busy!” Here Mipps gave a sobbing variety of laugh, odd enough to freeze most folks’ blood. “Busy, aye, as they two always was—with each other. For I never did see two men fight so, alive or dead; Cap’n Parry’d rather stab Cap’n Rusk than talk to him, most-times, for all Rusk could pick him, throw him, and did. Yet ‘tis easy enough t’see why for, when each fight always ends the same . . . ”
Collyer paled. “Yes, yes,” he put in, hastily; “so I have been informed. You may consider your tale told.”
“Aye, I thank you for’t, Cap’n. I’d cut these sights from my own head, if only I could.”
Tante Ankolee shook her head, tongue clucking, and thought: Ah, chah—men. Got no true stomach on some subject, all them brave talk regardless.
Once Mipps had decamped back to his quarters, where rum enough had been promised him to provide a long, hopefully dreamless sleep, Collyer stood by the window a moment, wincing. Then said, at last, as to himself: “And these are the same shades we must convince to lay their mutual hatred down, at least long enough for them to go . . . elsewhere.”
“Aye, sure. But did ya have aught else t’do?”
“Somewhat, yes—and you also, I suspect, for all you seem too polite to say so.” Adding, as she grinned, and shrugged: “Ghosts, my good God. How I loathe all such spectral discomfitures . . . yet with no insult meant, madam, since I know they are part of your purview
.”
“None taken,” Tante Ankolee replied, fluttering one dismissive hand. “Ghosts just people wit’ no flesh, only dangerous as you let ‘em think they can be—but neither of these no ordinary men, even when they still upright. So ta proceed wit’ wariness an’ caution a damn good thought, ta my mind.”
“Thank you. Proceed where, however? This brother of yours, again begging your pardon, seems little amenable to reason, so logic dictates we apply to Captain Parry instead, to persuade them to cease their depredations. Yet my bo’sun tells me he once ran three witch-finders up his yard-arm and dangled them over a pod of true sharks, using them for bait while that creature of his watched, and giggled. If he’s the one in the pair worth speaking to, therefore, we may already be at more of a disadvantage than I’d imagined.”
“Ya miss the point. Why ask either, when ‘tis the very ship herself won’t let them leave?”
Here Collyer turned from his reverie, frowning. “What did you say?”
“The only possible answer. Ship bring ‘em back up from below and herself along likewise, or so poor fuddled Mister Mipps say; ship keep me brother as captain even when Jerusalem Parry wear her colors, same as though she see no difference between ‘em. So ‘tis na she belong to either o’ them, but t’other way ‘round—they belong ta her, both, since she all unwillin’ ta part wit’ either of ‘em, no matter how they tear at each other, not knowin’ ‘tis she keeps ‘em bound.”
“I fail to see how negotiation with a ghost-ship can be any more easy than attempting to enlist the help of those ghosts who sail her.”
Tante Ankolee laughed. “Ah, but you forget: that ship a woman, fah all else, just like me, an’ women everywhere know I do my best work for ‘em, always. That how I make me livin’, after all.”
She had a plan already, of course. One of which, since Captain Collyer did not think to ask, she certainly did not think to tell.
***
When things fall foul of salt-water, common wisdom states, they are lost forever; down they go into the dark and wet, never to rise back up again. Yet the sea holds many mysteries. Indeed, with Her help—or hindrance—almost all things are possible.
Thus it came to Tante Ankolee how there were three things she needed to make good the spell she contemplated: proof of the Bitch’s love for her two captains, first (poisonous-confining though it might be, as dictated the strangle-close twine and snap of whatever nameless tangle they still felt for each other), by which sympathetic parallel might be drawn ‘tween them, Tante Ankolee and the good Captain Collyer, her unwilling partner in this venture—plus a token from either. Second, to raise two familiar spirits. Third, powers puissant enough they might summon the Bitch ‘cross any expanse, however great, and wielding a love for Rusk and Parry which rivaled even the Bitch’s own.
In the morning, Collyer had promised they would cast off, back-tracing Mipps’s report to the last place that vessel had made itself known. So Tante Ankolee began her work by taking the coral-set mirror off her consulting room’s wall, its glass so rucked by the silver-mercury beneath that the images caught within looked almost water-logged, reeled up with hard-bought bait from strange fathoms, and cutting herself ‘cross the palm with a knife made from drowned man’s bone serrated like a stingray’s spine, soft enough to bend, yet sharp enough to bring blood with a single touch.
The resultant mess she smeared over the mirror’s wavy face to sketch sigils with, fluid as words in wet sand, falling straightaway into a scrying trance; she had only a moment to wait before the whole pale burgundy mess blinked open, showing the Bitch’s deck with its divided crew all uncomfortably a-doze, grumbling in their sleep—for they needed rest on occasion, being mere human men. And since neither of their captains shared that same hunger, they tended to retire during such periods; in tandem, as though to test each’s ability to ignore the other while in close quarters.
Sinking through the cabin door like a mist, Tante Ankolee could see them both now, ghost-bodies fallen automatically into poses familiar from life: Parry propped up reading with his chair’s back braced ‘gainst the opposite wall, revisiting some book he must surely have perused ‘til he could recite it by rote, while Rusk lay stretched on the bed in a sly parody of natural sleep, with both hands behind his head and his single eye closed. Yet even as she studied the scene, she noted how Rusk’s lines began to soften, to blend with their surroundings, turn smoky and stretch longingly ‘cross the distance between ‘til at last he took shape behind and around the object of his affection simultaneously: a phantom pulse, cold flame-flickering, whose each caress stroked down through Parry’s memory of skin to tease that of muscle, nerve, memory itself.
Rumbling, as he did: Oh my Jerusha, constant treat and torment . . . so hard of heart, and else-wise. Yet diverting as these nightly conjugal fist-fights of ours have been, don’t you tire of holding yourself always apart, as I do of laying siege to you? Why should we carry our quarrels ever-forward, even now, when we’ve already each managed to take such effective revenge on the other?