Page 95 of Blow Me Down
I lunged sideways and tried to bite his leg. He laughed and sidestepped, returning to the door. “First, I destroy the game. Then his company. Finally, the man himself.”
“You’re insane,” I couldn’t help but say, wondering whether he could truly do what he planned. “There’s no other explanation for leaving me in charge of your crew andtheisland.”
He laughed, a genuinely amused expression on his face. I wished with all my heart he was within biting distance. “Can ye think of a better way to create havoc and general chaos man to put an inexperienced person in charge of things?”
So much for the slick explanation he offered in his letter to me. I bristled at the wordinexperiencedbut decided to overlook that slur in an attempt to get one last point cleared before he left. “Why are you using the game to settle what’s at heart a personal issue between you and Corbin?”
“Ye’re just chock full of questions, aren’t ye?” he chuckled, about to leave the room. “Ye remember me flag?”
I started to nod, remembered my head, and instead said, “Yeah. It was a picture of a man standing on a stabbed heart.”
“Corbin’s heart, stabbed with his own knife,” Bart reminded me. “I particularly like the irony of that point, lass. If ye be needin‘ anythin’, yell. I’ll tell me mates to keep an ear out for ye.”
“Oh, blow it out your blowhole,” I muttered to myself as the door was closed, then yelled, “You like the irony of what? Using an actual knife on Corbin? Or is that a metaphor for the game itself?”
Bart didn’t return to answer, but I hadn’t expected him to, not after that James Bond comment (which made me sigh— I had truly hoped he’d spill everything so I could go running to Corbin with the information). Still, I had gathered up a few nuggets. I cherished those as I tried yelling for help a few times, but although I could hear voices of men outside the cabin, no one came to investigate. So much for them keeping an ear out for me.
“Right, Amy,” I said aloud, looking around the cabin for inspiration. “What you need here is an escape plan. Some way to get off the ship before Bart can come back. Hmm. How do people get out of being tied up?”
I struggled with the bonds around my wrists but achieved nothing but sore shoulders and what felt like bloody wrists. I quickly formulated, and rejected, several plans of action, from setting the ship on fire and jumping overboard before I burned to death, to getting gravely ill so Bart would have to send for medical aid. I finally settled on one plan that seemed to have the fewest opportunities for failure.
After ten minutes of me screaming at the top of my head, someone finally came to shut me up.
“We’re tired of hearin‘ ye bellowin’,” a big, burly pirate said as he threw the door open. I didn’t recognize him as being one of Bart’s crew, but I didn’t care much at that point.
“It’s about time someone came! I’ve been yelling for you forever!”
The man frowned. I couldn’t help noticing that his upper arms—bare since he was wearing a leather jerkin without a shirt—were approximately the size of my thighs. “What be ye wantin‘?”
“I have to use the privy.”
The man made a face.
“Badly,” I said. “There’s no toilet facilities in this cabin. And I don’t think Bart would appreciate having this lovely Persian rug soiled, so if you don’t want me going all over it, you’d better help me up and take me to the nearest privy.”
“Ye can piss over the side, like the rest of us,” he said, hauling me to my feet.
“Hello, girl here! Can’t do that without a siphon or something, and that’s just such an icky thought, I don’t even know if I can do it then.”
“I’ll take ye to the head if ye promise to stop yer squawkin‘,” the pirate said, cutting my feet free. He kept a grip on my bound hands as I stumbled forward, but at least I was spared the indignity of falling. I tried to be not too obvious as I was herded out of the cabin and down the deck toward the bow of the boat. It was a square-rigged three-masted ship, the kind with two gun decks. Groups of men sitting around idle fell silent as my pirate guard hustled me to the bow. I recognized none of them, which made me wonder whether Bart hadn’t been keeping a second crew hidden from us.
“Do what ye have to,” the guard said, giving me a little shove toward the lee-side head (there was one on either side of the bow—which one you used depended on where the wind was coming from).
I tried to look as dignified as possible, and yet like my bladder was about to burst. “I can’t go with you looking.”
He growled something and turned his back. I glanced around him. We were the only ones on the bow. Behind me, the blue-black water of the sea lapped at the bow. The head was positioned so that the seawater would wash its grated floor clean, something I tried hard not to think too much about. It would be easy enough for me to jump overboard and swim to shore—the ship was anchored beyond a line of rocks, but not so far that I couldn’t swim to the shore—but there was no way I could do it with my hands tied behind my back.
“Um… I need to use my hands.”
The pirate spun around, giving me a suspicious look. “Why?”
I prodded a small box containing the wide leaves that the people on this island favored for hygienic purposes. “I would think that’s pretty obvious.”
He heaved a martyred sigh, roughly grabbing my arm and spinning me around, not even apologizing when he knicked my wrists cutting off the cloth that bound them.
“Hurry up with ye! I’ve not got all night to stand here waitin‘ for ye to move yer bowels.”
He moved away from me, not quite turning his back on me, but not standing close enough so I could tackle him. Either way was fine with me. I stepped out onto the grating of the head, took a deep breath, and dived over the side.
