He blew a long-suffering sigh. Very well. He sat up. He knew what Gunner meant about the wrong question. He was to ask not, ‘How did she die, Gunner?’ but, ‘How’d she live?’
Oddly, with Gunner, this would actually be the quicker way to get to how she died (and thus, get him to go the hell away) than trying to get a straight answer. Gunner seemed a bit bored being a captain when there was neither ship nor storm to fight. He’d already trained his new crew to some acceptable degree of proficiency on the many cannons that worked in concert, and now even that diversion was denied him, as he’d decided to conserve the rest of their powder for the dangers to come.
“Smart man, y’are, Yer Guileship.” Gunner grinned the big, happy gap-toothed grin of a man who was rarely understood and who prized it when he was.
Gunner took a deep breath, spat in the waves, muttered a curse to Ceres, and made the sign of the seven. “She uz pregnant most ’er time. Not with my pa’s brats, and that was clear as the Atashian shallows, him bein’ a sailor, en’ gone most the time.
“He’d leave with her pregnant with one, and come back an’ she was already bellyful with the next. Not that he were the subject of any hagioglyphics his ownself. Probably had ’least four other wives in other ports. He was the marrying sort. Gave my mama nothing but baby-batter and beatings, though. Finally died, or got took slave, I guess.
“I got my luck from her, though, cuz she mat a good man after that. Didn’t beat her once, not even when she ast for it. Treated us li’l brats like ’is own, though we were a right handful a hell and hot coals. Arranged apprenticery for me, and afore he put me on a ship he taught me to fight so I wouldn’t be made a buttboy.
“But kin you believe? All that good he done us, and Mama cheated on him, too. Some folk—my mama, me, you—we got the devil in us, Guile. Canna go straight, no gatter how many second chances we met.”
Gatter? Met?
Matter. Get. No matter how many second chances we get.
Ah, Gavin thought. It had been a while since he’d heard the pirate speak at length. It took some getting used to.
Again Gunner spat over the gunwale with a muttered curse at Ceres.
“Papa didn’t learn it out, but I did. I punched her in the face and gave her the raspy side a’ my tongue. But I didn’t hell tim neither. I had little brothers and sisters. What would they do without ’im, if he left ’er? Mama was so keen on makin’ the beast with two backs with any dangerous man what winked at her that she never even noticed she uz setting her own house on fire by doin’ it—with all us kids inside, burnin’. She was pregnant, that’s what for I hit her in the face. She told ’im the black eye was from falling down. Uz a better lie than you’d think. Only thing she was ever good at was gettin’ on her back in a hurry.”
Please don’t tell me you murdered her.
“S’pose the harpies took vengeance on her, since no one else would. Somethin’ broke in ’er after she shat out that last babe. One night after we were all asleep, she cut her arms up good, almost bled dry. Papa patched her up. Never seen a man what done nothin’ wrong look so hunted.
“Mama went on crying and carrying on most every day. Elgin, she named him. Algae, we all said. The baby, right?”
“Right,” Gavin said. He felt sick to his stomach already, and he was worried this was only going to get worse.
“Pa was a smith. One day, when he wouldn’t stop cryin’, Mama quick snatched up Pa’s hammer, and laid li’l Algae down on the workbench, lined him up good—she uz gonna smash his head, we thought. Then she stopped herself, and she smashed her hand instead, smashed it jelly, kept smashing. Wouldn’t stop. That wet, sloppy sound and her screamin’ won’t never come out me ears. Hear the echoes to this day, rattlin’ from cliff to cliff inside my skull. Said she had ta be punished for wantin’ a do such a thing.”
Fuck, Gunner! I am trying to enjoy some goddam sunshine!
“To save her life, Pa had to cut the hand off and burn the stump dry and sizzly, while she cursed him and screamed and asked to die. I hope you never have to hear yer mama beggin’ ta die, Guile.”
No, mine didn’t beg. She asked politely, and I killed her politely. Thanks for the reminder of that, asshole.
“We thought she was gettin’ better, after that. Healin’. I was jus’ ’bout to ship out. Her ‘little man,’ she called me. Made her so proud, she said. Not that it should mean much coming from her, she said. Broken woman, Guile. It ain’t how it s’pos’d ta be. Well, one day she puts on her finest and wanders out to the bog. Lays down and spreads her arms out lick thet. Lick what you done earlier.
“Someone saw her. Threw her a rope, but the whole area was too treach’rous to get close. She wouldnae take the rope, right at her hand. Help, that near. I s’pose she reckoned she’d take different kinder escape. Thatcher—that’s who threw the rope—ran to get help. But when we all come, she was gone. Sunk.”
Gavin had entertained the notion at first that maybe Gunner was making sport of him, that he was going to reveal this was all a tale simply to wind him up and pass a few minutes of boredom at sea. Now he didn’t think so.
Not at all.
The bouncy, ceaselessly grinning and hollering and spitting pirate who, having been raised amid a cacophony of accents himself, veered wildly between all of them and none, who covered his habitual malapropisms and neologisms by purposely creating as many as possible so that he might become larger than life—that legend was suddenly simply a slender Ilytian man, hitting middle age earlier than he ought, his face drawn, eyes haunted by things forever lost.
Gunner said, “I held this mammary like a puzzle box.”
Mammary? Oh no. Memory. Don’t laugh, Gavin. For the sake of all that is holy, do not laugh right now when Gunner’s feeling this vulnerable.
“Puzzle box?” Gavin said. He cleared his throat. He deliberately looked up at the burning white of a celestial eye as bleached of all color as his own eye was. The pain braced him.
“Aye. The mam’ry. I squeeze it, palpate it, grab it with both hands, twist it round, pinch at it, trya sink my teeth in t’ it . . .”
Don’t. Even. Grin.
Gunner had to be putting him on. But Gavin looked at the man, and he gave no indication of levity.
“And here’s thing,” Gunner said. “I kin understand it when a man throws back a few too many drinks on a lonesome night, gets sour inside, and sucks at the teat of a musket for jus’ long enough so that big ole ‘fuck you’ we scream at the world bounces back as ‘fuck me’ and he pulls the trigger. I kin understand when a girl climbs a tree and tries on a noose necklace for size and once she got it on thinkin’, ‘I come this far, why not?’ and takin’ that hop. Prob’ly e’ryone who looks oft a cliff thinks a taking the sharp drop with a sudden stop. E’ery sailor has thought of takin’ that swim what fattens sharks. We all got the black moment when the evil eye of the barrel dares a starin’ contest. And we’re all a hair trigger’s pull from the musket’s dare. It’s the devil’s gift, ain’t it? It’s the heritage o’ man, aye?”