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“May you be in heaven half an hour before the Devil knows you’re dead.” – Old Irish saying

“LAND!” CAME THE call from the maintop. It was Nedry, the young boy who’d had his arm amputated. He’d also lost a foot to the Disease, had seen it turn to Tam, according to him. Those two missing limbs made him inadequate for most other duties, but Oddsummers had found a place for all his sickly crew. “It’s Port Royal ahead, sir!” Nedry still had a good set of cat’s-eyes, and often had trouble sleeping. Perfect for staying awake during the Long Night and spotting sails. The cat’s-eye was a strange new occurrence, many men and women were developing them throughout the Caribbean, even after having had no previous affliction. Some children were now being born with them, as if in answer to the Long Nights. Some said the privateer Benjamin Vhingfrith had had his cat’s-eye since birth.

No one knew what it meant. No one knew what any of it meant. There were only guesses, and those usually came soaked in superstition.

I wonder how long before people start to realize the Cataclysm hasn’t just changed the World, it’s still changing it, it’s changing the creatures in the sea, the clouds, and it’s changing us, thought Oddsummers, walking up onto the bowsprit. With one hand he held onto rigging to keep his balance, and with the other hand he pulled down his plague mask and lifted the spyglass from his pocket. Three white moons—one full, one gibbous, and one crescent—allowed him to see clearly to shore. He sighted a small felucca ahead of them, pulling into the busiest and most cluttered docks he’d ever seen. Ships of every class—xebecs, man o’ wars, settees, brigantines, trabacaloes, tartans, sloops, dinghies, even a carrack, probably captured from the Portuguese and turned into an English privateer—they were all stacked in whichever way the captains had deigned to bring them in, and turned in whichever way the dockmasters decided was most accommodating for the next incoming ship.

It looked like a graveyard of ships.

The Edinburgh was never going to fit in that chaotic mess. About a dozen ships seemed to have decided it was best to anchor away from the island and boat to shore. That was likely the best choice for the Edinburgh, Oddsummers declared to his men, and had his first mate Bainbridge pass it down the line. “And make sure to pull down the yellow flag, Mr. Bainbridge. No need to keep up the ruse here. Though, they will probably assume we all have the Disease once they see you lot.”

“Aye, thirr,” Bainbridge slurred.

“Mr. Rollings?”

“Aye, Cap’n.” The one-armed engineer he had picked up back in Newcastle was just coming up from belowdecks. He had three yellow-fleshed nippers with him, all survivors of the Disease. They followed him constantly, taking notes. Since leaving Newcastle, they had been soaking up every piece of knowledge about ship repair from him.

“We cannot careen anywhere near harbour,” Oddsummers said. “But the Turtle Crawles are said to accept all sorts of ships, for a price. Worse than usual wharfage fees. Take Mr. Daltry with you, he was a trader once, he ought to be a keen negotiator. We need oakum to plug the holes we got when scraping through the Serpent’s Corridor.”

“I’ve heard only pirates moor in the Turtle Crawles, sir.”

“That’s true.”

“Are we pirates, sir?”

“What do you think?”

“We don’t have letters of marque, yet we’ve also not plundered anyone on the way here.”

“Then there you have it. We are enterprisers, Mr. Rollings. We are the Edinburgh and never forget, and that’s enough.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Mr. Gandross, at the waist there! Lively now!” Oddsummers pulled his plague mask back on and went to join Corbin on the quarterdeck. He clapped the helmsman on his bony shoulders. “You did well, Mr. Corbin. You made Jamaica in commendable time.”

“Believe ’twas the Altered Night, sir,” Corbin muttered, never looking up. He never looked anyone in the eye, not even the captain. The Disease had left him with a fear of holding a person’s gaze, but his was the only instance of such an aftereffect. “Those islands…they weren’t where they was s’pposed to be. And I believe Mr. James was correct with his charts.”

“I believe he was, also. And you are right, the Altered Night seems to have shortened the distance between England and the Caribbean, though I had read it typically lengthens the distance between two points. Odd, that. Even so, you kept it together and never abandoned your post, even when the lights in the water showed you the ghost of your dearly departed wife. You remained strong. Commendable.”

“Thankee, Captain. Now, you’ll keep your promise?”

Oddsummers looked at his helmsman. He had hoped the pilot would forget their conversation from two nights ago. Oddsummers felt strange about making promises. He never kept them to enemies, but he tried to keep them whenever he made them to someone loyal to him. “If your wife’s ghost told you to follow her through death’s door, and if you truly believe it was her that you saw on the deck, and not some illusion from the firmament, then yes, Mr. Corbin, I will help you on once we’re ashore. Once we’re settled in.”

Corbin nodded. Never looked at the captain. Never looked anywhere but at the course ahead of him. “How will you do it?”

“You won’t see it coming, Mr. Corbin.”

“Thankee, sir. It’s been a pleasure serving with you. I hope you find whatever ’tis you’re looking for out here, Levasseur’s treasure or otherwise.”

“Thank you, Mr. Corbin. And I hope you find your wife waiting beyond the veil of this mortal world.” Oddsummers meant it, too. He liked nothing better than seeing a good man get what he was owed.

Oddsummers took up the oars himself once in the boat, and only brought six men with him, including Corbin. The rest he left to watch over the Edinburgh. When they got to the docks, it was immediately evident that none here had seen any survivors of the Disease. Their yellow-fleshed bodies and drawn, etiolated eyes made some of his crew appear like skeletons with cracked, yellow leather pulled over their bones. Oddsummers himself was a survivor of the Disease, but he kept his flesh completely covered, and the plague doctor’s mask made him look more like their keeper than their kin.

On their way across the briny deep, the Edinburgh had intercepted a packet ship called the Saint John, bound for Madagascar. Her captain was a man named Rothchild, who hadn’t boarded, due to Edinburgh flying the yellow flag of a plagued ship. But Rothchild had shouted across the waves that so far the Disease had not reached any Caribbean shores. And he had also exchanged a few rumours, starting with one concerning Woodes Rogers and his friend Benjamin Vhingfrith. It seemed the Devil’s Son was soon to be on trial for “conspiring with dark forces.”

Upon hearing this report, Oddsummers had called for all stunsails loosed, to catch every last scrap of wind to reach Port Royal before the trial.

But they had heard other reports, too. Stopping by St. Kitts, they learned of Munt’s supposed whereabouts in Nassau, of increased attacks against pirates by the Royal Navy, of rebellious Caribee natives worshipping new gods they claimed spoke to them from the firmament, and, in Nassau, rumours of the Hazard’s return, her belly bloated with untold treasures, weighing her down so that she moved sluggishly. There were rumours of a secret Spanish fort being hit in Panamá.

There is so much going on in the Caribbean. Why didn’t anyone tell me? he thought, laughing to himself. Far more exciting than the bloody Indian Ocean.

Presently, Oddsummers sent a prayer up to Holda and Venus to oversee his journey, and see that its end bring him fortune. He moved past the militiamen at the dock. Or, rather, the militiamen moved out of his way, probably assuming, what with his plague mask, that he was some sort of doctor accompanying his patients.

A murmur of panic moved through the docks and Oddsummers saw some of the workers turn and run. One man even jumped into the water to avoid the sickly-looking men. Oddsummers made no attempt to explain that his men were cured, and that their bodies were only cursed by the aftermath of the Disease. It suited his purposes if everyone stood out of his way. No one would likely even attempt to rob them.

He knew generally the layout of Port Royal and walked straight down Queen Street to stand outside the gate of the Governor’s Mansion. “Wait here,” he told Corbin and the others.

The guards at the gate looked wary. One of them shouted, “Stop right there!” and brandished his sword.

“I need speak with the governor,” said Oddsummers. “The matter is most urgent.”

“Oy, yeah? And I’ll be wanting an audience with Lucky George himself.”

“I believe I might be able to arrange that,” he said, removing his mask. And the guard paled visibly. “I’m told by my mother that I am actually the son of some duke or other that took a fancy to her when she was thirteen. I never caught my mother in a lie, so we can assume that puts me somewhere along the royal bloodline—”

“Fuck off! And take your Diseased back wherever you come from, or you’ll be strung up in the—”

“My name is Captain Belardino Oddsummers. Formerly of the Spirited, I now captain the Edinburgh, which you can see just there.” He pointed beyond the docks. The three moons lit the inlet spectacularly, every ship was easily spotted. “I’m a known privateer and pirate, a traitor to England, a man who has helped the French government sink many of your ships. I’m here to surrender myself either into your governor’s custody or into his service. I think he’ll want the latter. Tell him if he accepts, he’ll have his share of Levasseur’s treasure. But I must have two things from him—”

“Don’t ask for much, do you—”

“First, there is a man somewhere either on this island or on New Providence called Munt. Some call him Cartera, others call him Dodum. He’s a corpulent man, but well dressed. You cannot miss him. I want a reward put on his head, I want him seized and brought to me. Secondly, I understand you’ve got a man by the name of Benjamin Vhingfrith in custody here in Royal. The Hero of Port Royal. Helped you boys fend off a couple of Spanish naos. I’ll also want him brought to me.”

“You do, do you?” said a second guard, stepping forward, the bayonet on the end of his musket aimed at Oddsummers’s chest. “Why would anybody listen to—”

“The men behind me are not Diseased. Both they and I survived the new plague in England. But there are others aboard the Edinburgh that are sick, and they will simply rush this island if I don’t return to them soon with an answer from Lord Hamilton. So tell the governor he either comes to speak with this traitor, or he’ll have pestilence on his island that he’ll not be rid of for years. Ask any priest in England how goes the search for a cure. Those are your choices.” He smiled and added, “And my men are most faithful. They’ll do whatever I say. Isn’t that right, Mr. Bainbridge?”

Bainbridge was standing directly behind Corbin. He stepped forward. “Aye, sir.”

Oddsummers looked upon his men and pretended to have a hard time choosing. Then he pointed at Corbin and said, “Him.”

Bainbridge drew his pistol and pointed it at Corbin’s head and shot him and some of the brain matter spattered across Oddsummers’s face. “Aye, sir.”

The two guards had been living in Port Royal a long time, and so death could not shock them. These men had likely seen and committed degradations beyond measure. But the randomness of it, of a captain ordering the death of one of his crew, without having to say the words, and the others seemingly unmoved by it, would surely shake any man. Especially under a Long Night like this. Oddsummers had learned that the Long Night often made many threats easier.

But the other crewmen had been secretly prepared for this moment. Oddsummers had told them what would happen. Only Corbin hadn’t known it was coming, as per their agreement. And while Oddsummers hated to shoot a man into the mud, he hated even more to waste any resource without first using it to advance his goals.

I hope you find your wife there, beyond the veil, his heart whispered.

“One hour,” Oddsummers said, pulling his mask back on and stepping backward to rejoin his men. “That’s how long Lord Hamilton has to send an envoy to a drinking hall I passed back there—I believe it’s called The Golden Goose? I’ll be waiting out in front of it. If I don’t have an answer and am not returned to my ship within the hour, those Diseased men are all coming ashore. And make sure you emphasize Levasseur’s treasure. That part particularly will interest the governor.” He tipped his hat. “Good day to you, gentlemen.”

____

Drip-drip-drip…

Vhingfrith awoke to the sound. He looked up at the one-foot-wide slit of grating on the ceiling, where a silvery shaft of moonlight was coming through. It was the only source of light in the room. Stinking water dribbled in from outside, lightly dripping from the bars and onto the widening puddle at the center of his cell. Faintly, he heard voices from outside. A wagonmaster admonishing a horse or ox.

Drip-drip-drip…

All of Marshallsea Prison’s dungeons were belowground. He knew, because he had been in Port Royal when they were being built, watched as the foundation was laid over three weeks. It had been his second or third sailing trip with his father, when the old man finally decided to allow Benjamin to start learning the business. He had looked into those fourteen gaping pits, and the mud-covered men digging them, and asked what they would be used for. Long as you follow everything I say, Benjamin, you need never find out, Father had said.

Drip-drip-drip…

Benjamin pushed himself off the floor. They had left him his coat, which he bundled into a pillow. But now he stood up and put it back on. The room was small enough that if he stood in the middle and reached out both arms his fingertips touched the walls. So there was no way to avoid the water dripping on his head. His scratched at his beard. Cracked his knuckles and leaned backward to stretch his back. Touched his neck, where the silver locket had been. They would have taken it, along with his rings, had Munt not been able to pay him a visit in the stocks where he was pilloried for a day.

The guards took everything worth anything. For some reason they even took his shoes.

He paced through water he was certain was runoff from one of the many sewage pipes that had been inadequately installed the year before, back when Port Royal had an influx of money from the Treasury, before the Cataclysm suddenly made the Crown tight with its purse, not knowing what to expect next.

He walked in a circle. Because what else was there to do?

Drip-drip-drip…

Benjamin thought about nothing and no one. But he did sing. He had heard men somewhere that were marooned talked to themselves, sang, and tried not to think of home. At least, the ones who succeeded at both surviving and keeping themselves from going mad. He had read the accounts of Hornigold and his time on a small island near St. Kitts, and the key seemed to be not pining for what was lost and hoping for rescue, but to simply stay busy. Do not think of the treachery that brought you to this point—

Rogers.

—and certainly do not dwell on what you would do once you were free—

Skin him and boil him alive.

—just stay focused on moving, singing, improving yourself through exercise. Benjamin willfully kept his mind away from Rogers’s promise that he would get a speedy and fair hearing, and he refused to look at the dark corner of his mind where he had locked away all thoughts about his crew and John Laurier and hopes of fleeing to the Colonies, and he bit his tongue any time his mind went near wondering what had happened to the Lively.

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And he walked. He ran his fingers over the grooves in the wall, the messages carved by past residents. Residents who hadn’t known how to spell.

Drip-drip-drip…

Benjamin’s mind betrayed him, though, many times. It would always happen when he ran out of songs to sing and would have to start all over again. That’s when he would look up at the bars above him and wonder if he could jump to them. They seemed almost within reach. If so, he wondered if he could take off his coat and loop it around one of the bars and still have enough slack to form a noose. Don’t let them hang you, his father said. If you can, die on your own account. Don’t give the bastards the satisfaction. Your mother and I will be waiting.

And then he paced again. And sang. The puddle had been getting deeper these days, for the water had nowhere to go, and the sun hadn’t come out to evaporate it. It was going to be another Long Night, he reckoned.

He licked his lips. No water in a whole day, even though he’d been promised good treatment—

Rogers.

Drip-drip-drip…

He kept walking and singing. Now he was on to his mother’s hymns, and those sometimes made him cry.

Benjamin touched the place on his neck where the locket had been for so many years. John Laurier entered his mind again. How could he not? Benjamin had never felt true romantic love—or perhaps he had and hadn’t known it? He had known friendship and closeness and attraction, all of it for John, and perhaps one or two others. But never more fiercely than him.

Benjamin now worried that he had experienced love, and had somehow missed it, somehow failed to marvel at it and appreciate it.

“I should have gone with you, John,” he said to the damp stone walls.

The next time he ran out of songs to sing, Benjamin stopped pacing and looked down at the puddle. He had heard that a man could feasibly drown in one inch of water. Drunken men who fell face-first into puddles had been known to. Was that a better way to go? Could he even do it? He had heard men hung themselves because, if done right, there was no going back, but the body would fight naturally against drowning and usually succeeded if not weighted down in a deep body of water. So, the bars were looking good. He could perhaps make a noose out of his clothing and throw it up and over the bars—

The messenger is not important. The last words spoken by Swanson came back to him. Benjamin had been occupying his mind with theories again. He had been taking inventory of the creatures of the firmament. Swanson was still a mystery, but his existence proved that the firmament had Mimics. What had his mother called them?

Pantomime spirits. Ghosts that do not speak…until they do. And then their voices are a terrible thing to behold.

Then there were the Beasts that attacked Port Royal, on the same day some huge demon appeared on the shore. And of course there were people saying they saw the ghosts of dead relatives. Spectres.

Mimics, Corruption, Disease, Leviathans, Spectres, Demons, Beasts. The list was getting longer without any indication of a common ancestor. All as diverse as Earth’s natural wonders. But were they related? Benjamin wracked his brain. He recalled a book a friend of his father’s had loaned him, written by some French naturalist—What was his name? Never mind, doesn’t matter—and in it he proposed the idea of some sort of transmutation of species over time. A radical notion, that God may have worked out all life over time, rather than instantly, that He had slowly changed one lifeform into another, over hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Not only that, but the naturalist had proposed that God was perhaps still tinkering with Earth’s flora and fauna. Like an ongoing experiment.

That could account for commonalities in Nature, he thought, trying anything to keep his mind off the blood stains left in the corners of the room, and the tally marks scrawled into the walls around him. Whales and dolphins need to breach the surface to take in air, unlike fish that breathe water. Perhaps whales and humans both stem from common designs of the Creator’s. Or at least a portion. Maybe God used similar components in different projects. If that is so, then Whose design do the Leviathans and Mimics follow? Who is the Creator of the firmament—

He shook himself. It was no good trying to unriddle the power of one Creator, let alone two. And besides, that French naturalist had been hanged and the book Benjamin had read had been among the last, all the other copies burned by the Church. These thought experiments were probably less helpful than just singing.

And yet.

The messenger is not important. Those were Swanson’s words. And the odour that emanated from his mouth when he spoke, it had been the same as the odour when Olaf dissected the Beast. Ammonia and feces. What did that—

There was a sound like creaking wood, like a footstep on old stairs. Benjamin turned and looked around his cell. Nothing there. He started pacing again, but stopped when the sound persisted. Creaking wood, the sound of it breaking. He looked around again, and saw nothing, but then something went by his face. A shadow. He looked up and his cat’s-eye allowed him to see it clear. And he screamed. Horror filled his every organ. Hanging from the bars over his head, impossibly, was the small shadowy form of a boy, and his body swung slowly back and forth. And though the rope around his neck was lashed to the bars above, Benjamin heard the creaking of the barn rafters, and saw Toby’s eyes, opened wide, gazing down at him.

“No,” he whispered. “No, no, no, you’re not here! No, no, no!”

Toby’s lips moved. No words came out, but they moved. And Benjamin somehow knew what Toby was trying to say. The messenger isn’t important.

Benjamin buried his face against the wall and clenched his eyes shut. Then, snarling, growling, enraged at his dark fate, he spun around and gazed up at Toby. At the Messenger. “You’re him? You’re the Thing That Was Swanson?” Toby kept swinging lightly back and forth, and the wood-creaking sound filled the dungeon. He would not blink or look away from Ben. “You’re the Messenger. So what else are you? What are you? Whom do you serve? A messenger serves someone.” The body kept swinging in a sourceless breeze. Kept staring at Ben. “Bastard! Speak! Speak to me! If you’re a Messenger then speak—”

“What is this world?” Toby said, and as before the air became foul and Ben gagged and pressed his sleeve to his nose and mouth.

“What—what do you mean? This is world is—it is the World!”

“You are moving. Why?”

“We’re moving? To where? Are you saying…are you saying the whole world is moving? It’s changing its position?”

“You keep moving. It is hard to pin you down.”

“Then where is this place? Please, tell me, help to understand. Where are we when the Long Night comes?”

“You slipped and fell,” said Toby, his eyes piercing Benjamin’s. “Into a teeny, tiny hole, you slipped and fell. A hole in the ground. You try to crawl out, but you are sinking, deeper and deeper. Why are you all so soft? How is it you are so soft and yet still live? Why is it so pleasant to squeeze you?”

Benjamin gagged again, almost vomited. He looked up at the Messenger and started to shout something back, something about how he did not understand any of this.

But then something hit him on the head. A glass bottle bounced off him and landed on the floor, its neck shattering, its contents partially soaked in the puddle.

Stunned a moment, Benjamin looked up at the grating. He saw a dark form break the moonlight. Then the form was gone. As was Toby.

“No.” The word was spoken as a ward against something encroaching on his mind, a madness imposed by the firmament. “No, it wasn’t…it wasn’t real, Ben. God Almighty, help me to keep my sanity.”

The Messenger is not important.

The words lingered in his mind

He picked up the remains of the bottle and removed its contents: a scroll of paper no wider than his forefinger. When he unrolled it, the writing was tiny but elegant. He knew its owner immediately. Munt. Benjamin moved away from the door in case a guard looked through the peephole, and closed his left eye to read the message in the safety of shadow.

If this doesn’t work, my Friende, my deepest Apologies, and I hope to meet you in the Worlde beyond this one to give you my Condolences in person. But if it does happen, it will happen quickly, and so you must be Prepared. There are three possible Outcomes, and they all will transpire during your Transfer. You are to be sent from Marshallsea to Fort Carlisle, and there a Sentence will be passed down, not in your Favour, and in a Secret Tribunal.

So, when you pass by the Graveyarde, be ready, for your escape might come from There.

If not, look to the Clocktower being built near the Produce Market, you may find Help waiting.

And if not there, either, then look to the Old Church, at the Statue of the Virgin Mary.

Oddsummers is in Port Royal and has asked for your Transfer. He’s demanded to have both you and I brought to him. I know not why. But my Sources tell me that you will not be handed over to him, you will instead be charged with Conspiring with him and Hanged alongside him. This will be dangerous. But I brought Help.

I hope this Works, old Friende. God love you, and God keep you. And if this doesn’t go Well, then may you be in Heaven half an hour, as the Irish say.

Benjamin read the letter again, memorizing every word. If it was not for the fact he knew Munt’s handwriting so well, he would be inclined to believe this was a test from the Admiralty or the Tribunal, to see where his loyalties really were.

It still could be. They could have Munt, and be forcing him to write the letter.

But the letter did not ask him to do anything, only wait for some unknown event or events to transpire. A window of opportunity, that was all Munt was promising.

And now his guts were in knots. He looked up again, to where Toby had been swinging—to where the Messenger had been. The Messenger was gone.

Ben’s hands were trembling.

One chance. Just one chance to escape, or a group of men who have already decided my fate will pass judgment on me and that will be that.

Benjamin started to pace.

Help, he says. But who would help Munt to—?

There was a loud thump on the door. The bar being moved aside. Benjamin wadded up the paper and shoved it down his pants, and when the door opened, three armed men entered carrying shackles. They clapped the irons on him and yanked him out and shut the door, leaving the dungeon once more empty and awaiting its next guest. A mouse that had been hiding this whole time now crept out from a hole and began sniffing around. It heard the sound of creaking wood, and sensed a cold presence, and fled back into its hole, leaving Toby to his tomb.

Drip-drip-drip…

____

Oddsummers did not meet the governor’s envoy at The Golden Goose as he promised. He would have been a fool to do so, because that would have led to his arrest. So, he left one of his crew, the carpenter Mr. Earley, to stand at the doorstep of the drinking hall and await the militiamen sent to arrest him. Earley would inform them that Captain Oddsummers was, in fact, not to be found inside the hall, but rather at the graveyard, surrounded by a cadre of his armed men.

Oddsummers waited in the graveyard humming a chanty and glancing over the headstones. He did not have to wait long.

When the militiamen arrived, they stood at the entrance to the graveyard, under the light of the three moons, and saw that they were outnumbered. More, they could not be sure how many of his crew Oddsummers had hidden in the trees at the edges of the mausoleum. More, they could not be certain that simply by approaching the Edinburgh’s crew they wouldn’t be infected by the Disease themselves.

Ravens swirled like mad, driven into a frenzy by the triple moon showing. The militiamen departed, and returned with a handful of Royal Marines to support them.

Behidn his mask, Oddsummers smiled. They don’t know how to proceed. It’s almost adorable.

One of them had the rank of major, and stepped forward with his hand resting on his undrawn sabre. A pointed threat. This man’s temperament was cool, even a little cavalier, as he strutted alone into the graveyard. Oddsummers respected him immediately. The major opened his mouth to speak.

“Captain Vhingfrith isn’t coming, is he?” Oddsummers cut him off.

The major gave a then smile that was, by turns, placating, apologetic, and sarcastic. “No, Captain. I’m afraid not.”

“I see. And I am to be escorted to Marshallsea to join him?”

“You have the right of it.”

“I see, I see.”

“You’re him, then. Belardino Oddsummers. ‘The Villain’ is what they call you in the Indian Ocean, is it not?”

Oddsummers didn’t answer him.

The major’s eyes glanced at the dozen armed men standing behind Oddsummers. “None of you have committed treason yet. It is only your captain that is known to have betrayed his country. But should you strike against us—”

Oddsummers walked forward. Twenty feet behind the major, at the graveyard’s entrance, militiamen and marines alike pointed their muskets at him. Oddsummers stopped in front of the major. He stood a head taller than the marine, but the marine didn’t seem fazed. “If you think you’ll get my men to turn on me, Major, please understand I am likened unto God. For I gave them a purpose and respect. They sail again, aboard the Edinburgh. Where England took their souls, Oddsummers gave them back. Where the rest of the World saw them fit only for the ditch, the Villain saw them fit to bend a sail. What can you do for them that I haven’t already? What can you give them that the Villain hasn’t already bequeathed? Arrest me, and you hold the one thing in the World they still value, and will fight with their fingers and teeth to get back.”

“You don’t intimidate me, sir. I’ve endured the Cataclysm and fought the Beasts when they came, and I’ve dealt with pirates like you all my life. But I do rather prefer to see pirates stand trial.”

“I know. And then to swing from a gallows, to then put their heads on pikes for all on York Street to see. Like you did with Roberts and McMillan.”

“If you want to die here tonight, Captain, you merely have to—”

“Walter Tate.”

The major blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You should know the name of the man upon whose grave you now stand.” He gestured.

The major looked down at the tombstone to his right and read the name there. “Friend of yours?”

“I’ve no idea who he was. But would you like to meet him?”

“Come again?”

Oddsummers reached into his coat and pulled out the glass vial. The Tam’s glowing pink colour shone brighter in the darkness. The major had seen Oddsummers go for the vial and so gripped his sabre hilt. Oddsummers poured just a dab of Tam onto the soil between his feet. “It doesn’t always work, I’m told, but that’s all right. If first time’s not a charm, we have others around we might introduce ourselves to—ah.” Oddsummers heard the thumping. He stepped back from the major to give Walter Tate some space. “I thought this might work.”

“What are you—?”

The thumping got louder, and now the major heard it and looked at the ground.

“I recall hearing that when the last tsunami hit Port Royal, many bodies in the graveyard were washed into the streets, and out to sea. That’s because the soil is so loose and mushy, and the lack of space means you people often bury your dead in piles, one on top of the other, and therefore corpses are usually just a foot or two below the surface. Whole heaps of them.”

The major stared at the ground. The thumping became loud.

Oddsummers put a finger to his ear. “Wait…just wait.” He knelt, and started raking away the leaves, then pulled up huge chunks of earth. When the blue-skinned, worm-eaten hand stabbed up from the ground, Oddsummers grabbed hold. “There we go. Welcome back, Mr. Tate. Pleased to meet you.” With a swift jerk, he pulled the rest of the arm out of the soil, where some of the flesh sloughed off. “Tombstone says he died last month, so I assumed he’d still have some meat left on his bones. Eh—Major?”

The major had drawn back, sword half drawn, gazing wide-eyed at the blasphemous vision.

It looked like Walter Tate was struggling to get out, sliding back into the slippery earth. Oddsummers chuckled as he helped clear away the muck for him, pushing the worms away from his busted brown teeth. “Honestly, I’m eager to see how this works. I’d only heard rumours before I left England, but the ursulas are rarely wrong, and I thought I’d show you—”

“God!” the major hissed.

“They are being called draugr, or drür, an old Scandinavian word—”

“God in heaven!” the major hissed.

“You sure He’s still at His post?” Oddsummers laughed. He stood up and dusted himself off, allowing the creature to find its own way out. “But please, Major, just listen. I am benandanti. We have our ways, I’m sure you know. We know things. We collect things. I am a hunter for the Order, and right now I am hunting something that belonged to Olivier Levasseur. French pirate, I’m sure you’ve heard of him. I asked your guards—are you listening, Major?—I asked your guards at the Governor’s Mansion to relay that message to Lord Hamilton, but it appears you all did the predictable thing and assumed I wouldn’t raise Hell—literal Hell—and send my Diseased men ashore to Corrupt all of you.”

The Major put a hand over his nose and mouth, either to cover his horror or the odour or both. Walter Tate continued crawling out of his grave. Worms and mud fell from his mushy eye sockets.

“It seems you think me an ordinary man. I am not. Nor is my crew ordinary. Nor my ship, whose guns face the shore right now but aren’t within sight of any of your fortress’s batteries. Or hadn’t you noticed? Just what had you hoped to accomplish when you walked out here all alone?” Oddsummers sighed. “Was there even a plan?”

“God…God in heaven…”

Walter Tate found a way to get his head all the way out, and what hair he had left was peeled away, along with half his scalp, to reveal a blackened skeleton. The shirt he was buried in looked like a dockworker’s uniform, and a mouse leapt out of the shirt pocket. The stench was thick, even through the herbs in the plague mask, and Oddsummers felt sure the major had never smelled anything like it. Not from anything still moving. Walter Tate’s jaw hung open and his half-eaten tongue teemed with maggots. Tate opened his mouth in a loud breath, and mud pouring from his throat.

The major turned and started walking away. Slowly. He didn’t run, he just walked. Stumbled. Like a man caught in a dream. Then he fell to his knees and calmly stood back up, swaying on his feet like seaweed, and had just started to run when Oddsummers caught up to him and snatched him backward by his collar. He pressed the beak of his mask against the major’s nose.

“Captain Vhingfrith, you fucking cunt! Bring him to me! And Munt, too! Or I’ll find your mother in here, or your brother or your son or one of your dead friends and I’ll bring the rotten fucker back to life, I swear to God! This was just one vial! I’ll drown this whole fucking graveyard in this shit, bring them all back to life like Christ Risen, every little girl dead of pneumonia, every fucking rapist and cunt father and cunt sister! And if you think you’re afraid of me now, if you think you saw something sinister when you faced the Beasts of the Cataclysm, wait until you see every fucking pirate you hung resurrected and charging through these streets, fucking you up the arse with their rotten fucking cocks! Tell Lord Hamilton what you just saw, and tell him to bring me Captain Vhingfrith tonight, here, now! Tell him I command the draugr! Tell him I’m Captain-fucking-Belardino-Oddsummers, and I wake the dead!”

The major saw something over Oddsummers’s shoulder. Oddsummers sensed someone approaching behind him. The major, pale-faced and with tears in his eyes, whispered, “My God,” and pushed himself away from Oddsummers and ran back to his men.

Oddsummers turned and saw Walter Tate staggering like a man on stilts, teetering to the side. A baby learning to walk again. The slabs of muscle hanging from his legs were going to make that difficult. Oddsummers walked past him, wondering if the dead man could see without eyes. Those two black sockets were filled with nothing but writhing maggots. He stood a moment, fascinated, then continued back to his men, some of whom were visibly shaken, despite having been prepared for the show.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “You all did very well. Mr. Garfield, would you be so good as to light an arrow and fire it yonder? That’s the signal they’re waiting for back on the Edinburgh.”

“Aye, sir.” Mr. Garfield said it in almost a whisper, gawking at the draugr.

He looked at all their uneasy faces. All of them were staring at Walter Tate, who went stumbling off into the night. He chuckled. “Lively now, boys. This is just the start. They haven’t even seen our third act.”