Blaggard's Moon Read Free

throw it back again from his awkward perch.
    But Lemmer had missed. Now it was useless, a good knife gone, ker-plunk. A true shame, too. He’d bought it in the Salmund Islands, the ones that ring the Sandavale nation. They could make a knife, the Sandavallians. That blade would hold an edge. It was balanced and hard as diamonds, sleek to look at and sharp as a razor to cut with. Delaney ran a hand over his stubbly chin, and felt a pang of sorrow that he’d never feel its cool steel on his whiskers again.
    Lemmer had paid dearly for that poor throw.
    Delaney didn’t want to think on it, but as the events were fresh they came into his head anyway. He didn’t mean to remember, but when he started thinking about his knife, and then about Lemmer, well, what Belisar had done just came next like a wagon follows a team of mules. Hungry piranha feeding on a live man’s hand was not a good thing to think on. He closed his eyes against it, but his mind rolled on anyway, and now he saw Captain Belisar Whatney’s bulk in the back of that little boat, making the prow point upward like a scolding finger, and he heard the pirate captain’s words.
    â€œThere’s the knife right there, Mr. Harps.” Belisar’s was a high-pitched voice, with just a touch of a whine.
    â€œI don’t see it, Cap’n,” Lemmer answered, peering down into the dark waters. His chin shook a bit as though he already guessed what was coming, and it made his jutting beard quiver. His eyes were small and sharp, and they were placed close in, right next to the thin bridge of his long, crooked nose, so close in fact that Delaney often wondered if Lemmer saw everything like he was looking from two sides of a wall at once.
    â€œJust reach in the water there,” Belisar said, almost gently, the fat flesh under his eyes rising up with dark pleasure. “I’m sure you’ll find it if you just reach your hand in.”
    Then Lemmer’s head jerked upward as his pinpoint eyes searched his captain’s, recognizing only too well the dancing gleam he saw there. “But Cap’n…”
    â€œYou lost it, Mr. Harps. You left our dear Mr. Delaney to die without a fighting chance. So just reach in the water, and fish it out for him.”
    â€œBut…there’s them Chompers in there…” Lemmer said pitifully. The Hants had called these fish the Jom Perhoo, but never explained what that meant. Lemmer had translated it directly into a word he recognized. It certainly fit.
    Belisar leaned back against the small boat’s high stern planking, quite at ease. “Blue, you may need to help our reluctant Mr. Harps.”
    Blue Garvey had the oars in his calloused hands. He was a big man, master at arms aboard Belisar’s ship, and just the sort of man a pirate captain would trust with all his ship’s weapons. He was loyal as a collared bulldog, though it was rumored aboard ship he had no heart at all. Word was he’d lost it in a poker game with the devil. Delaney didn’t believe that sort of talk. Still, if ever there was a man who would hand his heart over on a bet, Delaney figured it would be Blue Garvey. He was merciless as sunrise on execution day.
    Blue took Lemmer’s arm above the wrist in an iron grip.
    â€œNo!” Lemmer squawked.
    â€œYou’d rather your hand, or all the rest of you?” Belisar asked with a satisfied sort of smirk. “Mr. Garvey won’t be letting go his grip till one side or the other of you goes in the drink.”
    Lemmer couldn’t parse the meaning of that, so Belisar explained it patiently, like a schoolmaster. “Do you see where Mr. Garvey has his grip on your wrist, Mr. Harps? Well, he can put the short side in, which wouldbe from your wrist to your fingertips…Or, he can put the long side in, which would be from your wrist to your heels. It’s your choice, but I suggest the former. I’d hate for you to lose