Blaggard's Moon Read Free Page A

that nice pair of boots.”
    Blue emitted a guttural hiss, sounding like a snake with poor sinuses, that Delaney knew from experience to be a laugh. “I’ll take ’is boots, Cap’n, then chunk all the rest of him in for ye!”
    â€œI’m sure you would, Mr. Garvey, and I thank you for the offer. But Mr. Harps will make the right choice. Won’t you, Mr. Harps?”
    And he did. The Chompers were in fact exceedingly vicious, or exceedingly hungry, or both. Inside of sixty seconds of blood frenzy, Lemmer’s hand was nothing but white bone and gristle, still attached at the wrist.
    Delaney shuddered. It was Lemmer’s face, for some reason, and not his hand, that stuck in Delaney’s mind. It wasn’t pain there, not really. It was more like…amazement. And at the same time…sadness. It was odd. It was as though Lemmer was amazed to be losing his hand, and grieving for the loss of it at the same time.
    Delaney shook his head to clear the image, which didn’t work very well, because after the shaking he wondered if that’s what his own face would look like when the end came, when the mermonkeys took out his bones. He looked at his knobbled knees, his scarred knuckles, and he flexed his fingers. He’d broken several of them, plus an arm and a leg and a toe over the years, but they’d all healed fine. Gnarled and rough as his bones might be from the hard labor of hauling sheets and tying off lanyards and climbing ratlines in the rain, fighting and falling and rising up again bruised and bleeding and battered, they were still good bones, with a lot of years left in them. He’d be sorry to see them go. Sorrier even than he was about his knife.
    Then he looked up through the hole in the cloud canopy to the sky above. He needed to find a better place to put his mind. His whole life had come down to a post, a pond, and a few hours of daylight, and all he could do was think on the worst possible things, both what had already happened and what was yet to happen. He squinted against the sun that flamed down into this dank hole. It looked like a torch against a blue background.
    Yellow light in a blue sky.
    A blue-eyed little girl in a yellow dress. Eyes shining.
    Now there was something to think on! Delaney brightened and inhaled the dank air as if it were suddenly fresh and pleasant. Her face came back to him now, and it was a mercy. Her eyes were sad, but notlike Lemmer’s had been sad. Hers were blue and sweet and made you want to pick her up, protect her, take her back to her mama. How could anyone see such a sad, sweet face as that little girl’s and remember his orders? It’s no wonder he didn’t obey. Those eyes had little white specks in the blue parts, like she had inside her a whole world of sky and clouds, all shining out.
    She’d be dead now if he hadn’t done what he’d done. He knew that. She’d be dead if Delaney had followed Belisar’s orders the way Belisar had meant them. But now she was alive. He grinned, showing the piranha the gum line above his teeth. She was alive, and he was the reason. That was a good thing.
    But now Delaney was dead, or nearly so. And that was a bad thing.
    His grin faded. His face bunched up, and he scratched behind a ragged ear. There was something all akilter in the world when obeying orders would have got her killed and disobeying would get him killed instead. And it was doubly akilter when neither he nor the girl deserved such a fate. He hadn’t been given his orders aright. Go take care of the girl, was what Belisar had said. If he had wanted her dead, he should have said so plainly.
    Delaney hoped she was running far away now, far away and safe aboard the Flying Ringby, running from the pirates, far north out of the Warm Climes, north toward the Havens Tortugal where the Kingdom of Nearing Vast held sway, and at least some sort of law could be counted upon. She’d be safe