Chapter four
In which crime is committed
Ronon found Sheppard at the rail, his face turned upwards, sensing the air. "It's going to rain before the night is over," the captain said.
Ronon said what he had come to say. "I don't like this."
"The weather?" Sheppard said with half a smile. So that was to be the way of it, then. Sometimes before a dangerous endeavour, Sheppard's tension manifested itself in scathing words and ice. Ronon preferred that, he thought, to the smiles.
"You know it's not that." He leant on the rail, openly using his bulk to reinforce his point. "It's this whole affair. You're still not well…"
"It's been five days, four of them with our charming guest on board. I think that counts as at least ten."
"You're not well," Ronon persisted. "You're healing, but you're not healed. Let me go."
"You are going, Ronon."
He tightened his grip on the rail. "Let me and Teyla do it ourselves. I want you to stay behind."
"You want, Ronon?" And there, at last, was the ice, or a glimmer of it.
Warm breezes stirred his hair. He heard distant voices, but nothing near. There was little that could not be said in front of the crew, but perhaps there were some things. "You don't have to do everything, Sheppard," he said. "You don't have to lead every excursion."
"I don't." The smile was back, but so was the ice, not far behind it. "I let you and Teyla bring us our charming guest."
"Then let us do this," Ronon pleaded. "You stay here and heal." Then, when Sheppard still gave him nothing, he found himself saying, "Don't you trust us?"
"You know I do." There was no ice now, and no smiles.
And Ronon knew, of course, which was what made it worse. Few of the crew ever mentioned the name of Aiden Ford, but Beckett could always be persuaded to talk about anything, especially when stolen brandy was pressed into his hand. Ford had been Sheppard's right-hand man in the early days, until he had led an expedition to shore, and had never returned. "The captain changed after that," Beckett had said. "He'd lost men before, and he's lost men since, but this was something different. He'd planned to lead the expedition himself, you see. In his mind, it should have been him."
"But, either way, it's madness to let McKay come," Ronon said now.
"You're saying I'm crazy?" Sheppard raised one eyebrow.
"We abducted him from his bed," he said. "We're keeping him here against his will. And you're taking him into a town…"
"He's the only one who can recognise the supplies he needs."
Sheppard's tone brooked no argument, but from that very first day, Ronon had won the privilege of arguing, even when the cause was hopeless. "Get him to write descriptions or do drawings, then." When Sheppard said nothing, he hissed, "He's going to get you killed, Sheppard. He'll shout."
"I'll stop him."
"I'll stop him." He moved his hand to the hilt of his blade. "If he as much as opens his mouth…"
"Then you'll be gutting him as soon as he sets foot on shore." The smile was back, and Sheppard, seldom one to touch, clapped Ronon on the shoulder. "This is my game, and we do it my way."
"But –"
"No." Sheppard shook his head, and turned his back to the rail, leaning against the ship that was his own. "I appreciate your concern, but there is nothing more to discuss."
And Ronon had known that it would end like this, of course, just as Sheppard had surely known that he would object in just this way. "Had to try," he said, more lightly than he felt.
"Yes." Sheppard looked at him, and if he had been about to say something else, it was nipped in the bud by the loud protestations that heralded the arrival of McKay.
The game was afoot.
The rain started not long after they left the Atlantis. Teyla felt the heavy drops strike the back of her hands on the oars, and turned her face upwards to receive them. There was always something refreshing about rain, even when it came in the form of storms that threatened to tear the timbers of the ship apart.
McKay predictably complained, sheltered beneath his hat and coat. "I'm going to get soaked through. I'm going to catch my death. Oh! Is it a storm? I've heard about these tropical storms."
"Just regular rain," John said. He was in the bow of the ship, but for now he had turned his back to their destination, and was looking back at his ship as it faded into the darkness. She did not need light to know what his expression would be.
"You could help hoist the sail," she said sharply to McKay. "That would stop you catching your death."
"Me?" he squawked, as if the very thought was an outrage.
"There is no such thing as gentleman or commoner when life is on the line," Ronon grunted, not looking up from his work.
"Very trite." McKay sniffed, "but I see the great Captain Sheppard isn't doing his share of work."
"He would –" she started hotly, but John stopped her, holding up a hand.
"Sound travels across water," he said, no longer gazing after his fading ship. "You don't want to draw attention. If a cannon ball smashes into the boat, it won't make much difference that you're our innocent prisoner, and we're the dastardly pirates. We'll all be dead at the bottom of the sea."
She heard McKay suck in a breath for a tirade, then snap his mouth shut with an audible sound. He said nothing for a long while, as the boat slowly edged towards shore. She remembered the first time she had hauled a sail, and felt just how heavy they could be. Rowing was worse, though. She had thought herself about to die from the agony. Those first few weeks on the brig had been a physical hell, but she had bitten her lip and not complained, and soon her body had changed shape, muscles forming where before they had been just softness.
I could have been embroidering handkerchiefs, she thought, or cowering under a parasol at the merest hint of rain.
Water trickled down her back, easing the stickiness of sweat. Her hair was pulled back in a rough knot at the nape of her neck, and the soft leather shoes on her feet felt like a second skin, and for a moment, despite everything, she grinned into the darkness and the cool rain that peppered the ocean around them, and the breeze that stirred her wild, free hair.
"I don't even know where we are," McKay whispered, as the trees on the shore became audible, even above the patter of the rain.
"Hispaniola," the captain told him. "Saint-Domingue."
"Oh," McKay said. "I haven't seen any charts." It was said with a touch of defensiveness, as if he was suddenly afraid they would think less of him because of his ignorance.
"No." She heard the smile in John's voice, and the tension that underlaid it, and she bit back the retort she wanted to make.
None of you are free, she remembered McKay saying. Of course they were not. She had traded one prison for another sort of trap. Once she had spent half a year on the Atlantis, she had known that she could never leave. This prison was voluntary, and there was much joy in it, but that did not make it any less of a prison for all that. She could sail beneath the stars with the wind in her hair, but she could not see her mother again, and she would very probably not see old age.
"Where are we going?" McKay's voice was too loud, but they were in the shallows now, and it was drowned by the swaying palm trees and the waves dragging at the sand.
"There's a certain settler," John said, as he jumped out, water to his knees, and prepared the haul to little boat in. "Quite the eccentric. Considers himself a scientist, just like you, though far less accomplished than you, of course. His home is a treasure trove of useful equipment."
McKay was holding onto both sides of the boat, as the waves rocked it from side to side. She heard his quivering breathing, and realised that he was probably entirely terrified. They had dragged him from his home and swept him up into an adventure that he had not wanted to be part of. He was a prisoner, and he spent every day in fear of his life. "You've robbed him before," he said.
"Of course." John grinned. "We're entirely without scruples."
Teyla jumped out of the boat, and offered McKay a hand. "As long as you stay quiet," she said gently, "no harm will come to you."
"But I don't know how to stay quiet," McKay said, almost sadly.
They started walking, and then they kept on walking. They walked and walked, and kept on walking, and it must have been miles, and he'd heard of labourers who walked fifteen miles to market, then fifteen miles back again, but that didn't mean that just anyone could do it, and his feet hurt, and it was raining. Raining! When it rained, you got your man to throw more wood onto the fire, and settled down in an armchair with the Almagest and chuckled over the quaint mistakes that the ancients had made, and thanked your lucky stars – not that you believed in them, of course – that you had been born in a more enlightened age, and then you moved to your table and made notes for your treatise that would usher Europe into a new scientific revolution. You didn't go outside in it. You especially didn't go outside in it in the dark.
With pirates, he added, setting out to do some crime.
He was quite ridiculously wet, soaked through to his shirt, and the air was thick with moisture, and felt too thick to properly breathe. The trees above him were most definitely not the trees of home. There were no mighty beech trees, no elegant birches, no oak and no ash. The trees had leaves that shivered, and thin bare trunks that swayed in the wind, making the leaves whisper as if they were plotting with each other to bring him down. The ground squelched under foot, and he knew that there were all manner of horrible insects, and…
"Crocodiles!" he gasped. "Are there crocodiles? I read about them in Herodotus. They can eat a man whole."
"There may be all manner of monsters," Sheppard said, "but if you keep your voice down…"
"I know. I know. Being quiet."
He wondered if he had ever been quiet so miserable. This wasn't exercising his strengths. Working in his cabin for the last few days, there had been times when he had almost been happy, as he had perfected his design and been so sure that even Halley would judge his the superior model. On the second day, he had removed his cravat, and on the third day he had gone out on deck without his hat, although the ferocity of the sun had quickly sent him scurrying back to reclaim it. Nobody had pursed their lips, looking at him as if he was transgressing some common law of decency by being seen thus in public. Nobody had seemed to care what he looked like at all.
But they cared about what he could do. Looking at his workings, Sheppard had grinned and called him a marvel. Of course, the grin was a death's head grin and murder lay beneath it… and, really, if a common murderer said good things about you, you couldn't put any store in it… But Sheppard had said he was a marvel, just because of the work that issued from his intellect.
His foot sank into mud up to the ankle. "Are we nearly there yet?"
"Nearly." Sheppard stopped, with Ronon and the woman – he now knew that she was called Teyla, but it was impolite to call a woman by her Christian name. Of course, it was impolite to think of her as 'the woman', but she left him with no choice – flanking him.
"We're nearly there." Sheppard's voice suddenly took on a tone that reminded Rodney of all the times his father had told him off when he had accidentally broken some knick-knack or frippery while rushing through the house for paper or a microscope – though, really, it was only to be expected. Tiny filigree ponies with topaz eyes were made to be sacrificed on the altar of scientific discovery, and deserved nothing less. "If you do anything to endanger us…"
"I'll kill you," Ronon said.
"The same holds true on land as it did on the boat." Sheppard glanced at Ronon, then back to Rodney. "If you shout out, anyone who comes won't distinguish between you and us. You're with me, and that implicates you, at least for tonight."
"I'll say I'm your prisoner."
"You aren't bound. You haven't been mistreated. Who would believe you?" Sheppard took a step forward; held by his voice, Rodney recoiled, but could not retreat. "I've already told you that you won't be harmed, and that promise stands. We're good at this." He gave a quick smile, faintly visible in the darkness. "You aren't in any danger tonight, unless it's danger of your own making. Keep your head down, be a good boy, and tell us what we need to steal, and you'll be safely back in your cabin in no time."
Rodney nodded; what else could he do? He nodded, and they walked on, and soon reached buildings, shrouded in dark. A dog barked far away. The trees thinned and the mud hardened and became tracks, marked with grooves from carriage wheels and wagons. The rain grew heavier, though, and he thought that the little town looked very sad.
There were no lights, but the moon, just past full, was bright enough behind the rain clouds to cast the whole world in a faint grey light. Then, a few steps later, he saw a golden light away to his left. It was a watch tower, he thought, keeping watch on the sea, looking out for pirates who would steal in during the night to rob people of life and happiness. Over here! he wanted to shout. He's here! But his throat felt clogged, incapable of uttering words.
"There is a watchman," the woman hissed, her voice barely louder than the wind.
Sheppard nodded. Ronon took off, and for a man who was so large, he seemed to shrink and become no more than a shadow. When Rodney blinked, Ronon seemed to disappear completely. I don't believe in spirits, he told himself. Ronon was just a man, and that made it worse, far worse. Men preyed on men, and there was such nastiness in the world, whereas the world of the stars and the elements was so pure and so uncruel. You were never safe. You could amass a head full of knowledge such as the world had never seen, but could still be cut down by the footpad's knife.
They waited – Rodney, and a woman in man's clothes, and the most heartless killer in Christendom. Ronon returned, appearing out of the darkness like one of the ghosts that Rodney didn't believe in, oh no, he most definitely did not. "He won't be troubling us," he said.
"You killed him." Rodney turned to Sheppard. "He killed him." He looked for blood, but the darkness hid it.
"So in we go," Sheppard whispered. "Be quiet. Once inside, use signs or touch." He touched Rodney on the arm as if to demonstrate, and it felt like the touch of death.
His mind in a daze, he barely remembered what came next. They opened a window; that much he knew. Sheppard caught him when his foot got caught and he almost fell, and it was horrible, to be so close to a pirate. But more horrible a moment later, when he thought about the fact that he was now inside somebody else's house, having entered without permission, and he would be killed if anybody caught him here – killed, even though he was innocent; his name becoming a curse and his memory spat upon, even though he hadn't ever done anything wrong. It seemed like the worst thing of all – the injustice of it.
And then they were in a laboratory of sorts, though a slapdash one, made by somebody without enough wit to deserve one. Somebody was holding up a candle, shielding it with their hand, and the faces of his companions turned into the demons that they were, all fiery light and deep shadow.
Sheppard's hand moved, like darting flame in the flickering light of the candle. Tell us what you need.
He needed tubing, and a valve – or, better still, the materials with which to make a better one. He needed glass and lead – no, Sheppard said he had another source for that – and… God, so many things. He needed a fully equipped laboratory. Halley had employed a team of labourers, but Rodney was being expected to do this all alone in the cabin of a pirate ship. It couldn't work. Even with his intellect, it couldn't work.
A touch on his arm. A look. A warning.
Oh. He swallowed, and wandered around, his flesh creeping at the thought that he was in somebody else's house. That, he indicated. That. Ronon picked up what he needed. Sheppard had come with a bag. The woman was on watch, her ear to the door.
Just days before, he had been woken from sleep to find Ronon standing over him. Ronon had… God! Had he killed Turland? You expected your house to be like a fortress. It was yours – your private sanctum where you could shut out the ridicule and cruelty of the world, and just be yourself. When people just broke right in, it was tainted. Somewhere in this house, perhaps just separated from him by the thickness of a ceiling and a floor, the owner was asleep, thinking himself safe, and…
Another touch. He clenched his hands at his side, and continued to move around. That, and that, and that.
He moved in a daze. Sometimes he almost bubbled over with the urge to shout – Sheppard's here! He's in your house! Take him! Save me! – but he felt as if someone had their hand around his throat, preventing him from producing sound. That, he pointed. That…
"There's someone outside!" Ronon hissed.
"The light!" That was Sheppard. Their candle flame was blown out, but that only served to show the torch that was approaching outside, and even over the sound of his sudden rapid breathing, Rodney could hear someone speaking, and then a shout.
"I guess it's back to the boat." Sheppard's hand closed on his arm, and he was dragged to the window, pushed out, to land in a tumble of hands and knees in the mud. Ronon landed beside him, and was up before him, to turn back two steps ahead of him, and reach for his arm.
The shout was repeated, and answered by another. A dog barked, far nearer now than it had barked before. "What now?" he gasped.
"We run."
"But I can't…" But Sheppard was grabbing him, and Ronon tugged at his sleeve, and his feet were pounding on the path, then sinking into the mud, and rain sheeted against his face and poured down his front, and his breath, oh God, his breath was tearing in his lungs, and people were shouting behind him, and there was a second dog, and a third…
He's here! He's over here! Take him!
"I can't…" His chest felt as if it was being torn in two. His legs felt as if they had been turned to pulp. He was going to die. Oh God, he was going to die. He was…
Someone grabbed at him. He tried to scream – more like a dying gasp, really – but a hand closed over his mouth. He struggled, panting, heaving, and the hand was removed. "Quiet," Sheppard whispered. "Take a minute."
"But…"
"Ronon's gone to draw them off," Sheppard whispered.
"But…"
"He's good at it. He'll be fine."
And slowly his breathing came under control, although his legs… His legs hurt, and he needed to lie down and sleep, but Sheppard was already pulling him out from behind the tree – and he had mud all over him, and was soaked – and was dragging him on. It was miles to the boat, miles, but the noise of the dogs was fading, and…
"I thought… you said… you were good… at this… robbery thing," he gasped.
"This is good," Sheppard said. "No-one's dead yet."
And he saw nothing but darkness and the figures at his side, and sensed nothing but the mud beneath his feet and the rain on his face, and felt nothing but the tearing pain of too much exertion, but at least they were moving slower now, more like just a fast walk, and minutes passed… minutes… hours…
The trees thinned. The boat was there, and Ronon! Ronon was in the boat! "I lost them."
"Are you…?"
"Not a scratch."
Helped by Sheppard, Rodney staggered into the boat, and collapsed to lie on his back. Rain sheeted into his face, and it was cool, so cool, so delicious, so fresh. He took it in with his tongue. His chest rose and fall, and he felt the boat quake beneath him as it was pushed off, and heard the sound of oars, and he was safe, and he was resting, and no-one had torn him to pieces with their fangs or dragged him off to be hanged for a crime he had not committed.
It was a long time before he was able to sit up. They were far from land. Lights were bobbing on the shore, but if people were shouting invective, they were too far away to be heard. "I thought you said you were good at this," he said again.
Nobody answered. Ronon was sculling, keeping them steady in the ocean. The woman was bent over Sheppard, and in the faint light, Rodney saw a dark mark on his exposed shirt.
"You're hurt," he gasped. "I didn't hear them shooting."
It was the woman who answered, in a voice that started sharp and grew yet sharper as she spoke. "It was not from today. Captain Sheppard was shot the day before you came on board. The injury has reopened; that is all."
"Oh." Rodney had no idea what to say. He thought back to all the times he had seen the captain around the ship. There had been no sign of injury then, had there? "Then… Then it was rather stupid to come out tonight, wasn't it? Why didn't you say something? Is it a case of ridiculous pirate pride?
Amazingly, Sheppard chuckled. "Quite the match for your ridiculous scientist pride, don't you think?"
"At least I don't almost get myself and everybody else killed," Rodney retorted. "I don't break into people's houses and steal things."
Sheppard tried to sit up, but the woman stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry, McKay," Sheppard said, "but we needed you there. Couldn't have done it without you. It'll be the last time, I promise."
Rodney huffed, and looked away. The sail was raised, and as they inched slowly back to the Atlantis, the rain stopped, and by the time they were back on deck, the stars were out.
He was still looking away hours later as he leant on the rail, watching the unfamiliar stars, with the sound of singing drifting up from below. Then he retired to his cabin, but did not sleep.
end of chapter four
