"This seems a bad idea, lass," Gibbs pointed out. "Breakin into a famous pirate's hideaway is bad luck."
Anamaria rolled her eyes. She jiggled the metal pick sideways and frowned at the lack of response. Normally she had no trouble picking locks, and this one was starting to get on her nerves. After a row to shore with near no help from Joshamee Gibbs, she had not felt much like fighting with a stubborn bit of metal. She had not felt much like fighting with anything stubborn, including the superstitious sailor. But after fighting with the stubborn bit of metal, she felt very argumentative.
"Not if the famous pirate's long gone," she spat.
"Double bad luck when he's dead," Gibbs lamented.
Anamaria grit her teeth.
Gibbs frowned at the troublesome lock. "Ain't got her picked yet?"
"Does it look like I have it picked?" She glared at him and turned back to work, jamming the pick in the keyhole. Twisting it, she tried to find the niche that would catch the cam and turn it against the pins inside. She found none. She heard not the sound she was trying to hear, the click that would admit them into the house. "Blast!"
"Is it locked?"
"If it wasn't locked would I be trying to pick it?!"
"Did you try the knob?"
"It ain't gonna turn if it's locked, ya fool! Watch!" Anamaria yanked her pick out of the tumbler. Scowling up at Gibbs, she grabbed the doorknob and twisted. "Ya see? It ain't—" The knob twisted under her hand. Her gaze hooked to it and then returned to Gibbs. The sailor's grin flushed her face. When he patted her shoulder she tsked and slapped his meaty hand away.
They watched as she eased the door open.
Under his breath Gibbs cussed an incantation of protection to ward off the doubly terrible bad luck they were sure to suffer as they crossed the threshold. Anamaria smacked his shoulder. She shut the door quietly behind them and squinted into the darkness.
The Tortugan cottage was a bright and airy place in the daytime, but at night it was as dark as any. Luckily, Anamaria had spent a bit of time there and knew that to her right on the wall rested a candle lantern. She reached for the matches in her pocket. The struck stick cast enough light on the wall to spot the lamp, and she thrust the flame at the wicks of the candles inside. In the yellow glow of light she blew out the match, grabbed the lantern from its hook on the wall, and snuck through the open room afront them.
"Well come on," she growled at Gibbs lagging behind her.
In the dark and lit only by candlelight, the room was much more enchanting than she remembered. It had always been striking—gilded statues and exotic silks and draughts of velvet. But without the bright sun streaming in the windows, it was a murky, intoxicating space. Gold caught her eye and Anamaria smiled, running a hand over the trident of Neptune's statue as she passed it. With a glance backward she found Gibbs studying the gilded god. She smacked away his hand and, scowling back at him, turned her head toward the hallway ahead.
Gibbs gave a grunt of displeasure and followed.
The leopard fur under their boots muffled their steps as they crept forward. Doorways flanked by golden sentinels, set in gilded arches, and cloaked in thick velvet drapes lined the long passageway. Anamaria tried not to let the splendid walls that shimmered in the candlelight, nor the gold glow of the decorations, distract her. Fine as they might be, she was set on getting to the last door.
It was straight ahead at the end of the hall. Shrouded in velvet, as deep and dark a blue as the midnight lagoon outside, the shining jewel of a door was larger than the ones they had passed and its setting twice as decorated. Elaborate designs, swirls and knots and swishes of fish tail, were carved into the arches that crowned it. A pair of golden mermaids, one finned femme to each side, stood guard.
"Not one cursed fishwoman but two," Gibbs grumbled behind her. "It gets worse and worse."
"Mermaids ain't bad luck," she growled to him. "Specially statues of em!"
"They're trouble sure as the day's long."
"Well then ya got double the trouble, ya crazy coot." Anamaria stopped. She held up a hand to silence the muttering Gibbs and listened. Save for the soft sound of her breathing and the less soft of that of the oaf behind her the place was quiet. Pressing her lips together, she stepped, one boot quietly over the other, between the reaching hands of the mermaidens toward the door. She reached a hand out to grasp velvet but stopped short. Beyond the thick curtain there was a stirring and she had heard it. Flicking a hand up she hushed the grumbling Gibbs, who'd plodded right into her, once more.
The sound was soft, but Anamaria had been a pirate long enough to hone her ability to hear such sounds. The one teasing her ears was but a whisper. It was a rustling of silks, she decided. It was silks rustling and the soft murmur of sleep. She lowered her hand and looked over her shoulder at Gibbs. "Ya ready?"
The scruffy sailor frowned. "Don't got a choice do I?"
"Now Joshamee ya know I ain't the demandin sort," she whispered. "Ya always got a choice. Follow me in or don't. But I'd be choosin wisely. Wouldn't want Jack to find out what happens," she pointed accusingly at the man's chest, "to all his missing rum."
Gibbs flushed, hiding the flask beneath his shirt. "Aye." He grinned and nodded toward the door. "Ladies first."
Anamaria rolled her eyes. Taking a deep breath, she parted the velvet curtains in the middle and stepped through them to the other side. If she'd never been in the room before she'd have been bamboozled. It was lavishly decorated and equally as intoxicating in the candlelight as the other they'd crept through.
Stepping carefully on the plush rug under her heels, Anamaria approached the bed. Drenched in the moonlight streaming from a wide window above it and draped in sumptuous silks and satins, the grand thing, in all its sprawling gilded glory, was fit for a king. But it was a Queen who slept in it.
The pirates stood staring down at her sleeping form.
"Ya know," Anamaria swallowed, "I ain't ever seen her look as sweet."
For all the years she had sailed the same waters as the slight captainess, she could not remember such a soft smile on the fine face of the woman. No, on the contrary Anamaria remembered most the woman's lips pressed in a thin line or, on occasion—usually when dealing with insufferable circumstances, merciless villains, indomitable evil entities, and Jack—a hissing, teeth-baring grimace. She had seen many a smirk on the woman's face and many a grin but never had she seen Alice Witter, Ice Queen of the Caribbean, with the pink bud of her mouth open in a tiny smile that made her seem a perfect doll.
It wasn't that she didn't look the part to begin with what with the shiny snow-white hair, pale porcelain skin, and fine features. That she did—down to the ringlets curled in her hair and the tiny bow tied at her neck. But dolls had rosy cheeks, soft smiles, and wide bright eyes. Alice Witter was called the Ice Queen of the Caribbean for a reason that did not include any of those things. The niece of Onry Witter, politically correct pirate king still revered after his death as one of the sea's finest embodiments of the salted spirit, was sharp as ice and twice as cold.
Or so the stories went.
In any case, Anamaria didn't like the woman much but she needed her. She needed to wake her and she dreaded it. Alice looked for all the world to be perfectly content in her snoozing. If the woman was having a breakthrough—some strange emotion slicing through the ice around her heart—Anamaria did not want to be the one to interrupt.
Neither did Gibbs. "Maybe it be best to let her sleep, Marie," he rasped to her. "Let her see the Pearl for herself."
"Let her wonder why it's there," she whispered, nodded fast.
"Aye." Gibbs grinned. "Let her wake and wonder on her own!"
"Let her come to the Pearl when she will!"
"Aye, lettin her sleep would be best, lass."
"Unfortunately, I am already awake." The woman's cool, clear voice pierced the hush. Both pirates froze, finding the open end of the barrel of a golden gun aimed at them and as loaded with danger as the steely eyes she gazed at them with. "And not, I should like to add, of my own free will." Alice Witter sat up and slid herself back against her bed pillows, arms out to hold the pistol trained on the two pirates at the foot of her bed. She smirked at them. "And I don't need to wonder. I already know. Coincidentally my answer is no as well."
"No one asked nothin of ya," Anamaria spat.
"Not yet. But," the woman's eyes narrowed on her, "you will."
"Why you—"
"Captain Witter, it's Jack." Gibbs stepped in front of her. "He ain't right. Somethin's amiss with the lad. Off center, he is and ain't no one been able to talk sense into him."
"Mister Gibbs, do tell me something I don't already know."
The sailor frowned.
But Anamaria had caught the note of laughter in the woman's voice. She smiled in spite of herself and pushed Gibbs out of the way. "Look lady I ain't no fool. I know ya know somethin's wrong and I know you'll be on the Pearl soon as ya can to find out what. Much as any of us say otherwise we all care about that daft pirate and his bloody boat."
Alice arched a brow. She laid the gun on the table beside her and folded her arms across her chest. The moonlight glinted in her grey eyes as she stared up at them. Moments passed in silence as she regarded them, from Anamaria to Gibbs and back. "Fine." A soft sigh slumped her shoulders. "I'll get dressed. But I promise nothing." A flash of a smile crossed her face and was gone. "Now get out."
Anamaria tried to keep the triumph from her face as she nodded. Clashing with Alice Witter was nothing new, but winning the battle was. Not wanting to jinx it, she turned and followed Gibbs from the room. Over her shoulder, she smiled sweetly at the woman and topped it off with a wink. "We'll be waitin."
So they did wait.
Anamaria was near to knocking her head against the wall. She'd been standing in the great open room, with a too snoopy Joshamee Gibbs, for what seemed like weary hours while the woman readied herself. For all the time the wench took, Anamaria had guessed that she could fairly assume the woman fancied herself a princess rather than a captainess. No woman she knew, not even the Governor's daughter Elizabeth, took as long to freshen up as the Ice Queen.
Gibbs was admiring a set of smooth obsidian candlesticks.
"Oh come on!" Anamaria stomped a boot. "It ain't tea time at the King's palace you'll be off to!"
"Shut up!"
Anamaria stared in surprise at the shrill that screeched at her from somewhere in the place.
"I'll not be hurried to do something I don't wish to do!"
Gibbs snickered and poked a rosewood statue of Siddharta Buddha in its round belly.
Anamaria rolled her eyes.
It was sometime later when the woman appeared in the doorway, dressed to the hilt in pale blue silk and ruffles of snow white. She'd even tied a matching bow at her neck and taken the time to tend to her corkscrew curls. Anamaria eyed her but she seemed to ignore it, slipping into the room and slapping Gibbs' hands from the trident of Neptune he had been about to touch.
The sailor scowled.
"For not wantin to go ya sure did gussy yourself up." Anamaria pointed out, noting with a skeptical eye the yards of lace fluffing her skirts and a row of satin bows lining the back of the woman's bodice. She folded her arms. "What's in the bag?"
Alice Witter glanced at the sack slung over her shoulder. It was squirming. "Personal items."
Anamaria quirked a brow.
"There's a trunk in the hall," Alice said, breezing past them to take an ivory-handled dagger from a display mount, "and two chests in my bedchamber." She hiked up her skirts-ruffles of lace and all-and slid the weapon into a sheath fastened to the lacy garter around her thigh. Patting the layers primly back into place, she turned and nodded to the pirates, smiling sweetly at them both in turn and serving Anamaria with a wink. Then she turned sharply toward the door. "I'll be waiting!"
