Chapter 15: John Silver; How His Act of Piracy Affects Him
Barak resembled Silver's prize in every fancy, save for the fact he stood, moved about, and stared with admiration and approbation at the comparable remains. He was, in every aspect otherwise, much like a corpse himself; his coat—the great red coat that Silver had admired the day he met the man— each of his hands, and his face was spattered with flecks of gleaming blood, and his clothes were tattered in great slashes along his torso and sleeves. His own blood dripped from his right shoulder unevenly, and crusted about the wound with vigor, though he never heeded it until he lumbered below deck several hours after his inspection of the fruits of Silver's exploit.
After the captain's late, somewhat curtailed correspondence with Silver as the siege began, Barak had entertained little expectancy to be presented with an enemy that was affirmed to be run through—thrice, nonetheless—by his little server boy, but he bore extensive ovation to Silver upon beholding such proficient craftsmanship on the body and observable mastery of the sword.
He inquired to Silver if he had been trained in fencing, or of the possibility that he had ever seen the activity tried.
"No sir," answered Silver, after a pause to look about him. By this time, most of the pirates had accumulated about Barak—and some others clustered around the door of the roundhouse, among them Timeus; all of whom resembled corpses as well—to view Silver's esteemed handiwork. Silver, internally, was still being inundated by the power he had earned when he stole away with the Aquanog's life, and he quivered slightly from the entrancing trial; the realization of capacity being expensive, but worth all he paid. With hair erect on his nape, he delighted himself morbidly on the thought of his potential—his authority over the other individuals in the room. Their lives could be taken by a simple act, which could be realized by even a boy of fifteen.
Barak continued to review the body. He then jumped at Silver's answer minutes after it had been given, as though he had just heard it. "Ne'er seen the sword tried, boy?"
"No, never."
Barak slapped one thigh as he turned back to the body. "Shiver me sides! An' with sich a clean cut as that! Ye is a pride t' have in tow, Silver, I'll give ye that faster n' I drink me brandy, though it's a mite shockin', t' be sure!"
Silver's eyes glistened up toward Barak's great head. He smiled. He would not kill Barak, he decided frivolously, despite the fact he had the ability to do so whenever he wished—which he considered very merciful on his own part. Barak had always been significantly affable toward him, and was most likely the sole reason he had survived so long among the pirates—the pirates that had so long known of Silver's new found power, and could have used it against Silver whenever they liked.
Barak looked up from the Aquanog and glanced at the pirates lingering in the doorways around him in the roundhouse. "Gentlemen," he grinned, his yellow teeth blazing against the red clustered about his face, "start a-cleanin' this mess off o' me ship, but take this here heap o' guts to me stateroom when I says for ye to; clean 'im up, and take his fingerprints. Then toss 'im into th' drink. Silver," Barak looked down at the Ursid, who was looking down at his murder. The pirates, responding, fell away from their positions to comply Barak's orders, leaving the two alone with the corpse.
"Silver, I want ye t' learn somethin', boy", Barak said, his voice coarsely and crackling with what seemed like elegant kindness, and he stooped down beside the body's legs, and gestured sweetly for Silver to follow. Bending his knees, the adolescent placed himself next to Barak, and moved hair from before his eyes. Barak put his face very close to Silver's, grinning, and said in a low voice, "afore my teachings, though, Silver, I need ye t' answer me a question."
"All right."
Barak's eyes seemed to point to the corpse with a jerk in its direction. "What," Barak asked, even lower, "what made ye do it? What happened?"
Silver was suddenly taken by a dull fear. Was Barak implying that Silver had disobeyed him, and had left the roundhouse to submerge into the fray? Quickly, Silver glanced at Barak, and then at the Aquanog. Was it true? Silver bit his lip. Had he actually left the roundhouse? He suddenly could not remember; all he recollected from the hour before was the sound of the sword penetrating the body.
"I didn't leave the roundhouse," Silver answered, falteringly. "He… he found me."
"Why'd you kill 'im, boy?"
Silver considered this to be an appropriate question. Why had he killed him? Silver did not know. At the time, he had not been aware of the power he would possess if he did kill him, so that would not be the proper motivation to conclude upon. He strained his mind to remember, but all he could surface was the red nebula—the red, murderous haze—the skylight, and the chanting.
"I… I didn't leave the roundhouse," Silver repeated, awkwardly, absurdly. "He came in and… found me there."
Barak's patience was consoling. He let a pause respire, and they both stooped over the body in silence.
Silver found himself staring at the Aquanog's yellowed eyes. They were round and bulged from their sockets, like death had made them swell, and the black little pupils curved up toward the ceiling, understanding nothing. Silver's eyes suddenly felt wide to him, and he was seized by a horrifying idea that his eyes looked like the Aquanog's. He blinked, and saw a mural of the blood covering the deck painted on the back of his eyelids.
Silver felt a warm hand catch his chin and turn his head from the Aquanog to Barak's face. Silver's eyes lifted, and saw Barak's brown skin and sunken eyes. They were not comforting, nor were they kind or gentle, or even remotely compassionate, but they understood him; they betrayed the life they supported, which was a consolation of its own. A tangle of Silver's eyelashes framed his window of vision. "I didn't want to die," Silver answered, with a stronger voice than what was to be expected. "That's why I killed him."
Barak clapped a hand on Silver's shoulder benignly and casually, having gotten his answer and keeping it to himself, as though he had tucked it delicately away in his coat pocket. "Ah, boy!" he said with a heavy exhale, "If that's all! Come, look here with me, now, and then I'll let ye go t' yer berth an' rest."
With great dignity—like a surgeon with a patient—Barak gingerly unbuttoned the Aquanog's shirt, and threw it open with a flick of his hand. He then straightened, looked at Silver, and said, in a low voice once more, "Put yer hand in that there pocket, Silver."
Silver looked perplexedly at Barak. Still, the captain insisted with more excited gestures toward the shirt pocket that he had indicated, and Silver allowed himself to reach over and slip his fingertips inside the cloth, and then retracted it rapidly. He looked again at Barak, with one raised eyebrow.
Barak shook his head slowly. "Deeper."
Silver, cautiously, reached over into the cloth pocket again, deeper, this time.
An angelic, cold sting met his fingertips with a surprise that made his hand freeze. "I feel something," Silver thought aloud, inadvertently.
"Well, pull it out, by thunder!" Barak laughed, playfully agitated.
Silver pulled his hand back out, and revealed three coruscating coins of an origin he did not recognize. "Aye!" the brown spacer beside him whistled in awe, "Them be the coins of th' olden days, when Flint sailed th'erium, t' be sure! They's extra-special coins, an' ye may lay to it."
The name Flint made Silver's ears buzz and his head clatter with such suddenness, Silver could have ratified that Barak had struck him hard. "Flint?" Silver repeated loudly, "do you mean that?"
"Aye, boy, by all a' me heart, I do! Them coins is worth keepin'."
Silver moved the coins in his palm with his thumb. "Are they mine to keep?"
"Ye killed the man, did ye not?"
"Yes…"
Barak laughed. "Then they're yours! They're yer prize for takin' part in the raid, and I 'spect ye deserve 'em. Ye better remember that, too, by thunder, or else some of yer mates'll get to yer prizes first. Then you'd have t' slit a few extra throats t' get 'em."
Silver raised his eyebrows, but said nothing more. He had never considered it. Barak had always paid Silver for his work as his servant, and had always paid him his ten goldspecies, and Silver had always been satisfied. He had never once assumed that he could add to his earnings if he ever participated in the raids.
A hot compulsion flared up inside his body—one that had slept dormant for two years and now burned more invigorated and incandescent after being so long forgotten on the sweeping waves of the Etherium. He must become rich.
Silver spread the coins out on the floor, and bent forward to search through the rest of the pockets—any pocket on the body—he could find. Each time he retrieved a new handful of coins, they were the same as the ones he had pulled earlier. "How much," Silver asked, while exploring through the Aquanog's pants pockets, "how much are these coins worth?"
Barak shifted his weight from left to right, and he remained quiet a while, like a mountain, simply watching Silver. "Oh," he rejoined at length, busily, "I s'pose we're lookin' at roughly… by yer standards… one hunnerd of yer goldspecies."
Silver threw the coins down on the roundhouse wood floor in front of him in ecstasy. He counted them. "I have ten of 'em, Barak!"
Before Barak had the chance to speak, Silver turned back to the body, revealed a scrap of paper and an ink pen, and leapt to one of the tables. Barak stood, stiffly, slowly, his eyes after Silver. He lingered on his feet, and then moved wearily to the table as well, and looked over Silver's shoulder. Silver was ferociously scribbling a math problem on the paper.
"Ye writes, boy?" the Captain demanded, at a high octave in his voice, as he pushed Silver's shoulder out of the way so he could place an amazed eye in close proximity of the numerical phenomenon. Silver, recovering from his initial shock, was lost to utter confusion. He had written since he was a young child! "Of course I write," He responded, "Who doesn't write?"
Barak lifted the sheet of paper, and his black eye glistened across the penmanship. "None o' me crew, by thunder, ye learned little rap-scallion!"
Silver looked skeptically at the man hunched over the simple equations Silver had written. None of the crew was educated? Silver wasn't going to believe it. His father had emphasized education so; surely someone else had felt so strongly about it as well in the presence of the pirates. How could everyone on a ship escape the importance of basic skills in writing?
Barak leapt the little distance between them, and put his face very close to Silver's, and demanded, almost maliciously, "An' ye read this, too, don'tche?"
"Yes, I read it." Silver said, insistently. "I read, write, and I do math. Is it that hard to—?"
Barak was no longer paying him any heed; he turned back to the little scrap of paper and fingered the exotic, alien lettering. Silver was impacted with the realization Barak could not read it.
"It only says that I have ten hundred worth of goldspecies in those coins." Silver replied to Barak's big, red back.
A pause. "Go t' yer berth, now, lad," the great man said, lowly, monotonously. "Yer a mite tired, no doubt."
Silver airily collected his coins and floated to the door, until the captain again called his name. He turned and looked at Barak, who hadn't moved. "Yes?" Silver prompted, detachedly.
Barak rotated to face Silver, and he grinned. He shook the piece of paper in the air, close to his ear, and he asked Silver, "Do ye want t' officially be part o' th' crew?"
"Officially?"
"Aye. Do ye want t' be considered a pirate no matter where ye go, and no matter who ye talk to, no matter who ye with? Do ye want to be a man o' fortune yerself, or do ye still want t' be the boy o' 'va man o' fortune?"
Silver wavered on his feet, indecisively. "Will," he murmured, "will I be able to take my place in th' raids with you, and get in on the money you find on your prizes, instead of sittin' in the roundhouse like you've always had me do?"
"Definitely, boy."
Silver lowered his brow, and looked at Barak. He was grinning. "Then yes," Silver replied, mirroring the smile, imagining the many hundreds worth of coins he would obtain, "I want to be a pirate."
On deck, as the Ursid fingered his way down to the forecastle, the setting sun reminded Silver so much of Barak's grin in the roundhouse, he lightly laughed at it.
The induction procedure was performed in the earliest hours of the morning. Silver was roused peremptorily by Timeus and Mercurius from the forecastle and told brusquely by the latter to wake swiftly and follow them onto the deck—Barak had called for Silver. Arduously, into the beacon detonating from the lantern Timeus carried, Silver ascended to a sitting position, and then the cook ensnared his forearm and threw him to his feet, Silver in a somnolent, dully disconcerted haze.
"What time is it?" Silver asked in a voice almost of a moan, his eyes blurring with distress.
"'bout two in th' mornin'." Timeus answered. "Barak wants ye. He says—"
"Nix t' whot th' cap'm says!" interrupted Mercurius, with a breathless oath. "Let 'im find out fer hisself."
"Does he want me t' change?" Silver asked, as the cook pulled him by the arm in the direction of the forecastle door.
"Th' Cap'm don't care, is whot I make o'v it. Long's yer dressed, is what I says, an' ye may lay t' that!" Mercurius answered him, fleetingly, as the two—followed by the pendulant lamplight carried by the dark figure of the craven Timeus—departed the forecastle.
A fog spread thick around the deck and waltzed fragmentarily, cloaked in the darkness and masked with the stars. The black deck swelled in Silver's eyes, and momentarily, he could only see tens of thousands of gleaming yellow amoebas swinging like Timeus's lamplight until his vision adjusted to the new atmosphere. The ship lingered on the starboard tack, and, like black ghosts, Silver could see under the arched foot of the foresail a pod of Orci Galacti in the nebula. Desultorily, he heard them call distantly to the light on the ship, and they moved in their echoes.
Silver slowed his pace, warily watching Mercurius, and sidled close to Timeus. "What are we doing?" he asked in a rough whisper.
"Makin' you a pirate," Timeus returned, barely above a whisper.
Silver paused to think. "Have you been made a pirate?"
"No," Timeus answered. "I've no idea what they're goin' t' do."