Page 36 of Escaping Pirates (Legends of Neverland #4)
G il didn’t wait for a formal goodbye. The coin purse disappeared into her jacket and she spun on her heel. “We need to leave now if we’re going to get this done.”
I fell into step beside her, my shoes striking the cobblestones with more certainty than I felt. Korth called my name once, but I didn’t look back. If I did, I might hesitate, and I couldn’t afford that anymore.
“So did you actually have a plan for this rescue, or are you rushing in with no experience and counting on me to bail you out?” Gil asked. I couldn’t think of her by any other name.
“I’m counting on your loyalty to money. You’ll be getting multiple bounties, and likely more if you help Harlan get to his destination unharmed. His family would probably offer a reward for his safe return.”
Gil stopped so abruptly that I nearly ran into her.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” she told me coldly. “Don’t take me for a fool. Ever. I may play a young boy, but I’m neither young nor a boy. You owe me your life and I collect on my debts. All my debts. Make no mistake. ”
“I didn’t think—don’t! I don’t think you’re a fool.”
“So, we’re talking about Prince Jameson?”
I bit my lip. I wasn’t revealing his identity if she already knew. Tyrone must have told her, or else she was far better connected than I thought. “Yes.”
“I assumed so. That is the only reason I agreed. I expect a handsome reward for saving his skin. Now, what’s your plan?”
“We steal Tyrone’s flares, stow away on the Fortune Hunter , and when he meets up next with Harsh, we rescue Harlan—I mean Jameson—and set off the flare for Korth to send his navy.” I spoke confidently enough that she would know I was serious, but quietly enough that it was for her ears only.
“How are you going to get the flares? Do you know how to pick locks?”
“No.”
“Do you know when Tyrone will meet up with his brother?”
“Soon, I think.”
“Do you know where to hide on the ship so you can go days without being seen? Do you have a plan for getting onboard without being spotted?”
I shook my head. Gil stared at me for so long that I had an intense urge to shuffle my feet and apologize. How could someone so tiny make me feel so small?
“You really do need a fairy godmother,” she informed me. “A hundred things could go wrong before you even get started.”
“What do you suggest, then?” An indignant edge crept into my voice. True, I didn’t have the experience in bounty hunting or extracting people that Gil did, but she didn’t have to be so rude about it. “I’m a merchant’s daughter, not some cutthroat vigilante.”
“Here’s what we are going to do,” Gil said, starting to walk again. “ I will go back aboard as if nothing happened. For a mission like this, we need another man.”
“No, we don’t need anyone else. We could?—”
“Yes, we do need another person. If you want my help, we do things my way, no questions asked. I know what I’m doing and you have no idea what you’re doing.
Before we can hope to rescue anyone, we need to get ahold of those flares, and I can’t pick locks as well as needed for the time constraints we have.
The first order of business is finding and hiding the flares or else there won’t be a bounty or reward to collect.
And you can’t simply act like nothing happened; Tyrone will know you’re behind the flares disappearing, so you need to disappear too. ”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Hide.” Gil came to a halt outside a dimly lit tavern and pointed me toward a haystack next to a barn. “Right now, actually. I have a purchase to make.”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
Gil pulled the coin purse out of her jacket. “You can’t, nor should you. I’m not a trustworthy person.” She pushed open the door to the tavern, her boyish smile instantly and firmly back in place.
I crouched down behind the haystack, heart thumping madly inside my chest. It was utter insanity to put my life, and Harlan’s, in Gil’s hands, but what else could I do?
If I tried to find someone else to take me to the Kraken’s Revenge , dawn would come, Tyrone would discover that I was gone, and the flare would go up.
Even if Gil was just as underhanded as Tyrone, I had no choice but to trust her.
Each minute that crawled by felt like an hour. Each time a horse pranced in its stall or an animal scurried past, I just about leapt out of my skin.
Finally, the door opened, spilling out a rectangle of light. Laughter followed Gil out of the tavern. She was rolling a large barrel and called as she left, “This is just the size of barrel that my mam needed. Thanks, gents!”
“Good luck getting it clean, son!” they hooted.
Gil rolled the barrel over to my hiding place and stood it upright. It smelled strongly of tar. “Still here, are you?” she asked. “If you were smarter, you might’ve run.”
“Lucky for you, I’m good at taking orders,” I told her. “What’s the barrel for?”
“Tar. Captain needs some, and this will be your ticket aboard. You aren’t afraid of getting a little dirty, are you?”
My mouth dropped. Gil expected me to hide in there? I’d drown in the pitch.
“Relax. It’s empty—mostly, anyway.” Gil took the lid off to show me.
I had to squint to see through the darkness. Sure enough, the majority of the tar was gone, but there was still enough to leave a solid coating around the interior and several inches on the bottom. It would be worse to clean off than the ashes that Blossom had kicked all over her quarters.
“So, I’m going to hide in that and you roll me aboard? How long will I stay in there?”
Gil patted the rim. “Until we reach the Kraken’s Revenge .”
“But that could take ages,” I protested.
“No, it won’t. They aren’t far away.”
“How do you know?”
Gil fixed me with her penetrating stare. “I remember everything I see. The captain logged that he’s planning to meet up with his brother tomorrow evening. You’ll stay put until then.” She checked the moon’s position. “Correction, it will be tonight. We only have a few hours before dawn.”
“What about the flares? How do we get them?”
“We won’t. I have someone in mind, though.”
In mind? We only had a few hours before daybreak. How would we sneak back aboard, convince someone to help us, steal flares, then hide them and myself in time?
The dock attendant was still out cold when we reached the pier leading to the Fortune Hunter .
“That simplifies things,” Gil muttered, lifting the lid. “In you get.”
I stepped in, and the thick, glutinous squelch immediately consumed my foot like a sucker fish eagerly slurping at my shoe.
The smell from outside the barrel had been bad enough, but the moment I lowered myself inside, it hit my nostrils with such a pungent wave that my eyes watered and I nearly choked.
Pinching my nose and breathing through my mouth helped, but only a little.
The barrel was large enough for me to crouch, legs bent and squeezed so tightly to my chest that my chin rested on my knees.
Streaks of sticky black tar coated the insides so thoroughly that simply lowering myself down turned most of my clothing black and each strand of my loose hair seemed intent on getting glued to the repulsive residue.
A moment of panic clutched me tightly and I stood again, breathing deeply.
“Ripe, isn’t it?” Gil asked with a wicked grin. “Get comfortable. I’m about to nail you in.”
“ Nail me in?”
“Wouldn’t do us much good if anyone could open the barrel and see you instead of a shipment of tar. I’ll only use a few. If you really needed to, you could stand up and bust out. Probably, anyway. Depends on how strong you are. ”
And she thought my plan was bad?
“And you’re sure it’s just the one day until we meet up with the other ship? We’ll be there tonight?”
“I’m sure. And if you want to save princey-boy, you’ll need to hurry up. I still have to convince my friend to pick the lock and swipe the flares.”
I issued a silent apology to my hair as I knotted it as firmly as I could, then squatted back down and closed my eyes. “Do it.”
The stench was unbearable, and each breath felt like trying to inhale through a puddle of syrup. Why couldn’t Gil have gotten me a barrel of flowers to hide in? Why must everything about pirates reek? And why, why hadn’t I appreciated the fresh air when I had it?
A shuddering pounded the barrel as Gil tamped the lid into place. A new fear shot through my mind. Just how tight was this barrel? Would I run out of oxygen?
“Gil,” I hissed. “I need air.”
“You’ll be fine. There’s a knothole here.” Gil tapped against a spot near eye level.
I would not be fine, but she was right. A small knothole pierced the side of the barrel, no wider than a coin.
I cupped my hands around it, pressing them flush against the tar-slick wood to form a crude tunnel.
With my face buried in my palms, I drew in a thin thread of outside air, sharp and salty but blessedly free of tar.
It wasn’t much, but it cut through the stench inside like a lifeline, and I clung to it, taking slow, careful breaths as the fumes clawed at the back of my throat.
“Here we go,” Gil said.
The barrel tipped sideways so I nearly faceplanted into the tar-lined side, and then I began to roll.
Splatters of tar rained down on me as Gil rolled me all the way down the pier.
The noise of the barrel’s exterior grinding over the uneven planking was amplified inside the barrel, echoing as I became dizzier and dizzier.
Gil’s footsteps, however, sounded oddly muffled and distorted so that I felt more claustrophobic than ever.
It was all for Harlan, I repeated to myself. This would all help Harlan in the end.
“Oi! Lower the gangplank!” Gil’s boyish voice pierced the night so unexpectedly that I nearly shouted aloud.
Luckily, I was too disoriented and dizzy to do anything other than keep my head between my knees, taking deep breaths that might have hurt more than they helped from being so heavy with the bitter scent.