Page 39 of Storm over the Caribbean (Storm and Silence Saga #8)
The pirates cheered, eager to hear about their booty.
“You wanna know? Well, let me share the list, then. We got six-hundred rifles, two dozen cannons, thirty casks of gunpowder, a dozen military maps with the locations of secret bases and supply stations, tools for land clearing, telegraph equipment, several tons of building materials, and six hundred sets of bloodstained, perforated military uniforms.” Gaptooth gave his men his foulest and least friendly smile.
“Anyone wanna try and go to a market and pay with that? Wanna eat it? Wanna spend it?”
The pirates’ cheers abruptly subsided.
“You mean…” The pirate with the hangover paled.
“Aye.” Gaptooth nodded. “One of us will have to go meet the fence.”
I blinked. They wanted to meet my dog? How did they even know about him?
Then my not-quite-awake-yet brain suddenly decided to start working, and I realized: they didn’t want Fence. They wanted a fence. As in, someone to sell their stuff. A prospect none of them seemed to be very eager about.
“All right!” The fat man snapped his fingers. “Volunteers!”
Deafening silence answered him. Oh my. I thought only Mr Ambrose could do that.
“I said,” Gaptooth ground out, “ Volunteers! ”
“Err…sorry, I think I drank a little bit too much last night.” Scratching the back of his head, Mr Hangover retreated into the crowd and ran off the instant he was out of sight.
“Um, me too!”
“Me too!”
“I’ve gotta go take a piss!”
“I’ve gotta go take a dump!”
“I’ve gotta…um…do something! Yes, definitely something!”
“Don’t you frigging move, you bloody cowards!” Gaptooth roared. His glower made the pirates who were about to skedaddle freeze in place. “You just won a bloody battle against the British Navy! And you tell me you’re afraid of some stuck-up, stingy moneybags? Don’t you have any guts?”
“Err…” One of the pirates raised his hand like a shy schoolboy. “You’re talking about the old man, right? The one on Antigua?”
“Aye.”
“Then no, I don’t have any guts.”
The man had to duck out of the way fast to avoid the whiskey bottle that was hurled at his head. “Bloody cowards!”
“Oy, boss, it ain’t really our fault!” One of the men protested.
“Remember last time? We went to sell a few barrels of booze to that old bastard, and the old man got us drunk on our own whiskey! We came back with nothing but our underwear, and I still don’t remember what the hell happened exactly! And you wanna send us there again?”
Oh my.
Slowly, very slowly, a grin started to tug at my lips. Was this really going where I thought it was going?
The pirate leader sent his disobedient men another glower—to no effect whatsoever. “By Davy Jones’ barnacle beard! You yellow-bellied bastards really have no shame! Isn’t there anyone here who’s brave enough to go?”
Silence.
Absolute, icy silence.
In my head, I started counting down from ten.
Ten, nine, eight, seven…
“I will go.”
All eyes, mine most certainly included, went to the man who had spoken. A tall, chiselled man with eyes as cold as the Antarctic. I’ll give you three minus two guesses who I was talking about.
“You?” Gaptooth cocked an eyebrow. Somehow, even his eyebrows were fat enough to wobble when moving. He was also conveying a pretty fat amount of scepticism. “The new man? You really think you can get a good price out of the old bastard?”
“I am fairly certain, yes,” Mr Ambrose answered, his face unmoving, while behind him, I grinned like a loon.
“Do you have any experience in negotiating? Have you done stuff like this before?”
It took a lot of restraint to not start rolling around laughing on the beach.
Not a single muscle on Mr Ambrose’s face twitched. “Once or twice.”
“Well, if that’s the case—oy, you there! Why are you rolling around on the floor! And stop with the inane laughter!”
“S-sorry,” I wheezed, trying to push myself back to my feet. “Don’t know what came over me.”
So I wasn’t quite able to restrain myself—so what? Anyone would have laughed at what was going down! Especially when I thought about that fence and what he was in for. Oh my, oh my, oh my…
Trying my very best to wipe the loony grin from my face, I raised my hand. “Oy! Can I go with?”
“Freddy? You?” Gaptooth’s eyebrows shot up. “What would a ship’s cook do at negotiations?”
“Oh, I don’t think I’ll have a problem finding something to do. I’m fairly certain this little trip will be interesting.”
“Are you now?” The pirate leader grunted. “Well…doesn’t seem like there are any other volunteers.”
Instantly, I reached out, grabbed a nearby, scrawny arm and pulled it into the air. “Here’s one!”
“Hey!” came the squeaky voice of a certain young boy from somewhere down to my left. “I didn’t volunteer!”
“Oh, I know. I did it for you.”
“All right, all right!” Gaptooth cut me off with a wave of his hand. “Stop with the theatrics! You can take the brat. Now get going, you two blaggards! Take all the men you need to man a ship and piss off!” He sent a glare at the two of us. “And don’t you dare let that old skinflint bamboozle you!”
“Oh…” Lips still twitching, I cast a sideways glance at Mr Rikkard Ambrose. “Somehow I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”