‘And the mate – and Gray Coll, Lousy Macllwine, Dickon Merret – yeah, I saw. Lord, that was a neat trick they pulled. There was I half afraid the ship’d been hit first – right from the moment I saw the castle was a trap. It made sense – but when I saw them all waving, natural as kiss my ass … There’s more’n Wolves behind this, or these Injuns. There’s a brain.’
I shivered in the chill breeze. ‘The Indians – who are they, anyhow?’
‘Amerinds. Caribs – what the dagoes named the sea for. After wiping them out, mostly, or enslaving them. They’re regular guys enough, the ones left; but this isn’t them.’
‘You mean – these are the originals? Another hangover in time?’
‘Kind of looks that way.’ He fell silent as footsteps approached, stopped a moment, then hurried on. ‘You said – they hit Mall real hard?’
‘She – she may be dead, Jyp.’
‘That could be the worst mistake they ever made,’ he said at last – thoughtfully, not vengefully. ‘She –’ I heard him choke and gasp at the thud of a boot. I got the same treatment next, not hard but right in the kidneys. Writhing, I was only dimly aware of being untied from the pole. My hands and legs still bound, I was dragged bodily through the grass till it vanished abruptly on bare rocky ground, where I was dropped. I lay blinking, thinking how bright the torchlight seemed; then a hand in my hair hauled me to my knees, and I saw the two tall fires, and the white stones between, and the dark silhouettes passing to and fro.
More than that I didn’t make of them, just then, because chains rattled suddenly, and ice-cold iron snapped around my throat, pinching the flesh painfully. I pulled away instinctively – and found I wasn’t alone. Clare and all the rest of the crew, Pierce and Hands and the crabbed little steward among them, were slumped in rows on the cold ground beside me, fastened together with what looked like old slave collars. And next to me, uncomfortably close, sat the Stryge himself. He curled his lip in something like a sarcastic greeting, but I paid him no more attention, because next in line sat Mall. Alive; but her head hung, she was deadly pale, and a thick clot of blood caked her curls at the forehead. Her lowered eyes were dull and glazed, and my heart sank; I saw concussion there, if not a fractured skull. A biker had looked like that, after a pile-up I witnessed; and he’d died in the ambulance.
Stifled cursing told me Jyp had been dumped just behind me. ‘So what’s this?’ he demanded. ‘We in line for service, or what?’
‘Undoubtedly,’ grated Stryge through his stained teeth. ‘Though I should be in no haste about it, if I were you.’
I knew what he meant. My eyes were adjusting to the light, and the more
I saw of the crowd that was gathering the less I liked it. Apart from
the Wolves there were ordinary men and women both among them, more than
a few evidently Haitians. Not all were the dark-skinned villager types,
though, and those looked better fed and complacent. The rest were
mulattoes, Haiti’s powerful aristocracy – well-groomed creatures who
could have jetted in from London or New York. Gold gleamed around their
necks and their fingers, jewels flashed in the firelight; some wore
elegant powdered wigs and carried quizzing-glasses, but others sported
hornrims and chunky Rolexes on their wrists. The heavy robes they all
wore looked well cut, and the
