Blue Sea Burning by Geoff Rodkey Read Free Book Online Page B

vaulted himself up onto the arm of the couch and stuck out his hand.
    â€œHello, luv. Don’t believe we’ve met. Quint Bailey, jack-of-all-trades. Don’t mind the legs. Clever men get by without ’em.”
    Kira shook his hand warily. “Kira Zamorazol.”
    â€œYou are easy on the eyes, darlin’.” He turned to wink at me. “Know how to pick ’em, don’t ye, Egbert?”
    Guts didn’t care for that. “Back off, ye
billi glulo porsamora
!”
    Quint just grinned at him. “Look who’s been hangin’ round Short-Ears!” Then he nodded at Guts’s stump. “Where’d yer hook get off to?”
    â€œHad it pinched by Natives,” Guts muttered.
    â€œBought it off Ozzy, didn’t ye? Got himself a new one down in the Scratch a while back. Prob’ly sell that to ye as well, now he’s outta money.”
    â€œWot the deuce!?”
Adonis had wandered off into the den, and judging by the fury in his voice, what he’d found there must not have been pleasant.
    â€œI was plannin’ to clean that up!” Quint yelled back at him. “Soon’s I can find the wheelbarrow,” he added under his breath.
    â€œWhat on earth is going on around here?” I asked Quint.
    He looked pained. “Why don’t I fix ye a meal? Better we talk on a full stomach.”

    LIKE MOST OF QUINT’S COOKING, the stew he put in front of us was filling but not exactly tasty, and we had to eat it fast before it hardened. Most of the dining chairs had vanished, so we stood around the butcher’s table in the kitchen while he caught us up on what had happened.
    Leaving fifty field pirates alone with nobody in charge, several crates of weapons, and enough money to get drunk for weeks had turned out to be, no surprise, a recipe for disaster. In addition to nearly wrecking the house, nobody had done a lick of work in the fields for six weeks, and what should have been a manageable case of planter’s blight had now spread over enough of the upper orchard that it was threatening to ruin the entire crop.
    The only good news was that the field pirates’ money was all gone, so they couldn’t buy any more rum unless they went back to work. And somebody—Quint wasn’t sure who—had been levelheaded enough to steal all the weapons in the dead of night and dump them over the cliff at Rotting Bluff.
    But not before the fifty men had been reduced to thirty-six, mostly due to arguments over card games.
    â€œFact of the matter is,” admitted Quint, “none of us is what ye’d call captain material. We can follow orders all right, ’specially with a hard stick backin’ ’em up. But leave us be to make our own rules . . . don’t go so well.”
    â€œWhat about Otto?” He was the foreman, and he’d run a pretty tight ship in the past.
    â€œHe, ahhh . . . wound up wrong side of the cannon. That rule yer dad had ’bout nobody havin’ guns? Smart.” Quint nodded appreciatively. “No drinkin’ an’ gamblin’ was another smart one, come to think of it. Reckon it’s time to get back to that.”
    â€œGonna get back to all of it,” said Adonis firmly. “Me and Egbert are in charge now. Gonna set things right round here, thank ye please.”
    â€œDunno how the lads gonna take that,” said Quint. “By now, they’s good and used to not havin’ no boss on the plantation.”
    â€œBut there’s not going to
be
a plantation if this keeps up,” I said. “It’ll fall apart completely.”
    The whole situation was making me feel angry—and helpless, which was worse. Fortunately, Mung showed up just then, with a smile that filled his whole face, and gave me a big bear hug.
    Of all the busted-down pirates who’d worked the fields for my dad, Mung was my favorite. He was missing a good chunk of his