On Discord Isle by Jonathon Burgess Read Free Book Online Page B

jungle foliage.
    Almhazlik Isle was not as deserted as his crew had believed.
    A loud crack brought him back from this discovery. Natasha lay back upon the sand, and was ramming her boot heel down atop the crate. The lid took two blows before breaking inward. Natasha chortled at her success and sat upright to pry aside the broken planks of wood still nailed to the crate.
    Fengel refocused on what was important. “It’s true,” he said to her. “It has to be.”
    Natasha ignored him. She pulled objects forth from inside the crate; a tinderbox, some rope, foodstuffs. These she tossed aside. Heavy packets of hardtack and rolls of rock-hard, razor-thin salted jerky landed in the sand between them.
    “They meant to get you with the net, but I got caught as well,” he insisted. “They couldn’t let me out without freeing you, so that’s why I’m here. They’ve just flown off to the other side of the island, waiting for me to find them.”
    The mound of supplies between them ceased growing as Natasha hit the bottom of the crate. There wasn’t much, enough for maybe a week or more of rough living. His wife gave a cry and sat back happily, holding a dark bottle of rum with both hands.
    “What I’m hearing,” she said wickedly, “is denial.” She placed the cork between her perfect teeth and bit with a pressure than Fengel knew could sever fingers. With a hollow noise, Natasha pulled the cork from the bottle and spat it to the sand. “A gentleman has certain standards to maintain,” she mimicked mockingly, “if he doesn’t want his crew to toss him overboard. Oh, I have to look nice and talk like a stodgy Perinese jackass if I don’t want my crew of brigands to find a manlier captain.” She tittered to herself and took a long pull off the bottle.
    Fengel felt himself flush. “I am not in denial. You’re the one whose been so Goddess-damned obnoxious that you’ve been pitched by a crew. This is the second time this has happened this year!”
    “That was Mordecai,” Natasha growled.
    “Oh,” said Fengel with a false lightness. “You’re right. It was the fault of your nasty first mate. You were perfectly innocent.” He hardened his voice. “Probably because you were drunk on a raging four-day bender that left half the men back in port crazed or blind from the pox.”
    Natasha glared at him. “You pompous, insufferable bag of wind.”
    “Floozy.”
    “Jackass.”
    “Slattern.”
    Natasha smiled suddenly.
    “Mock me all you want,” she said. “Use that creatively bankrupt brain of yours to come up with all the high-sounding insults you can. Do whatever you have to in order to keep looking away from the truth; that Lucian, Henry, and all the rest didn’t want you anymore .”
    Fengel froze. He found it hard to breathe. His vision narrowed to a pinpoint tunnel, with Natasha’s mocking smile at the center. She was infuriating. Obnoxious. Dreadful.
    And right.
    Past the excuses, past his irritation with her, he knew what she said was true. They’ve turned on me. She’s right. And after all that I’ve done for them. His stomach seemed to drop into an abyss. The sky threatened to smother him. He should have known better. They were pirates, after all.
    Fengel’s irritation ignited into a burning ball of anger. His face flushed. His monocle fell free. Calmly, he wedged it back into place, deciding to set rationality aside and give an output to this growing rage. It was the only sensible thing to do, after all. He reached out and snatched the bottle of rum from his wife. Flipping it, he caught it by the neck and whipped it down hard at the crate. The glass shattered into dozens of pieces, soaking the wooden box and the pale white sands with rum.
    Natasha stared at him in unbelieving startlement. “What’d you do that for?” she cried.
    “Because I didn’t want you to have it anymore,” he said smugly.
    Natasha screamed and threw herself at him.
    Her fingers, and nails, were aimed for his eyes.