The scheme was to make our ship look like a desperate, fleeing merchantman and to concentrate the Sicilian fire on the nearly empty corsair.
I looked anxiously at the fort. The excited shouts within the Castello died down as officers applied discipline. Door after door of the fortress gun ports banged opened. We heard the groan of tackle as each behemoth cannon was hauled out, its muzzle pointing at our vulnerable hull. We tensed, waiting for a barrage of fire that would gut us, but none came.
Now the corsair was coming abreast of the fort’s guns.
Its tiny crew slipped into a cutter on the side of the ship and pushed off with oars in the dark.
Finally there was a cry of command and a ripple of cannon fire thundered from the fortress. Metal screamed and punched through the towed pirate vessel as though it were paper, heeling the decoy.
Aurora swung her cutlass and chopped the towrope away, even as Dragut winced at the pummeling of the graceful flagship. Its rudder had been lashed, and it began ghosting on a course of its own.
“Fuoco! Sparare!” The excited commands to fire and shoot could be heard from the fort.
More cannon balls crashed into the pirate craft’s hull, sending up showers of wood splinters. The sail was slashed to ribbons, ending the ship’s motive power, and then the entire rigging cracked and crashed down, spilling tackle and shredded canvas over the side. The corsair began to drift and wallow. Cheers began in the fort.
Not a shot had come our way.
Another command, and another roar of fortress artillery. Pieces of Aurora’s old ship erupted, a barrel of gunpowder went off, and the vessel began to burn. The flames made it an even easier target, and more shot struck it solidly amidships. A mob had formed on the city’s shoreline and a fusillade of musket shots came from there, too, the crowd peppering the empty vessel and its scarecrows with bullets. The corsair’s stern began to settle.
We’d slipped by the tip of the fort and were gaining speed, on our way to safety.
Aurora looked from the Isis to the mirror. “A fair trade,” she murmured. “You destroyed my vessel, Ethan, and I salute you for it. That’s the kind of ruthless wisdom we’ll bring to all affairs.”
Perhaps they expected our merchant vessel to stop fleeing and turn around upon our apparent rescue from the destructive pirates. Perhaps they expected us to slow, or dip our flag in acknowledgment, or light a lantern, or give a cheer to our saviors.
Instead a score of pirates and monks clambered silently up our rigging to unfurl yet more sail. Faster and faster we slid into the dark, the mirror of Archimedes rocking where it balanced. The brightest light was the burning corsair, and it drew the eyes of fort and town ever more hypnotically as we faded into the night.
By the time the Sicilians put out in small boats and realized they’d battered an empty target, the skeleton pirate crew that had abandoned the corsair had hoisted their own cutter sail to race to catch up with us. We hoisted them aboard and were out the harbor mouth, reaching down the coast of Sicily without so much as a bullet in our hull. The island’s greatest prize was ours, to be resurrected in Tripoli.
“If the gods didn’t want this, why would it be so easy?” Aurora told her followers.
They laughed.
Now the Barbary pirates could set the world’s navies on fire.
CHAPTER THIRTY
We sailed south across the Gulf of Noto, apparently having confused any pursuit. Once we cleared Syracuse, I went below and found Harry in the sail locker just as the sun was coming up. Both of us curled into the folds of canvas, the little lad cradled in my arms, but despite my exhaustion, sleep eluded me. Having performed my part of the bargain by finding the mirror, would Astiza, Horus, and I be allowed the freedom to try to find peace while the Rite reassembled its diabolical machine? My only hope was that I could warn the world in time to make up for the bargain I’d struck. Yet Aurora, Dragut, and Osiris seemed more convinced than ever that we’d become partners.
I eventually dozed fitfully. I got up by late morning to see that despite their tumultuous night, the “monks” couldn’t keep away from the mirror. They were inspecting it more closely and speculating how it might work. The crew rigged an awning over the weapon as the sun climbed, because even covered in dust and tarnish it was blindingly bright. The pirates feared it might accidentally set their own rigging aflame.
We anchored that evening off Sicily’s southeastern tip, at a small, flat island called Capo Passero. As the sun descended behind the Sicilian hills to the west, the Rite members worked to better secure the mirror and prepare a celebration in the hold below. Oddly, I found myself a pirate hero, thanks to my idea to sacrifice Aurora’s corsair to enable our escape. Even my young son, cheerful after his sleep, was celebrated as a swashbuckler in the making. The attention pleased Harry because they gave him a hat.
There was no pursuit from Syracuse. Chances were that the city’s ministers and priests were uncertain just what it was we’d even taken. So we risked some lanterns as the mirror was lashed more securely. Carpenters cut out a section of each gunwale so it could sit firmly on the deck, while members of the Rite began to sketch and measure the ancient contraption. It was more complex than we initially imagined. The main surface was shaped like a huge shallow bowl, but it had been forged or hammered with a complex system of hexagonal facets like the pattern of a honeycomb; a thousand small mirrors linked into one. Then there were hinged sections that folded like a closed flower over the main mirror. If unfolded, they would double its diameter. They pivoted as well. There was also some kind of engraving on the back, Dragut announced after crawling underneath. It showed a complex scaffolding to support and turn the device, with lines suggesting how to orient the mirror and its “petals” in relation to the sun.
“It’s as simple as a magnifying glass and as complex as a watch,” he said. “The Rite’s savants will have a challenge mounting this properly. There are more ropes than on an opera stage.”
Hard to operate, easy to sabotage, I thought, but didn’t say that.
“Osiris will figure it out,” Aurora said, looking exultant. She’d finally slept, too, and emerged radiant. Her Egyptian Rite lieutenant limped around the circumference of the mirror to calculate and draw. “Osiris and Ethan together, masterminds of a new age!”
“Not the most natural of partnerships, given that I crippled your engineer,” I commented.
“A wound of battle, no different from the one I gave you in America,” she said cheerfully. “Wounds heal, minds forgive. Right, Osiris?”
“We’ll see what your electrician has to contribute.”
“Yes, my electrician!”
“Your helper, your sycophant, your lover, your slave.”
“I’m not any of those things,” I told him. “I and my family are free, now that I’ve done my part of the bargain. Right? And what’s your real name, when you’re not made up like a eunuch in an emirate? Is it Dunbottom? Lord Lack-Purse? Prince Preposterous?”
“You’re not entirely free,” Aurora interrupted.
“Come. You said if I helped you find the mirror, you’d let Horus and Astiza go. There the bronze platter is, to incinerate whom you wish. Now keep your part of the bargain.”
“Oh, young Horus will not be sold into slavery. And your Egyptian wench can wander wherever she wishes. But there is one thing more you and I must complete before we give her final leave from Yussef’s harem. There’s still unfinished business between you and me, as I told you in America.”