“Brandy,” said the captain. “I decided to uncork something decent.”
“Thank you.” Matthew took a taste and found it considerably better than decent, but not so strong as to cause the eye-watering reaction he’d been expecting.
“It’s a civilized drink.” Falco poured himself a cupful. “For civilized men. Eh?”
“Yes,” Matthew answered, for Falco seemed to expect a comment.
The captain offered Matthew the plate of lime slices, but Matthew shook his head. Falco chewed one of the slices, rind and all. He had a high, heavily-creased forehead and a widow’s-peak of iron-gray hair. The upper portion of his left ear was missing. Matthew wondered if he’d ever met a swordsman named Dahlgren. In this light Falco’s flesh appeared the hue of the deepest blue-black ink, which made the amber eyes both lighter and more powerful in their unwavering appraisal of his guest.
Falco finished the lime before he spoke again. “What in God’s name have you gotten yourself into?”
The question was so direct it stunned Matthew for a few seconds. “Sir?”
“I don’t repeat myself.” Smoke roiled through the air.
A silence stretched, as one waited and one considered.
At last Matthew said, “I really don’t know yet.”
“You’d best find out in a hurry. Day after tomorrow, we reach Pendulum.”
Matthew wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. He frowned. “Pendulum?”
“Pendulum Island. One of the Bermudas. It belongs to…but you know who it belongs to. Don’t you?”
“I do.”
Falco nodded, the pipe’s stem clenched between his teeth. The eyes had an expression in them both sinister and jovial. Mocking, it might be, Matthew thought. Or carefully curious. “Are you afraid?” Falco asked.
There was no sense in lying to the lion. “Yes.”
“And you should be. My employer, I understand, is to be feared.”
“You understand? You’ve never met him?”
“Never met him. Never seen him. I take my orders from him through Sirki.” The eyes had become heavy-lidded, and smoke swirled between the captain and Matthew. Falco poured himself a drink and removed the pipe from his mouth to take a sip. “I know he…commands many people, and directs many things. Some I’ve heard about, but I have ears that can remain closed when I choose. Also, my mouth can remain closed when need be. Which is most of the time.” Another drink of copious strength went down the hatch, and then the pipe’s stem was returned between the teeth.
“You’re not one of his criminals, then?” It was a daring question, but Matthew felt it was the right thing to ask.
“I am the captain of my ship,” came the measured reply. “How long I wished to be a captain, I cannot tell you. How long I labored for this position, again…a long time. He has given me the Nightflyer. He has placed me in the position I desired,” Falco amended. “And pays me what I am worth.”
“To do what, exactly? Sail from where to where?”
“From here to there and everywhere. To ferry passengers and carry cargo and pouches of letters. You see, I’m not like those others.”
“What others?”
Falco spewed smoke in a long stream toward the ceiling. He took another drink. “His other captains. The ones who—” He paused, with his head slightly cocked to one side and his gaze sharp once again. “The ones who do more than ferry passengers,” he finished.
“What more would there be?” Matthew asked, hungry for as much information concerning Professor Fell as he could consume. He reasoned that the more he knew, the stronger his armor.
“More,” said Falco, with a faint and passing smile his eyes did not share. “But I asked you here because I wished to know what your purpose is on Pendulum Island. I wasn’t told. My orders were to expect a passenger. One passenger, not three. Then there was some business with the signal lamp, and I saw fires burning in your town. Evidently the gunpowder bombs Sirki brought along in a wooden crate were put to use. I chose not to know anything further.”
“But you’re curious about my reason for being here?” Matthew prodded. “Why is that?”
Falco drew in more smoke and released it. He drank again before he answered. “You are out of place here. You are not…” He hesitated, hunting the rest of what he was trying to express. “The type I usually see,” he said. “Far from it. And the young girl and the Ga warrior? They shouldn’t be here. I can’t understand this picture I’m seeing. You stood up to that woman in the brig. And you stood up to her for the right reason. My friends, you said. You see, this is what puzzles me: the kind of person I ferry for my employer has no friends, young man. To risk anything for anyone else…well, I’ve never seen that happen before on this ship. So I have to wonder…what in God’s name have you gotten yourself into?”
Matthew pondered the question. His reply was, “I’m a problem-solver. I’ve been summoned by Professor Fell to solve a problem for him. Do you have any idea what that might be?”
“No. And why would I? I keep out of his business.” Falco nodded at some inner comment he’d made to himself. “There. You see? I knew you were different. You’re not of his world, if you get my meaning. But take care that his world doesn’t get into you, because there’s a lot of money in it.”
“Dirty money, to be sure.”
“Clean or dirty, it buys what you please when you please. It’ll buy me a ship of my own one day. I’ll start my own cargo business. That’s what I’m in it for.”
“A reasonable plan,” said Matthew. He decided to try again at a question he wanted answered: “What do the other captains do? Besides ferrying passengers?”
For a time Falco did not answer, instead relighting his pipe from the candleflame. Matthew thought the question was going to go unheeded, and then Falco said, “There are four others. A very nice fleet, the professor has. The other ships carry cannons, which I have said I will not do. I want a clean and fast ship, unburdened by that heavy iron. But the others are also in the business of taking prizes on the high seas.”
“Pirates?”
“They fly no flag,” Falco corrected. “They are in the professor’s employ.”
This scheme was becoming clearer to Matthew, and the picture fascinated him. “So the professor gets a major portion of the prize for affording these…um…other captains a safe harbor?”
“As I said, he pays well. And lately the prizes have been something he obviously finds of great value.”
“What? Treasure boxes of gold coins?”
“Not at all.” Falco drew on his pipe and the blue-tinged Virginia fumes rolled from a corner of his mouth. “In the past few months the professor has been interested in ships carrying loads of sugar from the Caribbean.”
“Sugar?” Matthew had to sit back in his chair on that one, for he’d had the image of Solomon Tully having a temper fit on the Great Dock, and asking the question of Matthew and Hudson Greathouse: What kind of pirate is it that steals a cargo of sugar but leaves everything else untouched?
The third shipment in as many months, Tully had moaned in his disconsolate agony of lost commerce. And I’m not the only one affected by this either! It’s happened to Micah Bergman in Philadelphia and the brothers Pallister in Charles Town!
Professor Fell at work, Matthew thought. Sending his captains out to the trade routes to intercept the sugar boats.
“Why?” Matthew asked, through the smoke that hung in layers between himself and Captain Falco.
“I have no idea. I only know the sugar is brought into that harbor on the northernmost point and taken away in wagons.” He offered Matthew a thin smile that looked like a razor cut. “Possibly this is also of interest to a problem-solver?”