Crimson Waters

“She possesses a certain sensibility,” Doc said, with irony Ryan could make out distinctly even though he wasn’t sure their guide did. “Which fits not altogether comfortably with the exigencies of our modern world.”

Oldie shrugged. “She’s probably not gonna find NuTuga much to her taste, then.”

“Punishment is harsh,” Ryan rasped.

“Told you,” Oldie said with a certain gloomy satisfaction. “Syndicate runs a tight ship, even if they don’t tread the decks themselves much anymore. These poor folk broke the law. So they got their legs slashed and hung into the harbor to think things over.”

“Legs slashed?” Krysty said. She wasn’t a delicate flower, by any stretch. She was Deathlands born and bred, like Ryan himself, like everybody but Doc and the vigorously puking Mildred. It took a lot to shock her.

But this had done the trick.

“Doesn’t that bring ’cudas and sharks?” she asked. The way her emerald-green eyes flashed the instant the words were out of her mouth showed she got it.

“Reckon that’s the point,” J.B. said. “Right?” He took off his glasses and began to polish the lenses with a stained handkerchief.

“Best keep your noses clean while visiting lovely Nueva Tortuga, folks,” Oldie said. He continued to row.

“What manner of crimes,” Doc asked, “would occasion such stern punishment?”

Oldie managed to shrug without missing a stroke. “Could be a lot of things. Theft. Vandalism. Cheating at cards. Welshing on a debt. Brawling.”

J.B. frowned and fitted the glasses back on his nose. “Reckon those things’re pretty much what pass for recreation among pirates,” he said.

“There’re limits, see,” Oldie said.

“What are they, precisely, my good man?” Doc asked.

Oldie laughed. “You sure find out once you cross ’em,” he said, nodding to the dangling, half-submerged bodies.

“So the one real rule is don’t piss off the Syndicate,” Ryan said. He grunted.

Krysty knelt on the sideboard next to Mildred. She helped the shorter woman turn back inboard and wiped her mouth with a rag.

“Are we sure we want to visit this place, Ryan?” she asked.

“We do got a habit of pissing off the powerful, Ryan,” J.B. said.

“It’s not like we’re here on a pleasure cruise,” Ryan said with a bit of a rasp. “We got to find passage back to the mainland. Or some kind of paying gig. Triple-fast. Otherwise we’ll be boiling the shirts off our back to make soup of the sweat—if we could find a way to pay for fresh water, that is.”

“Oh, there’s work aplenty to be found in NuTuga,” Oldie said, “if a body’s got the stomach for it.”

“We got the stomach for a lot,” J.B. said. But he was frowning at the dangling bodies as he did it.

The body that had had the seagull pecking its eyes jerked. Ryan guessed something big had hit its legs underwater. He still couldn’t tell if any kind of living muscular reaction contributed to the motion.

He didn’t really want to know. He was a hard man, but he had limits, too.

“So the ville’s actually run by pirates?” Mildred asked. Her skin was the color of the ash in Oldie’s firepit. “They must be monsters.”

“They turned into something worse,” the old man said. “Government.”

And he laughed and laughed.

Chapter Four

Oldie pulled the Ernie H up next to the end of an unoccupied wharf. “You folks make it ashore without I tie up?” he asked.

“Reckon so,” Ryan said. “Why?”

J.B. went over the side to stand knee-deep in water on the slope of the busted-rock mole to help the others across.

“Don’t wanna pay their fee. Not my kind of place, NuTuga. Not my kinda crowd.”

“That speaks well for you,” Mildred said.

“Don’t they try to stick you, anyway?” Ryan asked. He was surprised that the Syndicate, as Oldie described it, would let loose of the smallest chance at income. It was standard operating procedure for barons everywhere, whatever they called themselves.

Oldie laughed again. “The Monitors let me slide if I don’t technically land. They’re not too keen on splashing around in water where all the big fish and most of the little ones got a taste for human flesh.”

J.B. was just handing Mildred across to the slanted rock face of the pier. He cocked an eyebrow.

“Get your fool ass out of the water, J.B.,” Ryan said.

The armorer grinned, but he scampered up to the boardwalk with a vigorous splash just the same.

Ryan sat on the outboard gunwale to counterbalance the others as first Krysty, then Doc leaped to the rock. Contemptuously, Jak jumped into the water, then waded the couple of steps up out of the sea. At the last, he yelped and jumped clear.

“Something bumped leg!” he said, then glared as the others grinned at him.

Ryan tossed everybody’s pack and weapons over to them. After Krysty fielded his own, he took the leap. He wasn’t going to go wading with sharks and killer ’cuda.

“Word to the wise, Ryan,” Oldie called after him.

Ryan looked down at the man where he sat in the prow with his oars cocked up in their locks.

“Mind your steps here, folks,” the old man said. “Walk careful, especially around the Sea Wasps.”

“I thought you said theirs was an egalitarian society,” Doc said.

“Yeah. Whatever that is. The Syndicate is law.” He chuckled. “Just remember that people are basically dogs. They always got them a pack order. The more folks talk about everybody being equal, the more some’re more equal than others.”

“Talk sense!” Jak grumbled.

J.B. clapped him on the shoulder—gingerly, to avoid the sharp bits.

“He is, son. He is. Someday you’ll appreciate the fact. If you happen to live, that is.”

Ryan nodded to Oldie, and the old man pushed off with an oar. Ryan shouldered his pack and headed up the pier.