Chapter 274: Do Not Eat the Hospitality

The black earth became leaf mold, the last root slipping behind them.

James walked second, hat pulled low, watching the sway of Zephy’s hips beneath the patched skirt. The cord hummed ahead of her like an instrument string while the trunks stood thick as mainmasts, their buttress roots rising higher than a man.

Every noise belonged either to the party, the cord, or whatever the jungle felt inclined to echo.

For instance, it repeated to them their own footsteps. Steps landed ahead of James, taking his stride and making it a heartbeat among the trunks. Then Bonnet’s tread followed, then all seven, marching through the dark yet away from their owners.

The jungle was walking the party for them, an unwelcome courtesy.

Dunk stopped dead. His footsteps went on three paces without him, then halted among the roots and waited there, patient as hounds.

His voice climbed an octave while he glared down at boots that hadn’t moved, then out into the gloom at the steps that had. "Me feet’s gone on wi’out me, Cap’n! Gone, the thievin’ bastards, and me stood here like a bleedin’ maypole! I’ve been drunk in four ports, so I have, and never once me own two legs run from me!"

James pitched the words low.

"Let ’em wait, Dunk. Walk on nice and easy, and they’ll fall back in line."

Zephy tossed the words back over her bare shoulder. "Ah, oui, the forest, she is learning you, chéri. Every step, every breath, she writes it down in her little book, alors! Do not give her a stumble to copy, walk like you belong here."

Dunk walked, and the phantom boots came back into rhythm.

James reckoned the sibyl’s protection was being inspected, thread by thread.

Their path ended at a wall of hanging vine, and the light dropped another fathom. The cord bent into a choke of strangler fig and liana, grey fists gripping dead trunks, aerial roots dangling like rigging, and at last, the vines parted without complain, then closed behind each walker like footmen who had grievances about every guest.

Every man tucked his hands into his belt.

Made out vine, a tendril brushed Nub’s left hand, the maimed one, and curled into the stump where two fingers were missing. It swelled, jointed, and knuckled, then put out two glossy fingers like peeled shoots, with a bud at each nail.

Nub stared at them, and ten fingers waggled back.

James raised a fist, halted the merry band, and checked his wrist. Zephy followed with the salt pouch open.

Nub held the green fingers up to the bottle-glass light and flexed them one at a time, slow.

"Fifteen pieces o’ eight a finger, that’s what the Code says."

He waggled the new pair.

"Green’s paid me thirty, in full, on the spot, an’ not a quarrel in it."

The salt hung there a breath longer than courtesy required, white grains caught between Zephy’s finger and thumb.

"Bon. It is your hand, chéri, and so it is your bargain."

She drew the pouch shut.

Mary’s voice came from the rear with not a scrap of humor in it.

"If them things go flowerin’, I’ll be prunin’ ’em, right at the knuckle!"

James let go of the wrist.

Ahead, the thicket floor sagged and water climbed across their soles, then shins, then knees.

The drowned forest lay black and warm as blood, steaming under them, while moss hung from dead branches and sulphur blistered up in slow, fat bubbles. More mosquitoes rose in clouds thick enough to pass for smoke, and leeches found their legs.

James kept the oilcloth-wrapped pistol high against his chest, while the cord’s hum spread across the water.

Then one cloud no bigger than a hat appeared over Pike and tipped itself like a pitcher. Warm, sweet rain poured down in a silent sheet that had the aroma of the best rum in Jamaica, bending toward open mouths. Every tongue in the merry band wanted some.

Zephy lifted two fingers from the cord, and her voice dropped to a heavier tone. "Mouths shut, chéri! All of you. Mon Dieu, Dunk, I can hear you thinking about it. It is not a gift, that rain."

In the middle of the pack, Pike replied without unclenching a single tooth, so the words leaked out through his lips in a thin, tortured hiss, rum streaming off his nose and dripping from his chin.

"Why’s it allus me? Whole line o’ thirsty folk, an’ Heaven goes an’ picks the one who’s got to keep his gob shut!"

Dunk held out his hat and watched it fill to the brim, then he tipped it out with deep melancholy, enough to shame theater writers.

From the rear came Mary’s voice. "Hear me, the lot o’ ye, the bastard that swallows a drop o’ that goes in the bilge o’ the world with the leeches, and I’ll not be fetchin’ him. ! I’ll step right over, an’ I’ll not look down!"

The cloud gave up and trailed after them, sulking, until the water shallowed.

As firm ground returned, boots found moss and the canopy tore open onto a round patch. The cord stepped onto a lawn trimmed smooth as a quarterdeck and the place smelled of candle wax, roast fat, and hot bread.

A table waited there, covered in white linen with a hundred candles burning without a flicker.

On top, some roast the size of a dinghy sat in the middle, an apple in its mouth. Seven chairs were laid, each with a card written for the guests. His read CALLOWAY.

An eighth held a silver egg-cup and a spoon no bigger than a thimble, and at the head stood a tall empty chair with its back turned toward them.

The chairs slid out a hand’s breadth without noise and the candle flames leaned toward the sling at Zephy’s chest, the roast’s eye flickered to follow it, and the apple winked. Against her ribs the egg warmed and pressed, and she clamped a hand over it.

Hospitality came first, and the bargain came after.

James kept his voice down.

"Walk the rim, lads, and keep your eyes off them. Whatever it offers you, you’re not hungry."

Bonnet’s expression was ashen grey. The forks were on the wrong side, the knives were edge-out, and the spoons were upside down, enough to make a gentleman forget himself.

His whisper came out strangled. "The cutlery, James. Oh, merciful heavens, it is an abomination! I cannot bear it, I simply cannot. It must be set right, or I shall expire where I stand!"

Mary shouldered through the bunched sailors and put him down six paces away from the table like a sack of flour, then dusted her palms against each other.

"Walk, Bonnet, ye daft peacock. Damned cutlery, it’s yerself I’m tryin’ to keep breathin’."

The merry band walked around the invitation while the candles guttered out one by one, the tall chair turned inch by inch to follow them, and the egg warmed up.

"Nothin’ behind us, only toadstools and a skull, grinnin’." Mary reported from the rear.

Past the glade, the ground tilted and limestone shouldered up through the soil in grey slabs.

James went at it on all fours, hauling himself over a ledge where roots clasped the rock like fists.

On the top, the canopy spread behind them like a sea. Far off at the rim of the world, threads of cane smoke thinned and vanished, and ahead rose a blue wall of hills, with a fold cut into it.

Then the hills drew, slow and enormous, and the merry band shadows stretched. A shaft of sunlight bent and lay across the gold thread at James’s cuffs, lingering there like a hand.

The cord’s hum climbed one note.

Zephy’s eyes dropped to his cuffs, where the beam lay like a hand, and every trace of play left her face.

She spoke low and fast, a hiss of warning with a laugh hidden under it. "Mon capitaine, the coat, close it, close it now. She is vain, that mountain, so vain, and she cannot resist wool who glitters. Quickly, chéri. Let her see nothing but cloth!"

James was ready to draw [Discretion] shut, but the black coat had already slapped the beam aside without being asked, as expected from an item of dubious and mysterious origin.

The breath let out, and the hills looked away.

Forward, the hillside dropped into a hidden bowl where the canopy closed again and the hush became absolute. The curtains of vine drew aside by themselves, and the brass light fell upon a pyramid.

It stood small and stepped, wrapped in moss and root, with a silk-cotton tree growing from its crown. Serpent coils wound down the balustrades of the stairs.

Against Zephy’s chest, the egg lay hot as a loaf.

The cord lifted from her hand, ran taut up the stairs, and went over the top like a fishing line cast over a yard. The hum climbed and James’s pulse fell into step with it, steady.

The hush was there.