The harbor pilot rowed out to meet them before the anchor touched bottom.
He was a lean man with gray in his beard and a straw hat pushed back on his head.
He stood up in his little skiff as it bumped the Morning Star’s hull, balancing without effort.
“Welcome to Nassau! Cuffee’s the name. Best pilot in the Bahamas and the only sober one before noon.” He grinned up at the rail.
“Mind the bar on the eastern side. Took the bottom out of a Dutch sloop last month. Two reales and I’ll walk you to the good anchorage.”
Kofi looked past him at the town.
Nassau sat low on a curve of white sand.
Burned timbers still stood where the old fort had been.
Shacks of driftwood and sailcloth crowded the waterfront.
Smoke rose from a dozen cook fires.
Ships lay tipped on their sides along the beach like beached whales, men swarming their hulls with scrapers and tar buckets.
Somewhere a fiddle played.
Somewhere else a man screamed, then laughed.
“No governor?” Kofi asked.
“Burned twice by the French and Spanish. Governor ran off after the second time.” Cuffee spread his hands.
“Now it’s just us. Nobody asks where you came from, captain. Nobody much cares.”
Kofi dropped two coins into his palm.
Cuffee tipped his hat and guided them in.
They gathered on deck once the anchor held.
“We’ve got no money,” Kofi said.
“The rail’s cracked, half the deck’s scorched, and we’re eating fish three times a day. We fix all of it here, and we find out what those chains were. Every one of you has a job.”
“Me first.” Theo held up an oilskin bundle.
“I have, in my possession, three mermaid scales and one mermaid claw.”
Bess stared at him.
“You kept pieces of those things?”
“For science.”
“You pried them off a corpse.”
“For science and profit. The line between them is very thin.” He patted the bundle.
“Somewhere in that town is a rich man who’ll pay a fortune to hold a monster in his hands.”
“Go find him,” Kofi said.
“Toby, Bess, Clementine, Obi. Market. Seeds, cuttings, hens, a goat if you can get one. Clementine, whatever herbs you need.”
“I need everything,” Clementine said.
“Then buy everything the money will cover.”
“Ezinne sings in the taverns. Titus goes with her.”
Titus crossed his arms.
“I’m a guard dog now?”
“You’re the only man here nobody will pick a fight with.”
“That’s not true, and you know it.”
“Then pick fewer.”
Ezinne laughed and slung her fiddle case over her shoulder.
“And me?” Yaw asked.
He hadn’t smiled since the burial.
Amara’s blue cloth was still knotted around his pistol grip.
“Find someone who knows about the chains,” Kofi said.
“The fire. All of it.”
“And you?”
Kofi looked at the ships lying on the beach.
“I’m going to go do what I’m good at.”
Theo found his rich man behind a warehouse stacked with salvage: brass bells, ship’s lanterns, a cracked figurehead of a woman with no face.
Delancey Pinder sat at a table under a canvas awning, fanning himself with a folded paper.
He was round and pink-cheeked, with rings on six fingers.
He didn’t stand.
“You said monster.”
Theo unwrapped the oilskin and laid the claw on the table.
It was as long as a man’s hand, curved and black and sharp at the tip.
Webbing still clung to the base in gray tatters.
Beside it Theo laid the three scales, each the size of a coin, shimmering blue-green where the light hit them.
Pinder stopped fanning.
He picked up the claw with two fingers and turned it.
He held a scale up to the sun.
His lips moved without sound.
“Where?”
“At sea.”
“Where at sea?”
“Very wet part. Lots of water. You’d have to be there.”
Pinder set the scale down.
“Fifty pounds for the lot.”
Theo laughed.
“I watched a sea queen sing a whole crew toward the rail. I’m not selling her fingernail for fifty pounds.”
“A queen.” Pinder’s eyes narrowed.
“You faced the Queen and her horde, and you lived?”
“I’m very charming.”
“One hundred.”
“Two hundred.”
“One fifty, and you tell me the ship’s name.”
Theo smiled wide.
“One fifty, and I’ll tell you a ship’s name.”
Pinder counted the coins into a leather purse, slowly, watching Theo’s face the whole time.
Theo scooped up the purse and backed away with a small bow.
“Pleasure doing business, Mister Pinder.”
“Which ship?”
“The Honest Mistake.”
He was around the corner before Pinder could answer.
His heart hammered.
He’d lied badly and knew it, and Pinder had watched him the way a man watches a card he’s already marked.
The pirate captain on the beach was losing his mind.
“Three times I’ve patched her! Three times!” He kicked the side of his sloop, which lay tipped in the sand.
“Still takes on water like a sieve. I’ll burn her before I patch her again.”
Kofi walked the length of the hull without speaking.
He pressed his palm flat against the planks.
He crouched near the keel and ran his thumb along a seam.
“You’ve been patching the wrong place.”
The captain spun around.
“And who asked you?”
“The leak’s not here. It’s here.” Kofi tapped a spot near the stern post.
“Your garboard strake’s sprung. The water runs forward along the keel and comes up through your patch. You’ve been plugging the drain instead of the pipe.”
The captain crouched beside him and pressed a finger to the seam.
It came away wet.
“How’d you see that?”
“I’ve built ships like her my whole life.”
By noon Kofi had fixed it.
By midafternoon three more captains stood waiting, coins in hand.
He worked and listened.
“—Navy captain out of Kingston. Bell. Hunting a runaway who took a lord’s arm—”
“—bounty’s up to six hundred now. Six hundred! For one man!”
“—say he walks with the dead. Say the sea spits him back every time they drown him—”
Kofi kept his head down and his hands moving.
The market sat in a tangle of stalls near the burned fort.
“Two shillings for that bird?” Bess planted her hands on her hips.
“She’s got one eye. She’ll lay one egg a week out of spite.”
The hen seller spread his arms.
“Then she can prove it. One shilling.”
“Robbery!”
“One shilling and I don’t tell everyone your hens are half blind.”
She walked away with three hens and a smirk.
Toby followed with a squawking basket in each hand, shaking his head.
“You scare me, Bess.”
“Good.”
Clementine moved stall to stall with her nose.
She crushed a leaf between her fingers and sniffed.
She tasted a root and spat.
She held up a bundle of dried bark and nodded once.
“This. And this. Not that; it’s cut with sawdust.” The seller opened his mouth to protest.
She looked at him.
He closed it.
Obi staggered along behind them with seed sacks stacked to his chin.
Callaloo.
Pigeon peas.
Sweet potato slips wrapped in wet cloth.
Ginger root.
Scotch bonnet seeds.
Three plantain suckers poked out of the top sack like green fingers.
“Can we get the goat now?”
“After,” Toby said.
“You said that an hour ago.”
“And it’s still after.”
Pockets rode on Obi’s shoulder, chattering.
They passed a pepper stall.
A small brown hand darted out and back.
The pepper seller shouted.
Toby turned.
Pockets sat very still, cheeks bulging, the crooked pocket on his little shirt stuffed round with something.
“Pockets.” Toby held out his palm.
The monkey stared at him.
Then he spat a mouthful of pepper seeds into Toby’s hand and shrieked, eyes streaming.
Obi laughed so hard he dropped the plantains.
They paid for the pepper seeds.
The tavern was called the Drowned Dog.
It smelled of rum and wet wood.
Ezinne tuned her fiddle on an upturned barrel near the hearth.
Titus stood behind her with his arms folded, glaring at anyone who looked at her too long.
She played two old tunes first.
Coins clinked into her hat.
Then a sailor with a gold tooth slammed his cup on the table.
“The new one! The one about the lord’s arm!”
The room roared.
Ezinne hesitated.
Then she smiled and set the bow to the strings.
♫♪♫ There’s a man called Kofi Brook, who built the ship that the lord took.
Every plank he laid with care, every chain they fastened there.
Ring, Bell, ring, you won’t ring long, the sea don’t carry a chain that strong.
Ring, Bell, ring, till your bell runs dry,
Kofi Brook don’t die!
Lord sat high with his brandy glass, thought the night would let him pass.
Kofi came through the kitchen door, now the lord don’t whip no more.
Overseer with his coiled lash, heard a pistol, felt the flash.
Nine souls ran for the waiting sea, took Deliverance and set her free.
Scraped her name down off the stern, painted what they’d died to learn.
Sun on black above the waves, broken chains and empty graves.
Queen rose singing from the deep, called the sailors in their sleep.
Gunman climbed the swaying mast, one iron nail, and the queen breathed her last.
Cane-row girl with a cook-fire song, waited for her boy so long.
Mango tree and a chipped-tooth grin, the sea took her, and she’s home again.
Captain came with his frigate tall, thought he had him, thought it all.
Kofi slipped where the coral lies, left the Navy with empty eyes.
Ring, Bell, ring, you won’t ring long, the sea don’t carry a chain that strong.
Ring, Bell, ring, till your bell runs dry,
Kofi Brook don’t die!
♪♬♫
The room sang the chorus with her.
They stamped their feet.
They banged the tables.
More coins rained into the hat.
In the corner, the harbor pilot Cuffee sat with a single cup of rum he never drank.
He listened to every word.
When she sang Kofi’s name, his fingers stopped drumming on the table.
The song ended.
The crowd cheered.
A big man with a shaved head and a broken nose stood up by the bar.
His knuckles were scarred white.
“Fairy stories.” He spat on the floor.
“Some cane cutter gets lucky with a knife, and now every fool in Nassau sings about him like he’s Moses.”
The room went quiet.
“He’s real,” Ezinne said.
“Real or not, he’s a runaway who’ll hang from a Navy yardarm before the year’s out.” The big man grinned at Titus.
“And so will every one of his kind who thinks a song makes him a man.”
Titus unfolded his arms.
“Titus,” Ezinne hissed.
“What’s your name?” Titus asked.
“Barabbas Knowles. Undefeated in the pit.” He jerked his chin toward the back door.
“Care to learn why?”
The pit was a ring of trampled sand behind the tavern, lit by torches.
Men crowded the edges, shouting bets.
Knowles hit first.
A fist like a brick caught Titus above the eye, splitting the skin.
Titus staggered.
The crowd roared.
Knowles came in again.
Titus ducked, took a blow to the ribs that drove the breath out of him, and grabbed Knowles around the waist.
They went down together in the sand.
He’d hauled bundles heavier than two men on his back from sunrise to dark.
He didn’t fight like a pit brawler.
He fought like a man who’d spent his whole life being hit and had finally been given permission to hit back.
He rolled on top.
He drove his fist down once, twice, three times.
Knowles’s nose broke with a crack the whole ring heard.
Knowles went limp.
Titus stood over him, chest heaving, blood running into his eye.
The crowd went silent.
Then it exploded.
Ezinne pushed through the bodies and grabbed his arm.
“We have to go. Now.”
The bookmaker shoved a heavy purse into Titus’s hands.
Across the ring, five men pulled Knowles to his feet.
They didn’t cheer.
They looked at Titus, at the purse, at Ezinne.
They memorized them.
Yaw found Quaco in the last tavern he tried.
It was built from the wreck of a ship.
The bar had been her rail.
The ceiling curved like her hull.
An old man sat alone at the back with a bottle and one leg.
The other ended below the knee in a dark wooden peg.
“They say you know about spirits,” Yaw said.
The old man didn’t look up.
“They say a lot of things in Nassau.”
“A man turned into fire in front of me. Another pulled chains out of the ground.” Yaw sat down across from him without being asked.
“A girl I loved died between the two of them. I want to know what they are.”
The old man lifted his eyes.
They were yellowed at the edges and very tired.
“Quaco,” he said.
“Buy me a drink, and I’ll tell you what I know. And you’ll wish you hadn’t asked.”
Yaw set a coin on the table.
Quaco poured.
“What you saw is called a Binding. A man goes to a spirit and makes a bargain. The spirit gives him power. He gives the spirit something back.”
“What spirit?”
“Depends on the man. Depends on the island.” Quaco drank.
“The spirits don’t travel. They live in their own land, and you have to go to them. A Jamaican duppy, you find in Jamaica. The old lwa, the great ones from Guinea, you go to Saint-Domingue for those. The Bahamian sea spirits live in the blue holes out on the islands here. Spaniards carry the Orisha in Cuba.”
“And that man with the chains?”
“Chains and fire in the eyes? That’s the Rolling Calf. A Jamaican duppy. The ghost of a wicked man, dragging his chains through the dark.” Quaco’s lip curled.
“Strong. One of the great ones. Your Navy captain didn’t earn that on a Tuesday.”
“And the one who turned into fire?”
“Counted rice, did he?”
Yaw stared.
“Ol’ Higue.” Quaco nodded.
“Common duppy.
Nasty, but weak.
Spirits are families, boy, and families have rank.
Sovereign at the top.
Then Great.
Then Common.
Then Lesser.
The rank tells you how high a spirit can carry you.
The Gede, the dead of Saint-Domingue, they sit at the very top.
Nothing outranks death.”
“How do you make the bargain?”
“You find the place.
Every spirit has one.
A crossroads.
A grave.
A silk-cotton tree.
A blue hole.
You bring what the spirit loves.
Rum, peppers, sweets, tobacco.
You draw its sign in the dirt.
You bring a blade or a gun, or the spirit chooses one for you.” He tapped the table.
“Then you tell it the truth. What you want. Why.”
“And it gives you power.”
“If it wants you.” Quaco leaned in.
“That’s what nobody understands. You can know every word of the ritual. You can stand at the right tree on the right night. And if the spirit doesn’t like the look of your heart, it turns its back. Or worse.”
“Worse how?”
“Some men who reach for a spirit that doesn’t want them never walk home.”
Yaw was quiet.
Then: “And if it does want you?”
“Then it tells you its Law. One rule: keep it till you die. Break it a little, the power weakens. Break it badly, the spirit hurts you. Break it worst of all—” He lifted the stump of his leg an inch off the floor.
“It leaves. And it takes something on its way out.”
“What was your Law?”
Quaco looked at the bottle a long time.
“Never strike a man who’s already down.” His voice went rough.
“I had a spirit of the sea. Ten years it rode with me. Beautiful. I could call the tide into a harbor like a dog to a whistle.” He swallowed.
“Then one night I was drunk and angry, and a man insulted me, and I knocked him down and kicked him until he stopped moving. And I felt her go. Like a wife walking out the door.”
He tapped the peg.
“Took the leg on her way out. Some days I miss her more than the leg.”
Yaw looked at his own hands.
“One spirit per life,” Quaco went on.
“That’s the other thing. You get one. You lose it, you never get another. And if the Navy catches you with one, they put you in cold iron. Cold iron cuts the rope between you and your spirit. You’re just a man in chains again.”
“I want one,” Yaw said.
“I want enough power to kill the man who killed her.”
Quaco’s face closed like a door.
“Then you’ll never get one worth having.” He poured again.
“A spirit hears murder in your mouth, and it runs. Or a bad one comes instead. The kind you don’t want.”
“Then where do I go?”
Quaco considered him.
Then he leaned closer.
“Out in the Out Islands there’s an old woman. Mother Phibba. She runs people. Runaways. Takes them through the fog in a boat nobody ever finds.” He tapped the side of his nose.
“If anyone living knows how to fight what’s hunting you, it’s her.”
“Where?”
“If I knew where, boy, she wouldn’t be very good at hiding.”
Near midnight, a small skiff slipped out of Nassau harbor without a lantern.
Cuffee rowed alone.
He pulled past the last of the anchored ships, past the dark shape of the Morning Star with her new cook fires glowing on deck, out beyond the harbor bar where a Navy courier cutter waited with her sails furled.
A sailor leaned over the cutter’s rail.
“You Cuffee?”
“I am.”
Cuffee reached into his coat and drew out a folded letter, sealed with a thumbprint of candle wax.
“For Captain Bell of the Vigilant. Tell him the Morning Star’s in Nassau harbor. Tell him she’s under repair. And tell him—” Cuffee smiled in the dark.
“Tell him the singing’s very good.”
The sailor took the letter.
The cutter’s sails dropped and filled.
Cuffee rowed back toward the town lights, humming the chorus of Ezinne’s song under his breath.