“Does he have it?” the new arrival asked.
Silverfin had recognized her when she spoke. It was her - Elizabeth Barnes - the reason his sister had abandoned her kin and came to live here, the reason she had become trapped here with humans who had no idea of her true worth or what she had given up to be among them. Silverfin caught himself scowling openly at the woman who fancied herself a queen among pirates.
“He says it’s in his head,” Hawk shared quietly.
So, Silverfin thought, Captain Hawk could be civil and gentle when he wanted to be. Just apparently not withhim. It did not make any sense. Surely, he was far more beautiful than Elizabeth Barnes with her stick-straight dark hair all unattractively pinned up to her head. Even without his magnificent, sacrificed mane.
“I think there’s something...” Hawk made an odd gesture with his finger by his temple. “... wrong with him.”
“Not all there?” Elizabeth whispered back. “I told you he was a lunatic, but that doesn’t mean he’s a liar.”
“Do you two mind? I’m right here. It isn’t right to talk about a man as if he wasn’t there, when I am very much there,allthere even.
An impressed silence greeted Silverfin’s outburst. Things were definitely not going according to his brilliant plan. He had to do something desperate to keep his dream alive, at least a little while longer.
“I beseech you, Captain Hawk,” Silverfin spoke with ardent sincerity, “if you take me with you on theOrca, I will lead you to the treasure galleon. I won’t let you down because I’m just as interested in finding that gold as you are. And I am very familiar with the winds and currents in the area. Who knows? I might be more valuable to you than you think, if you just give me a chance!”
Hawk and the Barnes woman exchanged a look. She shrugged. Her hand brushed over Hawk’s shoulder in a way that was overly familiar and it sent a jolt of jealousy igniting in the pit of Silverfin's belly. Or was it hunger? He probably was quite hungry, come to think of it.
“I’ll try you out for a week,” Hawk finally spoke and Silverfin felt his own eyes light up with excitement. “We’ll see how you get on with my crew. But at the end of the week, if I don’t like you, or they don’t like you, or Millie the cat doesn’t like you - you walk the plank.”
“What about theEstrela?”
“I’ll survive without it,” Hawk replied with a deepening frown.
Liar, Silverfin thought, bitterly.
The crew of theOrcahated him briefly, as they would any newcomer, but soon enough, he had made sure that they would grow to love him. Bipeds - men, Silverfin corrected himself - it turned out, loved reasons to ridicule their own kind, and all his time spent watching the crew through the portholes of the ship gave him plenty of fodder to amuse them. There was the one man who liked to expose himself to sea birds when no one was looking. And the one who got his third leg stuck in a bottle of rum, trying to do something drunken and incomprehensible to it. And they hung on his every word just like they had when he'd first come to Port Royal to find Hawk. Who was he to hold back such truthful information?
Millie the land-crab was turning out to be a much more difficult creature to access the heart and mind of, much to Silverfin's chagrin. Speaking to her didn't seem to elicit a response and bribing her with scraps of food did not seem to endear her to Silverfin either. Were land creatures simply stupider than those in the ocean? That would, he mused, explain the majority of the crew. Now that he was among them, it was painfully obvious from the odor that for men who spent most of their time on the sea they spent very little timeinit.
There were a few exceptions, of course. Hawk's right-hand man, a barnacled old Spanish sailor named Ruiz who eyed Silverfin like he expected him to make off with the ship, was at least well-groomed and clean. As was that lovely piece of man flesh, Hank the bosun, with his arm muscles worthy of a MerSir. He didn't seem to trust Silverfin any more than Ruiz, which rather annoyed him. How could they think so lowly of him when he was offering them treasure beyond their wildest dreams?
"I don't see why I have to be the one to muck out the goat’s stall," he complained to Hawk that night, pushing his way into the cabin at the rear of the ship. "Do you know how unfair it is being stuck in that dim hovel of a hold all day cleaning?"
Hawk's lips twitched into what might have almost been a smile. Despite how annoyed he was at how menial the day had been, Silverfin's heart skipped a beat. "That hovel of a hold you're talking about is my ship."
"Perhaps not quite a hovel," Silverfin quickly tried to backtrack. "But when one is used to feeling a fresh sea breeze on one's face...."
This time Hawk actually smiled, a wry quirk of one of the sides of his mouth. He seemed to be in a much better mood out on the open ocean, Silverfin couldn't help but think. "We all must do our part on this ship, Mr. Silver. And we all must eat."
Silverfin wasn't quite convinced that the swill he'd eaten that night could be rightly called food. The hard rocks he'd spent the day skinning had been boiled until they were little more than flavorless mush. But he forced himself to hold his tongue. "Surely there's some place else I could be of use. I could climb those rope things. Pull up the - " he thought quickly. "Sails. Right? It can't be that hard."
"Mr. Silver, I do not know where you come from, but it must have been a very landlocked place indeed.” The captain twirled a large feather in his hand that Silverfin had come to recognize as a writing implement. Merfolk had much better tools for that, he thought with some complacency. Then again, merfolk culture was obviously much more advanced than these humans.
“You told me, when you begged for your life, that you had many skills. So far, other than your gift of gab, I fail to see any of these finer qualities.”
“Rude!”
“I’m merely being honest.”
There was much Silverfin wanted to tell the captain. He could tell which way the wind was blowing, for one thing, without the need for any weathervane. He knew the tides by smell alone. He could tell you if a storm was coming hours in advance and exactly from which direction. He could name three hundred and twenty-eight species of marine life that bipeds knew about and another thousand more that they have never heard of or imagined before. But none of these were things he could very well share with Hawk.
“I give excellent backrubs,” Silverfin had offered him in desperation. "I don’t have to rub your whole back, if you don’t want. I can just do the shoulders. It’s very relaxing. If there’s one thing you need to do more isrelax. I mean, with all due respect, Captain, but you’re very tense.”
Miraculously, Hawk had let out a long-suffering sigh and beckoned him.
Could this be it? Would he finally be allowed the secret pleasure of touching him? That strange, aching longing Silverfin had felt for him on the docks flared hot inside him at the thought of his hands sliding over Hawk's bare skin. Even if it was only his shoulders - those magnificent, broad shoulders, peppered with beautiful freckles that looked like bursts of stars....
