Free The Last of the Sky Pirates by Paul Stewart, Chris Riddell Page B

hesitantly.
    A throaty laugh went up. ‘Aye, lad. Long ago. A sky pirate captain, no less.’ He paused. ‘Not that that means anything these days – not since the Edge was stricken with stone-sickness.’
    ‘A sky pirate captain ,’ Rook whispered in awe, and felt tingles of excitement running up and down his spine. What must it be like, he wondered, to have sailed in a sky pirate ship, with the sun in your face and the wind in your hair? He had often read, late into the night at the lecterns of the underground library, of the Great Voyages of Exploration into the darkest Deepwoods and the fearful dangers encountered there; of the series of Noble Flights out into Open Sky itself – and, of course, all about the fierce and terrible battles the sky pirates had fought with the wicked leaguesmen in their determination to keep the skies open for free trade.
    Ships with names like Galerider, Stormchaser , Windcutter, Edgedancer and the Great Sky Whale , sailed bylegendary sky pirate captains. Ice Fox, Wind Jackal, Cloud Wolf. And, perhaps the most famous of them all, the great Captain Twig himself.
    Rook stared more closely at the caged captain. Could this be the fabled Twig? Had the popular young captain he’d read so much about become the huge hairy hulk before him?
    ‘Are you Captain—’ he began.
    ‘Vulpoon,’ the sky pirate captain answered, his voice low, hushed. ‘Deadbolt Vulpoon. But keep it to yourself.’
    Rook frowned. Vulpoon . There was something familiar about it.
    A little smile played around the captain’s eyes. ‘I see you recognize my name,’ he said, unable to keep the pride from his voice. His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Those flea-ridden featherballs that captured me had no idea the size of the fish they had landed. If they had, I wouldn’t be talking to you now.’ The sky pirate captain laughed. ‘If they knew it was Deadbolt Vulpoon in this stinking cage, they’d cart me off to the Wig-Wig Arena in the Eastern Roost faster than a three-master in a sky-storm.’ He played with one of the skulls in his thick beard. ‘Instead, they’ve left me to waste away like a common Mire raider.’
    ‘Can I help?’ asked Rook.
    ‘Thank you, lad, for the thought,’ said the pirate, ‘but unless you have the cage key of a shryke-sister, I’m done for like an oozefish on a mudflat.’ He stroked his beard. ‘There is one thing …’
    ‘Name it,’ said Rook.
    ‘You could stay and talk a while. Three days and three nights I’ve been here, and you’re the first who hasn’t been too frightened of shrykes to approach the cage.’ He paused. ‘Yours will probably be the last kind voice I’ll ever hear.’
    ‘Of course,’ said Rook. ‘It would be an honour.’ He slipped back into the nearby shadows and crouched down. ‘So, what was it like?’ he asked. ‘Skysailing.’
    ‘Skysailing?’ said Vulpoon, and sighed with deep longing. ‘Only the most incredible experience in the world, lad,’ he said. ‘Nothing compares to the feel of soaring up into the air and speeding across the sky, with the full sails creaking, the hull-weights whistling and the flight-rock – sensitive to every change in temperature – now rising, now falling. Angle, speed and balance, that’s what it was all about.’ He paused. ‘Until the flight-rocks began to fall to the stone-sickness, that is.’
    Rook stared at the sky pirate captain’s crestfallen face.
    ‘A terrible time, it was,’ he continued. ‘Of course, we’d known what was happening to the new floating rock of Sanctaphrax for some time. The loss of buoyancy. The gradual disintegration … But we made no connection between the plight of the New Sanctaphrax rock and our own precious flight-rocks. That was soon to change. First off, news started coming in of large, heavy traders simply crashing out of the sky. The broad tug boats followed, with league ships and patrol boats soon also becoming useless. The leagues fell into decline and the