Free Rising In The East by Rob Kidd Page A

one to carry the whispers to him. His spies are pathetically inadequate. Company agents could be sneaking up on us this minute and we would have no idea.”
    Jack glanced around uneasily. He definitely did not want to run into any East India Trading Company agents. His encounters with them never seemed to go very well…a problem that Jack was quite sure was not his fault.
    The hallway opened into a palatial throne room. What seemed like hundreds of pirates in blue and green robes stood or squatted around the edges—conversing in low voices, trading goods, gambling, drinking tea, all in subdued voices. Jack couldn’t wait for the day he had that many pirates following him around!
    At the far end of the room, yellow banners emblazoned with red lions hung from the ceiling around an enormous carved-mahogany chair. Seated in the chair was a man who looked like Sao Feng, but with a shorter moustache and beard, yellow robes instead of green, and more of a paunch around his middle. His eyes were just as shrewd and calculating, however. He pursed his lips as the pirates approached his throne.
    “Brother,” he said slowly. “You have returned. Unscathed. How…delightful.” His gaze panned across Jack and his crew. “And you brought friends. Charming.”
    “I brought more than that,” Sao Feng said proudly. Around the room, pirates stopped what they were doing to stare at him. Liang Dao leaned forward with a hungry expression.
    “The opal?” he said. “You stole it?”
    Sao Feng threw back his sleeve to reveal the opal in the palm of his hand. He held it up so the whole room could see it. Sunlight from the windows high in the walls caught the fire within the opal and magnified it so it sparkled brightly like a black star in Sao Feng’s hand. A murmur of awe echoed around the room.
    Sao Feng waited a dramatic moment until the whispers died down. Then he stepped toward his brother and, in a voice everyone could hear, declared, “I did not steal it. It was given to me. This opal is rightfully mine—and with it I claim the throne of the Pirate Lord.”
    “What, now ?” Jack said as the room exploded into a hubbub of noise. “Can’t we get my bit over with first, please? Just throw us the vial and we’ll nip out the back, leave you lot to it, cheerio.”
    “No!” Sao Feng said, drawing his sword. “You must fight alongside us to get what you want! Fight, Captain Jack Sparrow! Fight, any pirate who stands with me—all of you who know that I should be Pirate Lord, not my brother. Not Liang Dao!”
    “Never!” Liang Dao shouted. “To me, loyal warriors!”
    And before Jack could do a thing about it, a pirate in yellow was pointing a very wicked-looking sword at Jack’s throat. Jack’s crew grabbed their weapons, forced to defend themselves.
    Jack gave the sword an alarmed look and moved it away from his throat with one finger. “That’s better,” he said and leaped into battle with the attacking soldier. “I say,” he shouted at Sao Feng as swords clanked and crashed around him. “This is rather unfair. You might have given us some warning that we’d get caught in your harum-scarum coup here!”
    “But then you wouldn’t have come!” Sao Feng cried over the din with a triumphant gleam in his eyes. He was locked in a struggle with his brother, each parrying the other’s sword strokes with ease. “And surely, Captain Jack Sparrow, you would not have wanted to miss a battle as glorious as this?”
    “Actually, that would have been all right with me!” Jack called back, ducking under a wild swing of his opponent’s blade. “Just so you know for next time!” He leaped over the blade as the pirate swung at his bare feet.
    The clash and clang of swords echoed off the walls. Carolina and Diego were fighting backto-back, practicing the moves they’d learned together on board the Pearl . Barbossa leaped behind a column and fired his pistol at any pirate who came near him. Jean and Billy fought bravely,