Free The Buccaneer's Apprentice by V. Briceland Page B

prompted him once more. “Eh?”
    “I didn’t make the pirate,” Nic growled back, pulling himself from his near-fetal position until he was sitting upright, with his back against a barrel marked possoins salés . “I mean, I’m not a pirate.” He tried to peer at the cavern’s other occupant, who had been unconscious since Nic had come to. All he could tell was that the unknown man was very old and frail. Like a bundle of broken sticks, he lay atop a pile of burlap sacks stuffed, by the smell of it, with dried grasses. His mouth was open, and his jaw limp. He breathed shallowly, like a sleeping baby. Unlike either of the conscious prisoners, the old man’s hands were not bound. “Signor,” he hissed, trying to awaken the man. “Are you awake?”
    “Maxl, he making the pirate when he less than you.” The pirate thumped his chest with his chin, to show that he was the Maxl in question. Not even his loud voice awakened the sleeping captive. “How many years you having?”
    Nic had learned that not responding didn’t shut the man up. It merely made him inquire more aggressively. “Seventeen,” he said, trying to sound as uninterested as possible. To the old man he called out once more, “Signor!” He still received no response. Perhaps the girl had done a sight more harm to his skull than she’d managed on Nic’s own.
    “A-ha! Maxl have four and ten years when he go to sea first time. Less than you!” The pirate’s blue face twisted with gleeful triumph. If this were a competition, Nic thought, it was one of a highly unusual nature. “Maxl live in …”
    “Maxl live in Longdoun then,” Nic said along with him. He’d heard several stories so far of Maxl’s upbringing in Longdoun city. Between the descriptions of the riverside town’s docks, Maxl’s humble beginnings as a pickpocket, and the allegedly rollicking tales of his drunken aunt known far and wide as “Fat Sue,” he didn’t think much of it.
    “Yes!” said Maxl, his face sunny. “Maxl live in Longdoun then. Fat Sue tell Maxl no go out after dark, bad men be around. But I go out, and am taken up by, what you call, uh, uh?” Nic shook his head and stared out into the darkness beyond the cave mouth. He could see sparks from a small fire flying into the air, but nothing of whoever might be warming themselves at it. Maxl made herky-jerky motions with his shoulders. “Gang. It kind of gang. They walk night streets, kidnap men, make men into sailor. If they not wanting to be sailor, too bad! Hah! Hah!”
    “Press gang?” Nic said. He’d heard of such things before, these illegal gangs that delivered unwilling yet able bodies to captains, depriving them of their freedom and families. One of Nic’s own masters had made idle threats to sell Nic to a press gang, but Nic had always hoped they were fictional conceits, made up to scare the young.
    “Press gang! Yes! Is thing. Smart boy.” The pirate grinned at him. Unlike the man who had held him captive on the Pride of Muro , at least Maxl’s teeth were all intact. They might not have been pretty, but they were all accounted for. “You being like Maxl, yes? Both very smart.”
    Nic thought of the Arturos then, and of Captain Delguardino and all the men of the Pride lost at sea, and felt an angry fire burn within. “No,” he retorted, staring the man square in the eye. “We are not alike.” Even as he said the words, though, he couldn’t help but wonder. Maxl might have been twice Nic’s age, but no matter how different his long black hair was from Nic’s dark, short crop, and no matter how encrusted with blue dye his face was compared to Nic’s sunburnt cheeks, it sounded as if they’d both had less-than-ideal childhoods. Not to mention the fact that they both had been pressed into labor against their wills. Deny it as Nic might, they were somewhat alike. “And I’m not a pirate.”
    “No?” Maxl’s eyebrow shot up.
    “No!”
    As if sensing Nic’s outrage at the