Free God of Luck by Ruthann Lum McCunn Page B

knives in the cookhouse—many times larger and made for cutting flesh—were sure to be more effective in battle. Even against muskets. At least the way the devils had used their muskets when captives had rushed the hatches shortly after sailing.
    Pinned in my berth by the ship’s wild bucking, I hadn’t realized what was happening. But above the awful rending of the ship’s timbers, the whacks of the corporals’ sticks, their shouted commands, I’d been aware of a solid, desperate roar that was shattered by a series of small explosions, the distinctive smell of gunpowder, shrieks of terror and pain.
    Later, I learned the devils had fired their muskets directly at the captives clawing the hatch gratings from below. Those shot had fallen onto the men beneath them. They in turn, had tumbled onto others. Then, as the fallen had piled up, the ship’s crazed pitching and lurching had shaken them loose, hurling bodies into the men choking the walkways, the corporals crushed among them, toppling all.
    In the flailing muddle, the efforts to disentangle sticks and limbs, many had suffered severe grazes and bruising, a few broken bones. But those of us who’d remained in our berths bore similar injuries from the ship’s lunges and rolls. As for the men shot by the devils’ muskets, none died. Their wounds were mere blazes of purpled skin. For the devils had fired pellets of seasalt, and I expected they’d do likewise when fighting mutineers. Not out of mercy. No. But because we were the captain’s goods.

    ACCORDING TO AH Jook, the captains of devil-ships protected the wheelhouses on their vessels with iron barricades, and the one we’d passed through when herded onto the stern deck for inspection was typical: About eight feet high and stretching from bulwark to bulwark, it had a single gate flanked by two openings for a pair of cannons that were positioned to rake the ship’s main deck. My eyes fixed on the devils and their weapons, I’d failed to see either the cannons or the barricade. Did the leaders of the mutiny know about them? Was overcoming cannons and a barricade in their plan?
    Even with the cannons shooting pellets of seasalt, I doubted the barricade could be breached unless the devils were taken by surprise—and by a large force. Which meant it had to be stormed at the very start of the mutiny.
    Red or some other devil surely counted the knives in the cookhouse before Shorty, Pockface, Ah Kow, and the two Buffalos returned to their berths for the night. The mutiny, then, would have to begin in the afternoon. The three cooks wouldn’t be foolish enough to fight alone or to rely on immediate help from below. Could there be mutineers among the men going above for opium?
    Those without cash were allowed to charge the cost of the opium against future earnings, and I’d heard more than a few who went for “medicinal doses” make fun of the doctor for failing to recognize that they didn’t have the habit. But I’d thought I knew why they were going. While in line for our meals or washing our bowls and chopsticks, I’d watched many a man collect his tiny jar of opium, stretch on a mat, take out a speck at the end of a wire, carefully warm it over the flame of a lamp, press it into the porcelain bowl of his pipe, then dip in for more. Back and forth he’d go, heating the opium, working it into the proper sticky consistency. Finally, the man would suck on the pipe’s stem, and although family teaching had instilled in me that pipedreams were both fleeting and false, I’d wish my own head was filling with hot, sweet smoke, bringing dreams of happiness with Bo See.
    Returning home through a mutiny might be a pipedream, too. With no other chance for escape though, I’d accepted Ah Choy’s invitation to join. Now I prayed to Gwan Gung—the heavily bearded, red-faced God of War who champions right as much as might—for another Sahm Yuen Lei.

    DURING THE FIRST war over opium, a devil-general had landed five