of its teeth missing. Of the remaining four or five, three were capped in gold.
Pirates, Arthur figured.
But there was something strangely non-aggressive about them too. Something that reminded Arthur of people playing dress-up. Surely real pirates would just kill him without a second thought, not sit quietly looking at him. And one of them was drawing a picture of the scene with a charcoal stick in a sketchbook.
“The Steelibed,” said the leader. “Can’t say I’ve heard of her. When did she sink? Carrying any cargo?”
“Maybe a day ago,” said Arthur cautiously. “Not much cargo. Um, cotton and stuff.”
“And stuff,” repeated the leader, with a wink at Arthur. “Well, with a treasure marker in front of us, we’ll not bother with ‘cotton and stuff’ if there’s anything below. The question is, are you claiming salvage?”
“Uh, I don’t know,” said Arthur cautiously. “Maybe. I might.”
“Well, if you’re not sure, then it don’t matter!” declared the leader, with a laugh that was echoed by the crew. “We’ll just have a look below and if there’s anything left, we’ll have it up. Then we’ll be on our way and you can get on with your own business.”
“Hold on!” cried Arthur. “Take me with you!”
“Lizard, take a line and have a glance under the buoy,” said the leader to one of the crew, a small woman who had blue scales tattooed all over her face. At least Arthur hoped they were tattoos and not actual scales. She undid her belt, kicked off her boots and quickly dived over the side with a rope held between her teeth.
“Please, I need to get to land,” said Arthur. “Somewhere I can make a phone call.”
“Ain’t no phone calls in the Border Sea,” said one of the Denizens. “Exchange got flooded and they never built a new one on the high ground.”
“Shut yer trap, One-Ear,” instructed the leader. He turned back to Arthur. “You want to come aboard the Moth as a passenger, then?”
“That’s your ship?” asked Arthur. “The Moth?”
“Aye, the Moth,” replied a Denizen who had a shark’s toothy mouth tattooed around his own. “What’s wrong with that? Moths can be extremely frightening. If you get trapped in a cupboard with a whole passel of moths—”
“I didn’t mean anything bad about the name,” said Arthur. He thought quickly. “It’s just I was surprised to be picked up by such a famous ship.”
“What?” asked one of the other Denizens. “The Moth?”
“Yes. Such a famous ship and its crew of … uh … such renowned pirates!”
Arthur’s speech was met by a sudden silence. Then the crew of the boat erupted, falling over themselves as they tried to run out the oars again. All of them shouted at once:
“Pirates! Where?! What pirates?! Back to the ship!”
“Hold hard!” roared the leader. He waded in among the crew, slapping them openhanded across the backs of their heads till they subsided on to the slats. Then he turned to Arthur.
“I ain’t never heard anything so insulting. Us! Pirates! We’re Salvagers and proud of it. We don’t take anything that hasn’t been thrown away first or sunk and come up. Or treasures left in the open sea.”
“Sorry,” said Arthur. “It was just the eye patches and the clothes and the tattoos and everything… I was confused. But I really would like to be a passenger.”
“Just because we’re only Salvagers doesn’t mean we can’t dress nice and wear an eye patch if we want,” muttered Shark-Mouth. “Or two eye patches, come to that.”
“Can’t wear two, you idiot,” said another Denizen.
“Can so,” replied the first. “Get some of that one-way leather from the doctor—”
“Shut up!” roared the leader. He turned back to Arthur and said, “I’m not saying you can be a passenger, right? I’m only the Second Mate of the Moth. Sunscorch is my name. But we’ll take you back to the ship. The Captain can decide your fate.”
“Thanks!” said Arthur. “My name’s Arth—”
He stopped halfway through. Better to keep his name to himself, he thought.
“Arth? Well, get aboard, Arth.”
Two of the closer Denizens held the boat against the buoy and another one helped Arthur across.
“Gettin’ yer leg ready to cut off, are yer?” asked the helping Denizen with a grin. He slapped Arthur’s cast and waved his own leg, showing off a wooden peg that started below the knee. “They grow back too quick, though, I’m telling yer.”
Arthur grimaced at the sight and quickly suppressed a flash of fear that his leg might have to be cut off. And his wouldn’t grow back, unlike a Denizen’s.
“I’ve had this one chopped a dozen times,” continued the peg-legged crew member. “Why, I remember—”
He stopped in midsentence and recoiled, staring at Arthur’s red-stained hands.
“He’s got the Red Hand!”
“Feverfew’s mark!”
“We’re all doomed!”
“Quiet!” roared Sunscorch. He peered down at Arthur.
“It’s only red tar or something from the buoy,” said Arthur. “It’ll wash off.”
“From the buoy,” whispered Sunscorch. “This here buoy?”
“Yes.”
“There wasn’t any smoke, was there?”
“Yes.”
“What about birds? That smoke didn’t turn into cormorants, did it? Smoky black cormorants that screamed out something that might have been ‘Death’ or ‘Dismemberment’ or anything like that?”
“There were birds,” admitted Arthur. “They screamed out ‘Thief’ and flew away. I thought they must have brought you here.”
Sunscorch took off his hat and wiped his bald head with a surprisingly neatly folded white handkerchief that he took out of a pocket.
“Not us,” he whispered. “Lookout saw the open buoy and the Captain thought it worth a glance. That there treasure marker must be one of Feverfew’s. The birds will have flown to find him, and his ship.”
“Shiver,” intoned the crew. “The ship of bone.”
As they spoke, the Denizen with the lantern shuttered it right down to the merest glimmer and everybody else looked out at the sea all around.
Sunscorch ran his tongue over his remaining teeth and kept wiping his head. His crew watched him intently, till he put away his handkerchief and clapped his hat back on.
“Listen up,” he whispered. “Seeing as we’re probably dead or headed for the slave-chain anyway, we might as well see what’s below. Lizard? Where’s Lizard?”
“Here,” came a whisper from the water. “There’s a chest all right, a big one, sitting pretty as you please atop a spire of rock, ten fathom down.”
“The chain?”
“Screwed to the rock, not to the chest.”
“Let’s be having that chest, then,” whispered Sunscorch. “Bones, you and Bottle back oars. Everyone else, hands on the line. You, too, Arth.”
Arthur joined