Sweet Nothings Read online

  Tad’s stomach rumbled loudly. “As you said, he’s a pirate. All he does is sail around causing mischief. I’ll ask to see what he looks like but there is no need to know any details about him.”

  Nan’s face did not agree. “Recall what happened the last time you failed to look into the pasts of both our clients.”

  Tad closed his eyes and moaned loudly.

  “You’re getting very grumpy because you’re hungry,” Claire said. “You should have accepted some of the dinner I offered you.”

  Tad put his face in his hands and rubbed his eyes. “Show me Avery the pirate,” he groaned at globe.

  After what seemed like hours, everybody’s eyes were drooping. Tad looked into Avery’s recent past and present, with constant interruption from Claire asking useless questions and pondering this and that. But everything was just as he had said. The pirate captain did what pirate captains do, give orders and sail around looking for a place to cause trouble. Apparently he wasn’t very good at his job, though. He had managed to steal a rowboat, barrels of wine, and crates of what turned out to be chickens instead of the gold bricks he had anticipated.

  “That’s enough,” Tad said. The image of the pirates in the globe fell away. “Tomorrow morning we’ll go have a look at him just to make sure he’s not something…unnatural.” Hardly possible since a magical being would have been far more successful in his schemes. “Until then, I bid you all goodnight.”

  “Not so fast. It is nearly dawn in Shub-Haramb.”

  Tad gave Nan the evil eye.

  Her face remained impassive. “That is Captain Avery’s realm and we now know he is at port.”

  “Ah, the Crazed Heifer,” Pip sighed out. “Home of the best spiced rice in all the realms.”

  Tad looked at Claire. “I told you he steals food.”

  “I can’t very well eat rice before somebody has cooked it. It would make my stomach explode. That is very inconvenient. The Lady does not enjoy when—”

  “Never mind your appetite, Pip.” Nan’s bird eyes fixed on Tad. “I suggest we go now if we want to catch Captain Avery alone.”

  “But I’m hungry,” Tad said.

  “Me, too,” Pip squawked. “Spiced rice,” he sang out.

  Tad rubbed his belly. “Maybe we could try the local cuisine. What type of place is Shub-Haramb?” The name rolled off of his tongue very nicely and sounded like something tasty to eat.

  “It is to the east, near Threigenland in the Aeorus,” Nan replied.

  Tad huffed. “Giants again?”

  “Unfortunately, nothing so simple,” Nan said.

  “The Aeorus?” Claire’s face took on a studious look. “Mystic fog, ships disappearing, things swallowing you up whole if you set foot on any of its islands, and…” Her eyes widened. “Giant turtles.”

  “Yes, but enough of that,” Nan said. “Avengers, I suggest the two of you go to see Captain Avery immediately. The rest of us will look for Princess Arabella.” She cast Sev a sideways look. “I think we know just where to begin our search.”

  Sev’s eyes glossed over as a groan rumbled in his throat. Tad’s lower lip poked out. But the ladies looked at both of them expectantly.

  “Fine,” Tad said with a look of shared pessimism at Sev. “I suppose we’ll do as we’re told.”

  Pip leapt into the air and sailed over everybody’s heads. “Pirates and princesses, rogues and royalty,” he cawed.

  Tad failed to appreciate his enthusiasm or the contemplative look on Claire’s face. His stomach rumbled again.

  Claire retrieved a suspicious-looking bundle from her pocket and held it out to him. “Candied peacock roll?”

  Tad’s hand flashed out and snatched the package. He unwrapped it and shoved the contents into his mouth with a mumbled, “Thank you.” But the burst of deliciousness captured him completely, so juicy, so scrumptious, so sweet. He stared off into space as he savored the morsel.

  “Humans are disgusting,” Sev said.

  “Oh hush,” Nan replied. “It’s not as if you actually are a bird, so he is hardly consuming one of your near relations.”

  Tad’s mouth stopped its chewing. “You aren’t really pigeons?” he said with his mouth full.

  “Most things are not as they appear, dear.”

  With this, Nan lifted her wings and glided toward the ceiling, Sev and Pip on her tail. The three of them disappeared and the library grew quiet. All that was heard was Tad’s gobbling and hushed whispers from the round trinkets on the shelf behind the ledger. Tad brushed his hands together and handed the empty cheesecloth back to Claire.

  “Good, huh?” She grinned at him.

  “It was perfectly acceptable,” was his reply.

  “Hmf. Your eyes twinkled and danced while you were eating it so I do believe I’ll pass on your compliments to Imogene.”

  Tad spat and gagged. His fingers shot to his tongue and tried to scrub away what remained of the peacock and wheat roll. “Tante Iezavel…bleh.” He coughed forcibly, eyes watering. The girl was trying to murder him or even worse.

  Claire ignored his horrified expression completely. She stepped up to the globe. “Show me what Captain Avery, the pirate, is doing right now.”

  Tad wiped away his tears to behold a familiar clean-shaven face of a man in his early thirties in the globe. Captain Avery’s light brown eyes surveyed his motley crew as they carried crates and rolled barrels up a plank and onto a ship. Most hardly looked like pirates at all. One wore a rather interesting dark blue suit with brass buttons running up the chest, sleeves that cut off at the elbow, and pants that barely reached his calves. With his shiny, black leather shoes and round spectacles he almost appeared a gentleman. The others were equally odd, though none so shabbily dressed as the one with a patch over one eye, which he lifted to reveal a perfectly sound instrument, only to replace the patch again and scowl at everything around him with his other eye.

  “Looks like they’re about to leave port, so we had better hurry,” Claire said.

  Before Tad could object she had magicked herself away, and before he could think to assert and defend his position of dominance, he was following after her. Both of them landed on a pier where the scent of the sea and unwashed bodies assaulted Tad’s nostrils. Claire rubbed her bare arms as her breath came out in a fog.

  Tad removed his coat and draped it over the lady’s shoulders. He had a “you’re welcome” on the tip of his tongue but Claire’s lips remained shut, bluish and trembling. She shivered and pulled the coat tighter around her. Warmth flooded Tad at the sight of it. No doubt the feeling was because he had repaid her gift of the poisoned peacock with a very gentlemanly expression. He drew in a smug breath and turned his eyes around him.

  The tide swished against the pier as the sun peeked over the horizon. Small fishing boats lay along the shore as far as the eye could see, but the waters around the dock held larger vessels bearing such names as bespoke origins far and wide. One pirate captain Avery stood alongside a ship, arms crossed and jesting with the local fisherman while they hauled in their catch and accused him of telling tall tales.

  “This is quite fascinating,” Claire said.

  Tad shoved aside the sights and smells of dawn in Shub-Haramb, marched right up to Captain Avery and cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sir.” Avery turned. Very slowly his eyes moved down to Tad. “I am Tad and I have come to give you the desire of your heart. That is, my patroness has found your true love. Just come with me to claim your happily ever after.”

  The fisherman voices grew quiet, then burst into laughter.

  Avery looked out of the corners of this eyes to where one of the pirates was rolling a barrel up the plank and singing out something about shivering and timbers. “Did Iakapov put you up to this?”

  “I do not know what a Iakapov is but I am Lady Love’s avenging agent.” Tad motioned to Claire. “And this is Claire, my little…my agent in training.”

  Avery’s eyes swept over Tad and Claire with a twinkle of am
usement. “And what am I to provide in exchange for your services? A share in the treasure?”

  Claire appeared next to Tad. He intended only a glance in her direction but what he saw had his eyes snapping back to stare at her. Those ridiculous things she called goggles had made their way from her dress pocket and onto her face.

  “This is very interesting. Did you know he has a dark blue aura about him?” Claire turned to Tad. “And yours is very…” Eyes as big as apples observed him. “Well, I might call it blue or green or perhaps blue-green.” She pushed the contraption onto her forehead. “I found these in the library and Pip said they’re love goggles, though my experiments have not revealed—”

  “Put those away,” Tad said in his big voice. Without taking his eyes from hers he added, “You’ll have to forgive my assistant, sir. Too much time in the laboratory has gone to her head. No one can really tell whether she’s stating some extraordinary and highly relevant fact…or merely ordering her lunch. Only in this case those particular things on her head belong to Lady Love so possibly your having a blue this or that might be important.” He shrugged. “But as I said, Claire’s lucid moments are entirely unpredictable and only perceptible in hindsight.”

  Claire’s eyes gave Tad a good flogging.

  Avery’s grin vanished. He turned his head this way and that and stared at the goggles, which barely reached his chest. “Magical sorts, are you?”

  “I’m a scientist myself and I am very interested in studying you and your crew. You see I have not—”

  “Thank you.” Tad patted Claire’s head, just behind the goggles. “That’s enough now. Let me tell the man what is required.” He whirled back to Avery before the storm in his little helper’s eyes transformed into a tempestuous wind in her mouth. “Your true love is waiting for you so if you will allow me to find her and—”

  “And who might this lady be?” Avery crossed his bare arms and arched an eyebrow at Tad.

  “Princess Arabella of Lumares,” Claire said. “Or at least that is the current hypothesis.”

  Tad frowned at her. “It is not a hypothesis at all.” And it was his job to tell people about their true love, not hers.

  “A princess?” Avery’s face soured. “Her kind and my kind don’t mix.”

  “That’s what I said,” Claire said.

  Tad was tempted to put his hand over the girl’s mouth, or perhaps he needed an enchantment or something more permanent. “None of that matters,” he told his client. “Lady Love marked you both and that means this particular princess is your true love.”

  “What does a pirate have to do with love?”

  Tad eyed the rogue, standing there in his thin, flowy pants and sleeveless tunic, despite the cold. “Maybe nothing. But love has chosen to have something to do with you.”

  “Well I am busy, so go away.”

  “I am here to make sure you get your completely undeserved happily ever after.” Tad stiffened his stance. “By any means necessary.”

  “We pirates are used to threats.”

  “What’s this, Avery?” A raggedy head popped his head up from behind a heap of fish. “How do you expect to convince us all you’re a real pirate with a crew full of dwarfs?”

  Raucous laughter boomed out as more fishermen gathered behind the first.

  “Aye,” another said, displaying a row of more gum than teeth. “I suppose you’re takin’ on a light crew so there’s enough room for all the treasure you’ll bring back.”

  Avery smiled at the chuckles that followed this remark. He pointed to Tad and Claire. “Just two dwarfs, unless, of course, you count Basset.” His eyes turned up to the ship.

  More laughter rang out.

  “You insolent scallywag,” a squat man called down from the crow’s nest. He turned loose of a long, cylinder object that dangled from a cord around his neck and down his round belly. “Fer e’ery mutiny I e’er saw, t’was an arrogant cap’n wi’ naught but seaweed fer brains.”

  The fishermen laughed and tossed fish parts over their shoulders. The one nearest to Tad and Claire wiped his brow, flopped a flounder onto the fish heap in front of him, and began to gut the thing with his bare hands. Claire’s lips drew into a grimace. She turned away from the carnage, pinching her nostrils together with her forefinger and thumb.

  “Life at sea, gentlefolk,” Avery said, eyeing Claire.

  “You can run back to your ship and sail to the farthest sea,” Tad said. “But if you persist in trying to ignore me, I will be forced to behave unreasonably.”

  “Which is the only behavior he knows,” Claire said with her nostrils pinched shut.

  Tad put up his finger to warn her to close her lips as well.

  Avery shook his head. “Never try to outfox a pirate, sir. I’ve been doing this since—”

  “Aye, since you were in bloomers,” a female voice cried. “We’ve heard it all before.” A young woman with raven hair and ruby lips leaned over the edge of the ship. “But I for one am very interested in seeing you fall in love.”

  “Shove off, Nadie,” Avery replied with a wave of his arm. “You leave man business to me and Basset and get back to your womanly chores.”

  Nadie leapt over the edge of the ship and landed on the plank with a thunk. She straightened and stood with her back to Tad and Claire. No class at all. Her apparel consisted solely of uncouth articles, a white, flowy shirt over a pair of black trousers that might have been made of some manner of animal skin. A dagger was tucked into one of her knee-high, ivory boots. “If you’re bringing more passengers on the ship that I keep in order, it is my business. I can barely contain the chaos the nine of you create. You’re worse than a brood of children.”

  Avery’s eyes narrowed but a grin stretched his lips. He clomped toward his female cohort and the two of them began to circle one another.

  “What is Tad short for?” Claire asked.

  But Tad was trying to hear what the pirate man and the pirate lady were saying, and not whatever babble was coming out of Claire’s mouth. The villainous pair stood head-to-head while they muttered, as if threatening to butt each other off the pier.

  Claire nudged Tad with her shoulder.

  “Tadpole,” he hissed.

  A giggle cheeped out of his supposed assistant. “Really?”

  Tad straightened his spine. “I’m small but my head is big and so are my eyes, so that’s what the other kids called me. I finally gave up trying to make them stop and decided to own it.”

  “Oh. What’s your real name, then?”

  “I already told you I’m not saying.”

  “Why not?”

  “Are you always this bossy with your questions?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m not going to tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s embarrassing. Plus, I’m trying to overhear their private conversation.”

  “Worse than Tadpole?”

  He nodded.

  “Oh, my.”

  He nodded again and jumped as Nan landed on his shoulder.

  “I’m afraid we have a problem,” the she-bird said.

  Pip flapped onto Claire’s shoulder. “A siren,” he trumpeted right in Tad’s ear. “And Captain Avery is after the treasure on her island. But the other pirates got there first and…she ate them all.”

  “I see you can hardly wait to be the bearer of ill news,” Tad replied.

  “Ahoy there, cast off. Get up you lazy brutes,” Avery shouted, stomping up the plank toward the ship.

  Tad shooed the birds away and cried out after the captain. “Wait, sir. I believe you will want to know what we have to say.”

  Avery did not turn around. “Despite my sister’s very unnecessary and dramatic protests, I have no intention of taking on any passengers, so…scoot along little fellow.” His left hand flicked its fingers in Tad’s direction.

  “Aye, but they might be good little swabbers,” a voice called from aboard the ship.

  “We are not your
slaves,” Pip cawed.

  Avery spun around and grinned at Tad. “Everybody works aboard a ship.”

  “We will not be traveling with you,” Tad replied.

  The pirate gave him a smug little smirk. “That’s what I thought.”

  “But you will need my help to survive if you intend to abscond with the treasure you’re after,” Tad said. “There’s a ravenous beast on that island.”

  Avery frowned. “My crew and I can handle it…although, I have no idea what you are speaking of, sir. We are merely traveling to—”

  “What do you think happened to the rest of your kind?” Claire said. “Or have you not noticed the sea has fewer pirates than it used to?”

  Tad jabbed her with his elbow.

  “He should know,” Claire declared like she was in charge and gave Tad a look that dared him to object. “As you guessed, we are magical sorts, and by using our magic we have discovered the fate of the lot of them. They’re all gone, eaten by a siren.” She nodded at the captain in the same way she did when she had just told Tad a thing or two.

  “I didn’t sign up for sirens,” a voice grumbled from the ship. “Plunderin’, aye.”

  “Mermaids, aye,” another said.

  “Aye, set me down for that,” a third replied.

  “Ladies or loot?” the first said. “It be a choice, aye?”

  The ship roared with laughter.

  “Quiet, you scallywags,” Avery cried, though he grinned. He dipped his head at each of Tad and Claire. “Now if you would kindly cease bamming my crew—”

  “Bamming?” Tad lifted his chin and inspected the rogue. “Where are you from, sir?”

  “Here and there.”

  “I feel I am the one being bammed,” Tad replied to Avery’s sneer, “since I have to convince a sweet and innocent princess to fall in love with a murderous pirate.”

  “I do not murder. I am far too clever for that.”

  “Then what is it you do, sir?” Claire asked.

  “I relieve ships and their passengers of excess cargo.”

  Claire’s eyes narrowed at him. “So you steal?”