Release date: December 1, 2018
Subgenre: Pirate Anthology
About Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space):
Outlaws. Lovers. Heroes. Villains
Think pirates are all about the rum and the pieces of eight? Let these
fifteen tales draw you into the adventures of a new kind of pirate. Sail
with them as they seek treasure, redemption, love, revenge and more.
Raise the Jolly Roger and sharpen your cutlass (or recharge your raygun)
and climb aboard for some unforgettable voyages.
Featuring stories by
Ginn Hale, A.J. Fitzwater, Geonn Cannon, Joyce Chng, Elliott Dunstan,
Ashley Deng, Su Haddrell, Ed Grabianowski, Mharie West, Matisse Mozer,
Soumya Sundar Mukherjee, Megan Arkenberg, Peter Golubock, Michael
Merriam and Caroline Sciriha.
Excerpt:
“Treasured
Island” by
Ginn Hale
How I came to be marooned on the back of a
wandering island is a matter of some debate. Bosun Lisboa would no doubt
maintain that I received a rightful punishment for attempting to incite a
mutiny against our brawny, blond Captain Alvim. But I would argue that I simply
surveyed the ragged, bare-foot crew as to how many members might enjoy a
respite from murdering sailors and plundering great stores of half-rotten
bananas. I’d wondered if anyone else desired to return to familiar home-shores.
Perhaps take up fishing as a source of income.
After the months we’d spent chasing
fruitless rumors of Captain Barradas’ hidden treasure and slaughtering entire
crews of little merchant ships for their pitiful stores, fishing didn’t sound
so bad to many.
Before you laugh, allow me to point out
that a good number of us came from fishing families before we were pressed by
naval recruiters or captured by privateers. All I know of navigation and
sailing, I learned while hunting the vast silver shoals of sun skates and
dragon eels that swam in the shadows of Reinazona’s wandering islands. It
wasn’t the easiest of work nor the safest of trades but then, neither is
piracy.
And truth be told, I’d felt far cleaner
back when I’d reeked of fish guts and eel shit.
So, after another evening swabbing blood
off the deck and listening to the screams coming from the sad little captive in
our captain’s cabin, I felt a change of occupation might be worth pondering. In
hindsight, I acknowledge that I shouldn’t have pondered so very loudly. But I’d
been under the influence of rum and remorse. And a little more rum, after that.
I may have referred to Lisboa as toadspunk; I may have called the captain a
turd in a velvet coat—that’s beside the point.
The trouble was that Captain Alvim had
only just done-in our previous captain—Easal, was his name, I think—who’d only
been leading us a week since he himself had done away with the captain before
him. There had been a few before that as well. Sometimes, even I forgot that it
had been Captain Barradas—him of the maps and riddles and the lost
treasure—who’d had me dragged from my little fishing boat to serve as their
Almagua navigator. “In the service of our Queen,” he’d assured me.
But the wandering islands he expected me
to find a way through were strangers to me, nothing like those I’d grown up
among. And of course it hadn’t taken long before Barradas’ patriotic
privateering gave way to preying upon any ships he encountered amidst the
ever-changing shores of the Laquerla Ocean.
All in all, it made for an uneasy history. And there was me, in the
middle of it, sick and drunk. I still argue that I didn’t deserve to stand
beneath the mizzen-mast, accused of inciting mutiny. Though I readily admit to
having upped my stew on the captain’s shoes.
Of course, the crew couldn’t just murder
me and toss my body in the ocean. Deadly bad luck killing an Almagua at sea,
even one as defiled with bloodshed as me. Too much of a chance that my fishy
spirit would take to the waves howling murder and raise up those black whales
on my granny’s side of the family. I swore to them that I’d do it too.
-***-
“The
Doomed Amulet of Erum Vahl” by
Ed Grabianowski
Captain Jagga
crouched by the quarterdeck rail. Beside her, the steady rattle of lead shot
striking the side of the ship rang in her ears. “Hard to port. Put on speed,
Tripton!”
The sailing
master, his demeanor that of an aggravated professor, was scrambling on all
fours above a hatch on the gun deck. “Hard to port,” he yelled down into the
opening, then turned back to Jagga. “We can’t do both at the same time, you
know.”
Below, the
helmsman heard Tripton’s call and pushed hard on the whipstaff, cranking the
rudder far beneath him and shunting the ship to port. The Hammer of Triel groaned and came about.
The chatter of
gunfire and other projectiles against the hull let up for a moment, and Jagga
dared a look over the rail. To starboard was the lush jungle shore of Brathi;
just aft were the low-slung, golden gunboats of the Redhands, mercenaries hired
to protect the coastal trade routes. The same trade Jagga intended to take a
piece of for herself. She flashed a manic smile at Tripton. “Do what you can,
sir.”
Tripton looked up
toward the fore of the ship, one last futile spray of lead peppering the rail
to his right. The carefully sculpted goatee and wire spectacles riding low on
his nose gave him a delicate look, but his skin was weathered and brown, and his
gentle, precise voice changed to a sailor’s rough bark when he relayed orders
for the captain. “Oi lads, straighten out and away from the shore, full sail. Got
to get off these breakers.” The crew, no longer ducking rifle fire, moved about
the rigging and set The Hammer of Triel
on her new course.
Jagga watched the
gunboats give up the chase and fade into the distance. She’d lost this
engagement by coming in too far from shore, her four-mast barque easy to spot
against the horizon. The Redhands had been ready for her, and Jagga wasn’t
overly fond of a fair fight. “Tripton,” she called mildly. “A word please.”
He joined her on
the quarterdeck and they watched the coast recede behind and to starboard, the
sleek ship gaining speed as it got farther from shore, slicing along the ocean
swells rather than crashing through breaking waves. They were headed south, the
wind at their back, the sky clear and blue, though the air was thick with
humidity. Jagga eyed Tripton’s heavy leather coat. “How you can bear the heat
in that thing? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you take it off.”
He turned slightly
and brushed away some lead shot that was embedded in the folds and creases of
the coat, not quite resisting the urge to grin. Jagga laughed.
“My aim is to go
another day south and try our luck again,” she said. “I consider this a trial
run. Now we know the merchants hire mercenaries, and they have guns. Not very
good guns, but those Redhand gunboats are too small and fast for us to hit with
our cannons.”
Tripton shrugged. “I
don’t see as we have much choice. We can’t very well return north. Not without
an impressively large amount of gold to bribe our way past your many admirers.”
Jagga
knew her reputation. They called her Jagga the Ripper, or Jagga the Bitter, or
Jagga the Thorn of Gael. In the darker corners of Ulsh and Covengate they had
much fouler names for her, filthy epithets that made her smile when she heard
them. She’d spent the last year flying the jade flag of the Azeth Rebellion on The Hammer of Triel’s mast, patrolling
the coast of Ulsh for any shipping between Ulshan loyalists and the exiled
royal family. The Azethans paid her well, but when the King of Ulsh came
roaring into Jaidh Bay with a full war fleet, she slipped away and headed south.
She’d backed a rebellion, the rebellion had been crushed, and now it was Jagga
who was in exile.
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About Catherine Lundoff:
Catherine Lundoff is an award-winning writer,
editor and publisher from Minneapolis. Her books include Night’s Kiss, Crave, Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades: Lesbian
Ghost Stories, Hellebore and Rue:
Tales of Queer Women and Magic, Silver Moon, Out of This World: Queer Speculative
Fiction Stories and the forthcoming Scourge
of the Seas of Time (and Space). She is the publisher at Queen of Swords
Press, a genre fiction publisher specializing in fiction from out of this
world.
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