"It's no use talking to him - ," Shandy began.

"Well? Are you?" the officer demanded.

"No, dammit," yelled Shandy desperately, "I'm Thomas Hobbes and this is my man Leviathan. We were just - "

"Woe to thee, Babylon warrior," intoned Woefully Fat in his deepest voice, pointing at the officer and opening his alarming eyes wide. "Lion of Judah be troddin' down yo' fig tree and grapevine pickneys!"

"You're under arrest!" shrilled the officer, drawing a pistol of his own. To one of his men he added, "Get down there, make sure they're unarmed, and then bring them aboard as prisoners!"

The sailor stared at the officer. "Aye aye, sir. Why, exactly?"

"Why? Did you hear what he threatened to do to my kidneys?"

"That's pickneys, it's a slang word for children - ," began Shandy, but he stopped when the officer pointed the pistol directly into his face; instead he raised his open hands and smiled broadly. "Good job, man," he whispered to the deaf bocor.

The Navy sailors lowered a rope ladder, and Shandy and Woefully Fat climbed up onto the deck of the Navy sloop while a couple of sailors secured a painter to the rowboat to tow it behind. And when the wrists of his captives had been bound in front of them the officer had the two prisoners brought to him in the neat but narrow belowdecks cabin. Woefully Fat had to bend almost double to fit into the chamber. Shandy was uncomfortably reminded of his brief visit aboard the Navy man-of-war that had captured the Jenny.

"Prisoners," the officer began, "you were seen to disembark from the pirate vessel the Ascending Orpheus. We have received intelligence from the New Providence colony to the effect that John Chandagnac and Grievously Fat left that island on the thirteenth of December, sailing for Jamaica with the intention of making a rendezvous with the pirate Ulysse Segundo. Will you deny that you are these two men?"

"Yes, we deny it," blustered Shandy. "I told you who we are. Where are you taking us?"

"To the Kingston Jail to await arraignment." As if to emphasize his words, the sloop surged forward as the sails were raised again, and a moment later there was a tug aft as the rowboat's painter came taut. "The charges against you are severe," added the officer reprovingly. "I shall be astonished if you do not both hang."

Woefully Fat leaned forward, his massive head seeming to fill the cabin. "Wheah you takin' us," he said intensely, "is the Maritime Law and Records Office."

For a moment Shandy smelled red-hot iron, and smoke rose from behind the giant bocor.

As if he hadn't spoken before or heard Woefully Fat's comment, the officer said, "We're taking you to the Maritime Law and Records Office." He added, a little defensively, "That's where the charges originate, after all."

Woefully Fat sat back, evidently satisfied. Shandy could smell the back of the bocor's chair burning where the gaff-saddle pressed against it, and he hoped that the dying sorcerer had something good in mind. Shandy knew that the Law and Records Office was a bookkeeper's den, not a place to which criminals were ever physically brought.

Shandy and Woefully Fat were locked into the cabin when the officer left, but even through the deck above him and the bulkheads to either side Shandy could hear incredulous protests from the sailors.

The Maritime Law and Records Office proved to be the southernmost of half a dozen government buildings on the west side of the harbor, and it had a dock of its own, to which the Navy sloop made its way. Like most of the waterfront structures, the building was of whitewashed stone, roofed with overlapping redbrick tiles that looked to Shandy as if they'd been moulded over the bases of palm branches. As the officer and several armed sailors led him and Woefully Fat up the walk toward the building, Shandy could see a couple of clerks already peering curiously out through one of the tall, open windows at this incongruous procession. His hands were still bound in front of him, and his eyes were darting around for anything that might be used to cut himself free.

One of the sailors sprinted ahead and held the door open. The officer, who was beginning to look a little unsure of himself, stepped inside first, but it was the sight of Woefully Fat in his sailcloth toga that made the clerks drop their pens and ledger books and leap to their feet with dismayed cries. Taller than any of them and as broad as three, the bocor rolled his eyes disapprovingly around the room. Shandy guessed he was looking for a patch of Jamaican soil, as opposed to floorboards.

One of the clerks, prodded forward by his white-haired superior, approached the group. "Wh-what are you doing here?" he quavered. He stared in horror up at Woefully Fat. "What d-do you want?"

The Navy officer started to speak, but Woefully Fat's earthquake-rumble voice easily overrode him. "Ah'm deaf, Ah cain't hear," the bocor announced.

The clerk paled and turned to his superior. "Oh my God, sir, he says he's going to defecate here!"

Chaos erupted on all sides as clerks and bookkeepers knocked over tables and inkstands in their frenzy to get to the doors - several simply leaped out of the windows - but Woefully Fat had seen, through a pair of French doors ahead, a small, enclosed yard with sidewalks, a flagpole, a fountain ... and grass. He started purposefully toward the doors.

"Uh, stop!" called the Navy officer. Woefully Fat strode on, and the officer drew his pistol. Realizing that nobody was paying any particular attention to him, Shandy shuffled along parallel to the bocor but a few feet to the left.

Bang.

The pistol was fired and bloody spray and bits of cloth sprang away from a new hole in the back of Woefully Fat's toga, but the shot didn't even jar the bocor. He pushed the French doors open and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Shandy was right behind him.

The officer had dropped his spent pistol and now ran up and grabbed the giant black man, apparently intending to pull him back inside; but he only managed to pull the sailcloth toga free of the huge shoulders.

Several people, including the officer, screamed when they saw the stump of the gaff-spar jutting bloodily from the broad back, but Woefully Fat took another step forward, and one bare foot, and then the other, dented Jamaican soil.

Shandy was following him, and when the bocor suddenly toppled backward he instinctively raised his bound hands to break the man's fall.

The jagged iron gaff-saddle ripped the rope around his wrists as the limp body collapsed, and then Woefully Fat lay dead on the sidewalk, his feet still on the grass, a broad smile on his skyward-turned face ... and Shandy strained at the damaged rope until it broke, and his hands were free.

Tags: Tim Powers Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net