Ebba-Viva Fairisles: Immortal Plunder (Pirates of Felicity Book 1) Read online

  IMMORTAL PLUNDER

  Pirates of Felicity: Book One

  Kelly St. Clare

  Immortal Plunder

  by Kelly St. Clare

  Copyright © 2018 Kelly St. Clare

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, media, and incidents are either products of the authors’ imagination, or are used fictitiously.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

  Edited by Melissa Scott and Robin Schroffel

  Cover illustration and design by Amalia Chitulescu Digital Art

  Map Art © 2018 by Laura Diehl, www.LDiehl.com

  All rights reserved.

  The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by fines and federal imprisonment.

  Contents

  Exosian Realm

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Thank You For Reading

  Acknowledgments

  About Kelly St. Clare

  Also by Kelly

  In the Wild Treasure Hunt

  Bonus Chapter

  Exosian Realm

  To people who lurk on beanbags in libraries

  One

  The pull of land after weeks at sea was a temptation none of Felicity’s crew could deny—especially not Ebba.

  The wobbling feeling that lingered from life on the water would fade in a few days—just before she re-boarded their beloved ship, Felicity, to sail home. As much as she adored every cedarwood inch of their pirate sloop and knew every creaking nook like the back of her hand, while on land she planned to have as much fun as possible.

  “Has anyone seen my silk socks?”

  Ebba glanced up from the sand-encrusted wood of Maltu’s Wharf, where they’d docked, and peered across at the eldest of her six fathers. Fifty-eight-year-old Barrels stood with one bare white foot propped up on the bulwark of the ship. He was the only one still aboard Felicity. The rest of the crew begrudgingly hovered on the wharf pier, waiting for him to finish dressing. The pull of land after weeks at sea couldn’t be denied . . . and neither could the urge to dress in finery for the occasion.

  “Aye, matey,” said another of her fathers, Stubby. Ebba glanced over her shoulder and caught his glinting grin as he continued, “Grubby used ‘em to swab the deck.”

  “Is that so?” Barrels replied, raising his brows.

  Ebba withheld a sigh and surveyed his apparel. The buttoned doublet, knee breeches, and crisp linen shirt he wore were commonplace for him. For their Maltu trading trip, he’d added one of his best cravats, an enameled brooch, and had secured his salt-and-pepper hair in a leather tie at the base of his neck.

  “Ye be lookin’ fine, Barrels,” she said, folding her arms. “I don’t think ye need the socks and shoes at all. No one will be noticin’.”

  Peg-leg, another of her fathers, wiped at the sweat dripping from his bald head. Mid-day usually saw him down in the ship’s hold cooking lunch, so he was unused to the sweltering tropical heat at this time. She knew that he’d be bursting to drink tea with Sherry as soon as possible, and, sure enough, his voice was edged as he spoke, “Ebba be right. How often do landlubbers look down? Hurry along, will ye?”

  “As often as they look up, I suppose,” Barrels mused with a ghost of a smile. Sometimes, originally being a landlubber himself, Barrels spoke fancy-like and meant something smarter underneath what he actually said. Most times, after an awkward pause, the crew just continued on with the conversation.

  “Aye . . . well,” Stubby grunted, the glint returning to his gray-blue eyes, “like I said, Grubby swabbed the deck with yer silk socks yest’rday.”

  An indignant squeak sounded. Grubby, the youngest of her fathers at forty-five, looked back at them from where he crouched on all fours, staring over the side of the wharf.

  “Now, now. Don’t ye be spreadin’ fibs about me.” He cast Peg-leg a slightly admonishing look.

  Ever the peacemaker, Ebba couldn’t recall seeing Grubby angry once in her seventeen years. The pirate could usually be found with a sloppy and toothless grin on his face, the result of being hit in the back of the head when he was young. Her fathers said the wooden boom hit him so hard that some of the rum in his skull had spilled out and left him a bit empty up there.

  Standing, Grubby straightened his yellowed canvas shirt, tucking the ends into the top of his frayed and stained slops. He never changed into different clothes for land. Out of the seven members of their crew, he showed the least excitement when going ashore, much preferring the water.

  “I haven’t seen yer silk socks, matey,” he said nervously. Snatching his Monmouth cap off his head, he began twisting it in both hands.

  Locks, the fifth of Ebba’s fathers, took mercy. Often as not, their crew ceased arguments for fear Grubby’d explode with stress. “Check in yer books, Barrels. Last I saw, ye were usin’ them to mark the page.”

  “You’re completely right, my fellow!” Barrels hurried back the way he’d come, likely going to search his cramped office below deck.

  Grubby sighed, staring after him. “Well,” he said, replacing his cap and patting his non-existent pockets, “that got worked out in the end. We all be happy again.” He paused, scanning the rest of them. “Ain’t we?”

  Peg-leg snorted. “Aye, Grubs. We all be happy again.” Shaking his head, he limped up the wharf, the wooden peg where his left leg used to be creating a tap-tap-tap as he went.

  “Barrels had all mornin’ to dress,” Ebba muttered to her sixth father, patience finally caving. Seriously, even she was ready.

  Plank smiled from the shade of the ship. “He’ll be along smart-like. Don’t ye worry. How about ye show me what ye’re wearin’ to the market, little nymph?”

  He’d nicknamed her after a water creature that liked to cause trouble—one of the mythical beings that featured in his stories of old magic. His love of story-telling aside, Plank was also the most fashionable of her fathers, and the only one who understood her interest in colors, fabrics, and trinkets.

  Ebba spun slowly so he didn’t miss any of the small touches.

  She’d tucked a billowing linen tunic into the belted waist of her full-length pants—the least frayed of her three pairs of slops. A laced, leather-brown jerkin hugged her light frame over the tunic and she’d placed black ties around her elbows on each side, so the shirtsleeves were drawn in halfway. A bright green bandana covered the top of her forehead and hairline. Her midnight dreadlocks coursed mid-way down her back and could be a pain in the hull at times, but the bandana kept the black mass out of her eyes. Not only was this helpful when the wind was high, especially considering the colorful wooden beads in her dreads liked to whip her
across the face, but it allowed Ebba’s single gold hoop earring to be seen. To all that, she’d added a deep-blue silk sash, with a second black leather sash on top of it, across her torso, and into that, she’d tucked her two pistols and three daggers. A single-edged curved cutlass swung from the belt on her left hip.

  “Ye look right-fierce,” Plank said seriously. “But ye’ll be needin’ shoes in the market. There be glass about.”

  Ebba crinkled her nose and stared at the dark bronze skin of her feet. She loathed shoes.

  A double thud startled both of them, and Ebba stared at the leather fold-down boots now on the wharf before her. She tilted her head, eyes narrowed at Barrels.

  . . . But at least he was finally ready.

  She yanked on the boots and dusted her hands off, surveying the six taut lines holding their boat to the pier. Felicity wasn’t going anywhere—especially not with the extra fee Stubby paid the dock master to keep thieves away. And if the thieves still dared, the black ship cat, Pillage, would claw their eyes out. Pillage took the protection of Felicity very seriously. Even against most of the crew.

  “Look after the ship, Pillage.” Barrels patted the overweight cat.

  Their crew left the ship at long last, striding after Peg-leg toward the shore.

  As she walked, Ebba ran a hand over the two strands of wooden beads in her dreadlocks. A thrill shot through her as she peered around the bustling wharf. Merchants’ fluyts, chartered caravels, messenger cutters, and fishermen’s rigs filled the harbor. Well, they appeared to. In reality, a fair number were pirate ships, but these ships blended in with the others. For good reason, too: They’d passed at least one of the King’s man-o’-wars on the way in to dock. The huge navy ships floated offshore, and their crews of eight hundred navy men would be scattered around the island. Not to mention the navy crews from the cutters and sloops-o’-war bobbing in the docks.

  It was the riskiest thing her fathers did, trading with the merchants of Maltu with the king’s navy men about. Maltu was one of the islands closest to the mainland, Exosia, and more tightly controlled by the king who ruled over all the islands in the realm. Seeing as King Montcroix loathed pirates, not many crews chanced trading here, preferring to trade on the notorious pirate island, Febribus. But her fathers flat-out refused to take her there, so Maltu it was. The only other pirate crews who came here were much larger than Felicity, both in crew and ship.

  “Ahoy, Felicity!” a voice boomed.

  Ebba’s booted feet sank into the white sand and she turned, stomach sinking fast as she recognized the pirates within the rowboat close to shore. Dressed from head to toe in black, aside from a sash the color of dried blood slung around their hips, were five of Malice’s crew.

  “Still callin’ yerself pirates? Or have ye realized ye just be old merchants?” the same young man heckled. The rest of his crew sniggered at the comment.

  An introduction wasn’t necessary. His name was Swindles, and he was the Malice captain’s right-hand man. Flaming sod.

  Every time her fathers docked Felicity they copped the same shite from this crew. Malice was the biggest pirate ship in the seas and Felicity one of the smallest, but that didn’t give them an excuse to make Felicity the butt of endless jokes. Ebba could take a hit on the chin most times, but not about her fathers, and not about their ship.

  Swindles snorted, not lifting a finger to help as the other crew members pulled the rowboat ashore. “Get a load o’ the crazy one, lads.”

  He pointed to where Grubby was swilling his hands in the edges of the tide. The Malice crew threw their heads back, their loud, sneering laughing drawing the attention of those nearby.

  White-hot heat flooded Ebba’s cheeks. “He ain’t crazy,” she snapped at them, striding to stand next to her father. “He were hit over the head by the boom when he were young.”

  “Whatever ye say.” Swindles smirked, vaulting over the lip of the rowboat and landing in the white sand.

  Scorching anger moved swiftly into place, and Ebba opened her mouth to deliver a tongue-lashing.

  “Ebba-Viva.”

  The soft reprimand came from Locks. He watched her with his sole emerald eye, though the brow over his eye patch was also raised, stretching the array of thin scars on his cheeks.

  It was enough to give her pause. After the last fight she’d started at the docks with a pirate crew, her fathers had refused to let her return unless she minded her temper. Truthfully, Malice really weren’t a ship to mess with, their crew being around fourteen times the size of Felicity’s.

  Reluctantly swallowing her retort, Ebba shoved her fury down as best she could.

  For lack of anything more satisfying to do, she planted her hands on her hips and scowled. They weren’t even real pirates. Felicity may be aged, but she was reliable and manned by pirates who stuck to the old ways. The true ways, as Peg-leg called them.

  “Those young, flashy pirates don’t know anythin’,” she whispered to Barrels on her other side, unable to resist saying something.

  “No,” said Barrels, his mouth twitching. “Though, you know, they’re only in their twenties. Or late teens, like you.”

  “Would ye look at the glower on fish-lips’ face?” said another of Malice’s crew with a snort.

  Were they talking to her? They were talking to her! The white-hot anger reared up again and Ebba lunged forward.

  A hand gripped the back of her sash, pulling her away from the other crew, up the beach. “Ebba-Viva Fairisles!”

  She glared at Barrels over her shoulder, fists clenched as she stumbled backward in his wake. “Ye heard ‘em. I’m goin’ to shove my entire fist down Swindles’ throat.” She’d wipe the damn smirk off his ugly mug.

  “And they’ll finish it, most assuredly.” Barrels continued tugging her gently in the direction of town.

  Assuredly, she thought in disgust. Fancy words. What was the point of them? She let up, however, shoulders sagging as she pivoted from the jeering young men to walk beside Barrels.

  “We gotta defend Felicity,” she whispered to him.

  And not just the ship. They had to defend themselves. Why were other pirates cruel about Grubby and the age of her fathers? Sure, her fathers were past the age of adventures and excitement. And they never chased any plunder reeking of danger these days—if anything, they ran away from it. There was no one in the entire Exosian Realm that she loved more than her fathers, but in a place filled with pirates, the reality was that their crew were perceived as weak. That rankled in several ways, but foremost was worry over her fathers’ wellbeing.

  Sometimes Ebba wished Felicity was a glossy schooner with a crew of one hundred. Blimey, even going after real plunder for a change instead of fruit and veg, might make Malice shut their stupid gobs.

  Barrels peered down at her, his weathered face soft. “They are just words, my dear. Just words. You and I understand Felicity’s crew has secrets to keep close. If these pirates knew what we knew, they wouldn’t be laughing at all. I know it’s hard, but focus on that and ignore the rest. One day, they won’t laugh at us.”

  She looked once more at the surrounding ships, each sleeker and larger than the next.

  One day their crew might not be a laughing stock, but what happened in the meantime? What if the jeering from the other pirates turned to violence before then? Felicity, though aged, was still a prize for any pirate who deemed her crew too weak to defend their ship.

  Ebba sighed heavily, hoping that ‘one day’ didn’t come too late.

  Two

  Leaving the white beach, they waded through the tussock grass and proceeded up the sandy pathway cleared through the pale bulbous trees. The trill of a harmonic and the high scale of an accordion blasted from the town ahead, urging her feet faster.

  Her temper was quick to come and quick to go, so the wharf incident was all but forgotten, and Ebba hustled toward the bustling crowds, a small grin upon her face. She was going to get fabric for another sash, a rich color that compleme
nted her dark skin. And maybe her fathers would gift her another bead. Every one of the beads in her dreads had been gifts from them over the years—buying beads herself would break tradition.

  “Can’t ye hurry a scant bit?” she pleaded with her fathers.

  Grubby smiled his toothy grin. “Sure, Ebba-Viva.” He lowered his head to pick up speed.

  A puffing Barrels gripped Grubby’s arm. “This pace is perfectly fine, thank you very much.”

  Grubby blanched and looked between Ebba and Barrels with wide eyes.

  Smiling, Ebba tucked her hand into Grubby’s. “Don’t get yer sails in a twist, Grubs. I can walk at this pace. Though I’m thinkin’ a fishin’ rig could row through sand faster.”

  “More o’ a run, little nymph,” corrected Plank lazily. Only he and Grubby weren’t puffing.

  Ebba frowned and focused on the others. They were kind of . . . running. She slowed with a sheepish glance at them. “S’cuse me.”

  “I ain’t complainin’,” sang Locks in his tone-deaf voice. “I’ll be seein’ my light-o'-love, my star shine—”

  “What’s this one called?” Stubby asked, grunting as he pushed through the white sand.

  Locks closed his eye, a wrinkle appearing between his brows. “Maltu harbor, see the barber, turn right . . . Delight!”

  “Delight?” Ebba replied. “Are ye sure that ain’t the one on Kentro?”

  Doubt stuttered through the emerald shards of Locks’ eye. The color was made brighter by the frayed eye patch covering the socket on the other side. “Kentro dock, chicken flock, gravy hock . . . Locks! Wait, wait. That’s for r’memberin’ me own name. Kentro market, has a basket, nice skin, Laylin. Aye,” he said with a sigh and smile. “Delight be on Maltu.”