The Mate's Sandglass

What kind of man threatens to maroon thirty singers on a jagged spit of coral before checking whether any of them can actually load a firearm? Gedeon Hollósy did not shift his scarred leather boot from the hem of my ruined silk, nor did he blink. Behind him, three privateer deckhands stood with cocked sea-service muskets, their muzzles aimed loosely at the quivering chorus girls. I wanted that heavy leather sole off my salvageable fabric, I wanted the hysterical soprano behind me to shut her mouth before an itchy finger touched a matchlock, and I needed the key to the props locker before someone swept up the rest of the powder soot.

"Stand back from the carcass, woman," Hollósy said. His voice was like anchor chain dragging over granite. "You are under shipboard arrest. Every creature on this bill of lading."

"The carcass was our leading tenor, Mister Hollósy, and that silk cost four silver florins a yard in Genoa," I said, keeping my forearms level beneath the warm brass barrel of the prop blunderbuss. "If your men trample the gore into the weave, you will owe the company's creditors twenty thalers before we even discuss the murder."

A shriek cut through the haze of sulfur smoke. Gizella Nyáry pushed past two trembling dancers, her crimson velvet gown trailing through the sawdust and drying lavender.

"Murder!" Gizella threw both arms toward the fly-loft, her diamond rings catching the gray deck lantern light. "A monstrous conspiracy! An affront to the muses! Look at him, Borbála! Slain in his prime, with his high C still vibrating in the timbers! And now this—this sea-peasant dares threaten our persons with irons?"

Hollósy’s eyes narrowed into slits. "Silence that harpy before I have the boatswain clap a gag between her teeth."

"Touch my vocal cords," Gizella thundered, puffing her chest like an enraged pigeon, "and Captain Vályi will answer to the Archduke’s chancellor! My voice is insured for ten thousand guilders in Trieste!"

"Your voice won't buy water on Shark-Tooth Spit, Madame," Hollósy answered, cold as winter brine. He jerked his chin toward his mariners. "Drive them below. Orlop deck. Herd them into the cable tiers and bolt the iron grating."

The marines surged forward with leveled bayonets. Pandemonium broke across the boards. Mariska Bánhegyi, still draped across the pasteboard pedestal in her swan plumage, emitted a delicate, operatic moan and allowed herself to slide gracefully to the white pine planks. Around her, ten tenors and six baritones began shouting over one another, while the contraltos retreated behind a canvas flat of Mount Olympus, clutching their petticoats and invoking three different patron saints of music.

The armed sailors yelled, shoving musket butts into soft velvet doublets. Two chorus boys tripped over a pile of fake halberds, nearly pitching headlong into the open orchestra trap. Hollósy reached for his brass hilted hanger, his jaw rigid with the urge to restore maritime order through sheer bloodshed.

I stepped squarely between the first mate's drawn cutlass and the stammering baritone nearest his boots.

"Hold your fire, you fools!" I barked. The tone had quelled three drunken theater managers and two riotous audiences in Ragusa. It made the front rank of sailors pause, their iron barrels wavering.

I turned my back on the cutlasses and faced the company. "Stop screeching! All of you! Gizella, close your mouth; you are swallowing pure coal dust and your top register already sounds like a rusted hinge. Dancers, pick Mademoiselle Bánhegyi up by her elbows—she hasn't fainted, she is merely protecting her tulle. If any man among you breaks another prop flat, I will dock his wine ration until Michaelmas."

The shouting sputtered out into sullen gasps. Mariska peeled one eye open through her veil of rice powder, realized nobody was offering a smelling bottle, and allowed two wardrobe girls to hoist her upright.

"You have no authority here, Mistress Gyöngyössy," Hollósy growled, stepping up behind my shoulder. The muskets remained leveled. "This deck is under martial law. Down the hatch, or my men will use their ramrods."

"You want thirty panicked performers locked in the cable tier without supervision?" I asked him, turning smoothly to face his weathered scowl. "Do you know what thirty hysterical artists do when confined in an airless dark hold next to your spare hemp lines, Mister Hollósy?"

The mate's scarred brow twitched. "They pray."

"They kick over bilge lanterns," I said. "They claw at the oakum caulking looking for fresh air. Madame Nyáry will scream until her lungs burst, which will keep your starboard watch awake through the dog watches. And within four hours, one of them will drop a candle into your dry tow-oakum bin and burn your frigate down to the waterline."

Hollósy did not answer immediately. His gaze flicked to the dark hatchway leading to the orlop, then back to the volatile mob of actors in feathers and wigs.

"Furthermore," I pressed, keeping my voice flat and businesslike, "you might care to consult the charter agreement Captain Vályi signed in Fiume. Clause seven. The privateer syndicate is entitled to forty percent of our gross gate receipts across the southern ports, payable only upon completion of the tour. If you drown this troupe or leave them to rot on a limestone reef without a trial, the Venetian magistrates will impound your vessel the moment you make landfall. You forfeit the prize money, you forfeit the charter fees, and Captain Vályi will hang you from his own yardarm for squandering his investment."

A muscle jumped along Hollósy’s jawline. He was a disciplined sailor, steeped in articles of war, but privateers lived and died by their ledgers. A dead tenor was a nuisance; a breached cargo contract was financial ruin.

"The gun was loaded on this vessel," Hollósy said through clenched teeth. "A murder aboard a commissioned privateer is treason against the letters of marque. I have forty-eight hours of fair wind before the tides carry us past Shark-Tooth Spit. The captain will not alter course for a dead player. If I do not have a murderer in chains by the second noon, you go ashore."

"Then let me find your shooter," I said.

Hollósy let out a short, dry bark of laughter. "You? A needle-woman?"

"A needle-woman who manages every prop, every costume trunk, and every pound of backstage tallow on this ship," I said. "Your mariners know how to splice a hawser and swab a gun deck. They do not know French steatite from common lime, nor do they know which of these vain peacocks had cause to blow Ignác Pálffy's teeth down his throat."

I stepped forward, extending my free hand while holding the blunderbuss securely against my ribs with the other.

"Lock the company on the lower gun deck, not the orlop," I commanded. "They have light there, and your sentries can watch them through the ports without smelling bilge water. Post two men at the companionway. But give me the keys to the scenery flats and the props locker."

Hollósy stared down at me. The Kócsag rolled gently beneath our feet, the frigate’s timber ribs groaning under the swell of the open sea. He reached into his coat pocket. A heavy brass key, cold and tarnished by salt spray, dangled from his scarred index finger.

From his belt, he unhooked a brass-encased sandglass, four inches tall, its upper bulb half-filled with red volcanic sand. He set it down with a sharp thud on the lid of a painted costume crate beside the prompter's box.

"Forty-eight hours, Mistress Gyöngyössy," Hollósy said. The key hit the oak floorboards at my feet with a dull metallic ring. "The sand does not care about your Venetian contracts. When the last glass runs dry at Shark-Tooth Spit, either I hang your killer, or the whole company swims for the rocks."