Fengel brightened. "True! They'd confiscate everything she has and lock her in the dungeon. I hadn't thought of that."
"Don't sell her short. If Breachtown is like Triskelion, they'll have her head off inside a week."
He frowned. "That may be going a bit too—" Fengel trailed off as Lucian came stomping up the deck to them. They turned to face the first mate.
Lucian was dirty. Grime covered his face and clothes. He was, however, wearing ten golden rings, four silver necklaces, and a pair of diamond-studded earrings. "Finished the count Captain," he said.
Fengel smiled. "And?"
"Quite a haul. We're good to pay that debt off and then some with just the lucre below."
"Capital. But I'd prefer we hand over the Lantern and keep the loot."
Lucian shook his head. "Plenty of lesser gemstones. Diamonds in particular. But nothing like the description we've heard."
Fengel stared. "Then where is it?" At Lucian's shrug he bent back over the gunwales toward their captives. "Hoy! You lot sure you never saw a glowing diamond, big as two fists?" The pirates below answered him in the negative. He turned back to face them. "We need that gem. Grey won't leave me alone without it, and I would really like to keep the rest of the treasure."
Lucian held up his hands. "It's not up here, Captain. And from what we know, it's not back there with Natasha."
Fengel clenched his fists at his side. "Then where is it?"
The first mate could only shake his head.
Chapter Fourteen
Fengel paced the deck. The moon was rising on the eastern horizon, just high enough now to be seen over the port-side gunwales. It spread pale illumination out over the deck, removing the need for lanterns. The rigging, gas-bag frame above, and the crewmen were all ghost-colored. Were he to look overboard, Fengel knew the jungle canopy would be visible as a silver carpet spreading out for miles in every direction.
Maxim had the helm. The aetherite growled something into his shoulder, then smiled at Fengel's approach, trying to catch his captain's eyes. It was obvious he wanted someone to talk to. Maxim was normally a solitary man, though not by choice—the constant mean-spirited pranks he played on the crew in order to retain his power were responsible. He'd once told Fengel that the daemon on his shoulder nattered constantly, and on occasion he felt the need to converse with anyone else.
Fengel didn't feel like talking at the moment. Just before he would have had to politely acknowledge the helmsman and become trapped in banal discourse, he turned on his heel to march back up the deck. At the far end of the bow, Lucian and several crewmen were pulling up their captives. Once they'd been wrung of anything useful, and then hung a little extra to teach them manners, Fengel had ordered them stowed somewhere they wouldn't cause trouble. They could be dropped off somewhere relatively safe in time.
He turned his mind back to his quandary. Lucian had not lied. After the incident with Miss Stone and her troubling new pet, his first mate had brought up the final tally from the holds, less a few small pieces that would go "missing" only to turn up as "longtime family heirlooms." Fengel let a little pilfering slide amongst the crew so long as it wasn't excessive. Even with such considerations, the treasure in the hold was ridiculous. It was estimated at some three hundred thousand sovereigns' worth of gold, silver, and precious gemstones. That would pay the two-hundred-and-forty-thousand sovereign debt to Mr. Grey and the Sindicato, with a decent amount left over to divvy up amongst the crew and to resupply the airship.
The problem was, Fengel really wanted to keep it all.
Unfortunately, he didn't think that he'd be able to. Grey wanted the Lantern, but the gemstone wasn't in the plunder that had been loaded aboard. Fengel had ordered another search and gone down himself, but nothing he could find came close to fitting the description. Also, he'd interrogated their captives again; there was the chance that Natasha and her Reavers simply hadn't found the Lantern aboard the Albatross. That was unlikely, however. His wife wasn't the kind of woman to miss any plunder of worth, especially considering the brass fixtures and old pots that Fengel found in the loot. There existed a small chance that she'd found the thing and hidden it. Fengel dismissed the idea almost instantly: the action was wholly out of character. Natasha was as subtle as a cannonball to the head.
Ah well. We've still come out of this mess a damn sight better than we entered it. They didn't have the Lantern for Mr. Grey, but there was no way that the financier would turn down good gold and silver toward his loans. Still. Fengel tried to force himself to be happy; his debt would be paid, he'd won out against his harpy wife, and he had his brand new skyship back beneath his feet.