Hunt for the Panther 3 (9781101610923) Read Online Free

each other, and the King’s Men were too busy trying to look important and keep their blue uniforms spotless. Which made it nice and easy for the Lost Souls to nab what they needed and disappear before anyone saw them.
    “All right.” Scarlet motioned for the crew to duck into an alley, where they huddled in the shadows. “We need some food—Edwin and Emmett, I’ll leave that to you. Jem, get whatever supplies you need to finish the houses. Tim and Liam, you’re on weapons—Charlie and Gil need new daggers. Oh, and some shirts and trousers. Smit, that’ll be your—” She stopped when she caught sight of Smitty’s face. The boy was chewing on his lower lip. “What now?” she growled.
    Smitty sighed. “Well, if you must know, I just saw this piece of rope that reminded me of the way Sina braids her hair some days, and I—”
    “Smitty!” Tim threw his hands in the air. “We’re on a port raid! We’ve got things to plunder, pockets to pick! This is no time to be a swoony sea dog!”
    “Wait, I know,” Jem spoke up. “Smit, why don’t you find a gift for Sina? You know, something nice. While you’re stealing other stuff, that is.”
    Smitty perked up immediately. “That’s a jolly idea, Fitz. Maybe I’ll get her something for her hair. One of those… clip thingies.”
    Scarlet opened her mouth to point out that a gift he’d actually paid for might be more thoughtful, then shook her head. There was no time to argue. “Right. Good luck with that,” she said. “Let’s meet back at the dock in a few hours.”
    She put her fist in the middle of their huddle, and the others, who knew the tradition well, piled theirs on top of it. “No prey, no pay, mateys.”
    “No prey, no pay!” they echoed.
    “May you die peacefully on Island X rather than have your hands chopped off by the merchant you stole from.”
    “Die peacefully!”
    “Now get going,” said Scarlet. “I’ve got an admiral to meet.”

    Scarlet made sure all her hair was tucked inside her cap and pulled it down over her eyes before slipping out of the alley. This way, if one of the King’s Men spotted her father during their meeting, he’d assume the admiral was talking to some scruffy cabin boy, and not his long-lost daughter.
    She headed down Port Aberhard’s main road, past a tavern packed with rum-soaked pirates singing off-key chanteys. She passed an apothecary’s shop boarded up for the night and sidestepped a pack of rats squealing over scraps outside the door. She could smell the jungle nearby, but its lush scent was overpowered by port smells like sour rum, horse manure, and rotting wood.
    If there was one place in the tropics that did not and would never feel like home, it was Port Aberhard. Or any port town, for that matter. Not even Jamestown, where she’d lived for five years, felt remotely like home.
    Her father had taken her to Jamestown after the Island Fever swept through their village when she was five years old. Scarlet’s mother had begged her father to take Scarlet off the island and keep her safe from the disease that was taking many Islander lives—including,eventually, her mother’s. They’d settled in a rickety old boardinghouse, and John McCray had gone back to work for the King’s Men, leaving Scarlet to learn Old World ways from the world’s creepiest governess, whom she called Scary Mary. After five years of English lessons, petticoats, and boots that pinched her toes until she was certain they’d fall off, she decided she’d had enough and ran away to join the Lost Souls.
    Even now, port towns made Scarlet’s skin crawl. It wasn’t just the memories of Scary Mary forcing her to forget her past as an Islander that haunted her. It was more than that. The longer she lived on Island X, the more she felt the island’s pain at being torn down and taken apart by the Old Worlders. And nowhere was that more pronounced than in port.
    Don’t think about it now,
Scarlet told herself.
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