Page 118 of Rears & Vices

What had he done?

Everard stood. “Con su permiso,” he muttered thickly. Receiving a raise of brow, a nod, and polite “Almirante” from Mina—who likely thought him suddenly grieving, and who wouldn’t be wrong—he bowed, pushed his way through scores of hearty laughter and rapid Spanish syllables, foreign now to his ears, and fled.

Thirty

Galveztown was a sandbar: a beach surrounded by swampy, undeveloped wetland. But it was still land, and therefore Everard hated it on sight.

Evidence of frequent and recent wrecks floated all around them as they slowly approached: flotsam planking; rigging snagged in foamy sea-weed; the odd wave-tossed barrel. Through a borrowed glass Everard spotted palm trees on the distant mainland, some ripped to shreds on the beach, others steadfast and lonely; there were clumps of green-leaf mangroves with their white roots exposed on washed-away shores, and before these, a spotted, weaving carpet of marsh reeds and underwater grasses.

Within the bay itself, the water was infamously too shallow for anything larger than a canoe or light jolly—they’d heard Alarie himself, the fool, had wrecked a handful of ships in this same bay only weeks before—so the Caledonia and Mina’s accompanying ships hovered in a vulnerable-feeling white-winged murder just outside the sandy peninsula. There were a handful of smaller ships already at anchor around the port: these being what, Everard assumed, would soon make up his own fleet under Alarie.

Half of them had been lost, and the rest of them were a sorry bunch. He’d have gone so far as to call them ragged: small and two-masted at the largest, at least half of them needing careening; others were possessed of soggy, tearing sheets. The best-looking was one Anemone, the corsario slaver that Everard remembered had carried the Galveztonian marque—and slaves, humans, souls—to Louisiana and then Florida. All in the name of profit.

Everard lowered the glass, swallowing heavily. He remembered Louis-Michel Alarie, standing beside him at the rail of the Sévère, covered in expensive, masculine pink satin.

Profit for him.

I have seen what motivates him.

Money. Everard had thought Vitya meant power, position, glory; and he had surely meant those things, but primarily, he had meant Alarie was motivated by money.

Of course he had. What else drove the world but greed?

All ideal, no practice. Everard’s convictions seemed more impossibles than ideals at the moment.

But why now? What had changed?

Throughout his career, he had upheld the brutality of authoritarian kings, obliged greedy admirals, endured tyrant captains, swept away officer injustices; all while telling himself he was different because of convictions and opinions he’d kept—for the majority part—private. Different because of a few anonymous essays, because of a handful of scratched cartoons mocking an untouchable man. Different because fucking other men had been the only thing he’d been unwilling to desert in his quest to become an unimpeachable, honorable, English officer of the Navy.

But he wasn’t different. Not really. None of those things had been active; none of them had changed him in any significant way.

Not even that last point; the thing he’d refused to let go, refused to think of as a flaw to be corrected. And perhaps he’d fucked—and loved—two men, and that was radical in itself. But he had never sincerely admitted or confessed that love, to the point that neither man even had been aware of his depth of feeling. Neither had trusted him with their true selves. Neither had had faith that Everard would, in fact, give up everything for that love, fight tooth and nail to keep what he’d found in them.

Because he hadn’t fought. Hadn’t given up anything. Had blamed them for inaction when it was inaction driven by his inadequacy.

No practice.

No; what was practice was what he was actively doing now, in this moment, with this decision he’d made to follow and support and uphold a man he didn’t trust and didn’t respect, who wanted revolution not for the sake of the people fighting and dying for it, but for the glimmering mirror that would shine the daylight of fame back upon him as gold and renown and legacy.

And in fact, it was with Alarie’s first act as governor—that Everard witnessed, anyway—that the man immediately proved himself ill suited to leadership or respect.

He refused to let Mina’s ships into Galveztown port.

The bay was too shallow. There was no other option for the Caledonia but to wait. Mina had his heart set on Galveztown, and Everard had nowhere else to go.

Fearing plague or worse, Everard sent a gig with a letter informing Alarie of his arrival, his answer to him in the affirmative. Yes, he would be his admiral.

No response, which stung Everard’s pride, but less than he thought it might.

Mina sent one too, reminding Alarie of his commitments to México and his pledge to assist him. No response. Mina was infuriated.

Eight days later, Alarie relented, with no excuse more legitimate than he had too many mouths to feed already and that he was himself convalescent.

He received Everard in his tent as though nothing had happened. He was indeed convalescent, but seated upright at a desk regardless, a pillow behind him on the chair.

“Happy to see you, de Anglada. I knew you would change your mind.” Alarie smiled handsomely. “Indeed, I had such confidence in you that I have written already to the American Congress: Galveztown is not only now possessed of a marshal, customs, port authority, and judges, but an admiral and admiralty court.”

“Indeed?” Everard said. “All that?” he couldn’t help adding. A week earlier, he had swung the glass over the smattering of shanty-like buildings on its east wing that made up Galveztown itself, and wondered.