Page 32 of Rears & Vices

Holy good God, he hadn’t even lowered his voice.

“Two nights!” Everard corrected, his face hot. “And I had expectation of neither of them.” Then a chill came over him as something occurred, a motivation, perhaps, for Vitaliy to be so angry at him. “I have no expectation of more, mind you,” he said hastily. “I didn’t—I don’t want anything from you. That wasn’t at all why I…” He trailed off.

Vitaliy gave him a long look.

“You told me why,” he said. “But we will see. You already know what it looks like to the outside.” Vitaliy made the two-finger salute known to all marines, as he had when they had first met. Blond hair on his hand and wrist shone curly and light-tipped in the sun.

We’ll see?

Everard cleared his throat. “What it looks like to the admiralty, you mean. They, too, think you bought me?”

Vitaliy nodded. “The admiralty and everyone else will think I bought you.” He frowned. “And I am not a man known for such things. Bribery.”

“You’re— He’s— You’re not?”

“In any incarnation, including that one,” he confirmed.

Everard was silent a moment. “But, Var…er, is his reputation not…”

“A slaughterer?” Vitaliy lounged back against the bench, arms spread, chest broadening. Out of the dust-mote line of sun, but still close.

Everard swallowed.

He was a liar.

He didn’t have expectations, but he did want.

Vitaliy watched him from under heavy eyelids. Patient. Waiting.

Everard took a long drink of coffee, not that he needed more.

He said, “Yes. What is bribery in the face of that? But I think you… you, the flesh-and-blood man in front of me, not the pirate… are not a slaughterer. Not really.”

“Do you.” Vitaliy blinked, slow. “The flesh-and-blood man and the pirate are the same.”

“It behooves a pirate to be known as vicious. You’ve only just got done telling me.”

“I won’t lie to you, if you ask.”

“No need,” Everard insisted, though saying it aloud did make him feel a little like he’d lost his mind. As though it weren’t absurd to justify a man’s moral character to his face. “You apparently aren’t concerned to make a profit with the most profitable commodity on Earth besides sugar. And one cannot forget that just last night, you judged me harshly for murder. Which, mind you, I was only party to, which happened for the sake of your own survival. I almost wanted to turn straight around at your expression.”

“I almost wanted you to,” Vitaliy agreed. “But I know that blame is with the lieutenant.”

Everard slapped the table, ignoring the swoop his stomach had done at that.

“There!” he said triumphantly. “A man can’t change so much in three years. Don’t you agree?”

Vitaliy pursed his lips. “I don’t. It is dependent on the years themselves, and which ones in the line they happen to be.”

“Well, of course⁠—”

“What’s more,” Vitaliy leaned forward again, “you can’t expect the decisions of the future to produce the same results as the past.”

Everard scoffed. “This is personal conjecture based upon observations of the near and immediate past. Some hours, not a decade. And if you could only see the horror that is my unceasing memory, you’d find even those of three years ago to be extraordinarily accurate.”

“Observations.” Vitaliy’s satisfied look made his eyes glint. “Then it is belief. Not conjecture.”

“It is still conjecture, because obviously I have not observed you at every possible moment—” Everard narrowed his eyes. Another suspicion was rapidly forming. “Did Thom give you leave to borrow aught beyond my razor?”