Page 35 of Rears & Vices

Ten

He was going to say yes.

Of course he would.

He shouldn’t.

The hot morning had turned into sweltering, oppressive afternoon, with another of those strange fog hazes so frequent this year. On the return walk to Maud’s tavern, he walked side-by-each with Vitaliy, discreetly spinning the gold band on his right hand. It fit well enough but also displaced his second and fourth fingers in a way that felt heavy. Odd. From the weight and thickness of the gold, it was a significant piece, which made him uneasy, as he was sure that he’d never taken something so expensive into his possession before.

Vitaliy had asked Everard to be his matelot, his inheritor in case of death. His business partner. His everything partner. His husband—in name.

There was just one thing that gave Everard true pause.

It seemed Varfolomey was a wealthy pirate. So, if he said yes, barring the signing of proper papers, that was what Everard would become. Wealthy.

Everard didn’t like owning things. Showing wealth. Having wealth. Despite having been an officer for a decade and more, with wars against several nations and a fair few prize ships under his belt, by choice he was of little circumstance. With his own room and board and meals taken care of aboard his ships, Everard had lived cash-poor, with few possessions: nothing that couldn’t fit in his sea chest. It’d always been more than enough. What monies he’d received surplus of this he’d sent over time to Catalonia in care of his madre; the rest went to voluntary associations. His mother had enough now to buy coal and swine and mountain-calves unto the end of her days, and not be beholden to Anderson Calicoes for a single peseta more.

He’d simply assumed the Navy would keep him on in perpetuity, at half-pay at least, with pension afterward. It wasn’t even an outlandish assumption. It was what was done, once one made post. It was commonplace.

Unless, of course, one had given one’s name as witness to a weapons-smuggler pirate and had nearly been arrested for it.

Everard’s memory might have been spectacular, but his ability to plan for a future that didn’t include service to the Crown had, he realised now, been a bit lacking.

He looked down at the ring again. He shouldn’t have put it on. He should go and do what he should’ve six months past, as the admiralty wanted—except now, unlike before, he had no pension awaiting. Not that he cared about that for his own sake. No; he ought to go back to Catalonia, beg his brothers’ forgiveness and reconciliation and ask for a spot as a manager. Or a clerk. Anything gainful. They likely wouldn’t care who or what he’d been for the British, even with his having been on the wrong side since the beginnings of the First Coalition.

Twenty-four years, though. They wouldn’t even recognise him. He wouldn’t recognise them.

And Vitaliy had been exactly correct. He did not want to be left behind. More so now he knew who—what—Vitaliy truly was.

Wealth notwithstanding, why not tie himself irrevocably to a large, blond, and very attractive pirate who paraphrased David Hume? He was fatally curious to see firsthand what sort of pirate Vitaliy Gray had made himself into.

“How did they detain you?” Everard asked now. “A thousand dollars on your head, and you don’t have an idea who was motivated to betray you?”

“I have several ideas,” Vitaliy said. “It doesn’t matter who was it. Thanks to you, they did not succeed.”

“It doesn’t matter?” Everard laughed. “A surfeit of options for betrayers, I suppose that’s being a true pirate.”

Vitaliy shrugged. “Anyone may arrest me, and call it fortune. You, even, this minute. Why should I count opportunists?”

You, even, this minute.

Everard couldn’t even feel indignant at the jest. Vitaliy had plainly said it only because he believed it untrue. Believed it, had for the moment taken it into himself as a true thing that Everard would not betray him, that Everard wasn’t an opportunist, that Everard would support him.

Everard squinted down at his worse-for-lakewater boots as they stepped over the cobblestone pavement. Between Vitaliy’s belief in him and thanks to you, he felt much the same as he did watching sunlight reflect in jewellike bits off a calm sea: content and at peace. The feeling that things, for the moment, seemed all right.

Perhaps it was the coffee.

“Well, I want to know who if you don’t.”

Vitaliy ducked his head. He smiled. “Please, always say what you want.”

Everard returned the smile. “Let’s assume it wasn’t an opportunist,” he said, “since you are humouring me. What were you doing when arrested?”

“I was in Philadelphia,” Vitaliy said easily. “Acquiring a press.”

“A… press?” Everard shook his head. He had imagined heists on a massive scale; a sea battle worthy of addition to A General History of the Pyrates; a duel set for ambush; a midnight assignation gone terribly wrong. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Nor I,” Vitaliy said with a laugh.