Page 134 of Tempest

“Don’t worry, Brimley will row us over, you needn’t mind the dress,” Ana said over her shoulder. Then she smirked, glancing over Cat from head to toe. “Though I think a swim might improve it.”

“Well, it isn’t mine, is it?” Cat said hotly, her free hand trying to tug the dress into place.

It was a hair too small, tighter across the chest than she would have liked, but the floral pattern caught her eye amongst the offered discards. She wondered who it had belonged to, and exactly why there was a dress of its like aboard a pirate ship.

Stolen, Cat wondered, or left behind?

“Wait, row us over?” she said, returning to the question at hand. “What’s happening on the shore?”

Her eyes darted past Ana and their joined hands, past the ship railing to the silhouette of Drowning Key. The island was a black void, an absence against the waves reflecting the light of the ships and stars overhead, but for a small collection of flickering lights on the key, half hidden by a hill above the drowning dock.

Candlelight in windows, Cat realized, placing the squares of yellow and orange, and the little flames shifting within.

“Is that a house?” she balked, thinking of sea witches and cursed hermits. “Someone lives here?”

Reaching the gunwale, Ana released her hand. “This is Drowning Key, and that is the Drowning Drink.”

From far away, the sound of laughter rippled over the island, carrying back to the anchored ships. To Cat’s surprise, a fiddle trilled beneath the echoing voices.

“Who operates a tavern in a place like this?” she murmured, incredulous at the prospect of a bar so isolated and remote. “Certainly the business would be poor.”

“You’re a funny sort, Lady Rose,” Ana laughed, shaking her head as she clambered over the railing and down the sea ladder to the waiting longboat bobbing against the hull.

* * *

STARLIGHT WASHED THE beach blue and silver, and a warm breeze hissed through the ropy grass laying thick over the dunes. While Ana and Brimley hauled the longboat up on the sand, Cat wrung out the hem of her dress and surveyed the landscape. The island seemed hardly larger than the Covenant and the Seadragon together, both pirate ships towering over the beach. There was little elevation, the highest point of the island no more than fifty feet above the waterline, and few trees bigger than scrabbly bushes. Up close, Drowning Key reminded her of Rosby. Nothing, in the middle of nowhere. Empty and desolate.

But certainly not forgotten like Rosby was.

Footprints tracked through the sand, a dozen of them at least, all leading from the shoreline to a path through the tall grass. It did not go far, ending at a wooden structure—the aptly named Drowning Drink. The building looked more like a shabby house than any inn or tavern Cat had ever seen. Candlelight wormed through gaps in the shingled boards and along the foundation line, the shadows of ambling feet clearly visible. Others gathered beneath the overhanging porch, trading bottles or playing dice. While Ryman, and probably even Lieutenant Fell, would have turned up his nose at the clapboard walls or the door hanging ajar on rusty hinges, pirates were clearly not so particular about their drinking establishments.

Raucous voices and a jolly melody spilled out through gaps in the walls, and too many silhouettes crammed the interior until Cat feared the Drink might burst like an overfilled barrel.

Certainly there will not be room left for us, she thought, though Ana and Brimley walked on, unconcerned. She followed them in silence, eyes wide as they approached.

Cat was no stranger to drinking or the drunk. Her husband spent many an evening deep in a wine bottle, at parties in Meridia or alone in their parlor, where he would sit in the dark and curse their lot. But she was careful to avoid Ryman in those moments, to steal away to a card table, or creep upstairs and pray he drank himself to sleep. Now she walked headfirst towards a bar filled with jeering pirates sick on liquor.

Somehow, Ryman was still the worse option.

Ana pulled open the door first, a panel of the wood splintering as it moved.

“Careful with the old girl,” Cavallid chortled just inside, his back pressed up against the door post. His tanned face was red, from the drink in his hand or the many candles burning around the room, Cat couldn’t tell.

Indeed, the air of the tavern was close and stifling, flush with too many bodies and lights. Fresh candles melted over years of old wax. Tobacco smoke swirled in clouds. Sand lay across the stone floor, swept in by the island winds. Rickety shelves lined the walls, some bowing under the weight of half-empty bottles, their labels torn away or obscured by dust. Cat ventured some of the wine was so old it had turned to vinegar. Men and women crammed themselves into mismatched chairs at uneven tables, or leaned against whatever spare bit of wall they could find. All of it seemed patchwork, the contents of the room cobbled together from plunder. Anticlean wine, an Esperese rug in the corner, Meridian pewter cups. The ramshackle wealth splayed across the L-shaped chamber, with a narrow bar top running down one arm, the rest open to the patrons. There was no bartender Cat could see, and she guessed the crew provisioned the Drowning Drink themselves.

Another open doorway emptied onto the porch, where the fiddler played. Next to him, Cat recognized steady Garedo from the card game. His nimble fingers held a type of reed flute, and he raised it to his lips, joining the melody.

Though the tavern looked small from the outside, the crowd made it seem far larger within. They quickly lost Mr. Brimley to a dice game, but Ana pulled Cat on, jostling through the pirate crews. Cat could not help but hold on tightly and let Ana lead, trying to recognize faces throughout the tavern as they passed. She spotted Ratter beneath a table, giggling into a jug of rum, with Cook not far behind.

Cat thought of her old servant, Mr. Greer, who had taken the black when the Seadragon robbed them on the crossing. If he was in the makeshift tavern, she could not find him—or he was simply unrecognizable, his neatly pressed servant’s garb and cleanshaven cheeks replaced by roughspun and an unruly beard. The crew of the Covenant were largely indistinguishable from the crew of the Seadragon, and she could hardly tell one from the other.

Except for Captain Morovant.

He held court in the central corner of the tavern, his back to the wall, his green coat the brightest thing in the room. His plumed hat was gone, revealing lush, black curls streaked with errant threads of silver. Drops of wine glimmered in his beard, and he drank deeply, laughing at the man across the table from him, who had his own back to the room, his face obscured.

Even so, Cat knew him by the broadness of his shoulders and the ease of his long legs, ankles crossed on the tabletop. Tonight Valerian did not bother with a coat, but mercifully wore a shirt again, his sleeves rolled to the elbows. His golden head caught the candlelight, blond waves curling around his ears and over his collarbone. One arm dangled, a hand clutching a tiny glass barely bigger than a thimble, like something a child might drink from.

As she watched, he motioned for a bottle, and one of his companions passed over a glazed clay jug. He pulled the cork with his teeth and poured, an amber liquid sloshing out to fill the little cup. Tossing his head back, Valerian downed the liquor in a single swallow, to the delight of the men around the table, Morovant most of all.