Page 39 of Tempest

Ryman rolled his eyes. “Just another society woman,” he answered. “If you can call these islands society at all.”

Above them in the rigging, a few sailors climbed hand over hand along rope ladders. They cast roving shadows across the deck, like flocking birds. Cat wanted to join them and fly away. Her eyes followed their forms, the men in varying states of undress. Unlike the officers, the enlisted sailors were far less fastidious with their uniforms. Cat could not help but marvel at so much bare skin, tanned and toned by life onboard a navy ship. They were so unlike Ryman.

“Perhaps we can make a little society for ourselves,” she offered, thinking of streets and markets, of people beyond her quiet, crumbling island.

Ryman tipped his head, a bemused look crossing his face. He put his hand on his chin and stared, examining his wife. For a moment, he looked softer, kinder. Not a gentleman, but something close. Reminding Cat of the first time they met, the way he smiled and took her hand. How he had promised to give her a different life than the one she lived.

It gave her pause, Cat’s sharp edges wearing smooth.

“You say such stupid things,” he finally mused, smiling at her with empty eyes.

Her sharpness returned tenfold, air hissing through her teeth as she sucked in a steadying breath. Fire licked up her spine, the rage hot and burning, and Cat’s vision slanted, taking on a red sheen.

Before she could construct a response, Lord Rose laughed, a cruel sound. It was blissfully cut off by a shout from the rigging, one of the shadows pointing.

“Sail!” the spotter called, a hand stretched out, the other holding a spyglass.

Dread doused Cat’s rage like a veil of ice across a hearth.

She spun, peering across the water, trying to discern a sail between the Venerable and the distant islands dotting the horizon. After five days at sea, they were close enough to Pearl Key to see her white dunes, with the faded mountains of Goldcoast beyond.

As Cat’s eyes darted along the flash of cresting waves, a black flag unfurled in her mind’s eye, a smiling skull sewn on its face.

She stared and stared, willing a ship to appear, its flag bared for all to see so she might at least know her own fate.

The white skull or the green cross?

Pirates or the Esperese navy?

Neither would pass without a fight.

The Venerable was a warship before all else, as Captain Quine so often liked to remind them. He ferried the Roses under orders from the governor, but this was not a transport vessel. The war did not lie down and stop for anyone, least of all a minor lord of the Meridian.

If duty called, the Venerable would answer.

Her heart thumped. She remembered the Credence, what it felt like to cower belowdecks. To be marched back out like a spoil of war, her life shredded around her, her knuckles bleeding. Her hand was still scarred, a little cross of pearly white on the bump of her ring finger. She touched it now, running a thumb across the marked skin.

But her fist on a man’s nose was not the touch she remembered most from that day.

His name was Valerian, she reminded herself, as if she might ever forget the young man with tempest eyes. He stole a prayer bead from her pocket, whispered his name and something else.

May the sea always sing for you.

The sea filled her senses. Blue, green, white clouds above and white waves below. The sailors jumped to attention, their officers shouting orders, but Cat barely heard them above the wind in the sails and the slap of water against the hull.

Is the sea singing now? she thought, listening.

Searching.

Then a ship bloomed on the horizon, and the spotter cheered.

“The Lion!” he shouted, describing a distant flag. “She’s one of ours! Meridian navy!”

A joyous roar rippled across the deck, and Ryman gave a theatrical sigh, returning to his breakfast.

Cat sighed too. But in disappointment or relief, she could not say.

* * *