Page 99 of Tempest

“If you’re going to gawk, don’t be so obvious,” she hissed. “Or pay for their time.”

He sputtered as they moved, ever a nuisance. “As you noted, I have never paid a woman for her time in my life—”

“Say it louder,” Cat said, her eyes a flash of warning. “You know I don’t need you here. Go back to the ship if you must.”

Some of the blush receded from Fell’s face and he adjusted his vest, smoothing it into place. He leaned, teeth gritted, putting himself at Cat’s eye level. Despite the surroundings, his discomfort did not outweigh his resolve.

“I know you think I’m an idiot, but I’m not that much of an idiot,” he said.

Cat could not help but heave an exasperated sigh, made more taxing by the tight fit of her bodice.

“Then find yourself a good vantage point, don’t make a fool of yourself, and let me work.”

His steel glare sharpened. “I’m still not clear on what you intend to do, exactly.”

She threw back her shoulders, knowing exactly what it did to her collarbone and breasts. To his credit, Fell’s gaze never wavered from her eyes.

“Would you like the details?” Cat murmured.

His lips twisted. “Certainly not.”

“Good,” she spat, unhooking her arm from his. “Have a drink, keep an eye out for sailors, eavesdrop if you can. Try not to look so out of place. If I’m not back in an hour, wait longer.”

“Cat—”

But she spun on her heel, leaving Jasper Fell to fend for himself in a garden of temptation.

Chapter Eighteen Before

BY THE TIME the sun set red into the horizon, Cat had the lay of Captain Kane’s library. And more importantly, his collection of maps and navigation charts.

She slotted the geography of the Lyrian Sea together in mismatched papers, until she had almost the full span of the islands laid out like a feast across the cabin floor. Along with a compass and sparing glances at the horizon, she tried to figure out their course, or at least where the Covenant might be heading. But it felt useless. There were hundreds of islands of the Lyrian Sea from towering volcanos to tiny, tidal keys.

We could be going anywhere.

Kane’s wishes be damned, Cat made a mess of his cabin and piled the most promising of his books alongside the patchwork map. She sat beside them in a borrowed dress, yellow skirts pooling around her crossed legs. She tried not to think about her equally borrowed undergarments as she read, scanning page after page in hopes of understanding a bit more of the world she found herself in.

She did not know what to look for. But she knew she must learn all the same.

You’ll learn. We all do.

His words still echoed in her mind, no matter how hard Cat tried to keep Valerian’s infuriating voice from her thoughts. Somehow, he managed to be both taunting and encouraging at the same time. It annoyed her to no end. And motivated her too.

You’ll learn.

Captain Kane’s library was more extensive than Cat expected, from the accounts of the first continental explorers to navigate the Lyrian Sea to an illustrated guide of Lyrian flora to scriptures from Meridian or Esperese churches. There were the published works of famous sea captains from the Meridian Empire, diagrams of various guns and cannons, medical journals, and charts of the shipping lanes. Not to mention sheafs of letters varying from naval dispatches to private correspondence, all from the captain and crew who used to the sail the Covenant before Kane seized her.

Cat pawed through these, skipping over letters to wives and sweethearts, bankers and debt collectors, children, parents. Curling script from the officers, spiky scratch from the enlisted men. They spoke of storms and bad water and hardship. Official reports and harried notes of anguish or hope or love.

Even the glimpses were enough to make Cat’s head spin, the weight of their words immense upon her shoulders. She swallowed against a sick feeling and tried not to think of the men behind the letters, their last thoughts imprisoned to ink.

The previous commanding officer of the Covenant, a Meridian captain named Edgar Errol, left an unfinished letter, dated only two months ago.

Two months since Valerian won such a prize and became captain of his own ship.

How he did such a thing, Cat feared to wonder. It felt near impossible to balance the man who awkwardly offered her a coat with a man who might kill a ship full of sailors. But she could not forget the bullet hole in the next room. Most likely it marked the end of Captain Errol, who would never finish the letter to his wife and daughter back in Brycam City.

Two months a captain, she told herself, filing the piece of information away.