AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I straightened under her scrutiny, though it was not easy. My head ached, and my muscles were spent. The Mereish coin now lay safe within my pocket, but worry for Mary and guilt over my failure to stop Lirr had poisoned my sleep. Over and over again, I remembered slashing his stomach. I remembered the shock of victory, the awe and the certainty that the wound would finally stop him. The Usti would collect his body, and I would claim the credit I was due. I had known I might have to fight for that credit, that there was a chance Demery would not vouch forme—butMary had been in danger, and I had never considered that my blow might not keep Lirr down.
Perhaps I had been wrong and I had only cut clothing, not skin. That doubt only made my shame greater. Instead of staying at the palace, instead of ensuring my commission was fulfilled, I had run off with Mary Firth, and now they were both lost.
“The death of Captain Slader is regrettable, but Silvanus Lirr will still be apprehended.” Queen Inara stared down Fisher and Ellas now, her gaze unyielding. She spoke in Usti, which Benedict had never been good at. But even he startled when the queen added, “Captain Ellas, you will join Captain Fisher in this venture. It is but a small diversion from your usual cruise, as I understand it. The peace between our nations, after all, is of the utmost importance. What would these seas be without Usti force? Lawless. And her peoples? In poverty. We bring salt from Sunjai, saltpeter from our southern holdings. We bring iron from Isman.”
Neither Ellas nor Fisher looked at one another, their thoughts hidden by measured expressions.
Benedict, meanwhile, shot me a glance. It was an instinct, I knew, and as soon as he did it he forced himself to look away. He would do the same when we werechildren—lookingfor cues as to how he ought to act and feel, when his own conscience could not tell him.
I ignored him.
“It will be done, Your Majesty,” Ellas said with a bow that barely wrinkled her fine-pressed blue coat. From her broad tone and commanding posture, she had decided to speak for both herself and Fisher, an assumed superiority that earned her a narrow glance from my new captain. “As you say, the peace between our nations is of the highest priority.”
“Good. You will also be joined by Captain James Elijah Demery,” the queen added in a voice that forbade questioning. “I have issued him a Letter of Marque. On my seas, he is a chartered vassal and untouchable, is that clear?”
Neither Ellas nor Demery responded immediately, but the pirate captain watched the queen with more familiarity than I thoughtwise—aneasy posture and a warm quirk at the corner of his mouth.
Inara filled the silence. “I understand you have a means of tracking Lirr, Captain Fisher?”
Fisher nodded without looking at me. “I do, Your Majesty.”
“Very well. Captain Demery has informed me he has means to navigate the seas beyond the Stormwall.” The queen paused after the last word, taking in every sharp breath and stifled murmur in the hall. “Together with Captain Ellas’s Stormsinger, do you believe you can succeed in this endeavor? Or shall I rectify the matter myself and make my displeasure known to your betters?”
“It will be done, Your Majesty,” Ellas assured the other woman, bowing again. “You need not trouble yourself further.”
“Good.” The queen turned, descended the dais in a cascade of skirts, and swept out of the room.
***
I followed Fisher into the quiet of Slader’s cabin and closed the door. The captain himself was laid out in a shroud on the table, ready to be dropped into the waves as soon as we reached open water. The air smelled of tobacco and old blood.
Fisher pulled off her hat and stared at the body without seeing it. She tucked a few stray hairs behind her ear and looked at me. “Are you fit for this? Being my first officer?”
I pulled the coin Mary had returned to me from my pocket and showed it to her. “I am.”
She looked surprised, but pleased. “Good. However, smothering your gift is not what I need, nor will it fix you.” She laced her arms loosely over her chest. “I still need you to track Mary Firth.”
“I can track Mary.” I came to stand across the table from her. Slader’s shrouded corpse lay between us, no longer judging me, and I felt stronger for it. Fisher wasright—stiflingmy curse with the talisman would not fix me. But if I could sleep easily, even for one night, it would be worth it. I would survive, as I had for the last twenty years. I would stop Lirr, rescue Mary, and reclaim my good name long before madness took me.
“However, I can track Lirr now too,” I told her. “We will stop him, Captain. You and I. Without Slader.”
It was the first time I had addressed her as captain. She lifted her gaze and I saw a flash of doubt there.
She immediately hardened it into a determined squint. “Very well. Ensure we’re resupplied and ready for open sea, Mr. Rosser.”
***
The next day our convoy of pirates, pirate hunters and Navy sailed out of Hesten. As soon as we cleared the harbor, we delivered Slader to the waves with the piping of the bosun’s whistle. Then went on our way, sails full of Ellas’s Stormsinger’s wind.
SeeingDefianceoff our larboard, with Benedict standing upon her decks, was something I did not grow used to in the coming days. The weather mage’s songs frayed my nerves, and even when I retired to my cabin to sleep, they wheedled through the hull into my dreams. Mary sung them there, in a dark wold and a flurry of snow. I set my coin aside and reached out to her, once, but the distance between us was vast and full of monsters.
Two days out of Hesten we dropped anchor off an island, which Ellas claimed was the last solid land before the Stormwall. Ice rimmed her shores and crowned her low, rocky mountains, but there was life here, and fresh water. Crewmen rowed ashore to haul barrels to a natural spring, scattering hardy shorebirds in thundering clouds and earning indignant bellows from shaggy, rust-red sea lions.
I caught the crack and flash of muskets as I climbed aboardDefiancewith Captain Fisher. A sea lion’s dying roar echoed across the water, followed by more bays and barks as its companions fled into the sea.
I stepped up on deck and paused to watch distant forms of crewmen converge on the creature’s huge body, my lips pressed into a line.
“Not a hunter, I take it?”
