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***
They were allies, Lirr and my mother. I couldn’t conclude anything else, standing in the quiet cabin where I’d been stowed.
My prison was a temporary thing, thin paneled walls constructed around one of the long cannons near the stern of the second gun deck. The weapon was bound in its cradle behind a locked port, with a lonely hammock swinging overhead in the light of a small, iron stove.
I sat on the gun, its metal frigid through my skirts, and wrapped my arms around myself. How could my mother and Lirr be allies? What had he done to her to break her, to bring her to the point where the presence of her own daughter hadn’t drawn a second glance?
Was it his magic, overriding my mother’s will as he and Benedict had done to me, back at the palace?
But it was he who’d answered to her, not the other way around.
I clawed through childhood recollections and turned over what I’d seen today, trying to rationalize the two sets of memories. Icouldn’t—mymother and this woman were different people.
But sixteen years had passed. I’d been a child when she left, sheltered from my parents’ pasts and the Winter Sea by village life and the Wold. Maybe this was who she’d been all along.
I was not a child anymore, but I felt like one rightnow—smalland confused, frightened and unsure. I resented that feeling, but it tormented me as the ship hit open sea, water began to roar past the hull, and my mother’s frigid, ensorcelled wind pried through the cracks around the hatch.
“It’s an act,” I finally said. Speaking the words aloud strengthened me, pushing my fear back to a manageable level. “It’s an act. She’s doing this to protect me. She has a plan.”
I just had to figure out what that was.
Hours crawled past. I fidgeted and paced around my little cabin, eyeing the door and hammock. I was exhausted and my muscles shook with cold and fatigue, but I didn’t consider sleeping. Someone would come for mesoon—likelyLirr, if I’d understood the promise in his eyes.
It was evening before the door opened. I straightened from my seat on the cannon and faced two pirates. They were both women, one younger than I and the other a few years older. Both wore trousers like everyone else aboard, though one had a posture that betrayed stays beneath her heavy clothes and the other a slouch that suggested she’d never worn them at all. They were armed too, one with a long knife and the other with a hatchet.
I stared at them, remembering the horrors aboardJulietteand at the Frolick. These women looked so normal, so human. How could they have participated in such atrocities?
“Come with us.”
I did not move, nor speak. But leaving my cabin put me closer to my mother, so I eventually unfolded from my perch and followed them into the close, dark corridor.
They led me through a deck populated by swinging hammocks, up to the first gun deck, then back again to the stern of the ship. Small rooms, narrow passageways and multiple ladders threatened to disorient me, but I mapped every step.
We passed through a door. Heat and the scent of baking bread struck me as soon as the barrier opened, identifying the galley before I saw the rows of cupboards and barrels. There was a steep ladder-stair to one side, capped by a hatch, and another beneath it leading down. A half-barrel of steaming water stood before the stove.
I looked at my guides in confusion. “A bath?”
“Aye.” The younger woman pointed to a stool piled with clothes. “Bathe and put those on. They’re not so fancy as you seem used to.” With that, she eyed my ruined gown with amusement. “But your tits won’t freeze off.”
I instinctively covered my breasts.“I…Fine.”
They retreated through the galley door. Just before it closed, the older one stuck her head in. “I’d be quick about it, lass. Cook was none too pleased being evicted, but all opposites at the thought of you being naked in his kitchen.”
They closed the door, sparing me the need to reply. I patted my cheeks to dispel their sudden redness and looked at the bath, tempting and hot. This felt too kind. There had to be a hitch, a trap.
I glanced at the ladder and the hatch above it. It didn’t appear to be locked, so I doubted it led anywhere useful. Still, was it worth trying to slip off and find my mother, or should I take advantage of the bath and clothes?
Immediate need won out. My mother would have to see me, eventually, and the pirate had been right; I was freezing in my current gown, and I could manage my situation more efficiently once I was clean and warm, not to mention out of my wide panniers. I’d also feel considerably less exposed without my bodice’s gaping neckline.
The bath was heavenly, though at any moment I expected a burly cook to saunter in, or my supposed guards to open the door and torment me in some way. Working quickly, I found a sliver of soap and scrubbed every inch of myself, from toes to scalp, then dried before the fire.
My new clothes were quite nice. There was a short shift, a clean pair of stays and a man’s shirt, all of which I tucked under two layers of wool trousers and a belt. Over that I shrugged a heavy, double-breasted coat, slit at the hip, lightly embroidered and forest green. I buttoned it from waist to collar and spent my remaining moments in the galley hovering before the stove, trying to speed the drying of my hair.
It was then, with my head upside down in front of the grating, that I heard running feet. I looked at the deck above me, half blinded by damp waves of hair, and listened.
Shouts. More footsteps. My eyes dragged to the ladder just as someone ran across the hatch. They issued a desperate obscenity as they went, and theirvoice—avoice from a nightmare of two days tied to amast—madethe warmth flee my cheeks.
I knew that voice. My shock faded into grim need, I grabbed a fire poker and made for the ladder.
