Esmeralda laughed. “When was the last time you were on a ship, friend? Did you not know the captain’s chair is always nailed to the floor?”
She watched as his focus dropped to the nails in the chair’s feet.
“Last thing one would want moving around in a storm,” she said delicately.
He glared, and it was only then she took in his appearance. Startling dark eyes, almost black, they seemed to reflect the light in the room. His hair was dark, too, and long, far longer than an Englishman would have it. She knew he was tall from their struggle, and she had felt the strength in his body. If he had not been so taken unawares, he would undoubtedly have won their bout.
She examined him more closely. She was hardly the best judge, but from what she could see, he was…well, handsome.
As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she forced it down. She had never allowed herself to be turned by a handsome man. She needed to stay in control of herself and her crew.
“What are you doing here?” she asked quietly, hiding her moment of weakness. The crew must not think her weak.
Instead of replying, the prisoner spat on the floor.
Her second mate, Andrews, leapt forward with a cry. “How dare you—”
“No,” Esmeralda said slowly, and Andrews stopped immediately, a desperate look on his face. “Not yet.”
He smiled and returned to his place in the circle.
Esmeralda began to walk around the prisoner, who twisted in his chains, attempting to keep her in sight.
“You know, Shepherd,” she said softly. “It is a real shame.”
The man stared, utterly lost. “It is?”
Esmeralda did her best not to roll her eyes. She was but twenty years of age, yet she was already quicker than most of her crew. She winked as she moved behind the prisoner’s back.
“Yes, a real shame. I liked this chair.”
Understanding dawned on her quartermaster’s face. “Well, we will just have to pick up a replacement at Southampton. We have enough gold.”
“I know,” she sighed heavily as she came back around to face the prisoner. “But, I hoped I would not have to throw this one overboard.”
Her captive’s face went pale, and Esmeralda’s smile broadened.
“But then, if there is nothing else of value attached to it, there is no point in keeping it,” she said.
***
Javier felt the pinch of the manacles on his wrists as he shifted on the floor.
Maldito! Damn! His father had been right.
“You are a disgrace to the Demonios name.”
He was a coward, a useless pirate, the shame of his tribe. In all his desperation to finally earn his freedom, why did Captain Esmerelda have to be a worthy pirate?
He would never get the chance to take her again. His opportunity to lead a peaceful life on land was gone. His father would never accept him back, not now he was a prisoner of the Demonioses’ sworn enemies.
He could, how was it the English said? The faint memory of his mother and her soft, warm arms drifted through his mind.
He could kiss his chance to live on land goodbye. That was it. Javier grimaced, the pain in his knee and shoulder demanding attention, while he tried to focus on the most important matter at hand.
Dry land? God’s teeth, he would consider happily staying here on this damned ship if it meant keeping his life!
He looked into Captain Esmeralda’s eyes and tried to ascertain whether she was serious in her threat to throw him overboard. There was a steel glint in her eyes he recognized. Every pirate would; it was the strength of command, and only those who had that inner strength could survive as captain of a pirate ship.
His gaze moved. She was far more beautiful than described.
All he had been told was that she was a pathetic captain, a captain! The English must have been desperate when they allowed her to take control of a ship.
A le Brecque woman, one whose own father had disowned her. It was a disgrace, and yet when Javier looked, he did not see a woman in shame.
No, he could only see…well, belleza. Beauty and strength. Her hair was dark, though not as dark as his, and her bearing was almost regal. She held herself confidently, obviously certain of her place in the world. Her eyes were bright, focused, intelligent, and her body…
Javier swallowed. He already had the interruptions of pain to prevent him from thinking clearly about the very real threat of his demise. The last thing he needed was a pretty face to distract him.
“Well?” Captain Esmeralda said dangerously. “Is there anything of value attached to my chair?”
Javier hung his head. There was no point in attempting to feign a name. His accent had already betrayed him, and if he were fortunate enough to be merely dragged to the nearest port and handed over to the authorities, they would know instantly who he was.
“Javier Mateo de Soto, of Los Demonios de Mar.”
Without looking up, he could feel the change in the room. There was a palpable reaction to his name, the tension increasing so rapidly, it felt like plunging to the depths of the ocean.
“A Demonios.” It was not a question from the captain. “Javier Mateo de Soto, of Los Demonios de Mar. I should kill you now, dog.”
Javier’s heart skipped a beat to hear his name on her lips. It did something to him, something he should not enjoy.
She had not killed him, and Javier knew enough about captains to realize he was more valuable alive than dead. Perhaps, if he were fortunate, he could capture her once they arrived at a port! It was possible, maybe, that she would be with him for a few moments without a guard.
A few moments. That was all he needed. He could earn his freedom from the Demonioses, after all.
Javier looked up and smiled. He was pleased to see Captain Esmeralda look a little disconcerted.
“But you will not kill me because you need to know more,” he said quietly. “What am I doing here? Are there others? Is going to Southampton a trap?” As long as he had her attention, he would likely keep his life—for today. “You need answers, and I do not propose to give them to you…yet.”
This speech caused a ripple of grumbling around the crew, but the captain raised a hand for silence. Taking a few steps toward him, she lowered herself onto her haunches to look him straight in the face.
When she spoke, it was in a whisper. “You will tell me. I have a way of making people talk.”
There was a gentle hint of a threat in her words, but it was not enough to frighten Javier, who smiled back. “I am a Demonios. You think I have not experienced that before and at the hands of my father?”
His gaze met hers, and in that instant, something strange happened, an understanding of some sort. Javier almost gasped—it was as though she could see the violence he had accepted from the hands of his father, from all the men on the Doloria. Looking into her bright eyes, which he could see were green, he could see some of the same pain.
She stood up abruptly. “How many others are coming? How many ships?”
“No one,” said Javier instinctively, and then cursed his honesty. It had been considered a failure by the Demonios tribe, but he could not feign intrigue for long, even when his life depended on it. “I…I wanted a different life, and so I came here.”
He had not expected her to believe him, and as she laughed, some of her crew joined in.
“The le Brecque and Demonios families have been deadly enemies for what, hundreds of years?” she asked. “Why, of all ships, would you come here?”
Javier swallowed. The more truth he told, the easier it would be to remember what he had said, and he had always hated lying. It was one of the reasons his father had said, in the midst of a vicious whipping, that he was such a terrible Demonios.
“I heard you were different,” he said, the truth flowing a little easier now. “I heard stories that you were a different kind of pirate.”
She was staring as though she might read his thoughts if she examined him for lo
ng enough.
Then she snapped at a man with yellow teeth who Javier assumed was her quartermaster. “Take him to the brig. I’ll decide his fate later.”
The man nodded and moved toward Javier with a key, but the captain placed a hand on his shoulder to stop him.
“With the chair, I think,” she said with a grin. “I still have not decided whether both will be going overboard.”
Chapter Three
Esmeralda’s feet ached, but she did not cease her pacing. Her sleeping quarters may be small—just enough space for her bed, a compact chest containing all her belongings, a window, and a door to her cabin, but she was able to move around comfortably. She bumped her knee on the bed as she turned but ignored the pain.
The pacing usually helped, but not today. She had spent the last hour hoping it would bring to mind a solution, but her head was sluggish and her heart torn, and she knew why.
Javier Mateo de Soto was a severe problem, and the last thing she should do was keep him on her ship. A chair could be replaced. Her life could not.
But her heart…
Esmeralda dropped onto her bed, hands over her eyes. When she had looked at him…there was something about him she had never seen in another man. He had, in that instant, seen her soul. She had felt naked before him, utterly unprotected.
Decisions had always been easy. Leaving the le Brecque clan. Stealing—well, more borrowing a ship? Of course, what other choice did she have?
Whenever faced with a serious decision, she had easily chosen a clear path.
Not today.
Javier was a Demonios. Her blood boiled at the thought of that treacherous pirate tribe, despite leaving that life behind three years ago.
“Do not be a fool,” she said, her voice muffled in her hands. “It was your father and his foolish family who hated the Demonios pirates.”
Had she ever met a Demonios before? She remembered all the raids she had witnessed as a child. She had seen, and she had to swallow at this thought, many bodies. But she had never spoken to a Demonios before.
Esmeralda lifted her head and looked at the wall. Hatred was in her blood, somehow. Bred into her. Even when she thought she had escaped the le Brecque, her very instincts betrayed her.
Just hearing the Demonios name on Javier’s lips was enough to make her angry, stirring her stomach to pain.
Esmeralda stood up hastily. No. This was not her, she was not murderous, only a pirate. She had made that decision years ago when she had first stepped onto the Periculum and invited the crew to go with her. Others in Poseidon’s League had been different from her father, but she had no wish to join them. She wanted to sail under her name.
“I am not a murderer,” she whispered to herself. “Chart your own course, Esmeralda.”
That was what she had done three years ago, leaving her family behind on the bow of a stolen ship.
She had never looked back.
Moving to the window, she could see nothing but ocean, glistening in the setting sun. It calmed her as nothing else had.
She strode out of the bedchamber and into her captain’s cabin to look at her charts. They had veered off course chasing that ship, to be sure, but they were still only days away from Southampton.
Days in the brig was no hardship—she had certainly spent more time in there as a child. Esmeralda shivered but pushed down the memories. Days in the brig, and then handed over to the authorities.
She would be rid of him, and the authorities would have gained a member of one of the most notorious pirate clans in Europe.
Javier Mateo de Soto would get his just due, and she would not have to concern herself with the prospect of unnecessary blood on her hands.
As she poured over the charts, the door opened behind her. Shepherd and a few others of the crew came in.
Esmeralda nodded at them. “Excellent timing. I have just made my decision.”
“Decision?” Her quartermaster leered.
“Yes,” she said, distracted by her calculations. If they only had a strong enough westerly wind… “About the prisoner.”
Shepherd spat on the floor, and the others sneered. “That is no longer your concern.”
Esmeralda sighed. Well, she had been foolish to give him more than five minutes alone with him. “Oh, Shepherd, you didn’t already throw him overboard, did you?”
It was only then that she noticed the other crew members who had come in with her quartermaster and started to move around the room and encircle her.
Esmeralda’s stomach twisted. Her sword was on the desk.
As the quartermaster lunged at her, Esmeralda ducked and rolled toward her desk, the path clear now that the chair had been moved. Grabbing her sword, she tried to rush across the room for the bell, anything to get the attention of the rest of the crew.
Not useful, she thought in that instant as her heart sank, if the rest of her crew were also mutineers.
It didn’t matter. She had not reached the bell before Andrews blocked her path, his sword clashing with hers. She parried, darting around him to force the man to the left, and she sprang forward, knocking the bell to the floor.
Was it enough? As Esmeralda fought off Andrews and another, the door flew open, and three more of her crew appeared in the doorway.
“Defend your captain!” she shouted, barely able to draw breath as she twisted her sword around to disarm one of her attackers.
The three men paused, and Esmeralda felt despair rush into her heart. She would be dead before long.
Two of them pulled out swords and joined her side, Cook and George, but the third grinned at Shepherd and moved to his side of the room.
Esmeralda caught her breath and looked at who she knew, now, were mutineers.
“Stand down,” she said commandingly, “and we can discuss your removal from this ship at Southampton. Keep fighting and…”
She did not finish her sentence, she couldn’t. The quartermaster jumped forward and started the assault again, and Esmeralda had to concentrate on every footstep and every slash of her sword in the confined space.
But she was not the captain of the Periculum for nothing. She knew she had not been permitted to remain sailing the seas around Britain by the le Brecque family because of her quiet nature. She knew how to handle a blade, and her hatred of drawing blood did not mean she was against it.
Within moments, one man was dead, three were knocked out, a clever bit of fisticuffs from George, her bosun, and another three were flat on their backs, nursing wounds.
Shepherd was kneeling before her, his eyes full of terror. He knew the customary punishment for attacking one’s captain.
“George,” Esmeralda said, panting. “Tie them up.”
She leaned against the wall as she caught her breath.
Shepherd glared at Cook, who had stepped forward to tie him up.
“Why?” she asked quietly.
The quartermaster spat on the floor again, but he was prevented from repeating it by the knife held to his throat.
“Do not do that again,” said Cook with a vicious grin, “or I shall make you lick the boards clean.”
Shepherd swallowed, and Cook removed the knife.
Esmeralda glared at the traitor. “Why, Shepherd?”
“You are no captain,” he grunted. “We thought you would be a le Brecque, our own le Brecque captain. We thought we’d have the best ship in the fleet, lead the charge.”
“I am a le Brecque,” Esmeralda snapped.
“Where is the battle? Where is the glory? Where is the killing?” The quartermaster shook his head, his hands now tied behind his back. “I wanted more, and you refuse to give it to us. Why do you think so many of us tire of…of your female compassion!”
Esmeralda felt the fury but kept it at a distance. She was in control, not just of this ship, but of her own emotions, too. She would not allow this man to drive her mad with anger.
“We are pirates,” she said. “Not murderers.”
“What s
hould we do with them?” George asked as Bones clattered into the room, fists up.
Esmeralda knelt, back against the wall, and considered the eight men before her. Eight men. Assuming they were alone, and it would be foolish to believe so, these men were a quarter of her crew. She only had two and thirty hands, and she needed forty men to make this ship work, no, that was not entirely true. She wanted forty. She needed twenty-five. With these eight men gone…
“How many?” she asked.
The quartermaster attempted to avoid her eyes, but she was too close and had too much force of will.
“Six.”
Esmeralda worked hard not to show the disappointment on her face. That left sixteen loyal to her. It was not enough, but she could not allow mutineers to remain on her ship. No matter how difficult it was, she could always find new hands at Southampton.
If they managed to get there.
“I need names,” she said slowly. “You, tell Cook. George, take Shepherd, Andrews, and the rest of them. Bind them, and leave them on the deck. Bones, bind these gentlemen and put them with their friends.”
She could not be weak. She had to show strength, or it would just be a matter of time before another mutiny rose against her.
As she followed the bound men up onto the deck, her loyal crew had already found the other six renegades. They were seated by the mast, glaring. They knew the punishment for mutiny, the sharp end of a blade, or marooning, a terrible fate.
Left out on the ocean, no sail, no oars, you would slowly starve to death or go mad for lack of water.
Esmeralda swallowed, ensuring her voice would be strong enough.
“Prepare a rower.”
The surprise around the ship was tangible, and even Shepherd stared in shock as two crew members prepared two small rowing boats.
“You—you are going to maroon us? You?” Shepherd asked.
Esmeralda nodded.
A nervous smile crept over his face. “No…no, you would not damn members of your crew to that fate.”
“You abandoned me the moment you took up a blade against me,” she snarled. The mutineers leaned away, and Esmeralda felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle.
Always the High Seas: Pirates of Britannia Connected World Page 2
