by Chloe Neill
“We’ll need a crowbar,” Grant said. “Do you have one on board?”
“We’ll find something,” Jin said.
“It’s possible, if not likely, Dunwood was injured in the taking, or may have been injured in his captivity. We may need to carry him out.”
“Sailors are strong,” Watson said, and curled an arm to show her biceps.
“Be that as it may,” Kit said, “we should alert March.”
“March?” Grant asked.
“Ship’s physick,” Kit explained. “Not officially; we’re too small to merit our own dedicated physick. But she has skills in the area of healing and herbs.”
“I’ll do that,” Jin said.
“What about exits?” Kit asked.
Simon pointed. “The sketch identifies a tunnel from dungeon to the shoreline. But in that environment, it’s possible the tunnel is flooded at high tide.”
“Or, given the ocean’s power, that it’s collapsed,” Kit said. Silence fell as their joint leaders—Kit and Grant—reviewed the maps.
“It’s possible this plan could work,” Kit said. “It’s also possible it may fail spectacularly.” She looked at Grant. “What’s your secondary plan?”
“We fight our way in,” he said, “and we fight our way out.”
“Soldiers,” Watson muttered. “Always eager for a brawl.”
“I’ve no urge to fight,” Grant said, and the grimness in his voice had everyone looking at him. “Those who’ve seen the costs of war rarely do. But we’re here for Dunwood, not for ourselves.”
Kit was irritated that she didn’t disagree with him.
In silence, she reviewed the plans, considered what he’d said, matched it against her own expertise. “We sail wide and to the north,” she finally said, tracing a finger around the island. “We disembark on the western side, send the jolly boat around to the trade zone with provisions. While we’re inside, the jolly boat should continue around the southern tip of the island, where we’ll rendezvous, get Dunwood aboard, and sail home. Me, Grant, Watson, and Sampson will take the jolly boat.”
“You should stay on the ship,” Grant said to her, “in case you need to retreat quickly.”
He may not have meant it as an insult, but it had the same effect—and had the officers narrowing their eyes at him.
“We do not leave crew behind,” Kit said. “We sail together. Always.”
“Your sense of honor will provide little comfort when Hetta is peeling the skin from our bones,” Jin said, and took a sip of his tea.
“Hetta would never do that,” Kit said with a grin. “She’d give the job to Jane.”
* * *
When their meeting was done, Kit went to the galley. She found Louisa sitting atop a chest there, holding a bowl as Cook cracked eggs into it. Cook looked up, nodded.
“Well, well,” Kit said, feigning confusion. “Who is this?”
The girl looked up at her. “It’s Louisa,” she said, brow furrowed.
Kit frowned. “I don’t think so. There was so much filth around Louisa it formed a cloud. You appear to be quite clean.”
Louisa scowled.
“There she is,” Kit said with a wink. “I recognize her now. What are you doing there?”
“I learned how to break an egg with one hand and say ‘hell’ in the old language.”
Kit just sighed, looked up at Cook.
“Tiny Cook is a sailor,” he said without apology. “She must learn a sailor’s ways.”
They’d see about that, Kit thought. But for now, there were other things to discuss.
She crouched so she could meet the girl eye to eye. “Louisa, I need to talk to you about something important.”
“More important than steering the ship?”
“For now, yes.” Kit considered how to say what she needed to say, how to impart enough fear in the child to ensure she understood the gravity of their situation without terrifying her.
“The queen has asked us to help someone who’s in trouble—another sailor who works for the queen.”
“Why is he in trouble?”
“Because he was taken by people who are cruel and greedy. They’re also dangerous. And they don’t want to let the sailor go, so they’ll try to stop us. And they’ll try to hurt us.”
Instead of the fear Kit expected, anger crossed the girl’s face.
“We should kill them with our sabres.”
Brave and bloodthirsty, Kit thought. But there was nothing to be gained by hiding the truth. “We may have to fight,” Kit said. “And they may fight back. But we have to get the sailor home safely—and we have to get you home safely. When I give you the order, I want you to go into the hold—the bottom of the ship—and stay there. Stay hidden.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“I know you aren’t. I don’t want you to stay hidden because you’re afraid, but because I’m afraid for you. And if you’re safe, I won’t worry about you, and I can focus on the sailor.”
Louisa didn’t look entirely convinced Kit didn’t mean to take away her newfound freedom.
“I can come out of the hold when it’s done?”
“As soon as it’s done. And if you’d like, you can even go aloft.”
“What’s a loft?”
“Aloft,” Kit enunciated. “Up there, where Tamlin watches.”
Louisa looked absolutely baffled. “Why would anyone want to go all the way up there?”
The eternal question of sailors who didn’t care for the mast. “Some like the view. Some like the quiet.”
“I like biscuits,” Louisa said after a moment’s consideration. Since Kit didn’t disagree, she pulled a small tin from a shelf above the counter, opened it, and took out two pale butter biscuits.
“I do, too,” Kit said, and offered one to Louisa. Under Cook’s mutinous stare, they ate, smiling.
* * *
She’d just returned to the deck when the lieutenant at the helm held out the spyglass.
“Captain,” she said. “You need to see this. There’s a warship on the northern horizon, same bearing as us.”
Kit was immediately prepared to reject the idea, but knew her people better. “A warship? Here?”
She looked, and swore aloud.
It was a gun brig, heavy with cannons. Kit counted six on the starboard side, and presumed there was an equal number on the port. Her hull was gleaming black, and no pennants or flags marked her identity. Two square-rigged masts, running with the wind—in the same direction as the Diana.
There would be plenty of boats and ships heading to Finistère. Traders with cargo, pirates looking for sanctuary, boats used by the Five to capture prizes. But this wasn’t a civilian ship. It was too clean, too sharp, too well maintained. And it had gone to much trouble to hide its home country.
She offered Jin the glass so he could see what she did.
“Do you recognize it?” Grant asked. He’d come above deck, too, stood beside her at the gunwale.
“No,” Kit said. “They’ve no flags, no name. But they’re in a hurry. Running at full sail, heading in the same direction as we are, if just ahead of us.”
“Guild?” he asked quietly.
“Very possibly,” Kit said with a nod. “And probably heading toward Finistère to pick up the same cargo we’re after.”
“Dunwood,” Grant said, and Kit nodded.
“They’re very careful,” she observed. “It’s an unremarkable ship. Sturdy and well gunned, but not obviously Frisian or Akranian or anything else.”
Akranes was an island of rock and ice northeast of the Isles, nearer the uninhabited frozen continent than New London. It was a small nation of contrasts—of jagged cliffs and green pastures, of waterfalls and smoking volcanoes. And its queen, Callysta, was one of Gerard’s two daughters.
&
nbsp; “They want Dunwood,” Grant finished. “To interrogate, or to eliminate.”
It was a small blessing, at least, that the ship hadn’t given any indication it had seen the Diana.
“Captain?” Jin asked.
Kit considered, watched the horizon. “We’re moving just faster than she is, so maintain course. We will not beat the gun brig at arms, so we will beat her with speed. We will get to Finistère first.”
And we’ll get to Dunwood first, she promised herself.
Nine
It was just past noon when the call was made.
“Land ho!” Tamlin shouted, and Jin offered Kit her golden glass. She opened it, looked across the water to the point of darkness on the horizon, the water growing brighter as it neared the shore of the first island in the chain.
She offered it to Grant, who stood nearby, quiet and watching.
“Stay on course,” Kit said. “If their lookouts see our sail, I want them to believe we’re passing the island.”
Jin acknowledged her command. “All hands!” he called, and the bell was rung, signaling all sailors, including those below preparing for a night on the watch, to their stations. And in the meantime, she had to prepare.
* * *
In her quarters, she changed into garments she’d borrowed from Tamlin. A shirt that had long since faded from crisp white to ivory, and a long vest of thin leather. From one of the lieutenants, scuffed but soft leather boots of doe brown.
She rebelted her scabbard, tied to her belt the small leather pouch containing the sparkers. Then she smeared candle soot across her cheekbones, her jaw. Just enough to look like a woman who’d come through some fire.
She came back above decks unrecognizable, and watched the quartermaster prepare to scold her for going below without permission. Until he realized who she was.
That was one success, at least.
“Captain,” he said, “my apologies.”
“Unnecessary,” she said with a smile. “You’re giving me confidence in my disguise.”
He nodded, began to get very busy chastising sailors for their line-coiling skills.
Jin walked to her, offered a very beaten beaver hat that had become soft with time and damp, and at her nod, placed it on her head. He stood back, looked her over.
“You look like a . . . type of pirate.”
“Your confidence is bracing, Jin. And I’m not wearing this.” She pulled off the hat, sniffed it, held it at arm’s length. “It smells like bilge.”
“All part of the illusion,” Jin said, but took it back.
Grant joined them, wearing a crewman’s work clothes, the shabbier garb worn for messy work—caulking portions of the hull or deck to keep them watertight, or tarring the rigging to keep it from rotting. Trousers of cotton duck, a blousy shirt of linen, and a short blue jacket with a jaunty kerchief. He’d mussed his hair so it fell across his face, and, like her, had added a bit of candle black to his cheeks.
He looked entirely convincing as a sailor, and Kit didn’t care to admit she found it rather attractive on him.
While she perused Grant, he perused her. “You don’t look like a captain now.”
“You don’t look like a viscount. How did you come by the slops?”
He just looked at her.
“The clothing,” she clarified.
“I spoke with Chandler before we left. He suggested I might want attire that was less . . . titled.”
“A good suggestion.” She looked at Grant in the eye. “Finding Dunwood and getting him out is not likely to be easy. I need to know that—if we’re caught, or injured, or the Diana is in danger, or Dunwood is already dead—that I can count on you. Can you handle yourself?”
“Yes.”
She looked at him, kept looking at him.
“I am obviously not unskilled in combat,” he said, and she felt a thrill that he’d been the one to blink first, to put an answer into that heavy silence. “That I don’t want to fight doesn’t mean I’m not capable of it. I’ve had enough of war, Captain. I’ve no need for more of it.”
“And yet,” she said, “you’re about to engage in battle.”
“That’s different.”
“Because it’s Dunwood?”
“And because the queen requested it.”
She understood duty, and could respect it. So she nodded, decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, as she’d do for the members of her crew. “Very well.”
Watson and Sampson joined them in similar ensembles.
“Any questions?” Kit asked, and they all shook their heads. She glanced at Jin. “Have March prepare the crew’s mess in case we have injuries. She can deal with them there.”
“Already done,” he said. “She’s gathering her instruments of torture.”
Watson lifted a hand. “If we’re able to rescue Dunwood, and we were, theoretically speaking, to come across any pirate loot, would we be authorized to liberate said loot?”
“Under those specific conditions,” Kit said, “it’s probably best I not know of any loot-related activity. Understood?”
“Aye, Captain.” She lifted a shoulder. “Odds seem low we’d run across that kind of thing, but a woman likes to be prepared, you know.”
“Always,” Kit said, and turned toward the sea.
* * *
They passed a dozen small islands, each a palette of tan and green and black, some nothing more than a spit of sand or stone.
There was no sign of the gun brig. Either it hadn’t been headed for the island, or they’d beaten it here. Whatever the reason, Kit was relieved to find one less obstacle in her way.
As they neared Finistère, the water changed, lightened—became the color of rich turquoise. The island rose, black and gray, from that water like a table, the stone dotted with seabirds and scatterings of green that had found a foothold in crack or crevice.
“You were right,” Grant said to Simon. “The cliffs would be . . . challenging.”
“Sailors are uniquely adept at gauging the ease of a landfall,” Simon said quietly, gaze on the landscape. “We’ve much practice at it.”
But the cliffs were hardly the only threat. Smaller monoliths of rock stabbed up around the island like the points of a crown. The waves were white between them, the spray ten feet above the surface. And gleaming among them, like jewels in the crown, were the bleached remains of ships that hadn’t judged the shoals carefully enough. Bows and masts speared up, tattered flags and pennants shifting in the wind.
Kit didn’t need to see her crew to know they’d be touching their talismans now, saying a silent prayer for the crew members lost to this graveyard.
They rounded the island, hanging as close as they dared, and neither heard nor saw any indication they’d been seen.
She nodded at Jin. “Bring us in so we can launch the jolly boat.”
While he steered, Mr. Jones, the bosun, called out instructions to haul in the sails, slow the ship’s forward progression.
“I’ll be back,” Kit said, accepting the time had come to give the promised instruction to Louisa.
Kit found her in the galley again, this time pounding her fist into a lump of what appeared to be dough.
Cook looked up, narrowed his gaze at his captain. “We don’t have enough biscuits for you to graze them like sheep all day and night.”
That he was the man in charge of biscuit distribution was the primary reason she didn’t toss him overboard for insubordination.
“And that’s a constant disappointment to me,” she said. “We’re nearing the island.”
Cook’s expression sobered, and he nodded. “Give me that, Tiny Cook.” And he took the bowl from her, placed it onto the table where she worked, and then helped her hop down again.
“Remember what we talked about?” Kit asked her. “How it wo
uld be time for you to go into the hold?”
Louisa nodded.
“It’s time now.”
“Is that why you’re dressed different?”
“It is.”
After a moment of narrow-eyed consideration that was nearly as intimidating as the admirals to whom she reported, Louisa nodded. “All right. You have to be careful, though.”
“I will be as careful as I can.”
“I’ll take her,” Cook said, his tone softer.
It was the first time in Kit’s memory that Cook had volunteered for anything outside the mess. But she appreciated the gesture and the care. Until they could get her back to New London, Louisa was their collective responsibility.
Keep her safe, she prayed, to any of the gods who might listen, who might have luck to spare for a child caught in a conflict that wasn’t her doing.
* * *
The jolly boat was prepared. Small casks of rum and water were loaded as emergency provisions, then the bargaining chits—hardtack and tea. Then the boat was winched over the side of the Diana, and Watson and Sampson climbed aboard, took seats on two of the plank benches where oars would be extended over the hull. Kit motioned Grant on board, and then followed him in. But she turned back, held out her hand to Jin. Jin clasped her forearm, and they watched each other for a moment.
“Tiva kass,” he said. It meant “gods’ kiss,” in the old language, a way of saying “take care.”
“Tiva kass,” Kit responded. “Lower the boat.” She watched her sailors until she could no longer see them, kept their gazes until they’d disappeared from view. She committed their visages to memory; they would be her touchstone. The reminder, should she need one, of who and what waited for her. Of the crew that needed safe passage back to their homes and families.
Watson pulled a gold coin from the leather harness that crossed her chest, bearing throwing knives that, Kit had reason to know, she could aim with impressive accuracy. She kissed the coin, tossed it into the sea. “Dastes,” she murmured as it slipped into the jewel-toned water.
