The Duke & the Pirate Queen

by Victoria Janssen

  Roxanne leaned out of the shoreboat and tossed a rope with the scraper and a small buoy knotted onto the end. Imena retrieved the tool, filled her lungs, then dived underwater to clear the troublesome barnacles from the rudder’s housing that impeded its bite into the water. She hadn’t performed such a menial task since her first year at sea, but just now she needed physical activity. Her free hand followed a rope they’d stretched, which would hopefully prevent her from being smashed into the rough hull by the waves. She would have preferred a more thorough cleaning of the ship’s bottom. Until they could sail into port, this would have to do.

  She’d spent entirely too many of her free moments lately mooning over Maxime and his fine body. If she’d been as busy as she ought to be, she wouldn’t have had time for such foolishness. She scraped more vigorously, until her arm throbbed.

  When she surfaced for the final time, some of the youngsters, Deena and Kiesha and Ailf, were clambering into the shoreboat, and Roxanne had extended her hand to Maxime, who’d also taken the opportunity for a swim. Roxanne’s hook, which replaced her lost left hand, was secured by an oarlock, but even so, Maxime’s muscular form rocked the boat as he half fell over the side, laughing. Roxanne didn’t give his near nudity a second glance—she was a lover of women, and partnered with Seaflower’s surgeon—but Deena and Kiesha glanced at each other and giggled, and Imena felt a surge of jealousy at how friendly he’d become with her crew.

  There was such a thing as being too charming. Her crew was hers, hard-won over a decade at sea. She didn’t want—

  She was being ridiculous. Her crew were not her possessions. Tying the scraper to her belt, she used the rope to walk up the side of the ship. She inhaled brine and tar, warmed wood scented with a distant echo of the forests from which it had come, paint; as she grew closer to the rail, she smelled the paste her crew used to polish the brightwork, and cinnamon-pineapple-pork dumplings steaming in the galley. Home.

  Standing on deck again, she wrung most of the water from her singlet and drawers as best she could before padding to her cabin. First she would rinse off the salt, then put on fresh clothing. They could spare the water for at least a catbath. She knew of a discreet island with more than one source of fresh water, and planned to make a stop there within the next few days. She hadn’t yet mentioned this to Maxime. She suspected he would argue for a long list of other possible ports, all of them much more dangerous to him.

  Behind her, she heard thumps as sailors from the shoreboat swarmed up a rope ladder, then shouted orders as Roxanne directed them in hoisting the boat up the side. Norris scrambled to help, banging out the rhythm on a small drum. The crew members burst into song.

  Inside her cabin, she peeled off her singlet and drawers, dropping them with a splat into the bucket near the door. Norris had left her favorite rough towel on the bed. She blotted water from her face and head, then wiped down her arms, enjoying the slight abrasion of the fabric against her skin.

  “Don’t stop on my account,” Maxime said. The cabin door fell shut behind him.

  Though he’d argued he should share her cabin, she’d banished him belowdecks, ignoring his complaints that the livestock in the hold disturbed his sleep. Keeping him out of her direct sight was simply easier. It had given her time to steady her emotional waves and erect a wall to block off memories of how he’d felt beneath her hands and inside her body.

  She cast a glance over her shoulder. Maxime had his own towel and was wiping himself down briskly. “Did you have a request, Your Grace?”

  “Yes.” He finished drying himself and tossed his towel over one shoulder. “I wanted to speak with you.”

  “Without clothes?” she remarked. She rummaged out her most voluminous robe and tossed it at him; he caught the silk before it floated to the deck, unfolded the robe and draped it over his shoulders. She was annoyed to find the bright blue silk looked gorgeous on him. She said, “Have a seat.”

  She found a dry pair of drawers and pulled them on, then added a singlet. By the time she turned to him, he was sitting in her desk chair. He appeared to be absorbed in studying one of the painted screens that were clamped to the bulkheads, though she was sure he’d been watching her dress.

  She said, “The one on the left depicts my ancestor in battle. She was the first in my family to achieve the rank of admiral. If you look closely, you can see her little dog at her feet. She’s rarely pictured without him.” She pointed out the dog. His name, along with hers, was painted along the edge of the screen in formal characters.

  “How long ago was that?”

  Imena shrugged. “Three hundred years, at least. She married a foreigner, just as my mother did. Except her husband’s country was conquered soon after, so he was considered an imperial from then on. It also helped that his physical type was indistinguishable from other imperials.”

  Maxime said, “One would think, after so many nations were conquered by the empire, that physical appearance would matter less.”

  She shrugged. “If not that, some other marker of status would take its place. And skin color has the advantage of being ineradicable.” She wasn’t about to sit on her bunk, so she chose a trunk instead. “What may I do for you, Your Grace?”

  “I was hoping—”

  Imena lifted her head when he stopped speaking abruptly. Had she heard a shout?

  Feet rumbled on the deck, a mass of them at once, and suddenly someone was banging on her cabin door. “Captain! Captain!”

  Maxime reached the door before Imena could, and flung it open. Norris fell into the cabin, unusually disheveled. She stumbled to her feet, took a deep breath and said, “Sir. Pirates, sir. Closing fast.”

  Imena frowned. They were sailing well beyond the usual cruising grounds of both imperial privateers and the fringe-territory pirates whom they usually hunted. Nor were they close enough to the northern lands to encounter the barbarian pirates who sailed forth in the cold months, even had they decided to set out in the summer instead. She said, “What sort of pirates?”

  Norris looked surprised at the question, but then, she had never encountered pirates, so far as Imena knew. She said, “Roxanne recognized the rigging on their mainsail. They’re from the Inland Sea, she says. To the north of the Horizon Empire.”

  “Bloody flux in a hurricane.” Imena yanked a tunic over her singlet and belted on her cutlass. “Your Grace, you’d better go below. No, go with Norris. Into the cubby, Norris.”

  “Sir,” Norris said.

  “No,” Maxime said.

  “Yes,” Imena said.

  “Pirates aren’t after me in particular,” he said.

  “You’re a valuable hostage, and you’re wasting my time,” she said.

  “They won’t have any idea who I am. I might be able to help.”

  And if pirates overran the ship, she wouldn’t want him to be trapped and helpless. She had a moment’s vision of finding his corpse, mangled and leaking blood onto the deck. Imena threw up her hands. “Fine. Don’t cry to me when they slice your bollocks off and wear them for earrings. Norris, get him a cutlass. And some clothes.”

  “No pistols?” he asked as they hurried on deck.

  “One shot and you’re left with a short club. No, thank you,” she said. “Stay behind me.”

  “What if it comes to a fight?”

  “Stay behind me,” she reiterated, though she wasn’t sure what she would do if he refused. She wouldn’t order the crew to subdue him unless his life was in immediate danger.

  On deck, the crew were being issued weapons by Nabhi, the armsmaster, and by Kuan and the surgeon, who had earned her sobriquet the Knife. Chetri stood near the prow, feet braced wide, a cutlass on either hip. Imena followed the direction of his gaze and had no trouble seeing not one but two ships approaching rapidly, hull up. He said, his voice eerily calm, “They came out of the sun. We were lucky Kiesha and Ailf had decided to seek a little privacy in the upper nest.”

  Imena calculated rapidly in her head, change
d a few variables and calculated again. “It’s too late to run,” she said regretfully. “Chetri? Am I wrong?”

  He shook his head. “The wind is their friend today.”

  Roxanne slid down the rigging and trotted over. “Oars, Captain,” she said. She took a stone from her pocket and began sharpening the tip of her hook. “They keep oarsmen down below, so there’s no chance of being becalmed. Most carry cannon.”

  Despite her years of privateering, Imena had never encountered the pirates of the Inland Sea; only once had she heard of them encroaching on the empire’s sea lanes, and the single ship had been quickly routed by the navy. The tales she’d heard about the Inland pirates had made her glad of her escape, but now she wished she’d had some direct experience of them. “Have you fought the northerners before, Roxanne?”

  “No, sir. I knew the look of them from my father’s tales.”

  “I’ve fought them,” Chetri said. “I was a boy, but I remember it well.”

  “Weaknesses?” Imena asked.

  Chetri shook his head, his earrings chiming. “That would depend on the captain. Some are no worse than we might be. Some drink all sorts of potions before they go into battle, so they feel nothing and fear no one. The maddest of them build an immunity to certain poisons, so they may hold poisoned mastic in their mouths and thus spit poison at their enemies.”

  Imena said, “We’ll expect the worst. Chetri, you’ll take the offensive fighters, but hold them unless you see an advantage in attack. Roxanne, you’ll command defense. Don’t give away that His Grace has any special importance.” As her first and second mates ran to assemble their crew, she called, “Norris!”

  “Sir.”

  “The youngsters go below. All of them. Assign cutlasses, just in case. Deena can command.”

  “But, sir—”

  Imena touched the girl’s shoulder before she could protest further. “You’ll run messages for me.” Young as she was, Norris had hard experience behind her, and would keep her head.

  Norris beamed. “Sir!” She ran to gather the rest of the adolescent crew.

  Imena turned to Maxime, who was yanking on a pair of dry trousers. She averted her eyes from his bare, muscular chest. “I recall you know how to use a cutlass.”

  “Not as well as a straight sword, but in close fighting that won’t matter much, will it?” His voice was perfectly steady. He scooped up his tunic and wriggled into it. “I might be valuable if it comes to negotiation.”

  Imena shook her head. “Let me do the talking. This is my ship.”

  To her surprise, Maxime didn’t protest. He inclined his head to her. “Am I with Chetri or Roxanne?” he asked.

  “With me,” she said. “We stay with the ship.”

  “Sir.”

  She cast him a glance at his ready acquiescence, but he was involved in adjusting the harness that supported his cutlass.

  One-Eye, the cook, finished dousing the fires and handed out a quick meal of dried meat and cold rice balls. The Knife went below to prepare her surgery. The crew braided back each other’s hair and applied paint to their faces and upper bodies, some filling in tattooed outlines, others marking themselves with vivid swaths of bloodred or cerulean. A few, mostly islanders, yanked their hair into topknots and applied paint to stiffen them. Nabhi carried around a bowl of rosin powder, to dust hands and the grips of cutlasses and knives, to ward against the slipperiness of sweat and blood.

  Norris brought Imena a new jacket, a deep citrus orange with red frogging all down the front that hung to midthigh. Imena put it on, then allowed Norris to readjust her weaponry and smooth the silk over her thighs. Norris then applied kohl to Imena’s eyes and stained her lips red as blood. Finally, Norris carefully shaved the stubble from Imena’s head. When she’d gone, taking Imena’s plain jacket with her, Maxime said, “You look absolutely deadly.”

  She grinned at him. “That’s the idea. There will be no doubt who is the captain of this ship.”

  She stood near the wheel and watched the pirate ships approach, striving to learn what she could about their speed and maneuverability and, more important, the skill of their captains and crew. She forgot Maxime stood near her until he asked, “Do you have any muskets?”

  She shook her head. “Too much upkeep for too little use. The humidity isn’t good to bows and arrows, either, but they’re still more reliable at sea, cheaper, as well, and a good archer is faster than a good musketeer. Besides, you know we don’t go into battle unless attacked.”

  “You’ve trained your crew well.”

  “Better prepared than sorry,” she pointed out. “A good captain is prepared for everything.” She glanced at him.

  “Are you attempting to distract me?”

  “You appeared tense,” he said.

  “I assure you, it won’t affect my performance.”

  “It can’t be pleasant, though, waiting to be attacked.”

  His voice was neutral, but she remembered he’d been a child when a neighboring duke had laid siege to his castle, eventually killing both his parents and making the duchy into a protectorate. How many days had that siege continued? Had he been old enough to fight?

  She said, “When I served on Sea Tiger, the waiting was always the worst thing. I would want to crawl free of my skin, and I couldn’t bear it when others coped by joking and gambling.”

  “Do you miss it? Being a privateer?”

  She stared at him, surprised that he’d guessed. “Sometimes. I miss the camaraderie of it. Then I remind myself that those times were rare.” She ran her hand over the tattoos on her scalp. “I remind myself that I’m still part of that fellowship, and will be until the day I die.”

  “You have your own ship now,” he reminded her.

  “Of course.” She looked out to sea. The two ships were drawing nearer. They’d be close enough to board in minutes. “Stay behind me,” she reiterated.

  “I’ll do my best not to have my bollocks made into earrings,” Maxime said solemnly. “I know you have use for them.”

  The pirate ships were similar in both hulls and rigging, but one was decorated more dramatically than the other, its hull a shiny black and its figurehead a screaming eagle, iron claws stretched out as if to seize prey. Its crew lined the rails, eerily still and silent, their weapons clearly visible. The second ship’s figurehead was a more sedate bird of prey with wings outstretched along the hull, its eyes made from inset yellow stones that glowed in the midday sunlight. The crew of the second ship, she noted with surprise, were mostly women, armed with a mixture of short bows and pikes. Or—she looked more closely—all women.

  She glanced at Maxime. “First, the show of strength. Then, the negotiation.” Waving her crew aside, she strode to the rail and stood, waiting.

  In seconds she knew: there would be no negotiation. The pirates did not lower boats. Instead, she saw men on the black ship swinging lines hitched to grappling hooks, ready to toss them at Seaflower as soon as they were close enough. She glanced at Chetri; he was already summoning a few of the crew with axes, led by Kuan, to chop at the lines and repel boarders. Roxanne assembled a company of sailors with cutlasses around the main hatches, to guard the ways below. Arionrhod, the purser, led their few archers; they had been perched in the rigging since shortly after the pirate ship was sighted.

  She could not look at Maxime. She needed to keep her eyes on her business, ahead of her, and if he had decided to move away from her protection, it would really be his own fault if he got himself killed.

  As if he’d heard her thoughts, he said quietly, “You may guard me, but I will also guard you.”

  And then the first grappling hook whined through the air and slammed into the ship, rattling and dragging along the deck. She lifted a hand, and Kuan leaped forward, hacking at the hook’s rope while it snaked like a live thing across the sanded deck.

  Pistols cracked, from the black ship, she thought, but she worried more about the arrows showering on them from above while her own
archers remained poised, saving their arrows to defend against boarders. Someone screamed in pain, someone else in rage, then everyone was shouting, a jumbled mess of orders and battle cries from a dozen lands.

  Maxime moved to her side, then attempted to step in front of her, but she warded him off with a glare as arrows rattled to the deck. They hadn’t been aimed, they’d simply provided cover for more grappling hooks. Kuan, she saw, was already down. Wiscz had taken up his ax, but the grapples were too many and her crew too few.

  Everyone seemed to move with slow clarity. She felt the familiar cold and lightness of battle; she scarcely noticed the weight of her cutlass in her hand. She shouted commands to her ax wielders; they shifted from attacking ropes to attacking pirates, a wave of black-clad figures who spilled over Seaflower’s railings like water, smashing into the ragged, fragile line of her sailors.

  Her crew were not warriors, not wholly. She’d considered crewing Seaflower with former privateers, but she’d gone beyond that life. She was not a brute warrior anymore. She hadn’t regretted her decision, until now.

  She had only a moment for regret before they were upon her, two pirates with pikes. She topped both in height, but was far outmatched in muscle. She sucked in her belly to avoid a thrusting blade and felt Maxime at her shoulder. He yelled and attacked the pirate on the left, so she took the second, slashing low.

  Sounds seemed distant, except for the clang and rasp of blade on blade. A pike nicked her upper arm, staining her orange jacket, another the outside of her thigh. She stood back to back with Maxime now, fighting with him as smoothly as if he’d been Chetri. It didn’t matter, though. The pirates were too many.

  Long before she and Maxime were finally forced against the mainmast, she knew they had lost, but she refused to stop fighting until she could fight no more.

  Her crew were being forced to lay down their weapons. Cutlasses and pikes thudded or clanged onto a sheet of canvas, no doubt damaging edges; she heard Nabhi spitting obscenities as she was forcibly relieved of her two blades. Arrows and bows rattled. To the left, Roxanne was forced to her knees and ordered in hoarse patois to surrender her bloodied hook.