Annoyingly, the man who called himself Nereus was right. With hot coffee and eggs in my stomach, I felt almost normal. For the first time, I let myself wonder if Fee might still be alive. She hadn’t resurfaced, but after all, frogmen could breathe underwater. And it would be just like Fee to want to stay behind and protect Cormorant. I felt silly not to have thought of that yesterday.
“Me, I’m here because I owe a debt,” Nereus said. “And because I missed the taste of rum. Never go three hundred years without rum, girl.” He slapped his knee. “Now is that a piece of advice or what?”
I folded my arms over my chest, the oversized sleeves of my sweater drooping. “You can’t expect me to believe you’re three hundred years old. Who do you owe a debt?” I demanded. “Tamaré Bollard?”
“Bollard.” He rolled the name over in his mouth and smiled. “Ayah, you might say I know the Bollards.”
I squeezed my fist around the fork. If my mother felt the need to assign someone to shadow us, she might have picked a less annoying man. What did he mean, three hundred years without rum? I wasn’t in the mood for fish stories. Didn’t he realize the trouble we were in?
Ayah, and didn’t she send me to help you?
Certainly I could stab him with the fork. Or bludgeon him with the frying pan. Or throw him overboard. On the other hand, it was possible he really was on our side. He’d had ample chance to murder me in my sleep, if that was what he wanted. He clearly had a different game.
I pushed my plate back. “Well, I can’t say as I trust you. I don’t like people who won’t give straight answers.”
“In my day,” he said, “the girls was less prickly-like.”
“Bully for them,” I said over my shoulder. Grabbing Daria’s hand, I tugged her up from the bench. Just because I’d decided not to kill him—for now—didn’t mean I was going to leave her alone with him. “Come on.”
We climbed the ladder to the deck. As the hatch creaked open, the wind whipped my hair into my face. For one disoriented moment, all I saw was ocean. My throat began to close. Never in my whole life had I not been able to see land. Kenté had mistakenly sailed too far. We would be lost at sea.
Then I spotted the blurry line of Enantios Isle off the starboard side and exhaled in relief. We were sailing north-northwest, on a broad reach with the wind over my right shoulder. The stormy night had given way to a fine, fresh morning. Kenté sat at the tiller, her braids looking fuzzy and windblown.
“Trouble always does seem to find us.” I jerked my head at Nereus, who wandered down the deck, hands in his pockets. “You didn’t happen to see where he came from?”
“Just looked up and there he was,” Kenté said. “He offered me a swig off a very filthy rum bottle, which I declined, then said he was looking for you. He’s not a shadowman, if that’s what you were wondering.” Her lip twisted. “He did be scaring the shit out of me when I saw him though,” she added grimly.
I knew the feeling. “Black Dog, you reckon?” I studied him from afar, fingers drumming on my knife hilt.
She shook her head. “I don’t know what he is.”
Nereus lifted Daria by the waist and set her on the railing. “There you are, pet.”
“Don’t do that, she’ll fall!” I snapped, striding over. “Daria, get down from there.”
“I don’t want to.”
My heart flipped over, for something about the way she turned her neck just then reminded me of Markos. I glared at Nereus. “She’s the Emparch’s daughter,” I told him. “The last of her line.”
“No, I’m not.” She refused to look at me. I remembered how Nereus had said all might not be lost, and I realized what had happened. He was putting ideas into her head.
“Markos is dead,” I said bluntly.
Nereus squinted at me. “So sure, are you?”
My voice came out strangled. “The Black Dogs burned eleven wherries because he might have been aboard.” And they’d murdered his parents and brother, but I didn’t want to say that in front of Daria.
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to be giving up on a friend so quick.”
Feeling my control slipping away, I stormed off. He didn’t know anything about what I’d been through. How dare he say that to me? I yanked open the hatch to the cargo hold. Down in the belly of the cutter, away from their eyes, I finally felt like I could breathe. For several minutes I stood swallowing, fists clenched, until the burning in my eyes subsided.
Dusty light streamed through the portholes. I wrinkled my nose. Belowdecks, this whole cutter smelled like feet. Captain Diric Melanos had kept a spotless ship, but I was not inclined to think much of his crew’s personal hygiene. The cargo hold was unlocked, the key dangling from a hook nearby.
I peeked inside.
And grinned for the first time in what felt like years. All manner of items overflowed the shelves, stuffed in higgledy-piggledy with seemingly no regard to their value. A stack of broken china rested beside a pouch, from which foreign gold coins spilled. There were jeweled necklaces and rolled-up carpets, pistols and paintings. One box was crammed entirely with silver talents. A locker in the back corner contained rows of muskets, many more than we’d been smuggling for Lord Peregrine.
I supposed everything in that hold was mine now. And it wasn’t even like I’d stolen it. It was mine legally, by order of the Margravina, thanks to my letter of marque.
Opening the lid of an ornate carved chest, I lifted out bolt after bolt of lavish brocade. Underneath were fancy clothes, folded in paper. None of them were cut to fit a lady. I didn’t care—they were better than the smelly garments I’d found in Vix’s lockers.
I buttoned the smallest waistcoat over a shirt of fine linen. Over this I wound a red-flecked scarf, tucking it down the shirt like a cravat. I set a three-cornered hat on my head, and buckled a tooled leather belt around my waist.
For the first time, I felt like the master of a privateering ship. So this was how it felt to be Thisbe Brixton, walking the decks of her wherry. Like a woman who knew who she was.
Like a captain.
On the belt I hung my matched pistols. Sliding one out, I turned it over and over. Light sparked off the handle as I admired the mountain lion whose tail curled around the underside. A master metalworker must have made those pistols. They were much too expensive for the likes of me.
Of course they were. They had been meant for an Emparch.
The corners of my eyes stung, but I refused to let the tears come back. I let the lid of the chest slam shut and secured the door to the hold, pocketing the key. Climbing on deck, I opened my mouth to take in deep gulps of the fresh salt air.
Nereus, leaning on the rail, saw me emerge, but wisely chose to leave me alone. Daria jumped up to tag along after me. Her eyes seizing on my tricorn hat, she stuck out her bottom lip. “I want a pirate hat!”
“Stop that. Ladies don’t pout.”
“What would you know about it?” She pouted some more.
“Privateers don’t pout either. That’s what we are. We’re privateers.” I slid the flattened dog-eared scroll out from the inner pocket of my waistcoat. “This letter says we can take a prize. And so we have.”
“So a privateer is a pirate with a letter?” She didn’t look impressed.