“And just leave them?”
“Alektor didn’t sink that bark. The guns on the fort did. You want to sit here in their range? That’s begging for death.”
“I don’t care! We have to try.” Everything that mattered was on that island. We were so close. I pressed my fingers to my temples to calm the shaking inside me.
“Sail!” a small voice cried. Daria scrambled onto the foot of the mast. “Look, there’s a sail!”
The new vessel was sleek, with white canvas billowing before her one mast and cannons glinting shiny black in the sun. At this distance I could not read her name, but I knew her. She was the sloop Conthar.
The wherrymen were here.
“Quick!” I screamed. “Before they fire!”
Kenté stopped waving her arms. “Why would they fire?”
“They’re here for Vix, remember? Run down below and get a white flag. If you can’t find one, a bedsheet, as fast as you ever can.”
I ran the sheet up to the crosstrees of the mast and waited, squeezing the rail so hard my bones ached.
As Conthar drew closer, Thisbe Brixton’s voice rang clear across the water. “Hold! I said hold your fire, you cursed mangy lot! That’s Oresteia’s girl.”
After we retreated south of the island, Conthar sent two boats across, and we met at Vix’s long table for a war council. It was strange to see all those wherrymen crammed into the belly of the cutter, after two days with just the four of us. The cabin smelled of mud and pipe smoke. My throat swelled, for that only made me miss Pa more.
They weren’t all men. Three of them were frogmen and four were women. I knew Thisbe Brixton, and the sharp-nosed woman beside her had to be her first mate. They looked like the only fighters among the women. The others were wherrymen’s wives, I supposed, left homeless in the attack at Hespera’s Watch.
“Wait a minute,” a man with long yellow hair said, after I explained the circumstances that had led us here. “I come to sink this ship. I come for that alone. Well?” He turned to the others. “Oresteia’s daughter has this cutter, and half of those Black Dogs must surely be dead.” He gave me a speculative look. “Though it do seem to me that a slip of a girl got no use for a smuggling cutter.”
“D’you want to see the letter of marque?” I pulled it out of my waistcoat, tossing it on the table.
“Go back to Siscema,” he told me. “Gather a ransom offer. If they’re alive, the Bollards will surely pay.”
“Nicandros Oresteia is in there too, or are you forgetting he’s one of you?” I snapped.
“We belong to the river. I don’t like it out here.” He looked at Captain Krantor. “You know what I be speaking of. I say Nick Oresteia made his choice twenty years ago when he went and got mixed up with that woman. Them Bollards ain’t like us.” He spat on the floor. I bristled at that, but surely the Black Dogs had left worse on Vix’s planks. “Let them rescue him. Myself, I don’t want no part in this.”
I put my hand on my pistol. I didn’t always see eye to eye with the Bollards, but I wasn’t going to let them be insulted by the likes of him.
He leaned back in his chair. “The girl don’t look like Nick. For that matter, how do we even be knowing she’s his?”
I lunged across the table and struck him in the face with my gun. Blood burst out of his nose, spraying everywhere. My rage pounded in my ears. Outside a wave slammed angrily against the porthole, water sluicing down the glass. Dimly I felt Nereus and Captain Krantor grab my arms and haul me back.
Thisbe Brixton laughed. “Oh, I don’t know, Dinos. She seems plenty like Nick to me, don’t she?”
The yellow-haired wherryman pinched his nose, muttering a steady stream of curse words.
Perry Krantor stood, and the wherrymen fell into a respectful hush.
“I don’t care about Akhaia’s succession,” he said. “The river, he run through Akhaia and Kynthessa and he don’t much care who rules the land. And nor do I, for I belong to the river.”
Every eye in the room was on him. I held my breath. “But I don’t like that this new Emparch sends the Black Dogs to burn our boats.” He gestured at the crushed parchment. “I don’t like this business with the letter of marque. It was blackmail from the start.”
The old man stroked his beard. “I reckon we’re already in this, like it or not. I don’t go with Caro because I care which man becomes Emparch of Akhaia. I go for Nick.” He nodded at me, and my eyes suddenly swelled with tears. “And for my Jolly Girl.”
“All well and good for you,” muttered another man. “But I have a family. Those Dogs bested the Bollard ship. You want to take that fort with a couple of kids, that’s your right, Krantor. I vote we go home.”
Thisbe Brixton folded her arms behind her head, her long braid winding down from under a knit cap. “Don’t go lumping the rest of us in with you, Hathor. You wouldn’t know a fight if it bit you in the ass.” She winked at me. “I’ll take my chances with these girls. Nick was my friend when plenty of you thought a woman got no call to captain a wherry. I remember my friends.”
Everyone began to shout at once. My heart sank. It had been a lovely speech, but it hadn’t been enough. Pa was in that fort. Each minute we wasted out here, they might be hurting him or Ma. They might change their minds and decide to kill Markos.
There must be something I could say to get through to the wherrymen. Something to make them listen.
I sucked in a breath, remembering the old man from the toll boat, back at Gallos Bridge. How he’d shown me the pistol in his overcoat. We looks after our own. And then I had it.
“Hey!” I yelled. They kept arguing. “Hey!”
I whipped my Akhaian dagger through the air. It stuck, wobbling, in the center of the table. That got their attention. I climbed onto a chair.
“I have something to say to the wherrymen. And women,” I called out, catching Captain Brixton’s eye. “I be Caroline Oresteia, mate of Cormorant and now captain of Victorianos.” The words felt strange in my mouth, and yet they were true. I fixed my eyes on the yellow-haired wherryman. “And anyone who thinks otherwise may try to take her if he likes.
“I had many opportunities to speak to Markos Andela,” I went on, “him who would be rightful Emparch of Akhaia, before he were taken by the Black Dogs.” I had lapsed into riverfolk cant. I thought Pa would have approved. “He regretted that folk died on his account, but he wanted to make restitution. He meant to repay everyone who lost property at Hespera’s Watch.