My heart is sending tremors through me, a frantic flail like a bird landing on water. I can feel the ripples all the way to my fingertips. Maybe . . . maybe . . . maybe. It makes me brave, the sudden chance of it tying stones to the fear and loneliness of one-sided wanting until they sink out of sight. So I take a breath and say, “It meant something to me—that kiss. That’s what I should have said. I didn’t, because I was stupid and afraid. But it did. It does.”
He stares forward into the darkness for a long while, or perhaps it’s not long at all, but I swear those few silent seconds seem to last half my lifetime. In the end, he doesn’t say a thing. Just reaches over and puts his hand upon my knee. A burst goes through me, like teeth breaking through the skin of a summer fruit in its prime.
Knees, as it turns out, can be rather grand.
I put my hand overtop, fingers fitted between his. His heart is beating so hard I can feel it in every point where our skin meets. Or perhaps that’s mine. We’re slamming, both of us. Percy stares down at our stacked hands, a deep breath trembling in his shoulders. “I’m not going to be the most convenient mouth around when you’re drunk and lonely and missing blue-eyed Sinjon,” he says. “That’s not what I want.”
“I don’t want Sinjon. I don’t want anyone else.”
“You mean that?”
“I do,” I say. “I swear to it.” I touch my nose to his, a fawn-soft brush, and his breath presses against my mouth as he exhales. “What do you want?”
Percy hooks his bottom lip with his teeth, eyes flitting down to my mouth. The space between us—what little is left—grows charged and restless, like a lightning strike gathering. I’m not certain which of us is going to do it—close those last, longest inches between us. I touch my nose to his again, and his lips part. Breath catches. I close my eyes.
And then, on the deck above us, a cannon goes off.
22
The recoil trembles through the whole boat. I lurch into Percy, my chin catching hard on his shoulder, and he grabs me, one hand fisted around my shirt and his other around my wrist. The bell is really going—somehow I’d failed to hear it—and the sailors are shouting, orders and “all hands” alike. There’s a holler of “Fire!” and another cannon blasts. We hear the bang at the discharge, then again as the frame slams into the planks, straight over our heads. The smell of gunpowder kicks through the rot. My heart begins to pound for a different reason.
On the other side of the hold, Felicity’s dark silhouette tears itself away from the shadows. “What’s going on?” she calls, and Percy’s hands slide away from my waist.
“They’re firing—” I start, but then a cannonball tears through the wall above our heads.
I throw my hands up over my face as the air rips apart around us. Percy yanks me to him, his head over mine as we both hit the deck. A shower of dust and splinters speckles the back of my neck. There’s a second splintering from above, another cannonball breaching our hull. My ears are ringing, and when I take a breath, I gag on the dust and gunpowder—the air is hazy and sparkling with it. On the other side of the hold, Felicity starts to cough.
“Are you all right?” Percy takes my face between his hands and raises it to his. He’s kneeling before me, his dark skin powdered and his hair sprinkled with flakes of wood. Above us, a stream of water sluices in through the hole left by the cannonball and dribbles down in a thin waterfall. The knees of my breeches go damp.
“Fine,” I say, though the word comes out as more of a gasp. “Fine, I’m fine. Felicity?”
“I’m fine,” she replies, though her voice sounds too tight. She’s hunched over between the crates, one hand clamped against her arm. A thin line of crimson leaks between her fingers and spills down her knuckles.
“You’re bleeding!” I scramble to my feet, Percy crawling after me. “Fire!” is called again, and the guns buck, pitching us sideways into the cargo.
“I’m fine,” she says, and I almost believe her—beyond a clenched jaw, she hardly looks like she’s pained. “Just a graze from the splinters.”
“Can you—do you need to bandage it? Or can I—what do we—should we do something? What do we do?”
“Calm yourself, Monty, it’s not your arm.” She crooks her finger at me. “Give me your cravat.”
It’s Percy who hands his over first, and Felicity peels her fingers from the slash above her elbow and wraps it so fast I hardly get a look at it. She pulls the cloth tight with her teeth before either of us can offer assistance, then wipes a bloody palm print upon her skirt. The sight of it makes me a bit woozier than is admirable.
There’s another blast and the ship gives a spectacular cant, so violent that one of the rope nets around a stack of crates breaks and they go flying free. From high above us—higher than the top deck, even—there’s a creak like a tree falling, then the long, low wail of wood splitting. We all three duck, pressing closer to each other, though we can’t see what it is that’s coming down. The ship gives its greatest heave yet. A barrel tips and breaks, flooding the hold with violet wine. Another swell of seawater pours in through the hole.
Then, silence, a long, eerie stretch of it. None of us say a thing to each other. Up on the top deck, a few sailors yell. There’s a single gunshot, like the bark of a seagull.
After a long while, there’s a hard slam on the deck above our heads and we all jump. A chorus of shouted surprise follows, then a man calls in French, “Everyone above!” A whole chorus of gunshots. Loud voices in a language I don’t recognize.
“What’s going on?” I ask quietly.
“We need to get out of sight,” Felicity replies. She’s watching the stairs, her face drawn in a way that is nothing like pain.
“Why?”
“Because I think we’re being boarded by pirates.”
For a moment, there seems to be no conceivable way that our ship is truly under siege by actual, godforsaken Mediterranean pirates. Not a chance. We already did our time with the highwaymen, and I am certain that no tourists—not even those in possession of an alchemical key—should have to endure both.
There’s a commotion above, heavy footfalls and then another shot and a scream of pain. Felicity scrambles into the trench between the rows of VOC barrels, with Percy and me close behind her. We collapse in a heap between the barrels, our heads ducked low and backs pressed into their divots, all of us breathing like we’ve been sprinting. Between the near-kiss with Percy and now goddamned pirates, my heart is certainly being put through its paces today.
For a time, all we can hear are indistinguishable noises from above. Shouting and cursing and the chink of hobnailed boots and axe heads ripping into wood. The bell tolling like mad. Then, the first certain sound in a long while, thundering footsteps on the stairs leading down to the hold, accompanied by men’s voices in that foreign tongue. Between us, Percy’s hand fumbles for mine.