-IV-

The Blackbird set sail at daybreak, on the back of a wind hard enough to blow white froth off the breakers and make Emma wary of raising full canvas this close to shore and the treacherous sand shoals. The Blackbird was a brigantine, which meant she carried two masts, square-rigged on the fore and the mainsail gaff-rigged on the aft, along with two foresails on the spar, and Emma ordered all the topsails to be kept reefed and extra care taken with the main, as that broad triangular sheet was the one that could catch the wind and send them sprinting (which, if it was toward land if the direction changed abruptly, would obviously be something of a problem). She had sailed both the Turks Passage and its neighbor to the east, the Mouchoir Passage, often enough to be familiar with the tricks of these waters, and indeed their course was set for the latter, as there was a prevailing current in the Mouchoir that would deliver them straight to Jamaica, even if there was no wind. That at least did not appear to be a problem. The mercury had dropped from its initial promising reading last night, and while the horizon was still clear, Emma had a feeling this might get interesting. But Cockburn Town wasn't a place to ride out a storm, and besides, she had enough devil-may-care in her to feel confident about her odds of outrunning it. Dawdling would do them no good at all, and only allow July to arrive with the height of summer hurricane season. They'd take their chances.

As the Turks disappeared swiftly astern, there came that moment that every pirate lived for – when it was just you and your ship pointed into open waters, not another vessel visible anywhere, the sun hot and the wind strong, master (or in her case, mistress) of your own destiny with infinite possibilities for adventure and profit ahead. Felix, in his capacity as quartermaster, was manning the helm, as Will kept a sharp eye on the monkeys in the rigging. When they were fully clear of the shoals, Emma nodded to him and he bellowed, "Let 'er fly, lads!"

There was a scramble as the crews on each topsail let them loose, and Emma caught a glimpse of Merida and Macintosh paying out the mainsail without even an intercessory smart remark exchanged, which had to be a first. She reckoned their speed at close to seven knots, which would put them in Mouchoir waters within a few hours – not bad, considering they had to sail more or less diagonally against the trades in order to get east to head west, which made much more sense in practice than it did in theory. But if they were doing this well even in a bit of a headwind, they might make it to Jamaica in only four or five days. Every amount of extra time was an advantage, hence another reason Emma had elected not to sit on her hands in the Turks.

She stole a glance over her shoulder, making sure the crew had descended safely and were otherwise absorbed. She had the sense that most of them had been happy to accept her speech this morning, that they were going to take a strong prize that, if successful, would instantly establish them as a premier force to be reckoned with in the crowded field of Caribbean piracy. She'd warned them it wouldn't be easy, but they were no cowards, and they were game for the challenge. Whether that would hold when they saw it was a fully armed Royal Navy third-rater, well. . . that was the trick of the whole thing. Ambushing it at an extreme operational disadvantage (i.e. anywhere the sixty guns couldn't play a part) would help, but how much?

The one who wanted more information was, of course, predictable. As he was steering them through the waves – seven or ten feet with a bit of a break on them, not bad, but enough to keep the deck at a constant low-level roll – Felix jerked his head at her, as if wanting her to come by for a question of navigational miscellany. She hesitated, but it never did to show anything that could be interpreted as weakness or fear to face the men, and crossed, as smoothly as was possible, to the helm. "Mr. Peterson?"

"Captain." In his mouth, it always sounded half an insult. He was a head taller than her, with a thatch of ragged blonde hair and a long scar across his face, one of the men who might appreciate the freedom and spirit of enterprise that the pirates' republic offered, but who really just liked beating up other people and taking things that did not belong to him. As long as he did it for her, Emma had to admit it was a useful character trait, but she also knew that Felix viewed this very much as a mere stepping stone on his way to his own career as a pirate captain, and if that came on this ship at the expense of its current captain, he would certainly not be shedding a single tear as they dumped her body overboard sewed up in sailcloth. He had contrived to ingratiate himself among the crew, making himself respected and popular and feared and hence elected quartermaster, so she couldn't throw him off without risking serious blowback, and she knew as well that an eventual reckoning would be coming. Perhaps if she could get him killed in the raid on the Imperator. . . make sure the blood was on the Navy's hands, not hers. Nobody could fault her if Felix were valiantly felled in action, could they? Make him a martyr for the cause, and out of her bloody way. The idea had merit.

"Can I help you?" she said aloud. "Do you think the wind will hold?"

"Seems so." Felix smiled. "But I had a different question. What – or who – are we really hunting? I saw that coin you gave the Dunbroch chit. The Spaniards involved, are they?"

"No idea. We all pay in pieces of eight when we can get our hands on them, it means nothing. I've told you and the others, you'll know everything in due course."

"See, that's what concerns me. Due course." Felix enunciated the words in a mockery of her own still-English accent; he had the rougher, provincial drawl of the colonies. "If this was another prize, I think you'd have told us by now, but you haven't. Almost as if you're keeping it secret a'purpose, leading us into some sort of trap. Not fair to the men, now is it? Especially if the danger might be far more than you're letting on, and they could all end up dead."

"I assure you, I have no interest in captaining a ship full of skeletons. It is entirely to my interest to have a living crew and one that stays that way, so your suspicions are both presumptuous and unjustified. Stay the course and do as I say, and we'll all be rich. Including you."

"That's right, I forgot. You learned from Flint." Felix studied her with a half-smile. "I know a man on the Walrus, he says the captain never tells them a blasted thing either. If his whore hadn't taken a liking to you, you'd be nobody, so small wonder all you know how to do is – "

"Do not," Emma said, very levelly, "call Mrs. Barlow a whore in my hearing, ever again. I will only warn you once."

"It's the fact of the matter." Felix took them two notches starboard, as Will shot a glance at them from the foredeck and Emma shook her head; she appreciated her first mate's concern, but she did not want a man hastening in here to rescue her, as that would only confirm Felix's notion that she couldn't stand up to him on her own. "If I wanted to slander the woman, you'd know it. And surely it's no slander either to note that it was only because of them that you didn't get your throat cut and thrown in a ditch?"

Emma's hand, hidden by the fall of her coat, moved to the hilt of her sword. "Oh, by all means. Do continue on with your opinions on Captain Flint's shortcomings, as well as my own. When we return to Nassau, I'll be certain to share them with him. We'll have a good laugh."

That caught Felix on the hop, as well as reminding him that while he might not be afraid of her, only a total idiot would make an enemy of Flint, and Emma had survived her first few years by trading on the fact that she was under his protection and he would deal smartly with anyone who gave her trouble. He would, however, never have wasted his time if Emma hadn't proven that she could take care of herself; if she was feeble or incompetent, he wouldn't have lifted a finger to help her. She hadn't gotten her command because of Flint, and she certainly was not going to lose it on any account of his either. Nor was she about to ask another captain to solve problems on her crew, or to involve an outsider in privy shipboard business. But if worse came to absolute worst, Flint would run Felix through without turning a hair – if not necessarily for Emma, certainly because Felix had insulted him and Miranda – and both Felix and Emma knew it.

This being the case, the insolent quartermaster deflated slightly. "Apologies, Captain. I've let my tongue run too freely, and I'll ask your forgiveness."

"Yes, you have." Emma gave him a sweet smile. "See that it doesn't happen again."

With Felix, for the moment, disposed of, she descended the stairs to the main deck, purposefully making a long circuit as if to show that any other man who had questions could approach her if they dared, but no one did. She glanced over the rail; by the color of the ocean, they were in the approach to the passage, which shared a name with the shallow coral reefs, the Mouchoir Bank, on the far side. Greenhorn captains coming in too fast and too sure of the deep waters of the passage could tear their hulls out on one of them, and Emma had done some good hunting of those hapless fools before. Not now, though. She just wanted to catch the current before nightfall, and after that, assuming the weather held up, the biggest concern was slipping through the narrow neck of ocean between Cuba and Hispaniola: the Windward Passage, the route every ship from the Spanish Main and the inner Caribbean Sea had to follow to reach favorable winds and open waters east to Europe. Cuba was the seat of the Spanish Navy in the New World, heavily patrolled since its treasure fleet left from Havana every year, and since they would be passing on the Saint-Domingue side of Hispaniola, better known as the place they had stolen the Blackbird from in the first place, some French frigate could conceivably recognize their old ship and decide either to avenge her loss or send her to the bottom of the ocean. The other way around, southeast between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, took more time, lost them the advantage of the current, and put them dangerously close to the nearly straight-line westward route between the Royal Navy's base on Antigua and its frequent traffic to Jamaica. They wanted to pick off the Imperator by herself, not sail straight into the teeth of the whole bloody convoy.

Seeing that the situation was under control, even if it promised to be a bumpy ride all the way out, Emma returned to her cabin, intending to comb through the maps that had come with the ship from her days as La Princesse. Since the chief joy and delight of being French, apart from cheese, was to torment and harass the English, it was possible they had marked some opportune spot for an ambush, some knowledge of the corridors the Royal Navy commonly used; Emma had found such hidden gems in the ledgers before. She had also kept the ship's old flag, the naval ensign of France: a white cross on a blue field, emblazoned with the royal coat of arms. Such deceptive upholstery allowed them to pass from afar as having legitimate business, though nobody would have taken them for French sailors close to. The flag was also rather dated, as most French ships these days used a plain white banner (in the jeering opinion of Englishmen, it was at least honest of them to fly it at the start of the battle, since they were certain to be flying it at the end) but as pirates categorically refused to sail under a white flag even in the name of subterfuge, the older one it was. When it came time to show their true colors and strike fear in the hearts of the prize, they used a black flag with a white swan and skull on it, Emma's personal emblem. That and the solid red, the jolie rouge, which signaled to the other ship that they could expect no quarter. That was not their way, as they almost never killed captive crews and treated them with courtesy after the taking of spoils was through. But it was excellent for inspiring terror, and that did half the work.

Emma spent a few hours searching through the maps, making a note of anything that looked useful, until she had to get up to light a lantern even though it was still the middle of the day, glanced out the window, and frowned. The previous blue to the east, from the direction of the open Atlantic, had turned into a glowering grey wall, pierced with veils of sky-to-sea rain. As of yet it was still loosely gathered, could blow apart in an hour or two with nothing more than a furtherly freshened breeze for their trouble, but it would bear close watching. She threw back on her hat and jacket and emerged onto the deck, which was sheened with a fine mist, to assess the situation. The wind was starting to keen through the lines, the topsails running almost taut, and she ordered them taken in again, having to raise her voice considerably to be heard. That slowed some of their pell-mell drive before the wind; they were now squarely astride the westerlies, as well as the current, and that at least gave them a good chance of widening the distance between them and that unfriendly horizon. Still, the clouds were catching up swiftly, and the strip of sky visible beneath the onrushing thunderhead was rapidly turning a bruised, ominous violet.

"Prepare for weather," Emma ordered, though she didn't need to; they all had eyes in their heads, after all. Still, now it could be officially done: closing gun ports, securing cannons and any other heavy loads they didn't want abruptly shifted, slacking or reefing the rest of the nonessential canvas, locking the capstan so the anchors couldn't jolt loose and drop, and getting the crew below as soon as they had finished their tasks. She could see the leading edge of the rain coming up behind them almost as fast as a galloping horse, pocking the sea with heavy marble-sized droplets, and in the next minute, it hit them full-on. Emma staggered as Will caught her arm, balancing them on the tilting, slippery deck. It was plainly dangerous to be out here without being tied down; Felix had already lashed himself to the wheel, not looking any more concerned than he had when it was fine and fair; whatever his character deficiencies, he had gotten them through every kind of weather, and this was no worse than most squalls. Seeing the management of the vessel was under control, Emma allowed Will to slide her up to the cabin door, pull it open, and both of them made it inside, slamming it shut and barring it as the rain howled and pounded. The tops of waves heaved past the windows, trailing ribbons of frothing spume.

"Bloody hell," Will said, wiping salt out of his eyes. "Where did that come from? Me nose usually itches when there's goin' to be a gale, I should have noticed this one brewin'."

"Your nose also itches plenty of times when there hasn't been," Emma pointed out dryly; Will had a much higher opinion of his weather-predicting skills than she did. Behind her, the lantern she had just recently lit was swinging and guttering madly, so she rescued it and moved it to a peg on the wall. As she turned back, however, she saw him looking with a frown at the charts and notes she had left out, and made a lunge toward the table. "I was just – putting those away."

"You're lookin' for spots to ambush the Royal Navy?" Will raised an eyebrow at her. "Just in case there wasn't enough adventure on this voyage already, was that it?"

"I. . . not exactly." Emma hesitated. If she couldn't share the news even with her first mate, that might be a hint that she herself harbored doubts about whether they could pull this off, and had in fact gotten them in over their head, just as Felix was slyly insinuating. So, as succinctly and understatedly as possible, she explained her meeting with the most-likely Spanish agent in the tavern, what he wanted them to do, and what he had informed her about the best way to achieve said objective. Will looked in turn dumbfounded, skeptical, and then outright alarmed, until she could tell by the end of the speech that she had done nothing to convince him either of its feasibility or its advisability, and he wasn't one for charting the safe and conservative course; almost always voted for taking the risk if it was a choice between a bit of danger or sailing away empty-handed. To see him balking at this wasn't what she'd expected.

"I know," she said, to his continuing dubious expression. "It doesn't sound like our usual ventures. But if I didn't think we could do this, I wouldn't have agreed. It's a tall order, but – "

"Think the word I'd choose is suicide." Will was still shaking his head. "There has to be some nice fat slow merchanter somewhere with a hold of trade goods, if all we need is quick cash. Or there's still a few of the gemstones off that Dutch sloop a few months back. Not sailing directly into the damn lion's den and yanking the biggest one's tail. There's something not right here. Someone's settin' you up. I don't like this one bit."

"It's not just money. It's about our names. About who we are, getting us to where we can finally recruit without having to go begging. We could take all the merchants and small-time traders we want, it won't make any difference. The only way to make the Blackbird a pirate crew that men want to sail on, that means something, is to do this."

"Aye, if by that you mean this will get all of us killed, and our replacements can take over an empty ship and swear never to repeat our mistakes. You don't have to do this. Flint and Miss Guthrie, they'll – "

"Flint and Eleanor won't be around forever," Emma interrupted. "And I learned a long time ago not to put my fate in someone else's hands."

"Maybe so, but something about it still don't smell right. If this captain's so bad, how come we haven't heard of him? When the Scarborough arrived, we knew everything about it within the fortnight. Even if this is the man's first posting to the Indies, we would have whispers of him from the mainland or from London. You're tellin' me someone who's bad even by the Navy's standards is comin' to Jamaica, someone dangerous enough that Spain supposedly wants him out of the way at any price, and we don't know anything about him? Not even his name?"

Emma opened her mouth, discovered no immediate response, and shut it. Then after a moment she said, "Even Nassau is not some great all-seeing, all-knowing oracle at Delphi. We've been ignorant of things before, we could have been again."

"Sorry, Captain, but that sounds more an excuse, not an explanation." Will regarded her bluntly. "One thing we all hate, it's the bloody Navy. If this bastard was rollin' into town with some lurid tale, the street would have been chewin' it over and talkin' of nothing else for weeks."

"We've been away from New Providence for a while," Emma countered. "It could have easily been kept a secret."

"If you say so," Will allowed, still clearly unconvinced. "But I have to warn you, I can't imagine the men havin' a different reaction than me. And if Felix gets wind of this – "

"Well, you're the only person I've told, so if he did, I'd know it came from you, wouldn't I?" Emma raised an eyebrow of her own. "And since I also know you wouldn't betray me, let us safely rule out that possibility. What does it matter who really wants this? If we do this, and they pay for it, and we reap the rewards, it could be King Arthur reborn for all I care."

Will kept looking at her, frowning. "Really? Doesn't matter to you at all? Well, it matters a damn sight to me, and anyone else who would actually have to pull off this mad scheme you've cooked up. They don't give pirates medals for tryin'. They hang 'em."

"I know what they do to pirates." Emma allowed her voice to show clearly that she did not need this explained to her, as even a man who respected and liked her, such as Will, could tend to do. "And right now, we're in about as dangerous a situation as it's possible to be. Pirates, so we have no friends on the right side of the law, but pirates who are disregarded and disrespected by the rest of them. We don't come here because we have some other skill or some other home to turn back to! We get what we take, and we take it by the sword! That is why they hang us!"

Will blinked, holding up his hands. "Right then. Maybe there's a miracle, and we can actually do this. But just think about what I've said, please? I know you're no idiot, Captain. I'll sail wherever you lead. But if that's straight down the mouth of hell, you and I both know there bloody well better be a damned good reason for it."

"I know." Emma studied her faint reflection in the rain-lashed window. "You're dismissed."

Will paused, then nodded. Unbarred and opened the door, letting in a skirl of wind and water, and showed himself out.


The storm did not break before nightfall, screaming and raging well into the hours of darkness, sheets of spray blowing horizontally across the deck as they toiled in the troughs of waves like tall green mountains. Here and odd it would ease off, nearly enough to make Emma think the worst was over, before changing its mind and returning with a vengeance. She was fairly sure it wasn't a hurricane, just a bad thunderstorm, but that was no particular consolation. Fortunately she wasn't prone to seasickness in the normal course of things, but the acrobatic tumbles being performed every few minutes were testing that resilience considerably, and she had given up on trying to put things back in order, as they'd just fall out of it again when the next wave hit. The Blackbird was stout, well-built, well-chinked, and recently careened, and they weren't riding as if they had taken on a critical amount of water, but things must still be quite damp belowdecks. Every so often the blackness would be starkly illuminated by jagged towers of lightning, enough for her to see that they hadn't lost anything vital, but a sail had torn loose on the foremast and was flapping raggedly against the wind, dragging the rest of the sheets askew with it and putting extra pressure on the beam. She would have to keep an eye on that. The sail should be a comparatively easy fix once the wind and rain let up, but a snapped mast would be much worse.

She tried to sleep, lying with her eyes closed and doing her best to imagine that the tumult was actually a soothing rocking. And she must have indeed dropped under, because the light was grey when she opened her eyes again and some of the racket had subsided; they were still pitching, but not in the way that threatened imminent capsize, and when she stumbled to the window and peered out, there was a distant flush of pink on the misty eastern horizon. The foremast had made it through the night, and the seas were down, though the deck was running off a foot of water with each rise and fall. She certainly did not want to hex anything, but this time it did look to be over.

Expelling a hearty breath of relief, Emma got dressed and strode out into the dawn drizzle, discovering Macintosh tied to the wheel and dozing off; he must have relieved Felix sometime in the night. He was another one who had been loudly disparaging of the idea that a woman could ever command a pirate ship, but he had slowly come around, and he snorted and woke with a start when she shook him. "Aye, Captain? Worst o' it seems to have passed, I've no idea how far it blew us, though. Thought I saw land off to port, you think it's Hispaniola?"

Emma pulled out her spyglass and scanned the horizon in the indicated direction, but couldn't tell if it was indeed land or just a low-lying cloud. "Hard to say. We'll need more sun to take a reckoning. Any damage to report?"

"One of the guns broke loose and made a bit of a stramash, but the lads got it tied down. Broke its mount, though, so we're running a gun short on starboard." Macintosh scratched his chin. "Had to get a bucket brigade started later in the night, but I dinna think we'll sink, no."

Emma frowned. The loss of a gun was not good, as they couldn't fashion a permanent replacement mount until they got ashore, but perhaps something temporary could be tricked up. The rest of the crew was starting to emerge from below, looking pale, wet, and tired, and Emma organized rotations for them to eat, sleep, and start going over the ship in search of any major or minor repairs. She herself went below, having to wade through two feet of water in the forward bulkhead, and joined the first shift on bailing duty. They had reduced it to manageable, ankle-deep level when there was a shout from above. "Captain! Better get up here!"

Surprised, Emma dropped her bucket, wiping her cold, chafed hands on her trousers as she hurried up the ladder to the deck. The men were congregated at the railing, pointing at something – or rather someone – in the water. He was clinging to a bit of broken wood, and was waving at them furiously in clear hopes that they would see fit to throw him a line. Other scattered debris in the waves suggested that there might have been a ship here, or at least nearby, that no longer was. It was impossible to tell how long the survivor had been in the water, or how far he had drifted; Emma glanced around quickly at the surrounding sea, but saw no other signs of life. He shouted again, trying to swim closer, and she ordered, "Pull him aboard."

A coil of rope was fetched, tossed out into the chop, and the survivor, after several failed attempts, finally got hold of it just in time, as the current was about to carry him out of range. The men heaved, getting him close enough to be able to grab hold of the side, and after a few minutes of intense exertion on everyone's parts, his head appeared over the railing and they were able to drag him onto the deck as if reeling up a fishing net. He sprawled out, coughing and exhausted, as the pirates gathered around in both curiosity and suspicion. Finally he sat up slowly, wiped his mouth, and said hoarsely, "Thank 'ee, thank 'ee most kindly. I'm indebted, truly. Which of you is the captain?"

"That would be me," Emma said. "Welcome aboard the Blackbird."

The man's eyes performed that customary flicker of surprise, though she thought it was in response to being greeted by a female captain rather than the name of the vessel; he didn't seem to recognize it, and thus did not know that he had gone from shipwreck to the custody of scurvy brigands. Still, in a moment he was nothing but charm and deference, getting to his feet and taking her hand to kiss. "Obliged, my lady, very much indeed. We sank in the night, can't be entirely sure where – think the storm drove us onto the banks just off Tortuga. There were others still alive, just after, but I don't know where they ended up."

"It seems you're the lucky one." Emma apprised him coolly. Tall, squarely built, and handsome, though the deep streaks of silver in his shoulder-length dark hair and neat beard, and the lines around his eyes, made her put his age as at least fifty, too old for a sailor. To hear him speak, he was Irish, which was also unusual. The English crown, faced with the periodic recurrence of its Irish problem – especially after the role the country had played in harboring the deposed King James after William and Mary's accession to the throne – had adopted the solution of shipping large quantities of Irishmen to the colonies, apparently deciding that while they could still cause plenty of trouble overseas, at least they could not do it in Ireland, which was located a damn sight too close to England for anyone's peace of mind. If that was the case, this newcomer might regard his deliverance with delight rather than hostility, if he'd only had travail and indentured servitude to look forward to otherwise. As he made to take a step forward, Emma said tersely, 'Where did you come from?"

"I was aboard the Duchess, my lady, out of Charlestown. Destined for work on the sugar plantations, far as I know."

"So you were a prisoner, then? Or a bondsman?"

"Neither. I was an honest tavern-keeper in Le Havre, until the day an English customs officer recognized me on account of old debts and seemed inclined to throw me into gaol for it. I disagreed, and left France with my son, deciding to book passage to the Americas. We made it to Charlestown, but we were separated after a bad fire destroyed half the city, and I never. . . I never did find him again, I don't know if he even survived. I plied my trade there a while, but the bloody English caught up to me again and took me to the magistrate. I managed to avoid the noose, so I was sentenced to hard labor instead. That's why they were sending me to Jamaica." He paused, then smiled. "So, not heartbroken over the sinking, my lady, no."

"Indeed." It was certainly a plausible tale, even potentially an honest one, even if Emma could hear a number of things he hadn't said – that an expatriate Irishman owning a tavern in the busy, anonymous port city of Le Havre, running afoul of the law despite his best efforts, forced to seek sanctuary in the colonies, and then arrested again when they finally caught up to him – was probably a criminal with more misdeeds to his name than mere debts or tax evasion. But then, they were all criminals whose raison d'être was that they did not care to pay for things which could be more easily stolen, so that hardly made him unique or detestable. And indeed, the crew was regarding him with open sympathy, clearly feeling his pain that the bloody English should go persecuting a fellow honest thief who had only been minding his own business. "Well then, mate," Will said. "You've landed in the best possible spot if you don't want to go back, as we're certainly not handin' you over to the authorities. We're still bound for Jamaica, though, so it'll be on you not to get yourself caught like an idiot."

"I. . . I certainly understand." As the Irishman glanced around, Emma could see it dawning in his eyes, the realization of who and what they must be. "You've saved my life, I'd never do anything to repay you as poorly as betraying you instead. I'm no sailor, but I learn fast, can cook and brew and clean, and I have plenty of good tales and company to offer. No mean hand in a fight, either. If you allow, Captain – " he turned to her – "I'd be glad to join your crew."

She was taken aback. Even if rather old, he was still an able-bodied and vigorous man, when she usually only had the derelicts, and if his story was true, he had no reason to love the English or go seeking out their justice any more than they did. It was also true that any man who wished to turn pirate was permitted to do so freely, if the rest of the crew assented to it, and plainly hers would. It was just – she hadn't expected to fish out the sole survivor of a shipwreck and then be fielding his application to join fifteen minutes later, but it was far preferable to him being an official of the colonial administration swearing to report them the first chance he got. Perhaps that storm had been a stroke of luck after all. There was no compelling reason why not.

"Very well," she said. "We'll accept you, on provision. You will of course have to prove yourself to our stringent satisfaction, and disloyalty or deceit will not be tolerated. But you sail as a free man under the black now, and with your brothers in arms, Mr. – ?"

"Jones." He smiled at her, charming and crooked, one that she recognized very well as a liar's smile. Not so, she imagined, in this case, but one that would still bear close watching. "Mr. Jones, my lady, Brennan Jones. At your service."


It was the eve of departure, all was complete, they had been only minorly cheated on the tariff (Killian suspected it was thanks to Robin that it hadn't been any worse) and a messenger had been round from Commodore Hamilton with discreet confirmation of their new orders. The accompanying note sounded distinctly as if he had spent a fair amount of political capital on securing this, and that hence failure would be regarded very dimly indeed, as if Killian needed another reason added to all the others he hadn't been sleeping the last few nights. Thus, naturally, the scout ships had heard reports of bad weather brewing further out in the Atlantic, and it would be Liam's call if they would delay their departure in hopes of avoiding it. This did not seem likely, as he had a reputation as an excellent foul-weather captain and it did not sound any worse than the usual summer tempest in a teapot, but Killian almost wished it would. That might give him more time to work out what in damnation to do about August bloody Booth.

He still had not sorted it in the least degree. He didn't want to have the man on the ship when they left, but the abrupt departure of a skilled carpenter would attract notice and comment from the rest of the crew, a resentful Booth deprived of legitimate occupation and marooned on the island would surely run to Gold for employment, and altogether seemed entirely more trouble than he was worth. At times Killian was horrified to find himself almost considering Regina's suggestion, but it would be very difficult to claim that the man had gone missing, when Antigua was a small island and any search that failed to turn him up would lead to suspicion. As far as Killian could see, he would have to act as if nothing was wrong, set sail as usual, and then attempt to find some private spot to catch Booth alone and impress on him exactly what the consequences for ratting them out would be. If only he knew what the hell those were. However much he could offer as a bribe, Gold could offer thrice that, and Booth was one of the men who couldn't say no to temptation – money, drink, gambling, women, if something was offered to him, he tended to take it. He was also something of an accomplished liar, which further recommended him for Gold's purposes, and a secretive sort who didn't have many close friends on the crew. It wasn't as if Killian would be taking away a bosom companion if he threw August off the ship, but it was still too dangerous without explicit and unambiguous provocation or reason.

Several times, he tried to screw up the courage to just tell Liam about it, have him decide what to do about it. But if he told Liam that he had made arrangements with Regina to suss out the sneak, he would end up telling him about James Nolan as well, and he could only imagine how that would go. He knew he should, he had to, but Liam had been run off his feet overseeing the final stage of preparations, and that likewise seemed the sort of thing that could wait until they were on the water. It was far too bloody much to hope that Nolan would come down with some horrid tropical malaise and keel directly over in the meantime, but he supposed it couldn't hurt trying.

Altogether, his state of mind was not in the least improved by the fact that Gold wanted to throw them a lavish supper party – which immediately made Killian suspect arsenic in the drinks, as the governor was not the type to be a graceful loser. He knew that they would get into further difficulties if they appeared to be snubbing the honor, but that did not mean he was about to subject himself to an entire evening with Gold trying to work out how best to sink his fangs into them. "Can't we beg off somehow?" he grumbled. "Besides, what's he going to do to us if we refuse? We'll be away from the island, out of his reach, and if we come back with an entire pirate ship neutralized and the captain in custody, even he would have a hard bloody time convincing the rest of them to hate us. Can't someone charge him with treason, for trying to subvert a loyal captain and crew and obstruct the workings of His Majesty's justice?"

"Wouldn't that be the day," Liam said, dipping the quill and signing his name to a final dispatch. "But we all know the law does not work the same for highborn lords as it does for the rest of us. Though if someone is still reporting on us to him, it could get complicated."

"They won't be," Killian assured him, hopefully not too quickly. "I've made sure of it."

"Have you?" Liam glanced up with a curious frown. "You haven't said anything about that."

"It was a. . . side project." Killian hesitated. "Liam, if I was to identify the man, hypothetically. What do you think the just response would be?"

Liam's frown deepened. "How can you be sure there will be no more spying, if you don't know who's been doing it?"

"I just can," Killian said feebly. "But if it was a particular man, what should we do? We can't exactly prohibit him from lawfully working for the governor, and we couldn't let him know that we were onto him. Perhaps. . ." He hesitated, hating himself even more for suggesting it, but they had to consider all avenues. "If he just didn't come back?"

Liam stared at him. "Bloody hell, what are you saying? Making sure one of our own men met some dishonorable end to prevent him from – Christ, Killian! Are you quite certain this is hypothetical? If you're talking of murder, I think I should damn well know who and why!"

Their eyes locked for a long moment, until their standoff was interrupted by the sound of a crisp rap on the door. Thinking that if it was Regina again, he was – he was – he was going to do something drastic to forcefully express his extreme displeasure, Killian turned away and strode across the floor to answer it. When he pulled it open, however, it wasn't the madam, but one of the public house's servants, holding out a folded paper sealed with glistening golden wax. "Letter for you, Captain, Lieutenant. Straight from the governor's mansion. Man who brought it said I was to wait and take back your response."

"Splendid," Killian muttered, whisking it out of the servant's hand and slamming the door in his face brusquely enough to be impolite. He broke the seal and scanned the letter; it was, as expected, their formal invitation to supper tonight, to herald the bold undertaking of the HMS Imperator and to welcome some eminent gentleman to the Indies, late of Bristol, Mr. H. Plouton. The courtesy of their presence was most ardently desired and should be promptly notified, gratitude & et cetera.

"Well, he's decided to put our backs against the wall," Killian said aloud. "And welcome some bloody associate of his, as if we needed another reason to get out of here as fast as possible. Some arse called Plouton, so that's sure to be a barrel of – "

There was a crash from behind him, and he turned to see that Liam had dropped the inkwell, causing it to smash on the floor and leave a spreading black stain on the boards. As he knelt to retrieve it, Killian noticed as well that Liam's hands were trembling, and he stared at his brother in confusion and consternation. "Liam, it's just some fool friend of Gold's. What's wrong?"

"Sorry, did you . . . did you say Plouton? From Bristol?" Liam scooped up the inkwell and put it back on the desk, nearly knocking it off again. "The Governor wants us to come to supper with him?"

"What?" It was Killian's turn to frown. "Do you know him?"

Liam hesitated. "I know of him, if it's the same one I've heard about. He's in the assurances and securities business, one of the scoundrels who makes their living by profiting off the misfortune of ships and sailors. It's rumored he periodically arranges for something to happen to the vessels of particularly well-off merchants, so he can collect on the payment for the loss of their cargo."

"Bloody hell," Killian said, with feeling. "Sounds exactly the sort of scoundrel that Gold would socialize with. How would he possibly make money as an assurance agent if he sank ships his own company had underwritten, though?"

"I don't know." Liam wiped the ink off his hands with a rag, and clenched them hard. "Some sort of elaborate scheme of false identities and accomplices, I imagine. Makes himself the beneficiary of their policies, and uses their own profit to pay himself for it."

"Well, if he's running some grossly fraudulent operation, we should report him! We don't want the merchants of Antigua signing up thinking he'll compensate them in case of the loss or destruction of their vessels, and then they end up short a ship and their money in his pocket! Unless that's exactly why Gold brought him, just because this place wasn't rotten enough already, and the two of them are going to rob the local shipping blind in the name of – "

"No!" Liam said sharply. "We don't have a single concrete accusation to put to him. It's only rumor and ill-whisper, I am not spending my last night on the island accusing Gold's business partner of malpractice to his face! As if that's the impression we ought to make on him on our way out the door! Tell the messenger we're. . . we're simply unable to make it on such short notice, too much to finish before we set sail in the morning, but we are deeply sensible of the honor and would love to pay a call on the Governor upon our triumphant return. If he's not inclined to take us at our word. . . here. Give him this."

Liam took out his pocketknife and slit the lining of his coat, where he kept some money sewn into it, and shook out several silver coins. He tossed them, and Killian caught them by reflex, stunned; it wasn't as if he wanted to spend a perfectly good evening with this pair of villains either, but the vehemence of his brother's reaction had taken him completely off guard, not to mention the fact that Liam was using their emergency cash to finagle their way out of it with a last-minute bribe. "Liam, are you sure this is a – "

The elder Jones gave him a searing look, and he snapped his mouth shut, made his way to the door, and told the servant what to relay to Gold's messenger, passing him the coins clumsily enough that he might as well announce his incompetence at clandestine maneuver to the world with a drum-and-trumpet company. When the man had gone, and they waited long enough to be more or less certain that he wasn't coming back, meaning apparently that the bribe had been accepted, Killian blinked hard and rubbed a hand over his face, trying to make any sense of the last ten minutes. "So, I assume that since we've dodged out on Gold, it would not do at all to be spotted anywhere else tonight. Shall I have Mr. Shaw send supper up again?"

"I – I suppose so." Liam sat on the bed, still looking rattled. "If you're hungry."

"Aye." Killian frowned. "You're not?"

"Of course I am." Liam stared at the floor for a long moment, before he shook himself and forced a smile. "I'm going to go down to the ship; the dockyard crew said they'd have her back here before five o'clock. There will likely in fact be plenty of details that I need to sign off on, so it won't be that much of a lie."

"I'll come with you, then." Killian reached for his coat. "Just give me a moment to – "

"No." Liam stood up. "You've done enough, little brother. I'll handle this. I know you haven't been sleeping, and I'll need you awake and rested tomorrow morning. Stay here, turn in early. I'll be back later."

"I should be with you. It's my duty."

"You've done it. Now your captain is ordering you to take heed for yourself, so you don't fall over from exhaustion before we even set out."

"Liam – "

"Do as I say, Killian."

Killian paused, feeling oddly rebuked. Then he nodded. "Aye. As you command."

After Liam had gone, he sat at the desk and paged through the dispatches, making sure everything was complete; his mind would not let him sit back and relax with the thought that his brother was still out there working hard. To hell with this bloody Mr. Plouton, anyway, taking his scurrilous operation from Bristol to inflict upon the innocent merchants of the West Indies. Then again, if they'd spent any time in this place, they probably were not innocent at all, but that still didn't mean they deserved to get systematically defrauded by someone Gold had probably brought here for the express purpose of raising a little extra revenue and showing the islands how dangerous a place this was, and how they so very much needed to approve his extra powers to restore safe commerce at any cost. Did he hire a few of the pirates as well? Given what they had heard about Gold's counterpart in Jamaica, Lord Archibald Hamilton, and his fondness for under-the-table arrangements with privateers, this did not seem out of the question in the least. It was good that Liam knew Plouton was such a rascal. They could possibly find hard evidence to expose his dirty dealings in the course of this assignment, and if it ended up taking down Gold (and James Nolan, while he was thinking optimistically) then so much the better. Then they would all learn an important lesson about meddling with the brothers Jones.

Killian finished the dispatches, yawned so widely his jaw cracked, and tried to make himself think of something else to do, such as going out, locating August Booth's current place of leisure, and having a strongly worded conversation, but reminded himself that he couldn't be seen by anyone who could then convey his whereabouts to Gold. He got onto the bed and took the account book for a little light reading, as if he actually needed to verify Mr. Hawkins' careful figures, but this was a mistake. His head started to nod, he slipped lower and lower on the pillows, and he had just enough time to think that this was only going to be a brief catnap, only a few minutes, before he slumped back and became, in quite short order, utterly dead to the world.


The Imperator weighed anchor the next morning: the twenty-third of June, which was in fact the third of July by most of the Caribbean's reckoning. Catholic Europe had adopted the new Gregorian calendar at the end of the sixteenth century, but England, who would proudly hate the Pope long past when it was good for them, stubbornly clung to the Julian calendar, which put them eleven days behind the rest of the horrifyingly Pope-prone world. But by either standard, the ship was quite a bit lesser than when she had arrived. Under extreme pressure to get the refit done on time and on budget, and conscious of the fact that they already had a firepower advantage and extra weight would slow them even further in comparison to their light, fleet target, Liam and Killian had elected for the dramatic solution of slashing their tonnage as much as operationally possible. They'd had twenty cannons taken off the ship, to be distributed to the new fort and other vessels in need of them; this reduced their gun carriage to forty, which was still enough to more than match eighteen and which likewise relieved them of supplies and shot for those twenty guns, a hundred men (also to be distributed among the perpetually short-handed Navy) provender and food for those hundred, the extra ballast calculated for their older weight, and all the cargo and personal effects Gold had brought on the crossing. Then they recalculated their entire refit requirement based on this reduced level, which meant they spent a third less than what they'd been fearing. It was a bloody labor of Hercules to get done, but it worked.

All this turned the Imperator from a third-rate ship of the line into essentially a fifth-rate frigate with more manpower and at least a few extra knots under full sail, which were bound to come in handy. She had been careened to clear the hull of shipworm, the tropical parasite that could eat through even solid oaken hulls in a matter of months if not regularly scraped off, and was by far the best-fitted of the local cohort as a result. Indeed, that impressive collection of ships they had seen in English Harbor was essentially fool's gold. Quite apart from the bickering and corruption of the administration, half of them were too shorthanded or too rotted to leave the bay, the ones that actually sailed were due to return to England, and the rest were in no hurry to leave the comfortable work of "protection duty" for an island that wasn't going to be attacked until Judgment Day. No wonder Regina had pounced on them for the job.

The one last-minute expedient that had occurred to Killian as a result of this – including August among the hundred men set to be reassigned to new crews – was likewise no good, as he was the ship's carpenter and thus a ranking officer who couldn't be removed from his post without a convoluted legal procedure. Killian hoped it was a vindication of the Imperator's methods that absolutely none of said hundred men wanted to leave. Of course they wouldn't. They would be going from a ship where they were decently treated, assured of being paid every three months rather than the years that the rest of the Navy kept able seamen in arrears, spared flogging except in the very worst of cases, and fed citrus and greens to prevent scurvy, so often as they were available, to the squalid, brutal, wretched servitude of a fate regarded as comparable to a condemned prisoner's, with the added danger of drowning. But running at two-thirds of their capacity, they couldn't take along all those useless extra mouths, and Killian hated to make them do it, to choose lots and watch the losers trudge off to their new ships, so much that it almost made him physically sick. Most of them would probably be dead soon, especially if they started filling their new mates' heads with tales of how much better things had been on their last crew, and he had as good as signed them back into slavery himself. He was bloody proud of how he and Liam ran the Imperator, no matter how much suspicion it attracted. He'd never change or compromise it. But it was only one ship in a very large Royal Navy, one drop in the bucket, and he couldn't help but wonder what it said that their policies hewed far closer to those of the pirates than they did to their esteemed peers. Almost as if, despite everything and anything anyone said, they might in fact be on the wrong side here.

Not, of course, that he dared to say any of this aloud, or even think it too loudly. They departed on the outgoing morning tide, the trades in particular roar and thus complicating the careful course Killian had set, after all his study of the charts, records, and reports familiar with the Blackbird's movements. As such, they were headed north by northwest, taking them up through the Leewards to the waters around Hispaniola and the Windward Passage, which any ship intending to do business (of one sort or another) with the interior of the Caribbean had to pass through. The west part of this would not be a problem; the north part might be. Large square-riggers could not sail any closer into the wind than about sixty-eight degrees, and since in the Indies it blew almost entirely west, an east-west journey could be an easy, few-day jaunt and a west-east return could be a nightmarish labor of a fortnight or more. They could make good time north if they stayed hard windward, but they would then hit delicate maneuvering around Hispaniola and the inner islands. Overshoot the mark, and it could take up to a month to circle back around. By then, of course, the pirate ship – if she had been anywhere nearby – would be long gone.

The sun was still coming up as they got underway, scattering splinters of deep golden light on the starboard water. Killian was rather surprised that Gold hadn't managed to pull off some final caper to complicate their exit, but so long as the bastard hadn't sneaked aboard and concealed himself in the hold, perhaps they could go back to how things customarily were aboard the vessel. As soon as he took care of that small problem.

Having ascertained that all was well above, he made his way below. In the ordinary course of things, the Imperator mounted fourteen thirty-two-pound heavy cannon on each side of its lower deck, fourteen eighteen-pounders on each side of its upper deck, two "long nines," or the nine-pound bow chasers, fore, and two twelve-pound cannonades astern. Due to their reduction, they had taken off ten guns apiece from the two decks, five from each side, leaving them with eighteen total to port and the same to starboard. A well-trained crew could fire them once every ninety seconds, an average of three broadsides per five minutes, and Killian stood contemplating them for a long moment. Bloody hell, he hoped they had made the right choice. A third-rater was rarely used for this kind of one-on-one pursuit, into the trackless wilds and shoals and treacherous waters of the Caribbean, and it would only be his forte at navigation that kept them from wrecking on one of those.

Abruptly, he found himself wondering about Captain Swan. He hadn't been able to find anything about the man in his search of the Admiralty archives, and Regina of course hadn't offered much in the way of help. He knew Captain Swan was a pirate, obviously, and now their opposite number, the mariner they had to match their wits and cunning against, the master of the ship they were chasing and who might well choose to stand and fight in a full battle, even if ludicrously outgunned; pirates were not fond of surrender, no matter how prudent. They'd probably have to kill him, which was a shame. After just ten days on Antigua, experiencing the delights of the English colonial administration and its ineffective, embezzling, infighting, all but actively criminal representatives, Killian had come out of it with far more sympathy for the pirates than he knew would be in any way appropriate. He'd spent all this time clinging to the Navy because it had saved him from slavery, but he knew that under the command of anyone else but his brother, it would have been no deliverance at all. Even abused merchant marines resisted getting pressed into it; it was the graveyard of sailors, chewed up and swallowed and never heard of again. And even if he and Liam had made something different of it, he was starting to understand just how much that defiance might cost them – and to wonder what might lie beyond. Something much darker and more dangerous than he had ever imagined, and coming from the men and the supposedly honorable service who were supposed to be on their side.

Killian took a final look around the stripped-down gun decks, forced to admit that everything did appear to be in order, and that they were as ready as they could be for what was to come. Then he turned and climbed the ladder back to the main deck, not entirely surprised to see that although the day was still clear, the sky ahead was a blood-streaked red – calling to mind the old saw, "red sky at night, sailor's delight; red sky in morning, sailor's warning" – and beyond the curve of the world, the dark clouds were starting to gather. So that, as far as he could reckon, and in more ways than one, they were now sailing directly into the deepening heart of the storm.