Siren's Call
IV: Faith
"What are you playing at?" she asked, eyes narrowed in suspicion as her hand flew to the hilt of the sword at her hip.
"It belongs to you," he replied as if it was the simplest thing in the world. "I am returning it."
Rana snorted with a brief instance of laughter, her focus now much more intent on this most curious of happenstances. "So you are being the good Samaritan and giving it back out of the … kindness of your heart?"
Connor nodded. "I did not agree with the way Faulkner kept it from you."
She quirked an eyebrow. "Is this before or after I bested you?"
"That means nothing to me," said Connor. "It is yours. I am giving it back because I believe it to be right."
"So you would give it back to a complete stranger with no regard for a reward?" she demanded, looking him up and down, analyzing him with a marked scrutiny. "You want something."
He frowned, grabbed her wrist and put the necklace in the palm of her hands. The cold metal against her skin lifted a weight from her shoulders. "All I ask is that you leave Robert Faulkner alone."
Rana's fingers closed around it "Why do you care about such things?"
"I care enough to have given you what you wanted," he replied. "That is all."
"You would get involved in a two year grudge for that old dog?" She threw her head back in a laugh. "Now that is loyalty. How refreshing."
His expression remained frozen in stoicism. "I would have your word."
"A pirate's word is not reliable," Jacques piped in, watching how this large man stood unmoving in his task. "You realize this, yes?"
"All the same, I would have your word," said Connor. "In return for the necklace, you will leave Robert Faulkner be and go about your business."
There was a long, pregnant pause. In that time she attempted to find an answer to her questions. She found him strange, unlike any man she has come across, and she had come across many.
Rana raised her glass to him. "You have my word. I will leave the old bastard be."
Connor nodded his head once. "I thank you." He turned on his heel to leave and began to stride to the door. She watched him go for a few moments.
"Connor!" she called, and he stopped to look at her over his shoulder. The ghost of an amused little smirk began to tug on the corner of her lips, an eyebrow raised in fascination before she said, "You have my gratitude for returning my property."
The next day on the Aquila was not a pleasant one. Connor did not ask permission but simply took the necklace from Faulkner's desk to see it returned to its owner. As he crossed the plank onto the deck, all he could think about was the way that woman carried herself. The arrogance, the fluidity of her movements, the glint in her eyes as she watched him. Like a wolf staring at an injured doe. As if she believed herself to be the most dangerous being in all of Boston. He could see that she thought that she believed as much by the perpetual flame burning in her eyes.
Faulkner stormed up to him. "Don't tell me you did what I think you did."
"It had to be done."
"Had to be done?" he repeated, teeth grinding behind his lips. "You made concessions with the enemy!"
"Your enemy perhaps," Connor replied. "But she is not my enemy ─ she is no threat to this land or its people."
His first mate snorted aloud. "How wrong ya are, boy. That bloody necklace was the only leverage I had over her 'ead. What's stoppin' her from blasting the Aquila to timber, eh?"
Connor pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers. "She gave me her word."
"Oh, aye, her word!" he cried, throwing his arms in the air in exasperation with a mouth now properly deepened into a scowl. "That'll do you some good, ya secured a pirate's word."
"She told me that she would leave you be!" said Connor.
"If she hangs me up by my toes from the crow's nest, it'll be your fault, ya hear me?" Faulkner spun on his heel and went about his business aboard the ship, and despite the man's irritation, Connor could not help but find his little spectacle a bit amusing.
All this fuss over one criminal and her band of misfits? She was hardly a Templar.
Long fingers brushed across the rusted metal key. The material against the palm of her hand after so long allowed relief, at last, to wash over her. Rana sat in her room in the inn at the edge of the bed, unmoving for over an hour, wrapped up in her own memories and doubts. Rana fastened it around her neck, resolving to keep a much better eye on it.
The key brought back images of a bygone age. Ones she, in an ideal world, would lose herself in. Childish as it was, Rana was bad at putting aspects of that particular past behind her. Much of her childhood was better left forgotten, but she almost wanted to thank her father for shipping her off to England.
It had been six years. Six years since she stepped foot in that blasted garden, strewn with discarded drawings and sketches and paintings. Six years since she held a pair of clammy, pale hands between her own and prayed to a God that she had lost faith in. Just give me this, she had begged Him, Just grant me this one request and I'll turn my life around.
God saw fit to ignore her pleadings that day, and took from this earth one completely undeserving of death. And it was on that day that she severed any connection she might have thought to rekindle with the almighty being in the sky.
Good riddance, she thought. She didn't need permission from some man in the sky to go about her business as she saw appropriate.
Rana stood to her feet and nudged the curtain open to see the sun setting in the distance. And where there was a sunset, there were people beginning to drink profusely. Turning on her heel, she left her room and went down to the pub counter, where Finnegan was cleaning off his counter before his regular customers would appear.
She slid onto a stool. "Give me a pint, Finnegan."
"I don't know where ya put it all, Cap," said the innkeeper with a chuckle, walking over to the barrel of ale. "Ya drink more than most Irishmen, I think."
She chuckled. "You have never seen how much an Ottoman can drink?"
Finnegan shrugged. "Can't say I have. Don't get much of them around these parts."
He slid the cold ale over to her and she took a hearty swig, wiping her mouth off with the sleeve of her jacket.
"Finnegan," she said. "Did you not mention that smuggling tea, stamps and drink into the colonies is quite a way to earn coin?"
"Oh, yeah," he replied. "Didn't think ya were interested in that ─ but business is boomin' for that market."
She needed to bide her time until her crew arrived for the evening. There was a plan they needed to discuss. Smuggling was a lucrative business in Boston and she intended to get them in on it. She also took a bit of enjoyment out of pestering the British government.
Rana cocked an eyebrow. "Who is the big dog in this town?"
"Thomas Hickey's who you're lookin' for," said Finnegan. "That one's got his finger in every pie."
"Well now." Rana glanced to her side to see a man grab the stool right next to her. He looked young, cocksure and otherwise uninteresting. "It's not every day ya see a woman in a pub."
"It appears you have learned something new this evening," she deadpanned with a roll of her eyes, turning her attention back to try and discuss the matter with Finnegan.
"You'll forgive my ignorance," said the man. "I'm new around here, y'see."
Rana scoffed. "That is obvious." An Irishman. Fresh off the boat and hungry for a poke by the next pair of breasts he saw. She felt so fortunate that she got to be his lucky attempt for the night.
Despite her clear sarcasm, he remained unfazed. "Quite an accent ya have. Whereabouts are ya from, love?"
"Haven't heard of the Barbary Banshee, Owen?" Finnegan interjected, an amused smile on his bearded face.
"Aye," he said, confused, "I'd hear tales here and there from some of the sailors at the port in Dublin, but that has nothin' to do with the colonies, surely? I thought the wanted posters were a bit of a joke to scare the colonists."
A smirk split across her lips. "It appears you speak with an apparition, then."
That was when she got a good look at him. A pair of dark green eyes peered back at her, framed by a head of thick, short black hair that curled at the tips. The one called Owen's face was oblong, accentuated with a long, straight nose. Stubble clung to the outline of his jaw. And just by looking at him she could tell that he prided himself on being acquainted with the ups and downs of women's skirts.
"Am I?" he said, removing his hat in mock awe and adjusting the collar of his shirt. "Then you're as beautiful as the stories say."
"Ah, so you did not hear the stories that describe me as an old hag?" she asked, smiling to herself at the memory of that. Her enemies were petty at the strangest moments. As if anyone in their right mind would believe her to be old and ugly.
"Heard 'em," he replied, a playful smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "But I liked to believe otherwise. And I was right."
Rana exhaled through her nose and made a point of allowing her next sentence to drip with sarcasm. "How very happy for you."
"Oh, I've heard all sorts of stories about you," he quipped, not taking any sort of hint. "Every step you take in these colonies seems to piss either the Yanks or the Brits off. I've heard from those whose toes you've stepped on that you're a wanton, Godless mistress of the Devil. Those wanted posters don't do you justice, either. But I suppose it is less embarrassing to be bested by a homely woman … than one as beautiful as yourself."
"Is that what you've heard of me?" she asked.
"From the sailors, I've heard that you're a fair captain and treat your men with respect," Owen said. "I have also heard from every man who knows of you that yours is a beauty that would bring any good Christian man to his knees in worship."
Rana scrutinized him. This one was laying it on quite thick. "Is that not blasphemy where you come from, Irishman?"
He shrugged with a wry grin. "Perhaps, but I've never presumed to call meself a good Christian. And if ya please, I'd prefer if you called me Owen."
"Alright, Owen," she said, leaning in closer to him. He mimicked the action, unable to hide the cocky smirk that flashed across his face. "I do not believe you have heard of me."
"Why not?"
"Because if you had," Rana continued, "Then you would realize that baseless flattery is not going to get your hairy Irish cock into my trousers."
The pub erupted with laughter at her comment, and she leaned back in her stool with a contented smirk of her own, yanking his pint of beer and downing a considerable amount. To her surprise, Owen didn't storm off in a humiliated huff like all the others. He took it all in stride. He was laughing with them, in fact.
When the laughter died down his smile at her grew broad and arrogant before he said, "It isn't all that hairy, actually. And I can always prove it to ya," he paused to wink at her, "if ya don't believe me."
"Jesus, Mary 'n Joseph, Owen," Finnegan commented, "the hole you're diggin' yourself in is gonna get you killed, y'know."
"I don't think so," he said, his eyes never leaving her face, "I've amused the good Cap'n Demir."
Rana's eyebrows rose. "What makes you so sure of this?"
"Judgin' by the way that tree of a man's been starin' at us since I started talkin' to ya," said Owen, gesturing a casual finger to Alf in the far back of the pub, leaned against the wall, "he's one of your crew members, and if I irritated ya that much you would have had him haul my arse out the door faster than I could rub two shillings together."
Glancing behind her, she noted that she hadn't even realized Alf was standing back there. For such a large man he was startlingly quiet on his feet. "Are you saying that I cannot fight my own battles?"
"'Course not, but why would an infamous pirate waste 'er energy on the likes of me?"
He had a point. Either way, she had matters to attend, even if this man was interesting in his own right. "Finnegan, where would I find Thomas Hickey?"
"I coulda told ya that," Owen piped in.
Rana ran a hand a through her hair. "I am less than willing to ask for directions from strangers."
"Stranger?" he said in a tone of feigned hurt. "I tried to get into your knickers and everything; does that not at least make us acquaintances?"
She shrugged. "If you continue to amuse me, it would be possible."
"I could show ya where Hickey normally is," said Owen.
Her eyebrow rose in coy flirtation. "Interested in piracy are you, Mr. Awley?"
"Teach me how to sail and I'll consider it," he quipped, never breaking eye contact, leaning in closer. "It might serve as another form of entertainment for you ─ watching a drunken fool steer a ship to impress the vivacious pirate queen."
"Pirate queen?" She tasted the title on her lips. "Hm, I like the sound of that."
The smirk widened into an impish grin. "I could call you pirate empress, if you like."
"It might get you a bit closer to my knickers," she countered. He inched closer at that.
"Pirate goddess, then."
A/N: Thank you for the feedback thus far. It's really motivational to kick these chapters into gear, and I really appreciate it! Thank you for reading and stay linked for next Saturday's installation!
