IX.

She fights like a soldier. King's men are marching on the docks and Luciana holds poised and steady behind their barricade, rifle primed for when they break through. She only has one shot and makes it count, putting a bullet through an officer's head before the fight enters close quarters and the weapon becomes too slow and cumbersome to be useful.

In its place, she draws her sword. 1796 pattern light cavalry sabre, British, curved for use on horseback, but she utilises it on foot to devastating effect. Several men fall in a bloody, brutal melee before she heeds James' commands to fall back to the ship.

She's never slaughtered soldiers wearing red before. A strange, unexpected feeling of guilt creeps surreptitiously into her stomach, and she ignores it.

Cholmondley falls to his own explosive. They lose Helga. Many others. Luciana knows almost none of them by name. She recognises the redhead and the whore only by face.

It's a heavy butcher's bill by the time they cast off anchor and the Good Hope flees the docks and sails for the Thames Estuary, seeking the sanctuary and freedom of the sea. It won't be the last battle they fight. James Delaney has a price on his head.

Bloodstained and exhausted, Luciana finds James on the poop deck some time later, after the surviving casualties have been tended as best they can. "Tell me Strange handed over the deeds before I did this," she says wearily. "And you haven't made a fool out of me."

He turns away from the wheel to survey her for a moment, expression unreadable, and then reaches silently into his coat to take out a small leather document tube. He holds it towards her.

It might be fake. Too late for it to make any difference now. Luciana closes her fingers around it and an unexpected sense of trust makes her sigh in relief.

"Did you send word to your men?" James asks gruffly, looking out to sea.

"Yes. Told them to meet us in Ponta Delgada, though I never received confirmation before we left. Don't suppose I will now."

"No. Let us hope they chose to obey."

She peers at him, studying his profile closely, turned away from her so that the sunset casts his features into pink-tinged shadow. The lines of his face are hard and formidable. Like his soul. A suitable whetstone to a fine razor.

Luciana retreats below deck to get some much needed sleep.