Vengeance of the Pirate Queen (Daughter of the Pirate King #3)

Chapter 9

“ GET THE ANCHOR UP!” I call out. “Put up the sails. Stop this ship now.”

Dimella runs the length of the ship, calling whatever remains of the crew to their duties. I run below to take stock of the hull. Radita is in the hold with a few sailors. They’re boarding up a few holes, while others carry buckets of water to the portholes.

“How bad is it?” I call down to her. She’s in water up to her calves.

“Not bad so long as I have the time to patch these up. I have to start over every time the ship lurches!”

“We’re stopping,” I tell her. “I think we killed it.”

“What is it?”

“I’ve no idea.”

I leave her to it, return back above deck, and assess the ship and crew.

It’s bad. The ship is a mess. Debris is scattered along the deck. Blood and severed limbs cover almost every inch of space. The railing is almost nonexistent where the cannons tore through. Part of the deck is missing from the cannon that went through it from the recoil. I know some of the crew are below, but we look like so few above deck.

“Dimella,” I say. “Roll call now.”

“Aye-aye.”

“Iskirra!” I shout, but I spot her a moment later. She’s already making rounds. I watch her put someone’s shoulder back into its socket, likely torn out while the beastie tried to haul her overboard. Many of those waiting to see her aren’t bleeding. Just holding their limbs still. Broken bones and more sprains.

The ship finally slows as we get the sails up. Kearan turns us, angling the ship back the way we came. We retrace our path slowly, and I know exactly what he’s looking for.

The beastie has risen to the water’s surface now that it’s dead, and we all get a good look at it.

The body is bigger than the ship. It’s fleshy, bell shaped, and almost transparent with the tentacles streaming out of the underside. It glows faintly in the moonlight with some sort of natural bioluminescence. Inside the body, I can see the outline of something humanoid. I don’t know who it is yet.

Lerick’s body is still on the deck. It could be Rorun, but it looks too small to be him. He’s likely lost at sea or clasped within one of the tentacles underwater. Dead either way. That water is cold enough to freeze a person to death long before they could drown.

“Captain,” Dimella says. “We’re missing three. The two lads who were pulled over and Unesta, who must have fallen during the fight.”

Unesta. That’s who’s inside the beastie.

Three more fallen. That’s four in total on this trip. We’re down to twenty-five now.

I say, “We stay put until we can make the repairs Radita needs. All the crew is to turn to her for direction, save those who are injured. Order rest for them.”

“Aye-aye.”

Then I go to my quarters to see to Roslyn.

She’s huddled under the bed. Right where I told her to go.

“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s dead. Are you hurt?”

She cradles her left arm as she wiggles out from under my bed. “Just bruised, Captain. Nothing bad.”

“You’re quick with that knife.”

“Because someone’s been making me practice every day.” She rubs at her sore arm. “Captain?”

“Yes?”

“Is it wrong that I don’t feel scared?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I ought to be terrified that a giant monster tried to eat me. That it almost pulled me off the ship. But I’m not.”

“What do you feel?”

“Alive. Sorinda, my heart is racing, and my hands are shaking, and I can’t remember the last time I felt this good.” She adds quickly, “I’m sorry I snuck aboard your ship and didn’t tell Papa. I feel bad, but I can’t regret the decision when I finally feel useful and like I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”

She’s a proper thrill seeker. Just like Alosa. Just like me when I’m about to kill.

I say, “It’s good to be scared from time to time, even if you aren’t right now. Terror is what keeps us alive. It stops us from being reckless.”

“But you’re not scared of anything. I want to be like you.”

“I was scared when I saw that tentacle hauling you away. I was terrified.”

She thinks about that for a moment. “I suppose I get scared for other people, too.”

“That’s what makes you a good crew member. Excellent job today. I’m proud of you for listening to me when I told you to go into my quarters.”

“Thanks, Captain, but …”

“What?”

“I can’t help but notice that the creature didn’t attack me until I followed your orders, so sometimes isn’t it a good thing that I disobey?”

I have to turn my laughter into an exasperated sigh. “Adults have to make tough decisions. Sometimes they’re wrong decisions, but we still have far more life experience than you, so you should listen.”

“All right.” She looks sadly down at the ground.

“Go make yourself useful. There’s lots of cleaning to be done.”

“Aye-aye.”

She leaves, and I write up a hasty report to Alosa before attaching it to the leg of a yano bird. As I move to exit the room, I find Kearan standing on the other side of my door.

“Kearan—” I start, prepared to tell him how I am in no mood for his antics today, but one look at his face has me slamming my mouth closed.

His eyes are red and swollen. He holds his body too still.

He looks … distraught. No, more than that. He looks broken.

What happened to the focus and ruthlessness he showed in battle just moments before?

“Captain, I need a moment alone, and I wondered if perhaps …”

I step aside to let him into the room, then exit and close the door, thoroughly thrown off-balance by his change in demeanor.

Did I miss something? Or did he just find out who we lost during the battle? I know he said he liked Rorun and Lerick, which is plenty enough for grief. But he looked thoroughly wrecked.

I should have asked what was wrong. Now I have to stew about it as I get to work. As I deal with what I’m feeling. He looks how I feel. Until recently, I could believe that somehow Cyara got off the ship and was alive and well somewhere. It was an unlikely scenario but possible. Now the reality is before me.

Four dead on my watch. Four I failed to protect.

And Roslyn was all too close to joining them.

I was the wrong person for this job. This proves it. Alosa will surely call us back now, surely reprimand me for this. But I’m not allowed to lose myself to panic and distress. I have to keep it together for the crew. I need to stay busy.

I send the bird off and get to work on the ship, cleaning tentacles from the deck. Dimella works beside me silently, using a broom to scrape blood and guts overboard. We’ve buckets of salt water to use to aid with cleaning. Meanwhile, Radita has finished making repairs below, and she now instructs the crew on fixing the upper.

But then I see her teeth chattering. She’s still in her sodden boots.

“Radita, you and those who repaired below are to warm up before you do anything else. Get fires going. I’ll not lose anyone to frostbite.”

“Aye—aye—” She descends through the trapdoor with her bailers.

Stars, I wasn’t thinking. How can I expect her to do anything after being exposed to that icy water? Why didn’t she say anything?

I massage my temples.

Four dead.

Almost everyone else injured or hurting.

How did I let this happen?

There had to be something I could have done better.

“Do we know what it is?” Enwen asks, interrupting my thoughts. He’s sorting through pieces of broken ship for anything that can be salvaged.

“Who cares what it’s called?” Dimella asks. “You just thank the stars we don’t have them back home.”

“Them? You think there could be more out there?”

“No,” she says quickly. “Something that big in these waters? Its hunting ground would need to be massive. If there’re more of them, they’re far away, where they can find other food.”

“I’m going to have nightmares for weeks,” Enwen says. “I’m staring right at the creature, and I still can’t believe it existed.”

“I can’t wrap my mind around how smart it was,” Dimella offers. “Attacking only at night. Going for one sailor at a time when no one was looking.”

“Not as smart as the captain, though,” Philoria says from where she’s putting a cannon back to rights. “We killed it good and proper. Too bad it’s too large to bring a trophy home. No one will ever believe what we saw.”

“The queen will believe us,” Dimella says.

“Yeah, but everyone else will think we embellished its size.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “Four people are dead. That’s what matters. You honored them by killing what killed them.”

Philoria looks guiltily at the cannon as she keeps cleaning. “Sorry, Captain.”

“You did well today.”

“As did you,” Dimella says to me. “I thought for sure the anchor would be the death of us, but it bought us time. Quick thinking, Captain.”

I can’t say anything in response. Four people are dead. I shouldn’t be praised for anything.

AFTER HOURS SPENT HELPING with cleanup, I make my rounds. I check in with each individual aboard the ship, asking how they fare and if there’s anything they need. Everyone puts on a tough face for me, pretending as though they are unaffected. I can’t really blame them since I’m doing the same thing.

For many of them, this is their first true mission under the pirate queen. They don’t want to let her down. Everyone is ready to give their all.

I praise them for their bravery and skill. I try to say the things I think Alosa would say. I can only hope I’m not making anything worse. I know that people skills are not one of my strengths.

For the millionth time, I wonder why Alosa thought I could do this.

When the ship is in a less hazardous state, we clean ourselves up, heating water at the kitchen stove and wiping ourselves down as best we can. Jadine said she could have her kitchen girls pour me a bath in my quarters, but I opted out. Those girls have done enough work for the day. Everyone has. I wipe myself down with soapy rags like everyone else.

When I enter my rooms early the next morning, I’m startled to find that Kearan never left. He’s standing right where I saw him last, staring at nothing in particular in the corner. Dried tearstains cover his cheeks before disappearing into his short beard. His face is red, like when he used to drink, though I know he hasn’t touched a drop since he quit.

I realize now that I’ve checked on the well-being of every member of the crew except one person.

“Sorry, Captain,” Kearan says when I enter. He moves to leave.

“Wait.”

He halts in place but doesn’t turn around.

I find my courage. “How are you?”

“You don’t have to do this with me.”

“I asked you a question, sailor.”

He turns. “I feel like shit, Captain. There’s nothing I want more than a drink or five. Don’t suppose you could have Jadine lock up the rum tonight for me?”

“You have more self-control than that.”

“Right now I don’t think I do.”

I don’t want to be stuck in this tiny room with him, but I can’t pinpoint why, and that frustrates me more than anything else. He’s different, I remind myself. Things don’t have to be weird around him.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Do you mourn the fallen?”

“Of course I do, but these wounds are deeper than that.”

“Tell me.”

He looks up. “Is that an order?”

I gentle my tone. “Tell me, if you want to. I’d like to understand.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m your captain, and I care about your well-being.”

“You’re exhausted and ready to drop.”

“Not anymore.” I realize the words are true as soon as they’re out. My body might be ready to never move again, but my mind is alert. Ready to fix another problem.

“Captain—” Kearan starts.

“Are you scared to tell me?”

“No.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t think you actually want to hear my petty traumas.”

“Yet I’m telling you I do. You going to call me a liar?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then out with it.”

He heaves himself into the chair in front of my desk. It looks too small for him, but he doesn’t complain. He’s probably used to everything being too small for him.

“You were there when I told Alosa I had sailed this way before,” he starts.

“I remember.”

“I wasn’t alone. There was a girl.”

“Parina,” I say.

Kearan looks up, startled to hear her name from my lips.

“You talk in your sleep,” I say by way of explanation. When I was ordered to watch Kearan aboard the Ava-lee , I saw him do and heard him say all kinds of things. But one name he always repeated. At least, he did before he quit drinking. I’ve never heard him say her name since then.

“I thought she was the love of my life,” he says. “How fanciful we can be when we’re seventeen.”

I don’t point out that I was seventeen just over a month ago, but he seems to realize his error immediately.

“I meant no disrespect. We all age differently, and I was … different then.”

“None taken.”

“Good. Like I said, I thought she was the love of my life, but she … started taking on with a different lad on the ship. I caught her at it, and I ended things. That was hard, but not so hard as when she died.”

“She died on your last voyage out this way?”

“Went missing. Disappeared off the ship. Now I know what took her. What … ate her.”

He sighs heavily, fighting another bout of tears, I expect, and I try to think of something comforting to say.

“It would have been quick,” I reassure him. “It seems the creature snapped necks before it took its victims. That way they couldn’t scream. She didn’t feel a thing. Wouldn’t have even been scared before the light was snuffed out.”

“That is … surprisingly comforting to know. Thank you.”

I relax at the words, relieved I didn’t make his suffering worse. I dare to say more. “You shouldn’t care for a woman who discarded you. You should let her go.”

He laughs once without any mirth. “Should have known you’d say something like that, but you see, I can’t let it go, because I’m the reason she was on that ship. I convinced her to go with me.”

“You can be as persuasive as you like, but a person is still going to make their own choice in the end. Unless I’m to believe the girl had no say in the matter? Was she some docile thing who did whatever you wanted?”

“No.”

“Then stop fretting. You were young. You couldn’t have known. And she made her choice before she died. It wasn’t you.”

“I was trying to get her back.”

“Do you think you would have succeeded? Or that even if you had, her attentions wouldn’t have strayed yet again?”

After a long pause, he says, “No.”

“Then don’t mourn her. She didn’t die because of you. She wasn’t on that ship because of you. If she truly cared for you, she wouldn’t have chosen another man over you. So she wasn’t on that ship for you . She was there for herself. She chose someone else for herself. What happened afterward was an accident.”

Kearan swallows. “Those words are about as soothing as a blunt knife.”

“And just like a blunt knife, they still get the job done.”

He rolls his eyes, and some of his normal coloring returns.

“You really turned to drink because a woman died? And one who treated you like rubbish, at that.”

His gaze narrows. “That’s not why I started drinking.”

“Then why?”

He doesn’t answer right away. “I did lose Parina. That hit me hard. I came back from the voyage without pay. Then I found out my mother had passed. Some ridiculous cough that wouldn’t go away.” He looks up. “I had nothing. No money. No one left who cared for me. Nothing but a house with a fine stock of ale, courtesy of my good-for-nothing father, who’d quit the world a few years previously.

“So I started drinking to cover up the pain. I took on with Riden’s father’s crew when I grew too hungry for the drink to be enough.”

Confusion settles within me. “And then you stopped because of me?”

He grins. “I may have exaggerated that a bit. It wasn’t just you. It was Alosa’s crew, where I could see myself part of something bigger again. Not a family, exactly, but something like it. It was Enwen, who stuck with me all that time, even though I never deserved it. I still don’t deserve it, yet he keeps trailing me around like a lost puppy. He goes around insisting I call him my best friend, as if we’re a couple of little girls. Grown men don’t go around calling each other their besties.” He catches himself digressing and pulls himself back on track. “And then there was you, who gave me an excuse to stop in that moment because my easy access to rum was gone.”

“Drink is not an answer to pain,” I say, because I don’t know what else I can say to help. I’m entirely out of my element. Kearan just gave me his entire life story, full of pain and loss. I’m unused to being entrusted with such vulnerabilities. I add, “We can’t change the fates of those who are gone. We can’t unmake decisions—our own or others. All we can do is keep living, ourselves, and if you hate yourself, then live for others.”

He looks at me with the most peculiar expression. Disbelief?

Confusion, perhaps?

“That sounded far too self-reflective to be advice you just thought of,” he says.

“I did just think of it,” I lie.

“Do you hate yourself?”

“I didn’t say that. You’re reading too much into—”

But I can tell it’s too late. Kearan has deduced far too much about me. When I was trying to focus on him, no less.

“You think your life isn’t worth living, so you live for others?” he asks. “Is that what drives you? All this time I’ve been trying to figure you out, and—”

“Kearan, we were talking about you. Don’t change the subject.”

“Is that why you serve Alosa? Because you’d rather let someone else make choices for you? You think you’re not capable of directing your own life?”

I round on him. “This from the man who let drink control him for three years?”

“And you turned to killing. What was so bad that you became an assassin? What did Alosa save you from?”

Everything is cold and dark. I hear splashing and gasping, a shriek that cuts off into gurgling. The screaming of my sisters.

A body floating in bathwater. My mother’s sightless eyes staring at the ceiling.

I blink the thoughts away, refocusing on the man sitting in my room. How did we even get here?

“Alosa saved me from nothing. I saved myself. And then I got my revenge for what I couldn’t save. Alosa just gave me a purpose again.”

“Again? What was your purpose before?”

“It’s none—”

“Of my business. I get it. I’ll just pour out my deepest hurts and insecurities to you, but you stay bottled up. I hear that’s super healthy.”

He stomps out the door without looking back.

WE HONOR THE FALLEN by lighting lanterns the next night. Though we’ve been doing this for days to prevent the beastie from sneaking off with anyone, this time it’s different. The lanterns are for the dead, not the living. Souls lost at sea are able to follow the lantern light to the water’s surface. From there they can see the stars and be guided home. Each star is someone who has passed on, living a bright new life in the heavens.

When I was little, I would search the sky for hours, trying to guess which bright dots of light belonged to my family. So many nights I longed to join them, and many times I thought of speeding the process along.

Then I met Alosa. She reminded me that the stars have a plan for each of us. I shouldn’t cut my time short. My family will still be waiting for me no matter how much time I spend on the seas. There is still much good I can do before I reunite with them.

Now there are four new stars up in the sky. I can’t distinguish them, for the stars in the heavens are as numerous as the sands on the beach.

But I can’t help but wonder if there’s anything I could have done to prevent them from joining the night sky so soon.

IT TAKES A FEW days to put the ship to rights, but we thankfully had everything we needed on board to fix things. Radita is truly the best at what she does. She has the ship perfectly functional once more. Vengeance certainly shows signs of wear, but if anything, it makes her look more hardened. Like she’s seen tough waters and survived. I like her better for it.

We set sail again, our ship following the Wanderer ’s path, though we’ve long since passed the point where Alosa last heard from them. Since the water beastie didn’t attack the ship until we attacked it, I have every reason to believe they kept on sailing. Wanderer had a far larger crew. I don’t think a few missing sailors would have deterred the land king’s men.

When Alosa’s response to my report arrives, I feel relieved as I open the scroll. I want her advice. I don’t want to be in control for a moment. I just need to know what she would have me do next.

It was bigger than the ship, you say? And you still managed to take it out? I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. There’s no one better at killing than you. I know you’re downplaying your role in defeating the creature. Good work, and I’m proud. I am also saddened by the losses. We will honor them tonight after dinner. I know you’ll have already done so on the ship.

And don’t worry. I won’t say a word to Wallov about what happened during the attack. He need never know Roslyn almost went over. We had enough of a scare during that nasty storm. You remember? The one where Riden got himself tossed overboard. He can be such an idiot at times.

The next call is yours to make. I respect your choice as captain and trust you to make the right decision for your crew. You know the situation better than I, so proceed as you see fit. Stay the course and find those missing girls or turn around and come back.

Just know that I have every confidence in you. The land king’s ship was captained by one of the land king’s men. He doesn’t have you or this crew I’ve handpicked. You can all do incredible things. Better yet, no one was ordered to go on this voyage. You’re all there by choice. If anyone can pull this off, it’s you and this crew.

But again, the choice is yours. Remember, as captain, you can change your mind at any time. You can stay course, and then if things get worse, turn around.

I trust you.

— Alosa

Alosa’s faith in me is emboldening, but I wish she would order me to do as she sees fit. Instead, she’s leaving the choice up to me. What if I make the wrong one? Alosa didn’t lie when she said I would make mistakes. I’ve made at least four, and they have names: Cyara, Unesta, Rorun, Lerick. But Alosa’s lost sailors, too, and she’s kept going.

I know I have to do the same.

We can save more than we’ve lost, but even if we lost half the crew, we still need to fight for those who need our help. It’s what we do. We give our lives for our fellow crewmembers. It’s what being a pirate under Queen Alosa means.

I hate this responsibility, but I also can’t leave those girls to whatever fate befell them.

We keep going.