Chapter One
Nightmares
“Hillier, I’ve changed my mind.”
I glanced up from my task of dusting the mahogany desk to peer at Captain Martin with surprise. For a moment he was only a silhouette against the sun streaming in through the bank of windows, but then he turned and became solid.
Sometimes when I looked at Dinesh Martin, Captain of the Arrow, and realized that he truly was mine in all the ways that counted, I could barely believe it. He took my breath away every single day. Well, except when I was cross with him, but even then I knew how lucky I was.
“Have you? What about, pray tell?” Hillier, the quartermaster, asked, with fond affection.
They were friends, even closer now that the former quartermaster, Donatello, had passed so unexpectedly and cruelly in a skirmish with another ship.
“I’d like to pay a visit to Francis Bell and his wife, if you and the crew don’t mind,” he said.
“Oh!” Hillier exclaimed. “But Talamanca is in the opposite direction to where we had planned to sail, Captain.”
Hillier didn’t seem overly upset, only concerned at such a sudden alteration of plans, I supposed.
“Yes, I know. I hope it isn’t a very great inconvenience to everyone,” Dinesh said.
“To be honest,” Hillier said, “I expect the men will be thrilled. Mr. Bell was almost as well-liked as you.”
“That is high praise from you, and I do hope you’re right.”
When Hillier had gone to tell the crew about the new destination, I asked the question I’d been dying to put forward.
“Who’s Francis Bell?”
“How’s the dusting going, Rooster?”
Rooster was the captain’s nickname for me since I sported a shock of red hair on my head and…in other places.
Dusting the furniture in the captain’s cabin was not a job I would have chosen. However, it was a way for me to serve him, and keep myself busy and out of harm’s way most of the time. I didn’t hate it as much as I let on.
I stood, crumpling the rag in my hand. “Almost done. So, who is he? And where is Talamanca? And why are we going there?”
Captain Martin leaned against one of the posts of his—well, our—gigantic bed and crossed his arms.
“Francis Bell is a former crew member and a very good friend of mine. And Talamanca is a coastal paradise in the Americas where he fell in love with an indigenous woman and decided to abandon us to the joys of domestic living. They’ve recently had their second child.”
“But…that’s quite far, isn’t it?”
He gave me a quizzical look. “Yes. A few months sailing. Believe me, it will be worth the journey.”
“I only mean, how on earth did you find out about the child? The second one? Or even the first one?”
“I received a missive from him whilst we were in Port Royal, before I ran into you and my life was changed forever.”
I smiled, recalling the day he’d agreed to let me onto the Arrow and what had happened since.
“There aren’t many ships that pass through that part of the world, so he must have gone to some trouble to send it. And I miss him.”
“Well,” I said. “Then we must go.”
He grinned and shoved off the post, coming towards me with nefarious purpose.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m interrupting your housework,” he said, licking his lips and giving me a leer that would have made a whore blush. And it did. Perhaps I wasn’t a whore, but I had many of the same interests and abilities.
“For what reason?” I asked, and then squeaked when he grabbed me around the waist and slid his hand down my trousers.
We left the dusting for another day.
Captain Martin’s frigate, a former navy vessel called the Arrow, was a welcomed utopia for me and for many others aboard.
Our small society was equitable—or as much as possible, in terms of race and religion—and nobody batted an eye at the ‘most unnatural and detestable sin’ of loving a member of your same sex.
The men of this crew had been privy to acts of horrible cruelty and injustice in their previous lives.
In contrast, what two (or more) men did with their bodies was less of an issue.
A life at sea was treacherous and a man could perish at any moment, so any attachments were considered precious and valid.
The crew knew about Captain Martin’s preference for other men in his bed—in fact, several had indulged him in the past—and nobody judged him for the practice.
He and I were treated as though we were married, and we might as well have been.
***
“Simon Bartholomew White.”
A faint whisper of my name.
“Simon White, Sorcerer of the Black Depths, Summoner of Storms and Lightning.”
The creature had soulless eyes and sea-green hair. It swirled in currents deep beneath the waves, drifting in and out of focus. An eerie, melodic voice rose like a surge of desire, and caught me up in a net of seduction, resonant and enchanting.
The thing beckoned me with an inky tentacle and a ghastly smile, then opened its eel-like mouth impossibly wide.
A slick indigo gullet ringed with pointed white teeth, the void of its maw expanded until the wide mouth covered first the creature’s entire face, and then its head.
The inviting song became one piercing note, paralyzing me so I couldn’t move as the monster lunged.
I surged to a sitting position, blinking in the moonlight, sweating and shaking.
“Holy hell and brimstone,” I panted, breathless with the fright of the dream creature, my eyes wide, my fingers clutching the sheet.
The strangely compelling song echoed in my head.
The Arrow rocked peacefully. The captain snored next to me.
The man could sleep through a barrage of cannon fire, once he’d gone down for the night.
Perhaps why there was always someone on duty outside his door.
His quarters were mine now, the bed too.
The entire ragtag crew knew we belonged to each other.
Since our new destination had been decided upon, I’d struggled with bizarre and unsettling dreams. Dinesh thought they were the result of the conflicting feelings I’d been experiencing about the times I’d used my magic to save him and the crew, whilst destroying our enemies.
Particularly because, in facilitating our early morning escape from Tortuga, I’d decimated the town.
So my magic hadn’t merely affected the men trying to destroy us, but scores of innocents as well.
He was likely correct, but the creature in my dreams loomed so vivid and real and disturbing, I couldn’t help but wonder if the frightening figment had some connection to the magical realm.
I knew this ability came to me from my mother, but she had died—been killed—before she could explain the bewitchment to me.
The first time the conjuring had passed through me in an uncontrolled way had been after her death, when I’d dispatched my father—her murderer—in a fiery blaze that had burned me down one side and left a terrible scar.
My mother’s friend, Carago, had taken me in, protected me, and parented me until his death two years ago, when I’d struck out for Port Royal in the hopes of gaining employment.
I’d been lucky enough to stumble upon Captain Martin and his crew in a tavern when I was at my lowest point and barely had anything left to live for.
He’d taken pity on me, and I’d been brought aboard the Arrow, where I’d found lust and love and a bizarre sort of family.
My scar had faded and disappeared in a matter of hours following one of my spell castings, or whatever it was that I did to summon the powers of wind and lightning to my bidding. Neither the captain nor I understood how, or why.
Guilt was a strange thing. At times I felt fine, and then something would remind me of what I’d done and a sort of grey shroud would descend over me for a few hours or occasionally a number of days.
But the captain’s care and interest would normally bring me out of my melancholy and if not that, my friends Domingo and Squid would cheer me.
Or sometimes, I only needed to sit by myself for a while, staring out to sea and remembering that the entire crew, and Captain Martin himself, had blood on their hands.
I wasn’t the only murderer on this ship.
However, because Captain Martin had a preference for diplomacy over bloodshed, I hadn’t actually seen a violent skirmish and dreaded when I might be witness to such an event.
I also wondered how my magic might be able to intervene without destroying us all.
I still wasn’t convinced the Arrow’s crew would be spared the violence of my powers.
What was the criteria for any particular man to escape the wrath of my magic? So far, the entire crew had been spared each time. The issue was that I didn’t know how much power I wielded, or how I wielded it.
There were members of the Arrow’s crew with whom I now had a somewhat strained relationship, as probably occurred with any group of people confined for weeks in close quarters. One such was Robert Hanes.
The man insisted on teasing me and threatening me with castration as a punishment for my sometimes ridiculous and peevish behaviour. Would he be vulnerable because I didn’t particularly like him? Even so, my disfavour didn’t mean I wanted him dead.
There had also been occasions when I’d wished harm on Domingo’s mouthy mynah, Esmaralda, but I would hate for anything to happen to her as Domingo cared for her a great deal.
The powers I had were mysterious, and I was only beginning to get a grasp on controlling them in the most rudimentary way. So my horrible nightmares may well have been caused by the anxiety that plagued me.
I carefully extricated myself from the bed without waking Dinesh.
The white shirt I slept in, normally billowy and soft, clung to me with moisture from my own sweat.
I shivered even though the night was still and warm, and wrapped myself in a knitted blanket whilst I moved to stand at the windows that looked out from the ship’s stern.
Moonlight glanced off the dark waves as the Arrow moved silently through the swells, her night crew on duty now that the day had gone, and no other ships in sight, at least from this angle.
The sentry would spot any other vessels in this kind of light and would let us know if we needed to prepare for a skirmish.
We’d been lucky, and the crew of the two merchantmen we’d encountered since escaping Cayonne had bowed to the excellent diplomacy of Captain Martin and the quartermaster, Hillier, and allowed us to take an amount of plunder in exchange for escaping with their lives.
This was the way in which Dinesh approached a life of piracy. I believed he was in the business less for the booty than for the opportunity for him and his men to live lives of their own choosing, rather than bowing to society’s strict demands and class systems.
The crew had great respect for Captain Martin, and an appreciation for a life outside of the bounds of politeness and conformity.
Some of them even shared our fondness for love between men, and others partook of the activity as a temporary measure when they couldn’t access members of the opposite sex.
Despite our disregard for the habits of polite society, the Arrow was not a decrepit pit of orgiastic delights.
Intimate behaviour was carried on behind closed doors, if possible, or in hidden corners, or on deck in the cover of darkness as quietly as was possible.
Men looked the other way and afforded privacy when they could.
Dinesh and I were the lucky ones, with two large rooms in which to practice our particular predilections.
So far, Dinesh’s benevolent rule had been free from challenge, and I hoped his tenure continued as such, since I benefited greatly from his position as Captain.
The crew was made up of men from a patchwork of nationalities, and some, like Dinesh himself, of a mixture of many.
They all had a singular desire—to escape the bonds of regular society and find a comfortable way to live outside such confines.
“Rooster?” Captain Martin’s sleep-warmed voice broke the silence of the dark room.
I turned to see him gazing at me from the pillows with a concerned look on his handsome face.
I’d discovered he had a mixture of East Indian, Scots, French, and British ancestry.
It gave him the look of someone who couldn’t be placed with any degree of certainty, and I knew he enjoyed that ambiguity. And he was simply a very handsome man.
“Nightmare,” I explained, pulling the blanket closer around me.
“Another one?” he asked.
I nodded.
“How bad?”
I shrugged. “The same.”
He frowned. “The sea creature?”
“Aye.”
I shivered at the memory of those spindly limbs, the indigo cavern of its gaping maw, the eyes. But, in truth, the being’s song frightened me most. The notes, the cadence, the emotive energy, pulled me in. I still heard the eerie melody in my head.
“Come back to bed, Rooster,” Dinesh murmured, flipping the sheet back for me to slide in beside him.
Which I did, leaving my knitted shroud on the chair.
My shirt had dried. We had been used to sleeping together in a state of nature, but an incident had occurred which reminded us that we were living in close quarters with a crew of other men.
The night sentry had dropped a candle and set a cloth alight, then shouted “FIRE” at the top of his lungs and woken the entire ship, whilst his watch-mate had quickly let go a stream of piss that extinguished the flame.
But not before all aboard had woken in a panic and Captain Martin and I had ended up on deck in nothing but our skins for all to see.
The crew, who shared hammocks in the hold, slept fully or partially clothed.
Once he’d ascertained the fire was out and become aware of the gazes of our more circumspect shipmates, Dinesh had taken a bow and laughed about our predicament. But we’d quickly returned to his rooms and dressed, red-faced and embarrassed to be caught out. And we’d slept in shirts ever since.
He gathered me to him under the linen sheets, and I melted into his embrace, smelling his sleep-warmed skin and savouring his particular scent. I nuzzled his neck and sighed.
“You need a shave, my darling,” he murmured. I heard the smile in his voice.
“Oh, I’m sorry, does the rough hair on my chin bother your highness?” I asked with mock sweetness.
He laughed. “Not at all. However it does tend to tickle my thighs.”
I choked on a laugh as he continued.
“Perhaps you’d let me shave you, if you’re too lazy to do the job yourself?”
I frowned. “Too lazy!” Then I pictured Dinesh leaning over and scraping my chin with a razor, and my frown vanished. “Wait, would you? Truly?”
“Well, not right now. I need two more hours of sleep, at least. And so do you.”
I yawned to prove his point. “Aye.”
“Shh, now. Go back to sleep, my love. I shall protect you from all the monsters that assail you.”