Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
WENDY
T he next morning, it’s Charlie who gets stuck babysitting me.
She’d made it known that she was less than thrilled about the situation, reminding Astor she was hired on to be a gunner, not to be the caretaker of a dust addict—“No offense,” she’d added. Then she’d taken me above deck to the healer’s quarters and taken to working on my swollen and bruised wrist.
From the window I can see the coastal city of Morella, where we’ve docked to replenish supplies and have repairs made. According to Charlie, Astor is rather sour about the estimate the craftsmen provided. Apparently, the repairs could take a few weeks. As I watch the dock workers bustle about, my legs ache for solid ground. Not that I’ll be getting that anytime soon.
“I see your first training session didn’t turn out too badly,” Charlie says as she dips a cloth into the tip of a bottle of clear liquid and flips it over. “On my first day, I had a pair of bruised ribs and black eyes to match.”
I blink, confused. “Training?”
She furrows her brow, revealing a tiny dimple there. “Maddox said it was your idea to join the Carlisle job. It was your idea, wasn’t it?”
I blink. “Well, yes. But no one said anything about fighting.”
She cocks an angled brow at me. “You didn’t think you could just join a band of privateers without learning to throw a punch, did you?”
I’m about to admit that’s exactly what I thought, but the more times I rehearse it in my mind, the more stupid it sounds. It dawns on me that I had technically told the captain that I was happy to train for the mission. What I’d meant as an invitation to train me in the art of stealth, he’d taken as a request for a lesson in combat. I glance down at the galley, where the sailors are bustling about the deck. “I didn’t realize that’s what he was doing.”
Charlie’s soft smile is the type that saves face, though I’m not sure if it’s for me or Astor. “Not the best communicator, is he?”
“You’d think with how he always manages to find the perfect chink to lodge his insults, he could learn,” I say, dryly.
“So what?” She presses the damp cloth to my bruised wrist. It hisses when it hits the wound, burning worse than the salt air around us, but already the purple blotches are fading to a sickly yellow. “Did he just attack you out of nowhere?”
I shake my head, but Charlie levels me a scolding glare—the type that’s difficult to take seriously on her sweet face—since the movement messes with her ability to tend to my wound. “No, he pushed me. Well, he grabbed my wrist, and I told him it hurt, so he told me to fight back.”
“And did you fight back?”
“Well, no, but…”
Charlie’s staring at me like I just informed her I’d never made the connection between the rumbling in my stomach and hunger.
I sigh. Her unspoken assessment is probably accurate. “Where I come from, men don’t shove women to the ground. Well, they’re not supposed to, at least.”
Charlie chuckles in a tone that I would classify as moderate condescension. “Yeah, well, where I’m from, women aren’t supposed to be gunners, but I had to get over that one when I decided I wanted to be a privateer.”
“I wouldn’t say I want to be a privateer,” I say, holding the rag to my wrist at Charlie’s gesture. It’s frigid, like it’s been dipped in ice.
“Just…just hit him real good next time. In the eye. Or knee him in the groin,” she says, the cognitive dissonance of hearing such a feminine voice talk about a man’s groin banging against my skull as she speaks. “The men’ll say that’s cheating, but they don’t seem to consider being naturally stronger cheating, so I wouldn’t let it dissuade you.”
My mother’s training on what’s appropriate, and more importantly, not appropriate to speak of, kicks in, so I ask, “You said where you come from, women aren’t supposed to be gunners. Are you from Estelle too?”
Charlie shakes her head. “No. I’m from Xhana.” She pats me on the knee. “I grew up as an aristocrat like you, believe it or not. Except my father got into money trouble. Racked up his debts with a nasty band of pirates, so they slaughtered my family when he wouldn’t pay. I happened to be courting a nobleman at the time, so I wasn’t at the estate when it happened. Needless to say, he ended our courtship when he discovered the pirates had burned our estate down, as well as my father’s faerie dust mills.”
Faerie dust mills? Interesting. If that’s the case, Charlie is underselling just how wealthy her family was. “Pirates killed your family…so you became one?”
“Well, I always thought being a whore sounded unpleasant, don’t you agree? All those nasty men’s hands all over you.” She speaks of it as if she’s discussing which brew to serve during afternoon tea, but there’s a subtle quiver to her tone, a tell in the way her left eyelid twitches. My mind flashes back to the parlor, and all I can do is nod gently as she continues. “Besides, we’re not pirates. Not really. Captain Astor’s a privateer. I know what you’re thinking—but he really is picky about the assignments he takes. He doesn’t kill innocents.”
“Except for my parents. And the guests at my masquerade,” I say.
Charlie peers at me apologetically and bites her lip.
“How was that?” I ask, straightening my spine. Charlie sits cross-legged across from me on my bed. Someone moved it into her room for me now that Astor has taken his bedroom back and Charlie has been temporarily demoted to my chaperone. Parchment with Charlie’s bubbly script is laid out between us across the bed, overflowing with notes on Cressida Rivers, the woman I’m planning on impersonating.
Charlie blinks, her smile somehow both genuine and forced. Apparently, my performance was awful enough that even Charlie is having difficulty coming up with something complimentary to say. “You’ve got it all memorized perfectly. I saw you—you didn’t peek once.”
“Well, yes, but how did I do?” I ask. We’ve just spent the past half hour role-playing a conversation between Lady Carlisle and me, Charlie playing the secret-trader as I answered her questions. Again, it takes a moment for Charlie to produce a response, her supportive smile unwavering.
I groan, slinking into the mound of pillows behind me. “I’m going to get us killed, aren’t I?”
“Not necessarily,” says Charlie. “Maybe the Carlisles aren’t familiar with Delphian cadence and will assume it’s a difference in dialect.”
I cut my eyes across to her. “Assume what’s a difference in dialect?”
“Wendy, you sound like you’re reciting your own ransom while a knife’s being held to your throat,” Charlie says, then quickly adds, “but we’ve still got plenty of time to work on it.”
It’s probably not worth mentioning that we’ve been working on this for two weeks already, and I still can’t seem to get the hang of it. Memorization isn’t the problem—I had all the facts of Cressida River’s life branded into my memory by the end of the first day. It’s pretending to be Cressida Rivers that I can’t quite seem to get a grasp on.
“You’re just stiff, is all,” says Charlie. “Just, you know, loosen up a little.” She rolls her shoulders as if that’s all it will take to unwind fifteen years of constantly anticipating impending doom.
Because my eyes are beginning to cross from sleep deprivation, I fix my attention on a knot in the beam above us. “This is useless. I’m not quick-witted enough. I can hardly get the right words out when I’m being myself. Much less when I’m trying to be someone else. I’m not going to be able to come up with answers fast enough to be convincing.” I drag my palms over my face as I groan, my chest wound tight with frustration.
Charlie shifts on the creaking bed and exhales slowly before clapping her palms on her knees. “Okay, well, maybe we just need to think about this differently. Take a different approach. You said your parents trained you to charm suitors, didn’t they? Just think of the Carlisles as potential suitors.”
I peek through my fingertips at Charlie, who actually has the audacity to look hopeful, then roll myself upright, extending my fingertips in front of me on the bed as I stretch out my back, sore from cowering over the notes on my alias.
“That’s different,” I say. “When I was chasing a husband, it’s not as if I was having to pretend to be anyone else.”
Charlie raises a skeptical brow. “You weren’t?”
I open my mouth, but the words get stuck in my throat, like a shard of chicken bone lodged at the base of my tongue.
But then an idea flutters across my mind, wistful and wild and a smidge mad. Perhaps it’s just the late night and utter despair. But it feels right. More right than forcing facts out of my mouth like we’ve been attempting for the past several hours. “Charlie,” I ask, running my fingers over the pages of notes on Cressida Rivers, “does the captain have one of these for the Carlisles?”
While the stack of notes on the Carlisles at first appears daunting due to the weighty thud it makes when Charlie dumps it on the bed, I find these facts exceedingly easier to memorize than the notes on Cressida Rivers.
It helps that the Carlisles are actually interesting.
What’s easier to remember? That Arthur Carlisle once hid in the pit of an outhouse for three days because he’d gotten a tip that rival gang lords were planning to collude there? Or that Cressida Rivers’ favorite flower is a lilac?
Charlie keeps me company into the wee hours of the night, her enthusiasm for our task rekindled. Admittedly, I can’t tell if it’s because the Carlisles are so intriguing or because she no longer secretly considers working with me a lost cause. If I were to ask, she’d tell me it was the Carlisles, regardless.
We’re about to practice another conversation between Arthur Carlisle and Cressida Rivers when there’s a knock at the door. Charlie and I glance at one another, confused.
A moment later, Captain Astor enters the room.
“Everything alright?” Charlie asks.
Captain Astor wrinkles his brow. “Why do you ask?”
Charlie and I exchange a glance. “You don’t often visit in the middle of the night,” she says.
Captain Astor blinks, like the passing of time has taken him by surprise. Snuck up on him like an undesirable task. “I’ve been poring over the blueprints of the Carlisles’ manor. Was about to transition to freshening up on the target when I realized my intel had gone missing.” He stares pointedly at the stacks of parchment piled on the bed.
“It was Wendy’s idea,” says Charlie, who I at first assume is abandoning me to the captain’s wrath, until she adds, “She’s rather brilliant, you know.”
Charlie fixes the captain with a stare that is somehow both pointed and pleasant.
“I told you to have her memorize the fact sheet on Cortland and Cressida Rivers,” says Astor, not bothering to hide his annoyance given the way his boot is tapping against the floor.
Before Charlie can defend me, I spout, “I already did.”
Astor flicks his hardened gaze toward me. “How Cressida and Cortland met.” I might break into hives for how he doesn’t even bother to raise his pitch at the end and make it a question.
“She was his tailor,” I answer all the same.
“Her parents’ names.”
“Fredrick and Opal.”
“How she broke her arm as a child.”
“She fell out of a tree.”
“Type of tree.”
“Pear.”
“Cressida’s puppy’s name.”
I offer him a knowing look. “Cressida hates animals. She made her husband donate his Labrador to an orphanage when they wed.” Pleased with myself would be an understatement for my reaction when the captain’s scowl deepens. “You know, one would think you would want me to succeed, considering we’re working together.”
Charlie’s head has been oscillating between the two of us the entire time. She yawns, then slides her hands from her hips to her knees before bouncing off the bed and whipping her shawl around her shoulders.
“Where are you going?” asks Astor.
“Somewhere that’s not within clawing distance of the two of you,” she says cheerily, before hurrying out the door, leaving me alone with the captain.
“Why’d you convince Charlie to steal the Carlisle files?” are the first words out of his mouth.
And just like that, I’m riled. Though I shouldn’t be surprised given my company. “You don’t get to do that,” I say.
“What do I not get to do?”
“Tell me I’m too witless to come up with original thought, then accuse me of scheming.”
For once, the captain appears speechless. He crosses his arms, tracing his thumb up the ridge of his forearm.
But I’m not done. “Empty-headed or conniving?”
“Pardon?”
“You have to pick between the two,” I say.
“Fine,” says the captain, his jaw clicking. “I pick conniving.”
When my mouth seeks to curve, his gaze lingers there. “Why do you look so pleased?”
I purse my lips and bite down on my tongue, trying and failing to hold back my response. “Maybe that’s the one I was hoping you’d pick.”
Unamused, the captain sweeps me up and down with his gaze. “Are you prepared for tomorrow?”
“I already told you I have all the details memorized,” I say.
“Yes, but can you play the part?”
I stare at Cressida Rivers’ fact sheet and trace Charlie’s handwriting with my fingertips, if only to give me somewhere to look other than the captain.
When I don’t answer, the captain sighs. While his voice is twinged with impatience, it’s surprisingly not unkind. “Can you play Cressida Rivers, or do I need to start prepping Charlie to do it?”
“I’ll be fine,” I say.
“Show me.”
My heart pounds in my chest. I’d rather not put on a performance for the captain, but he’s not exactly a person worth arguing with once he sets his mind to something.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll let you lead.”
Something flickers in his eyes. “You’ll let me?”
I say nothing, simply wait.
He watches me carefully, then pulls up a stool and crosses his legs like he’s a posh aristocrat. I’m almost tempted to laugh. Almost.
“Your wife is lovely, Rivers. Had I known how beautiful Delphian women were, I might have spent more time there myself.”
I fight the blush rising to my cheeks and allow a sly smile to curve on my lips. “I’m Kruschian. Though I’m sure Lady Carlisle would prefer you visit neither.”
Whether Astor is pleased that I didn’t fall for his trap, I can’t tell from his cool expression. “Ah, that’s right. Yet you’ve lived in Delphi most of your life, correct? Tell me about Delphi then. I hear the countryside is lovely in the spring.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Astor raises a brow. “You’re not fond of traveling?”
“This lifestyle of doing what I want when I want is new to me, I’m afraid. Cost of living might be of little consequence to the nobility, but to the working class, it’s everything.”
“Ah.” He turns toward my pillow, our stand-in for Cortland Rivers, with a condescending smile. “Snagged yourself a working-class wife. How quaint.”
My grin is calculated, plastered to my face but still controlled. A challenge. “Quaint. That’s what my clients all thought as they blabbed their secrets to their friends, forgetting I was there at their feet, measuring them up.”
Astor’s imperceptible facade cracks, just slightly. It’s barely there, in the twitch of his lip on the right. “And here I was, thinking I was the one dealing in secrets.”
“Yes, and you’ve made yourself a reputation for that, haven’t you? Me? I’m just a…what was it? Ah, quaint tailor.”
I catch Astor in his stare, refusing to break first, even as I note his chest rising and falling underneath his white linen shirt.
“Where did you learn to do that?” His question sounds more like a demand.
I allow the unnatural air of confidence to drain from me, let my shoulders droop into a more comfortable position. “Do what?”
“You know.”
My knees find my chest, and I hug them into myself, suddenly embarrassed by my display, though I can’t explain why. There’s something about letting Astor see how easily I can let myself be molded that makes me feel exposed. Naked except for a painted mask. Now that I’m myself again, it takes me a moment to search for the words, but when I find them, they come out easily. “I don’t know how to be a specific person. But what I do know is how to be whoever the person sitting across from me wants me to be.” I absentmindedly stroke the Mating Mark on my cheek. “At least for a while, that is.”
Astor leans forward, his stool balancing on the front two legs. “And what if the person sitting across from you wants Wendy Darling? Could you be her?”
His green eyes pin me with such ferocity, my breath catches, fog flooding my mind. “I’m afraid I’d need more information on who’s asking,” is all I manage to choke out.
Satisfied with addling me, Astor pulls his coin out of his pocket and taps it against his knee. “That’s why you wanted the Carlisle notes. So you can figure out how to be whatever either of them wants.”
I nod.
“Clever, but it won’t work.”
I recoil, offended. “What makes you say that?”
“Because the only woman in the room that Carlisle wishes to be strong-minded and willful is his wife, and that’s only so she can bully information out of their guests.”
“I know that,” I say, tapping on the notes beside me.
“Considering that brazen performance of yours, clearly, you don’t,” Astor says, rising from his stool and stretching out his legs.
There’s a moment where I hesitate, where I almost let him leave without me defending myself. When I speak, my voice is hardly louder than a whisper, but I say it all the same. “That version of Cressida wasn’t for Carlisle.”
Astor pretends not to hear me, but I don’t miss the way his hand flinches on the way out.