Chapter 7
Seven
Everard almost wept to see the Jacob’s ladder hanging from the Brigitte’s elaborate gold-and-black quarter gallery.
There was being patronising, and there was consideration—this was the latter.
The deadrise on this lake-locked frigate was flatter than a sea-goer but still significant for a one-handed man to climb.
When he clambered over onto the quarterdeck and found it mostly deserted of the watch—the lone topman was faced deliberately away, bless D’Arcy—he let out a shaky, exhausted breath.
The frigate’s entrance to the captain’s quarters was, like the Netley, thankfully belowdecks; when Everard tried the latch, he found it unlocked.
Inside, D’Arcy wasn’t pacing, smoking, or even drinking.
He lounged in a plush red armchair in full undress, half-turned away from the window, his own hat and pistol in his lap, staring pensively at the cabin door with a finger over his lips.
His hair was re-greased, though still damp, and his expression looked far away and troubled.
And so despite the ladder, despite the man’s words, and despite his actions, Everard felt a shock of fear trickle down his neck. His skin went goose-pimple, all over, and not from the chill of being dripping wet.
It was a trap; D’Arcy hadn’t meant any of it; he would take Everard at gunpoint and arrest him, the Marines would walk in and take his half-naked, one-handed self down to the hold and—
He must have made some noise, for D’Arcy turned and gave Everard a familiar, wry smile.
“Sorry, Ev.” He scrubbed his face with his hands.
“I ought to be on the knife’s edge of awareness.
” His gaze darted quickly over Everard, up-down.
His eyes widened, and went elsewhere, everywhere else.
He stood, and cleared his throat. “No time to be woolgathering. Did Thom get off the dock aright?”
Everard’s face heated with shame. Of course D’Arcy hadn’t betrayed him. Hadn’t he only just given his pledge? “He did. Er—thank you for the ladder.”
D’Arcy waved this off, still not meeting his eyes.
The problem was D’Arcy tended to say things he didn’t mean, and sometimes those things were hard to distinguish. Three years out of touch—rhetorically and literally—and Everard’s directional instincts regarding the man were no longer as unerring as they used to be.
Everard stood, straight and awkward, dripping blue-green Lake Ontario onto the rug.
D’Arcy pulled down the shutter of the lamplit window, latched it. He turned down the lamp, blew it out, and brushed off his palms. He turned round, a strange expression on his face, his glance somewhere around Everard’s wet knees.
“You’re never nervy about this?” Everard said, bewildered. “Or is it the damned hand?”
“What?” D’Arcy’s glance flew up, finally, and he laugh-groaned, squeezing his eyes shut.
“No. I’m sorry. I’m trying not to…” He groaned again, and spun and bent, reaching for something laid over the chair.
“Put this on, for God’s sake,” he demanded, thrusting forth the blue wool—his old lieutenant’s coat? “Before I disgrace myself utterly.”
Oh. “Really?” Everard bit his lip and took the coat in his arm. “You should be used to seeing men of all sorts, shirtless and in wet breeches,” he admonished. “Or no?”
D’Arcy muttered something and threw him a towel.
“Would you mind—a shirt?” Everard said innocently, toweling his hair.
Linen came flying, sheetlike and billowing. Everard caught it and tugged it over his head.
“This’ll drown me,” he remarked of the coat as he shrugged it on. “Y mira. I was right.” He flapped his arms, demonstrating the slumping epaulettes. “Why haven’t you sold the thing?”
He knew why. Independently wealthy, D’Arcy didn’t have a need to sell his expensive uniforms to pay for the next iteration.
“Reasons of sentiment.”
“Hmm. No hat, I suppose.”
“No, sir. You’ll have to make do.”
There came a small groan from the berth—which, Everard belatedly realised, had its curtains tied firmly shut.
“What the devil?”
D’Arcy shrugged reluctantly, grimacing. “Johnson. Told you he had my cabin, didn’t I?”
“Oh, dear God. The port admiral? Have you lost your mind?” Everard pulled the curtain tie, yanked them open; there was Admiral Johnson, hog-tied in rope and irons and gagged with a wooden bit. He looked to be semiconscious.
Everard put a hand to his stomach; all the air had gone out of his lungs. To think that he’d thought— Well.
“Were your senses actually bashed out of you? You’re the son of an earl! You could have got out of this”—this being losing a prisoner under his watch—“with a shrug and a by-your-leave!”
“If I wanted, maybe. That, and a fair amount of coin,” D’Arcy agreed. His expression darkened. “He called you Blackhand.”
Everard shut the curtains, ignoring the squeezing in his chest.
“Sant Jesús. Let’s go.”
At the door to the pine-bound sickbay—temporarily doubling as a prison hold—there were two admiralty-supplied marines posted watch.
Everard gave D’Arcy (and his pistol, and garrote, and God knew what other weapons he had on his person) an uneasy glance.
The plan was to talk themselves out of this particular problem, not knock heads; Everard’s borrowed uniform was to that end. But would D’Arcy follow it?
Three in the morning, a ridiculous request, and nothing more than their rank to carry them through it. But D’Arcy had already overtaken and held hostage an admiral—and murdered a man, a voice whispered—so what were two lowly marines?
“Hullo, privates,” D’Arcy greeted. “How is the pirate this fair morning?”
The leftmost marine blinked in surprise as both saluted. He was the same sunburnt young man who had been gentle with Vitaliy’s gag yesterday. Everard wondered if he had been posted to Vitaliy’s guard for the duration, and if Vitaliy had somehow, in that short time, turned the man sympathetic.
If he had, Everard doubted it’d been intentional.
“Quiet tonight, sirs,” the marine replied. He was exceptionally soft-spoken, like a kind priest. “’Tisn’t morning already?” he asked, and eyed the moonlight shining into the hold around the mainmast.
Shite. This one wasn’t having it.
D’Arcy surged forward. “Good to hear. Excuse me, boys.” He made as though to open the sickbay door—
—only to be barred by two crossed bayonets.
“I say, let me through.” D’Arcy gave a feigned, gentleman-weak struggle.
“Begging your pardon, cap’n,” the right marine said. “We’re told no visitors, no entrance. Special circumstance.”
D’Arcy went still. “Special circumstance is why I’m here,” he insisted calmly.
A distinctly protective gleam came into the left marine’s eyes. “It’s for his sake as well as yours, captain.” He gripped his gun more firmly. The bayonet end looked well sharpened, though he must have known his range of motion would be challenged, there in the low hold.
D’Arcy backed up a step—not quite far enough for the bayonet’s use. “Lord above, an honest marine,” he muttered, intentionally loud. “All for a sodomite.”
It had the desired effect. The left marine’s stance went even stiffer, and he paled.
“Sirs, I am sorry.” Soft, but firm. “But there will be no crimes done here tonight, no matter the prisoner’s charges.”
Brave lad. If Everard weren’t so desperate to get Vitaliy free, he’d hug him.
Instead, he watched the right marine, whose blank expression had faltered into a frown. He apparently did not wholly agree with his contemporary.
Everard shifted his weight to his right foot, coughed.
D’Arcy nodded in response. He’d seen it too.
Change of plans.
D’Arcy lunged. His hands flew; he gripped the left marine’s bayonet gun and thrust it—chunk—deep into the deck above their heads; he pushed the freckled redcoat back with one arm. The young man was sent stumbling, straight into Everard, who steadied him with a tight hold.
“Don’t move, Private,” he warned. He was obeyed.
Meanwhile, the right marine stood no chance. D’Arcy had drawn his pistol in the same moment he’d pushed the younger out of harm’s way. Everard wondered, for a moment—
The marine fell to his knees, dropping the gun clattering onto pitch-and-plank, and his hands went up, far above his head.
“No, wait, wait. Do what you want, rape him bloody, I won’t hear nothing.” He spat on the floor. “I’d’a let ten of you through if it wasn’t for Saint Cunt over h—”
Crack. Blood and brain and black tufts of feathered, high-top bicorne went flying; the man toppled, missing fully half his skull.
The marine in Everard’s arms jerked and whimpered. Everard knew him no less brave for it. He had winced badly himself, and his ears rang, pulsing with imagined, repetitive reverb from the shot.
“God, Preston.”
“Prick,” D’Arcy said calmly. He leaned to pluck the keyring from the dead man’s belt, tossed it to Everard. “Trade you.”
“Er… indeed. He won’t hurt you,” Everard added to the marine. Though really it was useless reassurance, because who could say? He’d just point-blank shot a man of their own, a Royal Marine, for no cause—well, hardly any cause—at all.
He nudged the stunned man forward. D’Arcy put a hand on the man’s shoulder and spoke to him, hopefully repeating that he would not, in fact, shoot him in turn.
It rang through his head like the gunshot’s echo: Is this the true Preston D’Arcy, released from all consequence?
Everard worked the key in the door quickly; they had very little time now. Whatever Marines were still upon the Brigitte would soon come running.
“God damn it.” His hands were shaking. He shoved the door open with a kick, he was so desperate with nerves.
Who have I released upon the world?
The moonlight came through the darkness of the sickbay to reveal Vitaliy crouched against the curve of the hull, arms shackled to two thick frames, ankles wrapped together with fetters. No hood, no gag, but—
Who will I release upon the world?
Vitaliy raised his head. He offered no greeting, only a cool, blue, heavy-lidded gaze that was harsh and judging, disapproving and… damning.
Everard swallowed. He was never, ever sick aboard a ship.
“Er… we should… I’ll… um.” He yanked the little key and its lanyard out of his shirt and over his head, and bent to unlock the fetters. Those first, so he wouldn’t have to look Vitaliy in the face again just yet.
Vitaliy didn’t move as he was freed. Didn’t speak. There was only the heavy clink of shackles falling away, and D’Arcy’s murmuring from beyond the door, underlaying the unmistakable sound of retching. The young marine, no doubt.
The right wrist shackle was proving stubborn; Everard thought he would have to bash it with something to get it to separate.
And again Vitaliy didn’t so much as flinch as his arm was manipulated, puppetlike, as Everard slammed the cuff again and again against the frames of the hull—not until he slashed the skin between the two knuckles of his own left hand in the process.
“Shite-fucking-Christ!”
Then Vitaliy, expressionless, tensed his arm and did it himself, dealing the shackle’s killing blow with a powerful thwack.
Everard sucked at the cut to draw a bit of blood, and hopefully the chance of lockjaw, out of him. He spat, and looked up to find Vitaliy staring, his stern brow slightly furrowed.
“York,” Everard said, “shortly after we met.”
Vitaliy opened his mouth—
D’Arcy stuck his head into the sickbay. “Best go, Ev.”
Beyond the dead man was the mainmast hatch, rope handholds and stair rises unfortunately splattered in gore. But it was the closest exit. Everard ran up, lips pressed tight, trusting Vitaliy to follow; he did.
It wasn’t until they reached the starboard side quarter railing and Everard had hauled himself half over that he realised: the freckled marine was still with them, and D’Arcy had paused, bent forehead-to-forehead with the redhead redcoat, whispering frantic and quick and pleading.
“Uh.” Everard had only a moment for a stunned pause. Belowdecks, there came heavy, running boots from the direction of the forecastle. Everard turned to ask Vitaliy could he swim—
—just as the man launched from the rail in an impressive dive.
Everard followed. When he surfaced, he heard two heavy splashes to his left, along with the soft, shocked gasp-coughs of a man who really didn’t know how to swim, and who was being hauled forward despite it. He hoped to hell D’Arcy knew what he was about.
The marines lined up along the quarterdeck, guns straight and at attention; the sergeant-at-arms began the high yip of firing cadence.
“Make—aim! Set—”
They swam.