Chapter 9 #2
Slowly, Vitaliy reached for the coffeepot and refilled Everard’s cup.
“You really don’t know who Varfolomey is,” he said.
“I don’t,” Everard admitted. “The Lakes Service is fairly isolated, not much in the way of word of mouth.”
“So, why not ask?”
“This again.” Everard laughed faintly. “Who the devil asks such a thing? What manner of pirate are you, now that I’ve realised you are one? What sort of criminal have I released unto the world?” He sat back. “To be honest, I haven’t contemplated the total reach of it yet.”
Vitaliy nodded. “You should have. But I’m not a slaver. I have never made a coin from the sale of another human, nor owned one.”
Everard was so relieved, he almost dropped the cup.
Vitaliy went on: “But when I can buy it, coffee is a commodity I transport.” He tapped the coffeepot. “This is Haitian, delivered not a month past.”
“Ha?ti, of the massacre?”
“Ha?ti, the revolutionary nation.” He frowned. “War is war. One doesn’t say America, of the massacres.”
“Doesn’t one? But I take your point. I’ll be honest—I don’t know much about American history, save that we lost. Twice.” He sipped. “Did you say when you can buy the coffee?”
“When,” Vitaliy emphasised. “It requires taking a loss.”
Everard, surprised into rudeness, almost swore. “Oh, come on.”
Vitaliy said nothing.
“America has drunk coffee since its inception,” Everard went on.
God save him, the stuff made him talk. “It’s as patriotic as Yankee Doodle.
I cannot think of a thing less likely to stand for freedom than slave-grown coffee, but there you have it; it isn’t tea.
With Madison’s bloody restrictions and tariffs, you an American, and what you can’t throw a stone in Boston without hitting a coffeehouse…
you can’t see a profit? Even when buying it? ”
Not stealing it? he left unsaid.
Vitaliy raised his eyebrows. “You are worried I am a slaving pirate, but have some objection to my taking a loss on what is usually a slave-grown crop?”
“No,” Everard said emphatically. “Quite the opposite. But—”
“Are you a man to care for profit, Everard?”
Everard paused.
“I— No. I mean, I’m a—I was captain of the Royal Navy, entitled to shares of my prizes above and beyond the salary, which is fairly significant…
why else should I have joined the service, pray?
Renown? The incredible rate of officer death?
Or maybe was it the impossible odds of promotion? Authority?”
Vitaliy leaned forward, palms flat on the table, his expression intense. “Yes, why else? Why are you a twenty-year Navy man, Everard?”
Why, indeed. “Well, primarily,” he snapped, “abject violence and criminality doesn’t particularly seem to affect me. There is that.”
Vitaliy laughed. “You mentioned. It is certainly a prerequisite. But a greedy man—a man concerned of the loss of all those things—renown, authority, salary”—he ticked off fingers—“would not have done what you did yesterday. Do not you agree?”
Everard harrumphed. “That was impulse, and I believed you relatively innocent. And how the devil do I find myself explaining economic motivation to a pirate, anyway?” he said, incredulous. “You aren’t known for taking losses, you realise.”
Contrary to popular belief, ships were not really profitable things of themselves, but giant, floating, wooden estates that threw money and labor and materials and men to the sea at a fairly predictable rate of loss. And pirating was a business like any other.
“So, why would y…Vee? For that matter, how could he do so, and stay afloat? What about tobacco? Sugar? If one objects to profit from one cash crop with questionable sourcing, why not all?” he demanded.
Vitaliy sat back. He looked as though he were trying not to smile. “Why not all?” he said.
Everard put his head in his hands and groaned. “You cannot be an actual pirate. I refuse to believe it. You must see it’s all very incongruous to expectation. Every part of this. Of you.”
“Oh, I do see.” Vitaliy hummed. “Every part?”
Everard flushed as Vitaliy laughed.
“Let us forget not the testimonial of a night shared in bed,” he said. “Or did that too not meet expectation somehow?”
Holy good God, he hadn’t even lowered his voice.
“Two nights!” Everard corrected, his face hot.
“And I had expectation of neither of them.” Then a chill came over him as something occurred, a motivation, perhaps, for Vitaliy to be so angry at him.
“I have no expectation of more, mind you,” he said hastily.
“I didn’t—I don’t want anything from you.
That wasn’t at all why I…” He trailed off.
Vitaliy gave him a long look.
“You told me why,” he said. “But we will see. You already know what it looks like to the outside.” Vitaliy made the two-finger salute known to all marines, as he had when they had first met. Blond hair on his hand and wrist shone curly and light-tipped in the sun.
We’ll see?
Everard cleared his throat. “What it looks like to the admiralty, you mean. They, too, think you bought me?”
Vitaliy nodded. “The admiralty and everyone else will think I bought you.” He frowned. “And I am not a man known for such things. Bribery.”
“You’re— He’s— You’re not?”
“In any incarnation, including that one,” he confirmed.
Everard was silent a moment. “But, Var…er, is his reputation not…”
“A slaughterer?” Vitaliy lounged back against the bench, arms spread, chest broadening. Out of the dust-mote line of sun, but still close.
Everard swallowed.
He was a liar.
He didn’t have expectations, but he did want.
Vitaliy watched him from under heavy eyelids. Patient. Waiting.
Everard took a long drink of coffee, not that he needed more.
He said, “Yes. What is bribery in the face of that? But I think you… you, the flesh-and-blood man in front of me, not the pirate… are not a slaughterer. Not really.”
“Do you.” Vitaliy blinked, slow. “The flesh-and-blood man and the pirate are the same.”
“It behooves a pirate to be known as vicious. You’ve only just got done telling me.”
“I won’t lie to you, if you ask.”
“No need,” Everard insisted, though saying it aloud did make him feel a little like he’d lost his mind.
As though it weren’t absurd to justify a man’s moral character to his face.
“You apparently aren’t concerned to make a profit with the most profitable commodity on Earth besides sugar.
And one cannot forget that just last night, you judged me harshly for murder.
Which, mind you, I was only party to, which happened for the sake of your own survival.
I almost wanted to turn straight around at your expression. ”
“I almost wanted you to,” Vitaliy agreed. “But I know that blame is with the lieutenant.”
Everard slapped the table, ignoring the swoop his stomach had done at that.
“There!” he said triumphantly. “A man can’t change so much in three years. Don’t you agree?”
Vitaliy pursed his lips. “I don’t. It is dependent on the years themselves, and which ones in the line they happen to be.”
“Well, of course—”
“What’s more,” Vitaliy leaned forward again, “you can’t expect the decisions of the future to produce the same results as the past.”
Everard scoffed. “This is personal conjecture based upon observations of the near and immediate past. Some hours, not a decade. And if you could only see the horror that is my unceasing memory, you’d find even those of three years ago to be extraordinarily accurate.”
“Observations.” Vitaliy’s satisfied look made his eyes glint. “Then it is belief. Not conjecture.”
“It is still conjecture, because obviously I have not observed you at every possible moment—” Everard narrowed his eyes. Another suspicion was rapidly forming. “Did Thom give you leave to borrow aught beyond my razor?”
Surely, that was absurd. Even if the man had, for some reason, plucked A Treatise of Human Nature out of Everard’s trunk, he probably wouldn’t have had the time to read it in the interim hours, much less form complicated opinions around the thing.
Astoundingly, it was Vitaliy who flushed then: pink splotches on flat cheekbones, rouge sparingly applied. Everard remembered that feature too well—remembered that it only appeared at the utmost.
“I’ve offended you at last,” Everard said quickly.
Why did he so relish prodding the man into strong emotion?
“I’m sorry; I don’t mind if you had. It was only a handful of books and letters, I don’t own much in the way of physical capital”—and didn’t really need to, with his memory—“but you were welcome to it, as Thom was doubtless aware.”
Vitaliy blinked. Opened his mouth. Closed it. Leaned even closer, and put a big hand over Everard’s left one.
Everard startled but then remembered their surroundings. He nonetheless felt very visible, exposed.
“Why don’t you but ask me,” Vitaliy murmured, “what kind of pirate I am?”
“Stubbornness?” Everard offered, weakly.
Vitaliy shook his head. His hand slid off Everard’s, and he stretched, arms high over his head. He yawned hugely. The blush had remained.
Everard did not, absolutely did not stare. There was that quotidian beauty again, fascinating him.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Vitaliy said at last.
“Oh, shall I?”
Vitaliy hummed. “If you wish it.”
Everard kept quiet. If Vitaliy was going to tease him with whatever proposition he hadn’t yet put forth…
Why not but ask?
He sighed, and gave in. “Have we finally come to ‘what after’?”
“Nearly. I am enjoying this too much.” Vitaliy drew his fingers over his smoothed hair. “You did not know who I am, so maybe you don’t understand. It has taken me years to get Vee’s reputation as it is. And now to the world it seems certain he has bribed a captain of the British Navy.”
“This is… worse… than general piracy? Slaughter and destruction?”
“Morally, no. Practically…” Vitaliy sighed. “…Yes, it is worse. I cannot have men—Englishmen—expecting bribery from Vee. I can’t afford it.”