Chapter 17
Seventeen
Days later, long before first light, Everard sought answers simply, in the way Vitaliy seemed to always encourage from him: by asking.
They lay rocking in the massive cot, beneath the A-frame ripple of mosquito net: side-by-side, sticking, and sated.
Vitaliy had mentioned in his direct way that he did like to be awoken, impromptu, for sex—as long as it was assured he was truly wakeful before proceeding.
Everard had done this gladly, with enthusiasm, and there’d been a lot of proceeding, with gloriously no interruption at all.
Then he worked up his nerve and asked about Alarie.
Vitaliy said, “Louis-Michel wants me because he had me last year in Cartagena.”
“Oh?”
Vitaliy shifted onto his side and brushed his socked foot against Everard’s. Everard found Vitya’s preference for socks in the Caribbean heat mildly strange but also endearing. The wool tickled; the sheet woven betwixt their bare legs felt floaty and cool.
“Not like that,” Vitaliy said. “In his flotilla. He was commodore, at the siege. Do you know of it?”
He did. News of that conflict had reached Upper Canada, and he remembered it well. Spanish Royalists, intent on reconquest, had sieged Cartagena de Indias for months on end; reports were that a quarter, maybe even a third, of New Granada’s population had starved.
“The Sévère carried Cartagena’s marque at his request,” Vitya said.
“At his plead?” Everard jested.
Vitaliy laughed softly, without humor. “No.”
“Wasn’t it horridly brutal?” Everard asked. “Four, five months long?”
“One hundred six days. Eventually, we took as many as we could to Les Cayes, but… many died.”
“Damn the Spanish,” Everard said fervently. He paused for a brief, silent prayer for the dead. Vitaliy withdrew a foot and pushed the cot into a slow rock once more. The ship was forever in motion, but Vitaliy minded being still even more than Everard.
“Weren’t you privateer for Madison, you said?” Everard asked.
Vitaliy inhaled like he’d been drifting off. “Early on, yes. Not beyond 1815. Madison tore up every commission as soon as he could, to appease the treaty and your Crown.”
“Not my Crown,” Everard said unthinking, surprising himself.
Hadn’t he thought it many times without being able to say it? Why now?
“No?” Vitaliy’s surprise floated up, a query mark of curiosity. But he said nothing further.
Everard imagined his thoughts. Not his Crown? He, the twenty-year career man? That Crown wasn’t his?
Backtracking, regretting, Everard spoke hastily into the quiet anticipation.
“How many prizes did you take for Madison?”
“Twenty-two, not including the Sévère.”
Everard whistled. Prizes were sometimes valued at one hundred thousand American dollars. “Your riches aren’t just vanilla.”
“No.” The query mark was still there, faintly. “Do you mind?”
“That I’ve tied myself to a king’s ransom, you mean?
” Everard turned his head and kissed him, slid his tongue over the soft, welcoming fullness.
“It’s an unfortunate complication, but I’m accustoming myself.
” He reached, found Vitaliy already half-hard from the brief kiss.
“You could spill on my chest—make it more worthwhile.”
Vitaliy laughed, warmly this time. “I like that you mind it,” he said, low. “I like that my wealth gave you pause. I won’t keep it forever.”
“I know that.” Vitya would keep it only as long as he must, to accomplish what he needed to, in order to succeed. “You needn’t justify it to me, of all.”
“But I do,” Vitya insisted. “Because you care for it.” He levered himself up and over, straddling. “And I want you to like me. The man. Not the pirate.”
“Er… no question of that, I hope,” Everard said dazedly.
He stroked a thick thigh, flexed his fingers over fuzzed warmth.
“Surely by now my alignment has been made clear?” The gold ring glinted in the moonlight.
“I said yes. I want to stay. You gave me a printing press. I like everything about you, Vitya. I’m honored you want me by your side. ”
Vitya gave a happy hum. Then, slowly, deliberately, he stroked himself. Everard was pinned, laid flat, stunned speechless not by the weight or even the beauty of Vitya’s body over him, but by the solemn, deep earnestness in his expression, the burning affection in dark eyes.
Everard had for once said the right thing. It seemed Vitya, the man—the strictly egalitarian, majority-elected, reluctant captain—did in fact like to be worshipped. Adored.
Everard thought, Worship I shall. And so he put out his tongue, and his fingers, and pulled the man closer.
“C’m’ere,” he said. “I’ll show you how much care I have.”
Afterward, Vitya bent, breathless, and licked errant drops from Everard’s skin.
“D’you think we might’ve met on the Atlantic?” Everard mused, gasping.
“Mm.” Vitaliy kissed up to Everard’s collarbone, soft and sucking. “Maybe.” He veered down, and Everard seized with ticklishness. “No, I think not. I would’ve hoped not. I know of your record.”
“Do you? Have you been speaking to Preston? He inflates these things out of proportion, you know.”
“Hmm,” Vitya said. “No.”
“No?”
Vitaliy glanced up, then pointedly down. “He does not.”
Everard blinked. Laughed, a little disbelievingly.
Vitya slid further south, with purpose, and Everard wanted that—desperately—but his prick could wait. Probably should wait, in all honesty. He pulled at shoulders instead and said:
“No, I still do… No, hang on a moment; I do want to talk of Alarie.”
Vitya halted. “Now? You haven’t—”
“Yes, now, in earnest. Else it’ll never happen, and I let you do that. I can’t exactly bring it up abovedeck, can I?”
Vitaliy sighed but drew back.
Everard said, “Alarie went from being commodore of Cartagena… to governor of unknown Galveztown. Not a lateral move.”
“Mm.” Vitaliy flopped onto his side.
“You won’t help him take it? Galveztown?”
Vitaliy snorted. “I don’t need to. It is no more than a sandbar.” He paused. “He did ask, but I refused.”
Everard’s ears pricked up at this, crackling with focus. I refused.
That was, in his eyes, plenty reason for a man like Louis-Michel Alarie to hold a grudge.
Plenty motive to want a man dead. In a true navy, such a thing would have got a man executed for dereliction of duty.
And the refusal of Alarie’s authority, even an authority granted by a failed nation-state, would have stung.
But V. Varfolomey was a pirate-privateer, an outlaw, untethered to any jurisdiction at all. Surely, Alarie had gone into the relationship realising that.
If he still to this day wanted Vitaliy and his ships for his navy, why would he have had him captured, court-martialed, and hanged?
“You, Vitaliy, refused him, or did Varfolomey?”
Vitaliy hesitated longer than was usual. “It was… personal,” he said at last. “We had a falling-out. But Alarie’s sheltered slavers before. Varfolomey has excuse enough.”
“You fell out badly enough to leave his navy, refuse him aid?”
Vitaliy grunted. “Yes. Besides that, he wants muscle for his own gain and glory. Not as aid for México. He’s a filibuster; a power-seeker; a user. Something I didn’t realise upon first acquaintance with him in Cartagena.”
Gain and glory. This flew close enough to Everard’s own career heart that he felt defensive. “Well, gain and glory, achieving a greater good… they can go hand-in-hand. Yes?”
Vitaliy nodded. “Sometimes, they can,” he agreed. “But intention matters.”
Everard raised up on an elbow. “But how can one judge that of another?”
“I have seen what motivates him.”
“How can one know a man’s heart by observation?” Everard challenged. “There must be a reason Alarie defected from France, from his profession, from his family, and became a filibuster. Has he told you why? Has he a manifesto? Would you believe it if he had?”
Vitaliy was silent.
“Take yourself. Who knows what drives you but you? Or take Varfolomey, even. Surely, no one truly thinks he is motivated by altruism alone. It would be… unnatural. For any man, if not especially for a pirate.”
Vitaliy looked displeased. “Unnatural,” he said.
“Saintly is what I meant,” Everard said hastily. “Martyrlike. Unachievable legend. Heracles. Atlas.”
“That isn’t better than unnatural,” Vitaliy said slowly, and gave him a pointed look.
“It is still other. But I see what you mean. To be a pirate is to be a legend; a story; judged on surface.” He settled onto his back, put his head into the cradle of his left elbow, and wiggled wool-sheathed toes.
“That was intentional, and truthfully I don’t think they are comparable situations.
Varfolomey is necessarily exaggerated. No one expects a man with flaws and desires behind him. ”
Not until you told the world you wanted me, Everard thought.
With the space of Vitaliy’s body open, welcoming him again, Everard shifted closer and crowded in, so that their noses nearly touched.
“And a very good raised black he presents,” he whispered.
“But you said the pirate and the flesh-and-blood man are the same.” He tapped Vitaliy lightly on the chest. “So, what’s changed to impede that altruist, judgmental heart of yours? Why do you need Alarie?”
“I don’t.” Vitaliy turned his eyes downcast, swept them back up over Everard’s face, wide and earnest. “Varfolomey does.” He lowered his voice. “He wouldn’t oblige him more than outwardly but for Jean Lafitte.”
Everard drew back. “Lafitte is such a threat to you? Preston said he has only a few schooners, war hero or no.” He sneered. To think that such a man was dubbed a hero of anything.
“It’d be unwise to consider him not a threat. But lately, neither he nor his brother has been seen at Barataria or New Orleans. Not once o’er the past months, before even I was detained in Canada.”
“Mayhap he’s dead,” Everard said. “Caiman-eaten. Barataria’s a swamp, isn’t it?”
Vitaliy smiled. “No, I doubt he’s dead. I think he is too restless since his American pardon.”