Chapter 19 #2
“Keep me advised of our speed,” Vitaliy said to León. “I want it taken every five minutes.” He glanced over. “Input, matelot?”
“Not at all,” Everard said politely, though the question, really, was why Vitaliy wanted the Sévère to do these things. “Where d’you want the bloody cask of explosives?”
“In a moment. Come behind the staysail, so they don’t spy us by chance.” There, he stepped in a circle, peering around sentry-like. “Where is the lieutenant? From you, he is never very…”
D’Arcy appeared: shirtsleeves, frilled; sailor’s trousers, plain; mysteriously no gun bandolier.
He’d been amidships, hauling lines. “Why the devil’ve we put up the frigging course…
Holy gad, is that a powder keg?” His hand jerked forward, as though given the chance, he would snatch the keg and throw it over the side.
Everard sympathised. His whole person crawled with unease.
“Lieutenant,” Vitaliy said, not unironically. D’Arcy swiveled his attention and bowed. “Are you as good a shot as you say, or is it boasting?”
Everard said, “He’s actually quite deadly—”
“One-inch grouping at twenty-five yards, unrifled.” D’Arcy narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
“And with a shotgun?”
He dimpled. “Disallowed shooting in six shires, outside of competition. Ev”—he twitched his fingers for the keg—“give that here.”
“I am perfectly fine, thank you,” Everard said coolly.
Vitaliy was intent. “What about a harpoon gun?”
“Oooh,” D’Arcy said, light in his eyes. “Never that. Are you offering? What’s the calibre of such a thing?”
“Four-bore. Can you shoot it from the larboard gallery?”
D’Arcy bounced on his heels and whistled. “Four-bore. Can I? Absolutely. Spring-loaded or powder?” His glance flicked to the keg. “Silly question?”
The San Telmo issued another, not-so-distant warning shot. Vitaliy frowned and gestured them into the greatcabin.
They filed through, Everard leading, D’Arcy following, Vitaliy bolting the door behind—which he’d never done before, even at intimate moments.
Inside, it was semi-dark; there were no lanterns and no candles lit.
Only six-pane-divided sun rays slanted in at midday vertical.
On the white rafters above, the reflection off the sea shimmered and wove.
The doublewide cot was hauled up tight to the ceiling, out of the way of the run-out guns.
Everard set the keg down beside the desk, feeling suddenly rather queer. It took him a moment to pin down the sentiments, floating end-over-end like a handkerchief in the wind: regret, nostalgia, worry, fear.
Vitya bent his head to his hack watch once more, nodded to himself.
Everard hoped he knew what he was doing.
That whatever it was would succeed. Because at some point in the past month, this ship, this cabin, had become home.
Now he imagined it splintered, shot through, glass and lead blown out and the spray let in; his throat closed up in tight knots, pushing against his breathing, strangling it.
He wanted to stomp like a child and scream and demand why weren’t they to flee with the wind, when there was so much at stake—
“Oh, look at him,” D’Arcy murmured.
Propped against the panelling of the larboard gallery, between two open windows, was indeed a massive shotgun with a harpoon spear sticking out of the barrel, gleaming steel. The harpoon trailed a lead, the end of which was connected to a—
Everard inhaled. “Floating torpedoes. Dear God.”
Vitaliy’s retrieved chest held several more harpoons, all with loops at the end. A tidy stack of torpedo shells lay open-face beneath, ready to be filled.
Everard was at a loss. “You said aim high…”
D’Arcy peered through the open window, unaffected by violence as usual, only intrigued. “How many did you put already?”
“Three,” Vitaliy said, and jerked his chin towards a deskbound map. Everard leaned over carefully; he felt stiff and weak at the same time.
There on the grid were three neatly penciled x-coordinates, exactly along the spiked line of the Sévère’s recent, perfect tack.
She had to move laterally or else cross her own line of traps—traps her own captain had set.
Everard cursed. “You had these—these torpedoes—in here with us the whole time.” With us, as we slept, as we lay awake, as we fucked.
Vitaliy glanced up quick, then down, and nodded, eyes on his task.
Black powder hissed as it fell from the keg; he was already filling the war weapons, setting some kind of clockwork mechanism within, placing careful wicks, sealing them tight.
There was precisely enough powder in the keg for all, which must have been intentional.
Everard was for once glad of Gulf humidity.
He shook his head. “This is madness. You could sink us as easily as any other, Vitya, if the wind so much as…”
“Mathematically—if I have calculated it correctly—we should not ever get close.” If the wind holds, Vitaliy didn’t say.
If our movement stays on trajectory. “They’re on timers, all.
If the San Telmo chases us at the speed she was, and follows our dead reckon, the floating leads will drag her hull and stick there. A little while after…”
“They’ll blow holes to either side of her hull.”
“Mm.”
“Genius,” D’Arcy said. He had loaded the harpoon gun monstrosity and was lifting it, settling it against his shoulder, sighting it. “Wind is southeast-by-east… how many points into it, Vee?”
“Two, for compensation,” Vitaliy responded. “East by south.”
D’Arcy adjusted his broad stance. Everard’s heart clutched. I wish Vitaliy had picked anyone else for this, he thought. Anyone else.
Absurd. He’d seen Preston D’Arcy covered head-to-toe in blood, grease, mud, sick, seawater; a mix of all of these.
Had seen him injured, grinning, battle-mad, thrilled even as they’d failed and been defeated and the ship around them flared with sinking flame.
Had seen his face, calm and pale as he twisted his belt round Everard’s left wrist, held the smashed hand there in his lap.
Everard set his jaw. “Vitya. You don’t know there aren’t captives on that ship.”
“No.” Vitaliy stood, strode to the companionway, wrenched open the greatcabin door. “I don’t know. Starboard-aft, return two shots to leeward!” he bellowed. It was repeated—Romilly René—and the scrape of two gunsleds was heard, very close.
Covering fire—just as Everard’s suppressing cadence had been. Distraction from the true task. He felt sick.
Carefully, Vitya tied one torpedo to the harpoon’s lead and, leaning out the window, let it hang from his hand, over the water. With the other hand he retrieved his pocket watch.
“I want them in our windward wake, lieutenant.”
“Right-ho.”
Vitaliy studied the watch. D’Arcy waited, stock to shoulder, curls ruffling in the breeze. On deck, the cannons went off.
“Fire,” Vitaliy rasped.
The flint came down. Vitaliy let go the torpedo barely in time. The shot seemed as loud as the cannons; the recoil made D’Arcy almost stagger on his feet, and Vitaliy put up a steadying hand to his back.
The harpoon sang, the torpedo catapulted. Both splashed down and became invisible amid the foam. Everard wondered how Vitaliy had managed the others alone.
“Damn!” D’Arcy rested the stock on his thigh and circled his arm around. He whistled again. “Four-bore, I’ll say, I think my shoulder’s paste. Are there many more?” he asked ruefully.
“Five,” Vitaliy said. “We’ll switch off, you and I. The interval is seven and one-half minutes.”
A waiting constellation of unseen death, destruction. Everard palmed his face in despair.
“Vitya…”
Vitaliy picked up another torpedo. He said fiercely, “You’re right.
I don’t know there aren’t lives held there against their will.
I can’t know that. But as best as I can tell, she’s an anti-revolutionary, a man-o’-war, built to purpose.
Not a merchantman, not a slaver. Most likely, she’s full of soldiers. Fighting men. Mercenaries.”
“Even so—”
“And they will chase us. They will broadside us. They will board us. They will steal Ha?ti’s weaponry, the supplies for Montserrat, our cannon, our gunpowder, our shot.
They will sink us to every man. No survivors, because they can.
And then—then,” Vitaliy stressed, “the few who may survive, they will sell at auction in Havana—papers or no fucking papers—if they so happen to have skin any darker than you and I.” He glanced down to his watch, up again.
“And I will use every resource available to me to ensure that does not pass. Including violence.”
“Including war crimes!”
“I am a criminal.”
Everard ran his hand through his hair, tugged at it in desperation. He wondered at which point he’d lost his hat.
“I know. But you’re not only that. I know what’s done, Vitya.
I’ve done it, for God’s sake. I admit to having been the less-moral between us; you know whose crown I was obliged to.
I only hoped you’d be different. A man who flees rather than fights.
Who does the most good with the least harm inflicted. Who survives.”
Vitaliy’s expression wiped clean with hurt and surprise; then it twisted. “I don’t know what you were expecting from me. I am a weapons smuggler. A thief of justice. No matter in whose hands they end up, no matter what cause, justified or no: I deliver death and violence.”
“I know that. But must you—”
“Must I enact it? By my own hand?” Vitaliy said.
“It is effectually same to pull the trigger as to hand it over loaded. There are no alternatives here, now, in this moment. This isn’t the Navy; there is no gentlemen’s agreement.
It has never been just our own physical selves we have risked.
You knew this.” He checked his watch again, a swoop of pale lashes, then raised his chin, his jaw set in defiance. You chose me.
“Yes,” Everard said. He showed the ring. “But I chose a man of morals—or so I thought.”
“Everard,” Vitaliy said wearily, “you chose a pirate.”
There were several heartbeats’ worth of silence.
D’Arcy cleared his throat. “Don’t strain yourselves on my account.” He grinned weakly. “I haven’t really a proper functioning conscience to crack in the first place. So”—he saluted—“one fewer worry for both of you. May I shoot another harpoon, please?”
Everard sighed. Calming, but regretful, weary, he gestured to the pocket watch in Vitaliy’s hand. “What’s the interval? Seven and one-half? I’ll keep the time.”