Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
It was plain D’Arcy’s convalescence would be a long and involved one, though the surgeon declared what he’d suffered as a bad beating and nothing more.
Nothing more, Everard seethed.
But D’Arcy himself concurred: for all that it had looked—and had meant to look, Everard rather thought—frightening as all hell, he wasn’t permanently maimed.
“Could’ve been worse,” D’Arcy whispered, on the second night, as he succumbed to groaning beneath Everard’s ministrations of salve and bandaging. “Fists and boots only. A belt or two.” He sucked in an inhale. “Careful, like. Hardly any malice.”
“That’s bloody well plenty,” Everard hissed down, removing his hands. “Plenty to kill a man, no malice necessary. If you could see the extent of the bruising—”
“I feel ’em; that’s plenty.”
Everard was quiet.
D’Arcy had purple-wine streaks—veritable swaths—across his ribs, the splay of his back.
Had yellowish grip marks on his shoulders and the inside of his elbows, as he had fought against restraint.
Had a ring of swelling round his throat, where someone’s arm had yoked him.
There were black-blue half-moons beneath both eyes from someone’s hell of a right hook.
Several hooks: there was a split along his cheek, and his whole nose bridge had swelled to twice its usual.
“I’m not dead, Ever.” D’Arcy tried a wincing grin. “Nor yet close. I’m not missing teeth or limbs or eyes or essential appendages or even”—he paused, rolled over, and coughed—“fingers. All things considered, the pirates were nice about it.”
“Jesus sainted.”
Vitaliy, absurdly, seemed to agree. Arms crossed, standing quietly subdued at D’Arcy’s feet, he nodded. “It says much that he lived.”
“Much! Beyond a skull like a rock, it doesn’t say at all enough—”
Vitaliy shrugged. “Harder to leave a man alive than to kill him by accident,” he said softly.
“I know that!” Everard spat. “First and foremost that’s missing is why? Why would anyone have such issue with him to do this—much less several someones?”
D’Arcy shook his head with a grimace, rolling it on the pillow. He squeezed Everard’s hand lightly.
“Let it go, Ev,” he breathed. “I need a bit of sleep, is all. I’ll be upright within the week. Look after Bell in the meantime, won’t you?”
“Preston—”
Vitaliy put a hand on Everard’s arm. Let him be, his eyes warned. Everard gently let go D’Arcy’s hand, setting it down deliberately careful, and turned away with an angry jerk.
Vitaliy said nothing. Over the course of the past two days, guilt had built upon him like a soft snow, chilling his presence to near-constant silence.
Everard understood, he did, but he also wished to pitch and yell.
He wanted to call an all-hands and declare there to be an interrogation; put up a reward; issue threats.
He tried to think of what he would do if D’Arcy were still his subordinate aboard a Navy ship, and came up with nothing that translated here.
Powerless, without influence, without station, he had no inkling how to deal with such a trespass against someone he loved.
Too, Vitaliy—who did possess these things—had done nothing.
“You will do something?” Everard demanded later, as D’Arcy slept fitfully in a half-drugged state beside him. “Surely, you cannot let this stand.”
Vitaliy was knitting again, frowning, silent. Then: “No.”
Everard truly wished to scream. “No, it mustn’t stand,” he gritted out, “or no, you will do nothing?”
“No, I can do nothing. Not more than I have already.”
Only D’Arcy’s presence kept Everard’s voice low, and even with that, it was a mighty struggle. “Then what, pray tell, is the point of you?”
If a man could hide behind needles and sockweight spun yarn, Vitaliy was doing so then. He flinched but didn’t pause. “Somewhat of what you are looking for Milly might fulfill. If you ask nicely.”
“I can’t do that!”
“But why not? She is crew advocate.”
“He’s not crew.”
Vitaliy raised his eyebrows. The clicking of needles went on steadily. “Sorry? We are all of us crew. He signed the articles, did he not?”
“That’s not what I mean. He isn’t… he’s not crew! He’s… mine!” Everard’s voice broke abruptly.
Vitaliy gave up on the knitting, setting it aside.
There was a long silence, wherein Everard wrung out the washcloth in the basin, and re-laid it upon D’Arcy’s forehead.
He’d reject it in a moment as he turned onto the swollen planes of his face, and jerked away onto the other; and then the cycle would begin again.
But Everard could do this for him, so he would.
“I understand,” Vitaliy said at last. “You want blood, and want me to order it using authority you feel I possess. I won’t do that. I cannot. I am a figurehead, not an autocrat. Much less a despot.”
“I’m not asking for that. I mean, I might want blood,” Everard admitted. “Only look at him. I want the world to burn, and whoever did this to him, also. But you needn’t reach all the way to despotism.”
“Not for the world to burn?” Vitaliy challenged. “Or you wish me to put to pyre a handful of my own crew?”
“N-no,” Everard stammered. “But, Vee—they—someone did this to get to you. Through me. Through Preston. Don’t you see?”
“No. What you want,” Vitaliy said, infuriatingly calm, “what you are ultimately asking me for, is rank. Preference. Elevation. You and he are maybe accustomed to this, but this is not the Navy,” he emphasised.
“No pirate—none—has the status of untouchable. Nor should anyone. The crew elected me to provide them a service. A private vendetta—because this is private, it has nothing to do with me—is not that service.”
“The hell it isn’t! Fighting is supposedly disallowed! You’re a pirate with a code of bloody reciprocal violence! If it were anyone else lying here—León—Stephan—René—”
Me? Everard thought, despairingly. “—would you do the same?”
Vitaliy shook his head. “You are still all ideal, no practice, Everard.”
“Well—yes!” Everard exclaimed. Beside him, D’Arcy stirred, and he lowered his voice to a hiss. “I am! To be frank, I don’t think I will ever not be, if this is what’s required of practice—”
“I’m sorry, but I cannot help you,” Vitaliy said coolly. “It is Milly’s place if he will seek compensation for the damage. I cannot undermine her.”
“I will never—but she’s the one who’s done this! All of this! Don’t you see that?”
Vitaliy closed his eyes, rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Don’t.”
Absolutely beyond, Everard stood and threw the rag. It landed on the rug with a damp splat.
“On this you will heed me,” he seethed. “There’s no one else. She despises me, wants me gone, wants you supplanted. What better way than to send an irrefutable message that you cannot protect your own?”
Vitaliy placed both hands flat on the arms of his chair.
“Milly is my own,” he said quietly. “You dislike her because you have had few enough interactions with women in your lifetime that you see baseless fault in one who doesn’t fit within your narrow view of how one should be.
Or,” Vitaliy added, “you are jealous. Either is ridiculous. I trust her, the crew trusts her, and that is all you need to know.”
“Oh, dear God.” Everard threw up his hands. “Now you will admit authority! In the name of blind trust! Trust her because you do! Well, I cannot. Not in this nor anything else. Certainly not to negotiate the justice of aught she made with her own bloodied hands. No.”
Vitaliy stood: slowly; nonthreatening; weary.
“I’ll leave you.”
“Vee—”
“I would tell you to bring these insults to her face,” Vitaliy said, “but I think Milly would kill you as a matter of honor. She had no hand in this. And if you will not accept my judgment on it—if you do not trust me—I can do nothing else to convince you.”
He strode over to the door, opened it with careful, stiff movements.
“But,” he said hesitantly, “I can… I will ask her what she plans to do in regards to what the lieutenant suffered today. It won’t be blood, or justice; but she can make it known it isn’t conducive to the goals of the fleet. I believe she will agree to this.”
Thus deflated, Everard sank down onto the cot. He was careful not to disturb D’Arcy more than he had already.
If you don’t trust me…
How could he, when Vitaliy was choosing her? Choosing another?
And so have I, he thought, pushing damp curls from D’Arcy’s forehead. Look how neither of us is choosing the other.
No. There was no trust there.
“All right,” he managed, just so Vitaliy would go. “I understand. Thank you.”
Vitaliy nodded—and then he did go.