Chapter 20
Five months later
Alister stabbed the sharp point of his dagger into the top of the table, twisting it to carve a small hole. How many times he’d done this, he didn’t know. At some point, he’d bore his way through the wood if he wasn’t careful.
With his other arm folded across the table, he glared out at the bar patrons. The place was loud with chatter, a low flame from the fireplace warming the otherwise cool area. However, that fire, along with many candles, did little to light the inside of the dim, shadowy building.
He was at the rear of a tavern with his back against the wall, a long table sitting in front of him like a desk.
Pierre, Derek, and a handful of his crew sat around him drinking, talking to each other, but no one was allowed to sit in the empty chair in front of him.
No one came to talk to him. Not even his own crew spoke many words to him, since they would only receive short replies or wordless grunts. No woman wanted to sit on his lap – not with the murderous look he wore.
His aura was steeped in homicidal tendencies, and even his men found it hard to be around. It was as though his rage had manifested into something physical, a bubble around him.
As the months passed, it only worsened.
It had taken him nearly two months to sail directly to Tortaya in the west and speak with his mother about Rosetta. Since she had no information to offer, he’d docked at every port until he’d reached as far east as it was safe to go.
For five months, he searched, asking the locals if they’d seen her ship when he ported at the many places he’d been. His men asked everyone they could: local fishermen, incoming or departing trading boats. He’d even docked at risky places.
Alister and his men had almost been arrested once, but they’d made quick work of those soldiers and fled before anyone could stop them.
Now there was nowhere else in the northern hemisphere he could go. If he went much further east, Alister would be sailing the Howling Death directly into heavily guarded Queen Mary Anne’s waters.
As much as he wanted Rosetta, he knew he couldn’t go further than this.
Alister was back at Dunecaster, the last city safe for any pirate or criminal to dock. The island was similar to Tortaya.
So, if he had been everywhere she could have gone in the northern hemisphere, then... Where the fuck is she?
He knew Rosetta couldn’t have sailed off the edge of the Earth. She couldn’t have just disappeared. She was alive out there, somewhere.
He refused to believe she’d gotten arrested or had been sunk. She was too smart for that, too good at being a sailor to be so foolish.
Did she go south? Alister slammed the point of his dagger into another part of the table, his lips thinning further.
If she did go south, how was he supposed to follow her?
He knew those waters better than she did, but even he didn’t know them well. Sailing unfamiliar seas could find them hopelessly lost.
He didn’t know how to navigate those stars as well as he did the ones currently above him. If he went that way, he could be looking for a lost ship while sailing a lost ship himself. That’s how we starve to death.
He started twisting his dagger to create another shallow hole, a growling groan of irritation bubbling in his throat.
I don’t want to go south. He’d avoided it for most of his life and had only been that way when Mad Dog was captain.
But he wanted to find Rosetta.
Alister was obsessed. She consumed his mind totally, plagued him, haunted his every waking moment.
Seven months of having that woman, the memories forever seared into his brain like he’d been permanently branded. They burned him every minute he’d been without her.
He was sad. He was angry. Fuck, I’m horny.
He eyed a pretty woman walking across the bar, cringing at her with disdain. He stabbed the table once more, watching himself do it.
He knew his men were just as worried for themselves as they were for him. They’d never seen Alister like this. Dustin’s trove had always been his goal, but he wasn’t this crazed for it. He had his reasons for searching for it, but he was also fine with never finding it.
His determination to find Rosetta, however, was unwavering.
He knew it was a problem when old man Derek made a comment to Pierre, not realising Alister could overhear.
“Cap’n’s got that same look in his eye as his pa.”
Cole ‘Mad Dog’ McCarthy had been partially insane.
Watching his own father descend further and further into madness as he spent years searching for fabled treasure had been difficult for Alister to watch. The decline in his mental state, his obsession, his infatuation for something that might not exist, was hollowing for a child to witness.
He’d always feared that would be his own fate.
To hear he might have the same crazed look in his eye now? That hadn’t been pleasant to discover. But Rosetta is real. She was a living, breathing person. She wasn’t some mystery treasure.
It had only taken them four months and two weeks to get to Dunecaster. It had been easier than the three weeks he’d been docked in it.
For three weeks, Alister’s feet had touched land.
Every night and day, he sat in this bar, at this seat, with this table in front of him. If it wasn’t him, it was one of his men coming to take a shift for him while he slept on his ship.
He didn’t sleep long, always returning to his seat.
He ate well, and he was rested, but that was because he wanted his energy for when he finally set sail again. He refused to let his body wither away.
I’ve spent so much gold trying to find her.
His men didn’t mind that they were docked for so long. They just chased after the skirts of prostitutes and enjoyed their time here while they could.
Alister, on the other hand, hadn’t spent this much time on land since he’d helped his mother build her fancy little mansion. Before that, since he was eleven.
Every morning, his crew would collect on the pier to find out if they were sailing out that day. When it was a disgruntled no, their eyes would turn away from him, as though they were upset on his behalf.
It was pity, and he hated it.
The number of times he’d lashed out at his men for giving him that look... well, it was enough for them to eventually stop doing it. They just nodded and returned to their holiday away from the sea and hard work.
“How much longer do you want to stay here?” Pierre asked him quietly, leaning closer. He asked him the same question every few days.
“As long as it takes.”
Once more, Alister crawled his eyes over the busy tavern filled with drunken morons, flirty women, loud music, and heavy chattering. He was thankful the room was dim.
Someone who has seen her ship will turn up at some point. Another stab of his dagger had his eyes narrowing with impatience.
Stealing a poster of Queen Mary Anne’s bounty for the Laughing Siren, which had a picture of the figurehead on the front of it, inspired Alister to make his own posters.
He was offering a reward of five hundred pounds for the lucky bastard who could tell him where it was, or at least what direction it was heading.
It was why he was waiting here. He needed to stay in one place for the bounty to be effective. If someone saw, they needed to be able to hand the information to him – they couldn’t do that if he was on the sea.
It would cost him fifty gold pieces.
That wouldn’t bother Alister too much, handing out his gold to find her, if it wasn’t for every greedy, lying bastard who had taken a seat in front of him. They wanted a quick buck and were willing to cheat him for it.
The third man who had given Alister false hope by sitting in front of him with false information until Alister derailed him enough to reveal he was lying had been violently gutted.
From that moment forward, he’d sat with his own wanted poster of ten thousand pounds on the wall behind him.
It served as a warning.
It was a picture of his scarred face, eye patch, long hair, and stubble beard. Under the drawing was his name, the full amount for his arrest, then the half amount if it was just his head. The bounty poster was Queen Mary Anne herself, her name signed at the very bottom.
No one else approached him after that.
Good. Piss off. He didn’t want to deal with bullshit. He just wanted information, then to leave this sad rock he had no business being on.
So, when a wary and hesitant man shuffled his feet not even two tables down from them, eyeing Alister and the poster behind him, one of his brows raised.
He was an older gentleman, closer to Derek’s age than his.
He had a receding hairline with fluffy hair on the sides like he needed to cut it but hadn’t.
It was black but peppered heavily with grey and the occasional white.
He had a beard that covered his entire face and glasses that brightened his dark-brown eyes.
He was wringing a soft hat in his hands, similar to the brown overalls sitting over his white tunic and whatever pants he had beneath them.
Realising he probably looked menacing, stabbing his dagger repeatedly into the table, Alister slipped it into the side of his boot. He leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, and kept his eye on the man while he waited for him to approach.
A candle flickered between them as the minutes ticked by.
Eventually, the man came to stand in front of the table.
“A-are you Captain Alister Paine?” he asked quietly.
He pointed to the poster above his head to show him it was obviously him. “What do you want?”
He wrung his hat tighter. “I saw on your poster that you’re looking for information on a boat with a jolly mermaid on the bow.”
“I am.” He crinkled his nose into a sneer. “What proof do you have that your words won’t be lies?”
The man cast his eyes downwards. “None. I don’t even know if the boat I’ve seen is the one you’re looking for.”
Alister squinted as those of his crew seated around to protect him turned their attention to the nervously trembling man.