Chapter 11 Kaspar
Kaspar
“Do you think Ariella’s okay?” Willy asked me as I poured a bucket of filthy water over the edge of the ship.
The words barely penetrated because I couldn’t take my eyes off of Reaper—no, Max.
I couldn’t help but watch the big, muscly man as he berated Moonie while simultaneously teaching them the proper way to do something—the proper place to tie one of the sails’ ropes, I was pretty sure.
Moonie had made a mistake, again, and Max had stepped in to fix it before Viper saw and cut off Moonie’s hand like he’d threatened the last time they messed up.
Viper was oblivious to the whole thing, thank goodness.
I wasn’t really friends with Moonie, but I liked them well enough. They definitely didn’t deserve the punishment—no one on the ship did. They’d been working really hard and trying their best, at least it seemed that way to me.
And to Max, if his patience with them was any indication.
“Hello? Ghost?”
I jumped at the sound of Willy’s voice, and the bucket in my hands slipped, but I caught it before it could fall overboard. That could’ve been really bad.
A sigh of relief escaped me as I glanced at him, noting the rope in his hands. Hawk-Eyes was teaching him some rigging tricks, so he was practicing his knots.
“What?” I spoke to Willy, but my eyes were on Max again, my belly fluttering at the remembered almost-kiss.
Goddesses, what I wouldn’t give to go back to last night and make my move sooner. If I would’ve been even thirty seconds quicker, I would know exactly what Max’s lips taste like. I’d know what they felt like against my own.
I could’ve wrapped my arms around him, felt his arms around me. I could’ve devoured his mouth the way I’d wanted to since the moment I saw him.
Okay, well, maybe more like five minutes after I saw him and realized he wasn’t going to kill me.
“Ariella?” Willy’s voice brought my attention back. “She looks a little off, don’t you think?”
It was a chore to move my eyes past Max to examine the windweaver for a long moment, but I managed it. Ariella was using her magic to push our ship faster, just like she’d been doing all day, for more hours than she ever had.
Viper was standing behind her, watching her, probably being a jerk, like always.
His tricorn was hiding his expression, but I had no doubt he was scowling at her.
I’d been doing my best to stay far away from him, but even from across the ship, I’d heard him yell at her more than once to push the Wraith faster, faster, faster.
As I looked her over now, I couldn’t help but notice how pale she was.
I glanced around with a wince. It was really cloudy today, and our line of sight was terrible—even Hawk-Eyes couldn’t see anything from the crow’s nest, which was why she’d come down and sent Greybeard up instead—but I didn’t think it was the fog making Ariella look pale.
With a glance at Max, I noted his tan skin.
The clouds weren’t doing a thing to make him look anything but gorgeous.
I glanced at the windweaver again. Yeah, Ariella wasn’t looking too hot.
“Yeah, she looks off. Maybe we should get Stitches.”
Willy cringed. “So it’s not just me? She looks bad?”
“Yeah. She really does.”
He glanced at Hawk-Eyes, who was close enough to have overheard our conversation, and she sighed before giving him a nod and waving him off. “Go on.”
Willy didn’t have to be told twice. He rushed off in a hurry, taking his knotting rope with him.
I glanced over at Viper again and grimaced. The man had been in a terrible mood since he’d boarded the ship in Duskwater Harbor in the late morning. Max had been just as grumpy after being forced to run an errand with the captain.
Since I couldn’t act too familiar with Max in front of the crew, I hadn’t had a chance to ask him what happened.
But I knew he’d had to meet with a few unsavory people while our captain negotiated payment for some of the goods we’d…
stolen. My guess was that Viper hadn’t made as much money as he’d hoped, which made him act like a pissy toddler to the rest of us.
It couldn’t have been that bad, though, because a bunch of the crew had to haul our engine fluxstones out of the hull and replace them with new and fully charged ones. Many of the uncharged fluxstones on the ship had been replaced with new ones.
Max had come back with new and fully charged fluxstones for his prosthetic last night as well.
Which was good, not only for Max’s well-being and for our entire crew in general, but for me because I didn’t feel the pull to charge them, at least for now. Once they started running out of energy, that sensation would reappear, but I was happy for the break.
Viper screamed at Ariella again, and half the crew flinched.
As Patty walked past me, I heard him mutter, “What the hell crawled up his ass today?”
It seemed like a rhetorical question, but Hawk-Eyes replied, “Didn’t you hear that Trickster and Vulture left. Joined another crew or somethin’.”
Patty huffed. “Probably just decided to stick around at the brothels for a while.”
Hawk-Eyes rolled her eyes and snorted, shaking her head.
“Maybe. Not sure if that’s what’s got Cap so pissed.
Could be because he saw some suspicious boats on the other side of Duskwater.
Unmarked, but it was obvious they weren’t pirates.
Pretty sure they’re a Sunada House fleet, comin’ to collect on some warrants. ”
My stomach flipped and soured. Arrest warrants?
I swallowed around my dry throat. I had no doubt Sunada had an arrest warrant out for me—any runaway fluxweaver was labeled a wanted criminal, usually with a reward for their capture—but there was no way they knew what ship I was on, right?
Even if they somehow figured out which ship I’d boarded, The Black Wraith had a disguise on when they were docked at Sunada.
They didn’t know The White Swan was actually The Black Wraith.
Right?
Patty’s eyes went wide. “You serious?”
Hawk-Eyes shrugged. “That’s what Reaper said. That’s why cap’s pushin’ Ariella so hard. Don’t wanna get caught.”
I sure as hellfire didn’t want to get caught either, but pushing Ariella the way he was wasn’t right. She looked ready to pass out. I was surprised she was still standing, to be honest.
Didn’t Viper understand that pushing her this hard wouldn’t do her or us any good in the end? She’d be down for the count, unable to help us, if he didn’t lay off her.
Not to mention she was an actual person, not a machine. You just shouldn’t treat other people that way.
What a flaming goblin prick.
Plus, we didn’t even know if that fleet was after us. They could’ve been after any number of pirate ships. I mean, there were a billion of them on that island, after all.
I pushed away the bile that wanted to rise at the thought of being hunted down by a Sunada fleet and focused on Ariella. Someone needed to help her. Someone needed to step in and do something to… to stop Viper.
But I didn’t think that someone could be me.
I had no doubt Viper would throw me overboard if I dared to challenge him, and even Max wouldn’t be able to stop him.
Before I could try to get Max’s attention—out of everyone, he had the best chance of helping her—Ariella fell to the ground, and our ship rocked as the strong wind she’d been controlling came to a stop.
Viper started screaming at her, even though she was flat on her back with her eyes shut.
“Holy dragon balls,” I muttered as I started to rush over.
Hawk-Eyes snagged my shirt collar, stopping me in my tracks as she hissed, “Don’t even think about it.”
“But Ariella needs—”
“Willy’s bringing Stitches up now.” She gestured to where the two of them were climbing up the ladder. “If you go over there, you put yourself in Viper’s path. Don’t make hurtin’ you easy on him, Ghost.”
I itched to go over there and help my… my friend, but I knew Hawk-Eyes was right. Viper was in one of the worst moods I’d ever seen him in, and that was saying something. The last thing I needed to do was put myself on his radar.
I grimaced as Max stepped in front of Ariella, blocking her from Viper’s sight while Willy and Stitches fussed over her. I couldn’t hear Max’s words—he was speaking far too quietly for his voice to carry—but Viper’s face, or what I could see of it under his tricorn, was purple with anger.
Stitches and Willy managed to haul Ariella off the floor and began carrying her down to the lower deck. I saw Stitches give Max a reassuring nod while Viper cursed up a storm and barked angry orders at everyone around him.
It was his own damn fault. He shouldn’t have pushed her. Now we were stuck in the cloudiest area I’d seen yet with little wind and no windweaver to help us if we ran into trouble.
Fingers crossed no sky monsters found us anytime soon.
Since I didn’t want to get caught in Hurricane Viper, I grabbed my bucket and headed to the storage closet where my mop and other cleaning supplies were. If I couldn’t head down to check on Ariella right now, I’d keep myself busy with scrubbing the deck—a never-ending nightmare of a job.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been scrubbing before Willy came up, looking haggard. After glancing over my shoulder and finding Viper busy using a telescopic, I rushed over to Willy, asking, “How is she?”
He shrugged. “She’s in rough shape, but Stitches says she’ll be okay after lots of rest and food. Can’t use her magic for a few days, though.”
“Fairy wings,” I muttered under my breath.
That made Willy smirk, and he elbowed me. “She’ll be okay. She kicked me out of the doc’s room, said I was tryin’ to mother her.” He snorted. “If she’s complaining already, you know she’ll be fine.”
Relief made all the tension in my body release, and I sent him a small smile. “Good. I—”
“Sail, ho!” Greybeard yelled, making everyone look up at him to see where he was pointing since that meant he could see a ship.
Crap. I really didn’t want Viper to make us attack another merchant ship.