17. Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Seventeen
Although it will cause an interruption to the natural flow of the story, I feel I ought to provide an account of a disruption that occurred with the Brethren last night. I’d been preparing myself for another evening of storytelling when I was intercepted at my door by Orion.
“Oh,” I said awkwardly. We had not been alone together since the night he walked me back to my room, and I did not know how to be at ease around him.
The point being, I do think Orion was being suggestive with me the last time we spoke, and I have no idea what to do about it.
I’ve come to think of him as the least erratic, sanest member of the Brethren of Blood.
That will all be ruined if I learn he’s attracted to me.
Or, Havens forbid, that he’s developed feelings for me.
Frankly, I’d rather deal with Big Red and his propensity for biting off fingers than a man who has a crush on me.
That’s no reflection on Orion specifically.
He’s decent enough, for a space pirate. Surprisingly intelligent.
Brave. Occasionally even a little funny.
And now that I’ve gotten used to his space-weathered appearance, I suppose he isn’t entirely unfortunate looking.
Perhaps he’s even rather handsome, come to think of it.
But I haven’t thought of it, you see. Not once. Not even a little. My heart remained, and remains, entirely Ursa’s. Entirely yours, my darling. There is no room in it for anyone else.
The problem was, I had no idea how to communicate this to Orion.
It seemed presumptuous to blurt out that he was barking up the wrong tree, when I didn’t even know if he was barking up my tree.
And yes, that metaphor is getting a bit muddled.
The point being, I didn’t know if what he’d said was just a passing fancy or if it reflected something that might recur in future conversation between us.
If the former, how embarrassing to bring it up when it hadn’t meant anything at all.
And if the latter, how awkward to address something that might actually mean quite a great deal. Tact would be needed either way.
“I don’t love you,” is what I blurted out to him.
It was rather lucky that there was quite a bit of commotion going on that I hadn’t initially registered as I was speaking—alarms blaring and men shouting and that sort of thing.
If Orion heard what I said, he didn’t acknowledge it at all.
Instead, he leveled me with his steady, intense gaze, his jaw clenched.
“We’re raiding,” he told me curtly. “Came across a transport ship out in the black.”
Raiding. Ah, yes, the thing pirates did quite frequently.
Killing and carnage and whatnot. In my time with the Brethren, I’d tried to put it out of my thoughts as much as possible.
When I was telling my stories to the men, it was often easy to forget how dangerous they truly were.
They became my rowdy, boisterous audience, my Lost Boys.
Only these "boys" were murderers. Pillagers.
Outlaws. I would do well not to forget that.
“The men are gonna be bloodthirsty tonight,” Orion continued, holding my gaze steady, as if needing to ensure I understood what he was telling me. “Do not come out of this room for any reason. Keep the door locked until I come back for you.”
He would receive no argument from me. “Okay.”
A beat passed, perhaps longer than was strictly necessary, in which he just looked at me. I felt that look, deep in my bones. I understood its significance.
Or perhaps not? Maybe I was imagining things. Either way, a moment later someone shouted down the hall, diverting his attention, and he strode abruptly away from me without another word.
Shutting the door behind him, I made sure the lock sequence was coded in.
2 For a moment, I wished Orion had left a weapon with me, but that fancy passed quickly.
I was far more likely to accidentally shoot myself in the foot than to successfully save myself from a bloodthirsty pirate.
No, my best bet was to stay quiet and simply hope the Brethren forgot about me until their bloodlust cooled down.
I must have fallen asleep, because I awoke to the sound of someone pounding at my door. “Story lady! Story lady! Come quick. It’s urgent.”
Even half asleep and disoriented, it didn’t take long for me to register that this man did not know my name after weeks of almost nightly storytelling.
Not to mention the fact that there was only one woman aboard the entire ship, so it oughtn’t have been all that difficult to remember what I was called.
But who was I to quibble when I was being so urgently summoned? “What is it?” I asked blearily, pushing off the bed. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Orion, miss. Some of the men are bleeding out, and he needs every able pair of hands to stitch them up.”
Good God. I rushed toward the door, driven by the need to help in any way I could.
These men might be bloodthirsty, depraved outlaws, but somehow, somewhere along the way they’d become my bloodthirsty, depraved outlaws.
I would hate to see any of them come to harm—even if they might, strictly speaking, deserve it for attacking a defenseless passenger ship.
But as I reached up to key in the unlocking sequence, I paused. “He couldn’t come to tell me himself?”
“No time, miss. Jim has lost an awful lot of blood already.”
Oh, no. Not Jim!3 I dithered uncertainly.
Orion had told me not to open the door for anyone, but he couldn’t have known there would be an emergency.
Still, I didn’t want to be one of those stupid characters in galaxy-net films—you know the sort, the ones who run into lunar craters when it’s obvious there’s someone waiting for them there, or up the stairs where they won’t be able to escape.
“I think I ought to wait for Orion,” I said. “Have him come to me himself if he needs my help.”
“I can try, miss. But Jim will likely be dead by then.”
Oh, bother. I really hoped this wasn’t a trap. Sighing, I keyed in the sequence and then pulled open the door.
I recognized the rainbow-eyed man half a second before he grinned at me and grabbed me by the throat.
He was a rather nasty fellow, I’m afraid, who was always saying uncomfortable things, like that I looked “good enough to eat” and he’d love to “gnaw on my tender flesh.” I’d always hoped those were just euphemisms, but the fact that Orion warned me not to get too close to him made me fear they were not.
Damn.
At least my reflexes were quick. I began kicking at him and thrashing about, scratching, clawing, doing whatever I could to compel him to drop me.
Unfortunately, he did not, and instead drove me back into the room, kicking the door shut behind him.
He was much stronger than me, but seemed taken aback at how much fight I was putting up.
He must have thought I’d be more docile prey.
I realize in writing this that my tone might come across as flippant.
Truth be told, I think I might still be in a bit of shock.
Trust that in the moment there was nothing funny about what was happening to me.
I was absolutely terrified. For myself, of course, and also .
. . well, for you. Who would rescue you if I was eaten by a cannibal pirate in this dark, dank little room aboard a pirate vessel?
And how would you ever know why we’d been parted? How would you ever understand?
That was the frantic reminder that pulsed through my mind. Survive. Survive. I had to survive. I had to find you. I had to rescue you.
Buoyed by this thought, I began screaming as loud as I could—an ugly, ragged sound that was as much a war cry as a sound of terror. I redoubled my efforts to kick the rainbow-eyed man. Grabbing whatever objects were within reach, I threw them at him as hard as I could.
His surprise quickly morphed into indignation. “Calm down,” he spat at me as he attempted to grab hold of my bare feet. Catching hold of one, he licked his lips as he eyed it over. “Such soft little toes—”
No, please and thank you, I rather wanted to keep those. So I used my free foot to kick him in the gut as hard as I could.
He doubled over, those strange, multicolored eyes glittering at me as he looked up and met my gaze. “Stupid little bi—”
Then all at once, there came a loud shot. A crunch. A splatter of blood and bone. The rainbow-eyed man now had a hole through one of his remarkable eyes, as well as the rest of his skull.
Looking up in astonishment, I saw Orion and Jim—who was not dead, and not currently bleeding out, thank goodness—standing in the doorway.
Orion was still holding up the weapon that had dealt the kill shot, his hand shaking ever so slightly. He’d just killed one of the Brethren. Regardless of whether he might have deserved it, that would still take a toll.
And there was no way to get around the fact that he’d done so for me.
Afterward, as the three of us sat drinking moonshine hot toddies in the galley4 and steadying our nerves, I learned that it was Jim that had insisted they should come check on me.
“How did you know?” I asked him, warming my hands around my mug as I waited for his reply.
Jim shrugged, looking discomfited at the question. “Just a lucky guess, I s’ppose.”
Orion met my gaze meaningfully across the table. “Jim has a lot of lucky guesses, so we tend to listen when he speaks his mind.” He clapped a companionable hand on Jim’s shoulder. “Ain’t that right, Compass?”
I suppose I had, a time or two, noticed Orion calling him Compass, but I’d never known why. With this in mind, I evaluated Jim with fresh eyes.