Chapter 2
Chapter Two
The Black Parrot was the sort of tavern respectable men pretended not to know of and respectable ladies were never meant to enter.
Luckily for me, I was neither respectable nor a lady.
I kept my cloak pulled tight and my hood low, throwing an extra few silver pieces at the barmaid to seat me in the corner and make sure I stayed unbothered.
This was not just a tavern full of sailors. It was a tavern infested with pirates.
The common room was crowded with seafarers and dockhands, their raucous laughter both refreshing and unpleasing to the ear. Lantern-light bled amber across their tankards and their sweaty foreheads, highlighting the dirt in every leathery line on their cheeks.
My table was against the wall, placed so I could see the door, the bar, and most of the room without having to crane my neck. My rabbit stew and ale arrived not long after I was seated. It wasn’t the best. The taste of rotted herbs was most noticeable, but the rabbit and vegetables were lovely.
I needed something stronger than ale, though. I had a shit day and was sure it would only get worse. I was either going back home to face my troubles there or I was going out to sea on a boat full of men. Either way, I’d be begging for limp vegetables before the dawn.
Gods. What was I going to do? I needed to find a ship and I suppose this was the best place to do it. But how did one begin to find a captain? Asking too many questions sounded like a poor idea.
I decided that, though it may waste time, listening in on conversations would be my best wager. My fingers wrapped around the leather journal in my satchel, both needing to feel its weight and preparing to be of use.
My life’s work was written between its pages.
I took it out, keeping it hidden beneath the table, loosened my fingers around the pencil and prepared to note down anything in the hum of voices that could be worthy of mention.
The room roared with complaints about wages, boasts about women, and curses at the rain. Names of ships drifted past: Sea Bandit, The Maiden’s Tits, Lucky Break. I weighed them for usefulness before storing them away.
A man near the bar laughed too loudly and then stopped as if someone had struck him.
"Don’t," someone muttered. "Don’t say it."
I lifted my chin the smallest amount and let my gaze follow theirs.
A sailor stood on a bench, swaying slightly. He had to be one of the youngest men in the tavern, but the weariness in his eyes spoke of lifelong grief.
One of his hands trembled when he raised his tankard. "You want a story?" he rasped, his voice raw and vulnerable. "You want somethin’ to make you piss yerself quiet and grateful for dry boards under yer feet?"
"Sit down, Rook," someone said. "Leave it be."
Rook bared his teeth. "Leave it be? Leave it be?" He laughed, a touch hysterically, and I straightened further. "Like I let it be when it looked at us?"
The roar of the tavern fell to whispered murmurs, and a hush crept outward from Rook.
I leaned in despite myself. I hated superstition. It was plain ignorance and easily explained by simple solutions. Sailors lived and died by patterns. And patterns, however misinterpreted, were still data.
Rook took a long swallow, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and stared out at something no one else could see.
"It was off the Cape," he said. "Storm come up like the devil’s own temper, it did. Wind so hard it rattled the mast. We begged the cap’n set sail for land, but he said we’d ride it out.
" He paused, eyes glassy and far away. "We saw her then," he whispered.
"She came out o’ the dark with no lanterns, her sails black as funeral shrouds.
" He gulped, then said, "The Mourning Star. "
A man near the door muttered a prayer. Another crossed himself.
Rook’s gaze swept the room, and for a heartbeat I could have sworn it snagged on mine beneath my hood.
"We should’ve turnt away," he said hoarsely.
"Run for shore and begged whatever god we’d offended for mercy.
" Rook dragged a hand down his face. "I woke up on a plank, riding the sea with no sight of land.
" He lifted his tankard again, the liquid sloshing over the sides as he gulped down the rest. "So when I tell you," he said, voice rising again, "when I tell you to keep port until the storms pass, I’m doin’ you a kindness. Don’t chase her. Don’t look for her.
If you see her—" His eyes went wide. "— turn away. Get on yer knees and thank whoever you pray to that yer still breathin’. "
Silence held for two heartbeats before someone scoffed. "You’re drunk." A roar of agreement and laughter followed, and the tavern went on as it had before.
I could swear, however, that there was a bit of uneasiness floating around.
I exhaled slowly through my nose. A ghost ship as a bad omen was hardly novel. Sailors saw omens in everything: birds, clouds, women on ships.
I didn’t believe in curses. I did, however, believe in men doing foolish shit and then blaming fate.
No matter what truth there was behind the story, I was done here.
I wasn’t going to find a captain now that Rook had spread his superstition.
Even though everyone wrote him off as a drunkard, I could see the wary gleam in their eyes that would keep them at port until the sun shone once more.
I placed the leather notebook back in my satchel and stood, cloak swaying, as I moved toward the bar door. I didn’t get far before a hand shot out and caught my sleeve.
"Excuse me," I whirled to whomever dared grab me.
My assailant sat at a table near the aisle, half in shadow. He wore a plain coat and there was nothing remarkable about him except for the ring he wore on the hand that gripped me. Black metal with a compass rose and, above it, a small crown.
A wave of numbness ran through me.
The man smiled. We both knew exactly who had sent him and why he was here. It seemed my fiance had finally tired of our dance and had come to collect his prized pig.