Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
The stench of stale ale preceded the sight of their faces, but when they appeared, it was as I’d feared. Yellowing teeth flashed under gumlines that receded from the encrusted bacteria encasing the bottoms, and each smile was surrounded by layers of dirt caught in the wiry hair of their beards.
“What’s a girl like you doing in a fine establishment such as these here docks?” asked a tall, scrawny fellow to the right of the brawny one that stood in front. I assumed he was the pack leader, and was even more caked in filth than the others.
I swallowed and pushed my shoulders back. “I was unaware this was considered a fine establishment, what with the smell of putrid fish and halitosis.”
The brawny man’s grin didn’t waver. If anything, it widened, which was unfortunate for everyone, given the state of his teeth.
“She’s got quite the mouth on her, don’t she, boys?” he snickered.
“I have several things,” I answered, tilting my chin upward as I took one imperceptible step backward.
I’d spent years doing this dance with August. Showing fear to men like this only added to their fun.
“Including a very low tolerance for being cornered by men who smell like the bottom of a bait bucket. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
“Where you going?”
I jumped as a bony chest met my back. Turning around, I saw two more came up along either side of me, hemming me in.
“I don’t see no crew mark on ‘er,” said the scrawny one.
I swiveled, my heart racing as the men circled me. Godsdammit. I’d come too far to be ripped apart by a group of inbred pirates. However, I lacked the strength to fight my way out of this. Especially with one bum shoulder and a pair of weak lungs.
The dock boards were slick beneath my new boots, and open water lapped four feet to my left.
The Mourning Star sat in the harbor with her green lanterns glowing.
I made the swim once tonight. Perhaps I was capable of doing it again?
But I couldn’t move, my feet felt glued to the spot.
Fear was a vise, gripping me so tightly that it was paralyzing.
“Last chance,” I tried, unable to hide the tremble in my voice. “Walk away and we all pretend this didn’t happen.”
“You’re unmarked,” the leader said.
“Which means you’re fair game,” said the scrawny one to the side. Fire blazed in their eyes.
In one last, desperate attempt to resolve this without having to take another midnight swim, I reached into my bodice and grabbed the coin purse from where it was nestled in my cleavage. Hopefully it was enough to convince them to leave.
Then, another idea came to me. Perhaps I could use the Mourning Star in my favor.
I hadn’t noticed anyone shrieking in terror and running from the docks, but maybe they hadn’t seen the fabled ghost ship yet?
It had to be surrounded by some sort of illusion.
Otherwise the lanterns wouldn’t glow green and storms would have eaten it through.
The scientist in me screamed at the idea of magic.
However, all pragmatism gets tossed out the window when the only way out is appealing to their superstition.
I held up the purse. Five sets of eyes fixed on it, hungrily.
“Take this and go,” I said and tossed it on the ground between us, “or I scream loud enough that every soul on every ship in this harbor hears, including that one.” I tilted my head toward the Mourning Star. “And you can explain her cursed captain why you’ve been caught pestering his cabin guest.”
A round of curses went up at the mention of him and the scrawny one crossed himself. Hopefully Silas didn’t catch wind that I’d suggested we were sleeping together. My cheeks burned at the thought, damn them.
“His… cabin guest?” repeated the pig-head in charge.
“Well,” I clipped. “More like precious cargo. The exact relationship matters not. All that should concern you is that he would notice if I go missing and would come looking for me…and you.”
“That there is just a ghost story,” he said, nodding toward the ship. “Them green lights in the distance is a storm. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Green lights? Could he not see the ship proper?
“Them’s the cursed lights, cap’n,” whispered the scrawny one. “That there ain’t no storm. We ought to go.” He pulled on his captain’s sleeve, but was promptly shaken off.
Nobody moved. The captain looked to where he knew the ship was floating, then back to me, judging his next move while his crewmen breathlessly waited for orders.
I, on the other hand, scooted closer toward the water.
If they decided not to believe me, I had no option than to jump.
I would not be taken by the likes of them.
I would rather drown or be eaten by a squid.
The green lanterns of the Mourning Star burned cold and steady in the dark harbor. Slowly, the crew shuffled back from their captain, who now looked between me and the purse on the ground.
“Yer bluffin’,” he decided.
I looked deep into his eyes and dared, “Try me.”
I only had time to draw a single breath before he sneered and lunged. I jumped into the blackened sea.
The water hit me like an icy wall, stealing what little breath I had time to draw into my lungs.
I kicked hard, surfacing with a gasp that tasted of salt and harbor filth.
I wiped the water from my eyes in time to see the leader at the edge of the dock.
He bared his rotted teeth before he, too, leapt into the darkness.
He hit the water three feet to my left. I kicked hard in the other direction, toward the glowing green fog. His crew shouted encouragement from the docks, apparently too cowardly to be anything other than onlookers. I couldn’t make out their words over the blood roaring in my ears.
My new skirts were heavier than the ones I had before, dragging me under with their sodden weight.
A jolt of pain ripped through my shoulder as I worked twice as hard to stay afloat.
I was a very good swimmer for an astronomer, but I was exhausted from my desperate swim earlier tonight.
My lungs burned from the briny cold. A cough racked through me while I flailed in the water.
I’d barely drawn breath when a hand gripped my ankle and yanked.
The black harbor closed over my head. Salt water rushed into my nose and down my throat as he pulled me under.
Dammit. No. I would not drown in the damned water of Deadveil.
I twisted and kicked out, my boot connecting with something that gave a satisfying crunch before the hand released me.
I resurfaced, choking and furious. The captain popped up, blood streaming from his nose with murder in his eyes.
He grabbed me by the throat, his grip on me impossibly tight as he held onto the dock with his other hand.
I clawed and thrashed, but it only made him squeeze tighter.
“You little—”
Shouts rang through the air, followed by the pounding of boots on sodden wood. The bilge rat released his hold just in time to see the crew’s backs as they scattered. “Where are you imbeciles going, eh?” he shouted.
“What?” I coughed, nearly heaving up a lung. “Are you afraid to be all alone in the water with a woman?”
A low growl came from the darkness behind me. “It’s not the woman he should be afraid of.”
That haunting green light shone like a beacon now, casting a shadow across the water. A chill that had nothing to do with the cold skated down my spine.
Firm hands gripped under my shoulders and heaved me from the water. I cried out, pain radiating from neck to ribs as I was tossed onto the dock.
Silas.
His heavy footsteps echoed into the night as he strode toward the pirate still swimming in the bay. The light from the Mourning Star shifted around him, as if beckoning its captain back to the helm.
My attacker still held onto the boards of the dock, his face pale as a wraith’s as he watched Silas step in front of him. Had he any sense, he would swim, and fast. He was paralyzed though. I couldn’t blame him. The tension rolling off Silas was enough to petrify even me.
“I didn’t know she was yers, sir,” he started, blood running from his nose to mingle with the water droplets coating his beard. “We was jus’ helpin’ ‘er along, I swear it.”
“I know,” Silas answered.
He knew?
I sat up then, ready to scold the both of them, Silas most of all for preparing to thank this worthless bastard for helping me. Something stopped me, though, as Silas crouched at the edge of the dock. The movement was unhurried and held more grace in it than I thought him capable.
“Please,” the pirate whispered, so faintly I could barely hear him. But there was no mistaking the desperation in that single word.
Silas cocked his head, the motion like a hydra before it rose to its full height and unleashed hell. “You put your hands on something that belongs to me with the intention of ruining her in the filthy streets.”
“I didn’t know—”
“I threatened the skin of my crew for so much as misplacing a hair on her head, and I like them. What do you think I would do to someone who planned to disrobe and fuck her without my permission?”
His permission? I should kick him in the back and send him flying into the sea for that. The indignity. Like I needed permission to bed another man while he was in his cabin with a whore, knowing bloody well I could hear every giggle they shared?
Silas lashed out, killing the smart retort primed and ready on my tongue with a sudden, vicious lunge. The pirate screamed as Silas Draven plunged his fingers into the man’s eyes, hooked them into the sockets, and hauled him out of the water.
I clapped a hand over my mouth to stifle my scream, my stomach churning as blood and jelly-like fluid wept down my attacker’s cheeks. He howled his pain into the night sky, a high and desperate sound that rattled my bones.
“Corynne Godwin is under my protection,” Silas snarled each word through gritted teeth, his fingers still hooked inside the bloody sockets as the other hand wrapped around his throat.
He leaned in closer to the man’s bloody, ruined face and whispered something that I couldn’t hear over the crashing of waves against the pilings. The sharp, dirty smell of piss filled my nostrils.
Then, in one clean motion, Silas stepped aside and drove him face-first into the dock boards.
The wet crunch of cartilage pierced the air and I covered my ears, humming to drown out the sounds as Silas bludgeoned the pirate again and again, pulverizing his face until he was no longer recognizably human.
I closed my eyes and turned away, willing myself to be anywhere else.
Vibrations rattled the wood beneath me for what felt like hours.
I don’t know how long it had been when a hand finally gripped my wrist and pulled it away from my ears.
I looked up to find Silas kneeling in front of me, his face and coat spattered in blood and gore.
He looked like a monster cast in green-tinted moonlight, a rescuer and a beast all living within the same man.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “Did they touch you?” He snarled and every terrible thing I knew about him flooded my mind, along with every terrible thing I’d just watched him do. He brutally murdered another man just for touching me.
Vomit climbed my throat when I looked back at the pirate whose blood painted the dock, and I turned away again before it could spew. I thought back to the confrontation, grasping for anything to pull me away from the death before me.
“Your permission?” I asked. Silas’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t think I didn’t catch that comment about disrobing and fucking me without your permission. I don’t need permission from anyone, and I’ll bed who I please.”
The corner of his lip quirked. Whether into a smile or a snarl, I couldn’t tell.
“Get in the dinghy, Miss Godwin.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are.” He stood and turned toward the water. “Get in the dinghy.”
I followed his direction, not because I wanted to, but because I knew I wasn’t going to make a grand escape from Deadveil. I would have to plan better for the next time we made port.
Silas lent me a hand to stand, and another as I boarded the small boat that would take us back to the Mourning Star.
It rocked beneath his weight when he sat opposite me.
He readied the oars and rowed us back in silence.
I watched those murderous hands, unable to forget what I just witnessed them do.
“Corynne Godwin is under my protection.”
“You came for me,” I whispered. “Why?”
He didn’t answer for a long while. Just when I thought he wouldn’t, he said, “Because dead women don’t decode maps.”