Chapter 13 #2
That smile had indeed hidden a secret, but it was not an amusing one.
“Rowan?”
His own name brought him back to the present, and he realized he was breathing hard, staring at David who now cowered against the wall, still clutching his paintbrush. Yves’s fingers brushed Rowan’s arm.
“You know this Shaw fellow?”
“Yes,” Rowan said, his voice curiously flat in his own ears.
Yves frowned and turned back to David. “Tell us what you know. Now.”
“I-it’s not much,” David stuttered. “The Marrans are planning to invade the Sleeping Isles.”
As if that wasn’t shocking enough on its own.
No one had ever tried to invade the Sleeping Isles, a mysterious archipelago north of Kefrye and Nanad.
The last bit of unconquered land left before the Marran and Talvan empires would have to set their sights on valuable trade partners.
Rowan often wondered what the empires would do once the last acre of land was consumed, whether they would finally turn their sights on each other as they’d wanted all along. He wondered if he would live to see it.
The Sleeping Isles certainly wouldn’t be easy to conquer.
Next to nothing was known about them due to the impenetrable wall of storms that surrounded them.
Even only a few hundred years before, the isles had been more of a myth than a place real enough to put on a map.
The only person rumored to have returned from the other side in living memory was the pirate captain, Silver Stroud.
And the word of a pirate, of course, could not be trusted.
Rowan realized David had paused, as if waiting for permission to continue. “What do the Sleeping Isles have to do with me?” he asked.
“Shaw thinks you have something that can help them. S-something to do with that legend of Silver Stroud’s treasure. His orders are to hunt you down and take whatever it is. You and another pirate…They said she’s Yarenen, I think.”
A Yarenen pirate who had something to do with Silver Stroud?
It could only be Splinter Zanta. But Rowan had nothing to do with Stroud, least of all did he possess a piece of the treasure Stroud had supposedly brought back from the Sleeping Isles.
Were there really rumors that Rowan possessed such a thing?
Something that could make Marra’s invasion of the Sleeping Isles easy?
Or was Warrick Shaw taking an opportunity to finish what he’d started all those years ago, and finally take back his rightful place in Kefryean high society?
Silence unfurled. Words stuck in Rowan’s mouth, weighing down his tongue while his mind raced through the possibilities and angles. He hadn’t seen Warrick in nine years, but he knew his reputation as a mercenary.
For a few years, Rowan had heard nothing about the man and thought himself rid of the traitor for good.
But Warrick had been in the Marran Empire’s pocket ever since the war.
He’d popped back up again with a small force of thugs behind him, putting down any fledgling rebellions and doing the dirty work the empire didn’t want on the books.
He had a reputation for not sparing those he deemed guilty, and didn’t much care for evidence that contradicted his agenda.
Rowan might be a pirate, but as far as he could tell, it was Warrick who had no morals.
If Rowan and Zanta were now the ones in his sights, they were in grave danger.
Yves’s hand tightened on Rowan’s arm, grounding him.
“Is that all?” Yves asked David.
“Yes. I was dismissed for the day when Shaw took out some papers. I didn’t hear any more.”
“Then leave us.”
David fled, leaving his supplies, and the barely started painting, behind.
“Rowan.” Yves’s deep voice quieted some of Rowan’s frantic thoughts. “Are you alright?”
“We need to call a meeting.”
Logan, Yves’s new first mate, Doe Adair, and Fox—who’d been unreasonably clingy to whomever he could get his hands on since the Mercy’s departure that morning—gathered around the large table in Yves’s stateroom. They were silent, sensing the oppressive mood between the two captains.
“We’ve had some news,” Yves announced, when they were all seated. “There seems to be a new pirate hunter on the prowl, and he’s coming for Rowan.”
Rowan had told Yves nothing further about Warrick Shaw or their history together. He wasn’t sure how Yves would react, but as they’d waited for the others to assemble, things had clicked into place in Rowan’s mind.
“It’s Warrick Shaw,” Rowan said, his gaze locking onto Logan.
Both Logan and Fox sat up straight, as if a ramrod had been shoved down their spines. As the Siren’s longest serving crew members, both of them knew what had happened with Warrick. And Logan himself had been there to pick up the pieces of Rowan afterward.
“Warrick? You’re sure?” Logan asked, his eyes trained on Rowan’s face to gauge his mood.
“That’s what we’ve heard,” Rowan confirmed.
“From who?” Doe asked. She sat with her arms crossed over her chest, brown hair swept out of her face with a shell comb.
“The painter,” Yves answered. “He overheard a conversation between the new Kefryean governor and Shaw. How do you know him, Rowan?”
“I—” Rowan’s tongue still felt leaden. Maybe he should’ve explained it all while they’d waited for the others and saved himself the embarrassment of doing it in front of them.
“He used to be Rowan’s first mate before me,” Logan answered for him. All eyes swiveled in his direction.
Warrick had been more than Rowan’s first mate.
He’d been so many firsts. His first friend onboard the Siren Song, back when it was still a merchant vessel.
He’d been instrumental in Rowan’s harebrained scheme to steal the ship out from under its bastard captain.
Back then, Rowan had known nothing of Warrick’s past, but they’d trusted each other. Or so Rowan had thought.
After months of sailing up and down the coast causing trouble and earning a tidy little bounty on his head, Rowan had sailed the newly renamed Siren Song to the eastern coast of Marra to collect Logan after he was finally discharged from the navy.
Logan and Warrick didn’t get along, but Rowan was just happy to have his two best friends by his side.
As it turned out, Logan was a much better judge of character than Rowan.
Before that season was up, Warrick claimed another first for himself. He’d kissed Rowan one night out on the bowsprit. It wasn’t Rowan’s first kiss, but it was the first time he’d let it go further. Rowan thought he was falling in love, and in the months that followed, he only sank deeper.
Until Warrick, armed with Rowan’s blind trust and adoration, led the Siren into an ambush. He was not a poor sailor turned pirate at all, but a Kefryean noble in exile. Cast out from his homeland for patricide. He wanted that status back, and he handed Rowan over to the Marran navy to get it.
Rowan, Logan, and the Siren Song had barely made it out alive, with only a handful of crew members. They’d limped into the middle of the Broken Sea. Rowan had spent days scrubbing the bloodstains from the deck, and longer nursing a broken heart.
Yves watched Rowan as Logan explained it all, leaving out Rowan’s romantic entanglement. Yves must’ve known there was more to it. Suspicion sparked in his eyes, a slight downturn to his plush lips. Rowan needed to tell him.
“He’s my ex-lover,” Rowan said flatly, after Logan had finished his tale.
He felt almost compelled to say it, as if he was confessing a sin.
Yves’s attention sharpened in the air around him.
The others felt it too, shifting uncomfortably in their seats.
Doe’s nose, dotted with the typical Laslandish freckles, scrunched in distaste.
“He seduced you before turning you in?” Her voice was soft, almost motherly, in contrast to the wicked-looking knives strapped to her belt.
“More or less. He’s the reason I don’t sleep with my crew members.”
“Besides Fox,” Logan quipped, in an attempt to lighten the mood.
“What!” Yves, Rowan, and Fox all shouted simultaneously. Rowan and Yves in disbelief and horror. Fox with barely contained delight.
Logan blinked rapidly in confusion. “After Warrick left, we recruited Fox in Wave Harbor. I saw him sneak into your room half dressed, and he didn’t come out till morning, so I thought he was…
your…rebound.” The words slowed at the end of the sentence as Logan realized he was just digging all of them into a deeper hole.
“Is that what you thought this whole time?” Rowan asked in disbelief.
Yves was too quiet, and Rowan didn’t want to look at his face for fear of what he would find.
Of course both of them had had flings and lovers before they met, but all these revelations coming to light at once seemed like a recipe for disaster.
Rowan knew if he ever met one of Yves’s former lovers he would not be able to conceal his jealousy.
Fox’s bright cackle split the tension like an overripe melon. He bent double in his seat, clutching his belly as uncontrollable laughter spilled from his lips.
“I mean I did sleep in Rowan’s bed that night,” Fox said, when he regained enough control to speak again. Yves’s expression darkened, fists clenched, staring daggers at Fox as if he could barely keep from throttling him. Rowan grabbed his wrist.
“Unfortunately,” Fox continued, either oblivious to or ignoring Yves’s violent aura, “Rowan already had that pesky rule. He slept in a chair.” Yves’s tense muscles loosened, but his scowl remained fixed on Fox as he wiped a tear from his eye and dissolved once more into breathless giggles. “Gods…I think I’m dying.”
Logan patted him on the back with his wooden hand, a small smile cracked across his lips. Doe looked on with a confused yet gentle expression, as if she wanted to pick Fox up and rock him like a baby. Rowan felt a fond smile spread across his own lips.