Chapter One After #3
Once there had been no empty seats at all, every chair filled, the floor rowdy with customers night and day, all the bedrooms occupied, and Cat’s ledger bursting with lines of credit.
All manner of folk looking for rum or good company.
Sailors, merchants, craftsmen, travelers.
Knobbled old men and cabin boys. Fishwives taking their glasses of sherry.
Eager new colonists with bright eyes and brighter sunburns.
Smugglers, wreckers. And pirates, of course—though most people were pirates in their own way, on the sea or off it.
Cat and Ms. Moseley worked hard nights, barely able to sit, let alone think. Now thoughts were all Cat had, each one worse than the last, pounding across her mind like a mad horse tearing a man apart.
Gritting her teeth, she scratched out one last figure and set down her quill.
“I think we’re done for the evening,” she muttered, shutting her ledger with a thud to break the silence.
Moseley raised an eyebrow but did not argue. The barmaid knew better than to question her mistress, even if it meant shuttering a tavern before the sun was below the sea.
“Soon enough Morovant will be dust, and sailors will come stomping in again,” Moseley answered. It was easier to blame the corpse than the man who put him there, and the navy who chased her best customers away.
“From your lips to the gods’ ears,” Cat muttered, rolling her eyes as she stood.
Moseley gave a laugh, her long gray braid swaying as she retrieved the empty tankards from their lone patrons. Neither Dorian nor Pine seemed to notice.
“Let me put some distance between us,” the barmaid said. She tapped across her collarbone, making a holy sign to ward off bad luck. “Lest the gods strike through the nonbeliever.”
A smirk tugged at Cat’s lips. “Perhaps I’ve chosen to have a little faith these days.”
“Ha!” Moseley barked. “The only thing you have faith in is good coin.”
“Some might say gold is a god all its own,” Cat answered, smiling.
With quick strides, she approached the two old sailors. Neither moved.
“As always, thank you for your patronage, Mr. Pine, Mr. Dorian,” she said loudly, rousing them from their stupor.
They jumped in unison, both weak with age and alcoholism. At least Mr. Pine had enough sense to nod his thanks, leaving one last penny.
“May the sea always sing for you,” he rasped.
The sea does not sing anymore, Mr. Pine, she wanted to reply, but said nothing as they shuffled out.
When the door slammed, stirring the air, Cat slid the penny over the wooden bar.
“From my god to yours,” Cat said.
Moseley grinned and slipped the coin up her sleeve, exposing the prayer beads woven around her freckled arm.
Cat knew their symbols well enough but cared little for the Meridian Church anymore. There were no gods that she knew in the Lyrian Sea. At least not any greater than the hurricane wind, the blistering sun, or a punishing tide.
As for her prayer beads, those were lost long ago. Shattered or taken, she thought, remembering a turquoise stone and a callused hand in her pocket. That same stone on a chain of gold, looped around a long neck, bright blue against bronze skin and a black tattoo.
Cat winced at the sting of memory, turning to avoid the pain.
Behind the bar, a tarnished mirror reflected the few candles and the dying sun. And Cat herself, fading like the light.
The last months had grayed her complexion. Her skin, once pale, then bronzed by years in the Lyrian, had taken on a dull look. Her eyes were shadowed, the brilliant amber muted and heavy. Even her hair, chestnut gold that used to gleam like a new coin, had lost its shine.
It is only the light, she told herself before facing the room. “Moseley, let me help . . .” But her words trailed off. There was nothing to help with.
“Already finished,” the barmaid answered, forcing a false smile as she set the tankards away. “Like I said, things will change soon enough.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Then you’ll change things yourself.” The old woman’s smile took on a sharper edge. “You always find a way to shift the wind.”
“Indeed,” Cat murmured, for much had shifted in her life, and more was shifting still.
Moseley came out from behind the bar. She was taller than Cat, broad in the shoulders, ox-strong despite her age. Cat felt small next to her, breakable, though many things had failed to break her.
“I suppose if you must, you will say goodbye to the Widow Rose,” Moseley said, herding her mistress to the door. “That was always your plan, my lady. Wasn’t it?”
Cat did not bother to lie. Her heartbeat thumped, giving her pause. She eyed the barmaid, reading the years on her as she read the city or the tavern. Remembering the day they met, on another island, in another life entirely.
My lady. The title felt like an old coat, too tight and long discarded.
“You haven’t called me that in years,” Cat finally said, her words careful.
Moseley dipped her head, a glint in her eye.
“You haven’t been a lady in years,” she replied, smirking.
A laugh rose in Cat’s throat, and for a second she forgot the empty tavern, the bodies outside, and the last six months entirely.
“On that, we can agree.”