Chapter Three After
THE AFTERNOON RAIN had long passed, leaving only a few puddles to dodge on her walk back down the hill.
Cat did her best to avoid the carts rumbling through the streets, kicking up dirty water wherever they went.
She arrived home quickly, having taken the direct route to the pink brick townhouse instead of looping along the beach.
Just as well. It was too late for sunset, too late to run to the lighthouse and try to spot a flash of green on the horizon.
The stars gleamed instead, brilliant between the palm trees.
Cat’s street was mercifully bare of gallows and crows.
Only the neat townhouses with their brick walls and freshly painted shutters, their garden hedges bursting green.
It was the loveliest street in all Archenport, home to merchants, a few officers, and newly returned government officials.
But for the parrots amongst the palms, Keystone Street could be a fine corner of Brycam City, the sprawling capital of the Meridian Empire.
She did not bother to knock on her own door, climbing the stone steps to push her way inside.
Her arrival caught Derry unawares, the young maid scurrying out of the kitchen and into the small but well-appointed entrance hall.
Cat waved off her apologies. She was early home, and Derry had no way of predicting her once-predictable mistress anymore.
“Is something wrong at the Widow?” the maid asked, her watery blue eyes wide. Derry had the look of a porcelain doll, fragile and pale even after years in the Lyrian sunshine. “Have you taken ill?”
Cat gave her the most reassuring look she could muster. “All is well, just a slow night.”
The maid gave a trembling nod before her eyes darted to the dining room off the entrance hall.
Cat hardened, her body tense. One hand closed into a fist, and she thought of her pistol upstairs, or the rifle in the hall closet. But before she could open her mouth to speak, another voice cut her off entirely.
“A slow night?” a man drawled from the dining room. “Must be dire straits at the Widow Rose.”
Cat’s fist unclenched and she drew a fortifying breath, her eyes shutting in annoyance. Would it kill him to give me some warning, she thought, gathering her wits.
“How long has he been here?” Cat said, handing Derry her ledger and shawl. She did not bother to lower her voice.
In the next room, the man huffed a laugh.
Derry gave a small curtsy, an apology in her eyes. “He arrived only a few minutes before you, madam. By carriage.”
“Of course.” Cat rolled her eyes.
Indeed, there had been a rare carriage outside in the street, but she’d been too deep in her thoughts to notice exactly whose. Grimacing, she dismissed the maid with a curt nod. Derry turned tail, eager to be out of the line of fire.
Cat walked into it headfirst.
Warm candlelight filled the dining room, turning the floral wallpaper to gold.
The mahogany table reflected the candles, the wood polished to a high shine.
Catrine Rose had a taste for fine things—painted porcelain from the Rijkstad factories, gleaming Esperese silver cutlery, Anticlean lace to edge her curtains.
Oil paintings, shell goblets. The ticking clock, rare in its gears and gleaming face.
Her home was like stepping across a bridge, leaping from the wild edges of the Lyrian Sea to the gilded staterooms of Brycam City.
Until one looked closer to notice the chip in an opalescent cup, a crack through crystal, a missing set of saucers, or a scratch across painted canvas.
Damage that spoke of ship holds, not showrooms, finery bought with a saber instead of coin.
At first glance, all was in place in the dining room. Then her eyes fell on a tricorne hat alongside her silver tea set. And a Meridian officer seated at his leisure, his black leather boots propped up on the table.
Captain Jasper Fell remained unmoving as Cat entered the room. Only his lips curled, betraying a wicked smile.
Like the sailors all over the city, Fell wore the color of the fleet, his coat a deep, dark cobalt.
The white shirt beneath was crisp, laced tight up his throat, a glowing contrast to the tan across his cheeks and his black hair tied neatly into a tail at the nape of his neck.
Cat did not miss the way his new buttons gleamed, the telltale bright of real gold.
Nor did she miss the ornate brocade that edged his coat, along with the badges and honors on his chest.
Fell let her scrutinize him, as always. He looked back at his teacup, focused on stirring in a spoonful of sugar.
Sugar with a side of tea, Cat thought, as she had a dozen times before. His appetite for social standing is dwarfed only by his appetite for sweets.
In the corner, the longcase clock ticked softly, the carved wood taller than a man’s height, its pendulum swinging evenly. Long seconds passed.
Her eyes dropped, but the table obscured the floor. If Fell had brought what he promised, what he owed, Cat could not tell.
“I wonder, Fell, how do you climb the steps of the fort if you refuse to walk anywhere anymore?” she asked, folding her arms in front of her body. “I fear your legs might atrophy if you keep this up.”
It was no use to lecture him again on the idiocy of a carriage in a city so small as Archenport. But she could still needle him about it all the same.
Fell’s wicked smile widened, and his silver eyes narrowed.
“It is a privilege afforded to all captains of the Meridian navy,” he said, finally satisfied with his tea. He raised the cup and winked in such a way that Cat wanted to slap it from his hand. “I am simply behaving like a man of my rank, to better carry out my duties for Crown and Empire.”
“For Crown and Empire,” Cat echoed, repeating the motto of the Meridian. She heard it every day amongst the sailors, shouted out from the arriving ships. “Do you say that when you wipe your ass every morning, or is it reserved for special occasions?”
Fell laughed into his cup, well accustomed to Cat’s sharp tongue.
“Special occasions, I’m afraid.”
“So I’m special, then?” Cat shook her head. “Go on, Fell. Hand it over and be done with it. We are far past the boundaries of our agreement, and there are limits to my patience.”
The teacup made a soft sound as Fell placed it back on the table. His eyes flashed to hers.
“You speak as if you have some leverage here, Lady Rose,” he said evenly.
His words were a small cut, but the stinging kind. Part of Cat knew they were only meant to rile her. The rest hated that he could.
She took one step forwards and leaned, lowering herself to his eye level.
Upon closer inspection, she realized Fell had recently shaved.
It made him look younger—the way he had ten years ago, when he was little more than a lieutenant with a new sunburn and a ruthless ambition.
The latter, at least, had not changed. It made him predictable and easy to use.
“If you think I have no leverage where you are concerned,” Cat replied, “then you are welcome to go.”
Catrine Rose was no cutthroat, but she was not without her own dangers. Her own secrets, carefully kept but ready to be laid out like a deck of cards in a gambler’s hand.
Some color rose in Fell’s face, the only indication of his discomfort.
“I will not insult you further by repeating myself,” she said, her voice dropping. “The price was long agreed upon.”
In her mind, she saw it already. A chest of good Meridian coin, stamped with the crown on one side, the King’s silhouette on the other. Gold and silver, shimmering together like the scales of a beautiful fish. More than enough to finally go, to leave this infernal island behind, and start anew.
Again.
The prospect seemed enormous. She wanted it and feared it in the same measure.
There was nothing so exciting or terrifying as a new beginning.
A muscle ticked in Fell’s cheek.
“The price,” he echoed, a hollow sound.
An odd look crossed the captain’s face, the worst kind of look. The kind Cat could not read.
She searched him again, hunting for what lay beneath the surface of Jasper Fell.
She understood him better than anyone outside his own crew, knew his scheming smirks and judgmental stares.
Even his carefully guarded and rarely exposed heart.
But this detachment, this emptiness, she could not decipher.
Her pulse quickened, a bead of sweat rolling down her neck.
Cat felt her hands go cold on the tabletop and she recoiled, drawing straight again. Putting some distance between them.
What have you done, Jasper? she wanted to scream.
When Fell stood with her, Cat’s heart dropped to her stomach. A new saber hung at his side, decorated with gold filigree. And a flintlock pistol was holstered next to it. The gun was far more familiar, painfully so, its curves of silver and polished wood ornate and unmistakable.
For a second, she wondered if this was just another nightmare. She half expected Fell to fade in front of her eyes, to wake in her bed upstairs, all this just a passing terror.
Her fingers shook, but her voice did not.
“I see,” she said brusquely, taking another step back from the table. “I assume the final payment is on a ship, to make sure I disappear. Fine, that is my aim anyway. To leave this godsforsaken rock behind, and you with it.”
Hopeful words. Desperate words.
Silent, Fell matched her steps from across the room, prowling after her like a jaguar stalking its prey.
“Perhaps all this will sink into the Lyrian when I go, swallowed up by the wind and tide,” Cat continued, her mind already on the layout of her townhome.
The stairs were behind her, her keys in her pocket along with her knife. She would have to beat Fell to the front door, then hope the shadows provided cover enough to steal away into the harbor. Onto a ship, any ship. Off island, leaving Archenport behind as she should have done weeks ago.
She strained her ears, listening for Derry—or someone else.