Chapter Four Before
WHAT WILL YOU do about the pirates?
It was the first question anyone asked when they learned Lord and Lady Rose planned to make the crossing to the Lyrian Sea. In her quiet country town, Cat gave such things little thought. Pirates were the navy’s problem, not theirs. And there was no force in the world like the Meridian navy.
How foolish we were, Cat thought, her face pressed against the window in her cramped cabin.
She blinked out at the pirate ship, drawn up alongside the Credence, the sea sloshing between them. Barnacles striped the waterline of the opposite hull.
“That is a third-rate ship of the line,” Lord Rose muttered, his face centimeters from her own.
His breath fogged the glass, and Cat wrinkled her nose.
Indeed, she counted two gundecks on the pirate ship, one more than the Credence.
And so many cannons, aimed and ready, staring across the narrow stretch with abyssal black eyes.
“Sixty guns at least, crew of two hundred men or more,” her husband continued to marvel. “How the hell did they commandeer a ship of the line?”
At the opposite wall, Sara gave another whimper, sandwiched next to Mr. Greer.
Cat almost whimpered too. She knew little of ships, but the thought of so many guns was terrifying enough.
Foolish as her husband was, she believed his assessment.
Now instead of lamenting their possessions carried up on deck, she only prayed they were enough to slake a pirate’s appetite.
When the cabin door shuddered, she knew such prayers fell on deaf ears.
Sara screamed and attempted to burrow under the bunk, with Lord Rose not far behind her.
Mr. Greer was smart enough to barricade the door with his body, bracing his arms against it.
The cramped space left Cat with nowhere to go, the window against her back, blocking out most of the daylight.
She held her breath, expecting to hear a volley of gunfire or clashing sabers.
Instead, the cabin door flew open, and the manservant fell backwards, sending up a violent cloud of dust. Beneath the bed, Lord Rose whimpered like a kicked dog.
Only Cat remained standing, her body to the wall, her face to the open door and the passage beyond. Dust motes swirled and the scarce beams of light traced her silhouette on the floor.
Another shadow lingered, framed in the doorway.
His green-blue eyes caught the light, flaring through the dimness. They seemed a storm, a tempest, the warring color of wind and sea. For a moment, the eyes pinned her in place and Cat felt frozen, bound, even her heart refusing to beat.
The eyes did not move, but another pirate shoved around him into the cabin, burly and sun battered, a barnacle in a dirty shirt.
He hauled Mr. Greer out, then Sara, pulling her from under the bed like a rotten tooth from a reluctant gum.
Lord Rose went next, sputtering every protestation he knew, though his body fell limp, his fists resolutely at his sides.
His yellow face was a shocking shade of white.
The gnarled pirate reached for Cat last.
She expected to go limp, to turn in on herself.
It was her usual way, to shrink and become small in the face of horrible things.
Cat barely felt the prayer beads in her hand, round pieces of polished marble and precious stones wound against her knuckles.
But she felt them as they split her skin, her fist hitting flesh, catching the invading pirate’s face.
He went sprawling, howling as he struck the cabin wall.
Pain lashed up her arm as the shattered beads rolled along the cabin floor.
She dropped, clutching her wounded hand, blood welling up between her knuckles, scarlet red against freckled white.
The offending pirate moaned on the ground.
Above him, beyond the door, the tempest eyes widened.
Cat froze, unable to do anything but stare, the pain in her hand disappearing in an instant. The light of the window illuminated him fully, and the tempest became a man. Her eyes widened, trying to commit him to what would be a short-lived memory.
If I am going to die here in this filthy cabin, I might as well know who did it.
The storm-painted eyes looked out from a carved face, nose and cheekbones sharp enough to be hewn from stone.
But he was certainly not cold like a sculpture would be, worked in unfeeling alabaster or smooth marble.
His warmth filled the cabin, all but radiating from the door.
His skin was bronzed and freckled, the testament of a lifelong sailor.
All of him, from his burnished face to his scar-striped knuckles, looked rough and coarse, a raw jewel in need of a good polish.
Stubble bloomed across his cheeks, a shade darker than the golden hair curling to his shoulder.
The ends of his hair were near white, bleached by sun and salt water.
He had to bend to enter, too tall and broad-shouldered for the cramped space below deck.
At first glance, he could have passed for one of Meedy’s crew, clad in boots, leather breeches, and a simple shirt open to the sternum.
But the similarities ended there. He wore two belts crisscrossing his hips, a brace of knives on one, a long flintlock pistol fixed to the other.
The gun caught her eye, near long as her forearm, the wood stock oiled to a red shine, inlaid with sculpted curves of silver and brass.
It would have looked more at home on a lord’s hip, so fine was its make.
Cat trembled, venturing it was stripped from a dead or dying officer.
His hand balanced on the grip of the pistol, his fingers a mess of scars from rope burn or gunpowder flash. His forearms were the same, striped with old injuries and sun damage, with a single gold chain wrapped thrice around his corded wrist.
Another scar ran below his collarbone, white against exposed skin before disappearing into the curly, golden hair across the planes of his chest. This scar was more deliberate, given with purpose: mangling the script of a no-longer-legible tattoo.
But the ink next to it was unbroken, black lines, three of them, woven into a braided circle.
Cat did not know the symbol, but it felt familiar, like a dream forgotten.
She dragged her eyes up from his chest, back to the tempest eyes. Every bit of him looked burned and remade, a true son of the Lyrian Sea.
The man stared right back, studying Cat in the same transfixed way. His eyebrow curved, his gaze roving. She flinched as it rose to her face, meeting her own wide-eyed stare.
Neither spoke, the near silence stretching, broken only by the distant thumps and shouts of a ship steadily being overrun. And the low grunts of the other pirate currently writhing on the floor, clutching at his nose as blood gushed between his fingers.
Suddenly Cat flushed, remembering herself and her predicament, with no options left but one: to wait, still as a terrified lamb.
The pirate in the doorway opened his mouth, and she winced, expecting him to shout. Or shoot her. But he only glared at his crewmate still on the ground.
“Can you manage?” the taller man drawled, a curl of amusement on his lips.
The injured pirate spat red in reply, staining the sheets of her narrow bunk.
“Oy, she’s a tiger, this one,” he mumbled through his fingers, before extending a hand upwards.
The other pirate took it with a grin and hauled his mate to his feet.
While the injured one wobbled out the door, Cat scuttled back, trying to press herself into nothing.
Something sharp bit beneath her palms and she hissed in pain, looking down on the shattered remnants of her prayer beads.
Without thinking, she curled a fist, saving one cracked stone.
When the pirate whirled back around, she braced for a blow.
“Can you walk?” he said.
Cat blinked. His voice was coarse as his appearance, the timbre deep enough to make her shudder again. But the question was oddly benign.
His amused look twisted into a sneer.
“Can. You. Walk?” he barked, slower this time, as if she might not speak Meridian at all.
In spite of the circumstances, Cat glanced at her bleeding hand, then back to the pirate standing over her. He looked at her as Lord Rose had, as Meedy had, in the patronizing way that assumed weakness, if not outright stupidity.
It burned worse than her knuckles.
“I do not walk on my hands,” she said as primly as she could. And forced herself to stand on shaking limbs.
To her shock, the golden-haired pirate drew back from the doorway and gestured with an open palm. His other hand remained in place, curved to his pistol in grim reminder.
“Then walk,” he said, the sneer shifting like light on water, curling back into a wicked smile.
Whatever fire Cat had felt moments ago guttered and died, leaving her cold with fear. She did as commanded, slipping out of the cabin into the narrow space.
He stayed too close for liking, using his bulk to herd her forwards as if she were only livestock.
Cat quickened her steps, trying to keep ahead of him, but the man only matched her pace, his chest mere inches from her shoulder blades, his boots near to catching on her heels.
Cat swallowed the indignity of it as best she could, though her face still burned.
His hand brushed her shoulder. It sent a coil of heat down her arm, enough to make Cat falter, almost tripping on her skirts.
Then the hand moved again, catching her at the elbow, fingers tight around the curve of her upper arm.
A storm exploded beneath her skin, little shocks of lightning spiderwebbing from his warm palm.
She flinched, spinning around in his grasp, only for the pirate to unfurl his wicked smile again.
“I thought you said you could walk,” he said.