Chapter Nine After #2
Behind Carley’s back she shot Fell a look of desperation, embarrassing as it felt. He was already staring at her, his lips set in a thin, unreadable line. Panic set in, her throat closing. She could feel the cold of the cells and the rough brush of rope around her neck.
Do something, she wanted to say. Help me, you bastard.
“How many vessels did he bring?” Osprin sighed, his face obscured by Captain Carley’s rude position.
“Seven left High Harbour,” Carley answered, standing proud and stiff at attention.
“Six, sir,” Groust cut in, his pencil raised. Then he lowered his eyes again, ashamed to have corrected his superior officer.
Carley’s mouth twitched. “Ah, yes. Six have arrived.”
“Has Commodore Percy lost a ship, or have you miscounted?” Fell said dryly, one black eyebrow raised into a perfect, imperious arch. It was a look Cat knew well indeed, and enough to shatter the haze of terror settling over Cat’s mind.
Jasper Fell would always grasp at his own advancement, jumping at any opportunity, eager to climb. His hands were on the ladder now.
She only hoped she could climb with him.
Or kick him down the rungs.
Scoffing, Carley glanced over his shoulder. “Percy’s seven met a storm off Fortune Bay and were separated. But it will not be long until the last ship returns, the storm was small enough—”
Cat stood quickly from her seat, her mussed skirts pooling around her.
“A storm off Fortune Bay?” she balked, making a show of her disbelief for the governor. “Big enough to scatter a convoy? At this time of year? It is not yet the season.”
To her left, Fell took a step so they stood side by side. A united front. Under different circumstances, Cat would have shoved him away. Now she only wanted to keep him close.
“Have any other ships gone missing from the fleet?” he demanded.
Carley pursed his lips, annoyed.
But Osprin stood too, unfolding from his chair to rise like a thunderhead. He was shorter than Carley, but the captain quailed before the governor.
“Well, Carley?” Osprin prodded, his eyes narrowing into slits.
The captain of the Revel gave an appeasing bow, hat in hand.
“I will have to check our records and communications, Your Lordship,” he said, glancing sidelong at his lieutenant.
Groust was quick with an answer, which was perhaps all the more embarrassing for his captain. He turned a page in his notebook, eager to impress.
“Two ships lost in the Furies in the last month, Your Lordship. The Alliance and the Paladin. Both separated from their squadrons by storms, also near Fortune Bay.”
Cat felt such a storm whirling inside her, threatening to tear her apart. Part of her wanted to let it. It was simply too much to bear, the weight of this place, and all she had done to keep herself alive in it. And keep Valerian alive in it too.
My head or theirs. My head or his.
In contrast, Fell seemed intrigued. “Lost or sunk?”
Groust shrugged. “No wrecks were found, but they may yet arrive in their ports, the squadrons are new to these waters—”
The governor gave a low grunt, cutting Groust off with a slice of his hand. “What of bodies?”
Groust softly closed his notebook. “I do not know.”
Side by side, Cat and Fell exchanged heavy glances.
She remembered what he told her in the dungeons of the fort.
Two bodies washed up on shore, bullets in their heads.
Two sailors of the fleet. It was not just the Paladin and the Alliance missing, but other ships too.
Taken by violence, not storms or tides or any other danger in the Lyrian Sea.
Taken by him.
Cat cleared her throat as a lady would, the sound soft and gentle and delicate.
It was a sound any Meridian officer or lord would know well, even a sailor long separated from fine dinner parties and court intrigues.
Every eye snapped to her, black eyes and silver-gray, mud brown and sickly green. Cat faced them all down.
“Your crews are dead, but those ships still sail,” she said evenly. “Kane knows this sea better than any navigator you have. He knows the tides, he knows the wind, he knows the storms. And he’s using them to steal Meridian ships right out from under your nose.”
She let the weight of her words settle. Even pompous Carley had nothing to say, his face still blotchy pink.
But Cat only had eyes for the governor, holding his furious gaze.
“He’s building an armada of his own,” she murmured, landing the killing blow.
Behind his desk, Osprin’s cold facade threatened to burn, his face washing scarlet with rage. She did not miss the way his fists clenched, old scars standing out at his knuckles.
“You were never going to starve out Kane.” Cat stepped forwards to lean on the governor’s desk. The maps and parchments slid under her hands, the wax of the King’s golden seal cool to the touch.
“He means to fight, my lord. Total victory or nothing.”
Osprin grimaced as she threw his words back at him. But it was the truth, a truth Cat knew all too well. Val would tie himself to the mast of a sinking ship before surrendering to the navy, now or ever.
“So Kane will fight,” the governor growled, closing his fist. He seemed a volcano near to eruption.
This time when he struck the desk, he sent his maps flying, his regiment of paper soldiers scattered like a surrender. The letter from the King slid with them, the stamped image of the Meridian lion staring up at them all.
“From where?!” Osprin swiped at his desk again, sending another spray of parchment over the floor. “With whom?”
Fell did not flinch as a chart of the Lyrian currents slid across his boots, only picking it up with a sniff.
“And how many?” Fell added, moving to put the map back in its place. As he went, his arm brushed Cat’s, the pristine blue of his coat a sharp contrast to her wrinkled sleeve.
His body was far too close for Cat’s liking, but she did not move, holding her ground and the governor’s attention. Her survival depended on it.
“Like I told you, there are hundreds of small islands, some barely sandbars or tidal keys, with no inhabitants or crown claim. Before the pirates took Archenport, they used those islands as their own.” Her fingers walked a map of the Lyrian Sea, tracing the formations picked out in ink, bound by severe lines of latitude.
“Islands that aren’t even on your charts. ”
Her finger grazed an empty stretch of water that Cat knew was not empty at all.
Captain Carley seemed to have regained his voice. “Preposterous. The royal cartographers are unmatched—”
“The royal cartographers are in Brycam City and subject to what your ships see,” Cat said coldly.
“If a landslide or a hurricane changed a coastline tomorrow, your navy-issue maps would not reflect the difference for two years at best. I’m afraid pirates of the Lyrian Sea are far more knowledgeable in their navigations than you are, sir. ”
The captain sneered but even he could not argue with the logic. He rounded on the governor instead, electing to ignore Cat outright. “Send Commodore Percy after him, my lord. And the Revel will happily join him to hunt down this—”
Fell laughed openly, cutting the man off before Cat could. He faced the rival captain with a lazy smirk, shaking his head as if Carley were a student in the classroom—a student who had supplied the very wrong answer to a simple question.
“That is precisely what Kane wants, Captain,” Fell drawled.
“For us to chase him piecemeal, searching a hundred useless spits of sand. As Lady Rose said, he knows these waters better than you do. And he has at least four ships behind him, three of ours, and one of his own.” He ran his eyes over Carley once more, then turned away with a shrug. “And gods know who else.”
This seemed to embolden the governor, a strange light coming into his eyes.
“Then I will not play his game,” he said. “I will not send squadrons to the slaughter.”
“I don’t understand . . .” Carley sputtered.
“I will not send a squadron. I will send the fleet entire,” the governor barked. “I only need a heading. And I need it quickly.”
Cat felt the blood drain from her face. The fleet entire.
More ships than Cat knew how to count: men-o’-war, frigates, cruisers, warships all.
Dozens of ships, thousands of sailors. Worse than the fleet was two months ago, when the Meridian fell upon the Lyrian Sea and the pirate republic like a godly hammer, and shattered the world.
What will they shatter now? What world will rise from this wreckage?
She eyed the floor again, picturing marble instead of wood. White tile, black tile, left or right.
She chose her move without hesitation.
“I will find Valerian Kane.”
Perhaps it was some trick of the humid air, but her voice seemed to echo, her words repeating over and over, drumming in rhythm with her ragged heartbeat. Cat expected doubt or regret to course through her as her words landed. Neither came.
My head or his.
Carley’s laughter shook the study, high-pitched and needling. Groust gave a half-hearted chuckle but clamped his mouth shut on sight of the governor.
Osprin did not laugh. Neither did Fell.
Both stared at her, hard-eyed and silent.
“My lord, you need hunters, not a barmaid,” Carley said, still chucking. His spittle flecked the air.
“You need to keep count of your own ships, sir,” Cat shot back. “I will find Kane.”
“And how do you propose you do that, Lady Rose?” Osprin mused, folding his arms across his chest. His sleeve shifted, showing a flash of bronzed wrist. Not the skin of a lord but the skin of sailor.
A sailor of a different sea, Cat reminded herself. For all his experience, he is still fresh to these waters. His strength is in numbers, not wisdom.