Chapter Sixteen Before
THE SHE-PIRATE, THE one Captain Kane called Ana, waited outside his cabin. She paced a circle around the council room, unable to stand still, a shark forever moving. Cat tried not to be afraid, but trembled when the woman smiled, showing her silver teeth again.
“This way, my lady,” she said, beckoning Cat forwards. Ana’s sleeves were rolled, revealing a braided tattoo on her wrist. It matched the one on the captain’s chest, inked above his heart.
Cat could not help but stare at the tattoo and wonder.
It would be no shock to learn Captain Kane shared his bed with a member of his crew, particularly one so beautiful as Ana.
For she was beautiful, in a fierce, furious way, like a crashing wave or a waterfall.
Not like Cat, who felt more like a painting.
A piece of porcelain. Fine but immobile, unmoving. And silent.
She followed Ana mutely back on deck, and then below it.
She kept her feet as best she could, trying to be steady against the rocking motions of the sea.
Questions ran through her mind—how did you become a pirate, what will the captain do to us?
—but Cat was spent. It took all her bravery and boldness to face down Valerian Kane.
She barely had the will to walk, let alone interrogate a pirate woman with silver fangs.
Ana navigated the warren that was the lower decks of the Covenant, leading Cat down cramped stairwells and passages.
She glimpsed the bunk room of swinging hammocks, endless stores of food and plunder, the cook’s galley, the gun deck rammed with cannons.
Crawlspaces and portholes. Though she knew little of ships, Cat knew enough to realize where they were heading.
To the brig.
The ship’s jail was deep in the hold, tucked away amongst the cargo.
The low, damp space felt stifling, the air far too close, a single greasy oil lamp burning in the corner.
It was barely enough to illuminate the bars sectioning off one side of the room, forming a cell against the curved wall of the ship’s hull.
Two men turned towards her, their faces shadowed in the gloom.
Ryman’s eyes were swollen from crying and spittle drooled from his gag.
He hiccupped against the fabric, his tears thankfully spent.
Fell, on the other hand, jumped to attention at once, his silver eyes shining like an animal peering through the gloom.
He had long worked his gag from his mouth, Cat noted, and chose not to extend the same courtesy to her husband.
She did not blame him.
“Are you well, Lady Rose?” Fell said, pressing his face against the bars. Rare concern pulled at his features, his brows furrowed.
Cat nodded. She braced herself, expecting Ana to throw her in with the other two. Lady or not, she was a prisoner, another bit of plunder rescued from the Venerable.
But Ana did not move, flanking her as if she were just an innocent bystander.
An innocent bystander with two wicked knives.
Cat swallowed, finding her voice. “I am well, sir. I have treated with Captain Kane.”
Fell bared his teeth, disgusted. By the thought of a Meridian lady bargaining with a pirate, or the title she afforded Valerian, Cat could not say. Perhaps both.
“And what did he demand of you?” the Meridian officer muttered, a wash of pink spotting his cheeks. She did not miss the way his gaze flickered over her thin shift.
Her body heated at the implication, something curling in her core.
“Three hundred crowns,” Cat answered quickly, before her mind or Fell’s could run away with worse thoughts. Though three hundred imperially minted crowns were certainly a terrible price of their own.
Ryman whined behind his gag.
“My thoughts exactly,” Cat muttered, agreeing with her husband for once.
Then she remembered Ana at her side, sharp-eyed and sharper eared.
“But it will have to be done. I’m certain we can pay in installments, with promissory notes from the bank in Archenport to be underwritten and repaid from our vault in Brycam City. ”
Cat kept her eyes on Ryman, her gaze hard and desperate, willing him to understand. Willing him to be intelligent for once in his rotten, spoiled life. She had never been so grateful for a gag in a man’s mouth.
Fell, at least, perceived. He gave a short nod. “Of course. You will pay him upon arrival in Archenport,” he said dryly. “And what of me?”
“You are to be ransomed back to the navy,” Cat answered.
His flush deepened and his head thunked against the bars. “I should hardly bear the shame of it.”
“You should be used to shame by now, you Meridian dog,” Ana said lightly, one eyebrow raised. “Unless you’re finished serving distant masters?”
Fell’s lip curled, his shame turning again to disgust. “I serve the Crown and Empire. It is an honor and a duty. I don’t expect a pirate to understand that.”
“Oh, we understand what it is to serve, more than you know,” the woman replied, sharpening with distaste. Her eyes flicked over him from head to toe. Whatever she found, she did not like.
“Suit yourself, dog,” she added, spinning on the heel of her boot.
Before Cat could make sense of things, the door to the little room opened and slammed shut again, leaving her behind.
Not locked in with her husband and the lieutenant, but still just as trapped.
It was almost more insulting, to be left unbound, with little more than an unlocked door to keep her in place.
Cat Rose was no threat to a ship filled with pirates. She was no threat to anyone at all.
It made her skin crawl.
Her eyes lingered on the door, long after Ana had gone. Weighing her options. To remain in the little room, in self-imposed imprisonment . . . or to cross the threshold to gods knew what.
They will only bind me too, she told herself, taking a seat on an overturned bucket. Her hands still trembled, and she knit them together in her lap, hoping to hide her quivering fingers.
“Captain Kane said half the pirates in the Lyrian Sea were once men of the fleets,” she said softly. “Is that true?”
Against the bars, Fell gave a shrug. “I doubt half.”
Her eyebrows rose. “But some?”
“I suppose.” Fell busied himself examining the cell wall, made from crossing bands of iron. “There are always deserters, justified or not.”
“Justified?” Cat prodded, her curiosity flaring. In her head, she tried to picture the other sailors aboard the Covenant, their faces blurring together. Which served in the Meridian navy once? Which might hold sympathy for us now?
A strange look crossed Fell’s face and he halted in his study of the cell.
“Not every captain is as skilled, fair, or evenhanded as Captain Quine,” he said tightly, his jaw clenched. From grief or anger, Cat could not say. “But they’re traitors, all of them,” he added, sharper. “And the imperial navy is well shot of their like.”
On the bench, Ryman let out a stifled noise that sounded very much like a preening courtier clearing his throat. Given the circumstances, Cat almost laughed.
Fell rolled his eyes but was more sympathetic. He gestured with his bound hands, pointing at the gag in Ryman’s mouth.
“Do you promise not to start screaming again, my lord?” he said wearily, reaching for the scrap of fabric.
Cat perked up from her bucket. For once she felt as if she might have some control over her husband, holding the upper hand in their marriage.
“And promise not to say anything foolish?” she offered.
The pitiful lord gave a jerky nod, and Fell acquiesced, dragging the gag down his chin. The officer winced, wiping his hands clean of Ryman’s drool. The lord jumped to his feet, his cheeks going red with fury.
“Foolish?” he exploded, pointing at her through the bars. Gone was the soft and simpering lord, replaced by a man pickled with rage. “You’ve indebted us to a pirate captain and promised an unpayable sum! In imperial mint, no less!”
Cat told herself there was no reason to feel shame, but heat crept across her face anyway. “I tried to save us—”
Ryman’s bound palms slapped the bars and Cat flinched.
“I’ve half a mind to sell you to the ship instead and rid myself of your idiocy once and for all,” he snarled, his red-rimmed eyes too wide, black pupils eating up the watery blue.
“Though I doubt you would fetch any real price, stupid, useless woman that you are,” he added with a glare to wither flowers in bloom.
He is a stupid man. He should be dead already.
His opinion holds no weight here, Cat told herself, biting her lip so hard she tasted blood again.
Useless. The word stung more than stupid, and Cat could not help but curl a little, her spine bending to make herself smaller.
She felt torn by too many wants—to scream back at him, to reach through the bars and rip his hair out at the root, to go stalking through the ship to find a saber. Anything would do.
But she did not move. All her wants were only dreams, unreal and unreachable. She was Lady Rose, wife to a terrible, pathetic man. All she could do was sit on the bucket and stare back at him, holding on to her shrinking dignity.
Ryman’s breath came hard and fast, nostrils flaring like a bull loosed from a pen. Again, his eyes raked over her, catching on her bare collarbone.
“What else did you offer the captain, you wanton bitch?” he breathed.
Before Cat could open her mouth to protest her innocence, Lieutenant Fell rounded on Lord Rose. Their difference in height was never so apparent, the navy officer towering over Ryman not just in stature, but confidence. The kind of confidence that came with knowing one’s way around a sea battle.
“Lieutenant,” Lord Rose sneered, flicking his eyes over Fell from head to toe. He licked his fleshy lips, looking like an overgrown toad. “This is a private matter between a lord and lady. It is not the concern of common men like yourself.”
Despite the circumstances, he seemed to relish the rank he held over the naval officer.