Chapter Sixteen Before #3
Somehow, the idea of Valerian speaking about her felt like a comfort, though she could not say why.
“I am of Arcayo,” Ana continued.
“Crownless,” Cat muttered without thought, drawing another smile from the she-pirate.
“Exactly. Crownless. No kings of ours, no kings of yours.” She had a proud look on her high-boned face.
“I admit, I cannot fathom such a thing.”
“I can’t fathom being a lady. I’d make a terrible one. Never did like to oblige.” Ana’s voice turned thoughtful. “But why should we?”
Cat wrenched her eyes away from a pile of cannonballs to glance at her escort.
“Survival, I suppose,” she said dryly.
Ana’s eyes narrowed, not in challenge, but confusion. “What have you ever had to survive?”
Cat’s first instinct was to soften, to go silent in the face of the question.
Indeed, she was a lady of the Meridian and born to more than most, despite her own hardships.
But it was hard to ignore her surroundings and the circumstances that brought her to Captain Kane’s ship.
Not to mention Lord Rose himself, gagged and bound in the brig.
“Besides my loathsome husband, the Venerable exploding out from under me, and being taken captive by pirates?” Cat said evenly as they climbed the midship stairs, emerging out onto the main deck of the Covenant.
The light was nearly blinding, and Cat had to shield her eyes. But she heard Ana’s honeyed laughter.
“Obliging, but sharp,” Ana said over her shoulder. “You are a puzzle indeed.”
She slid along past her fellow crewmen, busying themselves mending sails and braiding rope, swabbing decks, stoning the timbers, and cleaning pistols.
Cat remembered well enough from the crossing six months prior—to work a ship was to work endlessly.
There was always some task to be done, but she was surprised to see pirates so diligent in their toil.
Navy sailors and merchant crews were dutiful, of course.
But she never pictured pirates sewing up shirts or cooking.
It seemed far too mundane. Yet here they were, the men and few women of the Covenant, as dedicated to the ship as any law-abiding crew.
“The Captain always did like puzzles,” Ana said suddenly.
“He’s a puzzle himself, your captain,” Cat responded without thinking.
Ana grinned over her shoulder. “What do you mean by that, Kitten?”
Kitten. The term of endearment should have made her angry, but there was no insult to it, no sting. Nothing but Ana’s sharp-eyed curiosity and amusement.
“I mean he seems a pile of contradictions,” Cat answered, choosing her words carefully. “A Meridian man turned pirate. And he seems young for a captain. Not to mention all this business about the sea singing for you—”
“Ah, yes, I see. You’ve never met a believer before. But how would you?”
“A believer? In what?”
Grinning, Ana slowed and spread her arms wide, gesturing to the shimmering turquoise sea. “In the Lyrian. In the Song of wind, tide, and sun. Can’t you hear it, Kitten?”
There was nothing but the lap of waves and the grunting toil of sailors, but Cat tried to listen anyway. It was of little use, and she flushed, feeling foolish for the attempt. There was no god in the world but gunpowder and coin, a truth she learned more every day.
But a few words lingered in her mind, clinging like barnacles to a ship’s hull.
May the sea always sing for you, she remembered, thinking back to the storm and the Venerable before she was blown apart. At least the prayer had brought her comfort, giving her something to hold when all else was beyond reach.
“I would tell you how Valerian came to believe as we do, but I suppose that is his story,” Ana said. “How he grew legends of his own. You know, his enemies say he has salt water in his veins instead of blood?”
Cat scoffed. “I sorely doubt that.”
“Watch him sail into a storm and see how you feel then,” Ana replied with a grin.
In response, Cat slowed, her pulse quickening. She knew the path beneath her, towards the quarterdeck. After all, she had just walked it only an hour ago.
Back to the captain’s quarters.
She looked up to glimpse the man in question, framed by the open door into the council chamber. Before Cat could protest, Ana led her inside, a hand tight on her upper arm. Though Ana was the smaller of the two women, Cat knew better than to struggle. She did not want to run afoul of the Seawolf.
Valerian Kane stood across the table, hands braced on the back of a chair.
Again, he seemed too tall for the room, his neck bent to allow some space between the crown of his golden head and another lamp dangling askew.
His stormy eyes followed Cat as she entered, her steps heavy.
She stopped as soon as Ana allowed, keeping the wooden table between them.
Once more, Cat shuddered in her shift, wishing for a change of clothing.
“Is there more you wish to discuss, Captain?” she forced out.
Then something thumped in the next room—his own quarters.
And the door banged open, revealing a huddle of Kane’s sailors.
They shuffled out with arms full, clutching sheafs and rolls of paper, a collection of books, and one of them an entire drawer of clothing pulled clean from the armoire.
Cat gaped at them as they passed, all three men wrinkled and sun worn, so pickled by the sea she could hardly guess at their ages.
They nodded at Kane and Ana as they went but were careful not to meet Cat’s scrutinizing stare.
“Hardly,” Captain Kane replied, releasing his grip on the chair, his long fingers uncoiling.
Then he stooped, retrieving an unseen sack from the floor and slinging it over his shoulder as he stalked around the table.
“You will tell Ana if there is anything amiss, or anything you need,” he continued, closing the distance between them.
Cat breathed in the scent of tobacco and salt water. And something new. Alcohol, she realized, the bite of it a ghost on her tongue.
The captain did not break stride, skirting around her towards the open door. “If you must touch the books, put them back in order—”
“The books?” Cat sputtered as she whirled. “I don’t understand?”
One arm against the door frame, the other still holding the sack, Valerian Kane gave a sigh like a secretary facing a mountain of paperwork. Indeed, Cat felt like an imposition beneath his withering gaze.
“I’m afraid the Covenant is not well suited to travelers of your station,” he said, emphasizing the word with all the disdain he could muster.
“There are no free cabins to be had, and I will not turn out a member of my crew to let a Meridian lady kick up her feet. I’ll not have you whining in my bunkroom either. ”
In the corner, Ana stifled a laugh.
Captain Kane did not share her amusement, his expression grim. “We are traversing the Furies, and my crew won’t have their rest disturbed when they can steal it.”
A flush heated Cat’s cheeks and a retort danced on her tongue.
I am hardly a disturbance compared to a crowd of rowdy, drunken pirates, she wanted to snap.
Then she remembered the bunk room, filled with swinging hammocks and snoring, stinking sailors.
There was no comparison between that and Captain Kane’s spacious cabin.
In the doorway, still leaning to accommodate his own height, the pirate captain raised an eyebrow. The motion illustrated another little scar, a nick of pearly white parallel to the brow over his right eye.
“Is there something you wish to say, Lady Rose?” he said pointedly.
Her reply was swift and equally pointed.
“Thank you, Captain.”
His grim manner dissipated a little, like a storm passing out to sea.