Chapter Eighteen Before
BY THE TIME the sun set red into the horizon, Cat had the lay of Captain Kane’s library. And more importantly, his collection of maps and navigation charts.
She slotted the geography of the Lyrian Sea together in mismatched papers, until she had almost the full span of the islands laid out like a feast across the cabin floor.
Along with a compass and sparing glances at the horizon, she tried to figure out their course, or at least where the Covenant might be heading.
But it felt useless. There were hundreds of islands of the Lyrian Sea from towering volcanos to tiny, tidal keys.
We could be going anywhere.
Kane’s wishes be damned, Cat made a mess of his cabin and piled the most promising of his books alongside the patchwork map.
She sat beside them in a borrowed dress, yellow skirts pooling around her crossed legs.
She tried not to think about her equally borrowed undergarments as she read, scanning page after page in hopes of understanding a bit more of the world she found herself in.
She did not know what to look for. But she knew she must learn all the same.
You’ll learn. We all do.
His words still echoed in her mind, no matter how hard Cat tried to keep Valerian’s infuriating voice from her thoughts. Somehow, he managed to be both taunting and encouraging at the same time. It annoyed her to no end. And motivated her too.
You’ll learn.
Captain Kane’s library was more extensive than Cat expected, from the accounts of the first continental explorers to navigate the Lyrian Sea to an illustrated guide of Lyrian flora to scriptures from Meridian or Esperese churches.
There were the published works of famous sea captains from the Meridian Empire, diagrams of various guns and cannons, medical journals, and charts of the shipping lanes.
Not to mention sheafs of letters varying from naval dispatches to private correspondence, all from the captain and crew who used to the sail the Covenant before Kane seized her.
Cat pawed through these, skipping over letters to wives and sweethearts, bankers and debt collectors, children, parents.
Curling script from the officers, spiky scratch from the enlisted men.
They spoke of storms and bad water and hardship.
Official reports and harried notes of anguish or hope or love.
Even the glimpses were enough to make Cat’s head spin, the weight of their words immense upon her shoulders. She swallowed against a sick feeling and tried not to think of the men behind the letters, their last thoughts imprisoned to ink.
The previous commanding officer of the Covenant, a Meridian captain named Edgar Errol, left an unfinished letter, dated only two months ago.
Two months since Valerian won such a prize and became captain of his own ship.
How he did such a thing, Cat feared to wonder.
It felt near impossible to balance the man who awkwardly offered her a coat with a man who might kill a ship full of sailors.
But she could not forget the bullet hole in the next room.
Most likely it marked the end of Captain Errol, who would never finish the letter to his wife and daughter back in Brycam City.
Two months a captain, she told herself, filing the piece of information away.
It was the most she would get about him, to Cat’s chagrin—and a small amount of pride too. His logs were gone, along with his more detailed navigation charts, a manifest, or any schematics of the ship. Clearly, Kane thought enough of Lady Rose to keep her away from his writings.
Cat put aside the correspondence, hunting instead for more immediately useful information.
She blazed past a few leather-bound books written in odd script, even the individual letters inscrutable.
Somehow the pages smelled of salt water and she guessed they were rescued from the sea, though the paper showed no sign of water damage.
She settled for more maps of the Lyrian, roving between nautical charts the size of wagon wheels to small scraps covered in scribbles.
Her eyes darted between the little speck that was Rosby Island and the far more important places.
To the north, amongst the Stills, was Archenport.
In the middle of the map, the Esperese patrolled the Furies from their strongholds on Prospera and its smaller islands.
To the south was the Hook, a looping archipelago anchored by Arcayo.
She traced the outline of the island with a finger, thinking not of what the Meridian books said about the crownless island, but something more real. Ana, an Arcayan herself, with her tattoos and her laughing manner, formidable and beautiful, first mate of a pirate ship.
It was difficult to read in the dimming light, the sun now fully below the horizon. But Cat did not miss the swooping lines of ink, drawn over the Arcayan island. A braided circle, three lines woven together.
Her eyes narrowed, trying to place the symbol for a long moment.
“Oh.”
She sat up straight, the image of a man’s chest searing in her mind. A gold chain, a scarred-over tattoo. And another beneath it, a circle of three braided lines.
As she stared at the ink, the shadows of the cabin darkened completely. There would be no more reading this night. Unless . . .
“I need a light,” Cat said to no one.
* * *
AS BELOW IN the brig, no one had bothered to lock the door to the captain’s quarters.
After donning an overlarge coat to defend from the sea spray and lacing up her borrowed shoes, Cat steeled herself for the main deck.
Somehow, she grew more ridiculous by the hour.
First, she was a drowned rat. Now she felt like a beggar girl from the Brycam docks, with frizzy hair and cobbled-together clothing.
Her skirts swept over the floorboards of the dark council chamber, and she was careful to avoid the bloodstained wall. One hand clutched an unlit oil lamp, while she held out the other to maintain her balance against the gentle rocking of the ship.
Cat paused at the adjoining door, her heart a drum. Somehow, going out onto the ship felt like breaking a rule, though no one had given her any.
Do pirates have rules? she wondered, pushing open the door before she could lose her nerve.
She expected a raucous show on the other side, a bevy of pirates enjoying their rationed rum and the cool night air. Instead, she met a half-empty Covenant, with most sailors seemingly below to sleep.
Of course, she scolded herself. On the Venerable, when not in service fighting a storm or other ships, any man who had the time to sleep would be sleeping.
She supposed it was the same here. Especially after the events of the previous day and night, chasing a navy ship through a battering storm, only to blow their prize to pieces.
A figure moved about the rigging: a sailor checking and rechecking knots by lantern light. Another swabbed the gunwales, shuffling along with a rag and a bucket. So it was. Quiet chores and a quiet ship.
Except for a threesome playing cards beneath the mainmast, the group of them gathered around a low table. They chortled in low voices, trading hands and winking coins. A lantern burned next to them, throwing off just enough light to play by.
With a start, Cat remembered herself and the oil lamp in her hand.
“I don’t suppose I can bother you for a spark,” she said, approaching like a mouse creeping towards crumbs.
All three looked up from their game in stunned silence.
Though their faces ranged, one man as different from the other as a man could be, they wore the same look.
Each carried the harshness of a life at sea, in rough, sun-worn skin and dirty hands.
In crowfoot eyes born of squinting into the sun.
Scarred, tattooed, with metal teeth or pierced ears.
These were hard men, killers and pillaging rogues.
And completely frozen in the face of Lady Rose.
Cat glanced between them, confused by their varying degrees of shock.
Have I said something wrong? Do I really look that horrible?
Hastily, she held up the dead lamp in explanation.
“I have no striker myself,” she offered, biting her lip. Though the pirates were certainly more dangerous than she ever could be, they seemed to shrink from her presence.
One of them, a bronzed Esperese man with a cap of curly black hair, nodded his head back at the quarterdeck.
“You should return to your cabin,” he said hastily. His warm brown eyes darted, catching the light. “The captain would not like you wandering.”
Cat could not help but laugh, in spite of herself. The three pirates and their distant manner were almost comical against her circumstances, imprisoned and held for ransom. She raised an eyebrow as she looked them over.
On the Venerable, she had done her best to ingratiate herself to the crew, to separate herself from her loathsome husband and his poor behavior.
It felt like a game for her to play, helping to pass the hours on the naval ship.
Not to mention a strategic decision to hopefully earn friends amongst the officers of the fleet.
It could be the same here, Cat thought.
“I am but a lady of the Meridian,” she said with a precious curtsy, her borrowed skirts fluttering. She lowered her gaze, lashes fluttering against freckled cheeks in a way she knew most men enjoyed. “I can hardly bring any harm to the likes of you or your magnificent ship.”
The Esperese man did not respond, grimacing at his hand of cards, but the pirate next to him raised his head.
He had umber skin and the lantern light gleamed off his naked scalp, shaved clean to show a tattoo over one ear—an eagle in flight, body arched and wings wide.
The symbol of Itzima, the mightiest kingdom of the Southern Continent.
“The Covenant is a beauty,” he offered, showing Cat a little white smile. His cards splayed in his hand like a peacock’s tail.