Chapter Eighteen Before #2
From her vantage point, the game was easy to spot. As she watched, the Esperese man threw down a pair of cards, black swords, with an exasperated sigh. The other two pirates jeered and eagerly added coins to the pot, smelling blood.
Cat smelled it too.
“Is this Red River?” she said, bending forwards to inspect the cards, her eyes going wide as a child’s. If I look stupid, so be it. “I know this game.”
The Itziman gave her another smile, nodding. “Indeed it is.”
But his compatriot, the third pirate, tried to shuffle her off. He stood up from his stool with a jolt and pulled a striker from his pocket.
“I’ll attend to your lamp, my lady,” he offered, striking flint against steel. Sparks danced and guttered like shooting stars. They illuminated his face for a moment, showing ruddy cheeks and a red-blond beard to match his hair.
“You sound like a man of Allisport,” Cat said, her lamp still dangling at her side. His accent was unmistakable.
He only quirked his head, the striker still in hand. “Born and raised. Now shall I light that for you?”
But Cat pressed a hand to her mouth. She felt like one of the pirates at the table, carefully choosing the cards in her hand.
“Oh, sir, I am so sorry for the news,” she murmured, her voice laced with pity.
The pirate’s red brow furrowed, grim lines deepening across his forehead. Still seated, his compatriots looked just as baffled, if not intrigued.
“What news?” he demanded, the striker forgotten in his hand.
“You have not heard,” Cat said softly, shaking her head. “I am sorry to have said anything, but—oh, it is just so horrible.”
When the pirate waved her to his seat, she took it without protest, folding herself down at the card table.
“What are you talking about?” The Meridian pirate drew up another stool for himself and leaned in next to her, a picture of concern. “What of Allisport?”
Her breath caught with a well-calculated hitch, as if she were only a lady speaking out of turn. Cat wished for a fan to flutter, to hide a nonexistent flush. Part of her cringed to use the news of Allisport in this way. Somehow it felt like twisting a knife.
But am I not at knifepoint too?
This was not like country dances, the room filled with pompous men and fawning ladies, all of them trying to entrance the other.
Or worse, Ryman’s parlor after their marriage, where he once boasted of his nonexistent triumphs, trying to squeeze a loan out of the few lords stupider than he was.
And Cat could only sit there, smiling into her wine, silently screaming.
She would not be silent now.
All three pirates stared as the spray of the sea washed over the deck. They seemed to be holding their breath.
Cat swallowed, as if fighting to speak the words aloud. It was an easy part to play.
“The Esperese fleet crossed to Meridian shores. They burned half the city to the ground,” she muttered, eyes downcast. To the men, she would look too affected to meet their gazes.
In truth, she studied the cards already piled, discarded from the game, counting them. “We learned as much only yesterday.”
The Meridian pirate let out a low curse.
“Burned Allisport,” he said in disbelief. His face reddened, flushing the same shade as his hair. “By the gods.”
Across from him, the Esperese pirate leaned to pat him on the shoulder. “My apologies, Brimley. You had family there, yes?”
“S’pose I should be grateful my mam up and died last winter,” Brimley replied, sniffing hard. He scrubbed at his eyes, but no tears fell, his face only growing redder.
“Cavallid,” the Itziman muttered, nudging at the Esperese. “What is Allisport?
The bearded pirate gave him a sharp look. “A city in the Meridian Empire. A city for sailors.”
“A city for half the navy,” Brimley said, his voice thick with emotion. “The Meridian fleet will be in tatters.”
“Then it is a good thing you no longer sail for it,” the Itziman replied shrewdly.
“Indeed, Mr. Garedo,” Brimley muttered.
Cat blinked at the pirate, looking at him through a new lens. “You defected? You left the navy?” she said with true surprise. She tried to picture him in a naval uniform, with a tricorne hat and a clean-shaven face.
Nodding, Brimley settled back in his seat. “Aye, two months ago.”
Then he sailed with Captain Errol. He served on this very ship when it was captured. Cat did her best to keep her face blank. She could not help but think of the letters in Kane’s cabin, written by men she assumed were dead.
Brimley was proof of another path.
“How did you hear of Allisport?” he said, voice gruff.
“Another ship brought word to the Venerable and Captain Quine.”
Word of Allisport, and their orders to sail back across the ocean. But the trio of pirates did not need to know the last part. Information was Cat’s only weapon. She did not intend to squander anything too soon.
“Quine was captain of the Venerable?” Brimley winced. “I am sorry to hear that.”
Cat blanched. “You knew him?”
“I knew his reputation,” he said, his focus now back on his cards. Frowning, he played a black star in reverse, altering the direction of play. The course of the river. “He was far softer than most captains of the navy.”
Softer. After only a few days on Captain Quine’s ship, she would hardly call the man soft by any measure.
But he was certainly fair and just with his crew.
After all, he held the other ship so they could write letters to send back to Meridia.
She supposed it was a great kindness, in his position, to hold against the waves a little longer and allow his men to grasp for a little bit of home.
Cat said nothing, and the hand went around the table in silence, from Brimley to Garedo to Cavallid.
She turned their names over, committing them to memory.
All three of them were fair enough at the game.
But Cat’s eyes glittered, following the cards, counting them off in their suits.
Sword, stars. Crescents, diamonds. And hunting through the deck for the single red X. To draw, to play, or to accuse.
It looked like a game of luck, but Cat knew better.
Softly, she put her lamp down before laying both hands on the table. A pile of pennies glittered inches away. Little compared to the size of her ransom, but still more than she had.
“Do you mind if I join the next hand?”
* * *
CAT PILED HER winnings neatly on her edge of the table: two pearls, a turtle shell bowl, ten pennies, and one silver Esperese coin winking in the light.
After losing so much to the Lyrian Sea, the little pile felt like a treasure hoard.
Cat could not help but errantly stroke the coin, feeling the stamp of the Esperese cross beneath her finger.
A voice in her head told her to finish the game, stand up from the table, and sweep her winnings into her skirt.
To leave with something, small as it was.
But that voice was weak, fading with every hand.
Besides, she could hardly leave the table, and the men gathered around it. Their stunned silence and stilted words were long gone, replaced by an amiable manner Cat had not enjoyed in a very long time.
The smell of rum wafted from her left side, where Brimley sat giggling into his ration, his hand discarded after his purse ran dry.
But he remained, ribbing Garedo and Cavallid as they steadily lost hand after hand to a Meridian lady.
And he wasn’t alone. Two other members of the crew joined him to watch, the cabin boy Ratter and the grizzled old cook named Cook.
It was a moonless night, the stars ever brighter for its absence. They glittered beyond the shadows of the sails, pinpricking the perfect black of the sky. Cook was good enough to bring another lantern, and the six of them huddled in the little circle of warm light.
“She’s going to bankrupt you two if you don’t come to your senses,” Brimley chortled, showing uneven teeth. “Put it up and go to sleep.”
“You go to sleep, Brimley,” Cavallid snapped from behind his fanned cards.
“And miss all the fun?” Brimley sloshed back another mouthful of rum. “Hardly.”
Cat kept her cards face down on the table, lifting them only enough to glimpse the symbols beneath.
Garedo was far steadier than either of his companions, neither drinking nor rising to anger. But he sighed at his cards, clearly disappointed with the hand dealt.
“We should all go to sleep soon,” he muttered. His sable-brown eyes lifted from his cards to the blackness beyond the rails of the ship. “These are the Furies. We should take advantage of the good weather while we can.”
Cat lifted the corner of a card again, though she had her hand memorized. Then she sighed and looked around the table, offering the silken, polite smile of a lady.
“Gentlemen, you may quit whenever you like,” she said with a wave of a hand. “I’ll not keep you from your bunks.”
They responded with riotous laughter, even Cavallid chuckling into his cards. He shook his head, black curls falling into his eyes.
“We’ve got her on the run. This hand’s ours,” he said, elbowing Garedo.
“Think what you like, Mr. Cavallid,” Cat said with a prim look. “But I mean it. I’ll not have you falling asleep at your stations on my account. After all, it is quite a long journey to Archenport. You need all your strength.”
Across the table, Cavallid gave a shrug and a snort. “Hardly, we can make the run to Drowning Key with our eyes shut.”
Drowning Key.
If it was a slip of the tongue, Cavallid gave no indication, nor did the others.
Cat checked her cards again to give herself a moment to think.
She chewed the inside of her cheek and tried to recall the map laid across the floor of the captain’s cabin, with its numerous keys, the little spits of sand too small to be deemed an island.
She wondered if Drowning Key was one of them, marked in smudged ink, their true destination revealed.