Chapter Twenty-Six Before
“CAPTAIN MOROVANT, YOU hold the X.”
With a bellow of dismay, the pirate captain slapped his cards flat, faces fanned out, the scarlet mark of the cursed X on full display.
Half the tavern erupted in cheers, the rest in hisses and howls of displeasure.
Outside, the fiddle and Garedo’s flute trilled, the music weaving through the room.
A dozen bets changed hands, in coins and crumpled bank notes and pouches of tobacco, while another gambling pot slid across the pitted table into Cat’s waiting arms.
She grinned down at her winnings, even as the world seemed to swim, her body loosened by drink and victory. She welcomed the sensation. It tasted of taquil and felt like heavy coin in her hands, the weight of them as comforting as a soft blanket.
“I did warn you, Harry,” Valerian muttered over his already discarded hand. “She is not to be underestimated.”
“I stopped underestimating her four rounds ago,” Morovant shot back, though he smiled beneath his black beard. “Lady Rose, I think I must admit when I am outplayed. Lest I lose my ship to the next pot.”
Cat could not help but laugh, resting her chin on her palm. “That’s for the best,” she said. Her free hand thumbed the pile of coins in front of her. “I would hardly know what to do with your ship.”
At her shoulder, Ana snickered, and even Valerian smiled into his glass. Morovant roared loud enough for all of them, slapping his knee under the table. Like most of his sailors, he was beginning to look a little cross-eyed, and Cat ventured the wine was beginning to get the better of him.
Across the room, the fiddle floundered and someone shouted, followed by a meaty thunk and a yelp. Wood splintered and a figure went careening off the porch, disappearing into the sandy grass.
Cat jumped in her seat, her spine going straight, expecting the rest of the room to react just as sharply.
But a fistfight between two pirates seemed uninteresting to them all, if not commonplace.
Valerian didn’t move, shuffling the cards without looking, his cigar between his teeth.
Only Morovant huffed and hauled himself out of his chair, weaving his way towards the two sailors now brawling in the darkness.
“Enough of that, Hawkins, Riago, or you’ll spend the night in the brig,” he grumbled, gesturing for another sailor to follow. Cat figured he was Morovant’s first mate, Valerian’s replacement aboard the Seadragon.
With a smack, Valerian slapped the shuffled cards back on the table in a neat pile. Then he gripped the clay taquil bottle, turning it over to pour another cup. Nothing happened.
“I can’t play cards with an empty glass,” he grumbled, sliding back in his chair.
Without thought, Cat followed, her legs moving independent of her mind.
After shoving her winnings into her pockets, she stood up from her seat—and nearly dropped again.
Her knees wobbled and she swayed on her feet, off-kilter.
Until a strong arm caught her by the waist, letting her find her balance.
“Taquil will do that to you,” Valerian said, grinning as she righted herself. He was so quick to let go, Cat thought she might have imagined his arm around her middle.
But the prickling sensation at her side was impossible to deny. She blinked fiercely, trying to bring the room into sharper focus. Everything seemed softer, as if glimpsed through cloudy glass.
“Certainly more potent than anything I’m used to,” she said, trailing in his wake.
Valerian Kane was easy to follow, standing nearly a head above most of the room, his blond hair a guiding beacon.
Not that it was a long walk from one side of the Drink to the other.
Barely twenty feet judging by their strides.
But the seconds seemed to melt, stretching too long, and Cat felt hours passing in the moment it took to reach the bar.
The window behind the bar was jammed open, allowing a salty breeze into the tavern.
Cat leaned towards it, the night air rousing her.
Her head spun a little slower, and she balanced against the bar top, hands braced to watch Valerian as he rooted through the shelves and little cabinets.
Like Cat, he moved more slowly than usual, his once-prowling motions lazy.
“I know I left one,” he muttered, pawing at the dusty bottles on the highest shelf.
Cat found herself marveling at the long length of his body, almost too big for the cramped space. When he brushed up against her, still searching, she bit her lip but did not move. He seemed to throw off heat, the air around him radiating with warmth.
To her chagrin, he pulled back quickly again, another clay bottle clutched triumphantly in his fist. When he grinned, it was not the sharkish look of the captain from the council chamber or the main deck, but the smile of a younger man, free of such burdens, with no thought beyond the path in front of him.
It felt like basking in a perfect ray of sunlight.
“I knew this would come in handy,” he said gleefully, pulling the cork out with his teeth.
She watched him gulp directly from the bottle before finding herself a glass amongst the strewn wares.
“Do you stash taquil on every island in the Lyrian Sea, Captain?”
Using her dress, she wiped the inside of a cup clean, then let Valerian pour. This taquil was darker, amber in color, and sweeter smelling.
Tastes sweeter too, she thought, taking a small sip.
He tipped his head playfully and leaned back, elbows braced against the bar top.
He hemmed her in between his body and the window, one side hot and the other cool.
Somehow, it did not feel like being trapped.
If anything, Valerian shielded her from the rest of the room, giving her a corner to collect herself.
“Not every island,” he answered.
The taquil painted fire down her throat, but the shivering kind. The kind to make one bold.
“On these islands?” Her knuckles brushed his exposed forearm, tracing the tattooed stars that were not stars.
To her delight, she felt him quiver beneath her touch, and his throat jumped above the open collar of his shirt. It made the golden chain glimmer, a thread of light around his neck.
He pulled at the bottle again, but his eyes never left her face. Storm and sunlight warred within his gaze, the deep blue-green swirling with the flickering candlelight. It was as good as a hand holding her chin in place, and Cat knew she could not look away, even if she wanted to.
“You like asking questions, don’t you?” he murmured.
“You said I will learn.” She could still hear him, speaking behind the desk in his cabin, her body wet from the sea. “I’m trying.”
A corner of his mouth lifted. “I saw. Have you put my books back where you found them?”
“Not quite.”
Sighing, Valerian shifted, bringing his forearm level between them. He made a fist with his hand and long lines of muscle jumped out, the tattoos shifting with his flesh. Slowly, he pointed to each in turn.
Cat’s eyes widened, drinking it in.
“Once, the people of Arcayo did not live on just a single island.” He indicated the largest black spot, which was, on closer inspection, a sharply drawn diamond.
Then his fingers trailed, tracing the smaller tattoos.
“Miradan, Inera, Izin. Guayar.” He touched each spot as he named them.
“They were abandoned, one by one. Left to be swallowed by the flags of distant countries and unfeeling crowns.”
A rare current of anger laced his voice, making his words tremble. Cat could almost feel it on the air, the temperature seeming to rise. She eyed the tattoos, each inked in turn, as if the map might form in her mind.
“What are they called now?” she murmured.
It was the wrong thing to ask. Valerian’s cheeks flushed, his brow drawing into an angry line. But his rage was not for her, his gaze still fixed on the tattoo. Again, he walked the line of black diamonds, touching each in turn.
“Longdawn. Ambrose. Aleta”
Cat’s pulse quickened. She knew those names—they were colonies of the Meridian or the Esperese, familiar even to her.
His finger continued, tracing another diamond of ink. Valerian’s eyes flashed, snapping to hers.
“Rosby.”
Suddenly the sweet taste of taquil turned sour and hateful, the contents of Cat’s belly threatening to crawl back up her throat.
“I—”
Her voice faltered, for there were no words to say. Valerian stared at her through it all, not with accusation, but some grim satisfaction.
“What did you think your island was?” he muttered, his bare forearm still between them. “A place of absence, of nothing? Do you think it rose out of the sea at your bastard king’s command, just to be given to some pale fool in a wig?”
Cat could not help but think of the hot cage that was Rosby, with its empty beaches and little hill, the crumbling house and simple barn. No fields, a single well. She felt as if the sea could swallow it at any moment. And yet it was not always so, she thought, ashamed.
“I did not think—did not know,” she forced out, stumbling to form a thought. Until one sharpened, impossible to ignore. “Of course the island came from somewhere else. From someone else.”
Certainly, Ryman knows the details better than I.
Which family member had been gifted a spit of land, for whatever service.
Land claimed by a crown, supplanted by a Meridian flag, with laborers and engineers to chip away whatever was left.
To burn down homes and markets and docks.
To tear down stone. To destroy belief. To erase people.
She tried to imagine the island, to see it as it was.
Was the flat top of the hill cleared away for a market square?
Were the stones around the barn the remains of a wall?
Or the smooth limestone that formed the beginnings of the dock?
Had there been a forest, cleared away for lumber in the early days?
And the phoenix trees, the only shade, the only respite on the entire island—was that a garden once?
An orchard loved and tended by the lost?