Chapter Twenty-Seven After
THE CARDS SKITTERED across the table, the edges battered and roughed by many hands. Cat glanced at them only once, the feel of thick paper familiar against her fingers. All around, the gambling hall pressed in, seemingly every eye in Nera turned towards the game in the center of the room.
Catrine Rose cut her teeth at the card tables of Meridian society, but she learned her hardest lessons in the gambling dens of pirates and smugglers, criminals who would sooner slit your throat than suffer a cheat or a slight.
A proper Meridian lady with her polite smiles and fluttering fan gave cause for neither.
But the hot-blooded tempers of chaotic men made for easy observation, allowing Cat to wait for openings and opportunities created by other distractions.
Namely, brawls and duels. She had seen her fair share of blood on the cards and taken enough money from men nursing their wounded pride.
But not Valerian. It had been long years since she ever took a single coin from his purse.
No, I’ve taken much worse, she knew, feeling his hatred radiate across the table. He glared over the edge of his fanned cards, silent and seething.
Captain Vex did not seem so interested in cards, or at least not as much as he was in the game unfolding between the two other players. He glanced back and forth, eyes darting as if following a very silent, slow game of chess.
“Lover’s quarrel?” he said gruffly.
He was not the only one. Some of the Covenant crew traded knowing glances, and Cat could not blame them. They had overheard many an argument onboard the ship, or on the docks, or in the tavern. Or anywhere sound carried.
“Hardly.” She rearranged her cards. “Captain Kane just hates to lose.”
Across the table, Valerian laughed into a steadily draining glass of taquil so strong Cat could smell it from her seat.
“You only lose when the game ends,” he answered dryly. Another coin joined the pot. “And this game is far from over.”
Cat wanted to flip the chipped silver back at him, or perhaps throw her glass at his idiotic golden head.
“I’ve heard many foolish things from your mouth, but none so foolish as that.” Her brow furrowed, the same old frustration making her toes curl. “You have lost, Valerian. We—”
He cut her off with a blazing look. “Don’t pretend to be part of something you never believed in.”
“Fine,” she sniffed, handing two cards to Vex without so much as a glance. “I won’t waste my breath explaining what you already know or repeating what I’ve already said.”
I’ve read this page before, Cat thought bitterly, remembering another table in another room. How he laughed at her worries, dismissing her warnings outright. Something broke in her then, and it still stung now. She tried not to think of it, the edges of a wound that refused to heal.
“Good,” Valerian snapped, returning to his cards.
Vex leaned sideways, his attempt at a whisper rough and not at all quiet. “You finished with the Prince of Merchants?”
Cat’s eyes flared wide, darting between the two of them, and Valerian perceived her attention. He pursed his lips and gave Vex a sharp shake of his head. His message was clear.
Not now.
But Cat understood enough. The Prince of Merchants. Goa. Smiling in an alleyway with Vex’s crew just that morning. Before heading off to meet with Valerian, no doubt.
To tell him of my presence in the city, she thought, cursing herself for her own stupidity.
And what else?
The Prince of Merchants could procure or fence anything—was Valerian buying or selling? She could only guess, trying to keep too many threads from tangling in her head.
“Captain, I’m told you have a naval officer in your charge,” Valerian said sharply, changing the subject with the grace of a lame horse.
Cat knew when to keep her mouth shut. She dropped her eyes to study her cards. Captain Fell was far from her concern, but he could certainly still be her problem. Valerian had not killed her on the spot, and she did not want to give him cause to change his mind.
Vex sighed at his cards, clearly holding a poor hand.
“Indeed, we have him,” he answered, before fixing Valerian with a stern look that spoke volumes. “But I venture we’re done with ransoms, these days.”
The captain nodded grimly. “We certainly are.”
Then be done with it and kill him. Again, Cat flinched at the thought—but not enough to change her mind. She eyed her cards again. Better to focus on something other than the thought of Jasper Fell drawn and quartered like Harry Morovant.
His head or mine.
“Tell me, how fares our old friend Jasper Fell?”
She jerked back up to find Valerian waving for another cigar and a light. Both appeared quickly, a barmaid leaning a little too far with a candle. Valerian basked in the attention, as he always did, his eyes trailing down her neck as he grinned.
Seething, she glared back, watching as he held the barmaid’s wrist, one finger tracing the veins beneath her palm. Cat neatly ignored the itch on her skin in the same place.
“As difficult as ever,” she replied, tone even.
With a puff of smoke, Valerian released the barmaid, who flushed and smiled before leaving the table.
“And still trailing you like a lost dog,” he sneered into his taquil.
Her head spun, the cloud of smoke and taquil fumes threatening to pull her under.
“Like a hound,” she forced out, trying to get her bearings. Inwardly, Cat cursed the alcohol already running through her veins. I should have never had a sip. I should have stayed in my room. I am a fool. “I’m lucky Vex’s men took him into custody, lest he drag me back to Archenport by my hair.”
Valerian rested his elbow on the table. “Is that it?”
She knew the look he wore. Smug, self-assured. Victorious. Many a ship had fallen to such a look, swallowed up by the ambitions of Valerian Kane.
Cat refused to be another prize.
“It is,” she replied.
“Ah, well.” He shrugged, rolling his shoulders in a way Cat did not like. “I shall have to ask his crew if they agree.”
His crew.
The table wavered, but not Valerian, his face the only fixed thing in her sight. She searched him, looking for a lie or bluff. He was good at neither.
And she found neither.
“After I speak to Fell, of course,” he added idly. “You should join me, Widow Rose.”
The trap threatened to spring, and Cat inched away from it as slowly as she could. Sighing, she put down her cards and relinquished the pot, forfeiting their game.
“I think I’m finished for the evening,” she said, her chair scraping, her hat snatched up. “Being a fugitive is certainly exhausting.”
But Valerian was faster.
He was always faster.
“On that, we can all agree.”
He was already out of his chair, rounding the table to take her by the arm, his palm molding to the flesh above her elbow. Beneath her sleeve, her tattooed skin warmed. As if embraced. Or set aflame.
Then his lips brushed her ear, the scratch of his beard rough and familiar.
“Please, I insist,” he said through bared teeth.
To another, it might seem a smile. Cat knew better. A tempest warred in Valerian Kane, and there was nothing to do but weather the storm.
Her own teeth flashed. If not for Vex and the crowd looking on, they would be buried in his neck.
“Well, if you insist,” she snarled.
Stiffly, she made to leave the hall, but Valerian held her in place. He clicked with his tongue, scolding her.
And flicking over her cards, one by one.
The last turned, the scarlet X on full display.
“So I thought,” he said.
* * *
THE COVENANT ANCHORED beyond the harbor, around a curve in the coastline.
Her silhouette cut sharply against a sky of stars, the warship a void but for the lanterns dotting her length.
Cat glared at the familiar vessel from the longboat, oars splashing on either side as she sat ramrod straight on the front bench.
The Covenant must have sailed in after nightfall, for there was no ship here upon Cat’s arrival in the morning.
Another hulking warship loomed a few hundred yards away and Cat guessed it to be the Harriet, Vex’s ship.
Not sunk or captured, but hidden, the pair of pirate ships careful in their anchorage.
Even in the dark she could see the figurehead of the Covenant. Once it was a Meridian lion roaring at the horizon—now the beast was skull-faced, laughing at all who dared come close.
Though she refused to look backwards, she was intimately aware of Valerian sitting aft, working the oars alongside his first mate, Adelo, and four other members of the crew. The rest followed in another longboat, cutting swiftly through the black waves.
It felt like being marched to the gallows, and Cat wondered if that was not far from the truth. Valerian had not killed her in the city but that did not mean he would not kill her on the ship. She supposed there was a small sense of justice to it. Pirate justice, at least.
Her heart sank as the Covenant loomed, bigger by the second. She could not help but glance at the ensign, the massive flag hanging loose from the staff at the stern of the ship.
Black fabric rippled, swaying with the rise and fall of waves beneath the ship. The flag was so dark it seemed to eat the lantern light, aside from the white symbol on its face. Cat knew it too well—a smiling skull with a golden tooth.
And beneath it, roses winding around the crossed bones, their blooms red as blood.
They felt like daggers to her heart.
It was the same flag Valerian flew six months ago, before the Meridian returned and set their world to ashes.
Before I betrayed him.
Why didn’t he change it? she wondered, looking mournfully up at the flowers, red as the flowers on the sign above her tavern door.
Red as the tattoo on her arm.
And the matching tattoo on his.
Without thinking, she turned over her shoulder, finding Valerian’s eyes in the darkness. He was already glaring, his mouth pressed into a grim line.
Then the longboat was alongside the hull, and there was no more time to think.