Chapter Thirty Before
THE WALK TO the brig felt like a death march, every step heavier than the last. Until Cat thought she might simply collapse to the timbers, overcome with shock.
The battle still raged behind her eyes, the flashes of powder and sprays of blood like fireworks.
And the smiles of the Covenant crew, eager in their hunt, like hounds loping after a hare. Ana, Garedo, Brimley, even Ratter.
And Valerian of course, the leader of the pack.
How did I ever think this could be a place for me? she thought, cursing the foolish hopes of an even more foolish woman.
And her inescapable fate.
The brig was a foul sight. The battle had upended the shared bucket and sent Ryman spewing in the corner.
He was still retching when Cat finally entered, her ears ringing and stomach churning.
The smell almost made her turn around, but she forced herself forwards, much as she wanted to retreat to her cabin and her bunk, to burrow into darkness and forget.
Welcome to the Lyrian Sea, she thought bitterly.
Lieutenant Fell leapt up from the bench, eyes wide with worry. The days belowdecks gave Fell’s face a pale-yellow pallor, and his meticulously combed hair was hastily tied back in a knotted black tail, his scalp shiny with grease.
“You’re injured,” he barked. “We must send for the surgeon—”
“The blood isn’t mine,” Cat murmured, shrugging out of the ruined coat to show her nightshift beneath. In another life, she would have cringed to stand before another man in such a state, but such bonds of etiquette were long gone.
For her, at least. Ryman somehow managed to leer at her from his fetid corner. He was a ghoul raised from the grave, his eyes glassy and white spittle crusted to the corners of his mouth. He blinked at her slowly, as if he could not make sense of her presence.
“For gods’ sake, cover yourself,” he hissed.
Both Cat and Fell ignored him, eyeing each other instead.
“What ship did they come upon?” the officer said, his expression blank. He looked like when she first found him in the wreck of the Venerable. As if the light inside him had been snuffed out.
“The Victorious.”
His lips pursed.
“How many dead?”
“I’m not sure, but the captain certainly. Most of the survivors are being set adrift.”
The rest chose the black flag, Cat thought, but refused to say so.
It would only be salt in a wound. She filled in the rest as best she could, barely understanding the battle herself.
Ana’s ambush, Valerian’s disguise. The many repairs needed on both the Covenant and the Victorious.
She could only wonder who might captain the captured warship, given command of the newest pirate vessel in the Lyrian.
“That’s all I know,” Cat mumbled, the useless feeling creeping back into her body.
Ryman seemed to pounce on it. “And what about before the sea rat’s attack on a ship of the Crown?” he said, sounding like a rat himself. “Where have you been, my loyal wife?”
“I do apologize for my absence,” Cat answered quickly, bowing her head to stare at the floor. It was easier to twist the truth that way. “But I have done—what I could to mend things. To find a way out of this for us.”
For me.
And I failed.
Ryman shuffled his way to the cell door and scowled at her through the bars. “You mend things? You couldn’t mend a shirt, let alone this mess you’ve put us in. Locked in the dark, at the mercy of pirates and worse.”
Heat crept up her neck, but Cat did not relent. She raised her face again, hands clasped in front of her, drawn up like a lady addressing a dinner party. It was the best way she knew to reach Ryman—to treat him like the lord he pretended to be.
“Yes, Lord Husband,” she murmured. “You are right in that regard. But I did convince Captain Kane to—take what we can give. From Rosby, when we arrive.”
A white-blond brow arched on Ryman’s face. “Oh?” he said, intrigued.
Fell shifted, some life returning to his face. The shackles around his wrists jingled, metal links clinking as he moved. The skin where iron touched flesh looked raw and inflamed, and Cat winced to think of it.
“What did I tell you, Cat?” he growled in a far harsher tone, the naval officer’s teeth flashing in the dim light of a single lamp. “Hold the ruse.”
“And I would have, if Captain Kane was a stupid man,” she answered, remembering her conversation with Valerian in the Drowning Drink.
It was only a few days ago but felt lifetimes away now.
“He is well aware of the navy presence in Archenport, and naval tactics, as you know now. He never planned to take us there or empty a bank vault that does not exist. There was no ruse to begin with, Lieutenant.”
It sounded like an apology, and Fell took it as such, swallowing hard and nodding his head.
“Kane is certainly a smarter man than I took him for,” the officer muttered, his disdain laced with a surprising thread of respect.
Ryman was not so calm. “Then we are finished!” he yelped, throwing up his unbound hands. “I’m surprised they haven’t chopped us up for meat already. Perhaps they’ll sell our bones. Human ivory fetches a fine price.”
Cat tried not to think of human ivory, or how her husband knew the economics of such a gruesome commodity.
“They aren’t going to sell our bones, Lord Rose,” Fell said wearily, settling back on the bench.
“Well, not yours!” Ryman snapped, whirling on him. “You still have a ransom. The Meridian navy will pay handsomely for your return. As for us—we must throw ourselves upon the mercy of the gods.”
Cat watched him with weary eyes, already exhausted by his presence.
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” she replied.
“I have a few dresses at the house. My last necklace. A pair of earrings. Some good crystal wineglasses. We will offer them water when they need it, and shelter on Rosby if asked. We can even give them the horse if they’ll take it. ”
Her heart twisted at the thought of giving away Sparrow.
She was getting on in years, but the piebald mare made life on Rosby a little bit more bearable.
Cat wondered how she might survive without her daily rides, when there was nothing to keep her company but the wind and the sky and the unrelenting sea.
“I’ll hardly be housing pirates on my island. And there is simply nothing I can part with.” Ryman shrugged, matter-of-fact. “Nothing of value, I mean.”
Fell gave another exasperated sigh, covering his face with his hand. “You’ll find something.”
Something.
Ryman Rose had never been a difficult man to read, but for once Cat wished he was not so transparent.
His roving stare made her skin crawl, her stomach rolling like the waves beneath the ship.
A blind man could have guessed his intention, and Cat was far from blind anymore.
One fist clenched against her skirt, the only motion she would allow, the only indication of her terrible discomfort.
It almost made her yearn for the bloodied deck.
Swallowing around the lump in her throat, she raised her head, tossing back a few curls. They smelled of gunpowder and smoke.
“Perhaps we can petition the governor for restitution, once things settle,” she said, trying to sound bright and hopeful. And not disgusted by her husband. “Lieutenant, we would appreciate your support in that endeavor.”
Fell peeked over his hand, meeting her gaze.
Cat offered him a tight smile. “When you are returned to the navy, will you make arrangements for us?”
“I shall try,” Fell answered, sounding unconvinced.
Ryman dismissed it all with a snort. “That means nothing, Catrine. Or are you so na?ve as to think Lieutenant Fell will waste another thought on us once we are separated?”
Fell’s lip curled but he did not give Lord Rose the satisfaction of a retort. Cat certainly did not envy the lieutenant his time in the brig with the worst sort of company.
“If I am na?ve, then so be it,” she said stiffly, taking a step back from the bars. “Think on what you can hand over when they take us ashore.”
* * *
THERE WAS A great deal of work to do in the wake of the Victorious, and Cat endeavored to stay out of the way.
Not just to allow repairs to proceed without her entanglement, but because she could hardly look a single member of the crew in the eye.
Even with the blood washed away, the decks swabbed, the bullet holes smoothed over, there was no forgetting what the Covenant could become.
Or always was.
The errant hope of somehow remaining on board disappeared like shot from a cannon, replaced with the sobering knowledge that Cat did not belong here. Rosby, Ryman, the cage she had only just fled—that was her single option for life in the Lyrian Sea.
She even avoided the burials, though she certainly glimpsed them from the windows, watching as bodies shrouded in white plunged into the deep.
Cat passed the dwindling time clearing Valerian’s cabin, returning everything to its exact location.
Or as close to it as she could. Some of the maps were certainly out of order, and the books somehow did not fit the shelves in the same way.
But she did her best, straightening the captain’s cabin until it looked like the day she had first walked into it.
When Valerian had sat smiling with a boot on his desk and she had shivered in his chair, half-naked in a wet shift.
After folding away her borrowed clothes and making up the bunk as neatly as she could, Cat glanced across the room one last time.
The gallery faced aft, out to the open sea, but Rosby was ahead, the prow of the ship pointed directly at the huddled little monster.
Still, she lingered, gazing out to the blue stretch of horizon.
May the sea always sing for you.
She looked at the clouds and wished, praying for them to darken. To move impossibly and catch the Covenant, dangerous as it was, and carry her far away from this place.
May the sea always sing for you, she thought again, as if the words held any real meaning.