Chapter Thirty-Two Before
RYMAN STARED WITH empty eyes, his body slumped in a puddle of his own blood.
Cat straightened, the flintlock still in hand, her fingers gripped so tightly, she feared the gun might mold to her flesh.
She refused to blink, lest it all be a dream.
She would not bear it, to wake up and find Ryman still alive, or worse, right next to her.
But he didn’t move, his toadish face pressed against the timbers of a pirate ship.
She could smell his blood, the scent so strong it was overpowering.
With a shiver, she realized it wasn’t just all over the deck, but her boots, her skirts—her face.
It made her skin crawl, entirely too horrid to be a dream or hallucination.
And the pistol was too heavy in her hand, the barrel still smoking as her husband’s corpse cooled.
This is real, she told herself, a prayer as much as an assertion. Slowly, she blinked her stinging eyes and exhaled through gritted teeth. The body remained, indisputable.
Ryman Rose was dead.
It was over.
She was rid of him.
Her lips parted, drawing her first breath as a widow. It tasted like iron and salt.
Like freedom.
Her body shook, cold washing over her limbs as if she had been dunked in icy water, a rush of emotions crashing over her. So many eyes looked on, and Cat was keenly aware of them all. But one above the rest. Not the pirate crew or even Valerian Kane, but Lieutenant Fell.
Tentatively, she raised her gaze to find the officer locked on her, straining against three pirate captors holding him back, his face bone white and unreadable. She could only fathom what she looked like from his position, a murderess with her husband’s blood all over her face.
The rest of the ship watched, cowed into silence by the shocking display. But they felt like an audience in a theater, distant and uninvolved, with Cat standing center stage.
“Lieutenant,” she heard herself murmur, trying to weigh his reaction.
He is a loyal son of the Meridian, a dutiful officer. Her stomach twisted, whatever joy she felt at Ryman’s death fading away. And I have committed the gravest of crimes right in front of him.
Her voice weakened, so soft she could barely hear it herself.
“Jasper.”
A vein pulsed in his neck, his only movement.
Boots thunked on the timber and Cat swallowed, feeling Valerian at her side.
The usual warmth fell over her, thrown from his body.
He surveyed the corpse with a shrewd twist of his lips, as if Lord Rose were only a gutted fish left for the carrion birds.
The crew kept silent, waiting for their captain’s command.
So did Cat, bracing for a worse fate than life back on Rosby.
What have I done? she thought, the consequences of her rage catching up to her with bitter speed. Valerian had shown her mercy, and she returned the favor by shooting a man on his deck. A valuable man. Will it be the brig for me? A brothel? A chain around my ankles and waves over my head?
Her heart thudded and she waited for Captain Kane’s judgement.
But Fell spoke first, shattering the silence.
“I go ashore,” he snapped, his voice the severe, unyielding command of a naval officer. With a twist, he shrugged off the pirates holding his shoulders.
They made to pin him back, but the captain waved them off, an amused look on his face. “You have a ransom to earn, Lieutenant. You’re not going anywhere.”
His chains rattled and Fell took shuffling steps, until he drew up level with Cat.
“I go ashore, and I swear the Venerable wrecked in a storm,” he spat. “Or you ransom me to the navy, and I tell them exactly what I saw here today.”
Realization swooped through Cat, and she thought her heart might burst from her chest. Instead, her grip tightened, using the gun to anchor her trembling arm. Even unloaded, it felt like a shield. Though she would have felt far better with another bullet in the barrel.
“What did you see here, Lieutenant?” she breathed, hardly daring to hope.
Fell did not break, holding Valerian’s gaze so intently Cat could almost see sparks burning between them.
“You tell me, Captain Kane. Did I see Ryman Rose go down with the Venerable, swallowed by just another storm in the Lyrian Sea?” It was an odd thing, to see a chained man smile.
And smile Fell did, grinning despite his circumstances.
“Or did I see his lady wife shoot him on the deck of a pirate ship. With the captain’s gun? ”
If looks could kill, both Fell and Valerian would have dropped dead. Instead, Cat watched some cosmic scales balance between the two men, an invisible battle of wills playing out before her eyes. Her breath hitched, and she wondered which man might win—and where that would leave her.
“Kill them all and be done with it,” someone shouted amongst the crew. “This prize has been cursed from the start.”
When a few voices called out in agreement, Ana hissed them all to silence, her face going pale.
It was not difficult to guess why. Cat remembered what Valerian said in the Drowning Drink—pirate crews voted for their captains.
If they lost confidence in Valerian’s leadership, or enough disagreed with his plan of action, they could remove him from command.
Cat scanned the crowded deck, her fate jumping from Valerian’s hands to the hands of his lethal crew.
For the first time since the sea battle, she forced herself to really look at them, to glimpse beyond their scars and weaponry.
They were still killers and monsters. Desperate men and women, but men and women still.
Perhaps this place makes monsters of us all, she thought again, the smell of Ryman’s blood impossible to ignore.
To her relief, she found many a sympathetic eye amongst the Covenant crew. Not towards the lieutenant or the man dead on the ground.
But me.
Something stirred deep in Cat’s heart and birthed a feeling she had never known before.
Control.
Steadily, the tremor in her hand stilled, her poise returning as her spine turned to steel.
Cat raised her chin, eyes sweeping from Fell to Valerian, the two men opposite sides of perhaps the same coin. And equally advantageous to her own ends.
“We go ashore,” she said, stern and steady.
“We go ashore and Rosby Island is yours to use as you see fit. Water, stores, a port in a storm or for ships in need of repair. All yours,” she added, raising her voice to address the crew.
“So long as Captain Kane commands the Covenant, you have safe harbor.”
It was no small thing, to offer up the island to pirates. Less than a great treasure, but far more than a ransom that never existed. A few heads bobbed, nodding their agreement, and Cat almost collapsed with relief. Ana was among them, her eyes glimmering as she smirked.
I am playing by the rules of a new world, Cat wanted to say, feeling a burst of gratitude towards her.
But Valerian kept silent, painfully so. Enough to make a bead of sweat trickle down Cat’s neck as he weighed her fate.
“Your offer is accepted.”
It was the same voice he used in battle, offering no quarter. No argument. There was only command. All down the deck, the crew shouted in acquiesce, submitting to his judgement without question.
Cat felt her knees buckle but fought to keep upright, even as her head spun.
“Thank you,” she breathed. Suddenly the feel of blood on her skin grew worse, sticky and corrosive, as if Ryman had acid in his veins.
He might as well have.
She gingerly tried to dab it away, but it came away thick and red, and her stomach rolled.
“May I—may I clean myself up before . . . ?” she mumbled, her mouth filling with a sour taste.
Valerian’s hard demeanor remained, but he nodded. “You may, Lady Rose.”
I am not a lady anymore, she wanted to reply but held her tongue. Instead, she took a mute step, fleeing back over the quarterdeck before she could be sick in front of the entire crew.
Door after door slammed behind her, loud as a cannon.
Her breath came hard and fast, her eyes stinging, her throat threatening to close as she almost collided with Valerian’s desk.
She dropped the gun onto a pile of papers, her empty fingers clawed as if still pulling the trigger.
Steadily, she flexed her hand, trying to forget the feel of the flintlock as it recoiled, her fingers still dusted with gunpowder.
Everything took on an odd sheen, the sun too bright through the windows, and the cabin spun, mirroring the maelstrom inside her.
She forced another breath, staring at the gun.
Ryman’s blood was on the barrel, a red constellation to match her face.
Cat wheeled to the basin in the corner, splashing old water and scrubbing herself raw with the first rag she could find. It helped very little, but enough to make the room stop spinning.
“He’s dead,” she whispered, trying to find her reflection in the window glass. “He’s dead.”
Her silhouette was shaky, clouded by the glare off the sea. Cat felt the same, shapeless and undefined. Ryman was a cage but a cage she knew. And now that she was free of him, the world seemed far more frightening, wide and dangerous. Filled with possibility. For better or worse.
Once thing was certain.
The path ahead, the horizon—it was hers to choose.
Cat squared her shoulders to her reflection, drawing herself up in her shift, to stand tall as a lady would. As a free woman would.
“He is dead,” she said aloud, her voice the last nail in Ryman’s coffin.
“That tends to happen when you shoot a man at close range.”
Her body moved of its own accord, whirling from the gallery to face Valerian at the door to the cabin.
As always, he towered, seemingly too big for the low ceilings of a ship.
He stood half in the open door, one boot planted in the next room, the other across the threshold. Waiting for an invitation.