31. THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-ONE
FANKALO
Location: North Sea
When day broke, they threw the bodies into the sea. A funeral of water was the only one a raider ever dreamed of.
Zeb and Drogus conducted interviews with the crew. It took very little prying to uncover that a dash of colocynth had poisoned the galley pot. Because Fankalo had disappeared the evening before without eating, she was the only who had gone unafflicted.
She took the helm, sailing southwest under the gold-streaked sky towards the Rollard Isles. The wheel was the only thing which kept her upright. She clung to it like a raft in a storm.
Hang on. Hang on.
If she hit the deck, she didn’t think she’d be able to get back up. She would just stare at the clouds overhead. In the sun. In the rain. Until she starved, or someone mistook her corpse for driftwood and chucked her overboard.
They slipped through dawn-black water to freedom. Away from her father’s body, now rigid beneath the dark and pitiless fathoms, a feast for the ocean’s denizens. Away from the memories of wishing desperately to be something. Now she was something, and she had paid dearly for it.
Her father would have wanted her to press on as captain, not act like a ninny. If she was to ascend the throne that was her birthright as a conduit, she would have to be a captain first. To avenge what had been done to her brother, she had to be a captain first.
Captain to a crew that might murder her the moment she turned her back.
The bad Luck had diminished since Calver’s butchery, but darkness still twisted at her insides.
How many among them still would have sided with Gelhard, had they their legs beneath them?
Would they all have accepted his takeover, had he gutted her while they waited out their sickness?
Not knowing was a scar that would itch for the rest of her life.
A throat cleared behind her. While her grip stayed firm on the wheel, she was sure her spine leaped into the sails.
“Little queen, will you accept an impromptu advisory session?” Drogus’s thick voice settled over her shoulders like a blanket.
She nodded stiffly.
He stepped beside her, words low and urgent. “You have done a bold thing and I applaud you. You have the brains and you have the technical authority to weather this succession. But you do not have the backbone.”
Her deepest fear, vocalized. In the eyes of the world, a twelve-year-old girl running a vessel of sixty-seven men could not stand. Capable or not, she possessed two undeniable limiting factors: she had not yet done it, and it simply was not done.
“You have given an opinion. Would you present a solution?”
“I spent a decade commanding a fleet one hundred times the size of this crew. With your permission, my experience is your experience. I am the word in their ear and the dagger at your side.”
“Why not take this ship instead?”
Drogus’s chin tilted into his chest. His eyes squeezed shut, and they stayed that way a long while before he answered. “I owe Alberous Keane a debt. I never wanted a supposed ally to murder my daughter the moment I was lost to them. I will not allow the same to happen to his.”
Fankalo swallowed. Delegation was a key component to leadership. Or so she understood. “I would have you lead the daily navigation standup, following our conference. And alternating huddles with the crew.”
“It will be done.”
A tag from her Luck confirmed his words to be true.
She had solidified an alliance with the man most suited to her job.
That might buy her just enough safety to give her time to validate her position.
A tear kicked free from her eye that she hoped Drogus didn’t see, but was nearly positive he did.
He left her then, with only a curt nod—a silent understanding worth everything she had to give.
At lowsun, Fankalo called on the navigator for reprieve.
Rather than move to the berth where she had always hammocked above Mitek, she made for her father’s room.
Calver waited there, as she asked him to, hours prior.
His shackles had been removed; the wounds around his wrists still bled freely.
His face was familiar, but his body was something she would rather unsee—arms scarred, back warped and disfigured.
His stare went right through the hull. If he had noticed her walk in, he showed no indication.
Calver. Everything she’d ever wanted, right here in front of her, and it only turned her fingers into fists.
“Did you get any sleep?”
Her words were met with silence.
“I don’t expect I will either.” She slung her body into her father’s hammock—hers.
Fatigued though she was, her heart beat like it was ready to run a race. She stood again, retrieved the dagger her father kept in his desk drawer, and laced her belt through its sheath.
As if understanding, Calver shifted his back against the door, his body a drawbar the size of a small horse. A part of Fankalo leapt at her brother’s intuitive response. She let that part fall. Calver might just be the one to kill her in her sleep.
She flopped back into the netting. “Thank you.”
She had never felt more detached from another person. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. He was supposed to embrace her. They were supposed to cry and laugh and share stories.
She’d been in her hammock long enough to heave a sigh when several rapid knocks sounded against the door.
“Go awaaaay,” she sang.
“It’s me.” The relief in Mitek’s voice was palpable.
So, he also suspected she’d be murdered in her sleep. “Still want you to go away.”
She had yet to express any gratitude to Mitek. Fates, did she ever owe it to him. But right now, the hurt was too bad.
“Please, Brat.”
Calver threw an elbow into the door with enough force to move the whole ship. She raised an eyebrow at him. “That’s not necessary.”
For all Calver’s reaction, she may as well have spoken to the door itself.
“What do you want?” she shouted to Mitek.
“Is he in there with you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I fucking want you out.”
Something told her that Mitek would not stand down on this.
With another sigh, she tilted her head sideways at Calver.
He shifted just enough for her to pass through the door.
More proof that he could comprehend. She didn’t have any care left to give.
She clacked the door behind her without a word to him.
“Where he can’t hear,” Mitek whispered, pulling her to the opposite end of the ship. He stopped her when they were in front of the brig, as isolated as one could get on the Rapture.
“Preservation, Brat.” He pulled her into a hug. His fingers curled into her hair. He smelled wonderful, like tung and seawater—distinctly not like vomit and piss. But then again, he’d already had his chance for a bath. She had not.
She sank into him despite all reservations. With everything that had happened, she hadn’t given herself the chance to feel any relief. But as she pulled in a shuddering breath, it was quickly displaced by anger.
“I,” she started, pushing him away, “am fine. You took your sleep shift. Let me have mine.”
Mitek looked at her like she’d chosen to adopt Pazirian fashion. “You can’t seriously mean to sleep behind closed doors with that thing? Are you forgetting that he tried to eat you not even a full sun ago?”
“Have you forgotten that he’s saved us both since?”
“It doesn’t change anything!”
Fankalo crossed her arms. “He’s… been through a lot. You saw what they’ve done to him. I just need a few days with him, maybe he’ll come around.”
“Is that a bet you’ll stake our lives on?”
She glared. “Yes. I’d do it if it were you, too.”
That stopped him flat. He fidgeted with the hem of his shirt, unable to meet her eyes.
“He killed five of ours last night in the time it takes to tie my boots. Traitors or not, evisceration has never been a part of our code. We need to drop him at first landfall. I would hope you would do that if it were me, too.”
Had he not witnessed the past six years she’d spent searching for her brother? “No.”
Mitek’s face screwed up. “I found out today that I don’t want to lose you. That I would give anything not to lose you. And if he—”
“I will not have sacrificed my father to gain nothing!” Her anger swelled into lip-curling fury. “I refuse it! And by my demand, even the fucking Fates will listen!”
Any low chatter in the ship’s rooms beyond them fell into silence. Their eyes met. Only then did she realize what Mitek meant. He had not been crying for fear of his life the night before. He’d been crying for hers.
“Damn it, Brat.”
She tore her gaze from his. “I need to get some rest. Calver’s on guard.”
“Yeah, sure.” Mitek ran his fingers through his smooth black hair. “Great.”
Fankalo stormed back to her room and slammed the door behind her. Calver moved back in front of it. The events of the day boiled over, and he was the closest target available.
“This is all your fault!” She slammed the heel of her hand into the door over his head where he sat.
“I waited for you! I looked for you! It’s not my fault that—” She gestured to all of him.
“This. Happened.” A sob punctured her tirade.
“If you’d only come home, maybe we would have…
We would have…” She crumpled, head pressed into the planking beneath her.
Only the Fates were to blame. “I swear, if you kill me in my sleep, I’m going to—”
Child or not, acting like one was not how she would start off as captain of the Rogue’s Rapture. She inhaled, the sound of it stuttering and wheezing as it flooded her shaking chest. Calver hunched lower in his boulder-like position, chin pressing toward his chest.