6. The Watcher and the Watched #2
He scratched his short, pepper-gray beard with gnarled fingers and said in a gravelly voice, “Sounds like you’re good with a knife?”
“Quite.”
He nodded to a chair and a low table covered in a pile of dusty potatoes. “S’pose I can put you on the chopping, then.” He reached for a blade, paused, then grabbed a duller one, passing it to her handle-first. Smiling shyly, he said, “Don’t give the first mate reason to throw me overboard.”
“I’ll go faster if it’s sharp,” she told him as she took hold of the knife. Lovely—it felt so lovely to hold. “Better cuts.”
“Maybe,” Stede said, stirring whatever was in his large pot.
The sides were too tall for her to see inside, but as the ship rocked and swayed, the boiling liquid stayed put.
“Though no one here cares ‘bout pretty food.” He glanced at the galley door where he’d last seen Jack.
“And I don’t s’pose you’re eager to be done so fast.”
“I won’t be in your way?”
“Nah,” he said. “It’s nicer havin’ company that doesn’t look a horror.”
With a quiet laugh, she took a seat at the table and reached for a potato. “Then I’m pleased to be here.”
“You like to cook?”
“I used to.” Cecily set her knife against the potato and might as well have tried to cut the thing with a rolling pin. Pinching her lips, she pushed the blade through the tuber’s flesh. “I’m more pleased to be hiding from the others.”
“Why’s that?”
“They don’t like me much.” She tried sawing at the potato, but still gained no ground.
“Morgyn—that busty one hanging around the big pirate—she’s been on me for months after I broke her nose for being rude.
Things never got better.” Cecily lifted her knife and frowned at the dent she’d left in the vegetable.
“Ehh, she can’t do anything to you,” Stede said. “Not without trouble. Same goes for the others, and if anyone’s daft enough to try somethin’, Jack’ll put his gun to their head.”
She drove the tip of her knife into the potato, and it sank halfway in. “So Jack keeps the law here?”
Stede gazed into the depths of the pot, stirring slowly. “He and the captain. Honestly, one’s as bad as the other. Jack’s gunnin’ for worse, but I like that. Keeps order on the ship better than anyone. I’ve never had trouble with him, and he’s a fair fellow.”
She made a face. Jack, fair?
“I mean it,” Stede said, sparing a brief glance at her. “I never met a first mate so devoted to his captain and crew. Mean he may be, but he’s the best at his job.” He nodded to her hands. “Keep choppin’.”
Cecily lifted the knife, the potato still lodged on the blade, and slammed it into the table. The vegetable snapped in half. “How often does Copson dock?” How long until I can escape?
He scratched at his beard again as he thought. “As often as he needs. Though it’ll be a little over a week or so till we reach Tortuga.”
She paused. “Where?”
“Tortuga,” he repeated, as though she’d understand better upon being told a second time. “Most pirates have business there. Chop, I’ll tell you.”
While Cecily struggled with her potatoes, Stede told her a story about how the captain’s father, the original Captain Robert Copson, had sailed the Fortuna Royale in a fleet with another pirate, Captain Robin.
Together, they’d robbed a group of royal ships and got a filthy lot of money, but when they went to split it, Robin ran and hid it in the Caribbean.
Copson’s father spent the rest of his life searching for it before passing the captaincy to his son—along with his infamous name, giving the impression that the captain had always been one man.
At least now she had an answer for how he looked so young.
“Robin’s dying at his home in Tortuga,” Stede said. “Captain’s on his way to get a deathbed confession of where the treasure is. Or threaten him, depending how it goes.”
“That’s awful,” Cecily said. As he’d talked, she had made an impressive pile of uneven potato bits, which Stede now dumped into his pot.
“Which part?”
“All of it. Copson thinking he’s entitled to something he stole.”
He gave a dry chuckle. “Pirates, dear girl. Copson wants what’s his, no matter who it came from first. ‘Sides, how do you think you’re gettin’ paid?”
Well…she supposed she couldn’t be quite so pious if she was relying on Copson’s loot to buy her a better life.
“You said there’s other pirates in Tortuga,” she ventured. “What else? Military?” She tried not to sound too hopeful. She didn’t care if they were headed in the opposite direction of where she wanted to go. She could easily board a different ship, one that would take her back to her homeland.
“Aye, pirates and Spanish,” Stede said. “But the military doesn’t make a place any decent.
They probably make it worse, really. Sailors always do.
But Tortuga is a good port to find more crew.
” He shook his head. “Such a shame what happened this winter. I’d never felt bad for our captain till he was left with barely enough men to run the ship.
He handled the loss like he expected nothing less, but he’s determined to make it up. ”
Stede kept talking, sharing stories of his time with Copson and about other pirate havens he’d been to. Cecily worked beside him, content to listen and work as a simple girl in a kitchen with nothing but dull knives, and a nice old man to mind.
She liked it, and she hoped Jack thought she was miserable so he’d send her back here.
When it was time for supper, she helped Stede carry pots of stew to a table outside the galley where pirates lined up with bowls and cups. Armed with a dented ladle, she began serving them as they shuffled by.
Across the room, Jack stood in the shadows. His eyes were on Greyson who seemed wholly focused on Hester, who seemed wholly absorbed in her new husband.
Cecily searched for some morsel of herself that could be happy for them. It wasn’t much—just a dusty corner of gladness—but she found it, held down by a selfish cynicism she couldn’t shake even if she wanted to.
They would grow bored of each other eventually, and Cecily and Jack would get their friends back and have more reasons to avoid each other.
Morgyn swaggered by with Fiero, looked at Cecily’s ladle, and smiled. “You’ve been busy, little Ces,” she said, cloyingly sweet. “I didn’t know you could work standing up.”
Though Morgyn craved Cecily’s spilled blood, she would start with humiliation. It was her favorite way to bring someone low, crushing their spirit before sending someone else to go for the throat.
But Morgyn couldn’t break Cecily over something she’d never done, and if this was the chosen insult of the night, her crime remained a secret. Good.
Cecily smiled with all of her teeth, biting back her contempt. “Surprise.”
“Fresh air has been kind to you,” Morgyn said, overly friendly. “It’s made you so much less like a feral cat.”
She gripped the ladle and envisioned what it might be like to pick up the pot and beat Morgyn over the head with it. Instead, she braced her hands on the table and leaned over it with a maniacal grin that didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m just so happy to be let out of my cage.”
Hostility strained between their smiles, but no one paid them any mind, eager for dinner as Stede carried on serving the others from his own pot.