34. The Captain’s Favor #2
“I know.” Fashioning the knife had been a good way to occupy her thoughts, and with the memory of her father so close, it soothed her to think he might at least be pleased to see her carrying on his craft.
“Have you checked the galley?”
She took the knife back. “I don’t go to the galley.”
His slate-gray eyes caught on the mindless flick of her hand as she tried to shake away the feeling of blood leaking from beneath her glove. With a grumble, she wiped it on her pants instead.
“Stede made a choice, Cecily. He knew what he was doing.”
Her throat tightened. She’d missed the cook so much these days when everything felt so dire.
His absence hurt like a wound, a fractured bit of her heart that would require time to heal—time she resented both for its inevitability and its slowness.
Every time she closed her eyes, she could see the way he looked at her in his last moments, the image clear as the day it had happened, and the pain somehow worse.
She wished more than anything that he was still here, and that there was way to find a some other reality where he’d never died in the first place.
But all she could do was wait and grieve and bear the pain while it lasted.
“I know that,” she said, turning for the steps. “But it doesn’t make me hate it any less.”
The next day, she didn’t plan to bring Copson any food. She was surprised, however, when he came to her. She sat behind the foremast, filing another scale when he appeared. His eyes narrowed beneath his hat.
“Your hands are red,” he said.
Gloves made it harder to hold the scales, so she’d opted to go without them. This morning’s insult was particularly harsh, as he knew her hands would look red to her regardless of the cold.
“I hadn’t noticed,” she replied, monotone.
The captain held out a metal hilt made of coiled bronze. She took it from him and studied the metalwork. It was made well and would work quite nicely for what she needed.
“Hm,” she said, and he accepted it as the thanks it was. His hand disappeared into his coat and emerged with a pair of knit, fingerless gloves. He dropped them into her lap.
“Don’t get clumsy,” he said. “It annoys me when my sailors lose fingers.”
As he walked off, she picked up the warm gloves and slipped them over her hands.
As a week became two, any lingering levity had entirely disappeared. Cecily grew quieter. The captain grew sullen. The crew lived in near silence.
Jack, however, was raging as Cecily wandered out into the frosty early morning.
“You have to kill Fiero,” he was saying from the helm, his low voice rife with fury. “Kill him or Jonah will kill us.”
Mornings were usually quiet as the day crew took over, looking as tired, haggard, and cold as those already out on deck.
They silently relieved the others and sent them to bed with a familial kindness Cecily hadn’t seen among them until recently, as they understood that the night crew weathered far more terror than those who sailed during the day.
Jack’s crew were the ones who saw the ghost ship trailing them like a red beacon. They sailed during the witching hour through water dark as nightmares and dread, and said nothing of their fear, even though it was obvious in the wrinkles around their eyes and the firm set of their blue lips.
As of this morning, however, it seemed Jack couldn’t take it anymore.
“You know I can’t do that,” Copson said.
“You save him for a gamble,” Jack argued. “Killing him may sate Jonah just as well.”
Cecily moved toward one of the drums, mindful of patches of ice that hadn’t yet been scraped away.
Night lingered to the west, and against the darkness was the bright, glowing spot of red. The Neptune was close enough to see its sails and rigging with the naked eye.
“And if it doesn’t, we’ll all die,” Copson said. “If I can get any number of my crew to safety before Jonah gets to us, you best be damn sure I’ll move heaven and earth to make that happen.”
Jack released a frustrated growl. “You damn us all.” He swept from the quarterdeck and headed for the door.
Cecily started after him, but Copson called her name.
“Let him go,” the captain said. “He’ll be no kinder to you.”
She stared after Jack, longing to follow.
They’d barely spoken except for brief exchanges between shifts, both of them exhausted and frightened by all they’d endured.
If she could only see some light in his eyes, it would be better—or so she thought.
There would be no light in his eyes, or hers, or anyone else’s.
Feeling lost, Cecily climbed up to the captain. “I miss him,” she said.
Jack was still haunted with worry that he’d forced her into a marriage she would come to regret.
He was deaf to her assurances in the short moments they’d had together, and had finally told her days ago that the regret wouldn’t go away, just as the blood on her hands didn’t vanish even when she knew no one else could see it.
It was difficult to ignore what their minds perceived, no matter what logic they threw against it.
“As do I.” Copson scrubbed away a bit of seaweed beginning to grow on the wheel.
By now, keeping the ship clean was impossible despite their constant efforts.
Someone was always scrubbing away grime and growing things, or throwing buckets of sandy mud overboard.
The masts were molding, the sails had begun to discolor and tear, and boards had warped under their feet.
“He’s always been like this,” Copson said. “Rarely scared, but when he is, he’s a nightmare.”
“Same as me,” Cecily told him. “Though I didn’t know it until it mattered. Ugh, shit.” She shucked off her gloves and shook out her hands in the frozen air to dispel the feeling of blood running over them. Then, right on cue, the distant coughing began, and she released a stream of expletives.
“Curse a little quieter, would you?” Copson requested blandly. “Now’s not the time for the crew to think you’ve lost your mind.”
She cursed at him too, but quieter, as he’d asked. “Everyone’s lost their minds,” she said. “I hardly think it matters if I do too.”
“It matters to me, but only because you force your presence upon me so persistently.”
“Liar.” A whisper of amusement tugged at the edges of her unease. “I’m one of your favorite pirates.”
He looked down at her hands. “Put your gloves back on. I told you I despise missing fingers.”
Frigid air bit at her teeth as she cracked a dry smile, but she shoved her hands roughly into her gloves.
She’d come to like arguing with the captain.
It was like playing a game, a spark of interest in their bleak circumstances, and it made her forget the haunting, even for a little while.
Because of that, she wasn’t ready to walk away yet, and would argue with him a little more for their own sanity.
So she brought up a new subject that was sure to distract both of them.
“Why is it so important that the king not get the treasure you’re after?”
Instead of answering, Copson asked, “Did Robin tell you about the king, or was it Jack?”
“Robin. Why does it matter who told me?”
“It doesn’t. The king shouldn’t get that money because it’s not his.
” Copson shook his head, his tone going brittle.
“That’s why my father stole it in the first place—that royal son-of-a-bitch went back on a deal and left my family destitute, and stealing the king’s money in that raid was meant to set things back to rights. It’s the money we were owed.”
“So it’s revenge,” she said. Robin had alluded to as much.
“If it was mere revenge, taking it would have been enough,” he said.
“That treasure is the reason my father became a pirate. Robin stealing it from him is the reason I am a pirate, and if the king gets it back, it’s nothing less than the gravest insult—to my father and my family.
” As he flexed his hands around the spokes of the wheel, bits of frost drifted to his boots.
“I wouldn’t have chosen this life if I didn’t feel I had to, and I’ve lost more than I care to name. ”
He gripped the wheel like a lifeline, stock still.
Cecily had once asked him what haunted him, but he’d only replied that she had no right to know, let alone ask.
That hadn’t stopped her from wondering, which she often did, but she knew too little of him to know for sure.
For how unbothered he seemed, she’d briefly considered that nothing bothered him at all, because what could haunt such a self-assured, spiteful man?
But this—piracy and all he’d lost because of it—surely this was the answer.
She could see it in his eyes, feel the gravity of it as he spoke.
He’d been forced to chase wealth because of his father and lost his wife because of it.
There was undoubtedly more to it, but even so, what she knew of him would be enough to haunt anyone.
And because she loved Jack and had eagerly taken his name and the protection it awarded her, she’d inherited this treasure and story as her own. No matter how awful the captain so often was, he was family.
She felt it more now than she ever had. Over these past days, there was a new respect between herself and the captain, even if neither of them said so.
“Why does it matter?” he asked, his tone milder as he turned her question back on her.
“It doesn’t,” she said, then swallowed as she made a decision that she hoped she wouldn’t regret. “Only that Robin said your map is in a vase headed for the king. He called it a gift that could ruin you so long as the king knows what to do with it. That’s all I know.”
Though the sun was masked, the air frozen, and the ship struggled to hold together for the sake of saving its disturbed crew, for the first time ever, she saw Copson’s true smile.