Compass Rose

by Anna Burke

  I kept one hand on her shirt while the other ran down her side, feeling her body move against me, and when I found her belt I clung to it with all my strength. The fatigue of the past twenty-four hours blurred into a delirium of longing. Her breath came faster as my fingers brushed the delicate skin beneath, and I shivered as she pulled me hard against her, the heat from her palms leaving red-hot brands along my back and up my sides.

  Her lips paused on my jaw, and her fingers dug fiercely into my hips as she broke away enough to whisper in my ear.

  “If you ever leave me like that again, Rose—”

  I tangled a hand in her hair and pulled her lips back to mine. She responded with an intensity that made us both stumble, and she caught me as we fell back into the chair behind her.

  I landed on top, my hands braced on her shoulders and my hips pressed against hers. Every molecule of open space between us felt like a crime.

  Miranda’s eyes trailed down my body and paused at the hem of my shirt.

  “You want to be my second mate?” she asked, her breath coming as quickly as mine. “Then lose the uniform.”

  She tugged the undershirt over my head. Cool air hit my flushed skin as Miranda traced the scar on my stomach, and I shuddered uncontrollably beneath her touch. When her lips brushed my collarbone, the collar of her shirt brushed against me and I pushed her away, fumbling at the buttons. I wanted to feel her skin against mine, not the rough weave of damp fabric.

  Her lips were flushed a deep red, and the desire in her eyes was shattering. Ignoring my desperate fingers, she ripped the shirt over her head and undid both of our bras with the sort of efficiency one expected from a captain who could mobilize an entire Archipelago station into mutiny, survive a swarm of man o’ war, serve beneath the most ruthless pirate on the waters, and still end up the captain of her own ship.

  I stilled her with a hand on her chest. I wanted to see her.

  The scars on her skin did nothing to lessen its perfection. The firm line of muscle that ran down her stomach softened at her hips, and above it her breasts rose and fell with her unsteady breathing. A scar crossed her left nipple, a pale tracery of remembered pain.

  She let me look. Her eyes were several shades darker as she sprawled in the chair beneath me, and she couldn’t keep the arrogance out of her posture any more than I could have stood and walked out of the room. Her body had molded itself to command, and even shirtless she radiated power.

  “I never wanted to go,” I said, the truth coming easily, and then her skin lay hot against mine and she lifted me into the air, her lips on my breasts as she tumbled me onto her bed.

  Like any good navigator, I let my captain take the wheel while I kept my eyes on the stars.

  “Rose,” she said, her words vibrating against me as she brought me to the brink.

  “What?” I cursed her mentally for stopping. No matter how good my name sounded on her lips, it didn’t feel as good as the way her lips felt on me, stripping away doubt and betrayal and death and bringing me perilously close to a place that felt like home.

  “Now.”

  I blame it on years of conditioning, and on the innate human desire to follow commands. Despite my intentions, as her mouth closed over me and she slid her hand inside me, I obeyed.

  • • •

  “For a pardon, this has a lot of demands,” Miranda said.

  I opened my eyes. There were several pages of official-looking writing in her hands, and I recognized Comita’s signature.

  The last thing I wanted to think about was Admiral Comita. I adjusted my head, pillowing it deeper into Miranda’s arm.

  “She wants you to scout for her,” I said, my lips brushing her skin with each word.

  “An official mercenary?”

  “And full citizen. You could go home, if you wanted.” I traced the scars on her chest.

  “No,” she said, putting the pages down and leaning back.

  I weighted her down with more limbs.

  “No?”

  “I can’t go back to Gemini. I made my peace with that a long time ago.”

  “What about your family?”

  Miranda rolled me onto my back and looked down at me, her hair falling in a tangle over her shoulder. It smelled like the strange flowers that grew in her garden, and salt water.

  “I made my peace with them, too.”

  “What about your sister?”

  Her eyes clouded.

  “Shouldn’t you try to see her?” I pressed.

  Miranda shook her head, placing a finger over my lips.

  “I took everything away from her. It’s a lot easier to forgive the dead than the living.”

  Her words reminded me of something.

  “What happened with Ching Shih, Miranda?”

  “You,” Miranda said, giving me a look that effectively shut down further rational thought, “have way too many questions.”

  My body rose to meet hers, and I let Ching Shih go. The pirate’s memory would haunt me later, I knew, but right now I had no time for ghosts.

  The next time I opened my eyes, Miranda was watching me, her eyes full of a desperate tenderness that vanished almost as soon as I saw it, making me doubt what I’d seen.

  “As much as it pains me to say this, I’m still the captain of this ship, and we have work to do.”

  I glowered at her. I was no longer convinced my limbs were all connected to each other, let alone that they could support my weight, and I was still exhausted from a full trawl’s worth of near death experiences.

  “Are you accepting Comita’s offer?” I asked, forcing myself to sit up.

  “It seems to be the only way to keep you around.” She winked at me, stood, and stretched. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her.

  “Do you want to keep me around?”

  Miranda walked back over to where I lay and extended her hand. I let her pull me up, but she didn’t release me. She turned my palm over and kissed it, once.

  The mark she’d left was fading, blending in with the other lines on my hand. It looked natural now, an extension of my life, head, and heart lines.

  “I never regretted marking my sailors, until you.” Her voice was rough.

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  “It’s not. I knew what I was taking away from you.”

  For an instant, I could see her, younger and unmarred, standing at the helm of a Gemini ship. I liked her better this way, naked, scarred, and holding my hand.

  I closed my fingers around hers.

  “Miranda,” I began, unsure of how to put my feelings into words. “I was an idiot. I never meant—”

  She waited, letting me stutter over my explanation.

  “About what happened with Orca. It didn’t mean anything.”

  “Of course it meant something.”

  “Well, it didn’t mean what you think it means,” I said.

  “It meant I was an idiot, and you were confused. And you were right. You were a distraction.”

  I could hardly deny that.

  “I’m not confused now.”

  “Good.” Her fingers tightened around mine. “Because I’ve known Orca for four years, Rose. She followed me here from Ching’s ship, and she’s saved my life more times than I can count. I really, really don’t want to have to kill her.”

  “That’s a pretty bold statement, coming from the woman who told me she didn’t give a rat’s ass about me.”

  Miranda didn’t flinch.

  “I wasn’t sure I did, until you left.”

  “You are an ass.” I snatched my hand away from hers.

  “I’m from Gemini,” she said. “We’re all like that.”

  “Well, where I’m from, people like you tend to die alone.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Is that a threat, second mate?” she asked.

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On if you care about me now.”

  She kissed me, and I could taste t
he anger and the fear and the longing on her lips.

  It was all the answer I needed.

  Center

  Captain’s Log

  Captain Miranda Stillwater

  Man o’ War

  September 11, 2513

  13, -59.5°

  This goddamn ocean. Finally escaped the anoxic bloom we’ve been riding for days. Three days, six hours, and twenty-seven minutes, to be exact. I took the surface reading myself this morning, against the sound advice of both the first and second mate, who wanted their objections noted.

  It is my official opinion that the only good thing that will come out of mapping the coasts is the distance it puts between Man o’ War and Admiral Comita. The southern wind itches, and I’m beginning to think Kraken might have the right of it, after all. We’d be better off rounding the horn and taking our chances in the Pacific. Rose could get us there.

  Compass Rose, who still hasn’t figured out that beneath her heading lies something far more dangerous than anything methane hydrate can throw at us.

  Strip away the uniform, and Josephine Comita, Ching Shih, and Miranda Stillwater are all the same, ambition poured into identical molds.

  I have not told my navigator about the second half of the bargain I struck with her Admiral. The Council’s pardon is paper, and will disintegrate as soon as it gets wet, and even if it wasn’t false hope, that life is gone. My home is this ship, and Gemini might as well be inland Antarctica. I would not have put either at risk for a pardon.

  I know why Comita has agreed to have us map the coasts, and it is not to search for further passages. It keeps us off the radar. It lets people forget, for a while, that Admiral Comita dealt with revolutionaries to claim her victory. It prevents the Council from connecting any dots that would be better off left in isolation.

  For my part, I am trying to enjoy this fleeting peace. I am trying hard to lose myself in the amber center of the compass, ignoring where it points, but Comita’s promise is like a cardinal direction.

  “You’ll get your mutiny, Miranda Stillwater.”

  Epilogue

  The repairs took the better part of a week. Harper was instrumental in refitting some of the systems that had been damaged beyond repair, and Comita stayed true to her word. The supplies Harper requested arrived, signed by the admiral herself. It was the only communication that took place between mother and daughter.

  Harper handled it with a stoicism that was far more worrying to me than rage.

  “I’ve always said I wanted to serve off ship from her,” she said when I asked her how she was doing.

  “Do you think she’ll let you stay?”

  “I don’t plan on giving her a choice.”

  I let the subject drop after that.

  Man o’ War remained on the outskirts of the Polarian Fleet while the battle for the Gulf raged on for another three days. Word of Ching’s demise had not so much as demoralized her sailors as invigorated them. Driven by the reckless knowledge of their own deaths, and the fate of the few ships that did try to surrender, they fought with a viciousness that defied the limitations of violence.

  I was more than happy to stay out of the battle, and with Harper on board, Comita made sure none of the Archipelago ships mistook us for the enemy. Her anger with her daughter did not extend to murder.

  We did not speak about her possible betrayal. There was no proof that she had ever intended to go back on her word to Miranda, and Miranda herself seemed unconcerned by the prospect the only time I brought it up.

  “What did I tell you when you first signed on? Deals at sea are rarely weathertight. She gave me what I wanted, and I gave her what she needed. There was always the risk that one of us would fall short, for one reason or another. We each had our contingency plans.”

  I did not ask her what hers had been. There was still a great deal about what had happened in my absence that I didn’t know. Ching’s sailors had not been hospitable guards, and Miranda’s surviving crew no longer harbored any sympathetic leanings for the pirate cause. As for what else may have passed between Miranda and Ching, I didn’t ask. Miranda’s face closed at the mention of the pirate’s name, and I remembered what Kraken had said.

  “There is nothing neutral about death.”

  We were given clearance to leave the Gulf a full week and a half after my arrival. I did not blame Comita for wanting us gone. As the carnage settled and the squid fed on the bodies of the drowned, the attention of the Archipelago fleets was bound to turn to the inevitable speculation surrounding the pardon of a certain, presumed dead mutineer.

  We set sail with a subdued Harper still onboard for a set of coordinates that Miranda laid before me without explanation and a promise to wait for any further instructions from Comita.

  I, for one, was shocked that the admiral had allowed Harper to remain with us, but Harper did not share my confusion.

  “You don’t know my mother as well as I do,” she said. “She doesn’t like mess, and I have created a mess. She will tidy up her other loose ends before she deals with me.”

  I was thinking about what those other loose ends might be as I closed in, at last, on Miranda’s coordinates.

  “We’re here,” I said, staring out of the helm at the island in the distance with a touch of trepidation. Crow’s Eye’s warning about fever was still fresh in my mind. “Are you going to tell me why we’re here?”

  Miranda stared at the mottled mass of green and brown.

  “Starbuck.” She brought the ship in closer, and I watched in mild alarm as the water turned from dark blue to turquoise.

  “Your tortoise?”

  “I need to pick up some new seeds for him, and drop off a shipment for someone else.”

  I followed her out of the bridge with a growing sense of unease. We were miles from anywhere and too close to land for comfort.

  “Climb aboard, Captain,” Finn said, waiting outside the parley vessel that had picked me up from Man o’ War, back when both my palms were smooth and my dreams limited. He was looking a little better, but he walked with a limp now, and his left hand shook when he used it.

  Orca offered me a hand up onto the deck, and I shared her eye roll as Miranda hauled herself up effortlessly after. I stood at the helm while more crew loaded the parley vessel’s small hold, and swallowed a faintly bitter taste of fear as we drifted out of the docking bay into a brilliantly blue morning.

  I could see the sand on the shore and the mountain reaching up into a bank of low clouds, rain falling on its green slopes. Miranda steered us straight toward it.

  “Do you need me to navigate?” I said, unable to keep the apprehension from my voice.

  “I’ve been here before.” Her eyes lingered on me just long enough to bring a blush to my cheeks. I forced myself to look away, and my jaw dropped as we passed between two cliffs and into a wide harbor.

  “Neptune’s . . .” I said, leaving the curse unfinished. Ships lay at anchor in the bay. Drifter trawls bobbed alongside pirate raiders, and there were some more ships I could not identify. My eyes jumped from deck to deck, distracted at last by the structures I could see built along the shore.

  “Welcome to Paradise,” Miranda said, guiding us through the ships and toward a finger of broken wood jutting out into the water.

  “Where did you think drifter scum pick up yellow fever?” Finn asked with a wink. “Don’t worry. We won’t be here long enough for anything to bite you.”

  “Bite me?” My voice faded to a ragged whisper as I stared around me at the trees on the shore and the people walking toward us down the wharf.

  Miranda wrapped an arm around my waist and I sagged against her for support, too stunned to do more than stare. I wished Harper had come along, but she was busy retrofitting the ship’s hydrofarm to grow something more appetizing than algae.

  Kraken, Orca, and Finn vanished below, and then reappeared on the wharf, escorting a fourth person. Whoever they were had a hood over their head, and their clothes were dark and
stained with salt. There was something vaguely familiar about the way they carried themselves, but then Kraken’s large bulk blocked them from my view and my eyes drifted back to the crowd.

  “This is neutral territory,” Miranda added, pointing at the gathered ships. “Pirates and drifters come here for repairs and to escape Archipelago patrols. It’s worth the risk, for them.”

  Neutral territory.

  “Miranda,” I said, pointing at the prisoner with an impossible idea forming in my overloaded mind. “Who is that?”

  She leaned against the rail, her blue eyes reflecting the water and the sky.

  “A settled debt.”

  The prisoner vanished from sight amid the gathering crowd, and our crew returned carrying several large sacks.

  I breathed in the smell of land and made a mental note to leave this particular island out of any correspondence with Comita. Some things were better off left uncharted.

  Behind us, Man o’ War waited, fully repaired and ready for her first voyage under official Archipelago contract. Her holds were stocked with decent food, and her crew, while a little bemused at their sudden change of fortune, were more than happy to resume their betting on my abysmal boxing outside the hearing of the captain.

  I smiled into the wind, letting my doubts blow away while Miranda ran her thumb over the knife on my belt, tracing the cardinal points in the hilt. This was where I belonged.

  Beyond the ship, underneath a darkening winter sky, the currents pulled us farther south. We could ride them around the South Atlantic gyre, swept south, then west, until we crossed over the equatorials and the Brazilian current flung us toward the pole.

  North, east, south, west.

  I looked up at my captain. Ching Shih had been wrong about me. I was born facing due north, and I knew exactly where I was going.

  About the Author

  When she is not writing, Anna Burke is an overly ambitious gardener with a penchant for terrible puns. Even though she wrote her debut novel, the high seas adventure Compass Rose, while living on a small island in the West Indies, she currently lives in Massachusetts with her wife and their two dogs. You can visit Anna at www.annahburke.com.