Scoundrel

by Zoë Archer

  “What’s wrong with her?” London asked. “Dark magic?”

  “Don’t know,” Bennett said, grim. “I don’t think she’s ever cast such a directed spell before.”

  London rocked Athena gently, as if she were a baby that needed soothing. “It must have taken something out of her.”

  “It took a hell of a lot out of the Heirs,” Bennett said. “Whatever she did, it stopped them.”

  “Get to the sails, Day,” Kallas growled. He began to turn the wheel, redirecting the boat.

  Getting immediately to his feet, Bennett trimmed the mainsail. “Where are you taking us?”

  Stone-faced, the captain revealed nothing of himself, only that he gnawed on the stem of his pipe as if he would snap it in half. “Kallas men always have friends somewhere on the sea. We go to them.”

  Once their course was secure, Bennett carried Athena below decks, with London close on his heels. He lay the witch down upon her bunk, and pain shot through him when she did not move even an eyelash.

  London bent over Athena and stroked her dark hair, her own brow creased with worry.

  “Blades know we risk our lives every day for our cause,” Bennett said, his voice a low rumble, “but that doesn’t make it easier when a comrade falls.”

  “We have to make her well again.” London turned imploring eyes to him, as if he held the witch’s fate in his hands.

  “We will,” Bennett said with a conviction he didn’t feel. “I’ve known Athena many years. She’s not just as brilliant as her namesake goddess. She’s a fierce fighter, too.”

  Looking back at the terribly still form of the witch, London’s eyes shimmered. “I would give her all of my strength, if I could.”

  Impulsively, Bennett took hold of London’s hand and pressed a kiss to it. “You’ve the strength of armies. If Athena taps even a fraction of that, she’ll be annoying our captain in no time.”

  London’s chuckle was brief and watery, but her eyes were warm as she regarded him. “You overestimate me.”

  “You underestimate yourself.”

  Silent and waxen, the witch lay on the bunk. Jesus, how could Bennett tell her mother if something happened to Athena? The love of one Galanos woman for another was stronger than their legendary pride.

  “For Athena’s sake,” London said, “let us hope your faith is well placed.”

  Chapter 10

  The Sleeping Witch

  What had been a fairly pleasant wardroom used for the officers’ mess now resembled the aftermath of a riot. Chairs were piled in broken heaps upon the decking, the table lay on its side like a wounded animal, and the books had been ripped down from their shelves and torn apart, scraps of their pages in drifts about the room. The captain observed balefully from the doorway. Someone would have to pay for the damage, but now wasn’t the best time to mention that. Joseph Edgeworth was in another frenzy.

  The respected gentleman of society and pillar of English values rampaged, and nothing was safe, not even the glass shades on the lamps mounted to the bulkheads. He smashed them with his fists, ignoring the cuts to his knuckles. He flung a ceramic ashtray across the room. It just missed Fraser.

  “You do not tell me ‘no,’” Edgeworth thundered. “Do you understand that? I won’t hear it. No one says that to me. No one.”

  “Yes, sir,” Fraser said. “Only—”

  Edgeworth kicked the spittoon with a clang. “Only what?”

  Fraser gulped down a breath. Damn Chernock and the ship’s captain for making him their sodding mouthpiece. He hated having to tell Edgeworth bad news, and this news was the worst. “Only, we’ve got to have a new boiler. We can’t catch them under sail.”

  “What the bloody hell is wrong with the boiler we’ve already got?” Edgeworth demanded.

  “It’s full of holes, sir. From the nails the Galanos witch sent.”

  “Then patch them!”

  Fraser tugged on his collar. “There are too many. The boiler would just explode. We’d be lucky if only half the ship caught on fire.”

  The words that spewed out of Edgeworth’s mouth shocked even Fraser. He knew Edgeworth had a temper, just as Jonas Edgeworth did, but this was downright terrifying of the trouser-soiling variety. Fraser cursed Bennett Day for turning what should have been an easy mission into a big sodding mess. A plum position within the Heirs, a new wife, the honor and respect of his colleagues and nation. All of this would have been Fraser’s, if Bennett Day had just kept his cock to himself. But no, the son of a bitch had to go seduce Edgeworth’s daughter, and Fraser had to clean up the mess.

  “Why doesn’t Chernock do something?” Edgeworth snapped. “Cast some bloody spell to fix the boiler or make the ship fly or some other goddamned thing.”

  Chernock, the coward, peered around the safety of the doorway, his long, thin nose like a carrion-eater’s beak. “There are limits to magic, Edgeworth,” he intoned. “It’s not some tinker’s shop you can use to patch boilers. And a steamship flying over the Aegean is not only nearly impossible, but downright conspicuous.”

  More ranting from Edgeworth. What hadn’t been broken before was now demolished. Until, at last, he panted, “So get another boiler.”

  “We must go to Mykanos,” the captain ventured. “It is the nearest island that will have what we need.” But it meant the loss of several days. Everyone knew it.

  “Make sail for Mykanos, then,” said Edgeworth. The captain bowed and hurried away. “And once we do get that new boiler,” Edgeworth said, pointing at Chernock, “you’d better have a way of catching up with the Blades, or I’ll chop off your fingers and feed them to you. Every moment London is with the Blades, her mind is being poisoned. If I don’t get her back soon enough, she’ll be lost to me.”

  God, what would it take to break Edgeworth of this delusion? Fraser hadn’t an idea, but it would take bollocks of iron to even suggest to Edgeworth that his whore of a daughter was acting of her own volition. At least Chernock, the funereal bastard, was smart enough to say, “Yes, sir.”

  “Does the Bloodseeker still track them?” asked Edgeworth.

  “It does.”

  “Good. I’m looking forward to giving Day a nice, slow death. And, Chernock, if you do your job properly, I’ll let you have the Galanos witch, so long as you kill her when you’re done with her. Something painful.”

  Chernock approximated a smile and faded into the shadows.

  Fraser and Edgeworth were alone now in the ruin of the wardroom. Fraser shifted from foot to foot, uncertain what he should do, and he was made even more uncomfortable when Edgeworth turned haunted eyes to him. Fraser hated to see vulnerability in anyone, especially someone as powerful as Edgeworth. It made him despise the older man.

  “I cannot lose my only daughter,” Edgeworth rasped.

  He had to ask the question that preyed upon his usually dormant mind. “What if she’s too far gone, sir?”

  Vulnerability fell away, and a cold mask took its place. “Then, for her own good, I’ll have to kill her. It’s the honorable thing to do.”

  In deepening waves, dusk fell. A sky of saffron, the sea a golden, inky reflection burnished by the setting sun. Clouds, the blue of robins’ eggs and softest pink, spread in waves, the remains of a god’s dream.

  London hadn’t anything within her to see such beauty. Not when Athena lay below decks in impenetrable slumber. No one spoke of their darkest fears—that Athena would not wake again. No one spoke at all.

  London dribbled wine and water between the witch’s lips, did whatever could be done to make Athena comfortable. The silence was unbearable, tight and strained, yet London could not break it. Even Bennett, who always had something light to say, kept his counsel. Kallas seemed to hold the same opinion, for he was also mute, trusting London and Bennett to know what the sails needed as he guided the boat toward an unknown destination.

  Every few minutes, London hurried below to check on Athena. Whenever she came back above, Kallas looked at her with a plea,
and she shook her head. The sturdy captain’s shoulders fell. No change. Whatever the spell had done to Athena, neither London nor Bennett nor Kallas knew its remedy. Their best hope, the witch, suffered for it.

  Adjusting the jib halyard, London saw a necklace of small islands appear, their forms dark, craggy gems spread over the surface of the water. The islands were much too tiny for even a single village. The islands hadn’t even beaches, just sank straight into the sea and the reefs that surrounded them.

  “Where are you taking us?” London asked Kallas.

  “To someone who can help our witch.”

  The triangular sails of another, smaller caique came into view as they rounded one of the islands. This boat was anchored, dancing slow and somnolent upon the water. Fishing nets dried upon its decks. Two men sat upon upended crates, mending nets with fast, deft hands. They glanced up as Kallas steered closer. In the growing dusk, London could not make out their faces, whether they nodded in welcome or stared back with hard eyes.

  Kallas waved his arm overhead, once. One of the fishermen repeated the gesture. He shouted something indistinct over his shoulder. Someone came above deck, wiping his hands on a rough cloth.

  “We’re coming alongside,” Kallas called. “You, stay with the sails,” he said to Bennett. He turned to London. “Prepare to anchor.”

  They sailed in slowly as she worked the jib and Bennett the main. Kallas brought them several boat lengths upwind from the other caique, and signaled to adjust the sails until they stopped moving. London began to lower the anchor. She felt the bump along the line as the anchor hit bottom, then paid out the line as the caique drifted backward. More leaps along the line as the anchor bounced along the sea floor, then the anchor dug in and the line tightened.

  The caique now bobbed beside the fishing boat. Three men stood at its rail, watching.

  “Set the anchor,” Kallas said, but London already knew. She had been taught well. As soon as she did this, lines were thrown from one boat to the other. Kallas and Bennett secured them, then the men pulled until the hulls of the boats bumped gently against each other. A flotilla.

  Kallas turned to her. “You make a good sailor.” His face was stone, but the praise was genuine.

  Too tired and frayed to blush, London ducked her head in thanks. The captain’s unadorned praise gave her more profound gratification than a finely crafted sonnet ever could. “I had a good teacher.”

  “What about me?” asked Bennett. “I’m a good sailor, too.”

  “And a whore for compliments,” Kallas grunted, but he gave an echo of a smile.

  “These aren’t your usual waters, Kallas,” said the eldest of the men on the fishing boat, his hair snowy and windblown, his hands gnarled. His accent marked him as a man who seldom left this corner of the sea. He turned jet eyes to London and Bennett, but addressed Kallas. “They your cargo?”

  “My friends.”

  The three fishermen stared at Kallas’s passengers, and London was well aware of Bennett’s proprietary hand at her waist, him drawing her close so that her hip touched his. She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. Even though he smiled, it was a smile of warning. Mine. You look or touch, you lose your bollocks.

  What primitive creatures were men. But perhaps that was why women kept them around, to remind themselves of their humble, animal beginnings.

  And she wasn’t Bennett’s. She was no one’s. Belonged to nobody. Only to herself, to give as she saw fit.

  The older man answered to the name of Stathis Psaltou. “And my sons,” he said, waving to the two men next to him. “Konstantinos,” a thickset but agile fisherman with his father’s face, “and Odysseas,” the younger of the brothers, lankier yet still sturdy. The brothers both nodded, holding their caps in their hands. Their gazes would linger on London, then paddle away like sea turtles whenever Bennett glared at them.

  “We’ve need of you, Stathis,” Kallas said. “To undo a spell.”

  The old fisherman nodded. “Permission to come aboard?” he asked. He looked at Bennett. “Or will your English wolf bite my hand off?”

  “I’ll keep him chained,” said Kallas.

  “For now,” added Bennett, smiling.

  Stathis seemed to respect this. He nimbly jumped from one caique to the other. Impossible to know his age, only that he seemed as old as Poseidon and hale as a tempest.

  “Below deck.” Kallas waved Stathis toward the quarterdeck house.

  As the old fisherman ambled away, London gripped Kallas’s arm. “Can we trust him? And his sons?” The Heirs had much wealth and power at their disposal. It would not be difficult to find and turn men—if not to the Heirs’ cause, then at least to provide might or information. London was certain it happened many, many times. Who knew what poison was concealed by a friendly smile, even here in the midst of the Aegean?

  “We hold together, the brotherhood of seafarers,” answered Kallas. “All of us have the same mother.”

  “But brothers can turn against one another.”

  “Don’t fear, Lady Oracle.” Kallas glanced at Stathis, who waited for them by the companionway. “I’ve saved that goat’s life dozens of times, and he’s saved mine. I drank wine with him when his sons first grew beards.”

  “Those two look like they started shaving minutes after birth,” muttered Bennett, glancing at the brothers.

  “Not minutes. Months. So, yes, Stathis is trustworthy.”

  “Here,” said the captain, once they were all below in the passageway. He opened a cabin door, revealing with a lantern Athena on her bunk. Again, London’s heart squeezed within her chest to see Athena completely still, like a flame shrinking before extinguishing completely.

  Stathis went to Athena, pressing his ear to her chest. His thick, knotty fingers lightly touched the witch’s face before he picked up her hand and turned it over so he could examine her palm. He grunted, then gently set Athena’s hand back down beside her. Kallas, frowning with worry, searched the old fisherman’s face for some expression, some indication of anxiety or relief, but Stathis kept himself removed.

  From around his neck, Stathis pulled out a small charm that hung on a cord. A medallion of St. Nicholas oscillated slowly in the lamplight. Stathis stilled the medallion’s movement, then held it over Athena’s prone body. It twirled, then spun in helixes. Stathis gave another grunt, then replaced the cord around his neck.

  “What does it mean?” London whispered.

  The fisherman’s lined face looked as ancient as centuries. “It means that you came to me just in time.”

  Laid out, Athena reminded London horribly of the funeral effigies she had seen in Westminster Abbey, a queen posed as though eternally slumbering, while her actual, physical remains moldered beneath layers of marble. The effect was only heightened by the scattering of small oil lamps around the deck of the ship, casting flickering, somber light over Athena’s face. She almost expected the witch’s skin would be cold. London had to touch Athena to assure herself her friend was warm and alive.

  Kallas had carried Athena above deck, where London spread out several coarse woolen blankets. Now, with Bennett at her side, she knelt next to Athena, Kallas facing them. Konstantinos and Odysseas kept to the shadows as their father walked to the rail of the boat with a wooden bucket, then lowered the bucket on a rope to the water, softly chanting.

  Stathis spoke too lowly for London to hear the words tumbling from his mouth, but she heeded only Athena, the shallow rise and fall of the witch’s chest, and feeling Bennett’s hand engulfing her own. She drew steady assurance from his touch, but, even so, there were some things he could not command or control—including the enchanted slumber that imprisoned Athena.

  With easy, practiced movements, Stathis brought the filled bucket up. He set it onto the deck. Konstantinos hurried forward and handed his father a small, battered tin cup that looked as though it had quenched the thirsts of generations of seafaring men. Stathis whispered into the cup, again too quiet for London to h
ear specific words, yet she felt in them the swells of tides, the eternal rise and fall of oceans and the silent kingdom beneath the surface of the sea. The water within the cup blazed azure, spreading blue light across the old fisherman’s face.

  He strode across the deck and stood at Athena’s head. He and Kallas shared a look, before Stathis drizzled some of the seawater onto Athena’s brow.

  For a moment, there was nothing. No movement. No sound. Only the waves surrounding the boats, splashing against the rocks of the nearby islands. Athena did not stir.

  London’s throat seized. Had the spell not worked? She tried to rise, but Bennett held her in place.

  Then—Athena inhaled deeply. Her eyes opened. A flash of panic, followed by calm. London sagged against Bennett, felt his lean, muscled arm wrap in support around her shoulder. He was solid and true.

  The witch turned her head, saw Kallas kneeling beside her.

  “Why will you not rid yourself of me?” Athena asked Kallas, her voice a rasp.

  London saw relief in the captain’s fierce frown, relief he would deny if accused of it. “Too easy for you,” he said.

  She looked away from him. “Now I’ve proof how foolish you are.” But she reached for his hand and, when it was given, gave it a gentle squeeze before letting go. The witch turned to London and Bennett. “Did my spell work?”

  “The Heirs’ ship was crippled,” Bennett said, and the witch smiled at this. “They’re far behind us.”

  Athena sighed, her smile fading. “You lost time because of me.”

  “We’re Blades, Athena,” said Bennett. “This is what we do. It’s why we’re different from them.”

  Athena was silent for a moment. She nodded slightly. “Thank you, and,” she said, gazing at Stathis, who had come around to stand at her feet, “blessings of the Virgin Warrior to you, sea mage.”

  The old fisherman’s face broke into a weathered smile, lines fanning across it like a chart mapping the sea. “I’ll take no thanks, land witch. The waters take life and give it with the same hands.”