First Command

by Alex Lidell

  Less than a day into my first command and I’m already a walking disaster.

  “What is your name, sir?” Syd asks, beckoning my middie over to the quarterdeck. The lieutenant’s voice is smooth with command and confidence.

  “Jax, sir.” The boy cuts his eyes to me for a heartbeat as if to ask, Who is he?

  “Mr. Jax.” Syd’s tone hardens, reclaiming the middie’s attention so competently that I can’t help noting the skill. “Would you be so kind as to locate a rain garment for the captain?”

  Jax nods enthusiastically despite his dragging fatigue. “Aye aye, sir.”

  It’s an effort to control my surprise, and I thank the darkness for concealing the color rising to my face. “That was considerate but hardly necessary,” I tell the lieutenant once Jax disappears from earshot. “I’m perfectly capable of fetching my own clothes.”

  Syd inclines his head, bringing his mouth to hover beside my ear, just beyond the reach of my wide hat. “No doubt. But it appears you have a few other things occupying your time just now. Call it an accidental observation of a lowered third lieutenant.” His mouth twitches in a half smile as he meets my gaze. “For instance, take that cup you’ve been savoring. Sight, touch, and smell are wonderful senses to be certain, but this particular liquid is best enjoyed through taste.”

  I look down to find the coffee, which I’d managed to forget, still in my hands. My face blazes.

  “It’s called co-ffee,” Syd offers conspiratorially. “An ancient tradition on the Swift.”

  Right. Toasting Syd with the porcelain, I take a sip and dissolve into the warmth of rich hot liquid coating my tongue.

  Syd grins and extracts a flask from a pocket, extending it to me. “I also located an exquisite brandy in the Marquis’s captain’s private stores. Will warm you up in no time.”

  Of course he located brandy. Probably took it upon himself to sample it first, out of consideration for his fellow officers. Unfortunately for Syd, he’s trying the wrong way of getting into my good graces.

  “We’ll have no spirits on this trip, if you please, Mr. Carley. We sail with a prize crew through dangerous waters.” My pleasure at watching Syd’s mental stumble at this change of expected course is very short-lived.

  I realize what I said—and how loudly I said it—when a sudden, heavy silence grips the deck around me. Grog, a rum-and-water mix served to seamen twice daily, is both a coveted tradition and often the high point of the crew’s day. Stopping it is a delicate negotiation, not a casually dropped line between two officers.

  “We will keep count of missed grog rations and provide them to the crew once in port,” I add hastily. Too little, too late.

  “I need second man at the wheel,” Ellis calls from the helm an hour later, the wind and sea still tossing us about like fodder on the waves. “This Tirik bucket is as weatherly as my grandmother’s washtub.”

  “She is no such thing,” snaps Syd, the indignation in his voice genuine.

  I motion for Landon to assist Ellis and have a pump brought up to clear away water that laps over the rail to the deck. While I do, Syd orders the well sounded again to check for leaks and sets up a rotation for working the pump itself. As much as I hate to admit it, Syd’s presence, selective and swaggering as it is, provides me with a much-needed second-in-command.

  The sun is well abed and the rain shows no sign of tapering when Syd focuses his attention on me again, leaning his elbows back against the rail. The pose is more suited for a pub than a quarterdeck, and the gleam in Syd’s eye says he knows it.

  I glare at him.

  He raises his chin. The cocky, unabashed arrogance oozing from him almost succeeds in concealing the fatigue in his eyes. “It is an honor to be working with you, you know,” Syd says with a lazy drawl. “One day I’ll be telling my grandchildren that I served with the Ashing’s top admiral when she wore a mere lieutenant’s insignia.”

  “Are you purposely trying to ignite my temper?”

  “I’d call it an instinctual tendency more than a purposeful plan.” He grins and lowers his voice for my ears alone. “But since we are discussing intent, I was wondering whether you were purposely trying to drive the crew insane?” Syd turns up his palms. “If so, I’d be happy to help. I’ve been told I’m excellent at driving people insane.”

  “What?” I rub my eye with the heel of my hand, the deck swaying beneath me.

  “Easy.” Syd’s steadying hand clamps on to my shoulder, and I realize that I had been the one swaying. He waits until I shift my feet under me before releasing his hold. “How long have you been awake?”

  From rising this morning until now? Twenty hours. I’d been awake and working for twenty hours straight. “I’m fine, Mr. Carley.”

  “No doubt,” Syd agrees easily. “It’s just that your cold, wet, and exhausted sailors would welcome a chance to curse and joke—a luxury they can’t take when their captain is watching their every breath.” He jerks his chin toward the main deck, where the hands go about checking lines and holding the helm in sullen quiet. “So…” He stretches his other shoulder, a feral grin spreading across his face, “so, perhaps you might consider getting the hell out of everyone’s hair for a spell?”

  I put my hands behind my back, holding one wrist tightly, and weigh the lieutenant with my gaze. Syd Carley is hardly the first attractive man I’ve met. He’s just the first one to point that maleness in my direction. Between my royal birth and my life in the navy, I’m always someone’s superior or subordinate. Never a friend, never an equal. Never someone any man would consider looking at too long or too closely.

  I am not a girl, I’m a naval officer. By choice. Maybe other girls get to be both, but not me.

  “Did you just tell me to get off my own quarterdeck, Mr. Carley?”

  Syd shrugs. “Is that what I said?” His voice drops so low, I can barely hear him despite standing inches away. “Every captain needs someone who’ll tell her when she’s being an idiot, and it appeared that function was left unfulfilled before my appearance.” He pauses, his dark eyes capturing mine. “Would you prefer I touch my hat and say yes, ma’am to everything you utter?”

  “Yes. It’s called naval discipline, and it is how a ship stays alive.”

  Syd takes a step forward until he stands right beside me. “And here I thought a captain who can think straight has something to do with a ship staying afloat,” he says into my ear before stepping away smartly and touching his hat. “My mistake, ma’am.”

  I watch Syd walk off, setting course for Squirrel, who is snoozing in middle of the deck, curled up into a small ball beside the ship’s boat. A bad place to be. Landon spots the boy at the same time Syd and I do, and the fury on the bosun’s mate’s face is cruel enough to match the seas.

  Everything happens at once.

  Landon winds up that damn cane of his and brings it down toward Squirrel’s back with all his might.

  I shout, “Belay that!” even as the cane is already whistling through the air.

  Squirrel’s eyes pop open, and he shrieks, his thin hands jerking up to cover his head.

  Syd, within reach of Squirrel but too far from Landon himself, throws himself between the two.

  The cane raps against the lieutenant’s flesh with a dull thud that stills the ship’s collective breath—my own included. Silence hangs over the deck. Tense and waiting. My heart stops.

  The circumstances little matter so far as naval law is concerned. Landon, an enlisted sailor, has struck an officer. One single word, one look, from Syd to me in official report of this incident will leave me no choice but to put Landon in irons and order him flogged once the sea settles. There are three officers on this ship: me, Syd, and Jax. None of us are to be touched. Ever. Nausea creeps up my neck, burning the back of my throat. The effort of keeping my face blank strains everything inside me.

  It is my fault. I should have seen the problem before it happened, should have spotted Squirrel sleeping, should have noted that Lande
rs was at the end of his patience and set him to work off his frustrations off deck.

  Landon’s eyes widen, his hands releasing the cane and rising surrender-like into the air. “Sir, I didn’t—”

  Ignoring Landon’s sputtering, Syd bends down to pick up the rattan cane and breaks it smoothly against his knee. “Be about your duties, everyone,” he calls, throwing the pieces overboard into the sea and continuing on his way. Not a glance back at me, not a word, not even a twitch of muscle to rub what had to be a welt filling beneath his jacket. Nothing to acknowledge that anything had just happened.

  I let my breath out slowly, my knees weak with relief behind my steady, straight-backed posture. Giving the ship a final surveying gaze, I take in the crew working hard to avoid notice, Syd standing at the rail, the Ashing flag on the foremast flapping in the jerky wind. The night sky is dark, with not a star to be seen through the weather.

  “You have the deck, Mr. Carley,” I call loudly and, without waiting for a response, make my way down to the cabin below.

  I little recall hitting the pillow. But I am well aware of hitting my head on the low beam a few hours later when a cannon’s belch and the splash of shot hitting water wake me from sleep.

  Chapter 3

  My heart gallops, my mind racing with my pulse to figure out why my ship fired a great gun while I slept. Images of a Tirik frigate bearing down on my little sloop interpose themselves on scenes of my crew in chains, being hauled away to a Republic prison camp. My breath comes quick as I struggle into my boots. Why is no one beating a drum to call the crew to battle stations? Why in the stars named did no one wake me?

  I nearly hop out the cabin door on one foot before I remember myself and force a breath into my lungs. No good comes from letting the rest of the crew know their captain is as bewildered as the rest of them. The three extra seconds I take to straighten the uniform I’d slept in and tie my boot laces are the longest of my life.

  The ship sounds eerily quiet as I swing myself onto the companionway stairs that lead to the deck. The patter of my own boots hitting wood echoes in my ears. The instant my head clears the hatch, I twist to survey my ship. I’d slept longer than I intended, and the night has given way to a miserable gray dawn. Early rays of sunlight try and fail to penetrate the newly settled fog. A fog so thick I can barely make out the rail of my own ship, much less anything beyond our hull.

  Yet something must be there. And apparently, it’s trying to kill us.

  The quarterdeck, where I presumed to find one Lieutenant Syd Carley, stands empty. “Mr. Carley,” I call out into the misty gloom hugging the deck. Clouds might look nice in the sky, but when the thick swirls turn you blind in the middle of an ocean, the combination is deadly. “Report!”

  Sure footsteps sound against the deck behind me, and I turn to find Syd, a glass in his hand and a rueful half smile on his perfect face. With the curtain of fog around him, the lieutenant has an ethereal aura about him that pushes in on me. He stands tall and calm and certain, whereas my heart races my mind to understand what the hell is happening. It’s all wrong. It should be the other way around, but it isn’t.

  It’s an inhuman effort to school my features to stone and force my hand to drape casually behind my back. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this exercise, Mr. Carley?” I ask in a voice that sounds too calm and clear.

  “An accident, ma’am,” he answers with matching calm, one that seems to cost him as little to maintain as it had when he showed up on deck six hours late, after all the tasks of getting a ship under weigh that been finished. “No need for concern. I’ve got it well in hand now.”

  Heat rushed through my veins. No need for concern? The Marquis just fired a bloody gun, something that’s not only unacceptable but that also alerted every ship in the vicinity of our presence. For a small sloop in enemy-infested waters, the wrong kind of attention can be suicidal. I rub my face. “Pray tell me how a gun that takes six men to properly load manages to fire by accident?”

  Syd shrugs one muscled shoulder. “It appears the Tirik had primed and loaded but never fired one of the guns during the battle. The repair crew must have overlooked the fact that the gun was still loaded when they secured it alongside others. With all the jostling of the angry sea—”

  With all the jostling of the angry sea, the gun would still have needed a spark of flame to fire. The chances of the powder having combusted from friction alone in this weather are simply too small to accept without question. “My cabin, Mr. Carley,” I say, cutting him off midsentence. “Now.”

  I signal Landon to take the watch and turn on my heels, leading the way back to the hatch. My heart gallops, in equal part rage and nerves. By all rights, it should be Syd Carley who breathes nervously, but from the confident swagger of his step, one would think it was me in trouble with him and not the other way around.

  Dressing down a crewman is an abhorrent experience in the best of times, and here, with Syd, the anticipation itself is enough to make nausea crawl up my throat. Variations of the opening gambit rehearse themselves in my mind. How the hell did that gun fire? Did he realize the gravity of what happened? Was he ever planning on sending for me?

  None of it feels like the right thing to say, though. By the time we reach the cabin and shut the door, I’ve come up with nothing workable.

  Syd braces his hands on one of the lower ceiling beams, his larger size filling the cabin with his presence. His damp hair is plastered to his head, and he shivers slightly beneath the blue jacket of his uniform. A reminder of the cold misery reigning above deck. One that Syd stood watch through so I could sleep. His gaze follows mine to the water still dripping from him to the floor, then meets my eyes head-on.

  “Do you realize that accidental shot just gave away the Marquis’s position to any passing Tirik man-of-war?” I say finally.

  “Aye, ma’am.” His chin rises a fraction.

  My voice freezes into a chill to match the seas. “And?”

  “And,” Syd says with that perfect, controlled calm, “and I can no more make it unfire than I could make the idiot of a bosun’s mate unswing a rattan cane.”

  I draw a breath. “What the hell happened on deck, Mr. Carley?”

  “The impossible. One of the Tirik guns seems to have been secured with powder and shot still inside. And by some miracle, the water had stayed out of the breech. With the waves crashing up to and fro.” He shrugged, letting the scenario speak for itself, as if there was little more to say on the matter.

  Such as how this miraculous contraption had come in contact with flame.

  I wait.

  Syd raises a brow.

  “Was someone smoking beside one of my guns, Syd?” I demand finally, throwing my hands into the air.

  Syd crosses his muscular arms over his chest and weighs me with his eyes. “Do you truly wish to ask that question?” he asks with preternatural calm. “What will you do if I say yes? Ask me the man’s name? Put him in irons? Flog him?”

  Syd’s words hit me like a bucket of ice water. My gut still says Syd has no idea what really happened, that he’d let his attention wander, perhaps even fallen asleep in the late dark hours of the night. But maybe, maybe, he holds the information back from me for my own bloody sanity.

  The question is, does it matter? I rap my finger against the tabletop, my mind racing, trying to put all the pieces together and coming up short each time. If Syd’s work ethic is as selective as I suspect, I will not be altering that in this ten—now nine—day cruise. If he’d caught the culprit in the act and dealt with the matter on the spot, then little more good will come of my resurrecting the matter. Either way, Syd is right—the accident cannot be undone. Not even if I turn the ship on its head, ferret out the culprit, and punish him before the crew. Not even if I punish Syd himself.

  How can I be the captain and feel as powerless as Squirrel?

  Syd’s brown eyes brush mine, as if reading my thoughts. He opens his mouth, shuts it, and trails his softened gaz
e to the port window, the foggy sea swaying beyond it. “We’re in the same binds, you and I, Nile,” he says softly, as if to himself. “The seamen are the ones who make the ship move. We know it. They know it. Cross a line and they’ll show you just how little an officer’s epaulettes can matter.”

  He clamps his mouth shut and watches the sea in silence, but I can tell he has more on his mind, words he needs to say. Maybe as badly as I need to hear them. Words that have always been there, in my chest, but never uttered.

  Syd sighs. “When I went to sea, I thought my officer’s uniform would make me a god. That everyone would walk around in awe of my wisdom because I’ve the epaulettes and the fancy coat and the letter of commission. But it’s all an illusion. A game that we all play in hopes the common sailors don’t realize our utter insignificance. How utterly alone we are in all this.”

  The words fit so perfectly into the hollowness in my heart that my breath catches. With his easy smile and handsome face, it’s difficult to imagine Syd Carley lacking for company—but what he said, how he said it, rings with truths I thought were mine alone.

  A younger child of the Ashing king, I’m too unimportant to my father to speak with, and too important for everyone else on the mainland to talk to without an agenda. On a ship, I’m an officer. Someone’s junior and someone’s senior. Never a peer. And as for more intimate relations… My mother’s beautiful eyes and long lashes went to my twin, Clay, not me. At seventeen, my body has only started developing a female’s curves, and I know as little about what to do with the new additions as I know of lip paint and dresses. By the time my older brother was my age, he’d bedded more girls than I could keep track of. Me, I’ve never even kissed a man.

  I sigh, giving up all pretense of a captain’s grandeur, and kick a chair toward Syd. “How long have you been at sea, Mr. Carley?” I ask. With the exception of the few officers who rise from the lower ranks, most go to sea as children to learn seamanship and command from youth. One has to start young to truly learn the craft. It is not so different on land, I think—my older brother, the crown prince of Ashing, started attending council meetings when he was six.