Beside her, Evelyn clutched her stomach, fighting the nausea that comes when one witnesses death straight on for the first time.
“You’re OK,” Flora told her. “Breathe.”
Evelyn nodded, looking away from the thing that had been Fawkes. She took a deep, steadying breath.
“We killed him,” Evelyn said finally.
We. Flora kissed Evelyn’s knuckles.
“We had to.” She did not tell her that they were bound now, both of them, to Fawkes. She did not mention the weight of his life that would stay with them forever. It was not the time. And besides, Evelyn was strong. Much stronger than she realized.
Instead, she pulled Evelyn by the hand down the stairs. They’d have to go through the stores to get to Alfie. With the Dove crewed by men who did not know her, it was possible they could do it. It was what they had come back to do.
This knife binds.
Why not just kill him?”
Rake was still tied to a rickety wooden chair, his head hanging despondently. He was positioned in the corner of the captain’s cabin so that he was out of the way of the officers now using the table to discuss and debate their plans.
Genevieve almost felt sorry for Rake. He wept freely. She knew the dry drowning was a cruel but efficient technique, well chosen by the Lady for the circumstances. Time was of the essence, after all. What she didn’t understand was why the Lady had not simply had him shot and tossed overboard along with the rest of the criminals.
The Lady Ayer smiled, the same patient smile she often used when Genevieve was slightly more bloodthirsty than was strictly necessary. Which was, the Lady had chided her, rather too often for someone who had witnessed so little death.
“We have not faced the Forbidden Isles yet,” the Lady said. “We do not know if we are yet done with him.”
Genevieve nodded. Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of that? The Lady Ayer was so wise.
“And he could prove a useful bartering tool,” the Lady added.
Genevieve had not thought of that, either.
Rake was — arguably — the worst among them, since his whole role in life was to support the Pirate Supreme and thwart Imperial plans and forces. How was it that someone would come to make so many wrongheaded decisions in so little time? She pitied him. He wasn’t stupid, exactly. He could have made something of himself if he’d been willing to do a little hard work. She shook her head at him.
“He’s a strong man,” the Lady said. “Most men can’t stand the dry drowning for nearly as long as he did.” She looked at him with something like respect upon her countenance. “It’d be a pity to waste a life like his.”
Rake coughed and snuffled his snot loudly.
Genevieve was not so sure she agreed, but said nothing.
“And now we sail for the Forbidden Isles?”
The Lady Ayer nodded solemnly. She had been on the Pirate Supreme’s trail for years now, and Genevieve could feel the Lady’s growing anticipation. She could see it in the way she drummed her fingertips, how uncharacteristically fidgety she was. They would use the Dove as a decoy and a trap, the Imperial galleons sailing in her wake. When the Pirate Supreme’s men spotted the Dove, they would, according to Rake, sail the mermaid flags that would render the stronghold visible at a distance. The Dove would lead the Imperial forces right in, cannons blazing.
When they returned to Crandon, the Lady would have finally earned the respect she deserved from the Emperor. Though she was widely regarded as his best operative, the Emperor himself had never deigned to comment on the Lady Ayer’s fine work in front of his court. He never hesitated to comment upon the many deeds of his male operatives, however, a fact that Genevieve was keenly aware of. The injustice of it rankled her, though the Lady had never once mentioned it. This was, Genevieve knew, a side effect of the Lady’s good training, her honor, and her ability to always place her duty before her own needs.
There was a holler from abovedeck, and the Lady Ayer snapped to attention. She was a fearsome thing at her full height, with her eyes glowing and hungry, her shoulders square. Genevieve did her best to mimic the Lady, standing at attention as though she herself had been called.
Another ship had been spotted. Perhaps. The men were unclear.
The Lady walked with a quick, purposeful clip abovedeck. There, a handful of the crewmen huddled around a spyglass, taking turns looking through it. With the morning sun starting to peek through the clouds, it was difficult to see, they said, but there could be something. There?
They pointed, and the Lady Ayer took the spyglass from them and looked.
Genevieve knew something was horribly wrong when the Lady gasped. The Lady never gasped, not in earnest, not as an operative of the Emperor. And yet the sound had been as unmistakable as a black ink stain on white robes.
“Get me the Nameless Captain,” the Lady barked, and two of the sailors ran off to see her bidding done.
“What is it?” Genevieve asked. But either her voice was whisked away by the wind or the Lady Ayer ignored her, for there was no answer.
One of the men returned holding on to the captain’s sleeve. The captain looked drunk. He swayed a little where he stood. Genevieve wanted to punch him.
“Look through this spyglass and tell me what you see.” The Lady handed him the device, and the captain snatched it gracelessly from her. The Lady wiped her hand on her robe where the captain had inadvertently touched her. The wind carried the scent of his nasty rum to Genevieve’s nostrils.
“Oh, bugger.” He seemed unable to take the spyglass down from his eye. The stupid drunk smile was gone now.
“I feared as much.” The Lady called to the men then, her voice strong with the power of command. She kissed her fingers in silent prayer. “It seems the Pirate Supreme has sent the Leviathan to us.”
There was murmuring, undeniable apprehension among the men. Genevieve knew now why the Lady had gasped. No one had faced the Leviathan and won. Not with ten ships, and certainly not four. Their assured victory looked like nothing of the sort now. She looked to the Lady to see how she might better comport herself and was pleased to find she stood just as tall as she had even before receiving the bad news. Perhaps even taller.
“Ready the cannons. Just because the Leviathan has not been defeated does not mean she cannot be,” the Lady Ayer said. Genevieve could see the Lady’s pride as she looked at the men, her men, and reminded herself of their skill. Their power. The men looked back at her with admiration. Of course they did. She had commanded their commanders, and now she was leading them to the Pirate Supreme. She was unstoppable, like death itself.
The Lady Ayer stepped up to the foredeck and faced her men, her face alight with a smile of assured victory. “The only reason the Leviathan has not been defeated is because she has never faced Imperial men, Imperial might, Imperial majesty,” she shouted to them. “We will blast that abomination from these waters. Whose glory do we fight for?”
“THE EMPEROR’S!” the men called back in unison. Genevieve could see the effect of the Lady’s rallying cry immediately. The Emperor’s men stood with their chins high.
“Whose flags do we sail?”
“THE EMPEROR’S!” Some of the men raised their fists now, their voices rising together like flames that would burn the sky.
“WHO OWNS THE SEA?” the Lady Ayer bellowed.
“THE EMPEROR!” the men called back.
Genevieve could feel the pride swelling in her heart. The Lady looked for all the world like the warriors of old, her eyes afire, her hair whipping about madly in the wind. If anyone could take down the Leviathan, it was she.
“Genevieve,” the Lady said, “have the men bring me Rake.”
There were no men left in the captain’s cabin. Only Rake on his chair, looking pitiful.
They were both from Quark; this Rake had acknowledged the moment he and Genevieve met. When she had told him her name, he’d cocked his eyebrow judgmentally. She’d seen it. He knew it wasn’t he
r true name, since it was not a name from Quark. But she had grown past her roots, unlike him. And now look at them. She stood, the student of the Emperor’s finest operative. And he sat, the broken man of the Pirate Supreme.
“Your Supreme will die, you know,” she said. She resented how impetuous her voice sounded. One of the many curses of being young was lacking the proper gravitas. Rake did not reply.
Genevieve grabbed the shackles from the captain’s desk, pulled the captain’s chair from it, and dragged the chair across the room so that she could sit face-to-face with Rake. He lifted his chin almost imperceptibly as she sat down, but not so high that they saw each other eye to eye. Pathetic.
“The Lady has called for you. The Leviathan has been spotted.”
Again, Rake said nothing but only sniffled, as he had been doing for hours. How wearisome his suffering was to watch. It was like a long act he put on just to remind the Imperials that their treatment had been rough. And of course it had been! What did he expect, cavorting with pirates? With the Pirate Supreme?
“Look at you,” Genevieve spat. “You’re an embarrassment to Quark.”
At this, Rake did lift his chin. His face was swollen from being punched, or the dry drowning. Whichever. He looked terrible. Strings of snot hung from his nose.
“Do not speak of Quark,” he murmured. His voice was firm, and for one ridiculous moment Genevieve felt chastised. As though he commanded any respect, as if he had that kind of power.
“People like you — you give us all a bad name.” She was more angry than she’d realized. She could feel the heat of it burning red in her cheeks. How hard she’d worked to distance herself from men just like him. “You’re the reason people think we’re all thieves.”
Rake did not say anything, but Genevieve could see his hatred for her; she could actually see it, like a storm gathering behind his eyes. He was old enough, she guessed, to have been alive when Quark first became an Imperial colony. And though that should have been a happy occasion — for soon after there were paved roads and constables — she was not so naive to think there had not been a handful of misled rabble who’d kicked and screamed the whole way through. Rake, she guessed, had been one of them.
“And anyway,” she continued, “you got what you deserve. And now I’m to take you abovedeck.”
This was not strictly true. She had been told to get the men to escort him. But she was not weak. She had been trained by the Lady Ayer. How impressed the Lady would be when Genevieve came with their prisoner on her own. And besides, Rake was only a shadow of a man now. Men were always diminished after the dry drowning.
With her knife on his throat, Genevieve undid the knot that held Rake to the chair easily with her other hand. The moment the ropes loosened, he rolled his wrists experimentally, and Genevieve could see the burning red rashes from where he’d fought against them.
“Stand, with your hands above your head.”
He did, his hands held up in supplication. Genevieve smiled. Though she knew duty was not meant to inspire pleasure, she could not help but be pleased. Here he was, the Pirate Supreme’s own man. And he was helpless against her as she had her blade to his throat.
She pulled the shackles from her skirt. “Put one hand down, behind your back.”
Rake did.
Genevieve fumbled with the shackles. Why hadn’t she checked to make sure they were open first? The key still rested in the lock, and she tried to hold the shackles against her side and turn the key all while holding the blade to Rake’s throat. She’d have him cuffed and ready to go in just a moment, as long as she could —
A knock to the side of her head sent the shackles spinning to the ground. She could hear the pain just as well as she felt it. She hadn’t even seen him move. But Rake was no longer under her blade, his eyes like the black coals of a raging fire. He stood before her as she clutched her head foolishly.
Another punch sent her reeling to her hands and knees. She’d seen his fist just before it connected with her jaw. The blade, too, fell to the ground with a clatter, beyond Genevieve’s reach.
Rake pulled his foot back and kicked Genevieve savagely in her side. Nausea roiled up in her belly, and she coughed for breath.
“You will never speak of Quark again,” Rake hissed. He kicked her again, and this time the sick did come, involuntarily and suddenly, burning Genevieve’s throat. “You may kiss Imperial feet. You may take Imperial names. But you” — he kicked her once more — “don’t speak” — again — “OF QUARK.”
The last kick caught Genevieve in the side of the head. She felt herself falling backward, as if through molasses, slowly and strangely, until her head hit the deck with a smack.
“You will never be one of them. Not truly.”
Distantly, she was aware of Rake picking up her blade, but try as she might, she could not make her limbs obey her bidding. They were like rags, lifeless things, not so much a part of her as simply attached. She wanted to scream; she wanted to stop him. But she could not.
And as the black embrace of unconsciousness took her, she saw him step cautiously from the cabin and slip out freely into the Dove.
It had been foolhardy to let him live, arrogant to leave him in the room as they drew up their plans. Idiocy to send that slip of a girl to handle him. If there was anything predictable about the Imperials, it was their ridiculous pride. The moronic notion that they were somehow better than other people, less vulnerable.
Rake would make them pay for that mistake.
Belowdecks, there were stores upon stores of explosives. All he’d have to do to keep the Pirate Supreme safe would be to blow them up. He would just have to hope that the other Imperial galleons were still close by — perhaps the explosion would do some damage to them, too. But at the very least, a skeleton crew of Imperials, including a high-ranking Imperial operative and the captain, would all be killed. Best of all, the Pirate Supreme would know something was wrong and steer the Leviathan away.
Death had not left his side. Not since the captain had named him the traitor in the ranks. Rake could feel it clinging to him like dried blood.
“Soon,” Rake said aloud. It did not do to fear Death, only to welcome it.
He grabbed his pistol from the Lady Ayer’s cabin and then slipped below the decks. It was a narrow fit, but Rake was a narrow man, and he’d made the slimy, rat-ridden trip more than once in his years aboard the Dove.
He made it to the gun stores before someone found him. He’d been coming down the ladder and hadn’t seen anyone as he descended. But there was someone there.
“Stop.” He knew the voice. He heard the unmistakable click of a pistol being cocked.
He turned slowly, his hands up, and looked into the face of the captain once again.
“So they let you live,” Rake said.
“Indeed they did!” the captain said cheerily. “Me and Fawkes, so we might help their efforts.”
“The other men —”
“Already gone.”
Rake shook his head. “You have no honor.”
“Nope.” The captain smiled his awful smile, all yellowed teeth and cruelty. There was no joy to the captain’s smile, only amusement. “Honor is a scam perpetuated by cowards. But I tell you what: you come with me without a fight, and I won’t shoot you here and now even though you so coldly betrayed me, and for years no less. Sound like a plan?”
“How could you bend to them?” Rake was stalling for time, but he hoped the captain could not tell. He was a vain man, after all, and there was nothing he loved more than a good bout of bloviation. Rake readied his patience for it, tried his best to ignore Death, though it lurked in the shadows.
“Who, the Imperials?” The captain laughed. “They’re uptight, sure, but at least they don’t want me dead.”
“Surely they do,” Rake said coolly. “You can’t imagine you’ll survive this.”
“Oh, I’m sure I’ve survived worse. And anyway, I don’t much care for my crew being infiltrated
.” Here he paused and gave Rake a condescending look of rebuke.
Behind the captain, Rake saw something stir. Not a rat. Something big. A foot, perhaps. He remembered then, in a flash, the wet foot he’d seen slip beneath the spare boat. But before he could see who it was, they had ducked behind a tall stack of cases.
“I must say, that is something that makes me very angry indeed,” the captain continued, motioning with his pistol impatiently. “Now, I think we’ve stalled enough, my good man. Come with me and you live, for now. Don’t, and I get the pleasure of shooting you right this second. You must know I am eager to see you dead. I did nothing but treat you well in your years with me, and yet you still saw fit to betray me to that idiot Supreme. Now. Ready?”
Rake tried to think of a reply, but none came.
Instead, two figures slipped out from behind the stores.
Florian, he recognized immediately. Though what he was doing there baffled Rake entirely. He’d worked so hard to see the boy safely away; why was he back? The other one — Rake could hardly tell. They had Imperial features, but none of the Imperial trappings of wealth. The two of them held pistols, aimed squarely at the captain’s back.
The captain whirled to see what Rake was looking at behind him. In his shock, he let his pistol hand droop, giving them the drop on him. When he saw whom he faced, the Nameless Captain burst into boisterous laughter.
“Florian!” he exclaimed. “And who’s this? Is this the Lady Hasegawa, then? You’ve gotten matching haircuts! How absolutely charming of you.” He was practically doubled over, he was laughing so hard. “Rake!” he gasped. “Look at ’em!”
Rake looked at them. The Lady Hasegawa. He’d have never guessed. She was not the same girl who’d left the Dove so recently.
“What say you, Rake?” Florian asked. “What should we do with the captain?”
The captain’s laughter subsided into the echoes of a giggle, irritation visibly washing over him. “You think I’d let you little worms decide my fate?”
The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea Page 25