“Ah, so that’s what you were at,” she mused, eyeing me. “Did you leave him his britches?”
I blinked. “What?”
She pointed to my overlarge coat and cloak. “The fellow you robbed. I’m assuming he was in a state of some… vulnerability, given you running off with his coat and like.”
Color rushed to my cheeks.
“Let her through.” Demery beckoned to me. He leaned forward, resting one forearm on his knee as he reached across the table and tapped the contents of his pipe into a bowl. Then, leaving the pipe hooked over the brim, he pushed out the chair across from him. “Ms. Firth, you changed your mind? I’ve had my crew scouring the port for you for the last hour.”
Athe’s leg retracted from my path. I gave the taller woman a bracing smile, as if that could make up for the redness of my cheeks, and stepped past her.
“Captain Demery.” I sat, a little stiffly. “I’ve a proposal for you.”
“Let’s have it.”
“I want my own cabin, with a lock on the inside and none on the outside,” I said, holding his gaze. In my lap, my fingers laced together to hide a lingering tremor. A small voice at the back of my mind screamed that I was mad, that this plan was suicide, but I ignored it. “You’ll teach me to shoot and use a knife. I’ll have privacy and security. Absolute protection from your crew and anyone else that might do me harm. Still, I require my freedom, freedom to leave the ship and do as I please. And I will have a cut of all your… profits.”
Up until the last sentence, the pirate had been nodding in consideration, but at the last his eyebrows shot up. “Pardon me? Are you turning rogue, Ms. Firth?”
“No. As soon as Lirr has been…” I almost chose softer words, but vagueness wouldn’t serve me. “As soon as he is dead and my mother secured—though I still hardly believe you on that front—I’ll be on my way, with my mother and enough money to start a new life. I’ll also need a daily pension while I’m with you, to provide for my needs.”
Demery’s smile was gone, but his eyes glimmered. Amusement? No. This was cooler than that. It was the glisten of an impassive winter sun, clouded and distant and without heat.
My determination hardened, my conscience and qualms obscured, and I leaned forward across the table.
“String up Lirr and help me rescue my mother, and I’ll sing you through every storm of the Winter Sea—even beyond the Stormwall itself.” Never mind that I was a terrible Stormsinger—I’d figure that out later. “You’ll have your treasure, your retirement, and Silvanus Lirr.”
Demery’s hand leveled across the table. No questions. No negotiation. “You have yourself a deal, Ms. Firth.”
His fingers were warm and rough as they closed around mine.
“Captain.” Athe raised her voice. I glanced over my shoulder to see her watching the door, which had opened to admit a gust of cold wind and a dozen newcomers. Armed newcomers, led by Samuel Rosser in his shirt and waistcoat.
He scanned the inn, posture etched with anger and cold, and his chest heaving. He had a cutlass in one hand and a pistol in the other.
Fear cracked through my determination and guilt punched clean through. Not twenty minutes ago this man had looked at me kindly and honestly, in a world where few ever did.
I’d thrown that away. I’d done it for good reason, but I still felt a stab of regret.
Athe stood, draining her cup and placing herself directly between Rosser’s gaze and my frozen form.
“So you did leave him his britches,” she commented, making a show of shrugging on her coat. It widened her already broad silhouette, completely concealing Demery and me from the doorway. “Captain? Shall we?”
Demery’s gaze flicked from my stolen coat, to Rosser, and back to me. His bottom lip pinched in a frown and his hand, still around mine, tightened in warning.
“He tried to recruit me,” I explained hastily.
“So you robbed him?” Demery asked.
“I did.”
“Clearly you chose the right crew.” The captain released me and stood, throwing his own coat over one shoulder and nodding towards a side door. “Mary, stay close. Mr. Howell? If you could cause a disturbance?”
A dark-skinned man at a nearby table saluted and sniffed, flexing his hand and giving the fellow across from him a wan smile. “Right. Jack? Fancy a dance?”
The Jack in question looked around the inn, one hand lingering on the embroidered tablecloth. “Here? But it’s so fine—”
“Lads, please,” Demery persisted.
Jack drained his cup and pushed his chair back. “Right.”
Demery nodded towards the side door again and we started off slowly, Athe stalking beside us and blocking me from view.
A shout rang out, followed by the crash of a table and a howl of pain. A few patrons screamed in shock, others in outrage, then madness took the room.
Demery opened the side door. I stole one last glance at Rosser’s handsome, brooding face, barely visible through the chaos of men and women standing to their feet. I couldn’t say what made me look, but the knot in my stomach felt a whole lot like shame.
My resolve, however, was harder than ever. It had to be.
*
A few hours later, I watched Tithe vanish into a veil of snow. My gaze drifted from ship to ship, the turmoil of my thoughts as muffled as the lights of the port.
I leaned against the windows in Demery’s cabin and slipped a hand into the pocket of Rosser’s coat. Cool metal touched my fingers. I withdrew a single coin, long and thin and oval, worn smooth on one side. I didn’t recognize the stamp on the other, which depicted three knotted serpents, each biting one another’s tails. The text around its circumference looked Mereish, though—all swirls and slashes.
Toying with it, I watched the anchored ships as we passed. Spars and yards, decks and lines were coated with sticky snow, and stovepipes trailed smoke into the night. One of those vessels was Hart, I knew. Would Rosser be back aboard, or was he still searching the town? How long would it take for him to realize I’d vanished at the same time as James Demery’s ship?
I turned the coin over in my palm—once, twice—then slipped it back into my pocket.
PART TWO
BLACK TIDE, THE—A variant of the original cultus of the Aeadine Mainland, which worshiped pagan deities and revered mages. With sympathies towards heretical Mereish magics, cultists are most widely known for their claims to amplify the magic of mages who undergo their rituals. Magni and Stormsingers are frequently subjected to various forms of physical torture, meant to expand the sorcerous mind through suffering or loss of senses. Sooths are often drugged until their connection with the Other is irreparably broadened, and they can no longer reside fully in the human world. All these rituals, according to their beliefs, must take place during the moonless nights and high tides of spring, hence the title of THE BLACK TIDE. The efficacy of their rituals is highly debated, and their practices formally outlawed under King Edmund in 1655. See also MOON WORSHIPERS, AEADINE CULTS.
—FROM THE WORDBOOK ALPHABETICA: A NEW
WORDBOOK OF THE AEADINES
SIXTEEN
Defiance
SAMUEL
I sat on the deck in my cabin, eyes closed, skin prickling through my shirt. The woodstove had long burned down. Cold wrapped its fingers across my arms and made the fine hairs inside my nose tickle, but it kept me rooted in my flesh as the Other welled.