Finally, I opened the door to the main cabin again. “Captain, the gown is enough. This paint—”
I paused. Demery was securing a broad leather belt over his own wrapped overcoat, knee-length, sapphire and trimmed with heavy silver embroidery. Not only did he cut a dashing figure, but he wore the garb with a suspicious level of confidence and familiarity.
He caught me watching him and grinned crookedly. “Ethnic ambiguity is a useful thing,” he observed, then held out his hand. “You must see me in an Usti kaftan, I look like I stepped from a Yustoff painting. Come, I’ll help you with that.”
I handed over the paint and brush, both his appearance and the thought of him applying the paint giving me hesitation. “Perhaps Widderow could help me?” I suggested.
“Widderow is as useless with paints as Bailey would be.” Demery uncapped the little jar and set it on the table, then dipped the brush and gave me a prompting look. “Tilt your chin back and look down.”
I complied, and with great care, he drew fine lines from the outer corners of my eyes. I was keenly conscious of our proximity, and strove to breathe quietly.
Demery, for his part, appeared unperturbed. With a nudge of a knuckle, he directed me to turn my head one way, then the other. He applied a few more careful strokes, then stepped back.
“Perfect,” he pronounced, brush still poised. “Try not to blink until it dries.”
I immediately blinked. His grin deepened and I smiled wryly in return. “Sorry. Where did you learn to do that?”
“No matter, I’m sure it will smudge in the weather anyhow. Where did I learn? I’ve lived a varied life, and loved varied women.”
“Do you have a woman now?” I wanted to know. “Somewhere on shore?”
“No, no.” Demery started to shake his head, then his eyes crinkled. “Well, your mother has always struck me. Perhaps she’d be interested in retiring with me? We’re still young enough to make a good go of things.”
I drew back, scandalized. “If you dare—”
Demery burst out laughing, drowning my indignance. “Your mother is a sister to me, Ms. Firth,” he soothed, rubbing at his chin and giving me a look that might have been fond, however brief it lingered. “We’ve been through too much together for romantic entanglements. Romances born out of such trials? They rarely last.”
“Good,” I bit back. I could imagine my mother with someone other than my father—my father, after all, had already moved on. But the thought of her with Demery made my cheeks burn.
“I do intend to retire after this, though, and your mother is welcome to come along, if she’s in need of a… discreet hideaway,” the captain said, picking up an ink cloth from the table and cleaning off the brush on its stained fabric.
My heart sank a little. I watched him work, turning over the thought. I wanted to take my mother home to the Wold, and try to reclaim the happiness we’d once had. But that was impossible.
Someone knocked at the door and Charles Grant stuck his head in. He noted the pair of us, his eye snagging on my face and clothes for a surprised moment before he cleared his throat. “I, ah, was told my services were required?”
“Yes,” Demery said, striding to his open trunk and pulling out a second Mereish coat. “Be so kind as to put this on and stay by Ms. Firth. I don’t expect any trouble from this prize, but let’s be cautious, shall we?”
TWENTY-TWO
Guise and Guile
MARY
The wind blew, guns thundered, and I stood with Charles as the Mereish merchant surrendered. Harpy closed upon her with every passing moment, devouring the waves with a roar of water and wind and spray. The weather strained against my song, but it was a hound on a leash—unruly, yet limited in its rebellion. The seas themselves were calm, mirroring my own efforts to contain my anxiety… and a rush of exhilaration.
Guilt and memory threatened to douse that thrill. But the wind and my song fed upon it, growing stronger and steadier.
From across the deck, Athe gave me an appreciative salute, and I warmed at the affirmation.
Finally, when we were close enough to see the petrified faces of the Mereish sailors as they fled below decks, Demery cried out, “Boarding party to the rails!”
Grappling hooks, ropes and long pikes latticed the space between the two ships. Ladders and nets were hauled into place and pirates swarmed from one deck to the other under Demery’s ringing command.
The pirates howled. They cheered. They roared and leapt at their victims, or strode with the confidence of seasoned victors, bristling with weapons. But no more than a handful of shots were fired, and those were for show.
There was none of the recklessness of Lirr’s attack, the wanton waste of life and resources. I watched in fascination as Demery’s pirates shoved their prey to the deck and bound them, chasing the rest below decks. Other pirates loitered like dockworkers, jesting and chattering.
“It’s the shock of it that matters,” Grant observed in my ear. “The shattering of resolve and summoning of a victim’s most base instinct—fear. Pirates or highwaymen, we’ve the same tactics. We’re lazy, the lot of us. Cleaning blood from your clothes is a chore, I tell you.”
“Not all of you,” I replied distantly. I thought of Lirr, and the highwaymen who’d taken my carriage back in the Lesterwold. I remembered the shock of the door flying open, and the blinding, visceral fear that had sent me fleeing into the wild.
But I also remembered leveling a stolen pistol at a terrified peddler under a noonday sun. I recalled seeing that same fear in his eyes. Fear of me.
The last of my unease abated into a hollow resignation. Was this the world, then? Violence and the threat of violence? Was that all there was outside the inn and the Ghistwold?
Was this who I would—and perhaps, already had—become to survive it?
“Mary?”
I realized Grant had continued speaking, but I hadn’t heard. I looked at him sideways and smiled sadly. “Just pondering my descent into depravity.”
“Ah. Well, one choice leads to the next,” he said with a shrug, and I was surprised to hear a thread of resignation in his voice. “And too often there are no honorable choices to be had. We are our circumstances, are we not?”
I elbowed him. “Don’t go philosophical on me. You’re supposed to be a dashing rogue, remember?”
“A dashing rogue with an unfortunately broad education and tendency towards the existential,” he admitted, watching as pirates hustled the Mereish captain across the gap between the ships and onto Harpy.
Midships, they presented her to Demery. He spoke levelly to the woman, who was grey-haired and lean as a whippet, her fierce eyes lined with black just like mine.
She spat at him.
Grant winced. “Did you see that?”
I nodded, mute, as Demery stepped back from the other captain and looked down at the front of his coat. Back aboard the Mereish ship, the captive crew began to shout and struggle to their captain’s defense.
A gun cracked. Demery glanced at the captured ship at the same time as the Mereish captain struggled free of her guards.
Chaos broke out. Pirates surged in to reclaim her but I saw a flash of steel, then lost sight of her altogether.