He misinterprets this question as a threat, though he looks confused as well as petrified. With one shaking hand, he digs into his pockets and throws down a coin purse with a solid, revelatory clink.
She looks from him to his bulging satchel, then back to the gun. Practicality sweeps aside her lingering surprise and hardens with the clink of discarded coins.
She tightens her grip on the pistol and darkens her voice. “I should hope you know who I am, you tallow-licking goatherd.”
That night the girl settles down to sleep with enough coin in her pocket to put herself up at an inn—should she find one soon—but she is starving and her conscience aches.
Still, when she spies a peddler on the road the next day, she gathers her courage. She steps out of the brush, facing him down the barrel of her useless pistol.
The peddler promptly opens the trunk on his small hand cart. “Take whatever you like, mistress, I beg you.”
The girl is hardly able to believe the ploy worked a second time, but she doesn’t question it. The quiet of the wood is broken by the clink of miscellaneous items as she burrows around in the trunk, pistol pressed to her victim’s sweating forehead. She wears the satchel from yesterday’s take, yawning open, and proceeds to stuff it full of food and useful things.
The peddler watches her, unspeaking. A bird sings off in the trees and the wind rustles the leaves in a merry, sun-dappled rush.
“Pleasant day,” the peddler croaks, clearing his throat.
“’Tis,” the girl replies amicably, suppressing a stab of guilt. His hands are shaking. It really was kind of him to be so terrified of her when she’d done so little to earn it. Whoever these men thought the girl was, she must truly be intimidating. But she dares not ask.
Then her fingers brush a sheaf of paper. She’s about to push past it, digging towards a clutch of candles in the bottom of the trunk, when she catches sight of her own face.
The peddler sees the direction of her gaze. “That’s the latest one, madam. I’m to post them in every inn.”
The girl picks up the top page and steps back, withdrawing the pistol from his forehead. It leaves a red circle on his sweating skin.
One ABETHA BONNING: HIGHWAYWOMAN OF MOST DREADFUL REPUTE stares off the page. She looks just like the girl, if a bit older and angrier. And the reward? Five hundred solem weight.
Below it, in the stack, she sees postings for various other criminals, but none of them have a bounty half as high.
The peddler gives a strained, wan smile. “Like to take that reward up myself but, you’re a woman to be reckoned with. I shall leave you to the Queen’s Guns and the bounty hunters.”
“Bounty hunters?” she repeats, feeling ill. “You think I’m… Oh, damn.”
*
TWENTY-EIGHT
Rendezvous
MARY
The Drowned Prince applauded as I left the stage and waded through a crowd that had, over the course of the last few nights, swelled. Athe and a quarter of Demery’s crew were here too, all surreptitiously armed and ready to intervene at the slightest threat to their Stormsinger.
Never mind that I was tired and longed for a quiet night in my hammock. Never mind that Hart was in port. The pirate hunters couldn’t openly touch me in Usti territory, and Grant insisted they wouldn’t dare resort to skulduggery when I was always surrounded by a regiment of unpredictable, self-satisfied pirates.
So, I sang and played cards and sat in the quiet of my thoughts as Grant teased out funds for Demery’s venture.
Halfway back to the table where Grant sat with Mallan and Farro, I caught the eye of a man at the back of the room. It took me a moment to recognize him in the half-light, but when I did, my heart wedged between my ribs.
Samuel Rosser sat with his coat—his new coat—open, one hand on his thigh, the other cradling a pint of dark Usti beer on the table. He wore a cutlass and a pistol and as my eyes darted to his face, his gaze fell into mine. He looked fine that night, handsome in his guarded way.
My guilt-ridden heart started to race for an altogether different reason.
Rosser nodded to the chair across from him.
I looked at Grant, preoccupied and more than a little tipsy, then found Athe among the crowd. She was shouldering out a side door, likely making for the tavern’s surprisingly well-kept water closet—the establishment’s clients enjoyed the thrill that came with merrymaking on the edge of the Knocks, but not the level of sanitation that came with it.
I decided it was safe to approach Rosser’s table.
“Mr. Rosser?” I said when I reached him.
“Ms. Firth. Sit for a minute.” He pointed to the other chair again.
“Why?”
“Because that will attract less attention, and I do not relish the idea of ending up dead in an alleyway.” He nodded to the plethora of pirates around us. “I will only take a moment of your time, I promise. I am not here to harm you or drag you back to Hart. This is personal.”
Intrigued, I watched him for a few heartbeats, then sat on the edge of the proffered chair.
“You stole from me,” he stated. He leaned forward, looming over the table and eyeing my cloak. “In my pocket—the pocket of the coat you stole along with that cloak—there was a coin. Mereish, embossed with serpents. Do you still have it?”
I sat back. He was glaring, but I saw a ghost of desperation pass behind his eyes. Or perhaps it was just fatigue. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in weeks.
“I do,” I replied, more perplexed than anything. It was back in my trunk aboard ship. “Pray, can you stop looming?”
“What? Looming—” Rosser looked down at himself, ruffled. He ground out, “Do you have it with you?”
“No, why would I? Sit back, please.” I glanced around nervously.
He obeyed. “Ms. Firth, I do not care that you robbed me, though I do consider it a gross breach of trust. I only ask that—”
“Breach of trust?” I repeated. “What trust? Did you think I’d spend the night in a room paid for by a strange man, where you could return at any time and drag me away? Or worse?”
Suddenly he was the discomforted one. “It was cold. You required a place to stay and would not come aboard Hart.”
“Because if I did, your captain would shackle me to the mast,” I reminded him. I knew what that felt like, and I let it show in my face.
Empathy passed through his eyes, deep and real enough that I was taken aback. But instead of softening him, the fleeting expression left him harder.
“Has Demery done better by you?” He started to loom again, then caught himself and sat straight, regal and restrained. “Mary, what are you thinking, falling in with pirates? Lirr is dangerous, but so is Demery. They are connected, those two, and I fear for you caught between them.”
The sound of my name silenced me. There was familiarity in his tone and words, even caring, and all of it wholly misplaced.
Over Rosser’s shoulder, I saw Athe re-enter the room. Her eyes immediately fell on me, then the back of my male companion. She raised her brows in question. She hadn’t recognized Rosser yet, but if she saw his face, she would.
I gave her a fleeting, casual shrug. Satisfied that I didn’t need saving, she sat back down at her table and picked up her drink. But she still watched me from the corner of her eye.