She immediately hardened it into a determined squint. “Very well. Ensure we’re resupplied and ready for open sea, Mr. Rosser.”
*
The next day our convoy of pirates, pirate hunters and Navy sailed out of Hesten. As soon as we cleared the harbor, we delivered Slader to the waves with the piping of the bosun’s whistle. Then went on our way, sails full of Ellas’s Stormsinger’s wind.
Seeing Defiance off our larboard, with Benedict standing upon her decks, was something I did not grow used to in the coming days. The weather mage’s songs frayed my nerves, and even when I retired to my cabin to sleep, they wheedled through the hull into my dreams. Mary sung them there, in a dark wold and a flurry of snow. I set my coin aside and reached out to her, once, but the distance between us was vast and full of monsters.
Two days out of Hesten we dropped anchor off an island, which Ellas claimed was the last solid land before the Stormwall. Ice rimmed her shores and crowned her low, rocky mountains, but there was life here, and fresh water. Crewmen rowed ashore to haul barrels to a natural spring, scattering hardy shorebirds in thundering clouds and earning indignant bellows from shaggy, rust-red sea lions.
I caught the crack and flash of muskets as I climbed aboard Defiance with Captain Fisher. A sea lion’s dying roar echoed across the water, followed by more bays and barks as its companions fled into the sea.
I stepped up on deck and paused to watch distant forms of crewmen converge on the creature’s huge body, my lips pressed into a line.
“Not a hunter, I take it?”
I looked up to see Captain Ellas watching me. Fisher stood between us, her expression dispassionately polite. Benedict stood on Ellas’s other side, absently running his eyes over Fisher in a way I did not like.
He met my gaze, gave a subtle grin, and clasped one hand behind his back.
“I hunt when the need arises,” I replied to Ellas, offering the captain a short bow. “Creatures or men. Captain, thank you for your invitation.”
“Of course.” Ellas smiled. The expression did little to soften her hard face. “Come, it would be a pity if our dinner grew cold.”
Soon after, we sat down to a fine spread in the grand cabin. I expected Demery and his mate to be there, along with Ellas’s other lieutenants and officers, but there were only four chairs, and four plates laid down by an aproned servant. Ornate glass lanterns were set on the table between platters of roast meat, vegetables and breads—each glass so packed with pulsating dragonflies that the creatures had no space to move.
“Captain Demery will not be joining us tonight?” Fisher inquired, the picture of decorum as she laid a napkin on her lap.
“No, no,” Ellas replied, smiling benevolently. “No need to sully ourselves with the presence of pirates.”
I settled in my own chair. For once, I was inclined to agree with Ellas, but my dreamer’s senses prickled.
Benedict filled our cups with wine. He topped up mine last and, noticing my gaze on the nearest dragonfly lantern, reached out to flick the glass. The dragonflies took flight in a clash of wings and renewed, golden light.
“Must remind them of their purpose every so often,” he murmured, then sat beside me. Across the table, he caught Fisher’s gaze and added in a pleasant rumble, “Captain Fisher, what a pleasure it is to properly meet you. I do regret Captain Slader’s demise, but I am reassured to see my brother serve a captain he so obviously… admires.”
There was an undertone to his words, a suggestion that irked me and I knew Fisher would not miss. But we had been associates long enough to have heard it before.
“Yes,” Ellas agreed, taking up her fork and knife and slicing through a fat, steaming potato. “Slader will be sorely missed. We were friends, as I’m sure you gathered.”
Fisher took up her own knife and, leaning forward, carved into a thick slab of beef. Blood and juices sluiced onto the platter and the scent of the meat, rosemary and onion wafted towards me. “Yes. Did you know one another long?”
Ellas nodded. “We went to the academy together. That was some… what must it be now, thirty years ago?”
I looked up from my wine. “The Naval Academy at Ismoathe?”
The elder captain took up her own cup and smiled at me over it. “Of course. We forged a friendship, then an alliance that carried on into the war. When the Fleet disbanded and he took his honorable discharge, I was sad to see him go.
“But that is behind us.” Ellas sat a little straighter in her chair. I saw the shadow of grief pass over her eyes, but she did not let it linger. “It’s my hope that you, Captain Fisher, will honor his memory by maintaining our alliance.”
Fisher laid down her utensils and surveyed the other woman. “What do you mean by ‘alliance,’ precisely?”
“Silvanus Lirr is a plague upon these seas, we all know that,” Ellas said. “And he is strong, and unlikely to be brought down by a single vessel. Slader approached me, when we met at sea before Hesten, and he offered me a share in the prize in return for my assistance.”
Benedict, unfazed by the tension at the table, speared potatoes and sprouts with a single-mindedness belied by his distracted eyes. He was listening.
Fisher said, “Captain Slader never spoke of this to me.”
Ellas’s smile was apologetic. “I am sure he intended to. He is not one to reveal his plans prematurely. But there is more. In Hesten, Slader heard the rumors Demery’s crew was spreading about ‘Bretton’s Hoard,’ this great treasure north of the Stormwall. As you can imagine, it caught our attention, and we met to discuss it.”
I recalled how finely Slader had dressed in Hesten, with his pale blue frock coat and his wig. So, he’d gone to meet Ellas, and very intentionally kept Fisher and I in the dark. I had not even known Defiance was in port until I saw Benedict at the Frolick.
There was always the chance that Ellas was lying. But Slader had never been an amiable man, always private and calculated, so perhaps he really had been scheming behind our backs.
From the look on Fisher’s face, she was as suspicious as I.
“The sea north of the Stormwall is unclaimed and Bretton was a pirate,” Benedict put in, unnecessarily. “Thus, no country has a claim on the Hoard.”
“Precisely.” Ellas raised her wine to him in salute and took a sip before she elaborated. “The prize is more than enough for the both of us, even if Captain Demery’s claims are exaggerated. However, half of Defiance’s share will go to Her Majesty Queen Edith. Slader’s share faces no such claims. So he and I came to a new arrangement.”
“He agreed to conceal a share of the prize for you,” Fisher summarized, coolly. “You intend to steal from our queen.”
“Our queen has a jeweled piss pot and cleans her teeth with ivory picks,” Benedict replied, shucking all pretense at formality. He mirrored Fisher’s icy tone, with a dash of his own scorn. “She will survive.”
“The funds would go to Aeadine’s defenses,” I reminded him. “You would be taking money from your brothers and sisters-in-arms, not the queen herself.”
Benedict gestured to the spread of fine foods before us and gave me a small, licentious grin. “We shall survive.”