ONE
The Demete
SAMUEL
The hush that followed the wind was portentous and thick with drifting smoke.The guns fell quiet in their cradles and the rush of water against the hull ebbed asHartslowed, nosing alongside his drifting prize.
No roar of victory came from the dozens of armed men and women crowding the waist of my ship.Neither I nor their former captain had been a miser for discipline, so their mutters were low, their muskets primed but at ease.Nor did I hear defiant or vengeful cries from the pirates on our prize’s deck, though they were slung about with pistols, cutlasses and machetes, and marksmen hung in their rigging.Outnumbered, outgunned and exhausted from two days’ pursuit, the flag flying from their mainmast was white, crosshatched with red—not a flag of surrender, but of parley.
Their captain stood on the quarterdeck with two helmsmen, who cradled muskets and held their posts with resentment in their eyes.
She called in accented Aeadine, “I am flattered you risk so much for my head, Aead,” as she came forward to lean on the rail, her voice easily carrying the dozen yards of docile waves between our ships.Her greying hair was braided, its length tied by a black silk ribbon, and she wore a felted, cocked hat with a blue overcoat faded to spruce.Her eyes were rimmed with black against the usual glare of sun off snow and ice and Winter Sea.
The pirate continued with feigned apprehension, “Bringing the Fleetbreaker’s daughter into Mereish waters?”She gestured to the woman beside me, in her pale-blue calico skirts and oversized wool coat.
Mary Firth, daughter of the infamous Stormsinger known as the Fleetbreaker, had her arms crossed over her chest, but at this she raised one hand a margin and fluttered her fingers in a wave.She was tall and dark haired, her head uncovered to the wind in a way that no mother on the Winter Sea would condone.
“She knows who I am?”Mary squinted at our would-be captive, speaking quietly to me.“We may soon be notorious, Sam.”
“Is that not our intention?”I murmured back.“If you wanted obscurity, you should have gone south with your mother.”
Mary hid a smile and called over the water in her rounded, inland accent.“Mereish waters, you say?I see nothing but fog.Though, we’ve a Letter of Marque from the Usti queen and the right to be wherever we see fit.”
The pirate captain snorted.“The fog that you called yourself, witch.And letters can burn.Captain, let us resolve this before we have a patrol on our heads.”
“Very well.Ophalia Monna.”I drew up to the quarterdeck rail and faced the other captain over the stretch of sea.Mary stayed where she was.“I am Captain Samuel Rosser ofHart, privateer under commission of the Usti Crown.Surrender yourself.You are taking on water, you have no Stormsinger, and falling into the hands of your countrymen will be your death.Come with me back to Hesten and you will face fair trial under the Usti for your crimes against their ships.Or we can wait here, becalmed, until a patrol sets to blowing us both out of the water.”
The pirate replied, “Would you perhaps be related to a Benedict Rosser?”
There was no question in her voice.She knew who Mary was.She knew who I was.And evidently, she knew something of my brother, too.
A whisper of premonition swept over me, blurring the edges of the world—the lines of the rails and rigging, the masts and lifeless sails, the waves and Monna’s fixed gaze.Then my fingers brushed the long, oval coin in my pocket, and the whisper faded.The world took on clear edges again, and I realized Mary had drawn up to my shoulder.
“Someone is coming,” she murmured.“Ghisten ships.”
I cursed.The fog shrouded us, but it also limited what we could see of the world around us.By natural means, at least.
“Can you delay them?”I asked, equally low.
Mary gave a nod and stepped back.I heard the smooth intake of her breath, then the first notes of a song slipped into the still air.They were low and melancholy, drawing in the hushed solemnity of the sea and returning it in sympathetic kind.
“There is a voice among the trees, that mingles with the groaning oak, that mingles with the stormy breeze…”
The wind stirred and damp air prickled across my cheeks.Monna lifted her chin, sensing the change at the same time as one of her crewmen murmured in her ear.
“We will surrender,” Monna decided.“No more storms, guns or bloodshed.I will peacefully come aboard, then I will tell you how I met your twin in the belly of a Mereish frigate.”
***
Monna sat at the small table in my cabin, fishing a pipe and pouch from her pocket.Ice rimmed each small windowpane, further obscuring our foggy view of open sea and pursuing ships beyond.It was cold; the iron-girded woodstove had been smothered for action and not yet rekindled.But at least we were out of the wind.
Distantly, I heard Mary’s song above deck, accompanied by the rumble of footfalls and the piping of the bosun’s whistle.Her witchwind was up and we were well on our way back to safer waters, with Monna’s ship in convoy.
“I am surprised they came upon us so quickly,” Monna commented as she stuffed the pipe.“But it is a time for surprises.I also did not expect you to chase me beyond Aeadine waters, yet here we are.May I?”
I nodded and the pirate leaned in to steal a taper and flame from the lantern suspended low over the table.Meanwhile, I shed my outer coat and sat across from her, leaving my cutlass and pistols in place.
Her mention of my brother itched the back of my mind, dredging up question after question.I held my tongue for now, sifting through tactics.
