“Ms.Firth,” I said, sitting straight.“This is Captain Mercer ofFair Fortune, who encountered some less-than-fair fortune, and has been waiting for his ship to be repaired.How long now, Captain Mercer?”
Mercer seemed put out.He sniffed and buried his face in his tankard.“Another two weeks or so.So?This your witch or just acommon whore?Or both?Ow!”He jumped and spilled ale down the front of his shirt.
“Oh, my apologies!I must have kicked you!”Mary crooned, leaning over the table and helpfully taking the tankard from his hands.She promptly dropped the whole vessel into his lap.
Mercer made a gargling sound, clutching himself out of sight.
Instinct had me half out of my seat—to defend Mary, help Mercer or punch him, I was not sure.But as Mary fussed, I sat slowly back down, trying to hide a smile.
“I’m so clumsy tonight!Too much wine.Let me get you a cloth.”With that Mary swept past the man and merged with the crowd.
“She did that on purpose,” Mercer raged, shooting me a heated look as he finally ceased clutching himself and tried, unsuccessfully, to mop up his shirt with a handkerchief.I heard a clatter under the table as the tankard rolled away, but Mercer seemed done with it.“You should control your people.”
“You suggested she was a whore,” I pointed out coolly.
“She’s clinging to your arm in the middle of a public house, what else is she?”
Steel crept into my spine.“A woman to whom you should show more respect.”
Mercer snorted.“So she’snotyour whore?”
“She isHart’s Stormsinger.”
Mercer threw his sodden handkerchief on the table and gave me an irritated pout.“Tart, whore, Stormsinger—there’s a difference?Both end up under your belly.”
All sound in the room faded, and all I saw was Mercer’s face.
Whatever he saw on mine made even his rosy Whallish complexion blanch.“No need to take offense, Rosser, we’ve all taken liberties with witches.”
“I have not,” I ground out.“I would not.”
Mercer’s expression stuttered into a false smile that failed to hide his disbelief or even a scrap of pity.Gathering his hat andhandkerchief with a muttered curse of farewell, he got up and left the table.
Mary did not come back until he had exited the tavern entirely.
“At last.”She eased back into her chair and smiled at me, warm and soft and amused.“What an awful man.”
She made to slip her arm around mine again.I imagined her touch, the gentleness of it, how I wanted to bundle her into my arms and hide her from the eyes of everyone else, from men like Mercer and every atrocity on the Winter Sea.
Instead, I rose, slipping her grasp with apparent distraction, and pulled on my coat.“I need some air.”
She eyed me but grabbed her jacket.
Outside, where a long summer evening graced the street with pink-orange light and the good folk of Usti traversed clean, dry cobblestones, I breathed no easier.Mary still didn’t speak, and, by silent agreement, we started back towards the ship.
It was not untilHart’s masts came into sight, rising amid some dozen others in one of Hesten’s square wet docks, that I spoke again.
“We need to be different.”
Mary looked at me sideways.“What do you mean?”
“The way we were tonight, how close we were.”I had pondered this the whole walk back, but I still struggled for words.“You know I care for you.I know you care for me.But Stormsingers and their captains have a… reputation.”
“Mercer is an awful man,” Mary cut in.“Just because he assumed—”
“He assumed I, as a captain, was abusing you, my Stormsinger,” I said bluntly.“And that is what everyone else will believe as well.”
Her scowl was disgusted.“And?They’re wrong.”
