“Can’t sleep?”
Cali jerked and spun around, her tail thrashing and her heart racing as she spied the captain standing behind her wheel on the quarterdeck, her hair as black and glossy as polished ebony. “Do you always lurk on deck after dark?”
As soon as the words left her mouth, she realized how accusatory they sounded. This was Bonnie’s ship, after all, and she wasthe captain. Most people wouldn’t consider her steering it to be lurking.
But the pirate didn’t seem offended. Instead, she beckoned for the pantheri to join her. “I couldn’t sleep either.”
Cali made her way up the stairs, her fur still on end. “Is Thrain’s snoring so loud that even you can hear it?”
Bonnie laughed, shaking her head. “That’s not why I couldn’t sleep, but I’m guessing it’s why you’re up here.”
Cali twitched one shoulder. If she were being honest, the dwarf’s snoring was only one reason she’d been chasing sleep and failing. “I should be used to sleeping in close quarters since I ran with a crew, but I guess it’s different when you’re not on solid land.”
The captain nodded as if she understood. “Give it a few more days, and solid land will feel strange to you.”
Cali couldn’t imagine ever feeling that way, but she nodded.
“Besides,” Bonnie said, running the tips of her fingers across the spokes of the wheel, “Tris likes you.”
Cali scoured her memories for a Tris. She’d met a lot of new people, but she was almost certain she hadn’t met a Tris. “Who’s Tris?”
Bonnie’s hand curled around two of the spokes in a caress more than a grip. “Why, the ship, of course.”
Cali blinked at the pirate. Had she said the ship was named Tris? She was sure it was called The Cruel Mistress? Then she turned the words over in her mind. “I get it. Tris is a nickname for Mistress.”
“Something like that.” Bonnie patted the spokes. “The old girl wanted a name that wasn’t such a mouthful.”
Cali thought of the woman painted on the bow of the ship. “You mean the mermaid at the front?”
The captain bobbled her head back and forth. “Yes and no. The mermaid is part of her, but she’s more than that.” She leaned forward and dropped her voice. “Aren’t you, Tris?”
Another keening sound as the ship scuttled a wave. This time, Cali was even more sure that was an actual answer.
Cali matched Bonnie’s hushed tone. “Are you telling me that your ship is alive?”
The pirate laughed, the sound as high and lilting as the musical sound that came from the ship’s creaking planks. It was as if she and the ship were laughing together. “Not alive in a traditional sense, and I couldn’t tell you how she came to be or who possessed enough powerful magic to create a sentient ship, but yes.” She rested a hand on Cali’s shoulder. “You’re sailing on the only enchanted pirate ship on the known seas.”
Cali slid her gaze around her to the ropes flowing from tall masts and the crisp sails that seemed to adjust themselves to catch the wind. From her vantage point beside the captain, the colors splashed across the deck no longer appeared random and, unless her eyes were tricking her, they’d changed since earlier in the day. It wasn’t only the moonlight that had shifted the ship’s colorful paint to a palette of blue.
Then Cali pivoted to the pirate captain. “Does that mean the jolly boat that Marina and the hellkins took is also…?”
Bonnie’s smile drooped, and the ship moaned. “Yes, which is why we must retrieve it. Jolli is as sentient as Tris, and the two have never been apart for longer than a few hours.”
“When Gert said the ship would rebel if you didn’t find the jolly boat, she didn’t mean the crew?”
Bonnie shook her head. “Although the crew is so fond of Tris that they’d also probably refuse to sail if we didn’t retrieve her companion.”
Cali rested a soft paw on the railing, which was surprisingly warm. Did she actually have something in common with a sentient ship? Were they both searching for someone?
Her throat tightened as she patted the warm wood, determination sharpening her breath. If there was one thing she understood in the marrow of her bones, it was the pain of loss and the longing to find the one you loved. Suddenly, the prospect of sirens and sea monsters and mermaids didn’t seem so daunting. “Then let’s get your friend.”
The ship bounded through a swell, the flapping of her sails sounding like a burst of applause.
Bonnie stepped back and gestured for Cali to take the wheel. “Lead on.”
Seventeen
“Sweet,simmering cauldrons, I slept like a baby.” Thrain stretched his arms overhead as he emerged from below deck and squinted into the morning sun.
