Page 30 of Rears & Vices

“Surely, this can’t be the local preference,” Everard marvelled.

“If custom doesn’t like it as-is, they water it.”

Everard bet that they frequently did. As for himself, he was going to be very awake, very soon. “Is this Brazilian? Cuban?” he said, half to himself. He sipped again. “Not Indonesian, thank God.”

Vitaliy leaned forward. He looked intrigued. “Why not Indonesian?”

Everard held up a finger. Well, a gloved thumb. “For one, acidity isn’t right.” He licked his lips. “And I do believe my lips are about to go numb from the stimulant effect.”

Vitaliy’s gaze dropped for a moment, slid back up. He prompted, “For two?”

“For two,” Everard said, “Dutch East India are some ungodly, unprincipled bastards. They’d have a monopoly over coffea arabica given half a chance, and work the enslaved Javanese fingerless doing so. I’m glad this isn’t theirs.” He sipped again. “Well, probably isn’t.”

“It is not.” Vitaliy smiled again, close-lipped. “The Navy man cares for the provenance of coffee?” he challenged.

“I know a bit about trades, commodities, the like—I’ve read Locke as everyone else.” Everard coughed. “Anyway, my father is—was—in business. A tradesman. I told you I was of common stock,” he said, somewhat defensively.

Vitaliy’s eyebrows rose. “Locke, as everyone else.” He took a long drink of coffee. “And the Portuguese, the French, they are exempted their cash crops?”

“Of course not,” Everard huffed. “Look, you—you cannot bring me to a coffeehouse, pour me the stuff, and then reprimand my drinking it. I don’t see you abstaining.”

Vitaliy chuckled. “No.” He pushed the pasties closer to Everard. “Do all Navy men still carry a grudge against the Dutch? I thought that war was before our time.”

Everard unwrapped one and sniffed it: lamb and onion. “Thank you. I’m glad to hear you recognise that fact. In 1780, I was still in skirts. Nothing doing with merchantmen.”

Vitaliy smiled, softer this time. “As was I.”

“I suppose you weren’t always a pirate. No, my grudge against Dutch East India is that they’re slaver bastards.”

Vitaliy raised his cup in mock salud. “So says the moral Englishman.”

Stung, Everard merely said, “One tries.” He lifted the pasty in return salud, took a large bite, and ate in silence. He wasn’t English, not really, but it was hardly worth disseminating the nuances of his complicated citizenship to a pirate.

Then it occurred to him: “Aren’t you, though? English? You were lieutenant-marine…”

“An Englishman?” Vitaliy shook his head. “No. American. Pressed.”

Everard sat back. “American.” He laughed. “Of course you are. You’re the reason we went to war, you know, you lost American boys.” As Everard, too, had been lost—except from Spain.

Vitaliy shrugged. He himself was not partaking in pasty, but tapping his fingers on the tabletop in some kind of chanty rhythm, glancing towards the door at intervals. His cup sat empty. He had not poured himself another.

A suspicion formed, perhaps spurred by the drug or the steadying food. Everard lowered his voice and asked:

“It’s not only weapons you cargo to and fro, then?”

Really, no ship ever carried a single commodity, not if they could help it. But what he wanted to know was simple: was Vitaliy a slaver, like so many pirates were since the laws had gone through?

“No,” Vitaliy replied. “Not only weapons.”

Everard’s stomach twisted.

“You wish to know if I’m a slaver bastard,” Vitaliy said carefully. “Yes?”

Everard nodded.

Slowly, Vitaliy reached for the coffeepot and refilled Everard’s cup.

“You really don’t know who Varfolomey is,” he said.