Page 46 of Rears & Vices

At 2,100 tons and a draught height of almost seven-and-a-half meters, stuffed to ribs with cargo and enough rations to last two hundred men the winter, Everard damned well hoped the meregildo could take it. Unless the storm was a hurricane—then they were probably fucked, no matter what size ship they tied themselves to.

“All right.” He eyed Vitaliy’s still-bare chest. “Are you not coming above?”

“Go tell León to fly her, as far as she’ll go,” Vitaliy said. “It’s time for the Sévère to come out of hiding.” He about-faced and stepped close. “Thank you for waking me,” he said. Carefully, slowly, smoothly, he leaned in, and, seeing no resistance, kissed a stunned Everard on the mouth.

There was nothing of revulsion in the way Vitaliy’s closed lips pressed sweetly against Everard’s, the way his hands bracketed Everard’s face, the way his fingers curled into Everard’s hair.

The ship began to roll again. Vitaliy pulled back. “I’ll come up in a moment. Don’t forget to tie yourself down.”

Twelve-ish hours later, they’d made it through. The storm hadn’t been a hurricane, thank God; it had come in from the west, a land storm that’d strengthened over the warm water of the coast before it reached them; but it had been fierce, hard enough to push the Sévère to the edge of a loop current. Now she had been put hove to, with most of her sheets tied up, made into a floating village once more; almost every watch took a well-deserved meal and rest.

At sunset, fresh off his own turn at a short but badly needed nap below, Everard climbed the hatch and gratefully took in the scent of a light wind coming off a calm Gulf sea. And then, with almost more gratitude, he took in the sight of Vitaliy Gray.

The man was perched in the starboard-side foremast shroud, a dark silhouette against a purple-orange dusk. He was alone, coatless, unusually shirtless—he almost never bared his skin to the daylight—in belt, breeches, and boots. His left knee bent at a right angle to the one beside it, and his arms were slung behind his back, elbows hooked over lines. A classic sailor’s pose, for a rare moment of rest, of observing a beautiful post-storm sunset.

Everard almost didn’t want to disturb him. But while Vitaliy clung high enough to take in a decent view—six or seven lines up from the rail—he was also still within spoken earshot. Accessible.

And sure enough, he heard Everard coming. He turned his head in profile, greeted him before Everard tried to say anything.

“Matelot.” Though Vitaliy’s voice was roughened from hours of yelling, retching, inhaling salt spray from the storm, the word sounded lovelier in his fur trader’s French than it did in others’ workaday Jackspeak. Ma-te-lou.

“Vee,” Everard replied with a smile, though he wished he could call Vitaliy by his name and not the moniker. He touched his hat out of habit, remembering too late that Vitaliy didn’t care for deference.

Vitaliy looked tired and strangely wary. Everard felt his smile falter. He didn’t like feeling that Vitaliy was reluctant to see him, though it was certainly understandable if he was.

But he pressed on. A man wanting to be left totally alone would’ve climbed higher, out of reach.

“Calm at last.”

Vitaliy nodded once. Then, quietly, he said, “Yes.”

Everard, heartened by this small effort, said, “Will you not take a rest shift?”

Vitaliy looked over in surprise. “Now?”

“I hope I haven’t kept you from it.”

Vitaliy stared down, still and intense, saying nothing.

“I wanted to make you aware there’s no hesitation on my part,” Everard said, “in sharing your bed. To sleep,” he clarified hastily. “I would wake you whenever… whenever is needed. That is, if you would trust me to do so. If not, I can easily find other⁠—”

“It’s not that,” Vitaliy rasped. “You can sleep where you like, with me, with whomever. Or not sleep. But look: the water is too blue.”

A crystal-blue sea. Deep, deep water; it meant they were well into the Gulf.

“Smack on ninety degrees west,” Everard agreed.

Their latitude, too, was concerning. The storm had pushed them into the deeper waters southeast of Louisiana—the most dangerous area of the Gulf, and not only because it was August and nearly hurricane season. They were directly placed along Jean Lafitte’s well-known routes.

“It is farther east than I’ve been in some time,” Vitaliy said.

“Kingston was seventy-six degrees west,” Everard pointed out.

Vitaliy slid him a patient look. “Farther east than I’ve brought the Sévère in some time,” he corrected. “I cannot rest. I must keep watch.”

Earlier, when the storm had ceased and the wind had died to almost nothing, the sun was pulled to the horizon in the sextant, and they found she’d run much farther than they’d thought.

Vitaliy had clicked shut the hack watch—his gilt pocket watch, temporarily put into service keeping Greenwich Mean—and cursed. “You were right.” A natural navigator, his mind worked maths and maps the way Everard’s did the written word, and easily time, distance, and speed came together to confirm their charting. “Ninety degrees west, forty-one north.”