Page 17 of The Sea Witch
The paleness in her cheeks had lessened. This close, he could see that the color of her freckles had shifted. They had been blood red, but now they were tawny.
He straightened. “I cannot and will not help you.”
Her eyes—the irises contained a mixture of green and light brown—widened.
“Do it, navy man,” one of the buccaneers holding him snarled, giving him a shake. Despite his size, he still rattled from her force. The woman was strong, stronger than many men.
“Thank you, but no,” he answered.
Idly, Alys Tanner noted, “Torturing you to tell us whatever you know is an option.”
“Except,” he said as evenly as he could, “the accounts given by people who’ve lived through your pirate attacks say that you’re no enthusiast of torture.”
“These aren’t typical circumstances.”
“Cut off one of his bollocks,” someone in the crew shouted. “That’ll make him sing like a siren.”
If Ben’s hands had been free, he would have used them to cover his groin. As though reading his thoughts, the captain snickered.
“Kill him now,” the Mediterranean woman urged. “Use the spell of extinguishing.”
“No spell needed when steel will do.” Captain Tanner moved her cutlass up and pressed the blade against his neck. He tried not to swallow hard, lest he accidentally slit his own throat.
She stared at him for a long time. This might be his last moments alive, his final sight the face of the witch pirate captainas she studied him the way he would study a navigational chart. He could change his mind and plead for his life. But he would never help a pirate. If hewasto leave this earthly existence, he’d do so with as much pride as he could muster. Father died courageously, and Ben would sail the same course.
“Take him to the brig,” she finally said.
He stared at her. She stared back.
Their gazes broke apart when the members of the company that held him dragged him away, while others kept their swords and guns pointed at him. Another pirate kept a spell dancing on her fingers, ready to be deployed. Right before he ducked to climb down the companionway, he looked back to see Alys Tanner standing at the gunwale, gripping the handle of her cutlass, looking toward the black horizon.
There was no comfort in the captain’s reputation for leaving people alive. His life was hers now, to command or extinguish, and he had little faith that she saved any of her mercy for him.
Chapter Four
“I do not like it,” Stasia muttered, pacing in Alys’s quarters. She paused long enough to stroke the throat of Eris, her magpie familiar perched on her shoulder. The bird made a pleased, muted sound as it rubbed its beak in Stasia’s thick dark hair, gently nibbling on her curls. “I do not likehim. He is too handsome to be kept alive.”
Alys poured two tankards of rum and handed one to her quartermaster. The tall mugs were of English silver, covered in elaborate scrolls that could only come from a skilled craftsman. These had been taken from a British merchantman.
She wrapped a square of silk around her head. The scarf had been seized from a Spanish galleon headed for Hispaniola. Its deep green color had been too delicious for her to resist, especially after the coarsely woven gray woolens she’d been forced to wear back home were an abrasive memory against her skin. Even so, she only wore plain gold hoops in her ears, rather than the pearls and gemstones other members of her crew favored.
“Staying a step ahead of him kept me too busy to notice whether or not he was handsome,” Alys answered.
“He has pretty blue eyes and a face too gorgeous for the good of anyone.” After setting Eris on top of a table, Stasia drained her tankard and threw herself into the seat in front of the largewindow that ran the length of the ship’s aft. “I want to finish the job you started and cut his throat.”
Alys supposed that Sailing Master Benjamin Priestley of His Majesty’s Navy was good looking, in a tidy way, with a hewn jaw and sharp nose, and instead of a wig, he wore his dark brown hair in a queue. He filled out his fine clothes well, too, and she had ample evidence he was in good physical condition.
She eyed her friend. “It isn’t his handsomeness you fear.”
“While he is on theSea Witch, he is a danger to everyone aboard.”
Alys drank from her tankard, yet bleakness flattened her words. “What happened to Fontaine and theDiabolique...” She shuddered.
“I hope to never witness such a horror again.” Stasia muttered an incantation in Greek.
“So long as the Royal Navy has the leviathan in its power, we’re all a moment away from annihilation. There’s no fighting it. No way to escape it. All the witches aboard our ship, using every ounce of our power... even together, we couldn’t stop that creature.”
Both she and Stasia fell silent, considering this ominous fate.
