Page 20 of The Sea Witch
For the next half an hour, every single member of the crew was brought into Alys’s cabin, and heard Little George’s riddle, making certain to include Luna, who served as their navigator. Yet, for all their varied experience with the Caribbean, not a one could hazard a guess as to what or where the Weeping Princess might be.
“Damn.” Alys planted her hands on her hips as the last of the company left her cabin. “We’ve one option left.”
“No,” Stasia said at once.
“Fetch our guest from the brig.”
His wrists and ankles in manacles and shackles, Ben sat on a narrow cot in a narrow space bound on three sides with iron bars that glowed with pale green light. A wooden bowl of untouched stewed chicken had been placed on the floor.
What the hell had he been thinking, chasing Alys Tanner all the way to her own ship? What had he expected to accomplish?
No one had ever accused him of being reckless.
“Your logbook is remarkably precise and detailed, Mr. Priestley,” Admiral Strickland had often told him, reviewing his account of the day. “Fastidious, one might say.”
“Pry that ramrod out of your arse, Priestley,” Lieutenant Vickers had frequently snapped at him whenever Ben took an additional ten minutes to make up his berth. “You make my bollocks shrivel.”
The lone time Ben had been impulsive, he’d wound up here.
Escape wouldn’t be possible. The ship was in the middle of the sea and the likelihood of commandeering one of theSeaWitch’s jolly boats was slim. There were also suspicious eyes all around, watching. More than a few of them were witches, who had God only knew what kind of power at their disposal to painfully dispatch him.
One of the crew guarded him now, a lean West Indian woman dressed in a loose linen shirt and flowing culottes. The bright blue of her headscarf contrasted with the burnished copper of her skin. She kept her hand on the pistol tucked into her sash, and maintained a healthy distance between Ben and herself, as if she expected him to lash out at any moment.
“Have you served on this ship for long?” he asked her.
She said nothing, but her hand tightened on the butt of her flintlock. The handle of the pistol was worn and smooth from much use.
He’d never set foot on a pirate ship. When the navy fought and then captured buccaneers, he wasn’t involved in rounding up prisoners or seeing to their captivity, but he had been present when the outlaws were brought aboard the ship.
Ben had been the object of those men’s hostile glares before. Yet they didn’t possess the personal element that he received from the company of theSea Witch. No one aboard this vessel liked him. There was far more safety within the confines of the brig than anywhere else on the ship.
Even so, to be on this ship, alone,surroundedby pirates... andwitches...He knew something of the first, and far less of the second.
Tentatively, he touched the shimmering bars of his cage, then pulled back when hot sharp pain shot up his arm. The brig was enchanted. He’d have no way out.
If he stayed alive long enough, perhaps he might be able to get some word to Admiral Strickland and theJupiter. He could lead the navy to theSea Witch. And see every last one of the ship’s crew arrested.
“Tanner must be a good captain,” he tried again, “to inspire such loyalty this crew shows her.”
More silence from his guard.
“Though she seems impetuous,” Ben said.
The guard’s eyes flashed, yet she remained mute.
“Raiding nearly fifty ships in the course of a single year,” Ben continued. “An impressive reputation for any pirate company. And to do so without resorting to the depths of vicious bloodshed so many other buccaneers revel in, well, that’s not without merit.”
The guard’s expression remained impassive.
“Yet you kill when met with resistance,” Ben went on. “The crews of slave ships face the worst of your brutality. Other pirate ships sell the enslaved for profit, but I’ve heard you never keep the human cargo. It’s said this ship takes the freed people to a safe haven.”
The woman standing sentry revealed nothing, not even a look of pride.
Therewasallegiance here amongst this ship of women. Unlike on naval ships, where the captain was assigned by the admiralty, by custom, pirate companies elected their captains, and another vote could see a buccaneer captain replaced by someone else. When captured by pirates, many prisoners opted to sign the articles and become part of the crew. On a ship such as this, they had an actual say in who commanded them.
Almost commendable, except for the fact that they were thieves, taking what did not belong to them.
The ship and her captain were paradoxes and enigmas—two things that had no place in this world with space only for right and wrong, certainties and truths.
