Page 25 of The Sea Witch
“Yet no one on this ship can make coffee worth a damn. Sleep as soundly as you can tonight.”
“I sleep no other way.”
“Mind, do not think of beef.” After shooting her a wry glance, Stasia quitted the great cabin. Leaving Alys alone with the sailing master.
They glanced at each other before looking away. A strained and uncomfortable silence fell. Her body was curiously awkward, her tongue and gaze oddly shy. She snorted in self-disgust. She’d taken to the sea to never again have to adhere to social niceties or custom. Especially in the presence of men.
“Your quartermaster should be disciplined for being so familiar with you,” he said.
“I rely on her familiarity. It helps me keep this ship sailing smoothly.”
“Without regulation and order, and hierarchy, a ship falls apart.”
“Everyone knows their duties on theSea Witch, and we take pride in keeping her shipshape, but none of us are better than any other.”
He shook his head. “The customs of pirates are inexplicable.”
“Only to those passing judgment on us. We’re all exiles aboard this ship, in one fashion or another. But not you. This sea is your home. You know it better than anyone.”
She crossed the cabin to where the map of the Caribbean lay spread across the table. For over a year, she’d studied charts such as this one, learning islands and inlets and keys and archipelagos, and all the secrets that drew so many to this part of the world. It was beautiful and treacherous, a place of mystery andazure water, beyond the scope of anyone ever fully grasping the complexity of such a vast place.
“A year isn’t enough to understand this sea,” she murmured.
“Lifetimes aren’t enough.” He clinked his way to stand beside her, and they both regarded the chart and its painstakingly rendered collection of atolls, peninsulas, and straits, islands both large and barely the size of a grain of sand. “Though I was born here, many of us will always be outsiders, so we cling to our maps to show us places and things we can’t ever fully understand.”
Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. “It hurt me, too, to set fire to your chart room.”
“No one impelled your hand to throw that spell.” His voice was flat.
“By chasing me, that’s exactly what you did.”
“A neat rationalization.”
“You don’t have the protection of the king here, Sailing Master. On this ship, in this cabin, we’re simply people trying our best.”
“I fail to see how making a living through theft and murder istrying your best.” He set his hand on the table, and the chain stretching between his wrists rattled like metal bones.
Alys didn’t tell him that she and the women of Norham had first come to the Caribbean in search of something else other than plunder. Freedom. Becoming pirates hadn’t been part of anyone’s agenda. Yet in order to fund their liberty, they’d turned to the only practical means available to them: piracy.
Having tasted the luxury of freedom piracy had provided, she wouldn’t go back. Too long had she been denied the right to be whomever she desired. He’d no notion of that, no concept that it wasn’t the plunder that brought her and her crew to these waters, but a treasure far beyond monetary value.
Why should the sailing master know any of this? It wouldn’t change his opinion of her or her crew. His beliefs about them didn’t matter.
“The difference between you and me,” she said, “is that you pretend your theft and murder is a patriotic act.”
“There’s nothing of me that you understand.”
She planted her hands on her hips as she turned to him. “I understand that men go to sea because they are forced to, or because they’re searching for themselves. Impressed sailors of low birth don’t usually rise high enough to become warrant officers and sailing masters, and they don’t speak as you do, with words taken from expensive books.”
His mouth tightened.
“Which all makes me believe you joined the navy to carve out your place in the world. In search of glory, maybe, when none was available to you on land.”
There was a long silence, before he said quietly, “To follow the path of glory he wanted for me.”
“He.”
The sailing master spoke softly, almost to himself. “Yet I hadn’t the ability to captain my own ship, as he did, and I took better to reading charts and stars and finding elusive longitude and guiding the ship safely to wherever it needed to go. There’s... utility in that. Despite what he said. I found my purpose.”
