Page 48 of The Sea Witch
Going to her quarters was one option. But, having been above deck for most of the morning, finally heading below would look as if she was avoiding him. He’d notice it, too. Little escaped his attention.
A dangerous combination, looks and intelligence. It meant he was clever, and the only thing more dangerous than a stupid man was a cunning one.
As the morning had gone on and he’d been interviewing her crew about his father, his growing frustration had been a palpable thing within her. It was tied around her belly in a knot. She hadn’t truly needed to ask him how his questioning had gone—she already knew, because she knewhim.
“Is he trustworthy here, above deck?” Stasia asked, stepping onto the quarterdeck.
“I trust his sense of keeping his hide intact. He won’t do anything stupid. AndI’mnot doing anything stupid,” she added before her second-in-command could make a remark. “He has a value, but it’s a temporary one. I’m counting the bells until that value is gone, and then he will be, too.”
“Hua is worried you will not give her the helm back.” There was warm humor in Stasia’s voice.
“She’s got nothing to fear. The wheel will be hers again. Before I came to the Caribbean, I’d only used a tiller to steer a boat.”
“When I met you, you had already taken to the wheel well enough.”
“Sailing down here from Massachusetts, that was my schoolroom. And a terrifying one at that. We’d set sail full of so much anger, and still half afraid that they’d come for us. Even so, none of us knew how little we knew. When I tried to cast a spell to bring strong breezes to speed us on our way, I stranded us in the doldrums for three days. Only pure luck had me stumbling across the right spell to set us moving again.”
From a pouch hanging from her belt, Stasia produced an orange, which she deftly peeled. She handed Alys a segment. “By the time we crossed paths in Tortuga, I saw no outward signs of your fear.”
“But you knew.” Alys popped the piece of orange into her mouth and savored the tart and sweet taste.
“You are not afraid any longer. Not of sailing or captaining a ship, at any rate.” Stasia glanced toward where Ben bent over the sail, making neat stitches in the canvas.
“He’s one man, and a shackled and manacled one at that.”
“The dreamwalking left its mark.”
“The effects’ll lessen with time. Won’t they?”
Stasia spread her hands. “My understanding of the spell is not much more than what you know. Will it last a few days, a month, or the rest of your lives? Only our foremothers know, and if they wrote down that lore, it has vanished.”
“Or been destroyed.” Even as Alys spoke with Stasia on the quarterdeck, Ben’s energy thrummed through her. There was a warm and soft kind of contentment in him now, as he repaired sails. To him, idleness was torture.
She nodded toward the deck, where a number of the company had enchanted scrubbing brushes to swab the wooden planks. The brushes moved of their own accord, spreading suds across the deck, but they required supervision, and so the crew kept a close eye on the proceedings.
“Enough chatter,” Alys said. “They always sing when they work, and yet they’re silent.” Louder, to her crew, she called, “I’ve a mind to hear a good tune.”
“Aye, Cap’n,” came their answer.
As the three women charged with washing the deck watched over the brushes moving rhythmically back and forth across the wood, they joined their voices into a well-loved song.
“Come all you gallant seamen bold,
All you that march to drum,
Let’s go and look for Captain Ward,
Far on the sea he roams.
He is the biggest robber
That ever you did hear,
There’s not been such a robber found
For above this hundred year.”
Alys hummed along, tapping her foot on the quarterdeck planks as the crew sang. Others on the deck who were whittling or simply enjoying the afternoon joined their voices. Susannah created a swirling cloud of energy that showed them an illuminated moving image of the legendary Captain Ward on his ship, sailing back and forth across the deck as he committed miniature acts of piracy—much to the delight of the familiars. The black cat and the orange cat, as well as Eris and a long-tailed, long-fingered lizard chased the illusion.
