Page 7 of The Sea Witch
“Where to, Cap’n?” Polly asked.
“What’s next?” Susannah added.
Only after Samuel’s death did she learn what it was like to make a choice for herself. And now, these women asked her to make the most monumental choice of all their lives.
She’d led them this far, and they’d survived. Now they were sailing to freedom, becauseshehad led them.
The world was a big place, far bigger than she could ever fully know. But there was one place she’d heard sailors speak of in eager and excited voices.
“It’s said that witches aren’t hunted in the Caribbean,” Alys suggested. “They say it’s a place of limitless freedom, where anyone can make themselves into someone entirely new. What say you, ladies?”
“The Caribbean,” came the response from her crew.
Alys took the wheel and pointed them south.
Samuel’s boat continued to move out to open water, heading on its own adventures. They were parting company, her and the boat. Old lives exchanged for new ones.
Finally, she lost sight of the small vessel.
Alys turned toward the horizon. It was as wide as dreams, and terrifying.
Chapter Two
Isle of St. Gertrude
One year later
“If ye be hearin’ this,” the silver-haired, one-eyed man read as he stood atop a table, “it do mean that I, Little George Partridge, be dead.”
Mutters and murmurs filled the taproom of the Wig and Merkin, teeming with pirates from every corner of the Caribbean that had gathered by specific request to hear the final message of one of the sea’s most notorious buccaneers.
Alys eased her way into the crowded room, slipping between benches and tables, with countless suspicious eyes fastened on her.
It was a ramshackle tavern crouched in the center of town. The walls of the pub’s central taproom were streaked with smoke from thousands of pipes. A spray of rust-colored droplets near the bar was the result of John Clay ill-advisedly starting a fight with the notorious mage Luca Pasquale. They said it took three whole weeks before the smell disappeared, but even then, the stench was mostly covered up by new aromas.
Scarred wooden tables were scattered through the room, though the prized seats were the settles shoved against the walls. The tall-backed benches ensured that no one could come up behind you and slit your throat or cast a blood seeping curse without you being able to throw a shielding spell. Tonight,though, every seat in the Wig and Merkin was full, men jostling for position so they could take part in the evening’s... well,partywasn’t quite the right word, but wakes weren’t often held in the tavern. Death was a part of life in the Caribbean, as much as heat or hurricanes or red-streaked sunsets.
“What areyoudoing here, Tanner?” A weather-beaten man looked at Alys with distrust. Fontaine was missing most of his left ear, but his right ear was adorned with a golden ring.
“CaptainTanner. And you weren’t the only one to be summoned here tonight.”
Fontaine grumbled, “Only been a year since your ship and your infernal witch magic appeared in these waters. Not long enough to say you’re pirates.”
“We’ve made use of that year. No need to be idle when there’s so much plunder to be grabbed—and if my company and I raid ships for loot, that qualifies us as pirates.”
“Witches as buccaneers, instead of brewing love potions,” he muttered to the mustached man sitting next to him. “I wouldn’t believe such a yarn if someone told it.”
“You’d be surprised what witches can do,” Alys threw in, “given the same chances as mages.”
A bald man dressed in crimson from head to toe moved through the tavern. Like all mages, he wore an embroidered black sash, indicating that he’d been educated and trained at an academy. He waved his hands over candles and lamps scattered atop tables. With each flick of his fingers, the wicks glowed to life, flames appearing to bring further light to the taproom. The candles staked onto the overhead wheel-shaped wooden chandelier blazed, and the already hot taproom turned sweltering.
No one blinked or looked skeptically at the mage. But theydidglare in Alys’s direction.
A sandy-haired, bearded man glowered at her. “Shouldn’t evenbehere,” the pirate grumbled. “Witches an’ ships be bad luck.”
“We’re in a tavern, Culver,” Alys pointed out mildly.
He scowled. “You an’ that brigantine full o’ witches, doin’ things only men and mages should do. They talk about ye from Maracaibo to St. Augustine. Ain’t right.”
