Page 54 of Dark Water Daughter

I stared at them, remembering the attack on Randalf’s ship. A man swinging from the rigging, piss and blood dripping from his twitching toes. Then I imagined lobbing a grenado into Lirr’s face and felt marginally better.

I released my breath and stared across the chamber, holding ill memories at bay. I would not live in fear. I finished taking down Widderow’s numbers and passed back through the ship quickly. Down a passageway, up a steep stair, and onto the gun deck.

Harpy’s dozen guns were stowed after last night’s show of force and the space had reverted to living quarters, home to some fourscore pirates. A quarter were at work somewhere about the ship but the rest were at their leisure, asleep in hammocks, lounging between the guns, talking and mending and whittling and singing and all the other things men and women did to pass the time. I passed one particular hammock, swinging and bracketed by a pair of naked, hairy, female legs. I fixed panicked eyes on the deck and hurried on before I couldsee—orhear—anythingelse.

Closer to the fore of the ship, I saw Grant’s coat slung over the lines of a full hammock. Bundling Widderow’s book and inkpot under one arm, I poked at the canvas cocoon.

“Mr. Grant,” I said, poking him again. “Grant. Charles!”

A nearby pirate caught my eye, sitting on top of a lashed gun. She squinted at me over the sock she was darning, the overly domestic image juxtaposed by the cannon, her worn men’s clothes and the shaved sides of her head. What remained of her hair was braided from the nape of her neck up to her forehead, and there it was folded over itself and pinned with two long wooden hairpins behind her skull.

“Slap ’im,” she urged. She indicated a rounded portion of the hammock, roughly where Grant’s legs connected with his body.

Heat spread across my cheeks, though I couldn’t decide whether it was from the woman’s suggestion or the continued memory of dangling legs.

I shoved at the hammock. Its steady swinging disrupted. “Charles Grant!”

Still nothing.

“That one sleeps like the dead. Slap ’im, I said,” the pirate insisted, her face lit with a wicked grin. “Do it, witch.”

I shook my head sharply. “I will not.”

“Fine.” Before I could protest the woman stood and shouldered past me. She gave Grant’s backside a firm, full-palmed slap.

Grant came awake with a flail and smacked his head off a beam. “Fucking shit-bucket boat!” He wilted back into his hammock, clutching his forehead.

I stifled a snort with the back of one hand and several nearby pirates laughed uproariously.

My amusement died when Grant’s squinting eyes fell not on the offending pirate, but on me. The other woman was already back at her darning, a look of startled innocence plastered across her face.

She winked at me.

“Saint, Mary!” Grant half fell out of the hammock, shirt askew andtrousers—thankthat sameSaint—intact.I’d seen entirely enough legs for one day. “What do you want?”

“That wasn’t me!” I protested.

“Oh, it was,” the sock-darning pirate said sagely. She waved a knitting needle at me. “This one’s predatory, Bonny Grant.”

Grant stared at me again, flabbergasted.

“It wasn’t me,” I started to protest again, but half a dozen nearby pirates contradicted me. I gave up, blushing furiously, and raised my chin. “It’s past noon. It’s time for my lessons.”

“What you need,” Grant growled, shuffling around me and shoving his shirt into his breeches. “Is a lesson in manners.”

“Says the half-dressed man who slept past noon,” I quipped.

Grant eyed me, brows rising. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Lessons,” I reminded him, still crimson, and strode away down the deck.

***

Over the next ten days, I battled the wind. Occasionally I madeheadway—theweather shifted as I willed it andHarpyflew over the waves as pirates cheered and the wind lashed my cheeks. But my control was inconsistent, and when the skies darkened with oncoming storms, Demery banished me back to the cabin. It was safer, he claimed, for the pirates to manage natural weather than rely on my unpredictable magic.

Storms upon the Winter Seas, however, were long and frequent. My stomach, which up until now had been unperturbed by the sea, finally gave in to the increasing severity of the tempests. I had two choices as to how to pass thetime—sitin my little cabin, worrying away the hours and throwing up the contents of my unsettled stomach, or spend them with Grant, gambling and throwing up the contents of my unsettled stomach.

When I was alone in the darkness, my thoughts turned to Lirr and my mother and the future. So I chose Grant more and more. It was not that I’d forgiven him, but I had no other choice. There was camaraderie in our misery and general uselessness, and when I returned from another bout of retching, he’d crack a resigned smile and pass me a flask of water to wash out my mouth.

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