The Devil's Tide (6 page)

In the days since Bart's disappearance, very few crewmembers made eye contact with her. They knew he had gone after her that night, and now he was gone. None of them could prove a thing, of course, but they all suspected her. If Bart hadn't been notoriously hotheaded, they might have held a grudge.

Hornigold went to his cabinet to retrieve another bottle. He kept a large supply of wine in his cabin. "Bartholomew was talented with the sails," he said as he searched for a specific vintage. "And he was equally talented at making enemies amongst his peers. It's very possible someone tossed him over the side in a fit of anger."

"How dreadful," Kate muttered.

Hornigold returned with a new bottle, popped the cork, and filled both goblets. He leered sideways at her as he poured. "The crew is uncharacteristically mum on the issue."

"Maybe you'll never know," Kate teased, picking up her glass.

For a long moment he looked at her. She stared coolly back at him. "Something on your mind?" she asked when she grew weary of the game.

"Why did you not return to your husband's family?"

She blinked. She hadn't expected that question. Over the past week she had pushed all thoughts of Thomas and his family out of her mind. She had last seen Thomas in a dream, in which she promptly ran from him. After killing the man who had murdered her husband, she saw no reason to dwell on the past. "What exactly would I be returning to?"

"Safety. Security."

Those words, which emerged so easily from his lips, sounded alien to her. "I thought I had those things once. And then my husband was killed, and I was taken."

"So why squander a chance at freedom?"

Laughter bubbled out of her. "This is freedom, right here! The two of us, seated across from one another, neither with any power over the other. Those other words . . . safety? Security? Those are illusions that may be stripped of us at any moment."

"Was your freedom not stripped of you by Jonathan Griffith?"

"No!" she said, slamming her palm on the table. A bit of wine dribbled over the rim of Hornigold's glass, which he hadn't touched since refilling. "Griffith could not take what I didn't yet possess."

"So you've discovered freedom in the Caribbean, amongst pirates, and now you want to be one yourself, is that it?"

"Call me whatever you like," she said on a sigh.

"You'll never be a pirate, Katherine."

"Kate," she glowered.

"Ah yes. Kate. I'm sorry."

"No you're not."

"Well," he continued, "you'll never be a pirate, Kate. Those men will never accept you as one of them. They come to sea to escape your kind."

"My
kind
?"

"Women, if I must be precise."

"We are a scary lot, aren't we?" she grinned.

"Life is simpler without you," Hornigold said. "Women complicate matters beyond necessity. If I present you a red flower, you will complain it's too bright a color. If I buy you an orange flower, you will say, in retrospect, the red wasn't so bad. If I bring the red back, you might accept it, but secretly you won't be happy with it, because the truth is no color is good enough for you."

She gawked at him. "Is this anecdote based in fact?"

His jaw tightened. "That's not the point. The point is women are unhappy with normalcy."

"Pardon," she said, again having to suppress a laugh, "what is normal? Murdering and pillaging? Is that the lone alternative to giving women flowers?"

"The sea is the only place you are not," Hornigold said in a condescendingly slow drawl, as though she wouldn't understand him if he spoke too quickly.

"And here is a woman, infiltrating your glorious sea."

"That's how they feel," he said, tipping his glass. "It is a subconscious thing, mind you, which they would never express even if they came to a miraculous comprehension of it overnight."

"I don't blame them. It's an embarrassing sentiment."

An awkward silence followed. Hornigold shifted uneasily in his chair, pretending to take an interest in the opposite wall. Kate hadn't decided what she thought of Benjamin Hornigold yet, but he was far more interested in her than he wanted her to believe. After narrowly escaping a perilous relationship with one pirate captain, she wasn't eager to jump into another. As far as she was concerned, this was a business arrangement and nothing more. When she finished her wine, she thanked him for dinner, bid him goodnight, and allowed him to stare at her ass as she took her leave.

A harsh wind greeted her on the main deck, threatening to tip her over. The full moon was partially obscured by a cloud that was moving fast. Patches of stars peeked through gaps in the clouds. The deck wobbled more than usual, and at first she wondered if she'd had too much wine. She stumbled to the port rail, setting a hand on one of the cannons to keep from falling over. The ship rocked this way and that, cresting huge rolling waves. The cannon trembled beneath her hand, breeching tackle stretched taut. She looked aft and saw a black mass trailing the ship, threatening to engulf the stern. Lightning flashed somewhere within the clouds.

"It's like to be a rough night," said Billie Dowling, one of the few pirates not afraid to speak to her. Billie was the younger brother of
Ranger's
master carpenter, Avery Dowling. She didn't care much for Avery, who her first day aboard had unnecessarily threatened dismemberment if she touched any of his tools. Billie, on the other hand, seemed genuine enough. He couldn't have been more than twenty, but his teeth were already mottled brown, and the whites of his eyes had gone yellow. The dark skin on his shoulders and arms was blistered and peeling. "The storm is catching up at last. Best get below, as that cannon won't offer much shelter."

"Thank you, Billie," she said, meaning it. "No rest for you?"

"I fear I'd wake at the bottom of the ocean."

Kate wished Billie luck and descended into the hold. She found her bed, which was a hammock set between two bulkheads. She rolled into the hammock, and it swayed dizzyingly. Her head was swimming with wine. The creaking of the hull filled her ears. Several crewmen that she couldn't see in the dark were snoring loudly in their bunks. A few of them were awake in a corner, playing a game of dice. She heard Fat Farley laughing boisterously at a joke. Did that man never sleep?

Heavy lids quickly closed over her eyes.

When she came to, the hold was immersed. Crates were floating around, knocking into each other. Her back was resting in the water, which was level with her hammock. She jerked upward in shock, smashing her head against the ceiling, and tumbled into the water. Her body twirled, and she thrashed her arms and legs. The water was black. She swam up . . . and hit the floor. She spun around, placing her feet flat on the ground, and projected herself upward. Her head emerged from the water, and she gasped hoarsely. She looked around, crates bobbing in and out of view, until she found the main exit. Water was cascading down the stairway, lit from the opening above. Was it daylight already? Had she slept that long?

She swam for the exit, making her way through the maze of floating crates.

A slender shadow split the light.

Kate clutched of the larger crates.

A foot appeared on the first step, and then another. Slender legs came into view, and then fully curved hips that arced into a thin waist, and then small breasts with black nipples. She was completely naked, her wet skin faintly tinted in green. She was tall and lean, like a well forged cutlass. She continued her descent, stepping into the water without hesitation.

Kate blinked the sting of salt out of her eyes, struggling to focus on the woman's face. She saw black hair, as short as a man's, elegant lips that were neatly pursed, a thin nose, and sharply arched eyebrows. Her eyes were closed. She continued her methodical descent, following the steps into the water until her head vanished beneath the surface.

Kate scanned the water, but it was impenetrable. She was about to swim the opposite direction when two blue orbs materialized, impossibly bright, illuminating everything beneath the surface in otherworldly cerulean hues. The naked woman was crouched three feet from Kate's legs. The orbs were her eyes, blank and passionless, and they were transfixed on Kate.

She woke with a start, twisting in her hammock. She sat up, looking around. The hold was not quite flooded, but water was streaming down the steps from the main entrance. Large puddles had collected on the floor.

She heard men shouting at each other above, footsteps thudding rapidly along the deck. Someone loosed a high-pitched shriek, or maybe it was the wind gusting through the hold. A crash resounded from above, bowing the planking just above her head.
Ranger
shuddered violently, and Kate was nearly thrown from her hammock. Water seeped through a crevice between planks, pattering her chest. And then the water darkened. She looked down.

Her shirt was drenched in blood.

"Get to safety, you fool!" Hornigold bellowed. "That man's already dead!"

The surgeon either hadn't heard Hornigold or was deliberately ignoring him. The fool was scrambling through a wave as it cascaded over the deck, stubbornly trying to get to a deckhand that was pinned beneath a fallen yardarm. If the pool of blood that spread from the man's compressed torso was any indication, he was well beyond saving.

In a last ditch attempt to get the surgeon's attention, Hornigold drew his pistol and aimed at the sky. In his years of captaining, he had learned that nothing commanded attention like a gunshot. He pulled the trigger, but the hammer clacked without firing. The powder was soaked through. He angrily threw the pistol at the surgeon, but he missed his mark by a few feet.

Hornigold could only watch in horror as the surgeon's feet were swept out from under him by the wave. The current carried him screaming across the deck, legs and arms flailing. For an instant, his eyes, insane with terror, met Hornigold's. And then the surgeon was dashed against one of the starboard cannons, his head splitting like a watermelon on the cascabel knob. His limp corpse slipped through the gunport and tumbled over the side of the ship, lost to the roiling sea.

The surgeon had been a recent addition to the crew, and Hornigold couldn't even remember the man's name. Copernicus Ryan, the boatswain, had recommended the surgeon a month ago, but Hornigold had been too busy to get to know him. He was glad he hadn't spared the time.
How many more will die,
he wondered,
without that idiot around to provide proper medical attention?

Bastion, who had been securing the foresail, leapt from his perch and scrambled toward the cannon where the surgeon had vanished. "Back to your post, sailor!" Quartermaster Reed bellowed from the bow, his arm wrapped around a swivel gun for support. Bastion skidded to a halt just short of the cannon, staring dumbly at Reed. He started to turn back when a massive wave raised
Ranger's
bow high into the air. Bastion was lifted off his feet as the ship crested the wave and slid steeply down the backside. Bastion touched down, his ass taking the brunt of the damage. He rolled over, moaning as water splashed over him.

The long bowsprit plunged into the black water, shuddering on impact. The jib topsail snapped free, taking a three foot long splinter of the bowsprit with it, and whipped back toward the deck. Two deckhands were quick enough to duck, but a third man never knew what hit him. The sail catapulted him over the side as it swept past.
Another man without a name lost to the sea,
thought Hornigold.

The topsail arced on its tether, the long splinter of bowsprit still attached. Reed released the swivel gun he had been clinging to and leapt out of the way as the sharp piece of wood shot toward him like a spear. But he was too late. He was sliced nearly in half, from crotch to shoulder, and then dragged across the bow and smashed against the railing.

What remained was barely distinguishable as human, let alone any semblance of the man Hornigold had once called friend. Entrails spilled from a gaping torso, slipping through exposed ribs. The legs were splayed in opposite directions, one foot missing, the other twisted downward at an impossible angle. The head was pulverized, face raked clean off, skull smashed in. An eyeball dangled from an open socket.

Hornigold fell to his hands and knees and retched.
Ranger
collided with another wave, but the sound was distant and inconsequential. As Hornigold's vomit was washed away, he barely recognized the man he saw mirrored in the water. The ripples hyperbolized his scowl. A stream of blood swirled into view, darkening his face. The rain was heavy on his back, weighting him down. His joints ached. His elbows quivered. He wasn't sure if the water was rising or he was sinking.
It wouldn't be such a bad way to go,
he thought.
I'm so tired of all of this.

Woodes Rogers had promised him security, and Hornigold had considered himself fortunate to be spared the gallows. He had thanked Rogers profusely, befriended him, and eagerly rushed out to sea to hunt his former friends. They saw it as a betrayal. They called him a coward. And he knew they would murder him given the chance. Now he was a pirate again, and his circumstances were no less precarious. Except his enemy was neither pirates nor a noose; it was the sea herself. It didn't matter whether he served the crown or ambition, he would be claimed by the sea either way. He knew that now.

We're not meant to be out here,
Hornigold realized for the first time in his life.
So far from land, on tiny floats of wood. Every time we venture out, our odds of success decrease, until the odds abandon us altogether. The dangers are too great, and those that survive are made evil by the horrors they see. And who can blame them for that? Certainly not I. What pardon did Woodes Rogers truly offer in sending me back into this hell? I am bound to it no matter what I do.

And then, with that sudden realization, it all stopped.

Complete silence.

Patches of blue materialized in the water. Hornigold tilted his head, looking up.