Page 69 of A Flash of Golden Fire

When I emerged from the stairwell, I spied the captain directing men near the bow and made my way over.

“Simon. Good. Stay close to me, will you?”

That I could definitely do. Or I’d try to.

“Yes, Captain.”

He eyed me with concern. “Ever been in a battle at sea?”

I swallowed. “Only the…last one.”

“Ah. Right. Of course. Well, this should go more smoothly. Although you have to be ready for anything in this line of…work.”

“Work?”

“Yes, Simon. Work. Just because we go about things a bit differently than the Royal Navy doesn’t mean there isn’t some validity to what we do.”

“Go about things a bit differently?” I said with incredulity. How dense did he think I was?

He narrowed his eyes. “Never mind. I’m not in the mood to discuss semantics.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Call it what he would, what he had planned was thieving, plain and simple. With a bit of murdering and maiming thrown in. I wasn’t looking forward to it.

Captain Martin shouted out more orders, then turned back to me.

“She’s a modest vessel, smaller than theArrow, so victory shouldn’t be too difficult for us. That said, there may be violence.”

“May beviolence? I thought that…”

“All right then.” He sighed. Good thing he liked my arse so much because he looked vexed with me at the moment. “There probably will be violence, but I do try to keep that sort of thing to a minimum. If they will surrender, all the better. Then nobody needs to die.”

“I—what? Aren’t we…pirates?” The disappointment in my voice was ridiculous, considering my desire to avoid violence of any sort.

Captain Martin frowned. “Privateers, Simon. Not pirates. We’ve a little more class than that,” he said, clearly not a fan of the term I’d used by mistake in his hearing. “And I’m a great believer in the power of intimidation.”

Of course he was. If anyone could commandeer another ship without spilling blood, it would be Captain Martin. Even though the attempted negotiations with the last vessel hadn’t gone as planned, I had utmost faith in Captain Martin’s judgement. If he thought we could avoid spilling blood, I was in favor.

I knew by now that the captain’s mouth had skills beyond what he liked to show me in the privacy of his cabin. He was an excellent orator and well versed at arguing a point with grace and precision.

Captain Martin filled me in on our quarry. She was still quite a ways off. Hillier estimated that we’d get close enough to announce our intentions in about an hour. She hadn’t shown signs of alarm or avoidance, although they must know of our presence. TheArrowflew a Dutch flag when not on an aggressive approach, and we hadn’t switched the decoy out for our own insignia yet. They likely thought we didn’t mean any harm.

The captain gathered the crew below the forecastle, where he stood. He raised his voice so that everyone could hear and smiled as if he were preparing to host a grand party.

“Now, we will raise the black flag in one hour, once we are close enough that they can’t escape when they realize our intentions are not entirely honorable.”

Not entirely honorable.Again, I was amazed by the captain’s flexibility of speech.

“I know you are men of great strength and fortitude, and with excellent capabilities in the area of hand-to-hand combat. And we will engage in combat with the men aboard that ship if wehave to.”

There were cheers. The captain raised his hand.

“However,” he said, waiting for quiet before he continued, “If we can convince them to surrender without the use of brute force, I will award the crew of this ship a five per cent allotment of my share—the captain’s share—of whatever we take. To be distributed evenly, on top of your individual shares.”

There were whispers and amazed mutters.

“Five per cent?” one fellow said. “That ain’t much, split amongst us all.”