Page 64 of Dark Water Daughter

“I do intend to retire after this, though, and your mother is welcome to come along, if she’s in need ofa…discreethideaway,” the captain said, picking up an ink cloth from the table and cleaning off the brush on its stained fabric.

My heart sank a little. I watched him work, turning over the thought. I wanted to take my mother home to the Wold, and try to reclaim the happiness we’d once had. But that was impossible.

Someone knocked at the door and Charles Grant stuck his head in. He noted the pair of us, his eye snagging on my face and clothes for a surprised moment before he cleared his throat. “I, ah, was told my services were required?”

“Yes,” Demery said, striding to his open trunk and pulling out a second Mereish coat. “Be so kind as to put this on and stay by Ms. Firth. I don’t expect any trouble from this prize, but let’s be cautious, shall we?”

TWENTY-TWO

Guise and Guile

MARY

The wind blew, guns thundered, and I stood with Charles as the Mereish merchant surrendered.Harpyclosed upon her with every passing moment, devouring the waves with a roar of water and wind and spray. The weather strained against my song, but it was a hound on aleash—unruly,yet limited in its rebellion. The seas themselves were calm, mirroring my own efforts to contain myanxiety…anda rush of exhilaration.

Guilt and memory threatened to douse that thrill. But the wind and my song fed upon it, growing stronger and steadier.

From across the deck, Athe gave me an appreciative salute, and I warmed at the affirmation.

Finally, when we were close enough to see the petrified faces of the Mereish sailors as they fled below decks, Demery cried out, “Boarding party to the rails!”

Grappling hooks, ropes and long pikes latticed the space between the two ships. Ladders and nets were hauled into place and pirates swarmed from one deck to the other under Demery’s ringing command.

The pirates howled. They cheered. They roared and leapt at their victims, or strode with the confidence of seasoned victors, bristling with weapons. But no more than a handful of shots were fired, and those were for show.

There was none of the recklessness of Lirr’s attack, the wanton waste of life and resources. I watched in fascination as Demery’s pirates shoved their prey to the deck and bound them, chasing the rest below decks. Other pirates loitered like dockworkers, jesting and chattering.

“It’s the shock of it that matters,” Grant observed in my ear. “The shattering of resolve and summoning of a victim’s most baseinstinct—fear.Pirates or highwaymen, we’ve the same tactics. We’re lazy, the lot of us. Cleaning blood from your clothes is a chore, I tell you.”

“Not all of you,” I replied distantly. I thought of Lirr, and the highwaymen who’d taken my carriage back in the Lesterwold. I remembered the shock of the door flying open, and the blinding, visceral fear that had sent me fleeing into the wild.

But I also remembered leveling a stolen pistol at a terrified peddler under a noonday sun. I recalled seeing that same fear in his eyes. Fear of me.

The last of my unease abated into a hollow resignation. Was this the world, then? Violence and the threat of violence? Was that all there was outside the inn and the Ghistwold?

Was this who Iwould—andperhaps, alreadyhad—becometo survive it?

“Mary?”

I realized Grant had continued speaking, but I hadn’t heard. I looked at him sideways and smiled sadly. “Just pondering my descent into depravity.”

“Ah. Well, one choice leads to the next,” he said with a shrug, and I was surprised to hear a thread of resignation in his voice. “And too often there are no honorable choices to be had. We are our circumstances, are we not?”

I elbowed him. “Don’t go philosophical on me. You’re supposed to be a dashing rogue, remember?”

“A dashing rogue with an unfortunately broad education and tendency towards the existential,” he admitted, watching as pirates hustled the Mereish captain across the gap between the ships and ontoHarpy.

Midships, they presented her to Demery. He spoke levelly to the woman, who was grey-haired and lean as a whippet, her fierce eyes lined with black just like mine.

She spat at him.

Grant winced. “Did you see that?”

I nodded, mute, as Demery stepped back from the other captain and looked down at the front of his coat. Back aboard the Mereish ship, the captive crew began to shout and struggle to their captain’s defense.

A gun cracked. Demery glanced at the captured ship at the same time as the Mereish captain struggled free of her guards.

Chaos broke out. Pirates surged in to reclaim her but I saw a flash of steel, then lost sight of her altogether.