Page 10

Captain Betts

Hybris stayed out of my sight yesterday, and I’m better for it.

As much as the female half of humanity would be better off if he drowned, I couldn’t do it.

When I swung over the railing to verify he was gone, I was shocked to my toes to find him clinging to the boat.

I thought the storm was a gift from the heavens, relieving me of my responsibility of putting him to death.

I could let Chub do it, but that’s not fair.

I should have dispatched him the moment he stepped foot on the ship.

I was mad enough then. Memories of Pastor Richard telling me to hide in the larder from his wife strangled me when I found Hybris in a larder with some poor man’s wife.

My repentance for corrupting a woman’s husband doesn’t absolve me for what I did to their marriage—because the sin wasn’t mine.

How many months of prayer did it take for the message to break through?

Too many. But the guilt and the lost love flooded back when I saw Hybris under that woman’s skirt.

His lack of remorse made it worse. Why didn’t I kill him then?

I was in such a hurry to run away from my memories that I put the practical matters to the side…

totally out of character for me. Now, Hybris is Flint, has a face I recognize as crew, and is a part of our story.

His story is full of lies, but it’s a story I know.

Nobody can know their captain can’t kill a man whose story she knows.

I’d get the blackspot swifter than the winds of a hurricane.

“You okay, Betts?” Catalina says as she enters the captain’s quarters.

She carries a tray of raw, Atlantic herring.

I’ve never been able to process the white flour in hardtack, so I must order a crew member to fish daily.

While they love having a fish dinner each night after a hard day’s work, I can’t help but wonder if they resent the lady who can’t digest most human food.

It’s a weakness I hadn’t expected to have after my conversion to human was complete.

Something went wrong when Richard took my soulbeak—besides the fact that he wasn’t my soulmate and had no right to choose my fate.

I tried to be a human in every way, once; now, I have no choice, but my guts remain stubbornly Other . The intestinal distress I suffered after a chocolate-studded hardtack was something I didn’t think I would survive.

“I’m trying to memorize Magda’s instructions, but I’ve got a block,” I say, pushing my hair out of my face for the thousandth time today. The longer I lean over this table, the more I want to chop it off with my dagger and tack it to my door, warning the crew of my mood.

“You haven’t eaten this morning. Your brain needs fuel—that’s all.” She sets the tray on top of the map I brought in from the war room. The prize falls over as if she’s conquered it with my breakfast as her only weapon.

“Thanks,” I say, lifting a small silverfish from the plate. “I need all the help I can get.” She winces when I bite the head of the fish and suck out the rich insides. I lick my lips and rub my stomach with the delicious innards sliding down my throat.

“Sorry,” I whisper, replacing the fish on the tray. “I was hungrier than I thought.”

“It pleases me to watch people enjoy my food. I just wish I could cook them for you.”

“I’m sorry, but for most of my life, I ate the fish as it swam past me.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me…Captain.”

“Shut up,” I reply with a giggle. “You know we’re Catty and Betts in this room. Our friendship is what keeps me centered on this chaotic boat. Half the time, I’m drowning in testosterone, and the other half, I’m surrounded by gossipy hens. I swear you’re the only mentally-balanced person aboard.”

“I’d defend my husband, but he’s grouching about killing the satyr. I’ve never seen him so trigger-hungry.”

“I know the boy is annoying—”

“Man,” she says, pointing her finger at me. “He’s deflowered half of Boston, so he’s definitely a man. And it’s not his lies or lazy attitude that’s driving Ellis—our Chub—to behead him.”

“What is it?”

“It’s the starry-eyed looks he gives you,” she says, bringing the sky down on my head. “The more you push him away, the worse it gets. He asks the crew about your past constantly.”

“Has anyone said anything about Richard?” I ask on a gasp.

“He can’t find out that I find him too similar to my former lover to tolerate.

It will lead to questions on why I haven’t killed him.

Then I will get the blackspot…and be exiled from the only place I can call home.

Without a nationality, a husband, or marketable skills, I’ll be destitute.

I’ll be a rotten working girl. I’ll starve because I’m too much of a prude to be a successful prostitute.

What kind of woman can’t succeed as a prostitute? What do I do?”

“What you do is take a deep breath,” she says, wrapping me in her arms. She smushes me against her ample bosom like a cat herding her errant kitten.

“You can’t be upright in some back alley—because you would make a terrible prostitute.

However, the crew believes you make an honorable, fair, and just captain.

Some playboy won’t change that. Ellis is worried about the satyr hurting you because you’re still raw from Richard.

He’s also worried that you can’t bring yourself to kill Hybris, even though you want him gone.

Just promise that you will delegate the task to someone else when the time comes if you can’t. ”

“What if the time never comes?” I pull from her embrace to look into her kind, brown eyes.

“Then I’ll get on Ellis to teach the man some useful skills. I swear he spends just as much time with his nose in these logs as you do.”

“What? Is he stealing Magda’s journals? Is that why I can’t find what I’m searching for half the time? That little sand flea!”

“Sail ho!” The call comes from Chub at the helm.

“Not another ship,” I wail. “I haven’t yet figured out the strategy to capture one prize. I’m not ready to be trapped between two of them.”

“Let’s hope the new ship is a prize and not the navy,” Catty whispers, her fingers tightening on my arm with fear. I forgot the Spanish authorities are still after the boat for killing her ex-fiancé.

“Sail ho! Kraken gobshites on the port bow! Kraken gobshites on the portside!”

“Kraken gobshites?!” My heart jumps to my throat, and I smile. It’s Sabs and Teeth! No other Kraken would approach a boat without capsizing it. My sister and brother-in-law’s visit is just what I need to right myself after the incident with Hybris. Maybe Teeth will eat him.

Catty and I race from the room, my breakfast all but forgotten.

I shed my holsters and beaded jewelry as I traverse the deck.

Leaning over the rail, I wave at my twin sister as her husband fights with his blonde hair.

I guess he never did get the hang of breaching the surface face-first. My discarded boots hit the railing and thump onto the deck.

“Draped in finery, it takes you forever to get into the water,” Sabs calls up to me.

“Well, being a successful pirate does tend to attract treasure, but you wouldn’t know a thing about that,” I call back with girlish giggles coloring my voice.

“Oh yeah! Come down here and say that, you wench!” Teeth has managed to get his hair parted to frame his face, so he can wave his remaining fingers at me. He may beckon me for a fight, but I love my brother-in-law like the big brother I always wanted.

“Ready or not,” I yell as I climb on top of the railing. “Here I come!”

As I dive into the sea, Chub yells to the crew that their crazy captain is overboard.

Hybris

“Sail ho! Kraken gobshites on the port bow! Kraken gobshites on the portside!”

This crew gets more bizarre by the day. What are they wailing about now?

I spent all yesterday reading in my bunk, and I think I have Magda’s battle plan from the capture of the Amelia figured out.

So clever, placing herself above the Crow’s Nest to reprise her role as the Phantom of Charles Town.

I can’t believe this crew was behind the fuss that reached not only Boston but also the English King himself.

Oh, how my father griped about how Charles Town was a stain on the colonies with its constant fires and riots.

How often did he threaten to go down there and discipline the lot of them?

I’d love it if he came face-to-face with the she-devil vampiress behind all the trouble.

While only one fire is detailed in Magda’s journals, I would bet my tail she started them all.

Why else would the churches burn but no other buildings?

She-devil, indeed.

“Sail ho! Kraken gobshites on the port bow! Kraken gobshites on the portside!”

Oh, would they shut up!

“Flint, come quick,” Gretta calls as she stumbles down the galley steps. “You’ve got to see this!”

While the crew has never been openly hostile to me, Greenhorn and Gretta are the only ones whom I’ve befriended.

Greenhorn is my assigned trainer, so I don’t have a choice.

Gretta is a friend to everyone and everything.

She sings and talks to the windows she washes on the outside of the captain’s quarters and the deck planks she swabs.

I couldn’t resist her sunny personality if I tried, but I’ve resisted a romantic entanglement with her.

While the openly accepting crew wouldn’t bat an eyelash at it, I don’t know how Betts would take it.

Until I get to the root of what makes her frosty toward me, I’ve decided to keep Gretta at an arm’s distance.

“What could be more thrilling than the battles and shenanigans of Magda’s travels?

This boat is a shadow of what they were under her leadership.

Did you know they had to run from Nassau when the yellow fever took hold?

They never did figure out what brought it upon the boat, but Chub almost died. A witch saved him—”