B illy Burr delayed the need to test Lafitte’s guns in favor of using the big black beasts she found on board the Black Wind .

Rose obliged her request by having Nate Reed tack the Black Wind into position at the mouth of the bay.

From there, Billy and her gun crews enthusiastically poured five full broadsides into the listing Hyperion , smashing timbers and rails, cutting through masts and yards.

The last round she sent thundering across the gap was for pure pleasure rather than necessity, for there was little left on the surface aside from floating debris.

At the end of the bombardment, the smallest thread of black smoke marked the spot where the English vessel had been, but that too was extinguished when the last scrap of timber sank beneath the bubbling water.

Rose had watched from the quarterdeck with Stubb, who had to stand on a coil of rope to gain enough height to see over the rail. Like most of the crew on deck, they had both stuffed twists of cloth into their ears, making it look like they were leaking clots of milk.

Without the plugs, the concussion from the heavy guns would have rendered them partly deaf for several days.

As it was, their voices sounded as if they were speaking from the far end of a long, watery tunnel, which in this case was not unwelcomed.

Stubb had not stopped talking, squawking, criticizing, and generally pointing out how he would have made a better job of the sinking.

“Even so, a fair effort,” he said to Rose, shouting so she could hear him through the tunnel.

She nodded and refrained from shouting anything back that might encourage him to start another analysis.

With the sun nearing its zenith, the heat was beating down in full force.

She had tossed her hat and frockcoat aside and stood now in breeches and waistcoat with the sleeves of her white linen shirt rolled up above her elbows.

Her hair shone red with sun-kissed gold threads wound through.

The long plait had lost most of its woven definition and the loosened curls flew haphazardly around her face and neck.

She plucked the cotton plugs out of her ears when she saw Billy Burr below her on the main deck. “Well done, Billy.”

Billy grinned and looked up. “The culverins are magnificent, cast in Spain by God himself. The barrels were so clean they whistled.”

“Shall I assume the armory is better provisioned than the Pride ?”

“There is enough shot and powder on board to fight the whole of King George’s navy.”

“Best put on sail,” Stubb said. “The thunder of them shots will carry two miles or more an’ we be a mort closer to Hispaniola than my liver likes.”

Rose agreed. “Mercado can handle the Cygnet ; I want you to stay on board here with me. Signal the Pride . Have Duardo prepare to get under way.”

“Oh, aye, I found a good place to make repairs a day south o’ here. Good harbor, friendly natives.”

“Find another,” she said after a moment. “We’re going due east.”

Stubb knocked a pudgy fist on his ear in case he hadn’t heard correctly. “East?”

“East, yes. To Crooked Island and from there, up the Tongue toward the Straits.”

Stubb’s eyes widened. “The Florida Straits? Ye sure ye want to risk it? British revenuers be thick as thieves along the Tongue waitin’ to pounce on ships comin’ out o’ New Providence.”

“Exactly so. Hopefully they will be too busy chasing smugglers to see us slipping past.”

Stubb’s look was sceptical. He scratched his head hard enough to dislodge his cap, but although he opened his mouth to voice another objection, he bit back whatever he was going to say and jumped down off the coil of rope.

“Aye, Capt’n. East it be. I’ll ‘ave to fetch my charts to plot a new course. Back in a blink.”

“Take your time,” she murmured. As the tiny navigator descended the ladderway, her attention was diverted to where Billy now stood, bow in hand, a wooden quiver of arrows at her side.

Scores of gulls had been disturbed by the thundering broadsides and flew in screeching circles overhead.

Billy nocked an arrow into the bow, drew the string back to her cheek and shot a fat one in the chest. Even before it had fallen to the deck, she fit another arrow and shot a second bird, then a third.

Rose came down from the quarterdeck and joined Billy on the maindeck. “Are food supplies so short we need to roast the flying rats for our supper?”

Billy loosed another arrow, shot another gull.

“The hollow shafts of their tail feathers hold the perfect amount of powder to prime the touchholes of the cannon. Quicker to fit a quill in the hole than guess how much powder is needed or spill it all over the barrel in the heat and confusion of battle.”

Rose knew the burns on Billy’s face had been a result of excess black powder igniting in just such a way.

“Tell me what you know about making a bomb. The explosive kind.”

“Is there any other kind?” When she realized Rose’s question was serious. Billy lowered the bow. “Well … the simplest way is to pack a metal tube or canister with gunpowder, then run a black-match fuse a safe distance away. The bigger the canister, the bigger the boom.”

“And if that metal tube was packed around barrels of whale oil and other combustibles, then placed in a longboat?”

Billy’s curiosity prompted her to lower the bow. “You would get a boom that would send hellfire exploding in all directions.”

“Enough hellfire to seriously damage a ship?”

“You’re describing a fireship. Aye, fireships destroyed more warships in the Spanish Armada than any rounds from British guns.”

Rose pursed her lips thoughtfully and Billy followed her gaze to where the crew on the Pride was unfurling the big mainsail. “May I ask what ship you are wanting to blow up?”

“I haven’t quite decided yet.”

“I was hoping you might say the Pride . It would make me very happy to blow up that floating brothel.”

“I’m not sure I want to vex Lafitte any more than I have already.”

Billy snorted. “I admire your knack for understatement. As if stealing his ship out from under his nose or humiliating his favorite captain won’t have vexed him enough.”

“I stole his ship to prove a point, that we can be more advantageous as a friend than an enemy.”

“And this?” She waved an arrow to indicate the sails overhead.

“Wasn’t planned,” Rose admitted, “But it certainly speaks to our worth.”

“You would still petition to be part of Lafitte’s fleet?”

“No. But I might accept an invitation to join his company of privateers.”

“And just how do you plan to get him to do that?”

Behind them, Sebastien Fonteyne stood with his arms crossed over his chest and a scowl on his face. “I would be curious to know the answer to that as well.”

Rose and Billy spun around at the sound of his voice. Rose with a hand flying to her pistol, Billy with an arrow nocked and ready to fling at the intruder. Sebastien did not flinch, did not blink an eye at either threat.

After a full thirty seconds, Rose huffed out a breath. “Do you always creep up on people and listen to their private conversations?”

“Not always. Sometimes I like to end their conversations by clapping their heads together and splitting their skulls.”

Billy increased the tension on the bowstring, but the cool gaze showed not a twinge of fear.

Nor did it betray any reaction to the ugly burn scars that distorted the left side of her face.

The terrible wounds had the opposite effect, in fact.

His mouth softened slightly at the corners.

“You must be Billy Burr. Did you enjoy firing my guns?”

“Not nearly as much as I would enjoy firing this arrow.”

He glanced over at the bay, where only the smallest of ripples remained to show where the Hyperion had once been. “It took you five broadsides to sink her?”

“I wasn’t counting.”

“I was. I would have expected a new crew firing unfamiliar guns to take twice that many.”

Billy eased the bowstring slightly, wary of the compliment. “My gunners can stand with the best.”

“As, apparently, can your captain.” Saying this, his gaze turned to Rose, but if he expected her to react favorably to the flattery, he was sorely mistaken.

“I did not give you leave to come up on deck,” she said.

“There was no lock on the door. Moreover, I’m an inquisitive bastard. When my ship’s guns are firing, I like to know why.”

He had discarded the bandage Penman had wrapped around his head and rinsed the blood out of his hair.

The shaggy black waves were tied smoothly into a damp queue at his nape, revealing features that were clearly defined: the broad forehead, the rugged shape of his jaw furred under several days worth of bearding.

Dark lashes called attention to the shockingly direct boldness of his eyes though the flesh beneath was beginning to turn purple from bruising.

Penman’s neat line of stitching cut through the tail of the eyebrow giving it a slightly downward slant.

Rose was aware that her crew had slowly stopped what they were doing to turn and watch the exchange between the infamous Sebastien Fonteyne and their captain, who, without the bulk of her frockcoat padding her shoulders, looked half his size as she stood glaring up at him, her hands planted firmly on her hips.

Billy broke the tension by shooting another gull that flew overhead, bringing a flapping corpse down into the crew’s midst. “Back to work, you laggards! You there, fetch the dead birds and have a care with the tail feathers, I need them whole. And bring me the spent arrows as haven’t enough to waste. ”

“Ho, there, madam, might I put in a request for the bodies of the gulls when your men have relieved them of the feathers?”

Archibald Penman stepped hastily out from the shadows of the hatchway where he had been hanging back out of sight. He had followed Fonteyne out of the cabin but was evidently less keen to venture onto the open deck.

“The livers,” he explained in response to Billy’s stare. “After they have been dried, the powdered livers can be of some medicinal use.”

Billy turned the damaged side of her face slightly away. “Aye, you can have what you want when I’m done. But if you call me madam again, it’ll be your liver that’ll be carved out and ground into powder.”

Penman raised his hands. “Yes. Yes, my apologies, ma—er…”

“Billy. Just Billy.” She turned and fired off two more arrows as she walked away.

“Billy is quite good with that bow,” Rose said. “Not so good at holding her temper. Nor, for that matter, is the rest of my crew.”

“Indeed,” Penman said, casting a glance at the hard faces. “Point taken.”

“You have yet to answer my question,” Fonteyne said.

“And what question might that be?”

“Two, actually. The first is how you plan to get Lafitte to invite you to join his company of pirates and thieves; the second is how you intend to convince him to defend the good citizens of New Orleans who have so obviously not gone out of their way to accept his offer of protection.”

She found herself focussing on the shape of his lips while he spoke and quickly looked away.

Some of the crew, she noted, had sidled discreetly closer to catch snatches of their conversation. Those snatches, she knew, would travel from one end of the ship to the other, top to bilges, before the last words had left her lips.

“Perhaps it is a conversation better had back in the cabin,” she said.

Fonteyne had seen the glance she had cast around the deck and nodded in understanding. He crooked a finger at the helmsman, Nate Reed, who was standing nearby, shadowed by two of Rose’s crewmen.

“The helm is yours again and you are to follow Captain St. Clare’s orders.”

“We will be getting under way shortly,” Rose said.

“Stubb is currently looking for a safe place to put in for repairs. The carpenters have done what they can for now,” She paused and pointed up at the mainmast where the crack had been bound in thick cables.

“We should not linger here in case someone heard the guns or saw the smoke.”

Nate blinked. He looked from Fonteyne to Rose—who had already started to walk away—then back to Fonteyne. “Captain?”

“I have given my bond that we will all behave like gentlemen,” he said, loudly enough for the crew to overhear. But quietly, he added, “And until I find out what the minx is up to, you will follow along with the charade.”

Nate tugged at a snow white forelock and his Irish came out in a crooked smile. “Aye Captain. Until you tell us otherwise.”