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T wenty minutes later, all but one of the Cygnet’s crewmen were standing at the longboats, quietly grumbling.

With no time to waste on soothing their interrupted carnal needs, Rose quickly outlined her plan, then split them into two groups.

She took to the bow of one of the longboats, Duardo the other.

With the mist forming a milky layer over the surface of the water, they were almost invisible as they rowed silently out into the bay, maneuvering stealthily between and around other ships.

When they drew close to the Pride , they lifted the oars out of the water and drifted, coming close enough to hear men on the aft deck talking and laughing.

Rose had heard much about the pirate king’s ship but until now had not seen it up close.

Once a proud vessel in the Spanish treasure fleet, it had the telltale high fore and aft castles rising from the deep well of the main deck.

She was two-masted, built to carry the weight of thirty heavy guns.

The original figurehead in the bow of the Catholic ship had been that of an angel with spread wings, but Lafitte had removed it and replaced it with a demonic figure surrounded by flames, whose face bore a striking similarity to his own.

Duardo made a soft hissing sound to gain her attention.

Communicating by hand signals, he slipped quietly into the inky water and swam the short distance to the Pride .

There he climbed the anchor cable and swung himself by handholds onto the narrow balcony that spanned the stern.

The upper deck of the ship was brightly lit, but aside from a dull glow emanating from a gallery of slanted windows, the rest was in darkness.

Darkness and mist was something that favored their business tonight.

Even so, it was risky. And would be more so if Fonteyne regained his senses and escaped his bindings to raise an alarm.

Rose’s plan was to get on board, cause some mischief, and steal some prized possessions … logbooks if she could find them, or manifests. Something that would prove she was not to be so cavalierly dismissed.

Reckless? Possibly so, but she was also not one to ignore an opportunity when it was presented.

Duardo’s gleaming head rose out of the dark water beside the longboat.

“I have opened a gun port amidships; easy access for the men. I have also dropped a rope from the stern gallery.”

“Lafitte’s crew?”

“Aside from four playing dice, there are two on watch in the bow, both asleep, stinking of rum, and sleeping more soundly now.”

Bolstered by Duardo’s wide grin, Rose nodded. “Go forward with your men; my crew and I will board by the stern.”

His black head sank back under the water and he swam away.

Rose drew a few deep breaths to quell the excitement racing through her veins, then quietly ordered the men in the longboat to row toward the Pride .

She was first up the knotted rope Duardo had hung.

The gallery windows rose as high as her head, and emblazoned above was the name of the ship in gold, the lettering as tall as a man and slanted elegantly to the right.

The balcony itself was more for decoration than any useful purpose.

Narrow doors at both ends opened into the captain’s quarters.

A single lamp glowed through the dimpled waterglass, revealing what appeared to be the captain’s private sleeping quarters.

The shadows were too thick to see much beyond the circle of light thrown off by the lamp but although the image was wavey and distorted, Rose thought she saw what might be an open logbook on the desk.

She went through the gallery door and stood for a moment to take in her surroundings.

Rose’s own cabin aboard the Cygnet was stark and practical, built with collapsible inner walls that could be taken down and stowed during battle.

Her berth was suspended over a demi-cannon, as was her desk, both of which could be removed so the guns could be manned by the crew during an attack.

The floorboards were bare, free of any wax or polish that might make them slippery.

By contrast, Lafitte’s cabin could have been mistaken for an ornate room in a brothel.

As Rose turned the wick up on the lamp, the shadows were pushed back to reveal crimson-cushioned chairs with thin gilded legs sitting on a thick Persian rug edged in gold tassels.

An enormous canopied bed occupied fully a third of the cabin space, the four corners hung with gold striped draperies.

The desk was huge and solid, the sides carved with Chinese symbols.

There were paintings in gold frames hung on two of the brocaded walls.

A sideboard filled with gold and silver artifacts was crowded into the remaining wall space.

The chair behind the desk was ridiculously throne-like with intricate depictions of two rearing dragons locked in battle, their scaled tails curling down to form the arms. The book she had seen through the windows was, indeed, Lafitte’s logbook opened to the page marked with that day’s date and a simple “meeting with S” penned below.

To one side of the desk was a tall bookcase, and on one of the shelves there was a row of leather-bound books sandwiched between two white marble bookends carved like the heads of ancient Roman Gods.

She took one of the books down and thumbed it open, and when she tipped it toward the lamp for a closer look, she needed a moment to understand what she was seeing.

It was a ledger filled with names and numbers, dates and manifests. There were lists of Lafitte’s contacts and the amounts of bribes he paid to city officials. Rose glanced up and counted a dozen more books on the shelf, all likely filled with Lafitte’s chicken scratch handwriting.

Meanwhile, the rest of the crew from the longboat had climbed aboard and filed quietly into the cabin, each of them gawping at the expanse of crimson and gold. One man reached up slowly to snatch the cap he was wearing off his head.

“An’ we take the piss fer ‘avin’ a woman fer a captain,” he muttered.

Rose reluctantly set the ledgers aside. Pistol in hand, she led the men across the cabin to the door. The latch lifted easily and swung open on well-oiled hinges.

The adjoining day cabin was not only larger than the sleeping quarters, but it was decorated even more garishly, if that was possible.

Gold candelabra sat on a long mahogany dining table polished to a mirror shine.

Each of the dozen Louis XIV chairs had plush velvet cushions for seats.

Cabinets on the wall held gold plates and crystal glasses.

A rack stretched floor to ceiling contained various bottles of wine and spirits.

A sideboard, she noted with a smirk, had two bottles of Pirata Lobo rum on ornate silver trays.

Reminding herself that an alarm could be raised at any moment, Rose sent five of the men below to secure the armory and powder magazine; both of which were crucial to secure before any of Lafitte’s crew became aware of their presence.

The rest of the crew from the longboat, pistols drawn, followed Rose’s hand signals and bled off to search the smaller cabins.

In the dead of night, it was safe to assume most of the pirate king’s crew would be asleep in their hammocks on the lower deck and not wandering around the ship.

Rose returned to Lafitte’s private quarters and sat in the dragon chair tapping her finger thoughtfully on the logbook.

The same shelves that held the ledgers had wooden bins below them, each filled with rolled-up maps and charts.

The desk itself had several pigeonholes filled with correspondence, most written in some bastardized version of Cajun and English.

There were three drawers down one side, all of them locked, and she was about to attack the brass plates with the tip of a blade when Duardo came into the cabin.

He was shaking his head in disgust. “Ten men. The six on deck and four more below. Our men have locked them in a cargo bay.”

“Alive, I hope?”

“Sleeping,” he said, patting the bamboo tube.

Rose frowned. “Only ten men? You searched everywhere?”

“Everywhere anything bigger than a rat could hide, Captain.”

“I’ll be damned.”

He nodded. “Arrogant even for a pirate king.”

Nibbling at the edge of her lip, she returned to the day cabin and poured two glasses of rum then handed one to Duardo.

He accepted the glass but was wary of the bright gleam in her eyes. It was an all-too-familiar gleam that usually meant trouble.

“I do not like what you might be thinking even more than I did not like what you were thinking before.”

“What do you think I might be thinking?”

“That merely taking a few ledgers and logbooks is not enough.”

“There are twenty of us on board,” she said, the eagerness hard to conceal. “Easily as many as we put on any prize ship to sail it.”

Duardo refrained from comment. His big hand squeezed the delicate crystal glass and he downed the harsh spirits in a single swallow. “If we take the ship, even if we manage to get her out of the harbor without any alarm being raised … what do we do with her then?”

“I haven’t thought that far ahead yet. Let’s just see if we can get her out of the bay first.”

Rose dispatched half of the crew to man the heavy capstan and haul up the anchor.

She doused the big deck lamps along with the lanterns strung along the rigging, plunging the ship into darkness.

She didn’t dare lower any sails. Instead, she put men back in the longboats and attached tow ropes to both in order to pass through the harbor as quietly as possible.

The thick mist aided their task by turning into a sudden downpour that was common in the humid heat of the marshes.

Sheets of rain cloaked their movements, dampening any sounds that were made as the Pride glided out of the bay.

Once they had cleared Barataria Bay and left the outer island of Grand Terre behind, they piled on sail to catch the wind as it came around the headland.

An hour later, they were in the open water of the Gulf where they retrieved the Cygnet and the Hyperion from the cove where they had been safely snugged away.

Most of the Hyperion’s crew accepted Rose’s offer to disembark along with the unconscious crew of the Pride .

Fully a third, however, lured by the promise of shared profits, signed articles and joined the Cygnet’s roster.

With the smear of dawn light barely edging above the horizon, Rose lowered Lafitte’s flag from the mast of the Pride and raised her own: a snarling female wolf on a hunter green field.