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PLOTS AND PERILS

‘S O. IT DIDN’T work out quite as Captain Kennit the Pirate King had planned, did it?’

‘Shut up.’ Kennit spoke more in weariness than rancour.

It had been a distressing and taxing day.

They had sighted a liveship, a wide-bellied merchant-trader of the old style, a wallowing sow of a ship.

She had been quite a way ahead of them, picking her way through the shallows of Wrong Again Channel.

She sat deep in the water, heavy with some rich cargo.

At the very least, they should have been able to force her to run aground.

The Marietta had put on sail and swept up on her, close enough to hear the figurehead calling out the soundings and headings to the steersman.

They came close enough to see the faces of the men that manned her, close enough to hear their cries as they recognized his Raven flag and shouted encouragement to one another.

Sorcor launched his balls-and-chains at their rigging, only to have the ship sidle aside from it at the last moment.

In fury, Kennit called for fire-balls, and Sorcor reluctantly complied.

One of them struck well, splattering on a sail that obligingly burst into flames.

But almost as swiftly as the flames ran up the canvas, the sail collapsed on itself, billowing down to where a frantic crew might trample it and douse it with water.

And with every passing moment, somehow, impossibly, the liveship pulled steadily away from them.

Kennit had shrieked at his crew like a madman, demanding canvas, oars, anything they might muster to push a bit more speed out of the ship.

But as if the very gods opposed him, a winter squall blew in, one of the horrible island squalls that sent the winds racketing in every possible direction.

Grey rain sheeted down, blinding them. He cursed, and climbed the mast himself, to try to keep sight of her.

His every sense strained after her, and time after time, he caught glimpses of her.

Each time she had been further ahead of him.

She swept around a headland, and when the Marietta rounded it, the liveship was gone. Simply gone.

Now it was evening, the night wind filled Marietta’s sails and the monotonous rains had ceased. His crew was tip-toeing around him, unaware that his seething displeasure with them had boiled itself dry. He stood on the afterdeck, watching witch-fire dance in their wake, and sought some inner peace.

‘I suppose this means you owe Sorcor another slaver, doesn’t it?’ the charm observed affably.

‘I wonder, if I cut you from my wrist and threw you overboard, would you float?’

‘Let’s find out,’ the small face suggested agreeably.

Kennit sighed. ‘The only reason I continue to tolerate you is because you cost me so much in the first place.’

The twin countenance pursed his lips at him. ‘I wonder if you shall say that of the whore, also, in days to come.’

Kennit clenched his eyes shut. ‘Cannot you be silent and leave me alone for even a moment?’

A soft step and the whisper of brushing fabric on the deck behind him. ‘Did you speak to me?’ Etta asked.

‘No.’

‘I thought you said something… you wished to be alone? I can return to the cabin, if you like.’ She paused, and added more softly, ‘But I would much prefer to join you, if it would please you.’

Her perfume had reached him now. Lavender. Irresolution assailed him and he turned his head to regard her. She curtseyed low to him, a lady greeting her lord.

‘Oh, please,’ he growled in disbelief.

‘Thank you,’ she replied warmly. Her slippered feet pattered softly across the deck and Etta was suddenly beside him.

She did not touch him. Even now, she knew better than to be that familiar.

Nor did she lean casually on the rail beside him.

Instead, she stood, her back straight, a single hand resting upon the rail.

And she looked at him. After a time, he could not stand it. He turned his head to meet her stare.

And she smiled at him. Radiantly. Luminously.

‘Lovely,’ breathed the small voice at his wrist. And Kennit had to concur.

Etta lowered her eyes and looked aside from him, as if momentarily shy or confused.

She wore yet another new costume. The sailor who had brought her aboard had followed his original directive, supplying her with a tub of warm water for bathing, but had been at a loss as to what to provide for her to wear.

Clearly rough sailor’s clothing would not do for his captain’s lady.

With a great deal of trepidation, he had laid out the captain’s own nightrobe for her, and then hesitantly offered her several bolts of rich cloth from their latest trove.

Kennit had at first been disgruntled at this largesse, but then resigned to it.

Needles and thread were always plentiful aboard a sailing ship, and Etta had kept herself well-occupied with her sewing tasks.

Kennit eventually concluded that the man had actually been brilliant.

While the woman was occupied with needlework, she could not bother him.

The clothing Etta styled for herself was unlike anything Kennit had ever before seen on a woman, and actually quite sensible for shipboard life.

Not that he was resigned to her living aboard the ship.

He had simply not yet found a good place to stash her.

It was convenient to him that she was an adaptable sort.

Not once had she complained since he had brought her aboard.

Unless one counted the second day, when she stormed the galley and upbraided the cook for over-salting the stew he had sent to Kennit’s table.

As often as not she now oversaw the preparation of their cabin-served meals.

And perhaps the food had improved as a result of that.

But she was still a whore, he reminded himself.

Despite her crown of sleek short hair that caught the ship’s lights and returned it as sheen, despite the emerald green silk of her loose-sleeved blouse, or the brocaded trousers she tucked it into, despite the cloth-of-gold sash that narrowed her lean waist, she was still just his whore.

Even if a tiny ruby twinkled in her ear-lobe, and a lush fur-lined cloak sheltered her body from the night wind.

‘I have been thinking about the liveship that eluded you today,’ she dared to say. She lifted her eyes to his, dark eyes too bold for his taste. She seemed to sense that, for she cast them down again, even before he barked, ‘Don’t speak to me of that.’

‘I won’t,’ she promised him gently. But after a moment, she broke her word, as women always did.

‘The swiftness of a willing liveship is legendary,’ she said quietly.

She stared out at their wake and spoke to the night.

‘I know next to nothing of piracy,’ she next admitted.

As if that might surprise him. ‘But I wonder if the very willingness of the ship to flee swiftly might not be somehow turned against it.’

‘I fail to see how,’ Kennit sneered.

She licked her lips before she spoke, and for just an instant, his whole attention was caught by that tiny movement of wet pink tongue-tip. An irrational surge of desire flamed up in him. Damn her. This constant exposure to a woman was not good for a man. He breathed out, a low sound.

She gave him a quick sideways glance. If he had been certain it was amusement at him that curved the corners of her lips, he would have slapped her.

But she spoke only of piracy. ‘A rabbit kills itself when it runs headlong into the snare,’ she observed.

‘If one knew the planned course of a liveship, and if one had more than one pirate vessel at one’s disposal…

why, then, a single ship could give chase, and urge the liveship to run headlong into an ambush.

’ She paused and cast her eyes down to the water again.

‘I am told that it can be quite difficult to stop a ship, even if the danger ahead is seen. And it seems to me there are many narrow channels in these waters, where a sailing ship would have no alternative but to run aground to avoid a collision.’

‘I suppose it might be done, though it seems to me that there are a great many “ifs” involved. It would require precisely the right circumstances.’

‘Yes, I suppose it would,’ she murmured.

She gave her head a small shake to toss the hair back from her eyes.

Her short sleek hair was perfectly black, as the night sky is black between the stars.

He need not fear to kiss her; she had no man save him these days.

She saw him watching her. Her eyes widened and suddenly she breathed more quickly and deeply.

He abruptly matched his body to hers, pinning her against the rail, mastering her.

He forced her mouth open to his, felt the small, hard nipples of her slight breasts through the thin, body-warmed silk of her blouse. He lifted his mouth from hers.

‘Never,’ he said roughly, ‘presume to tell me my business. I well know how to get what I want. I need no woman to advise me.’

Her eyes were full of the night. ‘You know very well,’ she agreed with him huskily.