Page 10 of The Sea Witch (Salt & Sorcery #1)

“Damn.” Alys pulled out several charts and spread them open on a table—a mahogany table, Alys was pleased to note, that she

had actually paid for at a port of call, rather than seized from a captured ship.

She and Stasia studied the charts thoroughly, reviewing the maps that had been painstakingly rendered by cartographers from around the globe, with territories and towns all carefully inscribed, just as the creatures and supernatural beasts that dwelled in the waters and forests were depicted in all their powerful splendor.

Yet there were no indicators of anywhere that bore the name the Weeping Princess.

“Perhaps it’s a nickname for some church or tower. ”

“Hell, if I know.” Stasia folded her arms across her chest as she scowled at the stack of useless maps.

“Perhaps this’ll do.” Alys spoke the riddle again as she summoned a spell from a thick honey-scented candle, calling upon

the knowledge bees possessed when finding their way from hive to flower and back again. She focused her attention on her words,

bringing to mind the bees’ flight, and cast the spell over the maps. It shimmered for a moment, and she held her breath, hopeful

that the enchantment would alight somewhere on the chart that might show them where they needed to go.

Yet the glittering spell turned to flakes of useless ash that scattered across the map.

“Fuck,” she muttered. She dropped her head. “A disaster of a captain I am, and an even bigger failure as a witch, if I can’t

lead us toward the one thing that might turn the tide in our favor.”

“Alys,” Stasia said firmly. “You can do this.”

“I’m glad one of us has confidence in me, if not my choices.”

Alys exhaled roughly. Her stomach knotted when faced with the immensity of her situation. She had to find the fail-safe, and

she’d kept the naval sailing master alive for that very purpose. But was that the right decision?

She looked down at the charts. “If our powers fail us, then surely there is someone in our company who will have the answer.”

For the next half an hour, every single member of the crew was brought into Alys’s cabin, and heard Little George’s riddle,

making certain to include Luna, who served as their navigator. Yet, for all their varied experience with the Caribbean, not

a one could hazard a guess as to what or where the Weeping Princess might be.

“Damn.” Alys planted her hands on her hips as the last of the company left her cabin. “We’ve one option left.”

“No,” Stasia said at once.

“Fetch our guest from the brig.”

His wrists and ankles in manacles and shackles, Ben sat on a narrow cot in a narrow space bound on three sides with iron bars

that glowed with pale green light. A wooden bowl of untouched stewed chicken had been placed on the floor.

What the hell had he been thinking, chasing Alys Tanner all the way to her own ship? What had he expected to accomplish?

No one had ever accused him of being reckless.

“ Your logbook is remarkably precise and detailed, Mr. Priestley ,” Admiral Strickland had often told him, reviewing his account of the day. “ Fastidious, one might say. ”

“ Pry that ramrod out of your arse, Priestley ,” Lieutenant Vickers had frequently snapped at him whenever Ben took an additional ten minutes to make up his berth. “ You make my bollocks shrivel. ”

The lone time Ben had been impulsive, he’d wound up here.

Escape wouldn’t be possible. The ship was in the middle of the sea and the likelihood of commandeering one of the Sea Witch ’s jolly boats was slim. There were also suspicious eyes all around, watching. More than a few of them were witches, who had

God only knew what kind of power at their disposal to painfully dispatch him.

One of the crew guarded him now, a lean West Indian woman dressed in a loose linen shirt and flowing culottes. The bright

blue of her headscarf contrasted with the burnished copper of her skin. She kept her hand on the pistol tucked into her sash,

and maintained a healthy distance between Ben and herself, as if she expected him to lash out at any moment.

“Have you served on this ship for long?” he asked her.

She said nothing, but her hand tightened on the butt of her flintlock. The handle of the pistol was worn and smooth from much use.

He’d never set foot on a pirate ship. When the navy fought and then captured buccaneers, he wasn’t involved in rounding up

prisoners or seeing to their captivity, but he had been present when the outlaws were brought aboard the ship.

Ben had been the object of those men’s hostile glares before. Yet they didn’t possess the personal element that he received

from the company of the Sea Witch . No one aboard this vessel liked him. There was far more safety within the confines of the brig than anywhere else on the

ship.

Even so, to be on this ship, alone, surrounded by pirates... and witches... He knew something of the first, and far less of the second.

Tentatively, he touched the shimmering bars of his cage, then pulled back when hot sharp pain shot up his arm. The brig was

enchanted. He’d have no way out.

If he stayed alive long enough, perhaps he might be able to get some word to Admiral Strickland and the Jupiter . He could lead the navy to the Sea Witch . And see every last one of the ship’s crew arrested.

“Tanner must be a good captain,” he tried again, “to inspire such loyalty this crew shows her.”

More silence from his guard.

“Though she seems impetuous,” Ben said.

The guard’s eyes flashed, yet she remained mute.

“Raiding nearly fifty ships in the course of a single year,” Ben continued. “An impressive reputation for any pirate company.

And to do so without resorting to the depths of vicious bloodshed so many other buccaneers revel in, well, that’s not without

merit.”

The guard’s expression remained impassive.

“Yet you kill when met with resistance,” Ben went on. “The crews of slave ships face the worst of your brutality. Other pirate ships sell the enslaved for profit, but I’ve heard you never keep the human cargo. It’s said this ship takes the freed people to a safe haven.”

The woman standing sentry revealed nothing, not even a look of pride.

There was allegiance here amongst this ship of women. Unlike on naval ships, where the captain was assigned by the admiralty, by custom,

pirate companies elected their captains, and another vote could see a buccaneer captain replaced by someone else. When captured

by pirates, many prisoners opted to sign the articles and become part of the crew. On a ship such as this, they had an actual

say in who commanded them.

Almost commendable, except for the fact that they were thieves, taking what did not belong to them.

The ship and her captain were paradoxes and enigmas—two things that had no place in this world with space only for right and

wrong, certainties and truths.

How was it possible that Strickland had actually worked with a pirate? No one dealt as harshly with buccaneers as the admiral. Few of the pirates he captured ever made it to Port Royal

for trial. In the five years Ben had served on the Jupiter , he’d witnessed the execution of scores of buccaneers, all at Strickland’s orders.

Many others had been killed by the leviathan. The destruction of the Diabolique wasn’t the first time Ben had witnessed the beast’s deadly power, but that didn’t stop a shudder from working its way along

his spine as the terrified pirates’ screams echoed through his mind. There was no honor in ridding the world of buccaneers,

not that way.

Strickland had swallowed his ethos long enough to collaborate with an infamous pirate. Yet it was to create a weapon against pirates.

Ben winced as contradictions battered against the inside of his skull.

Steps sounded in the passageway, and the woman with the Mediterranean accent appeared at the entrance to the brig. She had

a profile as noble and strong as any ship of the line. A black-and-white magpie perched on her shoulder, chirping lowly. The

woman shot Ben a glower before turning to the guard.

“Captain wants to see him, Dayanna. Has he been giving you trouble?”

“Trying to worm intelligence from me.” Dayanna handed the Greek woman a ring of keys that glowed with magic. “But that tree

bears no fruit.”

“That is why we trust you with the keys,” the other woman said with a small smile. She inserted a key into the lock, and the

glow vanished from the bars.

He could try to flee now—but he wouldn’t get far.

The bird on the woman’s shoulder flapped its wings. Once the door to the brig swung open, she snapped her fingers at Ben.

“Up, malákas.”

Whatever that word meant, it wasn’t good.

Standing whilst bound at the wrists and ankles wasn’t easily managed. Yet he struggled to his feet and shuffled after the

Greek woman as she led him through a passageway, which was neat and orderly, up a well-maintained companionway—even more difficult

with the shackles at his ankles—and then down another corridor, until she stopped outside a door and knocked.

“I have brought the pútsos,” she said when a voice within bid her to enter.

“It’s Sailing Master Priestley or Mr. Priestley,” he reminded the Greek woman.

She leveled him with an indifferent look before shoving him inside.

Between the hard push and the bindings around his ankles, he stumbled forward, landing uncomfortably on his knees.

“That’s how a man is supposed to approach a woman,” came a wry feminine voice.

His gaze landed on the toes of a pair of boots, and then went higher, roaming up the thigh-high boots, along feminine thighs

and hips encased in snug breeches, up over a leather tunic secured with a wide belt, going higher still until he beheld Alys

Tanner’s face, looking down at him with a mixture of contempt and amusement. She’d taken a kerchief of bright green silk and

wrapped it around her head, and the color was striking against the red hue of her unbound hair.